and exercising sovereignty in all the municipal departments of society. The citizen of each State also retained all his natural rights equally in the Union and in the State to which he belonged, and the United States were constituted by the whole mass of such citizens throughout all the several States. There was an unoccupied common domain which the several States surrendered to the Federal authorities, to the end that it might be settled, colonized, and divided into other States, to be organized and to become members of the Union on an equal footing with the original States. When additions to this domain were made from foreign countries, the same principles seemed to be the only ones upon which the government could be extended over them, and so, with some qualifications unimportant on the present occasion, they became universal in their application.
No other nation, pursuing a career of aggrandizement, has adopted the great ideas thus developed in the United States. The Macedonian conquered kingdoms for the mere gratification of conquest, and they threw off the sway he had established over them as soon as the sword dropped from his hand. The Roman conquered because the alien was a barbarian rival and enemy, and because Rome must fill the world alone. The empire, thus extended, fell under the blows of enemies, subjugated but not subdued, as soon as the central power had lost its vigor. The Ottoman, although he conquered with the sword, conciliated the subjected tribes by admitting them to the rites of a new and attractive religion. The religion, however, was of this world, and sensual, and therefore it debased its votaries. France attempted to conquer Europe in retaliation for wrongs committed against herself, but the bow broke in her hands just as it was bent to discharge the last shaft. Spain has planted many colonies and conquered many States, but the Castilian was proud and haughty—he enslaved the native and oppressed the creole. The Czar wins his way amid kindred races as a parent, extending protection in the enjoyment of a common religion. But the paternal relation in politics is a fiction of despotism which extinguishes all individual energy and all social ambition. Great Britain has been distinguished from all these vulgar conquerors. She is a civilizer and a missionary. She has planted many Colonies in the West, and conquered many and vast
