There are changes and crises in the course and destiny of political systems. The conditions of one period of time are different from the conditions of another period. Different conditions necessitate different political systems. Feudalism did not last always; European diplomacy is only three hundred years old. If Europe, out of her peculiar situation, originated the doctrine of balance of power, thus innovating upon the past, may not we, owing to the novelty of our situation, originate a continental system which will endure to the remotest periods of time, or so long as political systems shall have place on the earth? One empire may fall into fragments to-day; while another may not only not suffer dissolution, but really grow stronger, and appropriate, in a most legitimate manner, parts of the dismembered empire. We must allow, not only for the difference of conditions with reference to time, but, also, for the different situations at the same time of different political structures. To assume, because nations have been ground to atoms, or have fallen to pieces of their own weight, that therefore Russia and the United States are about to go in the same way, is a species of reasoning which is hardly warranted by scientific methods. It may be that the empire of Great Britain is itself doomed to dissolution at no very distant day; but it does not follow that the United States are, therefore, liable to the same fate, now or ever. So far from this, it is possible, if not highly probable, that as the remote provinces of the British empire shall fall away, the central political system of this continent may very naturally absorb at least one of the fragments, and thereby become stronger as a Government, and more potent for good to the people of an entire world. There are laws of dissolution, and laws of segregation and combination in the political as in the natural world. Great Britain may fall into fragments because her geographical and political conditions render her amenable to the laws of dissolution; while the United States may go on enlarging their boundaries and becoming more stable and powerful from the fact that their political status and local surroundings render them the legitimate subject of the laws of political growth and geographical enlargement. The British possessions are geographically too remote; they may not be united together by the necessary bonds of political union. The weakness of Great Britain may now be what the weakness of the Spanish empire once was. Her geography is against her. The day is gradually passing away when arbitrary power may hold distant regions in subjection to a central despotism; the day is at hand which demands that the bonds of union shall be natural and just, not arbitrary--bonds which forever assert their own inherent power to unite and grow stronger, not weaker, with the inevitable changes constantly being wrought out by the busy hand of time.