OUR NEW POSSESSIONS. 47$ form of colonial policy. But the entire recent history of Eng- land and of the United States shows that a wise and free colonial* administration, as regards the people who are governed, is one of the most admirable contrivances for the improvement of the human race and their advancement in happiness and self-govern- ment, that has ever been vouchsafed to men. On this head let me say one or two things more. We are going to have many perils and to commit many blunders in our new career; and yet we shall have some great gains. Not the least of the benefits will be found in the reflex effect of colonial administration upon the home government, and its people and public men. These new duties will tend to enlarge men's ideas of government and the ends of government. Our own experi- ments in the territories have been comparatively simple; so that already, in discussing our larger problems, we are finding good from having them forced upon us. The follies of the silver agita- tion and of much of our policy as to revenue, navigation, and trade; and the childish literalness which has crept into our notions of the principles of government, as if all men, however savage and however unfit to govern themselves, were oppressed when other people governed them ; as if self-government were not often a curse ; and as if a great nation does not often owe to its people, or some part of them, as its chief duty, that of governing them from the outside, instead of giving them immediate control of them- selves; — these things are taking their proper place in the whole- some education of the discussions that are now going forward. There is good ground to expect, I think, that among the incidental advantages of our new policy may come to us a larger and juster style of political thinking, and I may add, of judicial thinking, on constitutional questions, and a soberer type of political admin- istration. • Even the nettle danger is to help us in these respects. I have something more to say of our territories. And first let me shortly trace their history. Before the Revolutionary War was over, and several years before the Constitution of the United States took effect, the Confederation had begun to receive cessions of territory from the original States. The process continued after the present government came into existence ; and by the year 1802, the United States held, under these cessions, besides the District of Columbia, a vast region now represented by nine States, namely, by a part of Minnesota and by the States of Wisconsin. Michi- gan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. ' 62
