surrection, came from the
figures of the Census Reports. It is calculated that the United States,
if the rate of growth which obtained between 1850 and 1860 is continued,
will have, forty years hence, a hundred millions of inhabitants, and
four hundred and twenty thousand millions of dollars of taxable
wealth,--over three times the present population, and over ten times the
present wealth, of the richest of European nations. It is probable that
this concrete fact exerts more influence on the long-headed statesmen of
Europe than any abstract dislike of democracy. The only union which they
could bring against such a power would be a league, a confederacy, a
continuous and subsisting treaty, between sovereign powers. Is it
surprising that they should wish our union to be of the same character?
Is it surprising that the contemplation of a government, whether
despotic or democratic, which could act directly on a hundred millions
of people, with the supreme right of taxing property to the amount of
four hundred and twenty billions of dollars, should fill them with
dismay?

The inherent weakness of a league, even when its general object is such
as to influence the passions of the nations which compose it, is well
known to all European statesmen. The various alliances against France
show the insuperable difficulties in the way of giving to confederacies
of sovereign states a unity and efficiency corresponding to their
aggregate strength, and the necessity which the leaders of such
alliances are always under of expending half their skill and energy in
preventing the loosely compacted league from falling to pieces. The
alliance under the lead of William III. barely sustained itself against
Louis XIV., though William was the ablest statesman in Europe, and had
been trained in the tactics of confederacies from his cradle. The
alliance under the lead of Marlborough owed its measure of success to
his infinite address and miraculous patience as much as to his
consummate military genius; and the ignominious "secession" of England,
in the treaty of Utrecht, ended in making it one of the most conspicuous
examples of the weakness of such combinations. When the exceptional
military genius, as in the case of Frederick and Napoleon, has been on
the side of the single power assailed, the results have been all the
more remarkable. The coalition against Frederick, the ruler of five
millions of people, was composed of sovereigns who ruled a hund