The Works of William H. Sweard (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1884 Excerpt: ... DEMOCRACY THE CHIEF ELEMENT OF GOVERNMENT. MADISON, WISCONSIN, SEPTEMBER 12, 1860. It Is a political law--and when I say political law, I mean a higher law, a law of Providence--that empire has, for the last three, thousand years, so long as we have records of civilization, made its way constantly westward, and that it must continue to move on westward until the tides of the renewed and of the decaying civilizations of the world meet on the shores of the Pacific ocean. "Within a year I have seemed to myself to follow the track of empire in its westward march for three thousand years. I stood but a year ago on the hill of Calvary. I stood soon afterward on the Piroeus of Athens. Again I found myself on the banks of the Tiber. Still advancing westward I rested under the shades of the palaces of the kings of England, and trod the streets of the now renovated capital of France. From those capitals I made my way at last to "Washington, the city of established empire for the present generation of men, and of influence over the destinies of mankind. Empire moves far more rapidly in modern than it did in ancient times. The empire established at Washington, is of less than a hundred years'formation. It was the empire of thirteen Atlantic. American states. Still, practically, the mission of that empire is fulfilled. The power that directs it is ready to pass away from those thirteen states, and although held and exercised under the same constitution and national form of government, yet it is now in the very act of being transferred from the thirteen states east of the Alleghany mountains and on the coast of the Atlantic ocean, to the twenty states that lie west of the Alleghanies, and stretch away from their base to the base of the Rocky mountains. The political powe...