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Il faut que le monde que vous avez envahi, s'affranchisse de celui
que vous habitez: alors les mers ne sépareront plus que deux amis
deux freres. Quel mal y aurait-il donc à cet ordre de choses?

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THE

AMERICAN MONITOR,

A MONTHLY

Political, Historical, and Commercial

MAGAZINE,

PARTICULARLY DEVOTED TO THE

AFFAIRS OF SOUTH AMERICA.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE OF AMERICA, INTENDED AS AN INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE TO THE AMERICAN

MONITOR.

As we have already said in our prospectus, in the actual state of the world, political science embraces two grand divisions; Europe and America. In former times, each of these may have formed a separate system; but, at present, they can no longer be considered as distinct. The New and the Old World are now pleading contradictorily, at the bar of the universe, questions of the most vital importance to social order.

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For the first time, since the creation, we are presented with the gigantic spectacle of two hemispheres, advancing with equal rapidity, but in inverse ratio, into futurity. The one presents to our view, an increase of strength and prosperity, the other, a progress of decay and abasement. In other words, the actual condition of America resembles that expansive vitality peculiar to youth, while Europe seems to have reached that stationary point of virility, which presages a possible retrogression: in the one, may be already perceived the point where perfectibility stops; in the other, on the contrary, an immense horizon is discovered, which seems to extend in proportion as we advance.

These opposite progressions are undoubtedly conformable to the eternal order of nature, and, to foresee them, the philosopher needed only to examine what were the different necessities of society, according to each respective period. The progress, however, of the two hemispheres, would incontestably have been less rapid, had not events, hitherto unexampled in the history of the world, and excited by the most outrageous abuse of power, accelerated the natural course of things.

Our intention is not to trace the origin of the scenes that present themselves to our view. The primary 'causes of the grand catastrophe, which is now unfolding itself, are universally known; we will leave the historian to relate the calamities of the three last centuries, in the course of which America was discovered, and by turns, devastated, re-peopled, and re-modelled by Europe. This period is an unbounded field, open alike to the moralizer and the philosopher. But as our object is to confine ourselves to the practical policy and those

active systems which actually operate on society ; and to examine the questions which we shall treat of, rather in a relative view to their probable issue, than to the principles of right upon which they are founded, we shall choose for our starting point, that period when America, in the vigor of her youth, protested, with arms in her hands, against that species of social interdict imposed on her by the long supremacy of the Old World: in taking this position, we shall be enabled to follow, step by step, all those events, which, in their rapid succession, have for so many years blunted every congenial feeling that existed between the two hemispheres, and which have tended to consummate the most important revolution recorded in history.

However, as the United States occupy a distinct station in the American world; as their religion, government, language, and industry, distinguish them from the Spanish and Portuguese Americas, and as, moreover, their national existence has been for a length of time irrevocably fixed; we shall only refer to this part of the world under the common relation of its deliverance from European dependence, and under that new order of things emanating from the creation of the new governments of the south, whose different fortunes we intend to pursue, by thus constituting ourselves the annalists of their revolution:

This revolution, considered in its effects, which are already accomplished, as well as in its inevitable consequences, is the most extensive, the most variegated scene that can be opened to the descriptive pen of a political writer; for it will be discovered, upon the slightest reflection, that the grand contest for the social organization of the world, far from having ended with the

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