LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 437 



been a task, also, much more concisely performed. Sir, had you 

 looked at your countrymen in all that belongs to their history, 

 you had learned that in all things wherein they have been distin^ 

 guished, in every undertaking in which they have been most suc- 

 cessful, they have been anything but servile imitators of the na- 

 tions of Europe, in the quo modo of their actions. They did not 

 study foreign models (except to improve upon them) in framing their 

 institutions, nor in subduing the forest and turning the wilderness 

 into the abode of civilized man ; nor in their steam-navigation 

 and mechanical agents ; nor, above all, in their ship-building and 

 commercial enterprise. Our people, though the last to enter the 

 Pacific, have been chained down by no precedent in their move- 

 ments there, but have pushed their ocean business in that quarter 

 far beyond that of all other nations. Before you urge as authority 

 what the maritime powers of Europe have done, it is incumbent 

 on you to show that these powers had equal interests afloat to be 

 protected and extended ; that the motives which prompted their 

 efforts were the same and as imperative as those which have pro- 

 duced action in our own government; and, unless this can be 

 shown, it is idle to talk about models. The force to be employed 

 in any enterprise should be regulated by the consideration of what 

 that force is designated to perform. 



The exposition to which I have alluded I might, with propriety 

 and justice, require ; but, not supposing you would find it conve- 

 nient to give it, I waive my right to interrogate you on this point, 

 and proceed to show how little, in all probability, you know in 

 detail of the expeditions to which we are so triumphantly referred 

 as patterns for our own. 



Most of the early expeditions to the Pacific were despatched 

 there rather to plunder the Spanish settlements and to make con- 

 quests than for the purposes of discovery. They originated in 

 high daring and an ardent thirst for adventure. But I presume 

 you will not hold them up as models at this day, unless, indeed, 

 your statement, that the officers of our navy entered the service 

 with a view to distinguishing themselves by deeds of arms, hinted 

 at their emulating the forays of the bucaniers, in preference to 

 the more peaceful exploits of modern discoverers. There are, 

 then, but comparatively few enterprises of discovery with which 

 I need stop to institute comparisons. I will take those of most 



