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THE progress of the United States, from its first settlements at isolated points on the Atlantic border, has been one of continual territorial aggrandizement. Communities in their growth have constantly thrown forward a race of hardy pioneers, before whom the savages have fallen back and the wilderness has been subdued. The busy and enterprising settlers have descended from the Alleghanies, occupied the plains, pushed across mighty streams, traversed the prairies, penetrated the passes of the Rocky mountains, and are even now loading vessels in the harbors of the Pacific, with produce that their industry has raised from the lands of its tributary streams, forming the germ of that great commerce, which a few short years will find whitening the Pacific with its canvass. This whole progress, which has added 15 sovereign states to the Union, embracing an area of 500,000 square miles, as well as millions of acres not yet formed into states or occupied by emigrants, has been but a continuation of that pressure of emigration from the east, which the Roman empire was unable to resist, and which is destined to carry back to Asia the refinement of arts and the influences of Christianity, gathered in a journey of two thousand years round the world, from east to west. The progress of the emigration in Europe was a military one, and was attended by the subversion of states and the triumph of barbarism; the strong arm of the conqueror established those feudal customs which the people are but now gathering strength to shake off. On this continent the reverse has been the case-barbarism has vanished before the intelligent and peaceful settler; states and civilized governments have sprung up in the path of the emigrant, whose march has been supported and accelerated by the blessings he has left in his rear. As territory has been overrun, numbers have increased, and free institutions have insured to all a share of the growing national wealth. It has been democratic energy and enterprise that have given vigor to the movement and sustained our rapid growth. When we say democratic in this connection, it may be understood in its less comprehensive sense, as it will be found that it is the democratic party, as opposed to the aristocratic tendencies and predilections of the federalists, through which the blessings of civilization have been extended over the continent. A proof of this is to be found in the large democratic majorities of all the new states. Wisconsin, as an instance, sent as her first delegate to Congress a democrat in 1836, and no whig has ever been elected, nor has there been a whig majority in the Legislative assembly. It is the people who go forth into the wilderness to work out a home for themselves and an inheritence for their children, in a hard struggle with nature and the savage. These are not to be staid in their course by

imaginary lines, nor held back by theories which teach that a government is strong or a community well organised, in proportion only as numbers are confined in a narrow limit, laboring to swell the profits of the aristocratic few. The country beyond the Sabine offered to the emigrant inducements to settle, and its then government added other allurements to draw on to the soil the hardy and intelligent race, whose vigorous industry had in a few years placed the northern republic foremost among commercial nations. The fact was overlooked, however, that that race would bring with them the education, intelligence and faculty for self-government, which would nake them unfit subjects on whom to vent the caprices of the turbulent chiefs of a military anarchy and as soon as the articles of confederation by which Texas formed one of the United Mexican States were violated, without her consent, she declared her independence, and bade defiance to the utmost power of the dictator, who was simple enough to suppose "that the gnarled oak could be twisted as easily as the young saplin;" that the sturdy independence of emigrants from the north could be moulded to the will of a military usurper. The very virtues of the Anglo-Saxon race make their political union with the degraded Mexican-Spanish impossible. The missionaries of republicanism and civilization, who go out from among us, are sure to return into the bosom of the nation with the fruits of their enterprise.

The Mexican race now see, in the fate of the aborigines of the north, their own inevitable destiny. They must amalgamate and be lost, in the superior vigor of the Anglo-Saxon race, or they must utterly perish. They may postpone the hour for a time, but it will come, when their nationality shall cease. It is observable, that, while the Anglo-Saxon race have overrun the northern section, and purged it of a vigorous race of Indians, the Spaniards have failed to make any considerable progress at the south. The best estimate of the population of Mexico, is 7,000,000-of which 4,500,000 are pure-blooded Indians, and only 1,000,000 of white Europeans and their descendants. From these data, it is evident that the process, which has been gone through at the north, of driving back the Indians, or annihilating them as a race, has yet to be gone through at the south. The proud, rapacious, and idle Spaniards have but poorly fulfilled their mission. They have neither civilized nor christianized the people, nor reclaimed the country, in the possession of which they have been undisturbed for centuries. The native Indians have been allowed to remain in their passive state of idleness, as long as they could yield anything to the rapacity of their rulers, clerical, civil, or military. The descent of the northern race, now become imminent by the occupation of Texas, threatens speedily to change this state of things. The mineral and agricultural wealth of Mexico strongly tempts the hardy emigrants, whom no toil discourages, no danger appals; and the lands south of the Rio Grande are many of them more desirable than those north of it. Who shall say that the torrent of emigration, that for two thousand years has been pouring from the remote regions of Asia, across Europe, overturning empires in its course, bridging the Atlantic, peopling a new world, and surging to its confines, shall be stopped by the theories of the Whig party, the voice of Daniel Webster, or the frown of Santa Anna?

All that the Spaniards have failed to do, remains yet to be done. The progress of emigration on this continent has hitherto been peaceful ;but the Spanish race, to maintain their slothful possession of the country they hold, have, in the madness of their pride, attacked the colossal power that is about to overwhelm them. The result cannot be but to hasten the event, which peace would, sooner or later, have surely accomplished.— A state of war is entirely incompatible with our institutions and demo

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