Of all the states or colonies on this continent, the American
Republic alone has a destiny, or the ability to add any thing to
the civilization of the race. Canada and the other British
Provinces, Mexico and Central America, Columbia and Brazil, and
the rest of the South American States, might be absorbed in the
United States without being missed by the civilized world. They
represent no idea, and the work of civilization could go on
without them as well as with them. If they keep up with the
progress of civilization, it is all that can be expected of them.
France, England, Germany, and Italy might absorb the rest of
Europe, and all Asia and Africa, without withdrawing a single
laborer from the work of advancing the civilization of the race;
and it is doubtful if these nations themselves can severally or
jointly advance it much beyond the point reached by the Roman
Empire, except in abolishing slavery and including in the
political people the whole territorial people. They can only
develop and give a general application to the fundamental
principles of the Roman constitution. That indeed is much, but
it adds no new element nor new combination of preexisting
elements. But nothing of this can be said of the United States.
In the Graeco-Roman civilization is found the state proper, and
the great principle of the territorial constitution of power,
instead of the personal or the genealogical, the patriarchal or
the monarchical; and yet with true civil or political principles
it mixed up nearly all the elements of the barbaric constitution.
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