The stability and peace of our nation should be the great concern of our people, and as there is not a private virtue which may not be influential in this direction, each individual has it in his power to further the great purpose of the community. All the other nations envy us--envy us our form of government, our freedom from conscription, large armies, privileged classes, vested rights, ugly neighbors, churchly impositions and hopeless debts. But we can maintain all these features of superiority only by maintaining an honest and intelligent government. We cannot do it by being blind, unreasoning partizans of any political organization. To be a “strong Democrat” or “strong Republican” is often to be contemptibly weak as an American. Loyalty to party often means disloyalty to the nation. Party platforms are seldom framed according to the will of the majority; they are framed by the leaders, and often for the leaders’ own personal purposes. In all other lands where constitutional government prevails the intelligent classes sway from one party to the other, according to their opinion of measures proposed. Loyalty is accorded to the nation first, the party afterwards. The party is regarded as a means, not an end; it must be so regarded here, before we can rise to the level of our opportunities, and the number and greatness of these opportunities make this duty more imperative here, even for selfish reasons, than anywhere else. It is peculiarly stupid and disgraceful that any intelligent American should be able to say, with Sir Joseph Porter, in “Pinafore:” “I always voted at my party’s call, And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.” No party should be a voter’s ruler; it is his servant, and if it is lazy, dishonest or does not obey him, it should be disciplined or changed. We must do much else, by way of vigilance. We must insist that American land be held only by Americans. A great many rich men on the other side of the Atlantic are willing and anxious to reproduce here a state of affairs that has made endless trouble in Europe. Said President Harrison, while yet in the Senate: “Vast tracts of our domain, not simply the public domain on the frontier, but in some of our newer States, are passing into the hands of wealthy foreigners. It seems that the land reforms in Ireland, and the movement in England in favor of the reduction of large estates and the distribution of the lands among persons who will cultivate them for their own use, are disturbing the investments of some Englishmen, and that some of them are looking to this country for the acquisition of vast tracts of land which may be held by them and let out to tenants, out of the rents of which they may live abroad. This evil requires early attention, and that Congress should, by law, restrain the acquisition of such tracts of land by aliens. Our policy should be small farms, worked by the men who own them.” So says every thoughtful American.