that the British race is not confined within the frontiers of
the Union, since it already extends to the northeast.

To the northwest nothing is to be met with but a few in
significant Russian settlements ; but to the southwest, Mexico
presents a barrier to the Anglo-Americans. Thus, the
Spaniards and the Anglo-Americans are, properly speaking,
the only two races which divide the possession of the New
World. The limits of separation between them have been
settled by a treaty ; but although the conditions of that treaty
are exceedingly favorable to the Anglo-Americans, I do not
doubt that they will shortly infringe this arrangement. Vast
provinces, extending beyond the frontiers of the Union toward
Mexico, are still destitute of inhabitants. The natives of the
United States will forestall the rightful occupants of these soli
tary regions. They will take possession of the soil, and es
tablish social institutions, so that when the legal owner arrives
at length, he will find the wilderness under cultivation, and
strangers quietly settled in the midst of his inheritance.

The lands of the New World belong to the first occupant,
and they are the natural reward of the swiftest pioneer. Even
the countries which are already peopled will have some diffi
culty in securing themselves from this invasion, I have
already alluded to what is taking place in the province of
Texas. The inhabitants of the United States are perpetually
migrating to Texas, where they purchase land ; and although
they conform to the laws of the country, they are Gradually
founding the empire of their own language and their own

* The foremost of these circumstances is, that nations which are
accustomed to free institutions and municipal government are beci*r able
than any others to found prosperous colonies. The habit of thinking
and governing for oneself is indispensable in a new counUy, where
success necessarily depends, in a great measure, upon the individual
exertions of the settlers.



438 CONCLUSION.

manners. The province of Texas is still part of the Mex .
can dominions, but it will soon contain no Mexicans : th*
same thing has occurred whenever the Anglo-American
have come into contact with populations of a different origi*

[The prophetic accuracy of the author, in relation to the prese*
actual condition of Texas, exhibits the sound arid clear perception wit*
which he surveyed our institutions and character. American Editor.

It cannot be denied that the British race has acquired av
amazing preponderance over all the other European races i*
the New World ; and that it js very superior to them in civi
lisation, in industry, and in power. As long as it is only sur
rounded by desert or thinly-peopled countries, as long as *
encounters no dense populations upon its route, through whick
it cannot work its way, it will assuredly continue to spread.
The lines marked out by treaties will not stop it ; but it will
everywhere transgress these imaginary barriers.

The geographical position of the British race in the New
World is peculiarly favorable to its rapid increase. Above
its northern frontiers the icy regions of the pole extend ; and
a few degrees below its southern confines lies the burning
climate of the equator. The Anglo-Americans are therefore
placed in the most temperate and habitable zone of the con
tinent.

It is generally supposed that the prodigious increase of
population in the United States is posterior to their declaration
of independence. But this is an error : the population in
creased as rapidly under the colonial system as it does at the
present day ; that is to say, it doubled in about twenty-two
years. But this proportion, which is now applied to millions,
was then applied to thousands, of inhabitants ; and the same
fact which was scarcely noticeable a century ago, is now evi
dent to every observer.

The British subjects in Canada, who are dependent on a
king, augment and spread almost as rapidly as the British
settlers of the United States, who live under a republican
government. During the war of independence, which lasted
eight years, the population continued to increase without in
termission in the same ratio. Although powerful Indian na
tions allied with the English existed, at that time, upon the
western frontiers, the emigration westward was never check
ed. While the enemy laid waste the shores of the Atlantic,
Kentucky, the western parts of Pennsylvania, and the states
of Vermont and of Maine were filling with inhabitants. Nor
did the unsettled state of the constitution, which succeeded



CONCLUSION. 439

the war, prevent the increase of the population, or stop its pro
gress across the wilds. Thus, the difference of laws, the
various conditions of peace and war, of order and of anarchy,
have exercised no perceptible influence upon the gradual de
velopment of the Anglo-Americans. This may be readily
understood : for the fact is, that no causes are sufficiently ge
neral to exercise a simultaneous influence over the whole of
so extensive a territory. One portion of the country always
offers a sure retreat from the calamities which afflict another
part ; and however great may be the evil, the remedy which
is at hand is greater still.

It must not, then, be imagined that the impulse of-'the Bri
tish race in the New World can be arrested. The dismem
berment of the Union, and the hostilities which might ensue,
the abolition of republican institutions, and the tyrannical
government which might succeed it, may retard this impulse,
but they cannot prevent it from ultimately fulfilling the des
tinies to which that race is reserved. No power upon earth
can close upon the emigrants that fertile wilderness which
offers resources to all industry and a refuge from all want.
Future events, of whatever nature they may be, will not de
prive the Americans of their climate or of their inland seas,
of their great rivers or of their exuberant soil. Nor will bad
laws, revolutions, and anarchy, be able to obliterate that love
of prosperity and that spirit of enterprise which seem to be
the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish
that knowledge which guides them on their way.

Thus, in the midst of the uncertain future, one event at
least is sure. At a period which may be said to be near (for
we are speaking of the life of a nation), the Anglo-Americans
will alone cover the immense space* contained between the
polar regions and the tropics, extending from the coasts of the
Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific ocean. The territory
which will probably be occupied by the Anglo-Americans at
some future time, may be computed to equal three-quarters
of Europe in extent.* The climate of the Union is upon the
whole preferable to that of Europe, and its natural advanta
ges are not less great ; it is therefore evident that its popula
tion will at some future time be proportionate to our own.
Europe, divided as it is between so many different nations,
and torn as it has been by incessant wars and the barbarous

* The United States already extend over a territory equal to one
half of Europe. The area of Europe is 500,000 square leagues, and
its population 205,000,000 of inhabitants. (Maltebrun, liv. 114, vol.,
vi., p. 4.)



440 CONCLUSION.

manners of the Middle Ages, has notwithstanding attained a
population of 410 inhabitants to the square league.* What
cause can prevent the United States from having as numerous
a population in time ?

Many ages must elapse before the divers offsets of the
British race in America cease to present the same homoge
neous characteristics ; and the time cannot be foreseen at
which a permanent inequality of conditions will be establish
ed in the New World. Whatever differences may arise,
from peace or from war, from freedom or oppression, from
prosperity or want, between the destinies of the different des
cendants of the great Anglo-rAmerican family, they will at
least preserve an analogous social condition, and they will
hold in common the customs and the opinions to which that
social condition has given birth.

In the Middle Ages, the tie of religion was sufficiently pow
erful to imbue all the different populations of Europe with the
same civilisation. The British of the New World have a
thousand other reciprocal ties ; and they live at a time when
the tendency to equality is general among mankind. The
Middle Ages were a period when everything was broken up ;
when each people, each province, each city, and each family,
had a strong tendency to maintain its distinct individuality.
At the present time an opposite tendency seems to prevail,
and the nations seem to be advancing to unity. Our means
of intellectual intercourse unite the most remote parts of the
earth ; and it is impossible for men to remain strangers to
each other, or to be ignorant of the events which are taking
place in any corner of the globe. The consequence is, that
there is less difference, at the present day, between the Eu
ropeans and their descendants in the New World, than there
was between certain towns in the thirteenth century, which
were only separated by a river. If this tendency to assimi
lation brings foreign nations closer to each other, it must a
fortiori prevent the descendants of the same people from be
coming aliens to each other.

The time will therefore come when one hundred and fifty
millions of men will be living in North America,f equal in
condition, the progeny of one race, owing their origin to the
same cause, and preserving the same civilisation, the same
language, the same religion, the same habits, the same man
ners, and imbued with the same opinions, propagated under

* See Maltebrun, liv. 116, vol. vi., p. 92.

t This would be a population proportionate to that of Europe, taken
at a mean rate of 410 inhabitants to the square league.



CONCLUSION. 441

the same forms. The rest is uncertain, but this is certain ;
and it is a fact new to the world a fact fraught with such
portentous consequences as to baffle the efforts even of the
imagination.

There are, at the present time, two great nations in the
world, which seem to tend toward the same end, although they
started from different points ; I allude to the Russians and
the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed ;
and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere,
they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place among
the nations ; and the world learned their existence and their
greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural
limits, and only to be charged with the maintenance of their
power ; but these are still in the act of growth ;* all the
others are stopped, or continue to advance with extreme diffi
culty ; these are proceeding with ease and with celerity along
a path to which the human eye can assign no term. The
American struggles against the natural obstacles which op
pose him ; the adversaries of the Russian are men ; the for
mer combats the wilderness and savage life ; the latter, civi
lisation with all its weapons and its arts ; the conquests of
the one are therefore gained \>y the ploughshare ; those of the
other, by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon per
sonal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to
the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens ;
the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single
arm : the principal instrument of the former is freedom ; of
the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and
their courses are not the same ; yet each of them seems to be
marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of
half the globe.

* Russia is the country in the Old World in which population in
creases most rapidly in proportion.



APPE NDII



APPENDIX A. Page 17.

FOR information concerning all the countries of the West which have
not been visited by Europeans, consult the account of two expeditions
undertaken at the expense of congress by Major Long. This traveller
particularly mentions, on the subject of the great American desert, that
a line may be drawn nearly parallel to the 20th degree of longitude*
(meridian of Washington), beginning from the Red river and ending at
the river Platte. From this imaginary line to the Rocky mountains,
which bound the valley of the Mississippi on the west, lie immense
plains, which are almost entirely covered with sand, incapable of cul
tivation, or scattered over with masses of granite. In summer, these
plains are quite destitute of water, and nothing is to be seen on them
but herds of buffaloes and wild horses. Some hordes of Indians are
also found there, but in no great number.

Major Long was told, that in travelling northward from the river
Platte, you find the same desert constantly on the left ; but he was un
able to ascertain the truth of this report. (Long's Expedition, vol. ii.,
p. 361.)

However worthy of confidence may be the narrative of Major Long,
it must be remembered that he only passed through the country of
which he speaks, without deviating widely from the line which he had
traced out for his journey.



APPENDIX B. Page 18.

SOUTH AMERICA, in the regions between the tropics, produces an in
credible profusion of climbing-plants, of which the Flora of the Antilles
alone presents us with forty different species.

Among the most graceful of these shrubs is the passion-flower,
which, according to Descourtiz, grows with such luxuriance in the
Antilles, as to climb trees by means of the tendrils with which it is
provided, and form moving bowers of rich and elegant festoons, deco
rated with blue and purple flowers, and fragrant with perfume. (Vol.
i., p. 265).

The mimosa scandena (acacia a grandes gousses) is a creej^r of
enormous and rapid growth, which climbs from tree to tree, ancflfome-
times covers more than half a league. (Vol. iii., p. 227.)

* The 20th degree of longitude according to the meridian of Washington, agrees
"ery nearly with the 97th degree on the meridian of Greenwich.



444 APPENDIX.



APPENDIX C. Page 20

THE languages which are spoken by the Indians of America, from the
Pole to Cape Horn, are said to be all formed upon the same model, and
subject to the same grammatical rules ; whence it may fairly be con
cluded that all the Indian nations sprang from the same stock.

Each tribe of the American continent speaks a different dialect ; but
the number of languages, properly so called, is very small, a fact which
tends to prove that the nations of the New World had not a very re
mote origin.

Moreover, the languages of America have a great degree of regu
larity ; from which it seems probable that the tribes which employ
them had not undergone any great revolutions, or been incorpo
rated, voluntarily, or by constraint, with foreign nations. For it is
generally the union of several languages into one which produces
grammatical irregularities.

It is not long since the American languages, especially those of the
north, first attracted the serious attention of philologists, when the
discovery was made that this idiom of a barbarous people was the pro
duct of a complicated system of ideas and very learned combinations.
These languages were found to be very rich, and great pains had been
taken at their formation to render them agreeable to the ear.

The grammatical system of the Americans differs from all others in
several points, but especially in the following:

Some nations in Europe, among others the Germans, have the power
of combining at pleasure different expressions, and thus giving a com
plex sense to certain words. The Indians have given a most surprising
extension to this power, so as to arrive at the means of connecting a
great number of ideas with a single term. This will be easily under
stood with the help of an example quoted by Mr. Duponceau, in the
Memoirs of the Philosophical Society of America.

" A Delaware woman, playing with a cat or a young dog," says this
writer, " is heard to pronounce the word kuligatschis ; which is thus
composed ; k is the sign of the second person, and signifies ' thou ' or
' thy ;' uli is a part of the word wulit, which signifies ' beautiful,'
' pretty ;' gat is another fragment of the word wichgat, which means
* paw ;' and lastly, schis is a diminutive giving the idea of small ness.
Thus in one word the Indian woman has expressed, ' Thy pretty
little paw.' '.'

Take another example of the felicity with which the savages of Ame
rica have composed their words. A young man of Delaware is called
pilape. This word is formed from pilsit, chaste, innocent; and
lenape, man ; viz., man in his purity and innocence.

This facility of combining words is most remarkable in the strange
formation of their verbs. The most complex action is often expressed
by a single verb, which serves to convey all the shades of an idea by
the modification of its construction.

Those who may wish to examine more in detail this subjecTTwhich
I have only glanced at superficially, should read :

1. The correspondence of Mr. Duponceau and the Rev. Mr. Hec-
weld^jfc-elative to the Indian languages ; which is to be found in the
first volume of the Memoirs of the Philosophical Society of America,
published at Philadelphia, 1819, by Abraham Small , vol i., pp
356-464.

2. The grammar of the Delaware or Lenape language by Geiberger,



APPENDIX. 445

and the preface of Mr. Duponceau. All these are in the same collec
tion, vol. iii.

3. An excellent account o! these works, which is at the end of the
5th volume of the American Encyclopaedia.



APPENDIX D. Page 22.

SEE in Charlevoix, vol. i., p. 235, the history of the first war which the
French inhabitants of Canada carried on, in 1610, against the Iroquois.
The latter, armed with bows and arrows, offered a desperate resistance
to the French and their allies. Charlevoix is not a great painter, yet
he exhibits clearly enough, in this narrative, the contrast between the
European manners and those of savages, as well as the different way in
which the two races of men understood the sense of honor.

When the French, says he, seized upon the beaver-skins which
covered the Indians who had fallen, the Hurons, their allies, were
greatly offended at this proceeding ; but without hesitation they set to
work in their usual manner, inflicting horrid cruelties upon the pri
soners, and devouring one of those who had been killed, which made
the Frenchmen shudder. The barbarians prided themselves upon a
scrupulousness which they were surprised at not finding in our nation ;
and could not understand that there was less to reprehend in the strip
ping of dead bodies, than in the devouring of their flesh like wild
beasts.

Charlevoix, in another place (vol. i., p. 230), thus describes the first,
torture of which Champlain was an eyewitness, and the return of the
Hurons into their own village.

" Having proceeded about eight leagues," says he, " our allies halt
ed : and having singled out one of their captives, they reproached him
with all the cruelties which he had practised upon the warriors of
their nation who had fallen into his hands, and told him that he might
expect to be treated in like manner; adding, that if he had any spirit
he would prove it by singing, He immediately chanted forth his
death-song, and then his war-song, and all the songs he knew, * but in
a very mournful strain,' says Champlain, who was not then aware that
all savage music has a melancholy character. The tortures which suc
ceeded, accompanied by all the horrors which we shall mention here
after, terrified the French, who made every effort to put a stop to them,
but in vain. The following night one of the Hurons having dreamed
that they were pursued, the retreat was changed to a real flight, and
the savages never stopped until they were out of the reach of danger.

The moment they perceived the cabins of their own village, they cut
themselves long sticks, to which they fastened the scalps which had
fallen to their share, and carried them in triumph. At this sight, the
women swam to the canoes, where they received the bloody scalps
from the hands of their husbands, and tied them round their necks.

The warriors offered one of these horrible trophies to Champlain ;
they also presented him with some bows and arrows the only spoils
of the Iroquois which they had ventured to seize entreating him to
show them to the king of France.

Champlain lived a whole winter quite alone among these barbari
ans, without being under any alarm for his person or property.



446 APPENDIX.



APPENDIX E. Page 36.

ALTHOUGH the puritanical strictness which presided over the estab
lishment of the English colonies in America is now much relaxed, re
markable traces of it are still found in their habits and their laws. In
1792, at the very time when the anti-Christian republic of France be
gan its ephemeral existence, the legislative body of Massachusetts pro
mulgated the following law, to compel the citizens to observe the
sabbath. We give tie preamble, and the principal articles of this law,
which is worthy of the reader's attention.

" Whereas," says the legislator, " the observation of the Sunday is
an affair of public interest ; inasmuch as it produces a necessary sus
pension of labor, leads men to reflect upon the duties of life and the
errors to which human nature is liable, and provides for the public and
private worship of God the creator and governor of the universe, and
for the performance of such acts of charity as are the ornament and
comfort of Christian societies :

" Whereas, irreligious or light-minded persons, forgetting the du
ties which the sabbath imposes, and the benefits which these duties
confer on society, are known to profane its sanctity, by following their
pleasures or their affairs ; this way of acting being contrary to their
own interest as Christians, and calculated to annoy those who do not
follow their example ; being also of great injury to society at large, by
spreading a taste for dissipation and dissolute manners ;

" Be it enacted and ordained by the governor, council, and repre
sentatives convened in general court of assembly, that all and every
person and persons shall, on that day, carefully apply themselves to
the duties of religion and piety ; that no tradesman or laborer shall
exercise his ordinary calling, and that no game or recreation shall be
used on the Lord's day, upon pain of forfeiting ten shillings ;

"That no one shall travel on that day, or any part thereof, under
pain of forfeiting twenty shillings ; that no vessel shall leave a harbor
of the colony ; that no person shall keep outside the meetinghouse
during the time of public worship, or profane the time by playing or
talking, on penalty of five shillings.

" Public-houses shall not entertain any other than strangers or
lodgers, under a penalty of five shillings for every person found drink
ing or abiding therein.

" Any person in health who, without sufficient reason, shall omit to
worship God in public during three months, shall be condemned to a
fine of ten shillings.

" Any person guilty of misbehavior in a place of public worship
shall be fined from five to forty shillings.

" These laws are to be enforced by the tithing-men of each town
ship, who have authority to visit public-houses on the Sunday. The
innkeeper who shall refuse them admittance shall be fined forty shil
lings for such offence.

" The tithing-men are to stop travellers, and to require of them their
reason for being on the road on Sunday : any one refusing to answer
shall be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding five pounds sterling. If
the reason given by the traveller be not deemed by the tithing-men
sufficient, he may bring the traveller before the justice of the peace
of the district." (Law of the. 8th March, 1792 : General Laws of
Massachusetts, vol. i., p. 410.)

On the llth March, 1797, a new law increased the amount of fines,



APPENDIX. 447

half of which was to be given to the informer. (Same collection,
vol. ii., p. 525.)

On the 16th February, 1816, a new law confirmed these measures
(Same collection, vol. ii., p. 405.)

Similar enactments exist in the laws of the state of New York, re
vised in 1827 and 1828. (See Revised Statutes, part i., chapter 20,
p. 675.) In these it is declared that no one is allowed on the sabbath
to sport, to fish, play at games, or to frequent houses where liquor is
sold. No one can travel except in case of necessity.

And this is not the only trace which the religious strictness and
austere manners of the first emigrants have left behind them in the