850 THE YOUNG AMERICAN

commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.

2. In the second place, the uprise and culmina- tion of the new and antifeudal power of Com- merce is the political fact of most significance to the American at this hour.

We cannot look on the freedom of this country, in connexion with its youth, without a presentiment that here shall laws and institutions exist on some scale of proportion to the majesty of nature. To men legislating for the area betwixt the two oceans, betwixt the snows and the tropics, somewhat of the gravity of nature will infuse itself into the code. A heterogeneous population crowding on all ships from all corners of the world to the great gates of North America, namely Boston, New York, and New Orleans, and thence proceedingiinward to the prairie and the mountains, and quickly contribut- ing their private thought to the public opinion, their toll to the treasury, and their vote to the elec- tion, it cannot be doubted that the legislation of this country should become more catholic and cos- mopolitan than that of any other. It seems so easy for America to inspire and expressthe most expansive and humane spirit; new-born, free, health- ful, strong, the land of the laborer, of the democrat, of the philanthropist, of the believer, of the saint.