MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE STATES 339 



within its wide borders actual members or near kinsmen 

 of almost every family in the United Kingdom binding- 

 hearts together, and uniting the opposite continents by 

 cords and sympathies more sensitive and delicate still 

 than those of the magic telegraph. 



It is to be observed that, in proportion as a country is 

 great in superficial extent, in natural resources, in popu 

 lation, in growing wealth, or even in manifest energy, in 

 such proportion we feel constrained to respect it. And 

 from respect to imitation the step is natural and easy. 

 We do not carefully analyse, most men are unfit to 

 detect, the true sources of its greatness. We connect 

 its peculiar greatness with its political and social 

 peculiarities, and we are inclined to imitate the latter 

 with a view to insure the former. 



Now, the common speech and literature of our two 

 countries gives this tendency full opportunity of mani 

 festing itself, and lends to the institutions of each a moral 

 influence over those of the other, which, as I have said, 

 is more deserving of serious regard than any other 

 aspect in which we can look at the United States. Our 

 journalists talk alike to either people. Whether 

 published in London or Washington, in Liverpool or 

 New York, the periodicals of the day are circulated 

 among, read by, and directly influence thousands on 

 either side of the Atlantic. They tell also upon many 

 more, through the editorial and other comments which 

 they call forth in metropolitan and provincial papers. 

 Upon the population of no other country in Europe can 

 what passes in North America exercise a tithe of the 

 influence it does in this way upon the population of the 

 British Empire. 



Now there are certain broad lines of national progress 

 in which we have gone in advance of the United States 

 as in the abolition of slavery, the adoption of the 

 principles of Free Trade as a basis of national polity, and 



