for their future. The leaders of the rebellion, than whom none better knew or more nicely calculated the strength and resources of the Union, counted with certainty on success, and the ablest, the most experienced, and best-informed statesmen of the Old World felt sure that the republic was gone, and spoke of it as the late United States. Not a few, even in the loyal states, who had no sympathy with the rebellion, believed it idle to think of suppressing it by force, and advised peace on the best terms that could be obtained. But Ilium fuit was chanted too soon; the American people were equal to the emergency, and falsified the calculations and predictions of their enemies, and surpassed the expectations of their friends.

The attitude of the real American people during the fearful struggle affords additional confidence in their destiny. With larger armies on foot than Napoleon ever commanded, with their line of battle stretching from ocean to ocean, across the whole breadth of the continent, they never, during four long years of alternate victories and defeats-and both unprecedentedly bloody-for a moment lost their equanimity, or appeared less calm, collected, tranquil, than in the ordinary times of peace. They not for a moment interrupted their ordinary routine of business or pleasure, or seemed conscious of being engaged in any serious struggle which required an effort. There was no hurry, no bustle, no excitement, no fear, no misgiving. They seemed to regard the war as a mere bagatelle, not worth being in earnest about. The on-looker was almost angry with their apparent indifference, apparent insensibility, and doubted if they moved at all. Yet move they did: guided by an unerring instinct, they moved quietly on with an elemental force, in spite of a timid and hesitating administration, in spite of inexperienced, over-cautious, incompetent, or blundering military commanders, whom they gently brushed aside, and desisted not till their object was gained, and they saw the flag of the Union floating anew in the breeze from the capitol of every state that dared secede. No man could contemplate them without feeling that there was in them a latent power vastly superior to any which they judged it necessary to put forth. Their success proves to all that what, prior to the war, was treated as American arrogance or self-conceit, was only the outspoken confidence in their destiny as a providential people, conscious that to them is reserved the hegemony of the world.

Count de Maistre predicted early in the century the failure of the United States, because they have no proper name; but his prediction assumed what is not the fact. The United States have a proper name by which all the world knows and calls them. The proper name of the country is America: that of the people is Americans. Speak of Americans simply, and nobody understands you to mean the people of Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chili, Paraguay, but everybody understands you to mean the people of the United States. The fact is significant, and foretells for the people of the United States a continental destiny, as is also foreshadowed in the so-called "Monroe doctrine," which France, during our domestic troubles, was permitted, on condition of not intervening in our civil war in favor of the rebellion, to violate.

There was no statesmanship in proclaiming the "Monroe doctrine," for the statesman keeps always, as far as possible,his government free to act according to the exigencies of the case when it comes up, unembarrassed by previous declarations of principles. Yet the doctrine only expresses the destiny of the American people, and which nothing but their own fault can prevent them from realizing in its own good time. Napoleon will not succeed in his Mexican policy, and Mexico will add some fifteen or twenty new states to the American Union as soon as it is clearly for the interests of all parties that it should be done, and it can be done by mutual consent, without war or violence. The Union will fight to maintain the integrity of her domain and the supremacy of her laws within it, but she can never, consistently with her principles or her interests, enter upon a career of war and conquest. Her system is violated, endangered, not extended, by subjugating her neighbors, for subjugation and liberty go not together. Annexation, when it takes place, must be on terms of perfect equality, and by the free act of the state annexed. The Union can admit of no inequality of rights and franchises between the states of which it is composed. The Canadian provinces and the Mexican and Central American states, when annexed, must be as free as the original states of the Union, sharing alike in the power and protection of the republic-alike in its authority, its freedom, its grandeur, and its glory, as one free, independent, self-governing people. They may gain much, but must lose nothing by annexation.

The Emperor Napoleon and his very respectable protégé,

Maximilian, an able man and a liberal-minded prince, can change nothing in the destiny of the United States, or of Mexico herself; no imperial government can be permanent beside the American republic, no longer liable, since the abolition of slavery, to be distracted by sectional dissensions. The states that seceded will soon, in some way, be restored to their rights and franchises in the Union, forming not the least patriotic portion of the American people; the negro question will be settled, or settle itself, as is most likely, by the melting away of the negro population before the influx of white laborers; all traces of the late contest in a very few years will be wiped out, the national debt paid, or greatly reduced, and the prosperity and strength of the republic be greater than ever. Its moral force will sweep away every imperial throne on the continent, without any effort or action on the part of the government. There can be no stable government in Mexico till every trace of the ecclesiastical policy established by the Council of the Indies is obliterated, and the church placed there on the same footing as in the United States; and that can hardly be done without annexation. Maximilian cannot divest the church of her temporal possessions, and place Protestants and Catholics on the same footing, without offending the present church party and deeply injuring religion, and that too without winning the confidence of the republican party. In all Spanish and Portuguese America the relations between the church and state are abnormal, and exceedingly hurtful to both. Religion is in a wretched condition, and politics in a worse condition still. There is no effectual remedy for either but in religious freedom, now impracticable, and to be rendered practicable by no European intervention, for that subjects religion to the state, the very source of the evils that now exist, instead of emancipating it from the state, and leaving it to act according to its own constitution and laws, as under the American system.

But the American people need not trouble themselves about their exterior expansion. That will come of itself as fast as desirable. Let them devote their attention to their internal destiny, to the realization of their mission within, and they will gradually see the whole continent coming under their system, forming one grand nation, a really Catholic nation, great, glorious, and free.

THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for April, 1873.]

DURING our late civil war it was almost proverbial to call our government the best government under heaven; and whoever in the loyal states expressed an opinion to the contrary ran some risk of being sent to Fort Lafayette, Fort Warren, or to some other federal place of imprisonment. I defended the government during those fearful times, and stood by it when many a stout heart failed, because it was the government of my country, and I owed it the allegiance due from the citizen; but never since the "Hard-Cider" campaign have I believed it practically "the best government under heaven," or superior to almost any other civilized government. Tippecanoe and Tyler too" upset my democracy, by showing how easily the people can be humbugged and carried away by a song. Till then I had believed in democracy, though I believed in little else.

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My friend, George Bancroft, defined democracy, in a lecture which I published in my Boston Quarterly Review, to be "eternal justice ruling through the people:" defined it in a series of resolutions adopted by a Democratic state convention, to be the "supremacy of man over his accidents "-meaning thereby that democracy regards the man as more than his possessions, social position, or any thing separable from his manhood-and got most unmercifully ridiculed for it; but the ridicule did not move me, and I held fast to the doctrine, that the will of the people is the most direct and authentic expression of the divine will that can be had or desired. The people held with me then, in some respects, the place the church now holds with me. labored under the comfortable illusion that, in order to secure wise and just government, all I had to do was to remove all restrictions on the free and full expression of the popular will, and to leave the people free to follow in all things their own divine instincts. The defects of bad legislation to which I could not shut my eyes, I attributed not to democracy, but to the fact that the democratic principle was obstructed, and the will of the people could not have its free and full expression. There were still many restraints on

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their will, retained from old monarchical and aristocratic institutions; such as an independent judiciary, and the English common law with its subtilties and technicalities. These should all be swept away, and the unrestrained will of the people be supreme, and make itself felt alike in the administration of justice, and the election of representatives in the legislature and in all the offices of the government, state or national. To secure the rule of justice and the recognition of the man over his accidents, every thing should be swept away that imposed the least check on the direct and immediate action of the popular will. People, though adopting the democratic principle, told me I went too far, but I knew I was logical; and I have never in my life been able to persuade myself that a principle, really sound and true, will not bear pushing to its last logical consequences. If the democratic principle will not bear being so pushed, it is simply a proof that it is untrue, and cannot be safely adopted. This was my reasoning then, and is my reasoning now. The country, public opinion, gave me the principle, furnished me the democratic premises, and I took it for granted that the principle was sound and the premises indisputable, as do the majority of my countrymen.

The "Hard Cider" campaign of 1840 came. In it I took an active part on the Democratic side, in behalf of Martin Van Buren, the last first-class man that sat, or probably that ever will sit, in the presidential chair of the United States; and my party was, as all the world knows, wofully defeated. It was the first presidential campaign in which I had ever taken an active part, and almost my first experience in practical politics. It was enough. What I saw served to dispel my democratic illusions, to break the idol I had worshipped, and shook to its foundation my belief in the divinity of the people, or in their will as the expression of eternal justice. I saw that they could be easily duped, easily made victims of the designing, and carried away by an irresistible passion in the wrong as easily as in the right. I was forced by the shock my convictions received, to review first my logic, and then to examine the premises which I had taken on trust from my democratic countrymen which I had not hitherto thought of questioning. I found them untenable and absurd. I ceased henceforth to believe in democracy, but I did not cease to be a loyal citizen, nor did I deem it necessary to abandon the Democratic party so called, which after all, was less unsound, less radical, and