Foreign land

“ She is separated from every other foreign country and joined to every other part of the British Empire by the sea alone. Her land frontier is long and has given cause for much dispute in times of crisis. ”

“ Imagine a rich country, producing goods in large quantities which are salable in foreign lands, and anxious and willing to buy, in equal quantities, the goods of these foreign lands. Imagine such a country without a single harbour—with, perhaps, a long unbroken coast of sandy beach on which relentless surges pound the whole year through. ”

“ But, as they went farther, a new scene opened, all things grew milder, the air less burning, the soil more verdant, and even the beasts were less wild: and, at last, there were nations, towns, and cities, that had not only mutual commerce among themselves and with their neighbours, but traded, both by sea and land, to very remote countries. ”

“ It is seldom that one’s attention is so caught and held as by the happy suggestion that American interest in land—or rather interest in American land—began with the discovery of the continent. Even a momentary consideration of the subject, however, is sufficient to indicate how important was the desire for land as a motive of colonization. ”

“ That such is the case is the natural consequence of our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to compelling the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening of labour, and the export of the labourer. ”

“ They saw what every Westerner sees to-day,—illimitable reaches of prairie and ravine, forested hills sloping to mighty rivers, and open meadow-lands watered by streams looped like a ribbon. They saw a land waiting for its people, wealth waiting for possessors, an empire waiting for the nation builders. ”

“ Dollarson:
Come forward, pioneers! Gain beckons to you with its reward. The New Continent is already waiting for you. All that is necessary now is to set the seal of ownership upon the property which has been bestowed. Lay your hands upon it. This continent has need of hands so that it can deliver up all its wealth. It has room enough for the hands of all. ”

“ Whether we of this island are not from our peculiar circumstances determined to this very commerce above any other, from the number of necessaries and good things that we possess within ourselves, from the extent and variety of our soil, from the navigable rivers and good roads which we have or may have, at a less expense than any people in Europe, from our great plenty of materials for manufactures, and particularly from the restraints we lie under with regard to our foreign trade? ”

“ The colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor, and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cypress and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire. ”

“ The inhabitants of our colonies, by carrying on a trade with their foreign neighbours, do not only occasion a greater quantity of the goods and merchandizes of Europe being sent from hence to them, and a greater quantity of the product of America to be sent from them hither, which would otherwise be carried from, and brought to Europe by foreigners, but an increase of the seamen and navigation in those parts, which is of great strength and security, as well as of great advantage to our plantations in general. ”

“ And this is true whether we consider the compass of their commercial exchanges, the scope of their maritime ventures, the extent of their linguistic area, the measure of their territorial ambitions, or the range of their intellectual interests and human sympathies. From land to ethics, the rule holds good. Peoples in the lower stages of civilization have contracted spacial ideas, desire and need at a given time only a limited territory, though they may change that territory often ”

“ Since the establishment of the act of navigation, accordingly, the colony trade has been continually increasing, while many other branches of foreign trade, particularly of that to other parts of Europe, have been continually decaying. ”

“ It is impossible for us to realize what a sudden invitation to greed and discord lay in this fair, beautiful, unclaimed continent—eight millions of square miles of land—more than twice the size of all Europe itself. ”

“ Trade with other continents is favoured by the possession of a large number of safe and spacious harbours; long, deep, and numerous rivers, and vast inland seas, supply the means of easy intercourse; and the structure of the country generally affords the utmost facility for every species of communication by land. Unbounded materials of agricultural, commercial and manufacturing industry are there; it depends upon the present decision of the Imperial Legislature to determine for whose benefit they are to be rendered available. ”

“ VII. "As to increasing the settlements to respectable provinces, and to colonization in general terms in the remote countries, I conceive it altogether inconsistent with sound policy; for there is little appearance that the advantages will arise from it which nations expect when they send out colonies into foreign countries; they can give no encouragement to the fishery, and though the country might afford some kind of naval stores, the distance would be too far to transport them; and for the same reason they could not supply the sugar islands with lumber and provisions. ”

“ If it expands, crossing frontiers and penetrating areas heretofore considered foreign or alien, and proposes to remain in those alien territories, it must have sufficient means at its disposal to continue the administration of its home territory and at the same time to take on the administration of the newly acquired foreign territory. ”

“ You can kill a man with a tenement as easily as with an ax.—Jacob Riis.
Our foreign colonies are to a large extent in the cities of our own country. To live in one of these foreign communities is actually to live on foreign soil. ”

“ In foreign, as in home relations, we developed a frontier mind, and even to-day, long after our last frontier has been reached, we are still thinking of Europe, as of so many of our internal problems, in terms of this great colonising adventure. ”

“ An inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to send this surplus abroad. ”

“ Other nations leave the trade of their colonies free to all their subjects, who may carry it on from all the different ports of the mother country, and who have occasion for no other license than the common despatches of the custom-house. ”

“ We were first permitted to land on the sea coast to sell our wares, as humble and solicitous traders, till by degrees, sometimes by force and sometimes by fraud, we have possessed ourselves of an extent of territory containing nearly a hundred millions of human beings. ”

“ From time to time, our number has been increased by emigration from America, and by accessions from native tribes; and from time to time, as ci cumstances required it, we have extended our borders by the acquisition of land by honorable purchase from the natives of the country. ”

“ Almost all countries exchange with one another partly native and partly foreign goods. That country, however, in whose cargoes there is the greatest proportion of native, and the least of foreign goods, will always be the principal gainer. ”

“ The settlers in the United States brought with them many of their old-world customs and some of these early customs relating to land seem to us now most curious. Society has ever been influenced by the manner of holding, transferring, and inheriting land, and this all the more in a new country and especially where greatly influenced by customs and laws transferred from other countries. ”

“ Those nations which have so lately emigrated from the midst of our settlements to live upon our western borders, and have made some progress in agriculture and the arts of civilization, have, in the property they have acquired, and the protection and aid extended to them, too many advantages to be induced readily to take up arms against us, particularly if they can be brought to the full conviction that their new homes will be permanent and undisturbed ”

“ But a stronger attraction is that of a higher civilization and dominant economic interests. So long as the known world was confined to the temperate regions of Europe, Asia and Africa, together with the tropical districts of the Indian Ocean, the necessities of trade between Orient and Occident and the historical prestige of the lands bordering on the Mediterranean placed in this basin the center of gravity of the cultural, commercial and political life of Europe. ”

“ Colonies were once actually the means of the greatness of nations. The longing for colonial possessions, for the extension of commerce, the great jealousy and apprehension of peoples in regard to their trade routes, and the fear nations have for their commerce, quite out of relation to present needs and conditions, hark back to an old romance of the sea. ”

“ In the heart of the North American Continent, forming in part the boundary line between the United States and the British possessions to the north, lies that chain of great freshwater lakes bordered by busy and rapidly growing commonwealths, washing the water-fronts of rich and populous cities, and bearing upon their steely blue bosoms a commerce which outdoes that of the Mediterranean in the days of its greatest glory. ”

“ The ancient provincial restraints upon the transportation of corn from one province of the kingdom to another have been entirely taken away, and the liberty of exporting it to all foreign countries has been established as the common law of the kingdom in all ordinary cases. ”

“ By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Throughout our history, America's economic prosperity has been closely tied to its maritime geography. From indigenous peoples navigating our majestic rivers to colonists settling along the New World's eastern shores, natives and immigrants alike have relied on the sea and our bountiful inland waterways for commerce and security.
In colonial days and in the 19th century, America's maritime industries facilitated the exchange of goods and the migration of pioneers. ”

“ If national colonies can be utilised for special national advantage, financial, industrial or commercial, the attempt will be made. If trade and investment can be made to follow the flag, the nation has an interest in securing colonies. ”

“ The successful penetration of such a region must, nevertheless, have its value, both in a commercial and a geographical sense, as it points out to the future emigrant or settler, those portions of our continent which he should rigorously avoid. ”

“ Perhaps the great American Republic, whose interests lie in the Pacific and who has no hand in the spoliation of Africa, may some day dream of foreign possession. ”

“ Land.—The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens, should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only. ”

“ Most of the maritime powers in Europe had colonies, which they regarded as mere farms of the State; private property with regard to other nations; industrial speculations with which foreigners had no more to do than with their arsenals and dock-yards; places where they were admitted only on tolerance, and where they dealt not with the colonist, but with the imperial government. ”

“ A new country, bounded by the oceans, situated just right in latitude, with the richest land and vastest natural resources of any country in the world, settled by immigrants who had thrown off all the leading strings of the Old World and were in the humor for democracy. ”

“ In settling this continent, the powers of Europe, estimating the right of the natives at nothing, adopted, for their own government, the principle, that those who first discovered and took possession of any particular territory, became its rightful proprietors. ”

“ There is only one Antwerp, one Trieste, one Constantinople, and there are many claimants. Is Russia to control the Yellow Sea or is Japan? Is the Persian Gulf to be British, Russian or German? Is the present division of colonial possessions to be maintained or is there to be a new distribution, from which some nations will gain and others lose? What is to decide what colonies shall belong to what nation or what share each nation shall have in the profits of exploitations? ”

“ In other words, were it not for some hypothetical future war, that nation has already the open way to the sea which it demands. Another great nation desires a place in the sun, the freedom of the seas, or a fair share of colonies in distant lands, the colonies being desired for purposes of trade and colonization of its emigrants. ”

“ No one, beholding this enormous country, stretching from ocean to ocean, watered with ten thousand glorious rivers, combining every variety of climate and soil; therefore, every variety of produce and population; possessing within itself every resource that other nations are forced either to buy abroad, or to create substitutes for at home ”

“ Therefore, whenever man has touched it, it has moulded him in much the same way, given the same direction to his activities, dictated the use of the same implements and methods of navigation. As maritime trader or colonist, he has sailed to remote, unknown, yet familiar coasts, and found himself as much at home as on his native shores. He has built up maritime empires, the centre of whose dominion, race and commerce, falls somewhere in the dividing yet uniting sea. ”

“ The great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America, has been to improve and extend the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of this kingdom, upon which its strength and security depend. ”