"It used to be said that if Athens, and Lacedæmon could but make up their minds to be good friends and make a common cause, they would be masters of the world. The wealth, the science, the maritime enterprise, and daring ambition of the one, assisted by the population, the territory, the warlike spirit, and stern institutions of the other, could not fail to carry the whole world before them. That was a project hostile to the peace and prosperity of mankind, and ministering only to national vanity. A far grander object, of more easy and more honourable acquisition, lies before England and the United States, and all other countries owning our origin and speaking our language. Let them agree not in an alliance offensive and defensive, but simply to never go to war with one another. Let them permit one another to develop as Providence seems to suggest, and the British race will gradually and quietly attain to a pre-eminence beyond the reach of mere policy and arms. The vast and ever-increasing interchange of commodities between the several members of this great family, the almost daily communications now opened across, not one, but several oceans, the perpetual discovery of new means of locomotion, in which steam itself now bids fair to be supplanted by an equally powerful but cheaper and more convenient agency--all promise to unite the whole British race throughout the world in one social and commercial unity, more mutually beneficial than any contrivance of politics. Already, what does Austria gain from Hungary, France from Algiers, Russia from Siberia, or any absolute monarchy from its abject population, or what town from its rural suburbs, that England does not derive in a much greater degree from the United States, and the United States from England? What commercial partnership, what industrious household exhibits so direct an exchange of services? All that is wanted is that we should recognise this fact, and give it all the assistance in our power. We cannot be independent of one another. The attempt is more than unsocial; it is suicidal. Could either dispense with the labour of the other, it would immediately lose the reward of its own industry. Whether national jealousy, or the thirst for warlike enterprise, or the grosser appetite of commercial monopoly, attempt the separation, the result and the crime are the same. We are made helps meet for one another. Heaven has joined all who speak the British language, and what Heaven has joined let no man think to put asunder."