For a time, the flood may be diverted south or north: Mexico will doubtless, and British Columbia will probably, carry off a portion of the thousands who are pouring West from the bleak rocks of New England. The Californian expedition of 1853 against Sonora and Lower California will be repeated with success, but the tide will be but momentarily stayed. So entirely are English countries now the motherlands of energy and adventure throughout the world, that no one who has watched what has happened in California, in British Columbia, and on the west coast of New Zealand, can doubt that the discovery of placer gold fields on any coast or in any sea-girt country in the world, must now be followed by the speedy rise there of an English government: were gold, for instance, found in surface diggings in Japan, Japan would be English in five years. We know enough of Chili, of the new Russian country on the Amoor, of Japan, to be aware that such discoveries are more than likely to occur. In the face of facts like these, men are to be found who ask whether a break-up of the Union is not still probable--whether the Pacific States are not likely to secede from the Atlantic; some even contend for the general principle that “America must go to pieces--she is to big.” It is small powers, not great ones, that have become impossible: the unification of Germany is in this respect but the dawn of a new era. The great countries of to-day are smaller than were the smallest of a hundred years ago. Lewes was farther from London in 1700 than Edinburgh is now. New York and San Francisco will in 1870 be nearer to each other than Canton and Pekin. From the point of view of mere size, there is more likelihood of England entering the Union than of California seceding from it. The material interests of the Pacific States will always lie in union. The West, sympathizing in the main with the Southerners upon the slavery question, threw herself into the war, and crushed them, because she saw the necessity of keeping her outlets under her own control. The same policy would hold good for the Pacific States in the case of the continental railroad. America, of all countries, alone shares the future of both Atlantic and Pacific, and she knows her interests too well to allow such an advantage to be thrown away. Uncalculating rebellion of the Pacific States upon some sudden heat, is the only danger to be apprehended, and such a rising could be put down with ease, owing to the manner in which these States are commanded from the sea. Throughout the late rebellion, the Federal navy, though officered almost entirely by Southerners, was loyal to the flag, and it would be so again. In these days, loyalty may be said to be peculiarly the sailor‘s passion: perhaps he loves his country because he sees so little of it. The single danger that looms in the more distant future is the eventual control of Congress by the Irish, while the English retain their hold on the Pacific shores.