An Address

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Excerpt from An Address: Delivered Before the Alumni and Students of the Department of Law, of the University of Michigan, Wednesday, June 24, 1891 Not infrequently we have heard and still hear the United States of America alluded to as the "Young Republic of the West, " or sometimes as the "Latest Experiment in Government, " and its short national life contrasted with the older governments of Christendom, and yet, dating the birth of our Government from the year in which its Federal Constitution was adopted by the several States of which it is composed, and it was launched on the sea of political existence, one hundred and two years ago, it has outlived all of its contemporaries. Is it not safe to say that, looking at actual political conditions, at realities and not names, the United States Government, constituted in 1789, retains its identity of form and substance more than any other government in Christendom, which existed at the time we entered the family of nations? That it is in fact the senior and not the junior of the world's governments and has had a longer continuity of unaltered political institutions? The chronic political confusion and fluctuating systems, the checquered existences of the States and communities of Mexico and every Central and South American State, intermittently rent by political dissensions and overturned by revolutionary violence, have left to no other Government on this hemisphere a permanence or longevity comparable with our own. The Great Britain of 1789 is unquestionably Greater Britain of to-day, but who can detect much resemblance between the government dominated by the narrow mind and personal will of George the Third, and that over which in our day the venerable Victoria so mildly reigns, but does not rule? Within sixty years the government of Great Britain, expanding by military and commercial conquests, has been transformed from a monarchial aristocracy into a monarchial democracy in which the laboring classes are the strongest element numerically. The outline of a monarchy remains, a silhouette of its former self, but the balance of political power has been shifted. Its transfer to the middle classes took place under the reform bill of 1832, to the laboring classes by the acts of 1867 and 1884, and, finally, the redistribution act of 1885 installed an actual democracy in power. On our northern border "old Canada, " with one French and one English province, is almost concealed from view in the ample embrace of the young "Dominion, " now enjoying its 24th year of virtually independent self-government. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.