CORRESPONDENCE.

PERPETUAL peace between the United States and the British Empire, must be the earnest wish of every good man in both countries. There are many strong tendencies to this in the nature of things. Not only our common genealogy and our common language and literature, but our commercial affinities draw us together, and should knit us with the bands of interest and of love. And yet there are other effects of this consanguinity and contiguity, which kindle up angry passions, and from time to time threaten war.

Let us look at the matter from an elevated point-as philanthropists, as brethren, as Christians and try whether we cannot remove the occasions of offence.

And first, let us consider what causes unkindness towards us, in the hearts of our European kinsmen. We speak of the mass, and not of politicians, when we reduce the matter to two points: Slavery, which has been made use of to alienate from us the good will of a large, active, and influential portion of the British people, who do not understand the intrinsic difficulties of the question, or the nature of our government ;-and Repudiation, or a failure to comply with State contracts. Now, although this has been much exaggerated in Europe, it has always been underrated in America. We have no right to expect Englishmen to discriminate between the States, or to look for any exemption from the disgrace which has been cast upon the whole nation by the wrong doing of a part.

What is the cause of anger on the other side? is it not because we have an abiding suspicion that England is jealous of our prosperity, and desirous of keeping us in check? What is the staple commodity of our "slang whangers," and professing patriots? It is an appeal to these deep-rooted prejudices which are excited by wicked men whenever a general effect is desired to be produced upon the mass of the voters; excited with cause or without cause. It is this jealousy which makes us so sensitive to the occasional abuse and misrepresentation of the English press.

But if there were not in the very position of the two parties some good reason for these suspicions,. they could hardly be roused into mischievous strength. No angry feeling can be excited in America against France, until some real provocation have been given. When the French government united with that of Great Britain in endeavoring to prevent the annexation of Texas, we were surprised as well as offended. But there was only one of these feelings toward England. It was just what we expected. We seem to consider it certain that she will take every opportunity to thwart us, and to open a way to injure. us-in short, to prepare for war with us.

Now the great rock of offence, is Canada. Great Britain holds on to everything she gets, and we have no reason to conclude that because she retains this colony, she is inimical to us. And yet, when we come to look at its value to her, it seems to be chiefly as a point from which she can attack the United States. It is somewhat like a hostile garrison on this side the water.-In the opinion of

From Frazer's Magazine.

ENGLAND AND YANKEE-LAND, BY ANGLOMANE. "Un linguaggio

Parlan tutti, fratelli li dice
Lo stroniero, il comune lignaggio
A ognun d'essi sul volto transar."

THE United States of America are the greatest edifice ever achieved by the Anglo-Saxon race. They are a living evidence of the stubborn vitality, of the consistent enterprise, of the sound judgment, of that sturdy variety of the old Teutonic stock. England came last to the great work of American colonization. Rival nations had seized upon all that, was deemed habitable in the New World. The English had to put up with a barren, inhospitable coast, under the inclemencies of an iron climate. Other powers exhausted their resources to secure the golden prize. The English government abandoned the new settlements to the contingencies of private speculation. The results were Such as no human wisdom could anticipate. The Mississippi valley withered in the hands of the French. Spain was beggared by the gold of her Peruvian and Mexican mines. England alone owed her wealth, and to a great extent her safety, to her transatlantic possessions. New England and Virginia were the master-pieces of English

constructiveness.

When the day of emancipation came, and the overgrown colonies felt able and impatient to shift for themselves, the superiority of the British over the southern races was yet more strenuously asserted. French levity and Spanish indolence gave way before American thriftiness and endurance. The Creole everywhere dwindled and vanished before the Yankee; and the day is not, perhaps, beyond the limit of human conjecture when the preponderant element shall have completed its work of irresistible, even although pacific invasion, when the Anglo-Saxon shall lord it all over the

continent.

It is with little reason, we believe, and to little purpose, that an outery has been raised in England against the late schemes of American aggrandizement. The annexation of Texas, the invasion of the Oregon territory by right of accretion, or by whatever name such conquests and usurpations may be designated, are matters of necessity. They are the obvious consequence of that onward impulse, of that go-a-headism, which can only be arrested by the desert or the ocean. The Yankees have already monopolized the name of Americans, and the day will perhaps be when their universal nation and the New World shall be utterly identified.

"The United States of America," observes Mr. Palmer Putnam, in a statistical work lately published,"occupy an area of 2,300,000 square miles, or 650,000 more than the whole of Europe, excepting Russia.

"Collectively, their greatest length is 3000 miles, their greatest breadth 1700 miles.

"They have a frontier line of about 10,000, a sea-coast of 3600 miles, and a lake-coast of 1200 miles."

A few pages farther we learn that "the United States have 272 millions of acres of public lands surveyed and unsold, and 811 millions more which

*"American Facts," by George Palmer Putnam. Lon don, 1845. A work written with remarkable skill, and containing a great deal of useful information on impor

tant topics.

are unsurveyed. These lands are sold at 125 cents (say 5s. sterling) per acre," &c.

With all this extent of territory, with all this unimproved desert, the Americans are still fretting for want of elbow-room. Still they drive the wild Indians before them beyond the great lakes, beyond the Rocky Mountains, beyond all the limits of the regions appointed by Providence as the dwelling of man. They bully the Mexicans on the south, and sympathize with the Canadians on the north. They adopt for their motto in their popular jour

nals,

"No pent-up Utica contracts our powers;

His

For the whole boundless continent is ours." It is not difficult to account for this apparently senseless ambition. The Americans are a race of emigrants. The security and prosperity of the country is based on a system of general migration. The American is the citizen of a world. His rights, his name, his language, follow him everywhere. A descendant of pilgrims, he has no narrow-minded notions of local patriotism. wooden dwelling is something intermediate between a European house and an Arabian tent. On the background of civilization there opens before him a wide region of swamps and forests, a refuge for the outcasts of society. Therein, more than in any constitutional providence, lies the strength of the republic. As long as the valley of the Mississippi has marshes to drain and woodlands to clear, a rich soil and a blessed climate to rebuild broken fortunes and soothe disappointment, the Union can be in no imminent danger. As long as the republic is in possession of such an extensive means of ridding itself of all corrupting elements, corruption cannot strike deep roots. Civil and religious passions may ruffle the surface, but the waters are too shallow to be much troubled by storms.

Illimitedness of territory is then essential to the tone and temper of the American mind. Conscious of unbounded existence, the Yankee moves to his aim, circumscribed only by the natural orbit of his individual powers. He apprehends no encroachments, brooks no obstruction. He relies on no intervention of miraculous agents. Hence his life is movement, not struggle. He is active, not restless. His interests naturally harmonize with social welfare. His private efforts are easily identified with the forwarding of the good of the state. In a land of universal suffrage he has nothing to hope from violence or conspiracy. His equanimity in social life has a soothing influence on his domestic affections. At home and abroad the American is rational, resigned, and hopeful. Disappointed in one branch of industry he calmly turns to another. A bankrupt in the cast he sets up in a new line of business in the west. ever the result of the battle he is now engaged in, the "far west" always offers a safe and honorable retreat. Hence that "far west" must needs be inexhaustible, it must expand in proportion to the rapid increase of population. From Virginia to Kentucky, and hence to Arkansas, Texas. and the Oregon, down to the western shore, all must be appropriated by one sweeping inroad. Whenever the overwhelming tide be arrested or forced back by material causes, then it may be time to look out for an awful reaction. Evils which the safety-valves of emigration either averted or palliated will burst forth with redoubled intensity. Civil dissensions, which have hitherto

What

All these, however, although in our mind unavoidable, are as yet remote contingencies; and the American statesmen of all parties, by so unanimously concurring in their late measures of territorial enlargement, seem to evince an undefinable dread of such probable issue, and an anxious desire to ward it off by a farther extension of their migratory system.

Not that the Mexican or British North American territories may not be considered, even now, as widely open to Yankee speculation, but the United States, who have given the first instance of a colonization without emigration as it were, are bent upon claiming as home every foot of ground upon which their wild pioneers and squatters may set their foot, and determined that emigration shall add to their territory what it would otherwise take from their population. Therefore if the Kentuckian hunter, or the trapper of Michigan, pursue their game beyond the boundary of the Union, it is for the boundary to stretch, it is for the Union to follow them (by annexation) to Texas and Oregon. Every citizen is an integrant part of the republic; wherever he may choose his abode, he is understood to carry his stars and stripes-in fact, the republic itself along with him.

Whatever may be said as to the justice and wisdom of this system, we do not see what honor or advantage England or Europe may obtain by interfering with it. War in America, with whatsoever result it might be crowned, would never be attended with any permanent success. England has fought but too long for the privilege of sending out lieutenant-governors to unprofitable colonies. It is universally acknowledged that British trade has gained by the emancipation of the States. The day may equally come when the independence of the Canadas, nay of all the British Transatlantic and Australian colonies, may be looked upon as a matter of mutual expediency. What of it? The British race will not the less have settled and thriven on nearly three fourths of the earth. Old England will not the less be the centre of a hundred New Englands. It is not by the appointment of a few executive officers, or by stationing idle garrisons in those provinces, but by imparting to them the advantages of her industry, learning, and civilization that Great Britain may exercise a lasting supremacy over them. It is not by squabbling against rights of search and boundary lines in a desert, that kindred nations can contribute to the advancement of the common cause of justice and humanity. All struggles between England and the eldest of her colonies, were the latter even to carry into effect her ambitious views by armed conquest and usurpation, would be equally unnatural and impolitic. But if her new possessions are either the result of purchase, as in the case of

The Oregon question is indeed of a more complicate nature. The honor of the British crown is equally interested in the protection of the remotest territories of the empire. Yield only one inch, and there will be no end of Yankee blustering and bravado. No man of sense would recommend peaceful measures in presence of an arrogant adversary; for what says the Italian proverb? "Colui che si fa pecora, il lupo se la mangia,' and England has wolves enough around her ready to show their teeth the moment she betrays the slightest symptom of sheepishness.

But to fight the battles of the Canadians is a very thankless task. It has always been and always will be in the nature of colonies to cling to the fatherland as long only as they are compelled to hang helplessly on its support. It is idle to rely on their loyalty and gratitude. Sam Slick himself, the most faithful subject on the other side of the Atlantic, can find no better argument to bind the Bluenoses to their allegiance than the advantages derivable from the consumption of their beef and pork by the standing garrison at Halifax.

Were then, one day, those colonies to discover that their real interests lie the other way, were they to raise a unanimous cry for independence or for affiliation as members of the Republican Union, the armed interference on the part of England, however unavoidable, would in the end prove vain and improvident.

England and America have had already too many international wars, and indulged but too long their feelings of mutual animosity. There can be no rational ground of jealousy between them. Even the war of independence was a comparatively bloodless and guiltless struggle. There was much firmness and earnestness, but very little exasperation of parties. The whole matter was controverted and settled between two nations of men. It was all fair play, it was a legitimate debate of right and wrong, something like a difference arising between brothers at the division of their paternal inheritance. There was no sacking of cities, no shooting of prisoners, no military executions, none of the horrors and calamities which civil war is but too apt to exhibit in some even of the most civilized countries of Europe. Such a contest should have left no rancor in the heart of either victor or vanquished. That fraternal dispute is already so far back in the past as to admit of a ready and total oblivion. It is most important to both parties that there should be harmony and good understanding between them.

It is this rankling ill-will and mutual back-biting that we deplore, even more than the prospect of open hostilities. If the boundary line across the Oregon is deemed a fit bone of contention, let it be fought out at once, and let us hear no more of it. But the torrents of dastardly abuse, the bullying and bragging, the "Yankee-doodleing," and the "Britishers-lick-all-the-world-and-we-lick-theBritishers," are unworthy of Anglo-Saxon manliness, and have a tendency to disgrace the cause of social progress, of which both nations are so amply qualified to lead the van.

The writer of these pages belongs to neither