Far be from us, fellow-citizens, on this festival, the pride of national victory, and the illusion of national freedom, in which we are too prone to indulge! None of you make rude boast of individual prosperity or prowess. And here I end as I began. Our country cannot do what an individual cannot do. Therefore it must not vaunt or be puffed up. Rather bend to unperformed duties. Independence is not all. We have but half done, when we have made ourselves free. The scornful taunt wrung from bitter experience of the great Revolution in France must not be levelled at us: "They wish to be _free_, but know not how to be _just_."[115] Nor is priceless Freedom an end in itself, but rather the means of Justice and Beneficence, where alone is enduring concord, with that attendant happiness which is the final end and aim of Nations, as of every human heart. It is not enough to be free. There must be Peace which cannot fail, and other nations must share the great possession. For this good must we labor, bearing ever in mind two special objects, complements of each other: first, the Arbitrament of War must end; and, secondly, Disarmament must begin. With this ending and this beginning the great gates of the Future will be opened, and the guardian virtues will assert a new empire. Alas! until this is done, National Honor and National Glory will yet longer flaunt in blood, and there can be no True Grandeur of Nations. [115] "_Ils veulent être libres, et ne savent pas être justes_," was the famous exclamation of Sieyès. To this great work let me summon you. That Future, which filled the lofty vision of sages and bards in Greece and Rome, which was foretold by Prophets and heralded by Evangelists, when man, in Happy Isles, or in a new Paradise, shall confess the loveliness of Peace, may you secure, if not for yourselves, at least for your children! _Believe_ that you can do it, and you _can_ do it. The true Golden Age is before, not behind. If man has once been driven from Paradise, while an angel with flaming sword forbade his return, there is another Paradise, even on earth, which he may make for himself, by the cultivation of knowledge, religion, and the kindly virtues of life,--where the confusion of tongues shall be dissolved in the union of hearts, and joyous Nature, borrowing prolific charms from prevailing Harmony, shall spread her lap with unimagined bounty, and there shall be perpetual jocund Spring, and sweet strains borne on "the odoriferous wing of gentle gales," through valleys of delight more pleasant than the Vale of Tempe, richer than the Garden of the Hesperides, with no dragon to guard its golden fruit.