The habitual use of the liberty of the press, of trial by jury in open court, of the accountability of public agents and of some voice in the election of legislators, must create, in a man or a nation, a character quite different from what it could be under the habitual disuse of these advantages. And when these habits are transplanted with a young colony to a distant region of the earth, enjoying a good soil and climate, with an unlimited and unoccupied country, the difference will necessarily be more remarkable.
A most striking illustration of this principle is exhibited in the colonies of North America. This coast, from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, was colonized by the French and English. (I make no account of the Dutch establishment on the Hudson nor of the Swedish on the Delaware; they being of little importance and early absorbed in the English settlements.) If we look back only one hundred years from the present time, we find the French and English dominions here about equally important in point of extent and population. The French Canada, Acadia, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Florida and Louisiana were then as far advanced in improvement as the English settlements which they flanked on each side. And the French had greatly the advantage in point of soil, interior navigation and capability of extension. They commanded and possessed the two great rivers which almost met together on the English frontier. And the space between the waters of those rivers on the west was planted with French military posts, so as to complete the investment.
New Orleans was begun before Philadelphia and was much better situated to become a great commercial capital. Quebec and Montreal were older, and had the advantage of most of our other cities. Add to this that the French nation at home was about twice as populous as the English nation at home; and as that part of the increase of colonial population which comes from emigration must naturally be derived from their respective mother countries, it might have been expected that the comparative rapidity of increase would have been in favor of the French at least two to one.
But the French colonists had not been habituated to the use of liberty before their emigration, and they were not prepared nor permitted to enjoy it in any degree afterwards. Their laws were made for them in their mother country, by men who could not know their wants and who fell no interest in their prosperity; and then they were administered by a set of agents as ignorant as their masters; men who, from the nature of their employment and accountability, must in general be oppressive and rapacious.
The result has solved a great problem in political combination. One of these clusters of colonies has grown to a powerful empire, giving examples to the universe in most of the great objects which constitute the dignity of nations. The other, after having been a constant expense to the mother country and serving for barter and exchange in the capricious vicissitudes of European despotism, presents altogether at this day a mass of population and wealth scarcely equal to one of our provinces.
This note is written at the moment when Louisiana, one of the most extensive but least peopled of the French colonies, is ceded to the United States. The world will see how far the above theory will now be confirmed by the rapid increase of population and improvement in that interesting portion of our continent. ↩
Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.
This epigraph, written by Turgot on the bust of Franklin, seems to have been imitated from a line in Manilius; where noticing the progress of science in ascribing things to their natural and proper causes instead of supernatural ones, he says,
Eriput Jovi fulmen, viresque tonandi,
Et sonitum ventis concessit, nubibus ignem.
Ultima ratio regum; a device of Louis XIV, engraved on his ordnance, and afterwards adopted by other powers. When we consider men as reasonable beings and endowed with the qualities requisite for living together in society, this device looks like a satire upon the species; but in reality it only proves the imperfect state to which their own principles of society have yet advanced them in the long and perhaps interminable progress of which they are susceptible. This ultima ratio being already taken out of the hands of individuals and confided only to the chiefs of nations, is as clear a proof of a great progress already made, as its remaining in the hands of those chiefs is a proof that we still remain far short of that degree of wisdom and experience which will enable all the nations to live at peace one with another.
There certainly was a time when the same device might have been written on the hatchet or club or fist of every man; and the best weapon of destruction that he could wield against his neighbour might have been called ultima ratio virorum, meaning that human reason could go no farther. But the wisdom we have drawn from experience has taught us to restrain the use of mortal weapons, making it unlawful and showing it to be unreasonable to use them in private disputes. The principles of social intercourse and the advantages of peace are so far understood as to enable men to form great societies and to submit their personal misunderstandings to common judges; thus removing the ultima ratio from their own private hands to the hands of their government.
Hitherto there has usually been a government to every nation; but the nations are increasing in size and diminishing in number; so that the hands which now hold the ultima ratio by delegation are few, compared
