bitious spirit. Their result is a
handsome parade-place,--a pretty stone toy,--an unpickable lock to an
inclosure nobody wants to enter,--a navy-yard for the creation of an
armament which has no commerce to protect. No wonder that the
discontented despot seeks to eke out the quality of his ports by their
plenteous quantity,--seizing Algiers,--looking wistfully at the Red
Sea,--overjoyed at any bargain which would get him Nice,--striking madly
out for empire in Cochin China, Siam, and the Pacific islands,--playing
Shylock to Mexico on Jecker's forged bond, that his own inconvenient
vessels might have an American port to trim their yards in. Meanwhile,
to forget the utter unfitness of Paris for the capital of any imaginary
Commercial France, he plays ship with Eugenie on the gentle Seine, or
amuses himself with the marine romance of the Parisian civic escutcheon.

No one will think for an instant of comparing Paris with New York in
respect to natural advantages. The capitals of the other Continental
nations are still less susceptible of being brought into the
competition. The vast cities of China are possible only in the lowest
condition of individual liberty,--class servitude, sumptuary and travel
restrictions, together with all the other complicated enginery of an
artificial barbarism, being the only substitute for natural cohesion in
a community whose immense mass can procure nothing but the rudest
necessaries of life from the area within which it is confined.

_A priori_, therefore, we might expect that the metropolis of America
would arise on New York Island, and in process of time become one of the
greatest capitals of the world.

The natural advantages which allured New York's first population have
been steadily developed and reinforced by artificial ones. For the ships
of the world she has built about her water-front more than three hundred
piers and bulkheads. Allowing berth-room for four ships in each
bulkhead, and for one at the end of each pier, (decidedly an
under-estimate, considering the extent of some of these
structures,)--the island water-front already offers accommodation for
the simultaneous landing of eight hundred first-class foreign cargoes.
The docks of Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken may accommodate at least
as many more. Something like a quarter of all New York imports go in the
first instance to the bonded warehouse; and this part, not being wanted
for immediate consumption within the metro