United States is the nature
of the territory which the American inhabit. Their ancestors gave them
the love of equality and of freedom, but God himself gave them the means
of remaining equal and free, by placing them upon a boundless continent,
which is open to their exertions. General prosperity is favorable to
the stability of all governments, but more particularly of a democratic
constitution, which depends upon the dispositions of the majority, and
more particularly of that portion of the community which is most exposed
to feel the pressure of want. When the people rules, it must be rendered
happy, or it will overturn the State, and misery is apt to stimulate it
to those excesses to which ambition rouses kings. The physical causes,
independent of the laws, which contribute to promote general prosperity,
are more numerous in America than they have ever been in any other
country in the world, at any other period of history. In the United
States not only is legislation democratic, but nature herself favors the
cause of the people.

In what part of human tradition can be found anything at all similar to
that which is occurring under our eyes in North America? The celebrated
communities of antiquity were all founded in the midst of hostile
nations, which they were obliged to subjugate before they could flourish
in their place. Even the moderns have found, in some parts of South
America, vast regions inhabited by a people of inferior civilization,
but which occupied and cultivated the soil. To found their new states
it was necessary to extirpate or to subdue a numerous population, until
civilization has been made to blush for their success. But North America
was only inhabited by wandering tribes, who took no thought of the
natural riches of the soil, and that vast country was still, properly
speaking, an empty continent, a desert land awaiting its inhabitants.

Everything is extraordinary in America, the social condition of
the inhabitants, as well as the laws; but the soil upon which these
institutions are founded is more extraordinary than all the rest.
When man was first placed upon the earth by the Creator, the earth was
inexhaustible in its youth, but man was weak and ignorant; and when he
had learned to explore the treasures which it contained, hosts of his
fellow creatures covered its surface, and he was obliged to earn an
asylum for repose and for freedom by the sword. At that same period
North America was disco