and other western possessions. France was beforehand in making western settlements south of the Lakes, and they interfered with the desire for extensions on the part of New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The latter was under the Penn-proprietary rule, which chafed and hindered all movements for western acquisitions. The French held Pittsburg as Fort Duguesne, which checkmated the western advance of Pennsylvania. Virginia had extended her lines indefinitely westward along the Ohio, and these settlements suggested to Governor Spottiswood, and after him to Dinwiddie, attempts to counteract French encroachments north of the Ohio. Washington was charged with expeditions of explorations for this purpose. The Albany-New York plan of a general union of all the British Colonies had also been inaugurated, and Franklin supported it zealously as the best way to overcome the lethargy imposed on Pennsylvania by the proprietary government.

National Americanism of our kind, needed, to be born, first of all the removal of French supremacy over any part of North American soil, and the accomplishment of that object became the first large uniting cause of British America. Had Canada fallen into line during the Revolution, and it is very questionable, whether North America would not have presented for years afterwards the spectacle which Australia presents today; to wit: several colonial governments on the sea-rim, with indefinite rival extensions to the interior. New England would then have found full employment for its western inclinations in Lower Canada and New York, in the upper province thereof and Michigan; Pennsylvania into Ohio, and so on. But with Canada standing out, with Pennsylvania impeded by her lame government, and with Virginia in advance possession on the Ohio, Scioto, and the Wabash, there was only one way for New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland to share in the westward growth of the Union, and that was the cession of all claims to western lands to the Confederacy or its successor-the United States. And the Ordinance of 1787 was the public act that consummated this work, followed as it was by similar acts for Tennessee and the other states. Virginia performed the main act; it had initiated the policy in its treatment of emigrants to Kentucky. New

York yielded reluctantly to the same process as to Vermont, and, later still, Massachusetts as to Maine. But Virginia deserves to be called: The mother of states, and of their nationalization.

In this connection it may be well to remember, that the America, which Washington contemplated, when he prepared his farewell address, was but one-fourth of the area, which now constitutes "The United States ;" and that of it he asked: "Whether a common government could embrace so large a sphere?" And, unable to answer his own query, he added: "Let experience solve it! to listen to mere speculation, in such a case, were criminal; it is well worth a fair and full experiment." The intrinsic question of all nationalizations, that of ethics whether it is right to try to subject to a single central authority, countries of extremes in climate, race, historic development, and interests? was thus handed over as an "experiment" to posterity, and it made bloody work of it seventy years afterwards. That such an experiment should not be tried under a government residing beyond seas, had been asserted by the sword and maintained; but the deeper issue: whether, even in countries united territorially, there are such diversities in the pursuit of happiness as to make it impossible for one central public will to bring harmony out of the natural and social antagonisms that are inherent therein? was only cursorily raised. Yet time keeps ever asking: Is not an unlimited national ambition the contradiction of all true nationalism-ethics? And does it not require a self-limitation as to aggrandizements to make a people's conduct compatible with civil liberty? The question may look impertinent to a people, that has ever believed, that it cannot be too powerful nor have too vast a country. At present we have only to say with Scherr: "When the fire of facts burns men's finger-nails, they smear over them the cooling salve of illusions."

Thomas Jefferson and his whole school acted on the assumption: that, provided the government remained republican and federal, it might be extended without limit. And when an opportunity occurred to purchase Louisiana, he seized it as a providential indication to secure to the country the territorial extension, which it needed for its full development. And he

would have suspected his own mind of some latent treason, had it hesitated as to the proposed annexation. He knew, indeed, that the purchase was unconstitutional, but his zest for the acquisition was so overwhelming, that he completed the transaction with the sanction of Congress, and without securing an amendatory provision to the Constitution, that would have cut off all the collateral constructions of it, for which this act opened the door. When, twenty years afterwards, the Missouri question came, it awoke him, as he wrote himself, "like an alarm-bell of fire at midnight;" but again he acquiesced in the abnormal settlement of the question by a congressional enactment, called: The Missouri Compromise. And he died without realizing, that making a state a member of a federal Union by Act of Congress was a perpetual denial of the inherent right of self-disposition in every human society, that is an organic body-politic, and capable of forming an ethical public will. He thus helped to reverse the very order by which true federal law is generated.

The first effect of Jefferson's annexation policy was an unsettling of the duties of loyalty; so that Aaron Burr felt himself justified to play the part of the Spanish Conquistadores, who magnified themselves by enlarging the realm, whose soldiers they were. Jefferson saw treason very quickly in Burr's conspiracy, but to his chagrin the public mind was indifferent and easily led on false scents, when punishment was to be meted out to the supposed traitor. The whole issue run out in the sands of constitutional dubiousness. And with a little change of programme, Sam Houston, Austin, and Lamar carried out afterwards parts of Burr's projects in Texas, and Fremont and Stockton quarrelled over similar questions of priority in the seizure of California. And as in olden times Sylla, Marius, Cæsar, Pompey, and other Roman politicians had provinces assigned to them as stepping-stones to the highest places in the empire, so have in our day, in America, territories been created and states formed out of them, as means to seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives, if not to the Presidency itself. It began with Louisiana; the last instance in our own day is Colorado, and the process is still going on. It proves the truth of Professor Schmoller's late remark, that

the beginnings of malformations and the heights of development concide in the life of nations."

How all-pervading the tendency towards boundless national ambition was, we see, when we read in the "History of the United States," published by Rev. C. A. Goodrich, and used in the schools and seminaries of America for many years, so that it influenced more minds that any other book, this passage: "What should prevent our country from advancing to that eminence of national happiness, beyond which national happiness cannot extend?" Aye! but where is that eminence? Gibbon suggests that "the causes of destruction multiply with the extent of conquest; that a stupendous fabric may yield to the pressure of its own weight; and that the inner strength is weakened as the distance to which power has to be extended is lengthened." A more modern writer (A. Lasker) sees it in conditions, "when a people are confronted by countless public riddles, which stunt present existence by cares for the uncertain future." The people of the United States had no such misgivings up to 1860. They applauded Jefferson for buying Louisiana, Monroe for acquiring Florida, Polk for annexing Texas, and Taylor and other military leaders for securing California and other parts of Mexico. And, alas! even Seward's purchase of Alaska was passed at a run under the old impetus; but then came the surfeit, and the rejection of the tender of St. Thomas and St. Domingo with evident displeasure. Whether the refusal was caused by the fact, that these islands were beyond seas, and that their purchase would involve complications in our foreign policy, or whether it was a wisely conscious selflimitation, is not yet easy to determine. We fear that the key to our public tendency is to be found in Lessing's words: "A people, so eager for gain, inquires but little whether it acquires it rightfully or wrongfully, or by cunning or force."

When we reflect on the history of Great Britain and its ancestral populatory make-up, it would seem, that the unbounded craving for more territorial area, that pervades both the Romanic as well as Germanic nations of Europe, until checked by superior martial power, actuates also their descendants in America. The Declaration of Independence already contains the covert assertion of a supremacy over North America, at least for the

United States, and it was more openly avowed in the Monroe doctrine. Its only effective and seemingly permanent checks were, as to lands, north of our own territory. That this northern bounding of our area extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and carries with it the nearest and best ports both to Asia and Europe, would seem to indicate that the old limitation of the ascendency of southern genius by the steeled physical force of northern peoples, also operates on this Continent, and that it has caused the failure of our Canadian policy, including the surrender of Oregon to 540. Southward we have ever advanced successfully, and have controlled Mexican politics even against the emperorship of the lamented Maximilian. It suggests queer vistas into the future to reflect on it, that it was a New York politician-Seward-who ignored the steady growth of Canada into a Dominion, which is now, while we are writing, receiving a princely occupant on its viceregal throne, and that another New Yorker Secretary of State-Ewarts—is looking on, if not co-operating; but that at the same time Mexico has been kept from establishing a firm public authority. This strength north of us, and this weakness south of us, will yet play a big part in our future.

The old continental Americanism has, we see, died out; and the national Americanism stands in its place. We can see its strong pulsations in the jealousy with which every attempt at alienation or secession is watched in the United States. has, however, passed the aggressive mood, and has become conservative. But another Americanism, the pure Anglican species, is also disappearing, and lingers only in a narrow nativeism. The Liberal English leader (Gladstone) is kindly watering it by his articles "Kin beyond Sea," and other visiting personages of literary renown assist in it; but America and its nature is now, as at the Revolution, too potent to be a mere English shadow or side-show of British Protestantism. The name American covers much more than Anglo-Saxonism, or even Indo-Germanism. There is an indigenous growth of Americanism, that moulds Europeanism here into a nationality of its own, and extirpates also Indianism and Africanism, as well as that little Chinaisin. Even Canada, where Anglicism has its strongest hold, cannot be the American home of exclusive British pro