only the laws of inanimate matter, of the unmeasured regions of space, but of the immortal soul itself, in the recesses of its intellectual, moral, and religious nature. Man is studied as man, as father, husband, brother, friend, citizen, magistrate, legislator, and soldier. He is viewed as an element of the town, state, nation, world, and universe. Unlimited and unwearied, the spirit of inquiry seeks to know the rights of men in masses, as parts of a nation; and the rights of nations, as parts of the world; and our relations to the world, as the children of God.* In all ages, the influence of example has been acknowledged and inculcated. It is an incitement to sincerity, an encouragement to duty. The only legacy which the rude savage leaves to his children, or to his tribe, is a recital of his deeds, that they may be followed as the highest examples of good of which their nature is capable. The good man of the civilized world, in his parting blessing to those whom he loves best, speaks of examples of goodness as more precious to the forming man, than all the visible treasures of the earth. It is so with nations. The examples of nations influence nations, and each is held responsible, not only to its own subjects or citizens, but to the world, and to those eternal laws of right, which, in the process of moral change, will give equal freedom to the prince and to the slave. Having made these remarks as introductory to the subjects treated of in the following pages, it is now our purpose to speak briefly of our own country, of the Republic of the United * "Every generous emotion," says an interesting writer, "is in its nature elastic, and naturally labors to widen the sphere of its influence: the first impulse serves the virtuous mind to wake, Taylor's Natural History of Society. States of America; of its duties to itself, and its responsible relations to other countries. It is not the design of the author, however, to illustrate this great subject by a statement of abstract propositions, for this is forbidden by his limits; but rather to lead the reader into that atmosphere of thought which shall best prepare him to follow us in the investigation of those realities, those actual conditions of our country, as a matter of duty to ourselves, and to the nation and age in which we live. THE RESPONSIBLE DUTIES AND RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. THE PIONEER. WE honor the pioneer! We reverence him as the early agent of Providence in all those great changes of life which constitute the improvement of the world. We speak of the pioneer in an enlarged sense, as the discoverer of new regions, new agents, new laws, new beauties, and new combinations in the natural world, as well as new truths in the moral world. He seems to be endowed with an instinct superior to reason, a gift from his Maker to extend the limits of knowledge, and the great purposes of divine beneficence. We find him in the wilderness, self-exiled from the refinements of civilization, inviting labor, enduring hardships, incurring dangers, a willing neighbor to the savage. We find him upon the ocean, in the frail constructed bark, without instructions from man, ploughing the trackless deep, with no chart of his destined shores but that of faith. We find him in the icy regions of the poles, though aided by the light of science, but still the same unyielding and self-sacrificing spirit, reaching forward to burst the boundaries of his view. We find him in the laboratory and in the workshop, in the halls of legislation and in the observatory. We find him in the caverns of the earth, in the depths of the sea, in the vaults of the ancients, in the crater of the volcano, on the summit of the highest mountain, and borne by the chariot of science above and beyond the tempests of the sky. We find him, too, in the missions of the gospel to distant lands; we find him struggling in the cause of freedom; earnest and bold in all reforms, and a ministering angel of sympathy in the cause of suffering humanity. COLUMBUS AND THE PURITANS, THE GREAT PIONEERS OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. Ir was an extraordinary period in the history of the world, when the western voyages of Columbus were projected, and which led to the discovery of the American continent.* His aim was dignity, rank, and wealth, and these were sought with the noblest motives. The vast gains that he anticipated from his discoveries, he intended to appropriate to princely purposesto institutions for the relief of the poor of his native city, to the foundation of churches, and, above all, to crusades for the recovery of the holy sepulchre.† Endowed with talents of a high order, with a poetical temperament, a fervent piety, and, withal, a bigot's zeal, he was eminently fitted for such a mission. * An unparalleled impulse was given, about this period, to the progress of European civilization, by the simultaneous invention, or at least introduction from the East, of the mariner's compass, gunpowder and artillery, an improved system of arithmetic, and the art of printing. Combined with these were a renewed study of the Roman law, the cultivation of Greek literature, the restoration of the fine arts, and the opening of new paths of industry and commercial enterprise. See Taylor's Natural History of Society. The state of geographical knowledge at the period when the continent of America was discovered, may be inferred from the treaty of Tordesillas, made June 7, 1494, in which were determined "the principles on which the vast extent of unappropriated empire, in the eastern and western hemispheres, was ultimately divided between two petty states of Europe." - See Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. II. p. 181. + Irving's Columbus. All was done in the name of the Holy Trinity, and through his sovereigns, he owned no master but his God. Such was the character of Columbus. He discovered the continent of America, but it was left to other pioneers to people and to subdue it. His was the zeal of the Holy Catholic church, theirs was the zeal of reform. He carried the banner of St. Peter, they were the followers of Martin Luther. They were all inquirers after truth, but the declarations of the pope, and the protest of the sons of Britain, were alike the sources of zeal, faith, and sacrifice - all were prepared for martyrdom, each for his own form of faith. Columbus died ignorant of the extent of his own discovery,* and the Puritans died without a knowledge of the freedom which they had secured for their children and the world. The Puritans filled with a self-respect that knew no laws but those of duty, moved by a sense of accountability that acknowledged no ruler but God—preferred the foreign wilderness with the rights of conscience, with unrestrained devotion, to the firesides of home made bitter by oppression. They were the pioneers of the moral world; they were the defenders of the mind's integrity, of the soul's best good, of man's high destiny. We have no occasion to refer the reader to the well-known history of the Puritans; it would be as useless as an artist's chart to find the noonday sun in a cloudless sky. We point him to our country AS IT IS, with the proud conviction that all who read our pages have knowledge of WHAT IT WAS. * He supposed Hispaniola to be the ancient Ophir, which had been visited by the ships of King Solomon, and that Cuba and Terra Firma were but remote parts of Asia. † It is well remarked by an intelligent author, (De Tocqueville,) that "the emigrants who fixed themselves on the shores of America, in the beginning of the 17th century, severed the democratic principle from all the principles which repressed it in the old communities of Europe, and transplanted it unalloyed to the New World. It has there been allowed to spread in perfect freedom, and to put forth its consequences in the laws, by influencing the manners of the country." |