of the irresponsible _few_ that has always cursed humanity. And when I remember how seldom in all the world the fundamental rights of man have been ever recognized; how throughout all time the _millions_ have been toiling, suffering, dying, to keep a few priests in power, or a few tyrants on their thrones; how the _few_, whom the accidents of birth or fortune have clothed with titles and dignities and powers, fill all the spaces of history, while the patient masses figure only as their suppliants and tools, then I am glad to turn to our eighty years of history, and through all its mistakes and blemishes and inconsistencies, to recognize the great central fact that has struggled upon this continent into endless life, that the _rights_ of men _are_ equal, that men have higher uses than to become appendages of nobility or parasites of royalty, that birth and blood are nothing, that names and titles are nothing, that all the outward emblems of wealth and greatness are nothing, compared with the rights which all men possess in common, compared with the qualities with which God may, and often does, endow the humblest born of earth. And this Nation which our Fathers founded, and which thus expanded into eighty years of such vigorous life; how fares it now? It is racked and rent with civil war. In little more than a year, a hundred new battle-fields have been added to its history. Whole States are given up to desolation. The land is filled with mourners. Hearts are broken to-day, that a year ago beat high with hope, and love, and happiness. Childhood, and womanhood, and tottering age, its props all gone, are mingling their tears and prayers to-day, in the bitterness of a sorrow that will never end on earth.