If, with emotions of patriotic pride, Joshua, the great captain, could speak of the wide extent and the varied resources of that goodly land, into the possession of which he was leading the descendants of a whole nation of fugitive slaves, how much more, with devout gratitude and patriotic pride, may we dwell upon _the wonderful resources and the wide reaches_ of a free empire in which there are forty million sovereigns, and on whose territory you might place, in patch-work, three hundred and twenty-eight states as large as Palestine, and have scraps enough left over to cover the two dwarf sisters of the Union—Delaware and Rhode Island! Corresponding most nearly in area with Maryland, five Palestines might find comfortable quarters in the single State of Illinois; yet so wonderful was the fertility of that land, now comparatively barren and desolate, that it at one time sustained a population so dense that if the vast territory of the United States were thus thickly settled, it should have not merely forty millions of inhabitants, but one thousand one hundred and forty millions. Who doubts that such a population might be sustained on the fat valleys of the interior and the plantations of the south country, even though the waste places of the wilderness were left out of the account as utterly unfit for the dwelling-places of men? And, as though this vast heritage of ours were not enough for a free and industrious people, God has over many portions of the land practically doubled its area; piling its resources of wealth layer upon layer; rivaling and redoubling the riches of the surface soil by the exhaustless stores of coal, iron and copper, lead, silver and gold, treasured up for the use of many generations; for there is the hiding of His power who is the bountiful God of Providence.