The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-05-20


has been denied A silence, brief but intense,
is broken by the often fierce and violent, but
now measured and solemn, utterance of Burke
My counsel has been rejected. You have
determined to trample upon and extinguish a
people who have. in the course OF a single life,
added to England as much as she had acquir-
ed by progressive increase OF improvement,
brought on, by varieties of ciyilizing conquests
and civilizing settlements, in II series OF seven
teen hundred years. A vision has passed
before my eyes; the spirit of prophecy is upon
me. Listen now, to a revelation of the conse-
quences which shall follow your maddened de.
cison Henceforth there shall be division, sep
aration, and eternal conflict in alternating war
and peace between you and the child you have
oppressed, which has inherited all your indom-
table love of liberty and all your Unsuitable
passion for power Though still in the gristle,
and not vet hardened into the bone of man
hood, America will, within the short period Of
sixteen months, cast off your dominion and defy
your utmost persecution. Periecting the insti
buttons you have not yet suffered to ripen, she
will establish republic, the first confederate
representative commonwealth, which shall in
time become the admiration and envy of the
only twenty years ago with the aid Of your
own colonies you despolled OF her North Amer
lean possessiopa, though they had been strength.
ened by the genius OF Richelieu, will take sweet
revenge in aiding the emancipation of those
very colonies and thus Remembering your EN-.
pire. You will strike her in vain with one
hand, while you stretch forth the other to re-
duce your colonies with equal discontinue. And
You. even you, most infatuated yet most loyal
Prince, will within eight years sign treaty OF
peace with the royal Bourbon, and of independ.
ence with republican America! With fraud
corruption, fire and sword, you will compensate
England with conquests in the East, and within
half century they will surround the world
and the British flag shall wave over provinces
covering five millions of square miles, and con-
tanning one-sixth Of the inhabitants of the globe
Nor shall you lose your retaliation upon your
ancient enemy for she, in the mean time, i'm
billing and intoxicated by the spirit of revolu-
ton in her American utilization, shall overthrow
all authority, human and divine, and, exhaust.
ing herself by twenty-five years of carnage and
desolation throughout continental Europe, shall
at last succumb to your victorious arms, and
relapse after Intellectual struggles, into the EN-.
braces of an inglorious military despotism
Yet notwithstanding all these unsurpassed con.
quests and triumpbs, shall you enjoy no certain
or complete dominion. For, on the other hand
wild beasts and savage men and uneouth man.
ners shall all disappear on the American con-
tinent; and the three millions whom you now
despise, gathering to themselves increase from
every European nation and island, will within
seventy-five years, spread themselves over field
and forest prairie and mountain, until, in your
way to your provinces in the Bahamas, they
shall meet you on the shores of the Gulf OF
Mexico, and on your return from the Eastern
Indies they will salute you from the Eastern
coast of the Pacific ocean In the mean time
with genius developed by the influence of free
dom, and with vigor called forth and disciplined
in the subjugatiOn of the forest and trained and
perfected in the mysteries of ship-building and
by the hardy exercise of the whale
fisheries under either pole, they will, in all Eu-
ropean conflicts, with keen sagacity, assume the
relation of neutrals, and thus grasp the prize
of Atlantic commerce dropped into their hands
by fierce belligerents. In the midst of your
studies and experiments in hydraulics, steam
and electricity, they will seize the Impractical
and even incomplete inventions, and cover their
rivers with steamboats,, and connect and bind
together their widely separated Territories with
canals, railroads, and teiegraphs When long
of peace shall have come, your mer-
chants, combining vast capital will regain
and hold for time the carrying trade, by
capacious, buoyant and fleet
packet-ships, departing and arriving with ex-
act punctuality but the Americans, quickly
borrowing the device, and improving on your
skill, will reconquer their commerce. You
will then rouse all the enterprise of your mer-
chants, and all the spirit of your Government,
and wrestling the new and mighty power of
steam from the hands of your inveterate rival
will apply it to ocean navigation, and laying
hold of the commercial and social correspond,
ence between the two continents, increasing as
the nations rise to higher civilization and come
into more close and intimate relations, AZ the
basis Of postal revenue, you will thus restore
your lost monopoly on the Atlantic, and enjoy
it unmolested through u period of ten years
During that season of triumph, you will ma
ture and perfect all the arrangements for ex-
tending this mighty device of power and rcve-
nue., 80 as to connect every island of the seas
and every part Of every continent with your
capital. But just at that moment your emu
lous rival will appear with steamships still
more capacious, buoyant, and fleet than your
own in your harbors, and at once subvertng
your Atlantic monopoly, will give earnest OF
her vigorous renewal Of the endless contest for
supremacy of all the seas. When you think
her expelled from the ocean, her flag will be
seen in your ports, covering her charities con-
trlbuted to relieve your population, stricken by
famine; and while you stand hesitating wheth-
er to declare between republcanism and abso-
lutte power in continental Europe, her ambas-
sailors will be seen waiting on every battlefield
to salute the triumphs of liberty; and when
that cause shall be overthrown, the same con-
slant flag shall be seen even in the Straits OF
the Dardanelles, receiving with ovatons due to
conquerors the temporarily overthrown cham
pions of freedom. Look towards Africa, there
you see American colonies lifting her up from
her long night Of barbarism into the broad
light of liberty and civilization. Look to the
East, you see American missionaries bringing
the people of the Sandwich Islands into the
family OF nations, and American armaments
peacefully seeking yet firmly demanding the
rights OF humanity in Japan. Look to the
Equator, there are American engineers open
ing passages by canals and railroads across the
isthmus which divides the two oceans. And
last Of all, look Northward, and you behold
American sailors penetrating the continent of
ice in search of your own daring and lost nav
igators."
SIR, this stupcndous vision has become real.
All this momcntous prophecy has come to pass.
The man yet lives who has seen both the end
and the beginning of its fulRlment 1t is his
tory. And that history shows that this enter
nj, ,ns,
was wisely and even necessarily undertaken,
to maintain our present commercial independ-
ence, and the contest for the ultimate empire
of the ocean Only word shall express the
importance of these objects International
postal communication and foreign commerce
are as important rs domestic mails and traffic.
Equality with other nations in respect to those
interests is as important as freedom from re-
strction upon them among ourselves. Except
substituted conquest and spoil
at,n lnr .n,,o,ac.a--po tion waa ayar hiuhIxy