This country is not only a free country, but its government is the perfection of human wisdom. From the dawn of its existence, the United States has been heir to the ripest harvests of the world’s learning and experience. England, France, Germany and Sweden struggled through long centuries of barbarism, ignorance and oppression, before they wrested from force and Kingcraft the protection of constitutional government. Our forefathers brought with them, across the ocean, the fruits of this experience. They loved liberty, and they braved the isolation and dangers of an unknown land in order to enjoy it. Transmitted from sire to son, and broadening and strengthening for a hundred years, the ideas and the aspirations of the men who landed at Plymouth and at Jamestown at last found expression in the Declaration of Independence. “This immortal State paper,” says Bancroft, “was the soul of the country at that time; the revelation of its mind when, in its youth, its enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest creative powers of which man is capable. The heart of Jefferson in writing the Declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire world of mankind, without any exception whatever, for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be self-evident.” It was inevitable that the successful maintenance of the rights asserted in the Declaration, and the establishment of a government based upon the self-evident truths it affirmed, should not only exercise a potent influence upon the civil institutions of the world, but attract to this country the most energetic, daring and aspiring spirits of all civilized nations. A wide continent, almost boundless in its area and infinite in its resources, afforded human industry and activity such opportunities for the exercise of their powers as were never before known, while the theories and principles of the Declaration, embodied in the organic law of the Republic, guaranteed to every citizen the largest individual liberty consistent with social order, and ample protection in the enjoyment of the products of his industry and skill.