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in general our Reports of Decisions in Law, Equity, and Admiralty, are authority in English courts. Dwight and Edwards in Theology, Prescott and Bancroft in History, Sparks and Irving in Biography, are text-books on both sides the Atlantic. Within the last twenty years, more than one thousand editions of American books have been published in England, numbering at least six millions of copies, and six and a half millions of volumes. Single American books have circulated outside of the United States, in ten and twelve languages, in fifteen and twenty and twenty-five successive editions, to the amount of half a million, a million, and a million and a half of copies.

"Who reads an American book?" jeered Sydney Smith, a quarter of a century ago in the Edinburgh Review. The question of the clerical satirist must now be, to have any force-Who does not read American books?

Such statistics tell a proud story for our country. But it is not merely in science, philosophy, or elegant literature, that American thought is moulding the opinions of the world. Ever since the publication of the Declaration of Independence our statesmen have been confessedly, for breadth and depth of thought, and for power of reasoning, the ablest of the age. Were there three such men outside of the United States as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun ? Our public policy has put us at the head of the world's progress in international law. We have taken the lead in asserting a righteous equality among the great commonwealth of nations. We compelled England to discontinue kidnapping sailors by her piratical system of impressment; we first stipulated by treaty not to allow of privateering in time of war; we have successfully asserted the principle that free ships make free goods. Austria, at the imperative demand of our Executive, sulkily releases American citizens, imprisoned on suspicion. We first are moving to destroy the stingy monopoly, held by Denmark, of the entrance into the Baltic Sea. Is it not a conceded fact that the European nations, at the very farthest, cannot do better than to take a lesson in government from our Republic? Is it not our example which is stinging and goading the restive democrats of Europe into

their desperate revolts and crushed, but not conquered, revolutions? Have the despotic kings and emperors of that Continent more than one thing to fear? is there more than one ghost at their banquets? They are haunted by American Freedom-if by naught else.

Reformers and revolutionists, tyrants and their victims, alike look westward. Kossuth exhausts all the magic of his eloquence to engage us for his dear, fallen Hungary; Russia is our very good friend-for the time being-and would not grieve us for the world; Englishmen look to our administrative forms for examples to be imitated by the imbecile red-tapists of Downing-street. Blackwood's Magazine at last admits that the truth of our power and progress fully equals all the statements which have heretofore been considered "extravagant gasconade;" the Westminster Review terms our Republic "the pole-star to which the eye of struggling nations turns," and, in a long article, compares our effective and economical governmental methods with the expensive follies of Victoria's administration; the Edinburgh Review, which has heretofore spoken so bitterly and scornfully, concedes the full reality of our physical prosperity, and our present success in literature and art, and foretells for us a splendid future in each and all.

Hitherto, the energies of our republic have been expended in developing the immense resources of our extended territory. We have taken no position amongst the nations; our name, in fact, was scarcely mentioned. But the Russian war has summoned us to Europe; American diplomacy has made monarchs thoughtful; the United States have come to be regarded, not merely as a great nation, but as one to be courted and feared-a government capable of arbitrating in the affairs of the Old World, whose public opinion is respected, and whose favorable decision is regarded as a great moral power. Already, Europeans give us the possession of this entire continent. They apply the term American only to us. A Mexican, a Canadian even, is never, by them, called American; that name they consider ours alone. Europe, in fact, embraces the Monroe doctrine. Every month sees our influence increasing. Steam communication between the two continents has reached an unparal

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lelled perfection, and yet is insufficient to meet the demands of our business men. A fortnight, a week, a day, nay, an hour, is too long to obtain information-ere long, the submarine telegraph will put America and Europe in momentary communication. All things tend to give our country an immense preponderance in European affairs—a preponderance which is now beginning to be felt, and is deprecated by the despots and tyrants of the Old World.

Such have the United States been-such they are to-day. What they will be a century from this time, is a question which it is beyond the power of human prescience to answer, except by estimate or conjecture. Of our future, some few elements may be considered capable of reasonably reliable prophecy. That every ten years of our future growth will surpass any preceding ten, is proved by our progress hitherto. The last decade of our physical and intellectual progress shows an advance greater than that of the preceding twenty years, and greater than any other fifty years. For territory, within. the coming century we may have the entire continent of North America; for population, we shall have one hundred millions of people, not of an effete and overgrown stock, like that hideous monster, the Chinese race, but a people of vigorous youth, foremost in the blessings of freedom, and still marching onward, in the pure light of civilization, towards the highest human development.

The Anglo-American is the king of men. He possesses all the powerful and commanding nature of the Anglo-Saxon, the clear, cool head, the sober, calculating mind, the regard for law, the obstinate adherence to justice; but fused and fired by the pure bright air of America, and yet more by the wide freedom of American life, into the go-ahead and tireless energy, which endures no delay and brooks no opposition. The Anglo-American is the controlling type, the leading element of our future population.

America in 1950 promises to be, what the folly of the misproud Celestial so sillily calls his stolid people-the Central Nation. Already we stretch forth our hands to Europe and to Asia, and control the commerce of two oceans, and modify the politics of two

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continents. Europe, inspired by our example, already smokes and groans in the rising ferment of revolutions. We have opened the heretofore closed doors of distant Japan. American commerce and American civilization are striding inland, up the vast streams of the great Asiatic rivers and across her tremendous steppes. Even our missionaries among the heathen are driven by the logical results of Protestant Christianity to become founders of States and the promoters of independent political action. The Christianized kingdom of the Sandwich Islands, was converted and liberalized by Protestant missionaries. A Christian civilization has gone from us to commence the work of enlightening Africa, and has made a firm lodgment within the small but vigorous Republic of Liberia. Our missionary stations among the North American Indians, in Turkey and Armenia, in China, have been the centres of a light which has illuminated first the souls and then the minds of the barbarians, and which is gradually transforming them into self-governing and dignified communities. We have joined the Atlantic and the Pacific by railroad; we shall repeat the junction by telegraph and by canal. Throned between two oceans, we shall control the mercantile exchanges of the world, and with them the civilization and the welfare of mankind. It is not for us to rule with the barbarous violence of conquest. It is not for us to force a prostrating commercial system upon tributary millions by war, to steal colonies everywhere, to speckle the world with our garrisons, and then to boast that the drum-beat of our army ever greets the rising sun,

For us there is a safer, a surer, a nobler road, to a more desirable and enduring empire. Our destiny is to show the nations what is the greatest amount of national and individual happiness and prosperity which is possible under laws free and enlightened, and with a people self-governed and self-controlling. In the quiet and unaggressive fulfilment of that destiny we wield the lever which shall move the world.

A free and lofty humanity, seeking all that is good by every means that is right-such is the ideal of man and his life, which became

practicable in our empire for the first time. That ideal life satisfies all aspirations. Men will come to us to enjoy those privileges under our broad banner for a time, but, ere long, they will assert their right to enjoy them at home. Before a century has passed, the United States of America will stand peerless in strength and beauty, the pride and excellence of the whole earth; the refuge of the oppressed; the apostle of all truth; the freest, noblest, happiest, purest among the nations; the crown and culmination of human progress; the full expression of human development, under the conditions of a national existence based upon the eternal truths of Christianity,-maintained by laws enacted by the wide consent of all, restricting not one hair's breadth the rightful activity or happiness of any-invigorated and intensified by the untrammelled play of those infinite powers which God has given to man, and which are as comprehensive as the uni"verse of matter and of thought in which he exists.

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