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out the world, by furnishing it a home, and proving in it the practicability of republican institutions, when wisely framed and administered, than could be afforded by all the material aid and intervention which fleets and armies could carry. The gallantry of Ingraham, sustained by the President and by Congress, has sufficiently aroused Europe to the fact that republican America well knows how and when to extend the protection of its flag and the power of its nationality.

6. Freedom of speech and of the press are the inalienable birthright of the American citizen. With such levers, what abuse cannot be probed-what outrage redressed? We dare to speak our thoughts and to print them. This magic power of the press is at work throughout the land. Two thousand five hundred newspapers are discussing and elaborating measures of policy and cricticising the actions of public men. It is a power that is hundred-eyed and hundred-armed, and sleeps not-watchful sentinels of the liberties of the people. There is something almost divine in its actión. Licentious at times though it be, prostituted to base uses, better this than the gag law and the censor, and the other restraints which despotism throws around it in Europe. The freedom of the press is the ægis of our liberty.

The density of population in the United States does not exceed seven persons to the square mile, whilst in Great Britain there are 234 to the square mile, and in Belgium 385. While the densest of our States-Massachusetts-contains 137 to the square mile, the least dense-Minnesota and Oregonhave only one inhabitant to every 30 or 40 square miles.

With the same density as Massachusetts, the United States would embrace 420 millions; with the density of Belgium, our territory is vast enough to include all the present inhabitants of the earth.

It is not in the power of man to conceive of a case more typical of the wonderful advances of our country than the growth of some of its great cities-for example, Cincinnati. About the time when the federal constitution was adopted, Mathias Denman, of New Jersey, bought for $550, eight hundred acres of the land on which the whole of all the great business streets of Cincinnati are now located. In 1800, but 750 persons had made their residences here. In 1840, there were 46,000; in 1850, 115,000-a three-fold increase in ten years. At the present moment the number cannot be less than 150,000, which will make Cincinnati the fourth or fifth city in the Union. Thus can men, in its midst, in the very activity and meridian of life, in sweeping the eye over its densely-compact streets, its marts of commerce, its richly-laden warehouses,

its palaces of wealth, its splendid cathedrals of religion, its school-houses and its colleges, its quays, with their fleets of steamers, its railroads and telegraphs, approaching from every point of the compass, remember and recount scenes of the Indian wigwam and the Indian warwhoop, and when in all of its splendid and almost enchanted prospect was heard but the woodman's axe.

The State in which it is situated is another miracle of the present century. Admitted into the Union in 1802, with a population of 45,000, or two-thirds the population of Delaware, she already vies with Pennsylvania, and does not fall far short of the population of all of the New England States together. She has 820 miles of canals, built at a cost of $17,000,000, and 1,418 miles of railroads-a greater extent than any other State in the Union except New York. Her roads in progress (1853) were 1,736 miles, making a total programme of 3,154 miles. The magic lamp of Aladdin, in Eastern story, scarcely developed more rapid creations of wealth and power. The quick and infinite changes of the kaleidoscope are the only parallel for these.

The great interior valley, too, of which it is a part-the central basin of the Mississippi, and its tributaries—what enchantment at every step! The smoking cabin, the stealthy savage, the stalwart pioneer, the victim at the steke, the tomahawk and the scalp, the hunter's horn, the log house, and the picket, the interminable forests, the arrow trail! The nineteenth century opened thus upon the mighty West! It is so no more; the mansion rises, the plough speeds, the locomotive whizzes by, the paddle-wheels of the steamer dash into spray the slugged waters of every tortuous stream; fields laden with produce, wealth heaped up on every quay; the fashions of Paris, the elegance, the civilization, the intellectual culture of European courts! The spirit of the Anglo-Saxon has brooded over this waste, and chaos has broken up into life and light, and a thousand forms of attractiveness and beauty. Westward has been the tide of empire. It has been leaving even Ohio behind, and in its rapid footsteps making of it a very far down-east State. No longer may it be sung of her as of yore— "Together let us rise,

Seek brighter plains and more indulgent skies,
Where fair Ohio rolls her amber tide,

And nature blossoms in her virgin pride.

The centre of representative population of the Union is now west of the mouth of the Ohio. Standing at this point, four great arms of an inland ocean are opened to either point of the compass. To the east the Ohio ascends 1,000 miles, pene

trating in its tributaries the interior of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia-to the west the Missouri sweeps 3,000 miles towards the waters of the Western ocean-to the north and the south old Mississippi, father of all rivers, conveys his waters to the ocean. It has been working its way onward, that old river, further than our fancy may trace it-through all climes, and lands, and people-from where its remote source, a sleeping lake, deep set in impenetrable shades, on mountain heights, beyond all haunts of civilized life, mirrors savage and unchased beasts, it has worked itself on, father of all waters, among mountains

"Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings,"

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It is not possible that the tide of emigration from abroad to our country can continue always. The improvements in the arts, and the discharge of the surplus, will render the inducements abroad to emigrate less and less. New outlets to emigration are opening in other countries, as in Australia, Canada, &c. It is against all the precedents of history that such a state of things shoul long continue. Though our territories seem to be boundless, population has not a necessary tendency to swell in the ratio of territory. But whether the increase continue or not, experience has shown, against all expectation, that this large influx of foreigners has not deteroirated the national morals, or endangered the national liberties. The danger of our country's tending towards rank and monarchy from the influx of persons brought up under such forms of government seemed to be the most pressing; but the very reverse has been the tendency, and we have run and are every day running more and more into extremes of democracy. The foreign element may increase this tendency, but its proportion being annually less and less to the native born, and its diffusion being very general over large sections, its effects must be neutralized. The States which have been most increased by such population have shown nothing less of the pride of republicanism, the principles of progress, and the desire for mental development, than those that have derived no such increase. It is only in the large cities that the foreign element has ever been unfavorably felt; and this is rather owing to the fact that the worst portions of such population will stop there naturally, and because in great cities vice and crime are more natural even with the natives. In many of our large northern cities there is a species of native population, known by various Billingsgates designations, who, in readiness for lawless excess, are certainly nothing behind the worst class of foreigners. people who have derived so much from foreign increase should SIG. 20.

A.

be the last to complain of its excesses. With one-third of our standing army of foreign birth, and with so large a foreign portion of the physical working power which has been extending our wonderful system of public improvement, and so fast filling up the wilderness, it little becomes us to express distrust. The foreigner soon assimilates to the soil, and he, and his children after him, are the ready defenders of the flag of ths country. If they are for a time more exposed than any other population to the wiles of the demagogue, we should be willing to adopt any safe and practicable checks, compatible with their rights to citizenship, within a period which shall neither be so short as to be inconsistent with a knowledge of our institutions, nor so long as to involve a condition at war with the theory of our system of a large free population, without the right of representation, and forming no part of the gov

ornment.

MEMBERS OF THE CONVENTION OF 1845.