Greece, once the pride and terror of the world, now a bondwoman to the ignorant and barbarous Turk; witness Rome, once mistress of the earth, now the miserable asylum of a cumbrous superstition, decaying even to the last faint gleam of extinction.

Prior to the reign of the Imperial Charles the Fifth, Spain was the freest nation in Europe: the power of her kings was guardedly limited; all orders were admitted to an equal representation in the diet; she maintained an entire independence on the Roman Church; she engaged and excelled in every walk of literature, science, and erudition; she influenced and controlled every other European sovereignty. Now, she is the forlorn and abject slave of papal superstition, the victim of the inquisition, dark, ignorant, helpless, a prey to the most despicable civil and religious bondage. Yet the plains of Castile and Arragon show as wide a champaign, and the range of the Pyrenees, the chain of the Sierra Morena, and the Mountains of the Asturias, lift their heads as proudly to the skies, now in the darkest hour of Spanish thraldom and degradation, as in her brightest day of civil and religious liberty, chivalric heroism, and mental illumination. The character of nations, therefore, is formed, not by physical, but by moral causes and influences, as government, religion, laws, and education, which will, hereafter, be shown at length.

The United States are situated between 25° 50′ and 49° 17' north latitude, and between 10° east and 48° 20' west longitude from Washington. The most northern part is bounded by a line, running due west from the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods, and the southern extremity is the outlet of the Rio del Norte. The eastern extremity is the Great Menan Island, on the coast of Maine, and the western extremity is Cape Flattery, north of Columbia River, on the Pacific Ocean. Their greatest extent from north to south is 1,700 miles, and from east to west 2,700. Their surface covers more than 2,500,000 square miles, or 1,600,000,000 acres; and their population is ten

millions, or about four persons to every square mile. The following table shows the population and surface of some of the most important parts of the world; namely, in round numbers, which is sufficient for our present purpose, to point out the proportion of territory and people between the United States and other sovereignties.

200,000,000 1,200,000

United States N. America 10,000,000 2,500,000

Total....435,800,000 9,687,000

So that the United States have the largest home territory of all the nations in the world, except Russia; and their population is gaining fast upon that of all the European powers. China is laid out of the question, because she is barbarous, helpless, and effete; she can never contend for the sovereignty or controlling influence of the world; that question must be decided hereafter, between America and the first-rate potentates of Europe. Britain possesses a hundred and fifty

millions of subjects in her colonial empire, and covers a dominion equal to nearly one-fifth of the whole surface of the globe; but her main strength must always dedend upon the resources, intelligence, spirit, and character of her native population in the British Isles. If these fail, her colonial empire will be soon dissipated into thin air. The following table shows the gross population and surface of the four quarters of the world.

The following tables show how fast the people increase in an extensive country, under the auspices of free and popular institutions. In the year 1749, the whole white population of the North American colonies, now the United States, amounted only to 1,046,000 souls, in the following proportions, as to the respective colonies, now states:

What the national capacities of the State of New-
York are, may be inferred, not only from her territo-
rial extent, which is ten thousand square miles larger
than all England and Wales taken together, but also
from the fact, that she has already, in 1817, outstripped
every other State in the Union, in the number of her
population; although, at the close of the revolutionary
war in 1783, she did not contain half the number of
souls which the States of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia, respectively possessed. The
following facts will show how rapid has been the growth
of some particular places in the United States. In the

C

year 1783, the population of the city of New-York was only 26,000; in the year 1790, 33,000; in 1800, 60,439; in 1810, 93,914; in 1817, 122,000; thus multiplying four times in thirty-four years. Its harbour, formed by the union of the Hudson with the strait of the Sound, called East river, makes a roadstead capable of containing all the navies of the world. Its commerce far surpasses that of any other city in the Union, and in the course of a few years will be second only to that of London. It imports most of the goods consumed between the Raritan and the Connecticut, a coast of one hundred and thirty miles, and between the Atlantic ocean and the lakes, a range of four hundred miles. In the year 1816, the foreign imports into the city exceeded fifty-six millions of dollars.

Fifty years since, no such place as Baltimore existed; and now it is a city, abounding in commerce, wealth, and splendour, and contains a population of nearly sixty thousand souls.

In the year 1770, there was not a single white inhabitant in all Kentucky; in 1790, there were 73,677 souls; in 1800, 220,960; and now, in 1817, nearly 700,000. In 1783, the city of New-Orleans was inhabited by a few miserable Spaniards, who carried on a small smuggling trade. Now, in 1817, it numbers nearly 40,000 inhabitants: and its exports, during the last year, exceeded those of all the New-England States taken together: the steam-boats have been found able to stem the current of the Mississippi; and henceforth, the struggle to engross the foreign trade of the whole western country will be between New-Orleans, New-York, Montreal, and Philadelphia. The difficulty of ascending the Mississippi, had until the experiment of the steam-boats, prevented New-Orleans from supplying the western States with foreign merchandise, which was purchased cheaper in New-York or Philadelphia, and carried by land to Pittsburgh, at the confluence of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers, and thence down the Ohio, to the various settlements on