of citizenship. Through the golden gates of commerce pours an unceasing
stream of immigration, which must be amalgamated with American ideas and
American principles. From the earlier settlers has come a blending of
the vigor of the Anglo-Saxon with the Teutonic and Latin races,
resulting in that composite type which we are wont to recognize and
regard as the type of the true American. Aside from the commercial and
industrial results which followed the acquisition of this vast and
fertile territory, and the building up of the large marts and towns
which everywhere blend with its magnificent scenery, the definition of
the power and extent of our Constitution was most important. At its
inception, coming at a time when the framers of the Constitution were
not only able to interpret their work, but to give to it their moral
force and support, it was demonstrated that no constitutional
limitations should retard the onward growth, the onward rush of American
civilization, until it should have reached the farthermost bounds of the
far-off Pacific. The barriers to human progress were by this
interpretation removed and ranges of new States have given effect to the
democratic principles of our great Republic, and have made of our
country a Union--not of weak, impotent States--but a commonwealth of
nations, bound to each other through a centralized government by ties of
allegiance, common interest and patriotism, where freemen rule and where
suffrage is more esteemed than wealth.

"These rights and their protection should receive our earnest thought.
The battles of the past have been for freedom and liberty, and the
struggles of the future will be for their preservation, not, however, by
force of arms, but through the peaceful methods which come through the
education of our people. The declaration which brought our Republic into
existence has insured and guaranteed that liberty of conscience and that
freedom of action which does not interfere with the prerogatives or