however, in the first moment, with a true instinct of self-government, they drew together in the cabin of the “Mayflower” in an association—­to carry out the divine will in society.  But, behold how speedily their ideas expanded beyond the Jewish conception, necessarily expanded with opportunity and the practical self-dependence of colonies cut off from the aid of tradition, and brought face to face with the problems of communities left to themselves.  Only a few years later, on the banks of the Connecticut, Thomas Hooker, the first American Democrat, proclaimed that “the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people,” that “the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God’s own allowance,” that it is the right of the people not only to choose but to limit the power of their rulers, and he exhorted, “as God has given us liberty to take it.”  There, at that moment, in Hartford, American democracy was born; and in the republican union of the three towns of the Connecticut colony, Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, was the germ of the American federal system, which was adopted into the federal constitution and known at the time as the “Connecticut Compromise.”

It were not worth while for me to come a thousand miles to say this, or to draw over again for the hundredth time the character of the New England Pilgrim, nor to sketch his achievement on this continent.  But it is pertinent to recall his spirit, his attitude toward life, and to inquire what he would probably do in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

It is another December night, before the dawn of a new year.  And this night still symbolizes the future.  You have subdued a continent, and it stands in the daylight radiant with a material splendor of which the Pilgrims never dreamed.  Yet a continent as dark, as unknown, exists.  It is yourselves, your future, your national life.  The other continent was made, you had only to discover it, to uncover it.  This you must make yourselves.

We have finished the outline sketch of a magnificent nation.  The territory is ample; it includes every variety of climate, in the changing seasons, every variety of physical conformation, every kind of production suited to the wants, almost everything desired in the imagination, of man.  It comes nearer than any empire in history to being self-sufficient, physically independent of the rest of the globe.  That is to say, if it were shut off from the rest of the world, it has in itself the material for great comfort and civilization.  And it has the elements of motion, of agitation, of life, because the vast territory is filling up with a rapidity unexampled in history.  I am not saying that isolated it could attain the highest civilization, or that if it did touch a high one it could long hold it in a living growth, cut off from the rest of the world.  I do not believe it.  For no state, however large, is sufficient unto itself.  No state is really alive in the highest