as possible to what would remain the centre of population, but as to the location destined to enjoy the distinction there was the greatest possible conflict of conjecture. Goodhue declared that it would remain in the North for countless ages, and that when it did shift it would travel toward the manufacturing districts of New England.
Stone of Maryland argued that as the tides of humanity followed the lines of least resistance, they would flow into the warm and fertile South.
The vast domain to the westward was not taken into the calculations of statesmen predicting the course of empire. The profoundest philosophers of the latter part of the eighteenth century were unable to grasp the transformations soon to be wrought by the application of steam. They could not dream that subsequent generations would establish a teeming civilization in the distant and unmeasured solitudes. A century later, when the eleventh census was taken, the centre of population was five hundred and twenty miles westward of the spot Congress had fixed upon as the unchanging focus of our growth. Madison alone caught a glimpse of continental
