It is probably, in a great measure, because a large proportion of our fellow-citizens habitually feel no concern in public affairs; and further, feel and express a contempt for those who do take an interest in political matters; because they are indifferent as to what laws are passed, and never annoy themselves as to how they may be partially construed or tamely executed. And, strange to say, some of our wealthiest, most honorable and influential citizens, continually illustrate this want of interest in public affairs.

So absorbed are they in their particular pursuits that they have no time to cultivate an interest in the government under which they live, and upon the proper administration of which depends the security of their lives, liberty and property.

De Tocqueville, in his work on American democracy, says that the capacity of our government to execute the law depends on a traditional respect for the constable, meaning, perhaps, that so long as the people were not entirely indifferent to, or ignorant of their rights and duties, so long as they remembered that the laws are made by them, and their faithful execution necessary to their protection, just so long will our government survive, and no longer. While there is cause for solicitude, there is nothing in our history to create despondency, nothing to shake our faith in the political sagacity and foresight of the fathers. Reforms must often be necessary in the administration of all governments. Here they are the peaceful result of enlightened popular inquiry and the silent rebuke of the ballot. We are now in the midst of great reforms. The declared purpose of all political parties being to reform abuses in the public administration of the law, to punish crime in high or low places, and to secure the liberties, the property and the peace of the people.

This but illustrates that, while for a time crime, and fraud, and dishonesty may be common in public and private life-while, for a season, popular indignation may wait for popular experience to evince the effect of the failure of courts and juries and the executive officers to enforce the laws provided for the public safetystill there is always a restraining sober second thought of the people, springing from the instinct of self-preservation, and directing action to the perfection of needful reforms.

There is no reason to believe that the American government will

ever cease to be the highest political blessing to the people, until their apathy, indifference or demoralization shall destroy it.

It should be our highest and holiest political aspiration to transmit to our children the great inheritance we have received from the fathers political and religious freedom. And let it never be forgotten that he who assails either destroys both. Let the political right of suffrage and the private right of conscience be alike inviolate. Who would by law, whatever the specious pretext, interfere in the least with these things, defiles the "Ark of the Covenant" of liberty. He speaks in the voice of Jacob, and he presents the hand of Esau; and the birthright of liberty is in jeopardy.

If we do our duty in the work of pursuing the American government, and the great principles of that government, if it shall, as I trust it will, be perpetuated by the partriotism aud intelligence of the people through another hundred years, what imagination can picture the political grandeur to which our descendants will attain ?

When the purchase of Louisiana was pending, in 1803, in the United States Congress, John Randolph of Roanoke, the political Hotspur and enthusiast of that age, startled public credulity, and excited a smile among his compeers, by venturing the prediction that before the expiration of a century from that time there would be social and political organizations of Americans west of the Mississippi! Now, within three-fourths of that century we have a magnificent empire peopled with an energetic and prosperous citizenship throughout the then Western wild. The then unvisited slopes of the Pacific now teem with unparalleled wealth, and the valleys of the Rocky Mountains and the plains of the great desert are the homes of a thriving and industrious race. Texas, then unknown, afterwards often imperiled, always traduced, begins to feel in her growing muscle the mastery of power, and in her youthful heart the glory and pride of empire.

To-day, in the city of Philadelphia, where one hundred years ago our forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence, the people of the United States have gathered from every quarter of this immense territory to witness, at this jubilee of liberty, the friendly competition of all civilized nations, and to display their own handiwork for the inspection and criticism of an enlightened world.

To illustrate that, under our form of government the march of civilization has been as rapid as the stride of empire. Let us, then, cherish gratitude to God, affection for the memory of the fathers of the republic, and earnest and faithful and watchful love of the principles of free government. May these sentiments be displayed in our every act as Texans and citizens of the United States.

To-day, near fifty millions of people enjoy the results of the unparalleled resolve made by less than three millions a century ago.

These fifty millions are not the fruit of military conquest, nor merely of natural growth, but in a great measure the spoils of a free government in extending the blessings of personal liberty to every man who seeks shelter under her flag. It is the growth accompanying the great republican idea of free government.

So long as we adhere to this doctrine, thus long shall we enjoy prosperity and the blessing of Providence, because it is the leading political truth.

May the Sun never witness a departure from the principles of free government by the American people. May each coming year enhance our prosperous growth, to the end of time, and the recurrence of each Fourth of July behold the increasing glory and renown of the patriotic foresight of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of the patient, long-suffering and courageous men who maintained it and who transmitted to us the blessings that flowed from it.

HUMAN PROGRESS.

AN ORATION BY REV. HORATIO STEBBINS, D.D.

DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT SAN FRAN

CISCO, CAL., JULY 4TH, 1876.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE REPUBLIC AND OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF CALIFORNIA.-The great movements of mankind upon our globe, since it became the theatre of human life and human events, can never cease to be the subject of profoundest interest and loftiest contemplation. "There is a spirit in man," urging him on with the strong momentum of eternal law, to a destiny that ever allures him with mystic wonder and fascination. The earthly horizon of that destiny, ever retreating, invites him to the full and complete dominion of a world not yet subdued to intellectual and moral being. Generations, races and nations, inspired by impulse greater and mightier than themselves, move forward in grand consentaneous procession, and history unfurls her banners, the symbols of eternal purpose.

One of the most sublime conceptions of which the mind is capable, is the contemplation of the periods of time during which the earth was being prepared to be a fit habitation of man. Compared with these periods, the lifetime of the human race is but a moment, or a thought flashed by electric touch from city to city. The introduction of man upon the earth is a modern event, modern as the morning of to-day! The Egyptian civilization is but of yester day, compared with the formation of the delta of the Mississippi; and the alluvial plains of the Euphrates, the first abodes of human society, were the work of cycles and æons of unrecorded time. These periods of time and preparation, in the contemplation of which the mind is oppressed with the vague sense of infinity, suggest, with striking intellectual and moral force, the importance of man's place in the scale of created things, and the rank he holds in

the order of being :-The last term in an ascending series, involved in all that goes before, crown and summit of creation, end and fulfilment of primal intent and purpose. Science unfolds the order of nature and reveals her method and law, but man, his fortunes, his deeds, his nature and his destiny, are the noblest objects of thought and study. He is superior to nature, in that he recognizes the law of nature and the law of his own being. He discovers truth, good and evil, and is haunted by the thought that not death, but increasing life is his goal. Progressive reason achieves new conquests in every age, and can never rest until it is established upon the throne of the world, and the sublime affirmation is realized. "Thou has put all things under his feet." Man, society, nationality, government, give intellectual and moral import to a material universe, and the progress of history is the clevation of the moral character of mankind.

The American Continent, earliest in geologic time of all the lands of the globe, was reserved to these later days to be the theatre of a new cycle of human culture, and a new display of the power of human society.

The ancient oriental civilizations had flourished for thousands and tens of thousands of years, and sent forth those great migrations that founded the succession of Asiatic Empires, reared the fair forms of Grecian culture and the strength of Roman arms, made Europe the nursery of nations, and England the fostermother of the modern world. Christianity, that religion which more than any other seems adapted to universal man, had kindled its holy signals on the hills of Judea nearly fifteen centuries before the Pilot of Genoa was born. Rome expired a thousand years before. During all these vast movements of mankind, and through these historic ages, when the soil of the world was being prepared to receive the seed of the Modern age, the American Continent lay concealed behind the horizon. The Ptolemaic system held the universe in the thraldom of the senses, and religion, not yet allied to reason, enforced the thrall. The mind was enveloped in sense, and the sight of the eye, and the hearing of the ear, interpreted the world. The sun rose and set, and the earth was an extended plain. Imagination, strong angel of truth, had not looked with undazzled eye upon that inaccessible glory which the senses cannot