There is another eloquence, in which the national consciousness of a young or renewed and vast strength, of trust in a dazzling certain and limitless future, an inward glorying in victories yet to be won, sounds out as by voice of clarion, challenging to contest for the highest prize of earth; such as that in which the leader of Israel in its first days holds up to the new nation the Land of Promise; such as that which in the well-imagined speeches scattered by Livy over the history of the “majestic series of victories” speaks the Roman consciousness of growing aggrandizement which should subject the world; such as that through which, at the tribunes of her revolution, in the bulletins of her rising soldiers, France told to the world her dream of glory.

And of this kind somewhat is ours—­cheerful, hopeful, trusting, as befits youth and spring; the eloquence of a state beginning to ascend to the first class of power, eminence, and consideration, and conscious of itself.  It is to no purpose that they tell you it is in bad taste; that it partakes of arrogance and vanity; that a true national good breeding would not know, or seem to know, whether the nation is old or young; whether the tides of being are in their flow or ebb; whether these coursers of the sun are sinking slowly to rest, wearied with a journey of a thousand years, or just bounding from the Orient unbreathed.  Higher laws than those of taste determine the consciousness of nations.  Higher laws than those of taste determine the general forms of the expression of that consciousness.  Let the downward age of America find its orators and poets and artists to erect its spirit, or grace and soothe its dying; be it ours to go up with Webster to the Rock, the Monument, the Capitol, and bid “the distant generations hail!”

Until the seventh day of March, 1850, I think it would have been accorded to him by an almost universal acclaim, as general and as expressive of profound and intelligent conviction and of enthusiasm, love, and trust, as ever saluted conspicuous statesmanship, tried by many crises of affairs in a great nation, agitated ever by parties, and wholly free.

ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE

PASS PROSPERITY AROUND

Delivered as Temporary Chairman of Progressive National Convention, Chicago, Ill., June, 1911.

We stand for a nobler America.  We stand for an undivided Nation.  We stand for a broader liberty, a fuller justice.  We stand for a social brotherhood as against savage individualism.  We stand for an intelligent cooeperation instead of a reckless competition.  We stand for mutual helpfulness instead of mutual hatred.  We stand for equal rights as a fact of life instead of a catch-word of politics.  We stand for the rule of the people as a practical truth instead of a meaningless pretense.  We stand for a representative government that represents the people.  We battle for the actual rights of man.