r the colonial
system as it does at the present day; that is to say, it doubled in
about twenty-two years. But this proportion which is now applied to
millions, was then applied to thousands of inhabitants; and the same
fact which was scarcely noticeable a century ago, is now evident to
every observer.

The British subjects in Canada, who are dependent on a king, augment and
spread almost as rapidly as the British settlers of the United States,
who live under a republican government. During the war of independence,
which lasted eight years, the population continued to increase without
intermission in the same ratio. Although powerful Indian nations allied
with the English existed at that time upon the western frontiers, the
emigration westward was never checked. Whilst the enemy laid waste the
shores of the Atlantic, Kentucky, the western parts of Pennsylvania, and
the States of Vermont and of Maine were filling with inhabitants. Nor
did the unsettled state of the Constitution, which succeeded the war,
prevent the increase of the population, or stop its progress across the
wilds. Thus, the difference of laws, the various conditions of peace and
war, of order and of anarchy, have exercised no perceptible influence
upon the gradual development of the Anglo-Americans. This may be readily
understood; for the fact is, that no causes are sufficiently general
to exercise a simultaneous influence over the whole of so extensive a
territory. One portion of the country always offers a sure retreat from
the calamities which afflict another part; and however great may be the
evil, the remedy which is at hand is greater still.

It must not, then, be imagined that the impulse of the British race in
the New World can be arrested. The dismemberment of the Union, and
the hostilities which might ensure, the abolition of republican
institutions, and the tyrannical government which might succeed it,
may retard this impulse, but they cannot prevent it from ultimately
fulfilling the destinies to which that race is reserved. No power upon
earth can close upon the emigrants that fertile wilderness which offers
resources to all industry, and a refuge from all want. Future events,
of whatever nature they may be, will not deprive the Americans of their
climate or of their inland seas, of their great rivers or of their
exuberant soil. Nor will bad laws, revolutions, and anarchy be able to
obliterate that love of prosperity and that spirit of enter