After a few words on the vigour of the English blood, as exhibited in
the commerce, intelligence, and activity of the United States, he
returns to the immediate possessions and prowess of England. "I have
seen the English posts which stud the wilderness from the Canadian lakes
to the Pacific Ocean. I have seen English adventurers with that innate
power which makes every individual, whether Briton or American, a real
representative of his country, monopolising the trade, and influencing
the destinies of California. And lastly, I have seen the English
merchants of a barbarian Archipelago, which promises, under their
guidance, to become the centre of the traffic of the east and the west,
of the new world and the old. In saying all this, I have seen less than
half the grandeur of the English race. How insignificant in comparison
are all the other nations of the earth, one nation alone excepted.
Russia and Great Britain literally gird the globe where either continent
has the greatest breadth, a fact which, taken in connexion with their
early annals, can scarcely fail to be regarded as the work of a special
Providence. After the fall of the Roman empire, a scanty and obscure
people suddenly burst on the west and east, as the dominant race of the
times; one swarm of the Normans making its way to England, while another
was establishing its supremacy over the Sclavonians of the Borysthenes,
the two being to meet in opposite directions at the end of a thousand
years."
He regards the gigantic power of Russia as in an unconscious
co-partnership with England in the grand cause of commerce and
civilisation. He also makes the curious and true remark that,
notwithstanding the astonishing successes of the Normans in Europe, they
were never numerous enough to establish their language in any of the
conquered countries. Their unparalleled successes, therefore, seem to
express the idea that those feeble bands of warriors were strengthened
every where to accomplish the purposes of Providence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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