Whenever the present difficulties will terminate--and
who can tell the moment?--we will be at the mercy of our neighbours;
and, victorious or otherwise, they will be eminently a military people,
and with all their apparent indifference about annexing this country,
and all the friendly feelings that may be talked, they will have the
power to strike when they please; and this is precisely the kernel and
the only touch-point of the whole question. No nation ever had the
power of conquest that did not use it, or abuse it, at the very first
favourable opportunity. All that is said of the magnanimity and
forbearance of mighty nations can be explained on the principle of
sheer inexpediency, as the world knows. The whole face of Europe has
been changed, and the dynasties of many hundred years have been swept
away within our own time, on the principle of might alone--the oldest,
the strongest, and, as some would have it, the most sacred of all
titles. The thirteen original States of America, with all their
professions of self-denial, have been all the time, by money, power,
and by war, and by negociation, extending their frontier until they
more than quadrupled their territory within sixty years; and believe it
who may, are they now of their own accord to come to a full stop? No;
as long as they have the power, they must go on onward: for it is the
very nature of power to grip whatever is within its reach.
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