APPENDIX II. 253 



ceit. I see in British North America, stretching as it does 

 across the continent from the shores of Labrador and New- 

 foundland to the Pacific, and occupying a considerable belt of 

 the Temperate Zone, traversed equally with the United States 

 by the lakes, and enjoying the magnificent shores of the 

 St. Lawrence, with its thousands of islands in the river and 

 gulf — a region grand enough for the seat of a great empire. In 

 its wheat-fields in the west, its broad ranges of the chase at the 

 north, its inexhaustible lumber lands — the most extensive now 

 remaining on the globe — its invaluable fisheries, and its yet 

 im<listurbed mineral deposits, I see the elements of wealth. I 

 find its inhabitants vigorous, hardy, energetic, perfected by the 

 Protestant religion and British constitutional liberty. I find 

 them jealous of the United States and of Grreat Britain, as 

 they ought to be ; and therefore, when I look at their extent and 

 resources, I know they can neither be conquered by the former 

 nor permanently held by the latter. They will be independent, 

 as they are already self-maintaining. Having happily escaped 

 the curse of slavery, they will never submit themselves to the 

 domination of slaveholders, which prevails in and determines 

 the character of the United States. They will be a Eussia 

 behind the United States, which to them will be France and 

 England. But they will be a Eussia civilised and Protestant, 

 and that will be a very different Eussia from that which fills all 

 Southern Europe with terror, and by reason of that superiority 

 they will be the more terrible to the dwellers in the southern 

 latitudes. 



The policy of the United States is to propitiate and secure 

 the alliance of Canada while it is yet young and incurious of 

 its future. But, on the other hand, the policy which the 

 United States actually piu-sues is the infatuated one of rejecting 

 and spurning vigorous, perennial, and ever-growing Canada, 

 while seeking to establish feeble States out of decaying Spanish 

 provinces on the coast and in the islands of the Gulf of 

 Mexico. 



I shall not live to see it, but the man is already born who 

 will see the United States mourn over this stupendous folly, 



