heretofore have sufficed for its activities. That the vaunted blessings
of our economy are not to be forced upon the unwilling may be conceded;
but the concession does not deny the right nor the wisdom of gathering
in those who wish to come. Comparative religion teaches that creeds
which reject missionary enterprise are foredoomed to decay. May it not
be so with nations? Certainly the glorious record of England is
consequent mainly upon the spirit, and traceable to the time, when she
launched out into the deep--without formulated policy, it is true, or
foreseeing the future to which her star was leading, but obeying the
instinct which in the infancy of nations anticipates the more reasoned
impulses of experience. Let us, too, learn from her experience. Not all
at once did England become the great sea power which she is, but step
by step, as opportunity offered, she has moved on to the world-wide
pre-eminence now held by English speech, and by institutions sprung
from English germs. How much poorer would the world have been, had
Englishmen heeded the cautious hesitancy that now bids us reject every
advance beyond our shore-lines! And can any one doubt that a cordial,
if unformulated, understanding between the two chief states of English
tradition, to spread freely, without mutual jealousy and in mutual
support, would increase greatly the world's sum of happiness?

But if a plea of the world's welfare seem suspiciously like a cloak for
national self-interest, let the latter be accepted frankly as the
adequate motive which it assuredly is. Let us not shrink from pitting a
broad self-interest against the narrow self-interest to which some
would restrict us. The demands of our three great seaboards, the
Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Pacific,--each for itself, and all for the
strength that comes from drawing closer the ties between them,--are
calling for the extension, through the Isthmian Canal, of that broad
sea common along which, and along which alone, in all the ages