en should she always remain uncivilized? It is clear that
the question is simply one of time; at some future period, which may be
more or less remote, the inhabitants of South America will constitute
flourishing and enlightened nations.

But when the Spaniards and Portuguese of South America begin to feel
the wants common to all civilized nations, they will still be unable
to satisfy those wants for themselves; as the youngest children of
civilization, they must perforce admit the superiority of their elder
brethren. They will be agriculturists long before they succeed in
manufactures or commerce, and they will require the mediation of
strangers to exchange their produce beyond seas for those articles for
which a demand will begin to be felt.

It is unquestionable that the Americans of the North will one day supply
the wants of the Americans of the South. Nature has placed them in
contiguity, and has furnished the former with every means of knowing and
appreciating those demands, of establishing a permanent connection with
those States, and of gradually filling their markets. The merchants of
the United States could only forfeit these natural advantages if he were
very inferior to the merchant of Europe; to whom he is, on the contrary,
superior in several respects. The Americans of the United States already
exercise a very considerable moral influence upon all the peoples of
the New World. They are the source of intelligence, and all the nations
which inhabit the same continent are already accustomed to consider them
as the most enlightened, the most powerful, and the most wealthy members
of the great American family. All eyes are therefore turned towards
the Union; and the States of which that body is composed are the models
which the other communities try to imitate to the best of their power;
it is from the United States that they borrow their political principles
and their laws.

The Americans of the United States stand in precisely the same position
with regard to the peoples of South America as their fathers, the
English, occupy with regard to the Italians, the Spaniards, the
Portuguese, and all those nations of Europe which receive their articles
of daily consumption from England, because they are less advanced in
civilization and trade. England is at this time the natural emporium of
almost all the nations which are within its reach; the American Union
will perform the same part in the other hemisphere; and ev