So it seems that the supreme authority is about to escape from Western and Central Europe, to pass to the New World. In the northern part of that other hemisphere offshoots of the European race have founded a vigorous society full of sap, whose influence grows with a rapidity that has never yet been seen anywhere. In crossing the ocean, it has left behind on the soil of old Europe traditions, prejudices, and usages, which, as _impedimenta_ heavy to carry, would have embarrassed its movements and retarded its progressive march. In about thirty years the United States will have, according to all probability, a hundred millions of population, in possession of the most powerful means, distributed over a territory which would make France fifteen or sixteen times over, and of the most wonderful disposition.… Vainly do the occidental and central nations of Europe attribute to themselves a primacy, which, in their vanity, they think sheltered from events and eternal: as if there were anything eternal in the grandeur and prosperity of societies, the works of men!--MICHEL CHEVALIER, _Rapports du Jury International: Exposition Universelle de 1867 à Paris_, Tom. I., Introduction, pp. DXIV-DXVI. * * * * * America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin territories, with its republic, with its equilibrium between stability and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the continent of the Future,--the immense continent stretched by God between the Atlantic and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve all social problems. [_Loud cheers._] Europe has to decide whether she will confound herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the altars old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the theocracies despotic empires,--or whether she will go by labor, by liberty, and by the republic, to coöperate with America in the grand work of universal civilization.--EMILIO CASTELAR, _Speech in the Spanish Cortes_, June 22, 1871. MONOGRAPH.