Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1883 — THE GREAT NORTHWEST. [ARTICLE]

THE GREAT NORTHWEST.

Prophecy Being Fulfilled in the Growth of the Country. • Westward the course of empire takes i,ts way; r The four first acts already P aHt .' . . The fifth shall close the drama with the day, Timp.'s.noblest offspring ig tnaiMt. - , , These words of Bishop Berkeley are more than poetry ; they rise to prophecy. They are inspired by his brief visit to the American colonies nearly 20f) years ago. ""7 ; ■ ’ This vision of Berkeley was not the first prophetic vision of five aets in the political drama of mankind. Nearly 3,000 vears before the King of Assyria —the" first civilized empire of which history give us an account, an empire which had ruled the known world for 1,400 years—had a political vision, which the Hebrew and the Christian would regard as divinely inspired and divinely interpreted by the great propheT/^ceOTding^totirat^sibn,.all that was to come to pass thereafter was divided, like a drama, into five grand acts, Or parts of a drama, in which a change of scene was a chahge of continents, in which #s leading characters were ruling a drama which, in its grand sweep, involved the political destinies of the whole human race. He saw in his vision, first, the golden kingdom of Assyria, of which he was the head; second, he saw that overturned, to give place to the silver kingdom of the Medes and Persians under Gyrus the Great; third, he saw that silver kingdom overturned by Alexander the Great, to give place to the brazen kingdom of the Greeks; fourth, he saw that, in turn, give place to the iron kingdom of the Romans, and he saw its subdivision into ten lesser kingdoms of “iron and clay, partly strong and partly broken,” the ten European nations into which the Roman empire was divided. He saw all that,-Berkeley’s “four first acts already past,” and beyond that he also saw in the far distant future and in the fullness of time, the “God Of Heaven set up the fifth gingdom, which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom whereof shall never be left to other people.” In other words, he saw the last form of government upon earth, in which the people govern themselves, and which, the prophet says, shall stand forever. Whether skeptics or believers, whether we regard the vision of this great monarch, warrior, and statesman of the first civilized empire of tire earth was natural or supernatural, whether the.vision of God or the simple iuspiration of human genius, none can doubt the United States of America —this great republic, the outgrowth and heir of ffiH the ages, -far nation the world has seen fulfilled that prophetic vision. Beyond question this republic is the leading character in the fifth and last act of that great drama. The course of empire and civilization not only now is, but has always been, westward. In the providence of God it seems as if the north temperate zone of this great continent has been reserved to receive to - its bosom this child of promise—the now empire of a higher and better civilization. After a century and a half of struggle in the wilderness, the republic was born. At the end of its first century it is already the foremost nation of the earbli. At the end of the second—not by arms I trust, but by its progress in all the arts of peace, by its greatness, and the blessing it confers on mankind—it will lead t!ie civilization of the world. It will Americanize and republicanize all the nations of the globe. What is true of the whole world is true of our own republic. Within our own boundaries the course of empire is westward. In this great northwest, which embraces the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, lowa and Minnesota, and which embraces all the Territories west of them to the Pacific Ocean, is found, already, the seat of our empire. The opening of the Northern Pacific Railway, the Wisconsin Central, and the extension of the Chicago and Northwestern, and, perhaps, more than all for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, the extensions of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railway, of which our honored guest is president, have already done much ajid will do infinitely more to realize and demonstrate to all the world that the great - Northwest is, indeed, the new empire or civilation.. It is here that the picked men k and.XQßfiajal best blood of the ruling races of the earth, meet and mingle on terms of social and political equality. As the outcome of all this, as centuries roll on, here will be found the finest, strongest, highest race of men the world has ever seen. In the fullness of time, not by war and conquest, but by the peaceful operation of laws of free trade and enlightened public opinion, I do not doubt that all of British Columbia and the Dominion lying between T*»ke Superior and Alaska, will be united with us, as a part of the great Northwest, including all the Valley of the Red River, the Assinnaboin, and the Saskatchewan, as, by the laws of nature and right, they ought to be.” Address of Hon. James R. Doolittle.