The United States offer the example of the best development of the Imperialist evolution in the world. It dates as far back as the proclamation of the Independence of the Republic. When she was admitted into the international society of Sovereign States, she had at first to settle her political organization. The framing of a constitutional charter proved to be a very arduous task, at times almost desperate. Three sets of divergent opinions were fighting at close range during the protracted and solemn deliberations which at last reached a happy conclusion. Thirteen American British Colonies had coalesced to wring their Independence from England. The goal once attained, a first group of opinion was favoured by the supporters of the dissolution of the temporary union organized to secure the Independence of the whole, but to revert, they said, if successful, to their previous separate status. Had this view prevailed, at the very start North America would have been cumbered with thirteen Sovereign States. Many were alarmed at the creation of so many small Republics. More reasonable persons suggested to organize three or four of them, instead of thirteen, meeting as much as possible the wants natural to geographical conditions. It was no doubt an improvement on the first mentioned scheme. It met with the hearty support of devoted adepts. It is much to be hoped that they will forever receive from the successive generations of their countrymen the reward of the gratitude they deserve, the true statesmen who, at this important juncture, stepped on the scene and bravely took their stand in favour of the maintenance of the Union which had conquered Independence, and of the establishment of only one great Republic. The celebrated Hamilton was their trusted leader. They knew they were undertaking an herculean task. At that time, the population of the thirteen original States, scarcely four millions in number, was scattered over a vast territory, and located, for the most part, on the lands near the Atlantic coasts, two thousand miles in length, from North to South. Transportation was in a very primitive stage. Many years had yet to run before the whistle of the locomotive, powerful and struggling, would be echoed by the solitude of immense forests. No one foresaw that, in less than a century, the overflowing tide of European immigration would roll its waves so powerfully as to cross the whole continent and the Rocky Mountains to reach the coast of the Pacific Ocean. With such conditions, so unfavourable to the aspirations of only one new Independent State, moulding together political groups so far apart, interests apparently so hostile, the local point of view, local prejudices, were sure to dominate. They inspired the strong current of opinion in favour of the dissolution of the temporary Union, and the organization of every one of the old provinces into a separate Sovereign State.