But it is not alone in the mutual appreciation of each other’s value, by the States and their distant possessions, and their mutual willingness to share in each other’s burthens, and to have an identity of destiny, that these States and their possessions differ from Great Britain and her colonies. The two nations, apart from the views of their respective colonists, differ widely from each other in the most essential point necessary to the beneficial governmental connexion of any country with another, be it empire or colony, or distant far or near. And that difference consists in the people of the United States always becoming thoroughly acquainted with what they are connected with, and thoroughly understanding how that connexion may be rendered advantageous; and in the people of England’s desiring to retain their sway over what they will not take the trouble to understand, and wishing to combine and harmonise their interests with those which they seem, and ever have seemed, determined to be in ignorance regarding. Almost every intelligent inhabitant of the States, at this present moment, has nearly as definite and particular a knowledge of the portions of California that have been explored, as those who live in or have traversed California for themselves. The value of town lots, their situation and eligibility in San Francisco are as well understood in New York and Boston as they are by the man who occupies the next lot to them. There is not a spot where a village might grow up—there is not a place where a mill might be advantageously built—that is not known, marked, and considered, with all its relative bearings and benefits, by thousands in the States, with just as much intention of taking advantage of it, and, from the extraordinary enterprise of the people, with just as much likelihood of being able to do so, as those that are on the spot. The whole country—its towns, its situations for towns, its valleys, its hills, its woods, and its want of woods, its crops, and its climate, are, for all purposes of business, for present and for future advantage to the States, well and universally understood by the mass of the people. Its newspapers, published at the immense distance that San Francisco is from New York and Boston, are largely supported by subscribers in these cities, and by the people in every direction over the vast surface of the United States. The advertisements in them of village lots for sale, are matters of nearly as much interest to Americans as an auction sale of a bankrupt’s furniture and plate would be to a Jew in London.