within its limits, but more frequently extending far beyond it into the waste. It has been calculated that the whites advance every year a mean distance of seventeen miles along the whole of this vast boundary. Obstacles, such as an unproductive district, a lake, or an Indian nation unexpectedly encountered, are sometimes met with. The advancing column then halts for a while; its two extremities fall back upon themselves, and as soon as they are re-united they proceed onwards. This gradual and continuous progress of the European race towards the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a providential event; it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onwards by the hand of God.

"Within this first line of conquering settlers, towns are built, and vast states founded. In 1790 there were only a few thousand pioneers sprinkled along the valleys of the Mississippi; and at the present day these valleys contain as many inhabitants as were to be found in the whole Union in 1790. Their population amounts to nearly four millions. The city of Washington was founded in 1800, in the very centre of the Union; but such are the changes which have taken place, that it now stands at one of the extremities; and the delegates of the most remote Western States are already obliged to perform a journey as long as that from Vienna to Paris.

"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 ensue, 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 enterprise which seem to be the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish that knowledge which guides them on their way.

"Thus, in the midst of the uncertain future, one event at least is sure. At a period which may be said to be near, (for we are speaking of the life of a nation,) the Anglo-Americans will alone cover the immense space contained between the polar regions and the tropics, extending from the coast of the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean; the territory which will probably be occupied by the Anglo-Americans at some future time, may be computed to equal three quarters of Europe in extent. The climate of the Union is upon the whole preferable to that of Europe, and its natural advantages are not less great; it is therefore evident that its population will at some future time be proportionate to our own. Europe, divided as it is between so many different nations, and torn as it has been by incessant wars and the barbarous manners of the Middle Ages, has notwithstanding attained a population of 410

inhabitants to the square league.
can prevent the United States from having as
numerous a population in time?"

Mre league. What cause

તા 10

"The time will therefore, come w

come when one hundred and fifty millions of men will be living in North America, equal in condition, the progeny of one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and preserving the same civilization, the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the same opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is uncertain, but this is certain; and it is a fact new to the world, a fact fraught with such portentous consequences as to baffle the efforts even of the imagination."

It is not without reason, therefore, that we set out in this speculation, with the observation, that great and durable effects on human affairs are destined by Providence for the British race. And it is too obvious to admit of dispute, that the democratic principle amongst us is the great moving power which thus impels multitudes of civilized beings into the wilderness of nature. Nothing but that principle could effect such a change. Civilized man rarely emigrates; under a despotic government never. What colonies has China sent forth to people the wastes of Asia? Are the Hindoos to be found spread over the vast archipelago of the Indian Ocean? Republican Rome colonized the world; Republican Greece spread the light of civilization along the shores of the Mediterranean; but Imperial Rome could never maintain the numbers of its own provinces, and the Grecian empire slumbered on with a declining population for eleven hundred years. Is Italy, with its old civilized millions, or France, with its ardent and redundant peasantry, the storehouse of nations from whence the European race is to be diffused over the world? The colonies of Spain, torn by internal factions, and a prey to furious passions, are in the most miserable state, and constantly declining in numbers!* The tendency of nations in a high state of civilization ever is to remain at home; to become wedded to the luxuries and enjoyments, the habits and refinements of an artificial state of existence, and regard all other people as rude and barbarous, unfit for the society, unequal to the reception of civilized existence, to slumber on for ages with a population, poor, redundant, and declining. Such has for ages been the condition of the Chinese and the Hindoos, the Turks and the Persians, the Spaniards and the Italians; and hence no great settlements of mankind have proceeded from their loins.

What, then, is the centrifugal force which counteracts this inert tendency, and impels man from the heart of wealth, from the bosom of refinement, from the luxuries of civilization, to the forests and the wilderness? What sends him forth into the desert, impelled by the energy of the savage character, but yet with all the powers and acquisitions of civilization at his command; with the axe in his hand, but the Bible in his pocket, and the rifle by his side? It is democracy which effects this prodigy; it is that insatiable passion which

*Tocqueville, ii, 439.

overcomes alike the habits and affections of society, and sends forth the civilized pilgrim far from his kindred, far from his home, far from the bones of his fathers, to seek amidst Transatlantic wilds that freedom and independence which his native country can no longer afford. It is in the restless activity which it engenders, the feverish desire of elevation which it awakens in all classes, the longing after a state of existence unattainable in long established states which it produces, that the centrifugal force of civilized man is to be found. Above an hundred thousand emigrants from Great Britain, in the year 1833, settled in the British colonies; nearly two hundred thousand annually pass over to the whole of North America from the British isles; and amidst the strife of parties, the collision of interest, the ardent hopes and chimerical anticipations incident to these days of transition, the English race is profusely and indelibly transplanted into the boundless wastes prepared for its reception in the New World.

While the naval strength and colonial dominions of England have steadily and unceasingly advanced in Western Europe, and its influence is in consequence spread over all the maritime regions of the globe, another, and an equally irresistible power, has risen up in the eastern hemisphere. If all the contests of centuries have turned to the advantage of the English navy, all the continental strifes have as unceasingly augmented the strength of RusSIA. From the time of the Czar Peter, when it first emerged from obscurity to take a leading part in continental affairs, to the present moment, its progress has been unbroken. Alone, of all other states, during that long period it has experienced no reverses, but constantly advanced in power, territory, and resources; for even the peace of Tilsit, which followed the disasters of Austerlitz and Friedland, was attended with an accession of territory. During that period it has successively swallowed up Courland and Livonia, Poland, Finland, the Crimea, the Ukraine, Wallachia, and Moldavia. Its southern frontier is now washed by the Danube; its eastern is within fifty leagues of Berlin and Vienna; its advanced ports in the Baltic are almost within sight of Stockholm; its south-eastern boundary, stretching far over the Caucasus, sweeps down to Erivan and the foot of Mount Arrarat-Persia and Turkey are irrevocably subjected to its influence; a solemn treaty has given it the command of the Dardanelles; a subsidiary Muscovite force has visited Scutari, and rescued the Osmanlis from destruction; and the Sultan Mahmoud retains Constantinople only as the viceroy of the northern autocrat.

As the democratic passion, however, is thus evidently the great moving power which is transferring the civilized European race to the remote corners of the earth, and the British navy, the vast vehicle raised up to supreme dominion, for its conveyance; so it is of the utmost importance to observe, that if undue power is given to this impelling force, the machine which is performing these prodigies may be destroyed, and the central force, instead of operating with a steady and salutary pressure upon mankind, suddenly burst its barriers, and for ever cease to affect their fortunes. A spring acts upon a machine only as long as it is loaded or restrained; remove the pressure, and its strength ceases to exist. This powerful and astonishing agency of the Anglo-Saxon race upon the fortunes of mankind, would be totally destroyed by the triumph of democracy in the British islands. Multitudes, indeed, during the convulsions consequent on so calamitous an event, would fly for refuge to the American shores, but in the grinding and irreversible despotism which would necessarily and speedily follow its occurrence, the vital energy would become extinct, which is now impelling the British race into every corner of the habitable earth. The stillness of despotism would succeed the agitation of passion; the inertness of aged civilization at once fall upon the bounded state. From the moment that British freedom is extinguished by the overthrow of aristocratic influence, and the erection of the Commons into despotic power, the sacred fire which now animates the vast fabric of its dominion will become extinct, and England will cease to direct the destinies of half the globe. The Conservative party in this country, therefore, are not merely charged with the preservation of its own freedom-they are intrusted with the destinies of mankind, and on the success of their exertions it depends whether the democratic spirit in these islands is to be pre-hostility with each other; and it was generally served, as heretofore, in that subdued form which has directed its energy to the civilization of mankind, or to burst forth in those wild excesses which turn only to its own ruin, and the desolation of the world.

The politicians of the day assert that Russia will fall to pieces, and its power cease to be formidable to Western Europe or Central Asia. They never were more completely mistaken. Did Macedonia fall to pieces before it had subdued the Grecian commonwealths; or Persia before it had conquered the Assyrian monarchy; or the Goths and Vandals before they had subverted the Roman empire? It is the general pressure of the north upon the south, not the force of any single state, which is the weight that is to be apprehended; that pressure will not be lessened, but on the contrary greatly increased, if the vast Scythian tribes should separate into different empires. Though one Moscovite throne were to be established at St. Petersburg, a second at Moscow, and a third at Constantinople, the general pressure of the Russian race, upon the southern states of Europe and Asia, would not be one whit diminished. Still the delight of a warmer climate, the riches of long established civilization, the fruits and wines of the south, the women of Italy or Circassia, would attract the brood of winter to the regions of the sun. The various tribes of ths German race, the Gothic and Vandal swarms, the Huns and the Ostrogoths, were engaged in fierce and constant

defeat and pressure from behind which impelled them upon their southern neighbours; but that did not prevent them from bursting the barriers of the Danube and the Rhine, and overwhelming the civilization, and wealth, and

discipline of the Roman empire. Such internal divisions only magnify the strength of the northern race by training them to the use of arms, and augmenting their military skill by constant exercise against each other; just as the long continued internal wars of the European nations have established an irresistible superiority of their forces over those of the other quarters of the globe. In the end, the weight of the north thus matured, drawn forth and disciplined, will ever be turned to the fields of southern conquest.

The American struggles against the natural obstacles which oppose him; the adversaries of the Russian are men: the former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its weapons and its arts; the conquests of the one are therefore gained by the plough-share; those of the other by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm; the principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."

The moving power with these vast bodies of men is the lust of conquest, and a passion for southern enjoyment. Democracy is unheeded or unknown amongst them; if imported from foreign lands it languishes and expires amidst the rigours of the climate. The energy and aspirations of men are concen- There is something solemn and evidently trated on conquest; a passion more natural, providential in this ceaseless advance of the more durable, more universal than the demo-lords of the earth and the sea, into the deserted cratic vigour of advanced civilization. It regions of the earth. The hand of Almighty speaks a language intelligible to the rudest of power is distinctly visible, not only in the unmen; and rouses the passions of universal broken advance of both on their respective vehemence. Great changes may take place elements, but in the evident adaptation of the in human affairs; but the time will never passions, habits, and government of each to come when northern valour will not press on the ends for which they were severally dessouthern wealth; or refined corruption not tined in the designs of nature. Would Rusrequire the renovating influence of indigent sian conquest have ever peopled the dark and regeneration. untrodden forests of North America, or the deserted Savannahs of Australasia? Would the passions and the desires of the north have ever led them into the abode of the beaver and the buffalo? Never; for aught that their passions could have done these regions must have remained in primeval solitude and silence to the end of time. Could English democracy ever have penetrated the half-peopled, halfdesert regions of Asia, and Christian civilization, spreading in peaceful activity, have supplanted the Crescent in the original seats of the human race? Never; the isolated colonist, with his axe and his Bible, would have been swept away by the Mameluke or the Spahi, and civilization, in its peaceful guise, would have perished under the squadrons of the Crescent. For aught that democracy could have done for Central Asia it must have remained the abode of anarchy and misrule to the end of human existence. But peaceful Christianity, urged on by democratic passions, pierced the primeval solitude of the American forests; and warlike Christianity, stimulated by northern conquest, was fitted to subdue Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The Bible and the printing press converted the wilderness of North America into the abode of Christian millions; the Moscovite battalions, marching under the standard of the Cross, subjugated the already peopled regions of the Mussulman faith. Not without reason then did the British navy and the Russian army emerge triumphant from the desperate strife of the French Revolution; for on the victory of each depended the destinies of half the globe.

This then is the other great moving power which in these days of transition is changing the destinies of mankind. Rapid as is the growth of the British race in America, it is not more rapid than that of the Russian in Europe and Asia. Fifty millions of men now furnish recruits to the Moscovite standards; but their race doubles in every half century; and before the year 1900, one hundred millions of men will be ready to pour from the frozen plains of Scythia on the plains of Central Asia and southern Europe. Occasional events may check or for a while turn aside the wave; but its ultimate progress in these directions is certain and irresistible. Before two centuries are over, Mohammedanism will be banished from Turkey, Asia Minor, and Persia, and a hundred millions of Christians will be settled in the regions now desolated by the standards of the Prophet. Their advance is as swift, as unceasing as that of the British race to the rocky belt of western America.

"There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed: and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place amongst the nations; and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

"All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and only to be charged with the maintenance of their power; but these are still in the act of growth, all the others are stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these are proceeding with ease and with celerity along a path to which the human eye can assign no term.

Democratic institutions will not and cannot exist permanently in North America. The frightful anarchy which has prevailed in the southern states, since the great interests dependent on slave emancipation were brought into jeopardy-the irresistible sway of the

GUIZOT.*

rous caustic and profound observations on human nature, and the increasing vices and selfishness of a corrupted age; but like the maxims of Rochefoucault, it is to individual, not general, humanity that they refer; and they strike us as so admirably just, because they do not describe general causes operating upon society as a body-which often make little impression, save on a few reflecting minds-but strike direct to the human heart, in a way which comes home to the breast of every individual who reads them.

MACHIAVEL was the first historian who seems | the writings of Tacitus are to be found numeto have formed a conception of the philosophy of history. Before his time, the narrative of human events was little more than a series of biographies, imperfectly connected together by a few slight sketches of the empires on which the actions of their heroes were exerted. In this style of history, the ancient writers were, and to the end of time probably will continue to be, altogether inimitable. Their skill in narrating a story, in developing the events of a life, in tracing the fortunes of a city or a state, as they were raised by a succession of illustrious patriots, or sunk by a series of oppressive tyrants, has never been approached in modern times. The histories of Xenophon and Thucydides, of Livy and Sallust, of Cæsar and Tacitus, are all more or less formed on this model; and the more extended view of history, as embracing an account of the countries the transactions of which were narrated, originally formed, and to a great part executed by the father of history, Herodotus, appears to have been, in an unaccountable manner, lost by his

successors.

In these immortal works, however, human transactions are uniformly regarded as they have been affected by, or called forth the agency of, individual men. We are never presented with the view of society in a mass; as influenced by a series of causes and effects independent of the agency of individual manor, to speak more correctly, in the development of which the agency is an unconscious, and often almost a passive, instrument. Constantly regarding history as an extensive species of biography, they not only did not withdraw the eye to the distance necessary to obtain such a general view of the progress of things, but they did the reverse. Their great object was to bring the eye so close as to see the whole virtues or vices of the principal figures which they exhibited on their moving panorama; and in so doing, they rendered it incapable of perceiving, at the same time, the movement of the whole social body of which they formed a part. Even Livy, in his pictured narrative of Roman victories, is essentially biographical. His inimitable work owes its enduring celebrity to the charming episodes of individuals, or graphic pictures of particular events, with which it abounds; scarce any general views on the progress of society, or the causes to which its astonishing progress in the Roman state was owing, are to be found. In the introduction to the life of Catiline, Sallust has given, with unequalled power, a sketch of the causes which corrupted the republic; and if his work had been pursued in the same style, it would indeed have been a philosophical history. But neither the Catiline nor the Jugurthine war are histories; they are chapters of history, containing two interesting biographies. Scattered through

* Blackwood's Magazine, Dec. 1844.

Never was a juster observation than that the human mind is never quiescent; it may not give the external symptoms of action, but it does not cease to have the internal movement: it sleeps, but even then it dreams. Writers innumerable have declaimed on the night of the Middle Ages-on the deluge of barbarism which, under the Goths, flooded the world-on the torpor of the human intellect, under the combined pressure of savage violence and priestly superstition; yet this was precisely the period when the minds of men, deprived of external vent, turned inwards on themselves; and that the learned and thoughtful, shut out from any active part in society by the general prevalence of military violence, sought, in the solitude of the cloister, employment in reflecting on the mind itself, and the general causes which, under its guidance, operated upon society. The influence of this great change in the direction of thought, at once appeared when knowledge, liberated from the monastery and the university, again took its place among the affairs of men. Machiavel in Italy, and Bacon in England, for the first time in the annals of knowledge, reasoned upon human affairs as a science. They spoke of the minds of men as permanently governed by certain causes, and of known principles always leading to the same results; they treated of politics as a science in which certain known laws existed, and could be discovered, as in mechanics and hydraulics. This was a great step in advance, and demonstrated that the superior age of the world, and the wider sphere to which political observation had now been applied, had permitted the accumulation of such an increased store of facts, as permitted deductions, founded on experience, to be formed in regard to the affairs of nations. Still more, it showed that the attention of writers had been drawn to the general causes of human progress; that they reasoned on the actions of men as a subject of abstract thought; regarded effects formerly produced as likely to recur from a similar combination of circumstances; and formed conclusions for the regulation of future conduct, from the results of past experience. This tendency is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in the Discorsi of Machiavel, where certain general propositions are stated, deduced, indeed, from the events of Roman story,