Our location is for a purpose. For if you and I believe in the mission of individuals who accomplish the purposes of Providence, we must believe in the mission of nations for the elevation of mankind to a better future. And, my countrymen, it is equally significant that we stand above all nations in our origin. We started where other nations left off. Unrivalled for luxury and oriental splendor, the Assyrians sprung from a band of hunters. Grand in her pyramids, and obelisks, and sphinxes, Egypt rose from that race despised by mankind. Great in her jurisprudence, giving law to the world, the Romans came from a band of freebooters on the seven hills that have been made immortal by martial genius; and that very nation, whose poets we copy, whose orators we seek to imitate, whose artistic genius is the pride of the race, came from barbarians, cannibals; and that proud nation beyond the sea, that sways her sceptre over land and ocean, sprang from painted barbarians--for such were the aborigines of proud Albion's Isle when Caesar invaded those shores. Our forefathers stood upon the very summit of humanity. Recall our constitutional convention. Perhaps no such convention had ever assembled in the halls of a nation. That convention, composed of fifty-five men, and such men! They were giants in intellect, in moral character; all occupying a high social position; twenty-nine were university men, and those that were not collegiates were men of imperial intellects and of commanding common sense. In such a gathering were Franklin, the venerable philosopher; Washington, who is ever to be revered as patriot and philanthropist; and Madison, and Hamilton, two of the most profound thinkers of that or of any other age. It is one of those marvels that we should recall of which we have a right to be proud; but in our pride we should not fail to ascertain why the Almighty should start us as a nation at the very acme of humanity--redeemed, educated, and made grand by the influences of a divine Christianity. Those men were not mere colonists, nor were they limited in their patriotism. "No pent-up Utica" could confine their patriotism, for those men grasped the fundamental principle of human rights. Nay, they declared the ultimate truth of humanity, leaving nothing to added since, though a century has passed. Great modifications have come to the governments of Europe. Some changes have taken place in our national life. Yet I appeal to your intelligent memory, to your calm judgments, if anything has been added to our declaration of rights, those declarations founded upon the constitution of nature. These men voiced the brotherhood of the race. All other declarations prior to this were but for dynasties, or were ethnic at most. But those men swept the horizon of humanity. These men called forth, as it were, the oncoming centuries of time, and in their presence declared that all men are created free and equal.