430
man nature is altered, and men wholly transformed, I shall refuse to believe in the duration of a government which is called upon to hold together forty different peoples, disseminated over a territory equal to one half of Europe in extent; to avoid all rivalry, ambition, and struggles, between them; and to direct their independent activity to the accomplishment of the same designs.
But the greatest peril to which the Union is exposed by its increase, arises from the continual changes which take place in the position of its internal strength. The distance from Lake Superior to the gulf of Mexico extends from the 47th to the 30th degree of latitude, a distance of more than twelve hundred miles, as the bird flies. The frontier of the United States winds along the whole of this immense line; sometimes falling within its limits, but more frequently extending far beyond it, into the waste. It has been calculated that the whites advance every year a mean distance of seventeen miles along the whole of this vast boundary.[1] Obstacles, such as an unproductive district, a lake, or an Indian nation unexpectedly encountered, are sometimes met with. The advancing column then halts for a while; its two extremities fall back upon themselves, and as soon as they are reunited they proceed onward. This gradual and continuous progress of the European race toward the Rocky mountains, has the solemnity of a providential event; it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onward by the hand of God.
Within this first line of conquering settlers, towns are built, and vast states founded. In 1790 there were only a few thousand pioneers sprinkled along the valleys of the Mississippi; and at the present day these valleys contain as many inhabitants as were to be found in the whole Union in 1790. Their population amounts to nearly four millions.[2] The city of Washington was founded in 1800, in the very centre of the Union; but such are the changes which have taken place, that it now stands at one of the extremities; and the delegates of the most remote western states are already obliged to perform a journey as long as that from Vienna to Paris.[3]
