through the influence of the United States, and recalled the words of De Tocqueville that the growing power of this commonwealth was a new factor in the world, the significance of which even the imagination could not grasp.
About the same time another diviner was forecasting the horoscope of the young nation. William H. Seward, then a senator in the Congress of the United States, was urging upon that body the imperative necessity, in the interest of American commerce, of more accurate surveys of the North Pacific Ocean. In a speech which was notable for its wide research, its eloquence, and its breadth of statesmanship, he referred to the great future which he saw was to be realized in the commercial intercourse of the United States through its newly acquired possessions on the Pacific slope, the Hawaiian Islands, and the certain opening of Japan and China. He stated that the relations with Europe, which were then so extensive and constantly increasing, would in time diminish and lose their importance, and that the great development of the republic was to be on the other side of the continent; and he thereupon uttered this famous prediction: "The Pacific Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond, will become the chief theatre of events in the world's great Hereafter." Commerce, under the benign influence of peace, was to bring about this great transformation, when "the better passions of mankind will soon have their development in the new theatre of human activity."[1]
- ↑ The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, by E. S. Creasy, New
