These Are All Memorable, And Some
Of Them Are Great, Names.
If we have dreamed a dream of Union (as some
of you gentlemen say), it is at least worth
While remarking that a
dream which has been dreamed by such wise and good men, may, for aught
we know, or you know, have been a sort of vision - a vision
foreshadowing forthcoming natural events in a clear intelligence: a
vision - I say it without irreverence, for the event concerns the lives
of millions living, and yet to come - resembling those seen by the
Daniels and Josephs of old, foreshadowing the trials of the future, the
fate of tribes and peoples, the rise and fall of dynasties. But the
immediate history of the measure is sufficiently wonderful, without
dwelling on the remoter predictions of so many wise men. Whoever, in
1862, or even in 1863, would have told us that we should see even what
we see in these seats by which I stand - such a representation of
interests acting together, would be accounted, as our Scotch friends
say, 'half daft'; and whoever, in the Lower Provinces, about the same
time, would have ventured to foretell the composition of their
delegations which sat with us under this roof last October, would
probably have been considered equally demented. But the thing came
about; and if those gentlemen who have had no immediate hand in
bringing it about, and, therefore, naturally feel less interest in the
project than we who had, will only give us the benefit of the doubt -
will only assume that we are not all altogether wrong-headed - we hope
to show them still farther, though we think we have already shown them
satisfactorily, that we are by no means without reason in entering on
this enterprise.
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