Here in America I am told in nearly every city I visit that the young men are more and more caring for and bestirring themselves to discharge their civic duties. That is the best news one can hear. Surely no country makes so clear a call upon her citizens to work for her as yours does. Think of the wide-spreading results which good solid work produces on so vast a community, where everything achieved for good in one place is quickly known and may be quickly imitated in another. Think of the advantages for the development of the highest civilization which the boundless resources of your territory provide. Think of that principle of the Sovereignty of the People which you have carried further than it was ever carried before and which requires and inspires and, indeed, compels you to endeavour to make the whole people fit to bear a weight and discharge a task such as no other multitude of men ever yet undertook. Think of the sense of fraternity, also without precedent in any other great nation, which binds all Americans together and makes it easier here than elsewhere for each citizen to meet every other citizen as an equal upon a common ground. One who, coming from the Old World, remembers the greater difficulties the Old World has to face, rejoices to think how much, with all these advantages, the youth of America, such youth as I see here to-night in this venerable university, may accomplish for the future of your country. Nature has done her best to provide a foundation whereon the fabric of an enlightened and steadily advancing civilization may be reared. It is for you to build upon that foundation. Free from many of the dangers that surround the States of Europe, you have unequalled opportunities for showing what a high spirit of citizenship--zealous, intelligent, disinterested--may do for the happiness and dignity of a mighty nation, enabling it to become what its founders hoped it might be--a model for other peoples more lately emerged into the sunlight of freedom. Transcriber’s Note Page 48: “Americans” was printed as “Ameritans”, and changed here, presuming it was a typographical error.