North American Review

“ In the weekly papers, America achieves still more. The light, fresh, and direct American style there finds its most congenial field. The same is true of the monthly papers in a somewhat more ambitious and permanent way. The leading social and political monthlies, like the venerable North American Review, which errs merely in laying too much emphasis on the names of its well-known contributors, and others are quite up to the best English reviews. ”

“ It may be said that the North American is devoted to philosophy, learning, and literature rather than to affairs: we have heard this defence, even in the face of its elaborate papers on Hungary and Austria ”

“ 'In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearance of the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where, three hundred years previously, the victims of the pestilence had been buried. Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics, remarks that the opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate outbreak of disease.'—North American Review, No. ”

“ Every North American is—and who has a better right so to be—an enthusiastic honorer (vereher) of his fatherland, but he does not measure out by inches the limits of his native land, or bound his patriotism by the clod on which his cradle rested—for to him the roar of the Rio del Norte, the thunder-peal of Niagara, and the murmur of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans have equally a familiar, home-like sound. Nor less than the land of his birth does he esteem its laws, constitution, and institutions, and regards them in nowise as oppressive, but as protective. ”

“ In fact it seems to be in the nature of things that the United States' prestige should grow and ours should wane in North America, and I wish we were well and creditably out of the scrape.
In the course of the previous year he had already expressed the opinion that the great problem for us in American politics was to find some fair and honourable way of dissolving all connection between England and our North American colonies. ”

“ He who can raise his mind to the contemplation of the government of North-America, ruling over a perfectly free continent, may see in the future such a picture of national greatness as the world never before realized. ”

“ There is one comfort for the people of the United States, possessed in no such degree by any other nation at the present time or for several generations to come, and that is, the abounding possibilities of the North American continent in its natural resources, and the amazing vitality and resourcefulness of its inhabitants. ”

“ But the development of commerce in the Pacific, as the middle of the century approached, pointed unmistakably to the young republic of North America as the power destined to bring about that important event. ”

“ Not even the great North American republic has a territory at once so large and so productive. What will be its future? Is the people worthy of such an inheritance?
420 The first thought that rises in the mind of those who are possessed, as in this age we all more or less are, by the passion for the development of natural resources, is a feeling of regret that a West European race, powerful by its numbers and its skill, say the North American or German or English, has not, to use the familiar phrase, "got the thing in hand." ”

“ Yes, North America, by means of the speculative disposition of her people, by means of her political subdivision, her institutions which afford free play to individual peculiarity and will, in evil as well as in good; America is the land of experiment, and its commencement, in the field of experimental humanity, reveals a boundless prospect as to what it may yet bring forth. One of its sons drew the lightning from the clouds; another created wings out of steam for all the people of the earth, so that they might fly round the world; a third has, oh the happy man! ”

“ It is not in the nature of things that this North American continent should be arbitrarily divided in its most fertile midst by political lines, and by and by it will be impossible to keep the multiplying millions south of the imaginary line from surging across into the rich vacant territory to the north. ”

“ The North American knows more about the other side of the world than he does about those who live on the same continent with him. Neither the North American nor his southern neighbor has treated the other fairly. ”

“ Any aggressive North American, especially if he be from the West, looks upon the splendid areas of land, the fine rivers, the dense forests, and the other untouched resources of this rich country with amazement, and begins to plan development projects and dream of organizing syndicates, but the native loses no sleep over such vain imaginings. If he dreams at all, it is of his food if he be poor, and of politics if he be rich. Development in the North American sense is a disgrace, and no job for a gentleman. ”

“ However they may be settled, the great fact will remain essentially the same, that the two continents of this Western Hemisphere shall yet bear up a stupendous social, political, and religious structure, wrought by the American mind, moulded and coloured by the hues of American thought, and animated and united by an American soul. ”

“ The wish to spare the North American continent the war with which it was threatened, to dispose of different points in dispute between France and the United States of America, and to remove all the new causes of misunderstanding which competition and neighborhood might have produced between them; the position of the French colonies; their want of men, cultivation, and assistance ”

“ The life of North America exhibits such a hurrying onward, such a concentration of the fulness of development in good and in evil. The vastness and comprehensiveness of this hemisphere, embracing the productions and peculiar beauties of every zone; the means of communication, their abundance and facility, which places them within the reach of every man ”

“ It will have a tendency to increase both the internal and external commerce of North America, and undoubtedly will be infinitely useful to all the traders of every State in the Union, provided, as I have already said, it is conducted on principles of equity, justice, prudence, and economy. ”

“ Into this vast shaggy continent of ours poured the first feeble tide of European settlement. European men, institutions, and ideas were lodged in the American wilderness, and this great American West took them to her bosom, taught them a new way of looking upon the destiny of the common man, trained them in adaptation to the conditions of the New World, to the creation of new institutions to meet new needs ”

“ Moreover, the United States occupies the choicest portions of the North American continent. Our neighbor Canada has a cold and snow-bound frontier on her north, while on our south Mexico and the Central American countries lie near the tropics. The heart of temperate America, on the other hand, is included within the territory of the United States. ”

“ The right of the people of North America to be considered as one people, and as a peculiar people among the nations of the earth, is founded upon the character of its first emigrant-colonies, they who were peculiarly the creators of the society of the New World, and who infused their spirit into it. ”

“ In the year 1898, the Spirit of the Living appeared to be on the point of winning a great victory. It seemed as if the vast Empire was at last, after the lapse of centuries, to be rescued from the clutch of the Dead Hand. The breath of reform blew gently everywhere. As, after a long, murky night, the sweet breezes of the dawn bring freshness and life to a sleeping world, so the breeze of progress seemed about to rustle the leaves on all the trees of tradition and immemorial custom in China. ”

“ What a history of the United States has to be written since the last event! How much of human weakness and wickedness and folly has been developed in these years! But the North will receive their reward, under the inevitable and rigorous laws of a just government of the world. ”

“ Their influence will in time add insensibly to the force at work for the economic unification of the North American continent, though in the meantime they are as good Canadians as immigrants in the United States are good Americans, even in the first generation. ”

“ An eminent philosopher, who is an honour to the French name, [DY] defines the progress of the human race in its slow and majestic pilgrimage round our globe, by the term initiation. Following out this thought, we may pronounce North America, at least the non-slave-holding States, to be already in advance of us; for, in many respects, what amongst us is accessible only to a small number of the elect, has become common property in the United States, and is familiar to the vulgar. ”

“ If the United States leave her in undisturbed enjoyment of all her holds upon Europe, Asia, and Africa, with all her actual possessions in this hemisphere, we may very fairly expect, that she will not think it inconsistent with a very wise or friendly policy, to watch with eyes of jealousy and alarm every possibility of extension to our natural dominion in North America, which she can have no solid interest to prevent, until all possibility of her preventing it shall have vanished. ”

“ The first of these three nations, the Anglo-Americans, is, next to the English of Europe, that whose flag waves over the greatest extent of sea. Without any distant colonies, its commerce has acquired a growth attained in the old world by that nation alone which communicated to North America its language, its literature, its love of labour, its predilection for liberty, and a portion of its civil institutions. ”

“ But since the North American peoples are now to play an increasingly important part in our history, it will be well to devote a little more attention than we have hitherto given to their development. We have already glanced at this story in § 8 of the preceding chapter. We will now tell a little more fully—though still in the barest outline—what these colonies were, whose recalcitrance was so disconcerting to the king and ministers of Great Britain in their diplomatic game against the rest of mankind. ”

“ What England has done in North America without governmental control, we can do in Central and South America when our industrial condition demands new areas to work over. By the modernized Monroe doctrine our supremacy in this hemisphere is assured, and we have the guarantee of a clear field. Our interests are also furthered by our friendly relations with the American peoples and by our nearness to them. ”

“ Magnitude of interests involved.These interests are indeed of great magnitude; and on the course which Your Majesty and Your Parliament may adopt, with respect to the North American Colonies, will depend the future destinies, not only of the million and a half of Your Majesty's subjects who at present inhabit those Provinces, but of that vast population which those ample and fertile territories are fit and destined hereafter to support. No portion of the American Continent possesses greater natural resources for the maintenance of large and flourishing communities. ”

“ Our neighbours of the United States are in the habit of attributing their wonderful progress in improvements of all kinds to their republican institutions. This is no doubt quite natural in a people who have done so much for themselves in so short a time; but when we consider the subject in all its bearings, it may be more truly asserted that, with any form of government not absolutely despotic, the progress of North America, peopled by a civilised and energetic race, with every motive to industry and enterprise in the nature of the country itself, must necessarily have been rapid. ”

“ It is impossible to look upon the map of North America and not to perceive the rationale of the project.
Men may laugh at these suggestions, but when we are withdrawn from all the petty influences which now exist, these matters will be those of the most grave and solemn national import. ”

“ I take, probably, a stronger view than most people in this country, and certainly a stronger view than anybody in America, of the vast sacrifices of life, and of economical comfort and resources, which must follow to the North from this struggle. ”

“ When the two leading commercial nations of the globe, each claiming the highest civilization, speaking identically the same language, and governed by the same general laws, contrive to pass two centuries and a half of close intercourse with such unsatisfactory interknowledgable results, is it strange that a like ignorance should exist between the American people and the nomadic races of this continent? ”

“ It was hard for the mother country to realize that the raw new nation of the United States, child of her very flesh and blood, kindred in thought and speech, was a power to be reckoned with, on even ground, looking on the level, eye to eye; and not just a bumptious, underling nation, like a boy at the hobbledehoy age, to be hectored and chaffed and bullied and badgered and licked into shape, as a sort of protectorate appended to English interests. ”

“ The spirit that had shattered the Grand Armada and won for commerce the freedom of the seas, was directed to new countries and new States to be founded in North America, where the institutions, the habits, the sentiment and the society of their ancestors were to be transplanted, cultivated and developed, as they had been a thousand years before from the forests of Germany to the shores of Britain. ”

“ The contest, of which no man can predict the end or result, still rages, but notwithstanding the darkness and clouds which rest upon the scene, I place so much reliance on the innate good qualities of the great nations which are settled on the Continent of North America, as to believe they will be all the better for the sweet uses of adversity ”