In proportion as truth prevails among men, his character will shine with increasing glory until he is recognized as the first Englishman of his time.

His masterly faculties and his real goodness made him a prophet always.

He saw the future, and strove to hasten its promises.

The elevation and happiness of the human family were his daily thought.

Race, religion, language, traditions, are becoming bonds of union, and not the parchment title-deeds of sovereigns.

These instincts may be thwarted for the day, but they are too deeply rooted in Nature and in usefulness not to prevail in the end.

I look with less interest to these struggles of races to live apart for what they want to undo than for what they will prevent being done in future.

This is the secret of the admitted doctrine, that we shall have no more wars of conquest or ambition.

I agree with you, that Nature has decided that Canada and the United States must become one, for all purposes of free intercommunication.

I can assure you that there will be no repetition of the policy of 1776, on our part, to prevent our North American colonies from pursuing their interest in their own way.

If the people of Canada are tolerably unanimous in wishing to sever the very slight thread which now binds them to this country, I see no reason why, if good faith and ordinary temper be observed, it should not be done amicably.

I am quite sure that we should be gainers, to the amount of about a million sterling annually, if our North American colonists would set up in life for themselves and maintain their own establishments; and I see no reason to doubt that…

It is for you and such as you, who love peace, to guide your countrymen aright in this matter.

A prudent patriotism among us will appreciate the wisdom of this counsel, more needed now than when written.

Mexico will be, without doubt, a land of prosperity from its natural advantages, but it will not be so for the races which now inhabit it.

And so a Mexican leaves the door open to the foreigner.

Ancient prophecy foretold another world beyond the ocean, which in the mind of Christopher Columbus was nothing less than the Orient with its inexhaustible treasures.

Turgot, the philosopher and minister, saw in youth, with the vision of genius, that all colonies must at their maturity drop from the parent stem, like ripe fruit.

Aranda, the Spanish statesman and diplomatist, predicts to his king that the United States, though born a “pygmy,” will some day be a “colossus,” under whose influence Spain will lose all her American possessions except only Cuba and Porto…

Paley, the philosopher, hails our successful revolution as destined to accelerate the fall of Slavery, which he denounces as an “abominable tyranny.” Burns, the truthful poet, who loved mankind, looks forward a hundred years, and beholds…

Sheridan pictures our increasing prosperity, and the national dignity winning the respect, confidence, and affection of the world.

Fox, the liberal statesman, foresees the increasing might and various relations of the United States, so that a blow aimed at them must have a rebound as destructive as itself.

The Abbé Grégoire, devoted to the slave, whose freedom he predicts, describes the power and glory of the American Republic, resting on the two great oceans, and swaying the world.

All these various voices, of different times and lands, mingle and intertwine in representing the great future of our Republic, which from small beginnings has already become great.

They were already “America,” or “North America,” (and such was the language of Washington,) thus incidentally foreshadowing that coming time when the whole continent, with all its various states, shall be a Plural Unit, with one…