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and progressive policy of the United States, and the supine indifference of the British Government !'

Again; after some absurd and yet mischievous vapouring, which we pass over, Mr. Bristed says:

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The American rulers have become wiser. by their own experi'ence, have profited by their own blunders, have extracted strength from a sense of their own weakness. They are not likely again 'to plunge into a war, without funds, and without men they are now preparing in the bosom of peace, the means of future con'flict; by building up the finances of the country, by planting every where the germs of an army, by sowing those seeds which will soon start up into bands of armed warriors, by a rapid aug'mentation of their navy; and, above all, by attempting to allay 'the animosities of party spirit, and endeavouring to direct the whole national mind and inclination of the United States towards their aggrandizement by conquest alike on the land and on the 'ocean; by adding to their present immense empire the continen'tal possessions of Spain and England, and the British insular domains in the West Indies.' p. 237. [The Reviewer proceeds :]

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The way of barter,' Mr. B. says, is a much easier, safer, and better mode of acquiring dominion than that of war and conquest.' No doubt, so far as the immediate transaction is considered apart from its motive and its remoter consequences, it is, if not always easier, at any rate, always safer and better,' to buy than to plunder; but it should be remembered, that there are some things which can never be honestly bought and sold, and also that bargains by which a third party may think himself so far either injured or endangered, as to impel him to break the peace rather than acquiesce in the transfer, are justly chargeable with all the violence and outrage which they indirectly occasion.

If we are to take the account of the Writer before us, the Americans are far from being pleased with the irregular figure which the Republic exhibits upon the map. This and that corner of the continent must be bought (or conquered if it cannot be bought) in order to give a more handsome sweep to their periphery. But surely we have already heard enough of arrondissemens: in fact, their boundary line is never so exactly round to satisfy the nice eye of an ambitious people; the jagged polygon still needs here and there some trimming; but this perfecting of the figure is to be effected always by increments,-never by retrenchments.

As to the means employed on such occasions, those are not to be feared the least which are the most silent and plausible. As for instance, the plan of buying territory, which, while it springs from the same restless spirit, is more base than the passion for military glory, and in every respect as hazardous to the repose of nations. VOL. II.

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It is really almost better that ambition should appear in its old and proper garb, than that it should take a new guise and walk through the earth in the character of a peddler. Away then with the smooth-face state trader, who coolly appraises islands and continents as if they were the chattels of a bankrupt, calculates to a dollar and a cent, what it will cost him to buy up the world, and then says Is not my balance even?-Am I not a man of peace?

But it ought to be premised, that it would be rash and unfair to infer from the inconsiderate declamations of two or three lightheaded American writers, that this craving for territory,—not less preposterous than immoral,-affects the people of the United States generally. If Mr. Bristed, as every good patriot ought to be, is more concerned for the honour of his country, than solicitous for his individual credit, he will thank us, and all his candid English readers, for persisting to hope that, at least on this subject, the mass of his countrymen far surpass himself in the possession of plain good sense and political morality.

But if, for the sake of argument, it be supposed that the American people, forgetting the wise principles of the great founders of their liberty, are actually possessed by the mania of encroachment, and the passion for extended domination, their peculiar circumstances render this madness so eminently dangerous to themselves, that their European rivals could do nothing better than quietly look on, while it works on its own correction. No very profound political sagacity is needed, to perceive that nothing less than the very soundest and calmest condition of the public mind in America can promise the long continued acquiescence of the northern and the inland states, to the present Virginian government of the Union. It is a fact that lies upon the surface of American politics, that there already exists such an essential and irremediable contrariety of interests and of feelings between the northern, southern and western states, as has never yet, in the history of the world, been brought into voluntary concurrence under the same government. This fact supposes, therefore, that there should be found throughout these wide nations, so artificially united, a greater degree of philosophical superiority to the pressure of immediate interests, more freedom from passion, more immobility of temper, in a word, a more undisturbed reign of reason, than has ever yet been seen to prevail among men.[a] How long then, is it likely, will the patrician planters of the South be able to compose, and to retain under their guidance this discordant mass, after it shall have become inflamed with ambition, and erased with Quixotic projects? [b]

{a Why not? and without having much cause for boasting either.] [b The fancy of our becoming crazed with Quixotic projects arises from the

There are, no doubt, some particular causes which tend to foster in the minds of Americans, the propensity to indulge the extravagant reveries of national ambition. The American has vastly more geographical feeling than the European. The migratory habits of the people, the recollection of having an inexhaustible store house of territory behind them,-the necessity of thinking and speaking of the particular proprietorship of the soil, in its relations of latitude and longitude, even the periodical and nonchalante pilgrimages of their Congress-men, measured, not by hundreds, but by thousands of miles, compel them to a use of the map, in the common business of life, ten times more frequent than is found among any other people, and have actually, as it were, woven the idea of terrene extension among the very elements of the national character. The thoughts of the European farmer range within a circle of twenty miles diameter. The ideas of the Ameriean planter familiarly traverse the wide extent between the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The one knows nearly as much of his continent, as the other does of his country. In America, the fruits of the earth as well as manufactures, have to be sought for, or to be sent, some thousands of miles. Hence, both the solitary agriculturalist of the Western States, and the petty store-keeper on the water's edge, are necessitated to be in a greater or less degree, proficients in that general knowledge of the commercial condition of their own country and of distant nations, which, in Europe, is the business only of the first class of merchants. The mighty streams of the North American continent, make geographers of all the settlers on their banks, who depend upon this communication with the wide world, for all the means of raising themselves above the condition of the wandering savages around them. The Map, therefore, is ever in the hand of the American; but a map is a seductive article to men whose conscious power of influencing directly the government of their country, immediately allies personal feelings with the idea of its magnitude and glory. The transition from the, commercial to the political consideration of the Map, is not merely easy, but, under such circumstances, almost inevitable. A Map is the mischievous familiar of ambition; nor is its influence found to be much less bewitching in the Log-house of the rugged republican, than in the palaces of Kings or the mansions of Captains. Considered as the implement of political speculation, the map presents an abstract region of thought, palpable and gross in its elements, yet not without a

writer's observation of the people of his own country, who have no other way of showing their power but by the lawless violence of their mobs,--and being driven to that impotent resort, for any expression of their honest feelings, are inflamed and crazed with the consciousness of its impotency.]

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mixture of the great and sublime, and altogether peculiarly suited to the tastes of the rude intellect that has become at once vigorous and sordid by an arduous and continued conflict with physical difficulties. Here are high, and yet tangible matters, affording a relief from the petty disgusts of life, ministering at once to pride and vanity, and opening a field to the indefinite rovings of the mind. Ambitious political speculation is, to strong and coarse minds, what poetry and romance are to more refined spirits. Indeed, if we except the homeless wanderer upon earth, and the slave who is bound for life to the acre on which he toils, there are, perhaps, few men who have never felt inflated with the passion for conquest and extended domination. But this nefarious passion meets with the most favourable circumstances for its development, when, to an habitual familiarity with geographical ideas, is conjoined a full and direct exercise of political faculties.

It is obvious, however, that the one or two million citizens of a cooped-up republic, may listen with much less hazard to the suggestions of national ambition, than the dissimilar and discordant tribes of a score of independent states, that are but threaded together on a cobweb. The national passions are susceptible of sudden and accidental inflections even in compact, homogeneous, and social states; but infinitely more so in the case of a purely factitious union of distant nations. The particular direction given to these passions is almost fortuitous; and whenever they are converted from a more distant to a nearer object, their violence is augmented. And it must also be remembered, that there is a constant tendency in these passions, to seek a nearer in preference to a more distant object. Let then a few years of European peace leave the Americans at leisure more distinctly to apprehend the essential incompatibility of the aims and interests of the three great divisions of the Union; let the inevitable preponderance of the Western States more fully develope itself; let the palpable interests of the seaboard traders be, in several occasions, plainly voted away in Congress; and at the same time, instead of a peaceful, sedate, reasonable, and business-like temper, let there be supposed to pervade the people the turbulent, irritable, and presumptuous spirit of ambition;-and then, how long will it be before opportunity shall tempt European (perhaps English) interference on behalf of one of the parties; and thus destroy for ever the vain project of an undivided Republic on the North American continent.

Those anxious persons, therefore, in this country, whose lurking fears of America deprive them not only of their peace but of their candour, might do well to take the map in hand; to make themselves acquainted with the provision which the westward progress of cultivation is making for the partition of the States into three or four rival portions, and then they may comfort themselves with

the following dilemna, namely, If the people of America attain and preserve that eminent sober-mindedness which is indispensable to the perpetuity of the Union, then, that Union, attenuated as it must always remain, will not be formidable; but, if they shall, as it is supposed, become prevailingly ambitious, warlike, and enterprising, their intrinsically jarring interests make the disruption of the Union a matter of almost certain calculation.

It should be most especially remarked and remembered, that, in an extensive and disjointed Empire, where unalterable geographical circumstances produce and perpetuate various incompatibilities of temper, feeling, and interest, it is the very purity and perfection of the representative system which inevitably insures the ultimate oppression of the smaller portions of the Body. As surely as eight are more than three, so sure it is that a multifarious empire, the government of which is truly and purely representative, will be ruled, not by the more wealthy, nor by the more intelligent, but by the more bulky portion; or, in other words, it will be governed, not by the reason of the whole, but by the relative numbers of the parts. Where the representatives of the people constitute only the check and counterpoise to a supreme authority, these representatives feel themselves much less personally charged with the particular interests of those several portions of the Empire by which they are deputed; because it is found that that balancing and harmonizing of all the parts upon which the strength and security of the whole depends, may, to a great extent, be safely confided to the personal interests of the supreme authority. But where the supreme power (under whatever forms the fact may be disguised) is actually in the hands of the representatives of the people, and, where, therefore, it is the personal concern of no one to care more for the whole than for any of the parts, each feels individually that it is his first and most pressing business to defend and promote the interests of the portion of the Empire with which he is related. Under such a constitution, the representatives assemble, in some sort, like the ambassadors of independent states. At home, as private individuals, they may feel the deepest concern for the great interests of the state; but in Congress, they meet to struggle and scramble, each for himself and his clients. Wherever an Empire is so extensive as to include within itself widely separated nations, having interests really or apparently incompatible, there, a government by the ballot of a true representation of the whole empire must issue either in the oppression of the smaller portions, or an appeal on their part to foreign protection.

The growing discordances of the Great Republic' are cautiously and painfully alluded to by most American writers. Mr. Bris ted speaks thus on the subject:

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