which they are based, is the possession to every individual disposed to occupy and cultivate the land, to the extent of his ability, on reasonable terms of price and tenure. There is no compulsion and no restraint, but the famous preemption law encourages the settlement of deserving cultivators on small quantities of land, to form homes for their families, and it discourages the acquisition of large tracts of land by single persons. The pioneers of the wilderness are guaranteed, at a moderate price, the fee simple of the lands which they may reclaim from the wildness of nature.

This unfolds the sources of North American power and greatness; and, since the destruction of the Britsh aristocratic domination, the advance made has been altogether marvellous, not only from the natural increase of the population, but from the additions by foreigners, attracted by the wisdom and impartiality of the laws of the assignment of the public lands.

"We hold out to the people of other countries, an invitation to come and settle among us, as members of our rapidly-growing family; and, for the blessings which we offer them, we require them to look upon our country as their country, and to unite with us in the task of preserving our institutions, and thereby perpetuating our liberties.”*

The population of the United States, at the Treaty of Independence, was about three millions of souls, being about the number of the Jews on entering into the Holy Land; and now, at the end of sixty years, a country, from having been a colony, oppressed and insulted by a dominant. party in Great Britain, has, without hyperbole, become an empire, destined to exercise a powerful influence in the affairs of the world.

Let the United States husband their public lands, for * President's Message, June 1, 1841.

the use, and for homes, of generations yet unborn; and let facilities of settlement be continued at a natural price-in contempt of the theories of European colonizers; and, on the truth of all history, their prosperity, power, and influence will extend through countless ages.

In the year 1840, their population was 17,068,000, and the quantity of grain of all kinds raised, was 615,515,000 bushels confirming the truth of the observation made three thousand years before, "That there is much Food in the tillage of the Poor!" *

* Proverbs.

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM GENERAL HISTORY.-THE CRUSADES.-THE DARK AGES. -A FEW HISTORICAL EVENTS CITED AT RANDOM.

To the political philosopher, the moralist, and the romancer, the characters and events described in the pages of history, afford subjects for their respective studies and pursuits. But, for the great mass of mankind, those pages bear the record of deeds of violence, and acts of oppression, practised on the inhabitants of the nations of the earth.

Men in society, in every age, have presented the appearance of the ocean-ever in a state of oscillation-alternating between the hurricane, the breeze, and the calm.

After the transactions of all history have been divested of the pomp and circumstance attendant on war and diplomacy, and of the tinsel of courts and their intrigues, and when laid bare to the observation of men, they will be found to present cupidity on the part of rulers, and efforts of the governed to save themselves from being made victims to the covetous principle.

An attempt has been made in other branches of this work to show that political, and, to a certain extent,

spiritual dominion, rest on the control of the subsistence of the people subject to the power; and various examples, deduced from history, were cited to establish the position.

In this section the reverse of the picture will be shown; from which it will be discerned, that the overstretch of the power thus acquired, bursts for a time the bonds of society, which is thereby changed in its form, and balance of interests.

The action on society is the cupidity of sovereigns, princes, aristocracies, and dominations of all kinds; and the counteraction, is the resistance made by the subjects exposed to the severity of the exactions. The first is Power in all its degrees, up to the maximum of fiscal despotism; the second is Revolution, in all its forms of overwhelming violence, or of regulated popular force. This is describing the two great antagonist principles in the public affairs of mankind, in terms which admit of no compromise, and which will, no doubt, shock many persons by their very harshness. But there is no help for this. What history has written, down to the present age, cannot be altered-it will stand for ever: and the more deeply that its affairs be analyzed, the more striking will the truth of the description appear. The ambition of monarchs and of warriors-the loves, the jealousies, and revenges of the inmates of palaces-the schemes and tricks of statesmen— are only episodes in the great drama.* Society has been ever moved and agitated by those two antagonist powers, which are employed by an overruling Providence, as instru

History, as it has been written heretofore, is like those accounts of travellers, which are filled with the personal narratives of adventures, instead of descriptions of the soil, state of agriculture, manufactures, trade, religion, laws, and customs of the inhabitants of the country through which the traveller passes.

ments in his direction of human affairs, to some ultimate design of wisdom and beneficence. Oppression forces on the calm of misery-Revolution upheaves the elements of society, and moulds them into new forms. Such has been the case throughout the world-like the flux and reflux of the tides of the ocean, or of the currents which move its waters, and prevent their stagnation and corruption.

Taxation, unjust in its principles and severe in its pressure, has led to the greatest revolutions which ever agitated the world, and which in their consequences are felt in some way or other, by every individual at present living in Europe and America. It is perfectly marvellous to think on, how small a thing should produce such tremendous effects. Small pieces of coin, like sparks struck from the adamant of taxation, falling on the inflammable materials in human society, have physically and morally set the world in flames; morally, by the excitement and ardour of men's minds-and physically, by the fire of battles, and the blaze of burning fleets, towns, and villages. Nor need this create wonder, for we perceive precisely similar effects produced in the operations of nature. The ignition, or sudden expansion, of gases beneath the surface of the earth, will cause an earthquake which may overturn mountains and overwhelm cities;-the electric fluid, the most subtle of substances, will rend whatever is opposed to it ;-the massy trunks of the forest-trees which cover a whole continent, have sprung from small seeds dropped into the ground.

Political oppression, tyranny, despotism, and such like expressions, mean nothing more or less than the privations, discomforts, and dangers, to which men are exposed, by having their substance, or materials of living, curtailed, or, in the extreme case, reduced to less than will support life. When one nation subjects another nation, the first will

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