Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Progress of Liberty, in a Hundred Years, an Oration: Delivered Before the Citizens of Taunton, 4th July 1876
I salute you, my fellow countrymen, with a cheer of wel come on this joyous day, when forty millions of human voices rise up with one accord to heaven, in grateful benisons for the mercies showered on three successive generations of the race, by the Great Disposer Of events, during the hundred years that have passed away. Yet far be it from us to glory in this anniversary festival with any Spirit Of ostentation, as if assum ing to be the very elect of God's creatures. Let us rather join in humble but earnest supplication for the continuance of that support from aloft by reason of which a small and weak and scattered band have been permitted SO to grow into strength as now to command a recognized position among the leading powers of the earth.
Less than three centuries since, the European explorer first set his foot on these northern Shores, with a view to occupa tion. He found a primitive race aspiring scarcely higher than to the common enjoyment of animal existence, and slow to respond to any nobler call. Howlong they had continued in the same condition there was little evidence to determine. But enough has been Since gathered to justify the belief that advance never could have been one of their attributes. With out forecast, and insensible to ambition, after long experience and earnest effort to elevate them, the experiment of civiliz ation must be admitted to have failed. The North American Indian never could have improved the state he was in when first found here. He must' be regarded merely as the symbol of continuous negation, of the everlasting rotation of the present, not profiting by the experience of the past, and feebly sensible of the possibilities of the future.
The European had at last come in upon him, and the scene began at once to change. The magnificence of nature pre sented to his view, to which the native had been blind, at once stimulated his passion to develop its advantages by cul ture, and ere long the wilderness began to blossom as the rose. The hum of industry was heard to echo in every valley, and it ascended every mountain. A new people had appear ed, animated by a spirit which enlisted labor without stint and directed it in channels of beauty and of use. With eyes steadily fixed upon the future, and their sturdy sinews braced to the immediate task, there is no cause for wonder that the Sparse but earnest adventurers who first set foot on the soil of the new continent, should in the steady progress of time, have made good the aspirations with which they began, of founding a future happy home for ever increasing millions of their race. Between two such forces, the American Indian, who dwells only in the present, and the European pioneer, who fixes his gaze so steadily on the future, the issue of a struggle could end only in one way. Whilst the one goes on dwindling even to the prospect of ultimate extinction, the other spreads peace and happiness among numbers increasing over the continent with a rapidity never before equalled in the records of civilization.
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