It should be regarded a proud day for this Republic when the historian records her progress, and the consummation of her greatness, achieved through a policy embodying the Divine sentiment of "peace and good will towards all men," while the history of every other nation on the globe is written in letters of blood, amidst the groans of suffering humanity. Such, however, is the fact, and such is the history of the past, and of the present, of the old world and of the new. It is our inestimable privilege to participate with those who are to perform the pleasing duty of recording in history the peaceful extension of institutions adapted to the new order of things, and designed to promote the best interests of mankind, and to conserve whatever of good that has been handed down to us by those who, in 1776, laid the foundation of an expanding and progressive Republic.

But this Review, having from its birth until the present moment, advocated the "manifest destiny" of the American Republic, it is proper, in this article, to consider practically and somewhat in detail, the question involved in the acquisition of Cuba, as one additional step towards the accomplishment of that great end. And here it is proper to glance at the rapid improvement and progression in the social and political condition of the inhabitants of this continent, which finds no example nor parallel on any other portion of the earth, or in any previous stage of human existence, and to contrast our advancing condition as a nation, with the declining age of Europe. In this comparison, the preponderating power and vigor of the national youth and the early manhood of the American Republic is visible to every observer, and our almost fabulous. stride over a vast, and in many instances, rugged continent, under the guidance of the genius of liberty, is inspiring within the breast of our people a national pride as distinctive as that of a member of an ancient republic, whose highest claim to protection and honor, was drawn from the circumstance of his being "a Roman citizen."

While almost every child is familiar with the history of the discovery and the early settlement of this continent, of the Colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth, and of their extension and increase, in defiance of hardships and discouragements that at times appeared insurmountable; with the steady but slow progress of Anglo-Saxon enterprise in this new field of development, until quickened by throwing off the restrictions of foreign power; with their horrible encounters with the savages of the wilderness, and the still more frightful seven years' struggle with the parent country, resulting in the baptism of the new-born Republic in fraternal blood; but few of us realize

our wonderful progress during the last half century, which is so truthfully delineated by Senator Pugh, a youthful and distinguished national Representative of one of the youngest but most powerful States, in a late speech in the United States Senate, on the Cuban question, when he said, "The expansion of our federal system, as one emergency after another shall require, is the law of our development; it is the sign of our national vitality; the pledge of our national endurance. This proud sentiment, although imperfectly revealed, and perhaps never expressed, animates the heart of the humblest pioneer now braving the wrath of the savage or the hardships of the wilderness on our westernmost border; it is a theme of glory to boyhood, to youth treading the paths of temptation, to men in every pursuit-the capitalist and the laborer, the merchant, the artisan, the scholar, the soldier, the sailor-to all who reverence their country, and their country's renown. Indeed, sir, I can imagine no spectacle more grateful to an American citizen, at home or abroad, than the contemplation of that splendid procession across our continent within the last sixty years. Commencing with feeble settlements on the bays, inlets, and tributaries of the Atlantic ocean, thence to the summits deemed almost impassable, and beyond these to the banks of a river extending from the Gulf of Mexico northward to the region of the lakes, and swollen at every degree by the floods gathered as well in the Alleghanies as in the Rocky Mountains-itself, therefore, a complete emblem of union to all-thence over prairies of marvellous magnificence to the fastness and the desert; turning from which, at length, to seek more hospitable and shorter paths by the Isthmus, we have carried our name, our watchwords, and our ensign to the Golden Gate, where California, with her snow-capped diadem, sits virgin empress of the seas."

In contemplating this rapid and magnificent movement of the American people, it seems impossible to place a just estimate upon their strength and power when comparing them with European nations. It is a common practice, in contrasting the strength and means of the United States with some one of the leading European Powers, to strike a balance against this country, whereas a just comparison between the United States and all Europe combined, would leave a preponderance of power in favor of this country. Let every statesman, of whatever party, for the future bear this fact in mind, and not lower the dignity of this mighty confederacy in comparing it with any one of the feeble and decaying nations of Europe.

In elucidation of this opinion it is not proposed to give a minute schedule of figures enumerating the number of human beings

who inhabit each of these two quarters of the globe; the number of men-of-war subject to the control of either country, nor of the army that they kept continually enrolled as a bulwark of national security, but to employ a few figures and apply some facts found in social and political science, by which alone just conclusions can be reached. An able writer on this subject, in a leading New York journal, justly remarks that, "The superficial areas of Europe and the United States are not very dissimilar, that of the former being about 3,750,000 square miles, divided among fifty-five States and Territories, and that of the latter being about 3,300,000 square miles, divided among forty-one States and Territories. But here the similarity

ceases.

Europe is a great peninsula of itself, which is further divided. into a number of smaller peninsulas and islands on each of which one or more isolated, or almost isolated, kingdoms have been erected. Thus, on the throat of the great peninsula which juts out westward from Southern Europe, stands Austria, Prussia, and the German Principalities; from these, Denmark on the north, France on the west, and Italy and Turkey on the south, extend, with seas separating them from each other. Spain and Portugal occupy the African extension of the French peninsula, Sweden and Norway overhang the North of Europe between the Baltic and the North Sea, and Great Britain and a number of smaller Powers stand upon islands. On these isolated portions of the earth two hundred and seventy-five millions of civilized people reside, maintaining three millions of armed men in a time of peace, with which to keep order at home and menace each other abroad. Power is wielded by a series of intermarried and degenerate families, whose sway is maintained by the repression of intellect, restriction of individual thought and action, and a studied teaching of the fallacy that men are to be valued according to the accident of their birth, and not according to their individual ability to promote the good of the community. Barriers to the intercourse of mankind have been built up on every side, under the most specious pretexts of national good, and men everywhere have been sedulously taught that they must hate and oppose each other. Amid this untoward state of affairs social science has sprung up, and is gradually tearing down the hindrances which error has erected between man and man in Europe; and the tendency of all enlightened legislation of the present day is simply to destroy and remove the protecting fallacies of the past.

On the other hand, we have scattered over the same area in the United States barely thirty millions of people, without a

soldier among them to keep order at home or to menace each other; and with only about eighteen thousand troops scattered along a line of five thousand miles of frontier, to protect the advancing waves of civilization from the savage. These thirty millions of men are busily engaged in developing the resources of nature, and particularly in opening new routes and greater facilities for intercourse with each other. They are selfgoverned; and among them thought and speech are free, intellect and individual action are untrammelled, and every man finds his level in the community according to the exercise of his individual ability and the value of his labors to society. Social science, having no fabric of a barbarous age to pull down, is busily engaged in developing the intellectual and physical powers of man, and here he exhibits to wondering Europe a prosperity and rapidity of progress that knows no parallel.

It is this free working of the American intellect that the European observer cannot comprehend; and, as he does not understand it, he trembles before it. Everywhere it is bubbling up, gushing out and boiling over. Each individual man is a propagandist, and strives to become an apostle or a hero. He asserts his thought with all the zeal of an enthusiast; others catch it up and present it in a thousand ways of which the originator never dreamed; men wrangle and contend over abstractions as though the whole world depended upon their being reduced to practice; and yet all this chaos of discussion. seethes down into the most harmonious practical working. The multitudinous thoughts of millions of active, energetic, practical and impractical minds, are brought to the threshing-floor of public discussion, where they are turned and winnowed, and each individual of the community picks out silently the grains of wheat that he can apply in his own business, leaving the chaff to follow the wind where it listeth. Thus it is that among us red republicanism shouts at every corner its wildest theories, while democracy proves itself to be the most conservative of governments. Infidelity preaches its tenets unrestrained, and religion stands forth more pure, and with a stronger hold upon the hearts of men. Everywhere the law is reviled, and yet nowhere is there a more law-abiding people. On all sides those who govern are accused of the most outrageous abuses, and yet nowhere is government more religiously administered for the general good. The press, the pulpit, the bar, the senate, and the hustings, all teem with the novelties of innovations of intellect, and each innovator strives to impress his views upon the community with the zeal and courage that belong to self-conviction. This intellectual freedom constitutes

the motive power of our material development, and the stability of our social fabric. Each individual, left free to choose, adopts that which constitutes his own welfare, and the greatest good of the greatest number thereby constitutes our practical advance in the paths of progress."

It is these influences, the very opposite of those that have held in check, for ages past, the people of Europe that are impelling forward the people of the United States, and it is simply in obedience to this irresistible impelling power, inborn of our natural destiny, that Cuba is to assume the habiliment of an independent state, and join our proud Confederacy.

But as before remarked, this question should be treated as a practical one, involving the direct social, political, and commercial interest of the people of the United States and of Cuba. To arrive at a correct conclusion, in regard to the mutual importance of, and the national benefit to accrue to the people of both countries, by the removal of all restrictions imposed upon Cuba by the Spanish government, it seems pertinent to advert briefly to the geographical proximity of that island to the United States.

The island of Cuba extends almost from the seventy-third meridian of longitude west from Greenwich, to the eighty-fifth meridian, and lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the nineteenth parallel of north latitude. Its area is thirty-four thousand two hundred and thirty-three square miles; that of its principal dependency, the Isle of Pines, about eight hundred, and other dependencies a little over nine hundred. Its genial climate, and the marvellous beauty of its hills, rivers, woods, and plains attract the admiration of the beholder, and form the most charming subject for the landscape painter-its land and water present American scenery softened by an Italian sky. The richness of its soil, and the luxuriance of its agricultural productions are unrivalled, and the capacities and resources of this island are greater than those of any other region of the same extent upon the globe. We cannot do better justice to the territorial relations existing between the United States and Cuba, than by quoting from John S. Thrasher's "Preliminary Essay on the Purchase of Cuba." He says:

"The territorial relations of the island of Cuba, are of a more marked and permanent character than those of any other country of limited extent in America, and justify the Abbé Raynal's assertion that it is 'the boulevard of the New World.' The peculiar formation of the eastern shore of this continent, and the prevalence in the Caribbean Sea of the trade winds, which blow with great uniformity from the E.N.E., with a constant oceanic current running in its general direction, from east to west, make the narrow ocean passages, which skirt the shore of Cuba, the natural outlets for the commerce