Office of the Sangamo Insurance Company, GENTLEMEN: Springfield, Ill., August, 1870. The Constitution of Illinois, a copy of which is hereby presented you, is confessed to be the model organic law of the world. No State has incorporated into its Constitution so many excellent features, none has so thoroughly established justice or so fully protected its citizens against oppression of every kind. It is gratifying to know that in all future time will justly belong to Illinois, the credit of leading where all nations, really bent on getting at substantial justice and intelligent public order, must sooner or later follow. In the glory of this achievement the entire West shares; it was western brain and western sympathy, with the most progressive and liberal ideas of the 19th century, which conceived and made possible the enactment of that Constitution which is admired, and will eventually be copied, by every State in the Union. The West has demonstrated that in every enterprise which demands ability, energy and courage, she need be pensioner upon the bounty of none; she has within herself all the materials of greatness, and the ability to discover and utilize them. In business matters she has already too long consented to be tributary to the East. But the day has fully come when the West should supply her own citizens with all they need. Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone East every year for the purchase of products which could have been as well supplied here. In insurance alone, the sum which has thus been poured into the coffers of Eastern capitalists, and which, if kept at home would have given a mighty impetus to every branch of industry, developing our almost limitless agricultural and mineral wealth, is immense, and if the exact figures were placed before us, we should stand amazed. This pamphlet contains the cards of several western institutions and enterprises, every one of which is worthy of the warmest support of our citizens, and all of which in their respective positions are second to none of their competitors, from whatsoever part of the country the same may come. It is in the hope that western men will be induced more liberally to patronize western institutions, that the SANGAMO INSURANCE COMPANY presents the public with this, a correct and complete copy of the New Constitution of Illinois. SANGAMO INSURANCE CO. |