Magnifying their
difficulties will not take them off our hands nor facilitate their
adjustment. Distrust of the capacity, integrity, and high purposes
of the American people will not be an inspiring theme for future
political contests. Dark pictures and gloomy forebodings are worse
than useless. These only becloud, they do not help to point the
way of safety and honor. "Hope maketh not ashamed." The prophets
of evil were not the builders of the Republic, nor in its crises
since have they saved or served it. The faith of the fathers was a
mighty force in its creation, and the faith of their descendants
has wrought its progress and furnished its defenders. They are
obstructionists who despair, and who would destroy confidence in
the ability of our people to solve wisely and for civilization the
mighty problems resting upon them. The American people, intrenched
in freedom at home, take their love for it with them wherever they
go, and they reject as mistaken and unworthy the doctrine that we
lose our own liberties by securing the enduring foundations of
liberty to others. Our institutions will not deteriorate by
extension, and our sense of justice will not abate under tropic
suns in distant seas. As heretofore, so hereafter will the nation
demonstrate its fitness to administer any new estate which events
devolve upon it, and in the fear of God will "take occasion by the
hand and make the bounds of freedom wider yet.
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