“The first 400 years have passed--they have been illuminated by the heroic deeds of men and women, and shaded by crimes, national and individual. The descendants of the Puritans and Cavalier, of the Huguenot and the Catholic, of the slave and the Indian, together with those from other continents and the isles of the sea meet in peaceful rivalry where the forest fades away and the prairie expands. “At last we are a nation with common inheritance. Lexington and Yorktown, Bunker Hill and Eutaw, Saratoga and Guildford Court House, New Orleans and Plattsburg, are our common glory. “We have people to the north and south who can be linked to us with hooks of steel if we continue to retain their respect and confidence. I want no forcible addition to our territory, were it practicable. I want them to come as a bride comes to her husband--in love and confidence--and because they wish to link their fortunes with ours, to make their daily walk by our side. To bring about this consummation will be the work of time, of forbearance, of rigid observance of their rights, of due regard for their prejudices, of an unselfish desire for welfare--wherein all the amenities of life shall be cultivated. We must enforce their respect by order at our own home, and show them that our composite civilization--wherein we select all that is good from abroad, and retain all that is good in our own, is calculated to make them also happier and greater. “Should this occasion, this National Exposition, promote such a purpose as if we are rightly inspired, this meeting of all people would be more than a financial success--more than a vain commercial triumph. It would emphasize the new era, which I hope is dawning, and take the initiative in what may result in the federation of this hemisphere.” Thus the Columbian Exhibition will nobly close the first four centuries of American history, and by the splendor of its display shed brilliant rays upon the unknown years and centuries to come. The future must be estimated from the past and the present. As the present is grander than the past, so, may we hope, will the future be grander than the present. Mr. Chauncey M. Depew has drawn this comparison most graphically. “At the time of the Centennial Exhibition we had 45,000,000 people; now our numbers reach the grand total of 64,000,000. Then we had thirty-seven States, but we have since added seven stars to our flag. Then the product of our farms in cereals was about $2,200,000,000; now it is over $4,000,000,000. Then the output of our factories was about $5,000,000,000; now it is over $7,000,000,000. Such progress, such development, such advance, such accumulation of wheat and the opportunities for wealth--wealth in the broad sense, which opens new avenues for employment and fresh chances for independence and for homes--have characterized no other similar period of recorded time.