this faction of no principle proclaimed their purpose to be the conquest and absorption, of the entire continent. There were colonies of armed settlers on the Northern frontier who were to begin a war with England for the acquisition of Canada. By the exercise of a wisdom, which, embodied in one man, represents the prudence of the American people, that danger was averted. A second effort saved us a second time-during the boundary altercation with England about the Northern territories on the Pacific side of the Continent. In their third attempt, the instigators of war were more successful :instead of purchasing from Mexico what she would freely have sold to us had we approached her in a spirit of peace and conciliation, we trod rudely upon her frontiers, and roused her to a spirit irreconcilably hostile, and that refused negotiation. Late in the day, after a prodigious expenditure of blood and treasure, we recovered ourselves, and began to see reason and right again, as before; and we purchased the territory which our war faction would have had us seize for a conquest. And now the same faction are beginning again, a fourth time, or, rather, a fifth, for we recognize them first at the time of the annexation of Louisiana,-and they are preparing for us a series of alarming difficulties; their aim is universal empire, by conquest, on the new continent. They know the movements and desires of the more restless portion of the people, and with the bayonet they point the way. Their designs look not far into the future, not beyond an age. They have it in their power to create causes of war that shall be inevitable; and they know that, as a nation, we recognise no settled colonial system. separate sovereignties risen from thirteen to thirty. Seventeen new sovereignties have been added to the Union, each one able and efficient to represent and defend itself. But with the increase is augmented also the power of increase. The addition of every new state heightens the probability of the addition of others. Every new State, formed upon a new territory, acts upon the territory beyond it, and colonizes another state. The addition of Texas prepares the way for the addition of three others, to be formed out of the territory of Texas. The establishment of a new state on the Pacific, accelerates the formation of four more, two in the Northern, and two in the Southern and middle parts of the continent. The overflow of population from New Mexico, California, and the territories of Texas, rapidly Americanizes the Northern sections of the Mexican Republic. The absorbing and attractive power of our institutions, the same power which draws an annual emigration of half a million from Europe, which empties entire European villages of their inhabitants, acts with an effect still more intense upon the nations that surround us. By this attractive influence, powerful revolutionary parties are generated in every nation, sufficiently civilized and contiguous, to feel directly the influence of our institutions. These revolutionary parties desire to have their governments incorporated with, and under the protection of the Union. It is idle to protest against these effects; the causes are too creditable to ourselves that we should make the effects a subject of lamentation. And yet we have no policy of colonization, of a just, and peaceful, and beneficial colonization. We refuse to look at facts. We deny ourselves the benefits of the future; or, rushing into the other extreme, we grasp madly at consequences, and, by unjust means, accelerate the movement of events. It is reported that an armed expedition, organized by private adventurers, in league with a revolutionary portion in the Spanish Island of Cuba, is, at this moment, landing upon the shores of that island, with a view to assist in displacing the Cuban Despotism. The Government of the United States, it is said, in conformity with those laws, and with those treaties : Between and the defenders of the Island. with foreign nations, by which a strict neu- This movement of adventurers upon the Island of Cuba has thrown out, into strong relief, the two colors of the peace and war parties in America. The party of red, the aggressive faction, are watching eagerly the progress of events in the South. This Cuba business is, doubtless, to them, the first movement in a line of conquest, by which Mexico and the West Indies are to be absorbed. The chances are greatly in favor of their success: they have everything to hope, and nothing to lose they rely upon two causes to promote their final success:first, the onward movement of population, aided by that spirit of military adventure, and colonization, which is congenial to our people, and which, at certain moments, takes possession of the entire nation. Imagine a series of events like the following: The present, or some future expedition effects a landing, and succeeds in colonizing a portion of the Island of Cuba. The enterprise, managed with prudence, and well supported at home, could hardly fail. Then follows a season of hostilities, and a truce between the colonists war. Such is the first cause, or line of causes, upon which the war faction rely for ultimate success. Of their particular and personal object in creating the war, and carrying out the system to which it appertains, it is unnecessary to speak at present. The second train of causes upon which they rely is of a more subtle, and much less appreciable character. It is a line of support derived from the attitude taken by non-extensionist party, and which places them, and the entire conservative body of the nation, at the mercy of the war faction. It begins in the fact that the conservative and constitutional peace party refuse to adopt a colonial system; whereas they, the war party, have a system, and a very effective one it is, and appeals, upon occasion, to the passions of the people with such force as to overwhelm all opposition; and the unjust and destructive spirit of war has its own way, with consequences infinitely to be deplored by the friends of freedom and legitimate progress. Ab initio, in the very beginning, the unconditional opponent of extension begins by declaring his want of faith in the Constitution itself, and predicts the ruin of the ; Events move on. The war is begun. It becomes necessary to sustain the honor of the nation. Millions have to be voted; five, ten, fifty, a hundred millions,-army after army is sent into the field. The enemy, who might have been made friends and allies, with vast loss and great glory are subdued. The people grow weary of the war, and begin to calculate the cost. The war party falls into disrepute, and go out of office. Negociations ensue for the purchase of territories already conquered. It is a point of honor and of honesty to purchase them. The empire of freedom was not founded by robbers. WOULD IT NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER TO HAVE PURCHASED BEFORE THE WAR? nation by its growth. He has no faith in the expansive power of a Republic. He has faith in a despotic, but none in a republican or free expansion. He thinks that the best government is the least capable of extending its dominion. He reverts to the happy thirteen colonies; forgetful of the fact, that it is found a much easier task to nationalize thirty than thirteen, sovereigh and independent States. Of the thirteen the best that could be made was a rotten federation, and then a feeble and uncertain Union; but now, out of the thirty, is there one that can erect itself against twenty-nine? This error is one which a contemplation of the facts ought at once to dissipate. It is the power of the separate sovereignties of which conservatism should be jealous, and over which it should exert a constant care; it is they that are in danger, and not the general system. Again; no sooner does it appear that the tide of population and enterprize is beginning to overflow the boundaries of some neighbor State, all that we have to offer is a cry against the unmanageable growth of the empire, the unwieldly bulk it has at-lence, reacts unhappily upon the character tained, and the formidable dangers that must ensue from the increased patronage of the Executive. We throw down the reins and the steed goes whither he will; another hand snatches them up, and we are plunged into a war. Colonization, meanwhile, goes on rapidly. Bands of armed colonists and depredators swarm across the frontier, urged and encouraged by those who, if they confide but little in the constitution, trust implicitly to the timely passions of the people. The crisis arrives. It becomes necessary to negotiate for the protection of our citizens, now colonists upon a hostile territory. We are at a loss what to do. The people, impatient of our hesitation and delay, cry out for violent measures. Of all the systems of policy that have been pursued for national aggrandizement, that of the forcible or fraudulent seizure of the territories and property of others, has led those who have adopted it the most rapidly to their own destruction. Public immorality, originating in the vice and ambition of a few demagogues, who have the art to inspire, in the masses, a spirit of vio of individuals, leading them to a general disregard of social and moral obligations. As a just war elevates and strengthensan unjust, aggressive war, depresses and corrupts, a people. With ourselves, proud as we are of our strength, and confiding in the undoubted superio.ity of our arms, the temptations to aggression are extraordinary the ablest statesmanship of the age has been exercised in averting the omens of war. It is not always in the power of a single man to meet or avert the storm. It is wisdom to anticipate the danger and prevent its access by measures of progress and of conciliation, providing equally for the growth, education and unity of our future empire. govern and civilize in her own manner the surrounding nations upon whom she aggresses: her empire is an aggregate, bound about and held together by the iron tire of despotism, which expands itself during the heat of conquest, and contracts firmly upon the included masses in times of peace she has government, but not organization; she increases in size, but, excepting at the centre, and with her proper people, neither in authority nor in respectability. The barbarians tributary to her, have been always tributary to some one of the great Eastern powers. It is a law of barbarian existence, in Asia and in Eastern Europe, that a tribe shall be the tributary of an empire, and always to that which is the nearest and most civilized; and by this necessity, and not by any inherent or acquired superiority of policy or government, the broken masses which compose the Russian Empire, cohere at the edges, and float together. The Dutch people of the low countries, might be expected, from their occupation and their derivation, to discover a genius for colonization. By their mercantile enterprises they have extended the lines of their trade slenderly around the surface of the globe, and we find them through a period of three centuries, founding merchant colonies in remote seas; but in no part of the world have this people increased and occupied the territory which they seized upon, with an energy or rapidity sufficient to form a new nation. Estimating their genius for colonization we find them in the third rank, inferior to Spain or England; inferior even to the Phoenicians, and much more to the Greeks: If they can be compared with any nation of antiquity in this respect, it is to the Phoenicians; not only in the buccaneer character of their enterprises, but the hardness and isolation, and the deficiency of protecting and governing power, through which they have failed to control effectually, or to assimilate with, the nations among whom they have alighted. tuguese-on both the shores of the new continents, where, first among modern European nations, they succeeded in planting colonies, which should grow afterwards into States, if not equalling, yet approaching the mother country in numbers and in civilization. The crusade is an enterprise of conquest sanctified by pretexts of religion; it breaks the courage and destroys the nationality of the people, whom it subdues. The triumph of a colonial system, on the contrary, is to preserve that which the crusade destroys; to convert and ameliorate, but not by violence; and thus to raise and organise those whom it subjugates, leaving them free in their opinion and religion, until such time as interest and reason may prepare them for conversion; and the triumph of a true conquest, after the Roman and English model, is, to confer upon the conquered people the freedom and the benefits of the empire. In both these respects the Spaniards and the Portuguese have signally failed: their colonies, established in the two Americas, have been marked, from their origin to the present time, with every species and grade of oppression and extortion, exercised not only upon the aborigines, whom they enslaved and exterminated, but each colony upon the other, and among themselves. Their history, and their ill success, their ferocity at first, and their weakness and effeminacy now, are among the most familiar traits of history. South America and Mexico remain, as at first, after three centuries of occupation by Europeans, with their natural resources undeveloped, and their populations weak, ill governed and two thirds uncivilized. More fortunate in their methods, or rather in their spontaneity of colonization, have been the industrious, though narrowminded Chinese, whose populous empire is pouring annually its hundreds of thousands over all the shores and islands of the Asiatic seas. In them we discover no organization or clinging together of separate colonies: Impelled by the simple instinct of self-presIn the second order, as to success in ervation, they move off like emigrating rats colonial enterprises, we have to place or lemurs, floating from point to point, and the people of Spain and Portugal, whose from island to island, and every where expeditions combined the spirit of a cru- clinging to the land. They carry neither sade, or of a Saracenic invasion with that government nor arms, but only industry, of a merchant enterprise; witness the and the simplest arts of peace. It is supconquests and settlements of the Por-posed that they will eventually form the |
