the failure.  They were committing treason in the interest of the liberty of 3,000,000 people in America.  All the rest of the world was against them and smiled with cynical incredulity at the audacious undertaking.  Do you think that if they could see this great Nation now they would regret anything that they then did to draw the gaze of a hostile world upon them?  Every idea must be started by somebody, and it is a lonely thing to start anything.  Yet if it is in you, you must start it if you have a man’s blood in you and if you love the country that you profess to be working for.

I am sometimes very much interested when I see gentlemen supposing that popularity is the way to success in America.  The way to success in this great country, with its fair judgments, is to show that you are not afraid of anybody except God and his final verdict.  If I did not believe that, I would not believe in democracy.  If I did not believe that, I would not believe that people can govern themselves.  If I did not believe that the moral judgment would be the last judgment, the final judgment, in the minds of men as well as the tribunal of God, I could not believe in popular government.  But I do believe these things, and, therefore, I earnestly believe in the democracy not only of America but of every awakened people that wishes and intends to govern and control its own affairs.

It is very inspiring, my friends, to come to this that may be called the original fountain of independence and liberty in American and here drink draughts of patriotic feeling which seem to renew the very blood in one’s veins.  Down in Washington sometimes when the days are hot and the business presses intolerably and there are so many things to do that it does not seem possible to do anything in the way it ought to be done, it is always possible to lift one’s thought above the task of the moment and, as it were, to realize that great thing of which we are all parts, the great body of American feeling and American principle.  No man could do the work that has to be done in Washington if he allowed himself to be separated from that body of principle.  He must make himself feel that he is a part of the people of the United States, that he is trying to think not only for them, but with them, and then he cannot feel lonely.  He not only cannot feel lonely but he cannot feel afraid of anything.

My dream is that as the years go on and the world knows more and more of America it will also drink at these fountains of youth and renewal; that it also will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis of all freedom; that the world will never fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some enterprise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity; and that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.