San Andreas independent., 1858-07-03
The Fourth.

Tomorrow the Great Republic will
have numbered her eighty-second birth
day. 1t is an American custom, upon
the return of this glorious anniversary,
to revive the spirit of those bold and
noble men, who, eighty-two years ago, da-
red, in the face Of tyrannical power, to
assert the inalienable rights Of man
May we never live to behold the day
when their memory shall be slighted by
our countrymen.
In the year 1776, the United States
was embraced in that territory which lies
between the Penobscot, on the north, the
Chattahoochee, on the south, the Abe
ghenies, on the west, and the Atlantic,
on the east. Our settlements had not
touched upon the Gulf of Mexico, nor
was it dreamed that our civilization and
polity would subdue the solitudes of the
Mississippi. We knew nothing of that
fertile wilderness save through the Jour-
nails of De Soto and Lasalle; the most
utopian theorists scarce yentured upon
the magnificent idea of pcopling it with
the children of the pale face-much less
of extending our dominion to the waters
OF the Western ocean, and southwark to
the country of the fabled Aztecs. But
with the flush of prosperity ever comes
the lust for dominion.
We have grown great. Great in ter
ritory, great in numbers, great in that in
telligence which is the ornament of na-
tions, great in commerce, in wealth. great
In war and great in peace; and to-day,
after the lapse of a period, brief, indeed,
in the lifetime of a nation, we may stand
up In our strength, the peer of the fore
most power of the world History
chronicles no parallel to this. Rome
lived FIVE hundred years before she reach
ed the point of grandeur we have at
tained, and when the glory of the repub-
lie had eliminated she was not our equal.
But let us not be boastful. It is for
the weak and puny to distend their nat
ural dimensions by bravado. The pow
erful and the brave can offord to criticise
themselves. What, then, have we done
FOR the cause of man? IIas oar civai-
zation and morality kept even with our
material enlargement? Have we filled
the expectations of the worshippers of
Liberty? Have we been the shield of
the oppressed, and the lash of tyrants we
set out to be? Let our schools and our
laws answer; let the millions who have
fed from the vengeance of kings and
found an asylum III the New World, an
swer; let the salutary change that our in
fuence has wrought upon the institutions
of the Old World, answer. Every where
the bounding pulsations of the Great Re
public are felt. If our example has
been feebly initiated, still, it has thrown
up an impossible barricade against the
further encroaches of tyranny. Europe
may not achieve republic, but as long
as our system of government lasts, its in
fucnce will be felt on the other side of
the Atlantic There can be no more
Louis XIVths in France, no more Stuart
despotisms in England, no move Inqui-
sitions in Spain. America has taught
the world that public opinion is omnipo-
tent, and that the key to power among
nations, is the intelligence of the people.
Let us, then, on this retarning Ami
versary, with all solemnity approach the
sacred shrine in which memory hath
deposited the deeds Of our illustrious
=. dead, and swear anew, devotion to the
heritage they have left u.s.