APPENDIX.
No. 1.
A SUPPLEMENTARY LETTER ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS, THE CALIFORNIAS, AND THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES IN REGARD TO THE ENCROACHMENTS OF ENGLAND.
If there is anything that peculiarly distinguishes the statesmanship of England, it is the prospective wisdom with which its Ministers (while guarding the momentary interests at home,) seek new vents for the labor of its population and for the surplus of that population, also, when it becomes too crowded within the limits of the British Islands. It is the want of this vigilant policy that peculiarly characterizes our own country. In the midst of a vast territory, with ample room for the expansion of our inhabitants for hundreds of years, we are careless of the future, and we do not look with wariness to those geographical points of vantage around the earth of which England is gradually possessing herself, for the extension and guardianship of her commercial interests. We thus permit a grasping and ambitious rival to monopolize positions which, if they do not directly affect the people of our own generation, cannot fail, especially in the event of war, to injure and annoy our posterity.
We have seen Great Britain add Affghanistin, Scinde, and the Chinese Empire, to her control within the last two years; at the same time fixing her power steadily in Canada, by the suppression of every symptom of rebellious spirit. We have seen her firmly planted within her fortresses at Bermuda, establishing herself at the Balize, and encroaching on Guatemala; we have seen her holding the key of the Mediterranean at Gibraltar, and the power of the Straits at Malta and the Ionian Isles; we find her in the southern Atlantic, at St Helena, and in the Indian Seas at numberless islands; and we learn that she at last pounced, without warning, on the Hawaiian group, with the same spirit that animated her conquests in China, (although she has since officially disavowed the acts of her officer.) Britain has thus encircled the globe with her power, and in this greedy acquisition of territory, and prudent husbandry of resources, our Statesmen should at least perceive a warning of danger from a bold and ambitious rival, if they do not learn a lesson which, under similar circumstances, they would be studious to emulate.
The temper of our Republic is entirely too much devoted to the interests of the passing day. We writhe under debt, and we rush into repudiation. We suffer under financial distress, and we adopt some palliative expedient that saves us from momentary ruin. We dislike the policy of the hour, and we attribute it exclusively to Executive misrule; and the continual distractions of the whole scheme of our popular government seem but to nourish an unceasing nervousness as to who is to rule, and who to control the national patronage. This spirit is creating a vacillating system, which, in the end, must become nationally characteristic. If
