Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

All great workers, and the improvements they originate, find their legitimate use only in the enunciation of great truths for the popular good. Thus it is that the relation of men to each other and to the whole world is progressively changed, and that always in the direction of increased equality. The universal mind receives simultaneously the impression of each new idea; it imprints itself upon domestic institutions, infuses itself into literature, reconstructs political formulas, and in some measure both impels and controls the religious life. It has lately been proved that the whole earth is a magnet, and all mental achievements in our day tend to render the domain of American civilization one immense university of science. At each remove toward western freedom, progressive man has shown his mastery by compelling all the elements to help create and grace his triumphs. The waters turned from their courses to move his mills; the sportive zephyrs and angry winds imprisoned in his sails; the flying vapor taken captive to whirl his myriad of spindles, or send the "Iron Missionary" tramp, tramp over the earth, splash, splash across the sea; the soft light he makes ministrant to the dearest joys, depicting by it the portrait of tenderest love; and the latent flame which sings along the wires by lines of railway; all alike and together prophesy of mightier and better things to come.

Facilities of knowledge are the auspicious means of transfusing into the soul those ideas which are the tools vouchsafed to shape the destiny of our race. The dynasty of a new thought is much more glorious than the pedigree of old kings; and the future of free America will infinitely transcend in worth and well-doing all the arbitrary dignities and adventitious splendors gone by.

The machinery of production in America is already greater than that of England. Our twenty-three millions of citizens produce a larger amount of valuable staples, while they build twice as many houses; make twice as many roads; apply three times more labor in the improvement of land; build four times as many school-houses and churches; and print ten times as many newspapers. We have laid the foundation of a pyramid whose base is a million of square miles, studded all over with innumerable little communities, each one of which occupies space sufficient for a large one, with its academy, or its college, its journals, bookstores, and libraries, all aiding to give to the superstructure a magnificence proportioned to the breadth and stability of its base. Among the more western States, not less than in the eastern, there is universal activity and intelligence. It is safe to repeat that the commonwealths recently organized have more and better printing-presses, and consume more well-read paper; that they have more commodious school-houses, and more scholars in them; more churches, and more devout Christians in them; more well-selected libraries, and more thoughtful readers in them, than any other nation on earth.

What our future may become, our brief past will best suggest. We know that however high we may ascend the course of history, we see, not in each or any particular people, but in the human family as a whole, an uninterrupted endeavor to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge always progressive; so that, from the obscurity of earliest time, we arrive step by step to modern science, more certain, more extended, and more prolific, in practical results than was ever known in preceding ages. This progress is proved by the sovereignty which man has successively acquired over nature, subordinating to his will her most energetic forces, and compelling them to accomplish the highest ends in the surest manner. We see what the earth, transformed in an immense portion of its best surface, has become under his hand. He subdues the billows, traverses seas, and his invincible thought, aspiring to still sublimer empire, makes his necessities to be served by the stars which vainly flee in the deserts of space.

From the survey which has been taken above of the spreading of ameliorating empire in the great West, it is evident that its central throne must soon rest on the granite heights beyond the great lakes, near the sources of the mighty Mississippi. Thither the free and brave millions are fast gathering, whose noble progeny will people the entire continent, and bless the world. The denizens of those wealthy regions, and the patriots of those happy times, will be both intelligent and brave beyond precedent, in conserving the republican institutions they have received to perfect and perpetuate. The sentiment of the great man of the extreme East, will be best appreciated, and most sublimely exemplified, in proportion as it sweeps with the sun from the horizon of its origin, and, from the loftiest Rocky Mountains, resounds simultaneously from ocean to ocean, the profoundest sentiment of undivided peoples, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

CHAPTER IV.

PHILOSOPHY.

Human history is a perpetual exodus, and its promised land has ever been in the West. Bondage to escape, seas to cross, miracles to witness, conquests to win, a wilderness to traverse, and a Goshen to attain, institutions to create, and all the seeds of a newer and nobler civilization to propagate, ever has been, is now, and evermore will be, the destiny and recompense of our race.

Greece collected the materials of ideas for the work of universal civilization, Rome consolidated a heterogeneous mass from every department of thought, and our Teutonic ancestors put all anterior results into generalized systems, preparatory to the ultimate perfection of civilized society on this continent and throughout the world. We are perfecting the last republic possible in space, ending the girdle of the globe we were created to redeem. As remote as is our comprehensive sphere from the beginning of historic development, we are indissolubly linked to the one divinely identical purpose. Our Union constitutes the final member of an association truly majestic and holy, the design of which is to elevate all classes and conditions of men to the utmost heights of wisdom and worth.

The nations are not destined to find a precarious calm in their degradation. They can never be subjugated by force, even should their volitions be chained for a season, while their sentiments are enervated in the service of the licentious. The great law of human progress will not long permit its apathetic subjects to be passive and mute spectators, impelled, like a vile horde, from one power to another. Revolutions will multiply, and, at the same time, become less and less calamitous, until all subjects shall become citizens, no longer excluded from political equality and moral improvement. No enterprise shall then be interdicted to adequate skill, and no arbitrary action impede the pursuit of honorable gain. The popular currency of opinion, law, and affection, must eventually be coined, and circulated in mutual confidence, and bear a premium in every land. Progress in human society is necessitated by its primary constitution. The social union of men, and their habitual communication with each other, produces a certain advancement of sentiments, ideas, and reasonings, which can not be suspended. This constitutes the march of civilization, and the perpetual order of the day is—forward! It leads us, necessarily, to successive epochs, sometimes peaceable and virtuous, and sometimes criminal and agitated, sometimes glorious, and at others, opprobrious; and, according as Providence casts us into one condition or the other, we gather the happiness or the suffering attached to the age in which we live. On that our tastes, opinions, and habitual impressions, in a great measure depend. Transient events may modify this law, but no finite power can wrest from society its varied progress. In this course of human development, the accompanying circumstances which most nearly assume the form of an exception are themselves so enchained as most strongly to corroborate the general rule. Taken as a whole, the race of Adam, enlightened or benighted, pursues a determined route, and accomplishes a prescribed progress, as do the stars. Now clear, and anon obscure, at one time slow, and at another rapid their apparent flight, nothing arrests the inevitable career, nor prevents the accumulative good. Letters shine, science advances, the arts are perfected, and splendors on every side are multiplied; then arrives the moment when the opinions generally adopted, and the prevailing disposition of all leading spirits are in conflict with existing institutions. The crash of revolution resounds, and governments are overthrown; forms of religion become obsolete, customs change, disorder reigns, and prolonged suffering prostrates the people. At length the tempest exhausts itself, and calm is restored. The necessity of repose renders the populace docile for a season, and they lose the fiery zeal which at first characterized their newly conquered opinions. A new order of things becomes established upon a higher platform, in the tranquil enjoyment of which the happy inheritors forget the sorrows of their fathers. Then begins a newer, if not a sadder advance, which leads popular ideas again into conflict with existing institutions, whose overthrow results in yet wider catastrophes. It is thus that civilization, by vicissitudes of repose and agitation, more or less contiguous and saddening, conducts the nations to consummate perfection.