Miracles would cease
to be miracles if they were events of every-day occurrence; the very
nature of wonders requires that they should be rare; and this is a
miraculous and wonderful circumstance, that men at the head of the
Governments in five separate Provinces, and men at the head of the
parties opposing them, all agreed at the same time to sink party
differences for the good of all, and did not shrink, at the risk of
having their motives misunderstood, from associating together for the
purpose of bringing about this result. I have asked, Sir, what risks do
we run if we reject this measure? We run the risk of being swallowed up
by the spirit of universal democracy that prevails in the United
States. Their usual and favourite motto is--
"'No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,
But the whole boundless continent is ours.
That is the popular paraphrase of the Monroe doctrine. And the popular
voice has favoured--aye, and the greatest statesmen among them have
looked upon it as inevitable--an extension of the principles of
democracy over this continent. Now, I suppose a universal democracy is
no more acceptable to us than a universal monarchy in Europe would have
been to our ancestors; yet for three centuries--from Charles V.
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