PROGRESS IS BY NATURAL DEVELOPMENT.

537

equitable to all classes and all sections, and finds itself at the real commencement of its career with a territory so great and so rich, a series of commercial relations so admirable, and a people so thrifty and intelligent? With a situation so conspicuous for advantages of every kind it would be impossible for America not to achieve an eminence of prosperity and power unknown to any other nation or region.

In moral greatness, in giving the best chance to all its people without distinction, in dealing vigorously, justly and naturally with all the vexed questions of the past she is far beyond the foremost nation. In material wealth and volume of commerce she is now second, but must necessarily soon be first.

Progress, with the Republic, is a process of development more natural and more consistent with the interests and ambitions of others than with England. America is a world in itself; England a narrow island whose prosperity depends upon a world-wide trade. The Republic has ample room, ample resources in herself and ample opportunity for the gratification of a wise and peaceful ambition in the neighboring regions of her own continent. She could scarcely become stronger by absorbing the territory of British America, of Mexico, Central America and the West Indies. In time, her industrial and commercial activities may gather all the benefits her people could wish from intercourse with these countries, while they develop politically under their own law.

Before her own lands are completely occupied and all her resources developed to their fullest capacity, a brighter day will dawn on the nations so troubled by vain and hurtful ambitions. They will have learned to devote themselves, with all the zeal of Anglo-Americans, to the more profitable pursuits of industry, to the development of their resources and to the maintenance of the order and quiet which peaceful pursuits require. Like America, their people will learn to

content themselves with acquiring solid wealth and power, developing by internal strength, intelligence, and liberty. Free interchanges with the Republic of the Great Valley will give to each the substantial advantages most desired, and the family of nations will learn to live together as harmoniously and as usefully to each other as does the family of States in the American Union. The world of nations will then be a Federal Republic, not by force and by organic unity, but by interest, reason and common consent. The Valley will be the great center of wealth, of organization and influence to the two Americas. The Gulf of Mexico will be possibly even more important than the Atlantic and Pacific, for it lies between the two most magnificent Valleys in the worldthat of the Mississippi and the Amazon-which will be, in time, the complements of each other.

The industries, the commerce, the energetic activities of Anglo-Americans can never want room to expand so long as they shall be eager for fresh fields. Home commerce and trade, interchanges between the two Americas, must finally be many times more important than intercourse with Europe or Asia. It is possible that the great rivers of the Valley can not be made to answer but a small part of the demands of trade, and that the railroad may ever be the most important reliance of the immense activity of the Valley; but its rolling waters will still point the way that a large proportion of outward bound exchanges must take. The countries about, and the islands in, the Gulf have remained undeveloped, but the time for them to lie fallow is nearly past. A vast and prosperous activity will gradually grow up and will double the wealth of the Valley, while theirs will be increased a thousand fold.

Such are some of the splendid probabilities of the future, apparently the necessary fruit of the freedom and the expansive energies of the people of the Valley. America showed the possibilities for good of a thorough democracy that gave

THE LESSON IS FOR ALL TIMES AND COUNTRIES. 539

every man the chance to make the most of the powers lodged in him by nature. Her democracy has established the value of freedom for all time and for the whole world. It ripens men, brings out their hidden qualities, their latent abilities to be useful to themselves and to others and to bring to perfection the highest and truest civilization. When the Spanish-American Republics shall have caught, or grown up to, the perception of the real cause of the greatness of the United States, they will advance with astonishing rapidity in the same direction, stimulated and supported by the model Republic. For this result there is everything to hope and little or nothing to fear. The certainties of the future are almost inconceivably great, and the possibilities are wholly too wide and grand to be grasped by the imagination.

PART FOURTH.

THE TWO SLOPES-WEST AND EAST OF THE VALLEY.

The Mississippi Valley has been spoken of as lying between two other regions whose resources, natural and industrial, are very different from those of the great central alluvial plain as well as from each other. They have each outside relations by their respective oceans, through commerce, that are scarcely less important to other sections of the country than to themselves.

The Valley is, first of all, agricultural. However great its manufacturing and mining may become, that industry must always take the lead from its geological structure, its great extent of fertile soil, its climatic conditions and its ready relations with populous Europe. The East, or Atlantic Slope, starting as a string of English colonies along the coast, devoted almost wholly to agriculture, soon developed commerce, and then manufactures, till it has become one of the centers of the world for those interests. The West, or Pacific Slope, so far as it is Anglo-Saxon-and its real development began with the advent of that race-is little more than one generation old. Its leading attraction has been mining, although agriculture has won singular triumphs in the fertile and better watered basins and valleys. Ultimately its commerce must develop to immense proportions, and manufacturing is likely, in the long future, to flourish to an extraordinary degree.

Notwithstanding the prominence that has been shown to belong to the Great Valley as the seat and center of a new and remarkable race, the Anglo-American and its model