The United States of North America as They are

THE progress of the United States, during the fifty years of their political existence, is unparalleled in the history of nations. Thirteen states have increased to twenty-four, two millions and a half of inhabitants to eleven millions. The public revenues, which in 1784 were scarcely six millions of dollars, are now twenty-five millions. The navy, from the very lowest beginning, commands the respect, and excites the jealousy of the power which has hitherto been the ruler of the ocean. Upwards of a thousand steam and merchant vessels, surpassing in velocity those of every other nation, are daily importing the products of the most distant countries, and diffusing

them through the interior of the Union, by means of rivers, navigable for thousands of miles*. A single state (New York) has completed what is unexampled in the Old World, China alone excepted, a canal, three hundred and sixty miles in length. Another state (Ohio) will have finished, in the course of next year, á second canal, three hundred miles long, thus establishing an artificial water communication of nearly three thousand miles, beyond all comparison the most extensive on the face of the earth. Above thirty other canals are in progress, among them the Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake, the former partly finished, and scarcely yielding in length to that of New York.

To crown the whole, the national debt amounts

* About twelve years ago there arrived at Leghorn, a ship, built at Pittsburgh, and cleared out from that place. The master presented his papers to the Custom-house officers, who would not give credit to them, insisting that the papers must have been forged, as there was no such a port as Pittsburgh, and accordingly the vessel was to be confiscated. The captain laid before the officer a map of the United States, directed his attention to the Gulf of Mexico, pointed out the mouth of the Mississippi, led him a thousand miles up the mouth of the Ohio, and from thence another thousand miles up to Pittsburgh: "This, Sir, is the port from whence my vessel has cleared out." The astonished officer would as soon have believed that it had been navigated from the

moon.

to no more than seventy-four millions of dollars, and is rapidly diminishing. The clergy is without tithes, and peace and tranquillity prevail without a secret police and without an army.

It would not be difficult to trace the causes which have contributed to raise the Union of North America to this astonishing height of prosperity. A sea-coast of three thousand miles, excellent harbours, important rivers, rising and emptying themselves in its territory, a rich virgin soil, a temperate climate, a population composed of the descendants of the first nation in the world, the sciences of the ancient, the experience of modern times transplanted into a new and susceptible soil, and both united to the most liberal constitution that ever existed, were certainly elements which, well-employed and well-directed, afforded reason to anticipate future greatness. The Union happily found a genius fully competent to give it this direction in-Washington. Ever the same at home, in the field and in the cabinet, he imperceptibly gave to the nation the impress of his character and his politics. A character more firm, more composed, and, notwithstanding its simplicity, more dignified, than this statesman's can scarcely be imagined. There

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