_Progress_,--liberty to advance, never to retrograde. 'Nothing in the
world will ever go backward,' said the old lizard to Heine. All the
authority of a new Areopagus could never sanction that; and yet this
liberty the South claims, nay, has already acted upon, so that the world
may see the result of the experiment, and against its continuance Lyon
protests. In the long silent years of preparation for the fray he has
nursed strange thoughts on the ultimate destiny of man. He has seen in
dreams, prophetic of a mighty accomplishment, his country growing great,
and vigorous, and powerful, extending to struggling humanity everywhere
the protection of her friendship, building up noble institutions,
encouraging science and the useful arts, and leading the van in the
world's great millennial march; and this not through any miraculous
interposition of Providence, but by means of an exalted intelligence and
the power of thought stimulating to action, and that of the noblest
kind.

But you argue the unfitness of the masses for this destiny. Lyon
answers,--not in any musically-rounded sentences, in phrases nicely
balanced; the man is plain and outspoken,--'This is a truth of
philosophy and political economy, that man rises to a condition
corresponding to the rights, duties and responsibilities devolved upon
him; and therefore the only true way to make a man is to invest him with
the rights, duties and responsibilities of a man, and he generally rises
in intellectual and moral greatness to a position corresponding to these
circumstances.' It is a mistake to suppose the great body of the people
ignorant of their position, or unconscious of their growing importance
and dignity as representatives of a mighty empire. Vice and poverty have
indeed well-nigh quenched humanity in thousands in our great cities,
but these are but a drop in the ocean. Behind lies our vast West, with
its teeming population, sturdy, active and energetic. All our mountain