3. _We are separated by wide oceans from the rest of the world._ The Atlantic separates us from Europe on the east; the Gulf of Mexico from South America on the south, and the great Pacific ocean washes our western shores. We are a continent to ourselves, with the exception of Mexico, a sister republic on the south, with whom we are not likely to quarrel again, and the Dominion of Canada on the north, which, if never to become a part of ourselves, will at least at some day, and probably not a very distant day, become independent of the mother country as we did, though not at the great cost at which we obtained our freedom. Our distance from Europe relieves us entirely from the consideration of subjects which occupy most of the time of their statesmen, and which very often thrill the rest of the world in the apprehension of a general war in Europe. We are under no necessity of annexing other territory. We are not afraid of what is called “the balance of power;” we have no army that is worthy of the name, because we don’t need one, and we can make one if we should need it; and we have no navy to speak of, though I think we ought to have for the protection of our commerce, when our commerce shall be further encouraged. We have no entanglements with other nations; the great father of his country in his Farewell Address warned the people against this danger. 4. _Our country is very large._ You school-boys can tell me as well as I can tell you what degrees of latitude and longitude we reach, and how many millions of square miles we count. Europeans say we brag too much about the great extent of our country; but I do not refer to it now for boasting, but as a matter of thankfulness to God for giving it to us. It means that our territory, reaching from the Arctic to the tropics, gives us every variety of climate and almost every variety of product that the earth produces; and I am sure that the time will come when, under a higher agricultural cultivation than we have yet reached, our soil will produce everything that grows anywhere else in the world. The corn harvest now being gathered in our country will reach _two thousand millions of bushels_. The mind staggers under such ponderous figures and quantities. Our wheat fields are hardly less productive; our potatoes and rice and oats and barley and grass, the products of our cattle and sheep, and, in short, everything that our soil above ground yields; and the enormous yield of our coal mines, our oil wells, our natural gas, our metals, our railroads, spanning the entire continent and binding the people together with bands of steel――all these, and many others, which time will not permit me even to mention, give some faint idea of what a splendid country it is that the Almighty God has given to the American people. And do we not well therefore, when we come together on a day like this, to make our acknowledgments to Him?