A NIGHT PIECE WILLIAM WORDSWORTH -The sky is overcast With a continuous cloud of texture close, or tower. from rock, plant, tree, At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam Bent earthwards; he looks up- the clouds are split The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens. Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds, THE GROWTH OF A NATION JOHN FISKE JOHN FISKE (1842-1901) was an American author and scholar. The nation over which George Washington was called to preside in 1789 was a third-rate power, inferior in population and wealth to Holland, for example, and about on a level with Portugal or Denmark. The population, num- 5 bering less than four million, was thinly scattered through the thirteen states between the Atlantic and the Alleghenies, beyond which mountainous barrier a few hardy pioneers were making the beginnings of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. Roads were few and bad, none of the 10 great rivers were bridged, mails were irregular. There were few manufactures. There were many traders and merchant seamen in the coast towns of the north, but the great majority of the people were farmers who lived on the produce of their own estates and seldom undertook 15 long journeys. Hence the different parts of the country knew very little about each other, and entertained absurd prejudices; and the sentiment of union between the states. was extremely weak. East of the Alleghenies the red man had ceased to be 20 dangerous, but tales of Indian massacre still came from regions no more remote than Ohio and Georgia. By rare good fortune and consummate diplomacy the United States had secured, at the peace of 1783, all the territory as far as the Mississippi River, but all the vast regions beyond, together with the important city of New Orleans at its mouth, belonged to Spain, the European power 5 which most cordially hated us. The only other power which had possessions in North America was England, from which we had lately won our independence. The feeling entertained toward us in England was one of mortification and chagrin, accompanied by a hope that our 10 half-formed Union would fall in pieces and its separate states be driven by disaster to beg to be taken back into the British Empire. The rest of Europe knew little about the United States and cared less. This country, however, which seemed so insignificant 15 beside the great powers of Europe, contained within itself the germs of an industrial and political development far greater than anything the world had ever seen. The American population was settled upon a territory much more than capable of supporting it. The natural resources 20 of the country were so vast as to create a steady demand for labor far greater than ordinary increase of population could supply. This is still the case, and for a long time will continue to be the case. It is this simple economic fact which has always been at the bottom of the wonder25 ful growth of the United States. But it was very necessary that the nation should be provided with such a government as would enable it to take full advantage of this fact. It was necessary, first, that the federal government should be strong enough to preserve peace at home and make itself respected abroad; secondly, that local self-government should be maintained in every part of the Union; thirdly, that there should be absolute free 5 trade between the states. These three great ends our federal Constitution has secured. The requisite strength in the central government was, indeed, not all acquired in a moment. It took a second war with England, in 1812-1815, to convince foreign nations that the American 10 flag could not be insulted with impunity; and it took the terrible Civil War to prove that our government was too strong to be overthrown by the most formidable domestic combination that could possibly be brought against it. The result of both these wars has been to diminish the 15 probable need for further wars on the part of the United States. In spite of these and other minor contests, our federal Constitution for a century kept the American Union in such profound peace as was never seen before in any part of the earth since men began to live upon its 20 surface. Local self-government and free trade within the limits of the Union were not interfered with. As a result, we were able to profit largely by our natural advantages, so that the end of our first century of national existence found us the strongest and richest nation in the world. For these blessings, in so far as they are partly the work of wise statesmanship, a large share of our gratitude 25. is due to the administration of George Washington. . . The character of Washington may want some of those poetical elements which dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities and a rarer union of 5 virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of any other man, prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgment, an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy. It seems as if 10 Providence had endowed him in a preeminent degree with the qualities requisite to fit him for the high destiny he was called upon to fulfill, — to conduct a momentous revolution which was to form an era in the history of the world, and to inaugurate a new and untried government, 15 which, to use his own words, was to lay the foundation "for the enjoyment of much purer civil liberty and greater public happiness than have hitherto been the portion of mankind." The fame of Washington stands apart from every other 20 in history, shining with a truer luster and a more benignant glory. With us his memory remains a national property, where all sympathies throughout our widely extended and diversified empire meet in unison. Under all dissensions and amid all the storms of party his precepts and 25 example speak to us from the grave with a paternal appeal; and his name, by all revered, forms a universal tie of brotherhood, a watchword of our Union. |