an unwilling consent to the increase of a maritime power by which
they are only indirectly benefited. If, on the contrary, the commercial
States of the Union formed one independent nation, commerce would become
the foremost of their national interests; they would consequently be
willing to make very great sacrifices to protect their shipping, and
nothing would prevent them from pursuing their designs upon this point.

Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent
features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When
I contemplate the ardor with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute
commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the
success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they
will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born
to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.

Conclusion

I have now nearly reached the close of my inquiry; hitherto, in speaking
of the future destiny of the United States, I have endeavored to divide
my subject into distinct portions, in order to study each of them with
more attention. My present object is to embrace the whole from one
single point; the remarks I shall make will be less detailed, but they
will be more sure. I shall perceive each object less distinctly, but I
shall descry the principal facts with more certainty. A traveller who
has just left the walls of an immense city, climbs the neighboring hill;
as he goes father off he loses sight of the men whom he has so recently
quitted; their dwellings are confused in a dense mass; he can no longer
distinguish the public squares, and he can scarcely trace out the
great thoroughfares; but his eye has less difficulty in following the
boundaries of the city, and for the first time he sees the shape of
the vast whole. Such is the future destiny of the British race in North
America to my eye; the details of the stupendous picture are overhung
with shade, but I conceive a clear idea of the entire subject.

The territory now occupied or possessed by the United States of America
forms about one-twentieth part of the habitable earth. But extensive as
these confines are, it must not be supposed that the Anglo-American race
will always remain within them; indeed, it has already far overstepped
them.

There was once a time at which we also might have created a great French
nation in the American wilds, to counterbalance the influence of the