For the American people have never taken fear for a counselor. They have never taken doubt for a guide. They have obeyed the impulses of their blood. They have hearkened to the voice of our God. They have surmounted insuperable obstacles on the wings of a mighty faith; they have solved insoluble problems by the sovereign rule of liberty; they have made the bosom of the ocean and the heart of the wilderness their home; they have subdued nature and told history a new tale. Let American statesmanship listen to the heart-beats of the American people in the present hour and there will be no confusion, no hesitation, no craven doubt. The faith of the Mayflower, as it sailed into the storm-fringed horizon, is with us yet. The courage of Lexington and Bunker Hill is with us yet. The spirit of Hamilton and Jefferson and Jackson and Seward and Grant is with us yet. The unconquerable heart of the pioneer still beats within American breasts, and the American flag advances still in its ceaseless and imperial progress, with law and order and Christian civilization trooping beneath its sacred folds. The American people are the propagandists and not the misers of liberty. He who no longer believes in the vitality of the American people, in the immortality and saving grace of free institutions, in the imperial greatness of American destiny, belongs not in the councils of the American Nation, but in the somber Cabinets of the decaying races of the world. The American people are not perishing; they are just beginning their real career. The full sunrise of the day which peculiarly belongs to the American people in the progress of human events has flooded all the world at last; and we will live each golden moment of our mighty day in a way as great as the day itself. FOOTNOTE: [36] By permission of the author. THE AMERICAN QUESTION JOHN BRIGHT Now let me ask you, what is this people about which so many men in England at this moment are writing and speaking and thinking with harshness? Two centuries ago multitudes of the people of this country found a refuge on the North American Continent, escaping from the tyranny of the Stuarts, and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits from our country made great experiments in favor of human freedom on that continent. Bancroft, the great historian of his country, has said, "The history of the colonization of America is the history of the crimes of Europe." From that time down to our own period America has admitted the wanderers from every clime. Since 1815, a time which many here remember, and which is within my lifetime, more than three millions of persons have emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States. During the fifteen years from 1845 to 1860 more than two million persons left the shores of the United Kingdom as emigrants to North America.