BR ECKTNRIDGE COUNTY.



the industrious toilers who are building new empires on its
shores. Within these wide boundaries thirty-eight States
have been solving the intricate problem of American Lib-
erty: the problem of duplex government-of two races-
and, with God's blessing, have become powerful, rich, and
contented. The benign influences of religion, the pervasive
power of education, the sweet leadership of liberty, have
united with all the kindly agencies of a beneficent nature,
fertile soil, salubrious climate, exhaustless mineral re-
sources, numerous rivers, to give to the favored land every
blessing. Well might the fathers say, "Si mfonlumenhlim1
requiris, citcnrnspice."
  For this was not always so. When Boone on June 7,
1769, feasted his eyes with "the unrivaled valley of the
Kentucky," what a contrast the picture of to-day would have
been by the side of the picture of that day. If painter,
poet, or orator could in fitting color or apt word produce
these two portraits-paint America as she was in 1769 and
as she is to-day-it would stagger human credulity to real-
ize that they represent the same country, with an interval
of only one hundred and twelve years. And if some great
thinker would with equal power set before us the political
(I use the word in its noble signification) surroundings of
those people with those of our country to-day, the trans-
formation would be as astounding as is the physical and
material transformation. The germs of each existed; the
possibilities of each were in existence; the " precious seed"
for all these harvests were in our fathers' possession, and,
even if sown in tears, they, were sown with true intelligence,
and with brave confidence in the result.
  In the thin fringe of settlements on the Atlantic coast
were held in its very nature the capability and necessity of
future growth, and these settlements were themselves the
growth of this peculiar characteristic. There is something
in that great race, or that family of races which speak the
English language, which necessitates expansion, growth,