CHAPTER II. 



NATIONAL RESOURCES. 



It is necessary to the argument to show that the 

 United States is capable of sustaining a vast population. 



The fathers on Massachusetts Bay once decided that 

 population was never likely to be very dense west of 

 Newton (a suburb of Boston), and the founders of Lynn, 

 after exploring ten or fifteen miles, doubted whether 

 the country was good for anything farther west than 

 that. Until recent times, only less inadequate has been 

 the popular conception of the trans-Missouri region and 

 the millions destined to inhabit it. Of late years, home 

 missionarj^ writers and speakers have tried to astonisli 

 us into some appreciation of our national domain. Yet 

 it may well be doubted whether even he who has pon- 

 dered most upon its magnitude has a " realizing sense" 

 of it. Though astonishing comparisons have ceased to 

 astonish, I know of no means more effective or more 

 just by which to present our physical basis of empire. 



What, then, should we say of a republic of eighteen 

 states, each as large as Spain ; or one of thirty one 

 states, each as large as Italy; or one of sixty states, 

 each as large as England and Wales? What a confed- 

 eration of nations? Take five of the six first-class 

 powers of Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, France, 

 Germanv, Austria, and Italy ; then add Spain, Portugal, 

 Switzerland, Denmark, and Greece. Let some greater 

 than Napoleon weld them into one mighty empire, and 

 you could lay it all down in the United States west of 

 the Hudson River, once, and again, and again — three 

 times. Well may Mr. Gladstone say that we have "a 

 natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever 



