Manhood and Statehood 203 



a continent should be encouraged in that work, and 

 could not and ought not to be expected to toil only 

 for the profit or glory of others. When the first 

 Continental Congress assembled, the British Govern 

 ment, like every other government of Europe at that 

 time, simply did not know how to look upon the 

 general question of the progress of the colonies save 

 from the standpoint of the people who had stayed at 

 home. The spread of the hardy, venturesome back 

 woodsmen was to most of the statesmen of London 

 a matter of anxiety rather than of pride, and the fa 

 mous Quebec Act of 1774 was in part designed with 

 the purpose of keeping the English-speaking settle 

 ments permanently east of the Alleghanies, and pre 

 serving the mighty and beautiful valley of the Ohio 

 as a hunting-ground for savages, a preserve for the 

 great fur-trading companies ; and as late as 1812 this 

 project was partially revived. 



More extraordinary still, even after independence 

 was achieved, and a firm Union accomplished under 

 that wonderful document, the Constitution adopted 

 in 1789, we still see traces of the same feeling lin 

 gering here and there in our own country. There 

 were plenty of men in the seaboard States who 

 looked with what seems to us ludicrous apprehension 

 at the steady westward growth of our people. Grave 

 Senators and Representatives expressed dire fore 

 boding as to the ruin which would result from admit- 



