seemed too pretentious, is extending itself northward and southward upen its noble terrace, to receive the representatives of new in-coming States. The departments of executive administration continually expand under their lofty arches and behind their lengthening colennades. The Federal City, so recently ridiculed for its ambitious solltuides, is extending its broad avenues in all directions, and, under the lands of native artists, is taking on the graces, as well as the fullness, of a capital. Whore else will you find authority so august as in a council composed of the representatives of thirty States, attended by ambassadors from every free city, every republic, and every court in the civilized world! In near proximity and in intimate connection with that capital, a metropolis has arisen which gathers, by the agency of canals, of railroads, and of coast-wise navigation, the products of industry in every form throughout the North American States, as well those under foreign jurisdiction as those which constitute the Union, and distributes them in exchange over the globe—a city whose wealth and credit supply or procure the capital employed in all the great financial movements within the Republic, and whose press, in all its departments of science, literature, religion, philanthropy, and polities is a national one. Thus expansion and aggrandizement, whose natural tendency is to produce debility and dissolution, have operated here to create, what before was wanting, a social, political, and commercial centre.
In considering the causes of this material growth, allowance must be made liberally for great advantages of space, climate, and resources, as well as for the weakness of outward resistance, for the vices of foreign governments, and for the disturbed and painful condition of society under them—causes which have created and sustained a tide of emigration toward the United States unparalleled, at least in modern times. But when all this allowance shall have been made, we shall still find that the phenomenon is chiefly due to the operation here of some great ideas, either unknown before or not before rendered so effective. These ideas are, first, the equality of men in a State, that is to say, the equality of men constituting a State; secondly, the equality of States in combination, or, in other words, the equality of States constituting a nation. By the Constitu-
