needle gun we are anxious to get from Prussia, that we may beat her
next year with it? Had we not better take from America the
principle of liberty she embodies, out of which have come her
citizen pride, her gigantic industry, and her formidable loyalty to
the destinies of her republican land?"

The _Dublin_ (Ireland) _Nation_, already quoted, says:--

"In the east, there is arising a colossal centaur called the
Russian Empire. With a civilized head and front, it has the sinews
of a huge barbaric body. There one man's brain moves 70,000,000.
There all the traditions of the people are of aggression and
conquest in the west. There but two ranks are
distinguishable--serfs and soldiers. There the map of the future
includes Constantinople and Vienna as outposts of St. Petersburg.

"In the west, an opposing and still more wonderful American Empire
is emerging. We islanders have no conception of the extraordinary
events which amid the silence of the earth are daily adding to the
power and pride of this gigantic nation. Within three years,
territories more extensive than these three kingdoms [Great
Britain, Ireland, and Scotland] France and Italy put together,
have been quietly, and in almost 'matter of course' fashion,
annexed to the Union.

"Within seventy years, seventeen new sovereignties, the smallest of
them larger than Great Britain, have peaceably united themselves to
the Federation. No standing army was raised, no national debt sunk,
no great exertion was made, but there they are. And the last mail
brings news of three more great States about to be joined to the
thirty: Minnesota in the north-west, Deseret in the south-west, and
California on the shores of the Pacific. These three States will
cover an area equal to one-half the European continent."

Mitchel, in his School Geography (4th revised edition), p. 101, speaking
of the United States, says:--

"When it is considered that one hundred years ago the inhabitants
numbered but 1,000,000, it presents the most striking instance of
national growth to be found in the history of mankind."

Let us reduce these general statements to the more tangible form of
facts and figures. A short time before the great Reformation in the days
of Martin Luther, not four hundred years ago, this Western Continent was
discovered. The R