The Washington union. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1857-1859, 1858-09-29
THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN RACE FOR EMPIRE
ON THIS CONTINENT

J'has tag been subject of remark that while
saf owe domain on this continent has filed up with
inAFyshoea spidity, and new and great States have
gre@nialo being in few years under constitu-
toG willie centuries had been requisite for the pur
pose other parts of the world, and even in this
.hen our country was yet in colonial dependence
upon Great Britain--the immense British domain
north Of US upon the continent, though enjoy
ing all the advantages and facilities for rapid deve
opment which belonged to u.s. except political
institutions have remained for the most part until
now, wild, uninhabited desert.
Great as the difference of institutions may be I'M
der which the two contiguous parts of the Continent
have remained, and undoubtedly superior as ours
are to those Of British America in the impulse they
give to individual enterprise and adventure and
to political and social development; yet it would be
rash and empirical to conclude that tho existing dis
parity between the two regions is altogether due to
the different political institutions under which they
have remained. We have no doubt that it is per-
fectIy just to ascribe the low social and industrial
condition Of countries south of to the feebleness
and decay of their political institutions; but we are
not sure would be legitimate to attribute the back
wardness in development of the British domnions
on our north, exclusively in chief part, to infu
ences like these. II is not to be denied that the
Canadas are less prosperous and vigorous than the
States but we think it probable that the fact is
chiefly due to the seyerer climate and the more I'M
propitious seasons that there prevail and might
add somewhat also to the French extraction of the
people for we think it cannot be successfully denied
that the French is better adapted to conditions
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pied countries like France, than to the hardships,
privations and vcissitudes of colonial life. The his
tory of colonization in tho New World has abund-
anty proved that the Spanish race is immensely in
ferior to the AngloSaxon in capacity for planting
new and fourishing empires. The history of North
America has just decidedly proved that the
French race very far inferior to the AngloSaxon
in this particular for whereas France held do
minion in grand semicircle of country embracing
Canada, the country of the great lakes the entire
Mississippi valley and Texas, it now does not own
q foot of land upon the entire continent
The fact is thus established that the ultimate do
mnion of all North America and the West Indies
must soon belong to the Anglo-Saxon The
only problem remaining to be solved for each dis
trct is whether it shall belong to that portion of
the race which still swears by the crown of Great
Britain or to that which is engaged in extending the
free institutions of the American Union. Reasoning
from the past history of the this continent
history which shows long career Of feebleness,
poverty, and tedious and doubtful development
while under the colonial dominion, and of sudden
and stupendous outgrowth and expansion soon after
the yoke was thrown OLA history which presents
the almost stationary Canadas and the wild wastes
of British America the fruits of class of inst
buttons and the thrtytwo States of this Union with
their hourishing agriculture, universal commerce,
incalcuable wealth, their vast railroad systems, their
military power, their physical resources of every
name their mighty intellectual energy and activity
as the fruits of the other we say, reasoning from
the past history Of the AngloSaxcns on this cont
nent it would be very natural to conclude that the
great acquisitions of empire yet to be made upon it
would surely be by that branch of the race which
under federal constitution has already succeeded
in establishing thirty three States, two of which are
planted upon the Pacific ocean. ..rs.
We must not forget, however, the circumstances
which have controlled and retarded the develop
ment Of British empire on this continent Among
the most influential of these has been the territorial
AnohoPoJ nus poch onJoy W Two
by the great Hudson's Bay Company in all the Brit
ish domnions without the limits of the Canadas-a
monopoly which enabled that company, as it were,
to placard four hundred thousand square miles of
territory embracing of the finest lands in North
America, British landed proprietor would do bis
game preserves in England, mo thoroughfare here"
mo admission on any kind of business" Mon
strous as it seems to us that few men should |
have been allowed for two centuries, for the
mere preservation, for their own use, of the furs |
and skins Of wild beasts running wild upon it, an
exclusive, arbitrary, and absolute right of user, to
this large and valuable portion of the earth's sur
face while millions Of their counymen were stinted
for bread and frantic for the want of employment; |
yet the fact has been Of two hundred years dura |
ton Nothing could more strkingly exhibit the diff
ference which exists in the spirit of the institutions
of England and the United States than the temper in
which the two peoples would respectively look upon
such monopoly. @05
The territorial monopoly Of the great Hudson's
Bay Company has at last however, fallen; and acts
have passed the British Parliament establishing CO.
lonial governments in the hitherto closed domains Of
British America. The fall of the great land monop-
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