Ch. XXI.] EMIGRATION. 387 



has succumbed to the same influences has arrested my 

 harsher judgment. I cannot recommend Nicaragua with 

 all its natural wealth, its perpetual summer, its magnifi- 

 cent lakes, and its teeming soil, as a place of emigration 

 for isolated families, and even for larger schemes of 

 colonization I do not think it so suitable as our own 

 colonies and the United States. A large body of emi- 

 grants would carry with them the healthful influence of 

 the good and industrious, and the spirit of emulation and 

 progress might be preserved if the community could be 

 kept together, but I am afraid it could not be. After a 

 while the tastes of one individual would lead in one 

 direction, those of another in an opposite. Where all 

 were free to choose, the idle would go away from the in- 

 fluences that urged them to industry, the sensual from the 

 restraints of morality. Many will, however, smile at the 

 objection I have to emigration to Nicaragua, when they 

 perceive that it is founded only on the ease with which 

 people can live in plenty there. There is one form of 

 colonization that will be successful, the gradual moving 

 down southward of the people of the United States. 

 When the destiny of Mexico is fulfilled, with one stride 

 the Anglo-American will bound to the Isthmus of 

 Panama, and Central America will be filled with cattle 

 estates, and with coffee, sugar, indigo, cotton, and cacao 

 plantations. Railways will then keep up a healthful and 

 continuous intercourse with the enterprising North, and 

 the sluggard and the sensual will not be able to stand 

 before the competition of the vigorous and virtuous. Nor 

 will the Anglo-American be stayed by the Isthmus, long, 

 in his progress southward. Unless some such catastrophe 

 happens as a few years ago threatened to turn North 



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