every heart with his love. "The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." "Eternal Spirit! universal God ! Power inaccessible to human thought, Save by degrees and steps which thou hast deign'd Accomplish thou their number; and conclude Throughout all lands: let every nation hear * Wordsworth. Her SEC. I. PROGRESS AND National GREATNESS OF THE UNITED STATES UNPRECEDENTED AND WONDERFUL.—An exhibition of the mighty effects of industry and perseverance. great and glorious future. Present danger to future prospects from the continuance of slavery. Slavery an evident incubus on her progress. Great injustice as well as impolicy of the system. Advancement of the United States, though vast, still infantile. Calculations of amount of population at different prospective periods. Probable dense population of the whole valley of the Mississippi, and North-West States, to the Rocky Mountains. Her vast magnitude and power, when densely peopled throughout her whole extent to the Pacific Ocean. This result not Utopian. Past and present progress confirmatory of its probable result. Prediction of 'anti-republican politicians and others of the certain dissolution of the Union, from the fate of the Ancient Republics and France. Great dissimilarity in the character and circumstances of these governments, nations, and people, &c. Alleged danger from collision between the Northern and Southern States on the slavery question. Daily diminishing probabilities of this result. Evidences. Abolition of slavery inevitable. Abolition of slavery inevitable. Enquiry as to the policy of the nation in relation to this issue. Undoubted advantages of wise and just arrangements, because in harmony with Divine providence. Example of the consequences of injustice in the failure of 'ambitious projects in Russia. SEC. II. The lessons of peace and amity past history and experience are designed to teach both America and England. The cultivation of friendship and good understanding between these two nations should be the constant aim of both. Promotion of concord among nations the most important of social theories. Opinion of Montesquieu. Great impolicy as well as inbumanity of war. Examples in both ancient and modern history. Uncertainty as to its results. Duty of England and America in relation to each other. Improved sentiment of each in regard to war. Evidences of mutual desire for harmony of operation. Mutual sympathy from obvious causes. Especial influence of religion in the promotion of charity and good-will. Chief causes of international prejudices and hostile feeling. Best means of counteracting and obviating them. Testimony of an English nobleman. Reflections. SECTION I. When we consider, as already set forth in these pages, the originally different characters of the several States of America when they were provinces of a more extended empire,-the causes which produced this variety of character,-the means that were in operation to perpetuate this variety,—and the end to which it was designed to be instrumental, it is a matter of astonishment that such a social and religious, as well as such a civil and political state exists in the United States, especially when we consider the influence that is exerted by the vast tide of emigration that is continually setting into them from almost all parts of the world. America affords an astonishing proof of what industry and perseverance, labour and talent, may effect in a short period of time; while she has set to the world an admirable example of how much may be accomplished by such knowledge, energy of will, and utter self-devotion, as have been happily combined in the persons of many of her citizens. From whatever point we contemplate America, whether the past, the present, or the future,-notwithstanding her slave system and her oppression of her aborigines, which may possibly one day prove a withering, blighting curse upon her progress," may heaven forefend the blow," she furnishes one of the sublimest objects that can attract the mind whether of a poet or of a religious or political philanthropist, a mighty representative confederation, the abode of liberty, of enterprise, of knowledge, of morality, and of religion! In every direction, as we have shown, unmistakable evidences appear of rapid progress and improvement. Where forests once stood, cities are reared as by magic; where the stagnant morass exhaled its baleful effluvia, the cultivated plain now smiles; where pathless tracts once spread themselves around, roads are now formed, bridges are constructed, and villages spring up. Day by day her magnificent forests are falling beneath the axe of the advancing pioneer of civilisation. Her vast inland seas, and interminable rivers, and stupendous cataracts, her yet boundless prairies and untrodden forests, her cities, with all the tumult of busy life, on the very verge of solitudes over which broods yet undisturbed the hush of ages,—and the mighty tide of living energy which pours through the valleys and over the uplands, crowded with the melancholy mounds where silently dwell the dead generations of the Red Man; in a word, the contrasts everywhere presented or suggested between a growing civilisation and a civilisation extinct, and by a soil, one-half of which is pervaded almost fearfully by a tumultuous rushing of nations towards an unknown but mighty destiny, while the other sits dark and lonely beneath the veil of a mysterious and impenetrable past, are all elements of a poetry with which England need not doubt that America will one day enrich the language that is common to them both. Everywhere in America there is seen the youth of an invincible spirit, which seems destined by. Providence to give, for thousands of years, life and animation to the world. Such, as we have seen, is the amazing increase of the population, PROBABLE FUTURE POPULATION. 367 derived principally from natural increase, that, calculating at the same ratio as during the last ten years, which has been thirty-five per cent., the population in 1860 will amount to 32,000,000, for it was 25,841,000 on the 1st of January, 1853; and on a calculation generally admitted to be correct, the population doubles its amount every twenty-five years. It may therefore be safely estimated, that in the year 1900 a hundred millions. of persons speaking the English language will inhabit these fertile and highly-favoured regions! There is nothing to prevent the United States from being as populous as any other part of the world; and supposing its population to reach the ratio at present existing in Europe, of thirty to a square mile, there would teem on her territories a population of two hundred and twenty millions of human beings! But even this is a calculation now obsolete, as it supposes the States to be confined within the narrow limits of former days. We now see them enlarging their borders, and pouring the tide of population westward, year by year. M. de Tocqueville, speaking of the progressive settlement of America by the AngloSaxons, describes the latter as driven by the hand of God across the western wilderness at the average rate of seventeen miles per annum. In the vast valley of the Mississippi alone, which is ten times as extensive as the valley of the Nile, there is said to be room for more than two hundred and seventy-five millions of people to live comfortably. Looking beyond to the very distant future," says Calhoun, in his report to the Memphis Convention, &c., "when this immense valley, containing within its limits 1,200,000 square miles; lying in its whole extent in the temperate zone, and occupying a position midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans; unequalled in the fertility and diversity of its productions; intersected by the mighty stream, including its tributaries, by which it is drained, and which supplies a continuous navigation of upwards of ten thousand miles, with a coast, including both banks, of twice that length; when this immense valley shall be crowded with population, and its resources fully developed, imagination itself is taxed in the attempt to realise the magnitude of its commerce." The north-west States, which include Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and the Minnesota territory, have an area of 375,259,000 square miles; and it is remarked of them by the writer of the Report to the Senate, Mr. J. D. Andrews,-"When this last division shall become as densely peopled as the Middle States now are, it will contain a population, directly tributary to the trade of the lakes, of twenty-two millions of souls; and there is every reason to believe that the increase of population will be as rapid until that result shall be fully obtained as it has been since 1800. How wonderful and grand a spectacle will it then be to many, doubtless of those now born, by whom, at the commencement of the twentieth century, this lake country shall be seen supporting a population of so many millions! And what will be the amount and value of that trade, and the aggregate tonnage of that marine which has sprung up, in less than forty years, from nothing to 200,000 tons of steam and shipping? In years to come the advancing industry of the population will extend itself over the prairies, transform them into a new paradise, and cause other and yet more beautiful flowers to spring up. Even the Rocky Mountains, in a distant age, may, like Switzerland, become the happy dwelling-place of a nation yet unborn. What will America be then, when she will be peopled from the Eastern Sea to the Mississippi,—from the northern Minnesota to the tropics, and throughout the whole western country, from the great Father of Waters to the Pacific Ocean! And this is no Utopian vision. In the course of half a century the United States have actually quadrupled their population, and more than doubled the number of their States and the extent of their territory. Should the population progress for one century more as it has done even during the two last, and the Union continue unbroken, the number of its inhabitants would exceed 300,000,000. Such a people fronting on two oceans, with a temperate climate and so vast an expanse of country, must exert, under any circumstances, a mighty and ever-increasing influence over the globe. It is not being too sanguine to predict that within the compass of a century her shores will count a hundred populous towns where senators will debate and poets sing; that every nook of her coast will be visited by vessels and steamboats, and connected by railroads, mail routes, and electric telegraphs; and that the fisheries in their ports will become an object of as much national importance as those now of Newfoundland. The population doubling every twenty-five years, as it is generally allowed to do, it would amount in one hundred years, |