by conquest, and held its distant possessions by the strong hand of military occupancy and rule. America, on the contrary, gains her empire by emigration and colonization. New Siates form with a swelling population, and at once take on a republican government, assimilated to the great model which is before them, and very soon are incorporated into the same. The strength of this moral influence cannot be measured, as it moulds all the communities which organize over the entire continent. Mormonism will soon feel the pressure of this influence upon either side—as soon as States shall form upon the Pacific coast—and insensibly will she catch the spirit, and take the forms of truly republican institutions.
We cannot cast our gaze beyond the Rocky Mountains, and scrutinize the face of society collecting upon our extreme western coast, without a measure of anxiety for the unfolding future. Our country is certainly entering upon one of the grandest experiments it has ever been called to undertake, and is passing through the severest crisis it has ever been made to know. We cannot fail to observe the singular coincidence, that while a bold attempt is made by Anglo-Saxons themselves to reproduce the old civilization of Asia, and while a community has actually been founded upon that basis, a strong and copious tide of really Asiatic population has been pouring into our California territory. Take, as an estimate the fact that within three months of the past year seventeen thousand emigrants from China have sailed from three of her ports, most of whom are discharged upon our coast. What is to be the issue of this commingling of races on this continent? In the language of an American Senator[1] on the floor of Congress, “the reunion of the two civilizations which, having parted on the plains of Asia four thousand years ago, and having travelled ever afterwards in opposite directions around the world, now meet again on the coasts and islands of the Pacific ocean.” Will the issue be in accordance with the fond prediction of the same Senator, “the equalization of the condition of society, and the restoration of the unity of the human family?” Time alone can declare—but we cannot be insensible to the momentous crisis which is be-
- ↑ Mr. Seward.
