Let us, however, before with descend from this noble eminence, reflect
that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the
short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight
years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two
extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the
stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age at least to be made
to comprehend such things. He was then old enough "acta parentum jam
legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere virtus." Suppose, Sir, that the
angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made
him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men
of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in the fourth
generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve
years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of
moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should
see his son, lord chancellor of England, turn back the current of
hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of
peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these
bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel
should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his
country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial
grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck,
scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal
principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him--"Young man,
there is America--which at this day serves for little more than to amuse
you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before
you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce
which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been
growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in
by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and
civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall
see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If
this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not
require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of
enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see
it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the
prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!