length of the shore line of coast, as estimated by the superintendent of the Coast Survey in his report, would be 33,063 miles."
The importance of the power of the United States being then firmly planted along the Pacific applies not only to the New World, but to the Old. Opposite to San Francisco, on the coast of that ocean, lie the wealthy but decrepit empires of China and Japan. Numerous groups of islets stud the larger part of the intervening sea, and form convenient stepping-stones for the progress of commerce or ambition. The intercourse of traffic between these ancient Asiatic monarchies and the young Anglo-American Republic must be rapid and extensive. Any attempt of the Chinese or Japanese rulers to check it will only accelerate an armed collision. The American will either buy or force his way. Between such populations as that of China and Japan on the one side, and that of the United States on the other—the former haughty, formal, and insolent, the latter bold, intrusive, and unscrupulous—causes of quarrel must sooner or later arise. The results of such a quarrel cannot be doubted. America will scarcely imitate the forbearance shown by England at the end of our late war with the Celestial Empire; and the conquests of China and Japan, by the fleets and armies of the United States, are events which many now living are likely to witness. Compared with the magnitude of such changes in the dominion of the Old World, the certain ascendancy of the Anglo-Americans over Central and Southern America seems a matter of secondary importance. Well may we repeat De Tocqueville's words, that the growing power of this commonwealth is, "Un fait entièrement nouveau dans le monde, et dont l'imagination elle-même ne saurait saisir la portée."
An Englishman may look, and ought to look, on the growing grandeur of the Americans with no small degree of generous sympathy and satisfaction. They, like ourselves, are members of the great Anglo-Saxon nation, "whose race and language are now overrunning the world from one end of it to the other."[1] and whatever differences of form of government may exist between us and them—whatever reminiscences of the days when, though brethren, we strove together, may rankle in the minds of us, the defeated party, we should cherish the bonds of common nationality that still exist between us. We should remember, as the
- ↑ Arnold.
