Was Malta hers? her progress? Did she then possess Gibraltar, the key to the Mediterranean ? Did she possess a port in the Mediterranean? Were the Ionian Islands hers? Was the southern extremity of Africa, was the Cape of Good Hope hers? Were the whole of her vast possessions in India hers? Was her great Australian empire hers? While that branch of her population which followed the western star, and under its guidance committed itself to the duty of settling, fertilizing, and peopling an unknown wilderness in the West, were pursuing their destinies, other causes, providential doubtless, were leading English power eastward and southward, in consequence and by means of her naval prowess and the extent of her commerce, until in our day we have seen that within the Mediterranean, on the western coast and at the southern extremity of Africa, in Arabia, in hither India and farther India, she has a population ten times as great as that of the British Isles two centuries ago. And recently, as we have witnessed, I will not say with how much truth and justice, policy or impolicy; I do not speak at all to the morality of the action, I only speak to the fact,-she has found admission into China, and has carried the Christian religion and the Protestant faith to the doors of three hundred millions of people.1 It has been said that whosoever would see the Eastern world before it turns into a Western world, must make his visit soon, because steamboats and omnibuses, commerce, and all the arts of Europe, are extending themselves from Egypt to Suez, from Suez to the Indian seas, and from the Indian seas all over the explored regions of the still farther East. Now, gentlemen, I do not know what practical views, or what practical results, may take place from this great expansion of the power of the two branches of Old England. It is not for me to say. I only can see, that on this continent all is to be AngloAmerican, from Plymouth Rock to the Pacific seas, from the 1 The war between China and Great Britain, known as the "opium war,' which began in 1834, was ended by the treaty of Aug. 26, 1842. By the conditions of this treaty, Hong-Kong was ceded to the British. north pole to California.1 That is certain; and in the Eastern world I only see that you can hardly place a finger on a map of the world, and be an inch from an English settlement. Gentlemen, if there be anything in the supremacy of races, the experiment now in progress will develop it. If there be any truth in the idea that those who issued from the great Caucasian fountain, and spread over Europe, are to react on India and on Asia, and to act on the whole Western world, it may not be for us, nor our children, nor our grandchildren, to see it, but it will be for our descendants of some generation to see the extent of that progress and dominion of the favored races. For myself, I believe there is no limit fit to be assigned to it by the human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restriction on the one hand, and under various degrees of motive and stimulus on the other hand, in these branches of a common race, the great principle of the freedom of human thought and the respectability of individual character. I find everywhere an elevation of the character of man as man, an elevation of the individual as a component part of society. I find everywhere a rebuke of the idea that the many are made for the few, or that government is anything but an agency for mankind. And I care not beneath what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid; I care not of what complexion, white or brown; I care not under what circumstances of climate or cultivation,—if I can find a race of men on an inhabitable spot of earth whose general sentiment it is, and whose general feeling it is, that government is made for man, ‚—man as a religious, moral, and social being,—and not man for government, there I know that I shall find prosperity and happiness. 1 It is well to remember, that, when these words were spoken, California was a province of Mexico, inhabited only by Indians and a few people of Spanish descent. |