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WHY AMERICA WAS PEOPLED.

despotism are numbered. Hierarchy, rank, class legislation, unequal taxation, unjust laws, with centuries of time and thousands of precedents to sanctify the system, such are the obstacles to Democracy in Europe now. When it is born in the throes of a wide-spread revolution, as in 1848, it dies in its cradle, it is stifled. All Europe knows this. This accounts for the great fact of the peopling of this continent. The masses of Europe feel this in every pulsation. They pluck up the ancestral tree and bring it to grow in a more congenial soil. When they leave the homes of their fathers, they have tears to shed, which are nearly unknown to us nomadic Americans. We are always on the wing. Europeans cling to the hearthstone closely until they leave it for ever. The millions of men and women now in this land, who were born in Europe, bespeak the confidence which the great body of the people of the Old World feel in our political system, and show how little hope they had in the establishment or resurrection of liberty in those countries where their fathers were buried. A few gifted minds in Europe foresaw this actual state of things at the period of our War of Independence. Of such was Edmund Burke, whose words to the Prime Minister when he was attempting to force the Stamp Act through Parliament are known to every reader. Nor can we ever forget, in this connection, the prophetic lines of Bishop Berkley, fifty years before 1776, where, in speaking of the Anglo-Saxon race here, he says: "Westward the star of empire takes its way."

BUT

VI.

UT to be more specific in our illustrations. The New World was discovered by Italian navigators in the employment of Spain, Portugal and England; and it was taken possession of in the name of Rome. Neither Spain nor Portugal owns to-day a rood of ground on the continent of America. There is but one kingdom on this continent-Brazil; and that is entirely independent of the mother-country. Spain has lost

HOW EUROPE LOST THE NEW WORLD.

555

all her vast possessions on this side of the Atlantic, except Cuba; and this island she has held through no strength of her own, but solely through the jealousies of other European States, none of whom would allow it to change hands; or through the forbearance of this Republic.

In trying to hold these American colonies, Spain and Portugal attempted an impossibility; and for the simple reason that they tried to force upon them the political system of the old monarchies of Europe. That system would not do here; it was not suited to the New World; it would have been easier to reconcile them to the temporal reign of the Pope over them. They were good Catholics enough, and bigoted, withal, as they are to this day. But they protested as vehemently against the monarchical pretensions of the Prince of Rome as ever Protestants did themselves. Monarchy would not do in America, even when imposed by the Vicar of God. The only apparent exception to this rule is Brazil. But her people voluntarily chose an imperial form of government, and with it the sovereign of their own choice.

Thus, the mighty empires of Spain and Portugal in the New World have thrown off the political system of Europe, and with it went all the ligaments of race, all the prejudices of a bigoted faith, all the allurements of rank, all the associations of home, and all the souvenirs of their history.

France comes in here. Once, as we have shown in another place, she held much the larger portion of the continent which is now held by us. Her sway was undisputed from the mouth of the Mississippi to the roots of the Rocky Mountains, and from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to the cliffs of Lake Superior.

But when her strifes with England at home were transferred to America, she lost her New World possessions. To found colonies, and foster them through growth into independence, is the prerogative of England. France never founded successful colonies. She is a brilliant, heroic and scientific nation; but she has few adventures to recount in foreign lands. Of such

556

HOW ENGLAND LOST THIRTEEN COLONIES.

adventures England's history is chiefly made up. Although far ahead in civilization of her great rival in the times of the Crusades, she achieved far less in Palestine with her Godfreys de Bouillon, than England did with her Cours de Lion.

In attempting to hold her colonies in America, she found herself unequal to the terrible struggle with England; and thus, with the surrender of Montreal, in 1760, the French Empire on this continent passed away.

VII.

NEXT came England herself. Her statesmen who were

in power from the beginning of the Revolution, made a series of fatal mistakes in their American policy. Worse blunders than they were guilty of are not recorded in the whole history of politics. That England lost her Thirteen Colonies through sheer blunder is now too plain to require illustration or to admit of argument. She made a broad distinction between the natural and political rights of Englishmen abroad, and Englishmen at home. In claiming the imperial right to tax the colonies while they had no representation in Parliament, she laid down a principle utterly repugnant to the whole history of English liberty, and utterly subversive of the British Constitution. This was the rock on which her statesmen split her empire. Burke, Fox, Chatham and Barré gave timely warning of the result; but it was unheeded until the bolt had fallen.

Here we can advantageously pause a moment, to trace out the early workings of that great principle which lies at the bottom of the whole political system of the American world, and to vindicate which our late domestic war was waged. Every citizen of a republic should comprehend his own government; the causes which gave it birth, the spirit of its constitution, and the spirit of its founders. Without this clear comprehension of causes and results, he can never be prepared to serve the State with ability, nor even to go intelligently to

HOW TO DEDUCE LAWS OF EMPIRE.

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the ballot-box. In this respect the present generation are far behind their fathers. Those men studied government as a science; we study party politics to win. The difference is infinite.

Why, then, did England lose the United States, and why must she lose every one of her colonies in the New World? The Thirteen Colonies were forced into independence. They had no alternative but to be absolutely free, or absolutely enslaved. The idea of a Declaration of Independence dawned slowly on the American mind; and it was with the deepest reluctance that they at last took arms against the throne of England, by whose immovable base they were so fastly moored. The proofs of the loyalty of the colonists are scattered thick all through their history. There was not an American home in which the brilliant records of England's achievements were not read with pride.

Yes, all this feeling in America was in favor of the supremacy of England here. But there was a stronger feeling still in the hearts of the colonists. It was an instinctive love of liberty; and although not a man in America could forecast the result, yet the great body of the American people were impelled by a political law, then not understood even by themselves,—a law which has shaped and is shaping every institution on this side of the ocean.

IT

VIII.

T is as necessary to have the history of nations before us when we try to deduce the laws of empire, as it is to have the phenomena of the natural world for determining the laws of nature. In this glance we are making at the empires that have come and gone over this continent, we can infallibly arrive at as clear an understanding of the laws of government by which events are decided in our Western hemisphere.

France first lost her American possessions altogether, and

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FRANCE, SPAIN, ENGLAND.

then England lost all her colonies here worth the struggle of keeping. Those that were left have never paid the trouble or cost of governing. They have been too poor to govern themselves; for self-government is, after all, an expensive affair. Free states almost invariably tax themselves more than despots venture to impose. In proof we adduce our present gigantic system of voluntary taxation for popular education-our voluntarily sustained clergy, who, taken as a body, are the best-paid priesthood in Christendom,-last of all, the tremendous selfimposed exactions for raising the Internal Revenue.

France held on to Louisiana for a long period after the fall of her empire at the north. But, at the first suggestion of Jefferson for the purchase, Napoleon asked, "What will they give for it?" "It is a vast territory, and it should be worth more than fifteen millions to the United States." "That is not the question. Fifteen millions is far more than it is worth to us. If we keep it a little longer, we shall get nothing for it. Take the money." This purchase of Louisiana blotted out French power from North America.

It was soon after this event that the period of revolution came for the old colonies of Spain and Portugal. Hardly had Napoleon been driven from the scenes of his great achievements, when the tocsin of independence sounded from one end of the Spanish New World to the other. Nor can we omit an allusion to a coincidence which we have never seen noticed. It was during the last days of Napoleon, and even while that terrific storm of May 4, 1821, was sweeping over St. Helena, tearing up most of the trees about Longwood, and shaking the humble dwelling where the hero of Austerlitz lay, that the last Spanish colony on this continent wrenched itself away forever from the greedy and remorseless grasp of the throne of Aragon and Castile. Her sale of Florida to our republic blotted her power from the continent.