The influence which America exerts upon the currents of European history must continue to increase in power. Her population, reinforced as it is by emigration from less happily circumstanced countries, grows more rapidly than any European population. Her artisans are better educated than those of any other country, and they are therefore more effective for industrial purposes. They are free from the burden of military service, which in Continental Europe absorbs those years of a young man’s life when the hands gain expertness and the mind forms habits of industry. In the capacity of mechanical invention—the breath of life to an industrial nation—they are manifestly superior to Europe. The competition of this intelligent, ingenious, rapidly increasing people, fired by an ambition to become great as a manufacturing nation, cannot fail to influence directly and powerfully the industrial future of the European nations.
As the population and the wealth of America increase, the testimony which her example bears in favour of individual right and absolute freedom of thought will become more conspicuous and influential. The rebuke which her attitude of universal peace and her inconsiderable military expenditure administer to the diseased suspicions and measureless waste of Europe will become more emphatic, perhaps even in some degree more effective, than it has yet proved to be. Thus far, the teaching of America in regard to the maintenance of huge armies in time of peace has been rejected as inapplicable to the existing circumstances of Europe. But it may fairly be hoped that in course of years the industrial competition of a great people who have freed themselves from heavy burdens which their competitors still bear will enforce upon Europe economies of which neither governments nor people are as yet sufficiently educated to perceive the necessity.
America has still something to learn from the riper experience and more patient thinking of England. But it has been her privilege to teach to England and the world one of the grandest of lessons. She has asserted the political rights of the masses. She has proved to us that it is safe and wise to trust the people. She has taught that the government of the people should be “by the people and for the people.”
Let our last word here be a thankful acknowledgment of the inestimable service which she has thus rendered to mankind.
POSTSCRIPT.[11]
PRESIDENT GARFIELD.
The reconstruction of the Union was completed during General Grant’s term of office. The Presidentship of his successor, Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes, was uneventful. It was not on that account the less fruitful in good results. The complete amalgamation of the North and the South could only be the work of time. President Hayes helped forward this useful work. He visited the South in his first year of office, and was everywhere well received.
The Census of 1880 showed the population of the United States to be upwards of fifty million. The increase during the previous ten years had been eleven million and a half, or at the extraordinary rate of more than a million a year.