fund our national bonds at a rate of interest less than four per cent! We justify once more the old saying, “Happy the country that has no history!” We make but little history at the present moment; we should, perhaps, be more comfortable if we made still less.
Indeed, never since the close of our civil war has our condition—economic, social, and political—been so generally satisfactory as it is now.
Of our material prosperity I need not speak. It is felt in every sphere of society, in every branch of industry and commerce. It is the envy of the world.
The animosities of our great civil conflict have, in a great measure, subsided. Prosperous activity in the South has accelerated the healing of old sores, and the people of the two sections are more and more drawn together again by the consciousness of common rights, common duties, common aims, and a common destiny; in short, by the inspiration of a common patriotism.
Our National Government has, I think, succeeded in proving once more the falsity of the old assertion, that corruption is an inevitable concomitant of democratic institutions. Whatever mistakes may have been made by the late administration,—and I frankly admit that they were not a few,—it is generally conceded that it has demonstrated the possibility of honest, business-like, and morally-respected government in this republic; and the
