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nent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.
CONCLUSION.
I have now nearly reached the close of my inquiry: hitherto, in
speaking of the future destiny of the United States, I have endeavoured
to divide my subject into distinct portions, in order to study
each of them with more attention. My present object is to embrace
the whole from one single point; the remarks I shall make will be
less detailed, but they will be more sure. I shall perceive each
object less distinctly, but I shall descry the principal facts with
more certainty. A traveller, who has just left the walls of an
immense city, climbs the neighbouring hill; as he goes farther off
he loses sight of the men whom he has so recently quitted; their
dwellings are confused in a dense mass; he can no longer distinguish
the public squares, and he can scarcely trace out the great
thoroughfares; but his eye has less difficulty in following the
boundaries of the city, and for the first time he sees the shape of
the vast whole. Such is the future destiny of the British race in
North America to my eye; the details of the stupendous picture
are overhung with shade, but I conceive a clear idea of the entire
subject.
The territory now occupied or possessed by the United States of America forms about one-twentieth part of the habitable earth. But extensive as these confines are, it must not be supposed that the Anglo-American race will always remain within them; indeed, it has already far overstepped them.
There was once a time at which we also might have created a great French nation in the American wilds, to counterbalance the
