Volume 15 — PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. A MONOGRAPH.

I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main,—and I see one people, and one language, and one law, and one faith, and, over all that wide continent, the home of Freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime.—John Bright, Speech at Birmingham, December 18, 1862: Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, ed. Rogers, (London, 1868,) Vol. I. p. 225.

This monograph appeared originally in the “Atlantic Monthly” for September, 1867. It is now revised and enlarged. In the celebration of our hundredth birthday as a nation, now fast approaching, these prophetic voices will be heard, teaching how much of present fame and power was foreseen, also what remains to be accomplished.

C. S.

March, 1874.

History shows that the civilization to which we belong is subject to a general law which makes it advance with halts, in the manner of armies, in the direction of the Occident, making the sceptre pass successively into the hands of nations more worthy to hold it, more strong and more able to employ it for the general good.

So it seems that the supreme authority is about to escape from Western and Central Europe, to pass to the New World. In the northern part of that other hemisphere offshoots of the European race have founded a vigorous society full of sap, whose influence grows with a rapidity that has never yet been seen anywhere. In crossing the ocean, it has left behind on the soil of old Europe traditions, prejudices, and usages, which, as impedimenta heavy to carry, would have embarrassed its movements and retarded its progressive march. In about thirty years the United States will have, according to all probability, a hundred millions of population, in possession of the most powerful means, distributed over a territory which would make France fifteen or sixteen times over, and of the most wonderful disposition.…

Vainly do the occidental and central nations of Europe attribute to themselves a primacy, which, in their vanity, they think sheltered from events and eternal: as if there were anything eternal in the grandeur and prosperity of societies, the works of men!—Michel Chevalier, Rapports du Jury International: Exposition Universelle de 1867 à Paris, Tom. I., Introduction, pp. DXIV-DXVI.

America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin territories, with its republic, with its equilibrium between stability and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the continent of the Future,—the immense continent stretched by God between the Atlantic and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve all social problems. [Loud cheers.] Europe has to decide whether she will confound herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the altars old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the theocracies despotic empires,—or whether she will go by labor, by liberty, and by the republic, to coöperate with America in the grand work of universal civilization.—Emilio Castelar, Speech in the Spanish Cortes, June 22, 1871.

MONOGRAPH.

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is the greatest event of secular history. Besides the potato, the turkey, and maize, which it introduced at once for the nourishment and comfort of the Old World,[241] and also tobacco, which only blind passion for the weed could place in the beneficent group, this discovery opened the door to influences infinite in extent and beneficence. Measure them, describe them, picture them, you cannot. While yet unknown, imagination invested this continent with proverbial magnificence. It was the Orient, and the land of Cathay. When afterwards it took a place in geography, imagination found another field in trying to portray its future history. If the Golden Age is before, and not behind, as is now happily the prevailing faith, then indeed must America share, at least, if it does not monopolize, the promised good.

Before the voyage of Columbus in 1492, nothing of America was really known. Scanty scraps from antiquity, vague rumors from the resounding ocean, and the hesitating speculations of science were all that the inspired navigator found to guide him. Foremost among these were the well-known verses of Seneca, so interesting from ethical genius and a tragical death, in the chorus of his “Medea,” which for generations had been the finger-point to an undiscovered world:—

These verses are vague and lofty rather than specific; but Bacon, after setting them forth, says of them, “A prophecy of the discovery of America”; and this they may well be, if we adopt the translation of Archbishop Whately, in his notes to the Essay on Prophecies: “There shall come a time in later ages, when Ocean shall relax his chains and a vast continent appear, and a pilot shall find new worlds, and Thule shall be no more earth’s bound.”[243] Fox, turning from statesmanship to scholarship, wrote to Wakefield: “The prophecy in Seneca’s ‘Medea’ is very curious indeed.”[244] Irving says of it: “Wonderfully apposite, and shows, at least, how nearly the warm imagination of a poet may approach to prophecy. The predictions of the ancient oracles were rarely so unequivocal.”[245] These verses were adopted by Irving as a motto on the title-page of the revised edition of his “Life of Columbus.”

Two copies are extant in the undoubted handwriting of Columbus,—precious autographs to tempt collectors,—both of them in his book on the Prophecies.[246] By these the great admiral sailed.

Humboldt gives the verses in the following form:—

This sympathetic and authoritative commentator, who has illustrated the enterprise with all that classical or mediæval literature affords, declares his conviction that the discovery of a new continent was more completely foreshadowed in the simple geographical statement of the Greek Strabo,[248] who, after a long life of travel, sat down in his old age, during the reign of Augustus, to write the geography of the world, including its cosmography. In this work, where are gathered the results of ancient study and experience, the venerable author, after alluding to the possibility of passing direct from Spain to India, and explaining that the inhabited world is that which we inhabit and know, thus lifts the curtain: “There may be in the same temperate zone two and indeed more inhabited lands, especially near the parallel of Thinæ or Athens, prolonged into the Atlantic Ocean.”[249] This was the voice of ancient Science.

Before the voyage of Columbus two Italian poets seem to have beheld the unknown world. The first was Petrarca; nor was it unnatural that his exquisite genius should reach behind the veil of Time, as where he pictures

The other was Pulci, who, in his “Morgante Maggiore,” sometimes called the last of the romances and the earliest of Italian epics, reveals an undiscovered world beyond the Pillars of Hercules:—

This translation is by our own eminent historian, Prescott, who first called attention to the testimony,[252] which is not mentioned even by Humboldt. Leigh Hunt referred to it at a later day.[253] Pulci was born in 1431, and died about 1487, five years before Columbus sailed; so that he was not aided by any rumor of the discovery he so distinctly predicts.

Passing from the great event which gave a new world not only to Spain, but to civilized man, it may not be uninteresting to collect some of the prophetic voices concerning the future of America and the vast unfolding of our continent. They will have a lesson also. Seeing what has been fulfilled, we may better judge what to expect. I shall set them forth in the order of time, prefacing each prediction with an account of the author sufficient to explain its origin and character. If some are already familiar, others are little known. Brought together in one body, on the principle of our National Union, E pluribus unum, they must give new confidence in the destinies of the Republic.

Only what has been said sincerely by those whose words are important deserves place in such a collection. Oracles had ceased before our history began; so that we meet no responses paltering in a double sense, like the deceptive replies to Crœsus and to Pyrrhus, nor any sayings which, according to the quaint language of Sir Thomas Browne, “seem quodlibetically constituted, and, like a Delphian blade, will cut on both sides.”[254] In Bacon’s Essay on Prophecies there is a latitude not to be followed. Not fable or romance, but history, is the true authority; and here experience and genius are the lights by which our prophets have walked. Doubtless there is a difference in human faculties. Men who have lived much and felt strongly see further than others. Their vision penetrates the future. Second-sight is little more than clearness of sight. Milton tells us that

Sometimes this strain is attained even in youth. But here Genius with divine power lifts the curtain and sweeps the scene.

The elder Disraeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” has a chapter on “Prediction,” giving curious instances, among which is that of Rousseau, toward the end of the third book of “Émile,” where he says, “We approach a condition of crisis and the age of revolutions.”[255] Our own Revolution was then at hand, soon followed by that of France. The settlement of America was not without auguries even at the beginning.

A PROPHETIC GROUP.

Before passing to the more serious examples, I bring into group a few marking at least a poet’s appreciation of the newly discovered country, if not a prophetic spirit. The Muse was not silent at the various reports. As early as 1595, Chapman, famous as the translator of Homer, in a poem on Guiana, thus celebrates and commends the unknown land:—

In similar strain, Drayton, who flourished under James the First, says of Virginia:—

Daniel, poet-laureate and contemporary, seemed to foresee the spread of our English speech, anticipating our own John Adams:—

The emigration prompted by conscience and for the sake of religious liberty inspired the pious and poetical Herbert to famous verses:—

The poet died in 1632, twelve years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and only two years after the larger movement of the Massachusetts Company, which began the settlement of Boston. The verses saw the light with difficulty, being refused the necessary license; but the functionary at last yielded, calling the author “a divine poet,” and expressing the hope that “the world will not take him to be an inspired prophet.”[260] Fuller, writing a little later, was perhaps moved by Herbert, when he said: “I am confident that America, though the youngest sister of the four, is now grown marriageable, and daily hopes to get Christ to her husband by the preaching of the Gospel.”[261] In a different vein, a contemporary poet, the favorite of Charles the First, Thomas Carew, in a masque performed by the monarch and his courtiers at Whitehall, February 18, 1633, made sport of New England, saying that it had “purged more virulent humors from the politic body than guaiacum and all the West Indian drugs have from the natural bodies of this kingdom.”[262] But these words uttered at the English Court were praise.

Then came answering voices from the Colonies. Rev. William Morrell, of the Established Church, a settler of 1623, said of New England, in a Latin poem translated by himself:—

“The Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” another name for Rev. Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich, Mass., at the close of his witty book, first published in 1647, and having four different editions in this single year, sends an invitation to those at home:—

Another witness we meet in the writings of Franklin. It is George Webb, who, decamping from Oxford and the temptations of scholarship, indented himself according to the usage of the times, and became what Franklin calls “a bought servant” on our shores, where his genius flowered in the prophetic couplet, written in 1727:—

Another, Gulian Verplanck, of New York, in verses written in England in 1773, foretells the repetition of British wealth, power, and glory in the New World:—

And yet another, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, born in Scotland, and a graduate of our Princeton College in 1771, in a Commencement poem on “The Rising Glory of America,” pictured the future of the continent, adopting as a motto the verses of Seneca twice quoted by Columbus:—

To these add Voltaire, who, in his easy verse, written in 1751, represents God as putting fever in European climates, “and the remedy in America.”[267]

From this chorus, with only one discordant voice, I pass to a long line of voices so distinct and full as to be recognized separately.

JOHN MILTON, 1641.

The list opens with John Milton, whose lofty words are like an overture to the great drama of emigration, with its multitudes in successive generations. If not a prophet, he has yet struck a mighty key-note in our history.

The author of “Paradise Lost,” of “Comus,” and the heroic Sonnets, needs no special mention beyond the two great dates of birth and death. He was born 9th December, 1608, and died 8th November, 1674. The treatise from which I quote was written in 1641.

“What numbers of faithful and free-born Englishmen and good Christians have been constrained to forsake their dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide and shelter from the fury of the bishops! Oh, Sir, if we could but see the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are wont to give a personal form to what they please, how would she appear, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold so many of her children exposed at once and thrust from things of dearest necessity, because their conscience could not assent to things which the bishops thought indifferent?… Let the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of comets and impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes to states; I shall believe there cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation (God turn the omen from us!) than when the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are enforced by heaps to forsake their native country.”[268]

Here in a few words are the sacrifices made by our fathers, as they turned from their English homes, and also the conscience which prompted and sustained them. Begun in sacrifice and in conscience, their empire grew and flourished with constant and increasing promise of future grandeur.

ABRAHAM COWLEY, 1667.

Contemporary with Milton, and at the time a rival for the palm of poetry, was Abraham Cowley, born 1618, died 28th July, 1667. His biography stands at the head of Johnson’s “Lives of the English Poets,” the first in that instructive collection. The two poets were on opposite sides,—Milton for the Commonwealth, Cowley for the King.

His genius was recognized in his own time; and when he died, at the age of forty-nine, after a night of exposure under the open sky, Charles the Second said, “Mr. Cowley has not left a better man behind him in England.” He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer and Spenser.

He composed, in much-admired Latin verse, six books on Plants: the first and second in elegiac verse, displaying the qualities of herbs; the third and fourth in various measures, on the beauties of flowers; and the fifth and sixth in hexameters, like the Georgics, on the uses of trees. The first two books, in Latin, appeared in 1662; the other four, also in Latin, were not published till 1668, the year after his death. They did not see the English light till near the close of the century, when a translation was published by Tate, from which I quote.

Two fruits of America are commemorated. The first is that which becomes Chocolate:—

The other is the Cocoa-Nut:—

The poet, addressing the New World, becomes prophetic:—

This prophecy, though appearing in English tardily, may be dated from 1667, when the Latin poem was already written.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, 1682.

Dr. Johnson called attention to a tract of Sir Thomas Browne entitled “A Prophecy concerning the Future State of Several Nations,” where the famous author “plainly discovers his expectation to be the same with that entertained lately with more confidence by Dr. Berkeley, that America will be the seat of the fifth empire.”[272] The tract is vague, but prophetic.

Sir Thomas Browne was born 19th October, 1605, and died 19th October, 1682. His tract was published two years after his death, in a collection of Miscellanies, edited by Dr. Tenison. As a much-admired author, some of whose writings belong to our English classics, his prophetic prolusions are not unworthy of notice. Among them are the following:—

Some of these words are striking, especially when we consider their early date. In a commentary on each verse the author seeks to explain it. New England is “that thriving colony which hath so much increased in our days”; its people are already “industrious,” and when they have so far increased “that the neighboring country will not contain them, they will range still farther, and be able in time to set forth great armies, seek for new possessions, or make considerable and conjoined migrations.”[274] The verse touching Africa will be fulfilled “when African countries shall no longer make it a common trade to sell away their people.” And this may come to pass “whenever they shall be well civilized, and acquainted with arts and affairs sufficient to employ people in their countries: if also they should be converted to Christianity, but especially unto Mahometism; for then they would never sell those of their religion to be slaves unto Christians.”[275] The verse concerning America is expounded thus:—

“That is, When America shall be better civilized, new policied, and divided between great princes, it may come to pass that they will no longer suffer their treasure of gold and silver to be sent out to maintain the luxury of Europe and other parts; but rather employ it to their own advantages, in great exploits and undertakings, magnificent structures, wars, or expeditions of their own.”[276]

The other verse, on the invasion of the Old World by the New, is explained:—

“That is, When America shall be so well peopled, civilized, and divided into kingdoms, they are like to have so little regard of their originals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them: they may also have a distinct commerce between themselves, or but independently with those of Europe, and may hostilely and piratically assault them, even as the Greek and Roman colonies after a long time dealt with their original countries.”[277]

That these speculations should arrest the attention of Dr. Johnson is something. They seem to have been in part fulfilled. An editor quietly remarks, that, “to judge from the course of events since Sir Thomas wrote, we may not unreasonably look forward to their more complete fulfilment.”[278]

SIR JOSIAH CHILD AND DR. CHARLES DAVENANT, 1698.

In contrast with the poets, but mingling with them in forecast, were two writers on Trade, who saw the future through facts and figures, or what one of them called “political arithmetic,” even discerning colonial independence in the distance. These were Sir Josiah Child, born 1630 and died 1699, and Dr. Charles Davenant, born 1656 and died 1714.

Child is mentioned by De Foe as “originally a tradesman”; others speak of him as “a Southwalk brewer”; and McCulloch calls him “one of the most extensive, and, judging from his work, best-informed, merchants of his time.”[279] He rose to wealth and consideration, founding a family which intermarried with the nobility. His son was known as Lord Castlemaine, Earl Tylney, of Ireland. Davenant was eldest son of “rare Sir William,” the author of “Gondibert,” and, like his eminent father, a dramatist. He was also member of Parliament, and wrote much on commercial questions; but here he was less famous than Child, whose “New Discourse of Trade,” so far as it concerned the interest of money, first appeared in 1668, and since then has been often reprinted and much quoted. There was an enlarged edition in 1694. That now before me appeared in 1698, and in the same year Davenant published his kindred “Discourses on the Public Revenues and on the Trade of England,” among which is one “on the Plantation Trade.” The two authors treated especially the Colonies, and in similar spirit.

The work of Child was brought to more recent notice by the voluminous plodder, George Chalmers, particularly in his writings on the Colonies and American Independence,[280] and then again by the elder Disraeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” who places a prophecy attributed to him in his chapter on “Prediction.” After referring to Harrington, “who ventured to predict an event, not by other similar events, but by a theoretical principle which he had formed,” and to a like error in De Foe, Disraeli quotes Chalmers:—

“Child, foreseeing from experience that men’s conduct must finally be decided [directed] by their principles, foretold the colonial revolt. De Foe, allowing his prejudices to obscure his sagacity, reprobated that suggestion, because he deemed interest a more strenuous prompter than enthusiasm.”

The pleasant hunter of curiosities then says:—

“The predictions of Harrington and De Foe are precisely such as we might expect from a petty calculator,—a political economist, who can see nothing farther than immediate results; but the true philosophical predictor was Child, who had read the past.”[281]

Disraeli was more curious than accurate. His excuse is, that he followed another writer.[282] The prediction attributed to Child belongs to Davenant.

The work of Child is practical rather than speculative, and shows a careful student of trade. Dwelling on the “plantations” of England and their value, he considers their original settlement, and here we find a painful contrast between New England and Virginia.[283] Passing from the settlement to the character, New England is described as “being a more independent government from this kingdom than any other of our plantations, and the people that went thither more one peculiar sort or sect than those that went to the rest of our plantations.”[284] He recognized in them “a people whose frugality, industry, and temperance, and the happiness of whose laws and institution, do promise to themselves long life, with a wonderful increase of people, riches, and power.”[285] And then: “Of all the American plantations, his Majesty hath none so apt for the building of shipping as New England, nor none comparably so qualified for breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the natural industry of that people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries.”[286] On his last page are words more than complimentary:—

“To conclude this chapter, and to do right to that most industrious English colony, I must confess, that, though we lose by their unlimited trade with our foreign plantations, yet we are very great gainers by their direct trade to and from Old England: our yearly exportations of English manufactures, malt, and other goods, from hence thither, amounting, in my opinion, to ten times the value of what is imported from thence.”[287]

Here is keen observation, but hardly prophecy.

Contrast this with Davenant:—

“As the case now stands, we shall show that they [the Colonies] are a spring of wealth to this nation, that they work for us, that their treasure centres all here, and that the laws have tied them fast enough to us; so that it must be through our own fault and misgovernment, if they become independent of England.… Corrupt governors by oppressing the inhabitants may hereafter provoke them to withdraw their obedience, and by supine negligence or upon mistaken measures we may let them grow, more especially New England, in naval strength and power, which if suffered, we cannot expect to hold them long in our subjection. If, as some have proposed, we should think to build ships of war there, we may teach them an art which will cost us some blows to make them forget. Some such courses may, indeed, drive them, or put it into their heads, to erect themselves into independent Commonwealths.”[288]

Davenant then, following Child, remarks upon New England as “the most proper for building ships and breeding seamen,” and adds:—

“So that, if we should go to cultivate among them the art of navigation and teach them to have a naval force, they may set up for themselves and make the greatest part of our West India trade precarious.”[289]

These identical words are quoted by Chalmers, who exclaims: “Of that prophecy we have lived, alas! to see the fulfilment.”[290]

Chalmers emigrated from Scotland to Maryland, and practised in the colonial courts, but, disgusted with American independence, returned home, where he wrote and edited much, especially on colonial questions, ill concealing a certain animosity, and on one occasion stating that among the documents in the Board of Trade and Paper Office were “the most satisfactory proofs of the settled purpose of the revolted colonies, from the epoch of the Revolution in 1688, to acquire direct independence.”[291] But none of these proofs are presented. The same allegation was also made by Viscount Bury in his “Exodus of the Western Nations,”[292] but also without proofs.

The name of De Foe is always interesting, and I cannot close this article without reference to the saying attributed to him by Chalmers. I know not where in his multitudinous writings it may be found, unless in his “Plan of the English Commerce,” and here careful research discloses nothing nearer than this:—

“What a glorious trade to England it would be to have those colonies increased with a million of people, to be clothed, furnished, and supplied with all their needful things, food excepted, only from us, and tied down forever to us by that immortal, indissoluble bond of trade, their interest!”[293]

In the same work he says:—

“This is certain, and will be granted, that the product of our improved colonies raises infinitely more trade, employs more hands, and, I think I may say, by consequence, brings in more wealth to this one particular nation or people, the English, than all the mines of New Spain do to the Spaniards.”[294]

In this vision the author of “Robinson Crusoe” was permitted to see the truth with regard to our country, although failing to recognize future independence.

BISHOP BERKELEY, 1726.

It is pleasant to think that Berkeley, whose beautiful verses predicting the future of America are so often quoted, was so sweet and charming a character. Atterbury said of him: “So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman.”[295] Swift said: “He is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and power.”[296] Pope let drop a tribute which can never die:—

Such a person was naturally a seer.

He is compendiously called an Irish prelate and philosopher. Born in the County of Kilkenny, 1684, and dying in Oxford, 1753, he began as a philosopher. While still young, he wrote his famous treatise on “The Principles of Human Knowledge,” where he denies the existence of matter, insisting that it is only an impression produced on the mind by Divine power. After travel for several years on the Continent, and fellowship with the witty and learned at home, among whom were Addison, Swift, Pope, Garth, and Arbuthnot, he conceived the project of educating the aborigines of America, which was set forth in a tract, published in 1725, entitled “A Proposal for the better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations, and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, by a College to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda.” Persuaded by his benevolence, the Minister[298] promised twenty thousand pounds, and there were several private subscriptions, to promote what was called by the King “so pious an undertaking.” Berkeley possessed already a deanery in Ireland, worth eleven hundred pounds a year. Turning away from this residence, and refusing to be tempted by an English mitre, offered by the Queen, he set sail for Rhode Island, “which lay nearest to Bermuda,” where, after a tedious passage of more than four months, he arrived 23d January, 1729. Here he lived on a farm back of Newport, having been, according to his own report, “at very great expense in purchasing land and stock.”[299] In familiar letters he has recorded his impression of this place, famous since for fashion. “The climate,” he says, “is like that of Italy, and not at all colder in the winter than I have known it everywhere north of Rome.… This island is pleasantly laid out in hills and vales and rising grounds, hath plenty of excellent springs and fine rivulets, and many delightful landscapes of rocks and promontories and adjacent islands.… The town of Newport contains about six thousand souls, and is the most thriving, flourishing place in all America for its bigness. It is very pretty, and pleasantly situated. I was never more agreeably surprised than at the first sight of the town and its harbor.”[300] He seems to have been contented, and when his companions went to Boston stayed at home, “preferring,” as he wrote, “quiet and solitude to the noise of a great town, notwithstanding all the solicitations that have been used to draw us thither.”[301]

The money he had expected, especially from the King’s ministers, failed, and after waiting in vain expectation two years and a half, he returned to England, leaving an infant daughter buried in the churchyard of Trinity, and bestowing upon Yale College a library of eight hundred and eighty volumes, as well as his estate in Rhode Island. During his residence at Newport he preached every Sunday, and was indefatigable in pastoral duties, besides meditating, if not composing, “The Minute Philosopher,” which was published shortly after his return.

In his absence he had not been forgotten at home; and shortly after his return he became Bishop of Cloyne, in which place he was most exemplary, devoting himself to his episcopal duties, to the education of his children, and the pleasures of composition.

It was while occupied with his plan of a college, especially as a nursery for the colonial churches, shortly before sailing for America, that the great future was revealed to him, and he wrote the famous poem, the only one found among his works, entitled “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.”[302] The date may be fixed at 1726. Such a poem was an historic event. I give the first and last stanzas.

It is difficult to exaggerate the value of these verses, which have been so often quoted as to have become a commonplace of literature and politics. There is nothing from any oracle, there is very little from any prophecy, which can compare with them. The biographer of Berkeley, who wrote in the last century, was very cautious, when, after calling them “a beautiful copy of verses,” he says that “another age perhaps will acknowledge the old conjunction of the prophetic character with that of the poet to have again taken place.”[303] The vates of the Romans was poet and prophet; and such was Berkeley.

Mr. Webster calls this an “extraordinary prophecy,” and then says: “It was an intuitive glance into futurity; it was a grand conception, strong, ardent, glowing, embracing all time since the creation of the world and all regions of which that world is composed, and judging of the future by just analogy with the past. And the inimitable imagery and beauty with which the thought is expressed, joined to the conception itself, render it one of the most striking passages in our language.”[304]

The sentiment which prompted the prophetic verses of the excellent Bishop was widely diffused, or perhaps it was a natural prompting.[305] Of this illustration is afforded in the life of Benjamin West. On his visit to Rome in 1760, the young artist encountered a famous improvvisatore, who, learning that he was an American come to study the fine arts in Rome, at once addressed him with the ardor of inspiration, and to the music of his guitar. After singing the darkness which for so many ages veiled America from the eyes of Science, and also the fulness of time when the purposes for which this continent had been raised from the deep would be manifest, he hailed the youth before him as an instrument of Heaven to create there a taste for the arts which elevate man, and an assurance of refuge to science and knowledge, when, in the old age of Europe, they should have forsaken her shores. Then, in the spirit of prophecy, he sang:—

“But all things of heavenly origin, like the glorious sun, move westward; and Truth and Art have their periods of shining and of night. Rejoice, then, O venerable Rome, in thy divine destiny! for, though darkness overshadow thy seats, and though thy mitred head must descend into the dust, thy spirit, immortal and undecayed, already spreads towards a new world.”[306]

John Adams, in his old age, dwelling on the reminiscences of early life, records that nothing in his reading was “more ancient in his memory than the observation that arts, sciences, and empire had travelled westward, and in conversation it was always added, since he was a child, that their next leap would be over the Atlantic into America.” With the assistance of an octogenarian neighbor, he recalled a couplet which he had heard repeated “for more than sixty years”:—

The tradition was, as his neighbor had heard it, that these lines came from some of our early Pilgrims, by whom they had been “inscribed, or rather drilled, into a rock on the shore of Monument [Manomet] Bay in our Old Colony of Plymouth.”[307]

Another illustration of this same sentiment is found in Burnaby’s “Travels through the Middle Settlements in North America, in 1759 and 1760,” a work first published in 1775. In reflections at the close the traveller remarks:—

“An idea, strange as it is visionary, has entered into the minds of the generality of mankind, that empire is travelling westward; and every one is looking forward with eager and impatient expectation to that destined moment when America is to give law to the rest of the world.”[308]

The traveller is none the less an authority for the prevalence of this sentiment because he declares it “illusory and fallacious,” and records his conviction that “America is formed for happiness, but not for empire.” Happy America! What empire can compare with happiness? Making amends for this admission, the jealous traveller, in his edition of 1798, after the adoption of the National Constitution, announces “that the present union of the American States will not be permanent, or last for any considerable length of time,” and “that that extensive country must necessarily be divided into separate states and kingdoms.”[309] Thus far the Union has stood against all shocks, foreign or domestic; and the prophecy of Berkeley is more than ever in the popular mind.

SAMUEL SEWALL, 1697-1727.

Berkeley saw the sun of empire travelling westward. A contemporary whose home was made in New England, Samuel Sewall, saw the New Heaven and the New Earth. He was born at Bishop-Stoke, England, 28th March, 1652, and died at Boston, 1st January, 1730. A child emigrant in 1661, he became a student and graduate of our Cambridge; in 1692, Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts; in 1718, Chief Justice. He was of the court which condemned the witches, but afterwards, standing up before the congregation of his church, made public confession of error, and his secret diary bears testimony to his trial of conscience. In harmony with this contrition was his early feeling for the enslaved African, as witness his tract, “The Selling of Joseph,” so that he may be called the first of our Abolitionists.

Besides an “Answer to Queries respecting America,” in 1690, and “Proposals touching the Accomplishment of Prophecies,” in 1713, he wrote another work, with the following title:—

“Phænomena quædam Apocalyptica ad Aspectum Novi Orbis configurata: Or, Some Few Lines towards a Description of the New Heaven as it makes to those who stand upon the New Earth. By Samuel Sewall, A. M., and sometime Fellow of Harvard College at Cambridge in New England.”

The copy before me is the second edition, with the imprint, “Massachuset, Boston. Printed by Bartholomew Green, and sold by Benjamin Eliot, Samuel Gerrish, and Daniel Henchman. 1727.” There is a prophetic voice even in the title, which promises “some few lines towards a description of the New Heaven as it makes to those who stand upon the New Earth.” This is followed by verses from the Scriptures, among which is Isaiah, xi. 14: “But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west”; also, Acts, i. 8: “Ye shall be witnesses unto me unto the uttermost part of the earth,”—quoting here from the Spanish Bible, “hasta lo ultimo de la tierra.”

Two different Dedications follow,—the first dated “Boston, N. E., April 16th, 1697.” Here are words on the same key with the title:—

“For I can’t but think that either England or New England, or both, (together is best,) is the only bridemaid mentioned by name in David’s prophetical Epithalamium, to assist at the great wedding now shortly to be made.… Angels incognito have sometimes made themselves guests to men, designing thereby to surprise them with a requital of their love to strangers. In like manner the English nation, in showing kindness to the aboriginal natives of America, may possibly show kindness to Israelites unawares.… Instead of being branded for slaves with hot irons in the face and arms, and driven by scores in mortal chains, they shall wear the name of God in their foreheads, and they shall be delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God.… Asia, Africa, and Europe have each of them had a glorious Gospel-day. None, therefore, will be grieved at any one’s pleading that America may be made coparcener with her sisters in the free and sovereign grace of God.”

In the second Dedication the author speaks of his book as “this vindication of America.”

Then comes, in black letter, what is entitled “Psalm 139, 7-10,” containing this stanza:—

Entering upon his subject, our prophet says:—

“Whereas New England, and Boston of the Massachusetts, have this to make mention of, that they can tell their age, and account it their honor to have their birth and parentage kept in everlasting remembrance. And in very deed, the families and churches which first ventured to follow Christ thorow the Atlantic Ocean into a strange land full of wild men were so religious, their end so holy, their self-denial in pursuing of it so extraordinary, that I can’t but hope that the plantation has thereby gained a very strong crasis, and that it will not be of one or two or three centuries only, but by the grace of God it will be very long lasting.”[310]

Then again:—

“New Jerusalem will not straiten and enfeeble, but wonderfully dilate and invigorate Christianity in the several quarters of the world,—in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, and in America. And one that has been born, or but lived in America more than threescore years, it may be pardonable for him to ask, Why may not that be the place of New Jerusalem?”[311]

And here also:—

“Of all the parts of the world which do from this charter entitle themselves to the government of Christ, America’s plea, in my opinion, is the strongest. For when once Christopher Columbus had added this fourth to the other three parts of the foreknown world, they who sailed farther westward arrived but where they had been before. The globe now failed of offering anything new to the adventurous traveller,—or, however, it could not afford another New World. And probably the consideration of America’s being the beginning of the East and the end of the West was that which moved Columbus to call some part of it by the name of Alpha and Omega. Now if the last Adam did give order for the engraving of his own name upon this last earth, ’twill draw with it great consequences, even such as will in time bring the poor Americans out of their graves and make them live.”[312]

Again he says:—

“May it not with more or equal strength be argued: New Jerusalem is not the same with Jerusalem; but as Jerusalem was to the westward of Babylon, so New Jerusalem must be to the westward of Rome, to avoid disturbance in the order of these mysteries?”[313]

Then quoting Latin verses of Cowley[314] and English verses of Herbert,[315] he says: “Not doubting but that these authorities, being brought to the king’s scales, will be over weight.”[316]

Afterwards he adduces “learned Mr. Nicholas Fuller,” who “would fain have it believed that America was first peopled by the posterity of our great-grandfather Japheth, though he will not be very strict with us as to the particular branch of that wide family.”[317] The extract from this new authority is remarkable for its vindication to Columbus of the name of the new continent: “Quam passim Americam dicunt, vere ac merito Columbinam potius dicerent, a magnanimo heroë Christophoro Columbo Genuensi, primo terrarum illarum investigatore atque inventore plane divinitus constituto.”[318] This designation Fuller adopts: thus, “Hinc ergo Columbina primum”; and again, “Multo is quidem propior est Columbinæ”; then again, “America, seu verius Columbina”; and yet again, “Repertam fuisse Columbinam.”[319] This effort draws from our prophet a comment:—

“But why should a learned man make all this Dirige for Columbus’s name? What matter is it how America be called? For Flavio of Malphi in Naples hath in great measure applied the virtues of the loadstone to the mariner’s compass in vain, the Portugals have found the length of Africa’s foot in vain, the Spaniards sent out the Italian dove in vain, Sir Francis Drake hath sailed round the world and made thorow lights to it in vain, and Hakluyt and Purchas have with endless labor acquainted Englishmen with these things in vain, if, after all, we go about to turn the American Euphrates into a Stygian Lake. The breaking of this one instrument spoils us of the long-expected and much-desired consort of music.”[320]

Very soon thereafter he breaks forth in words printed in large Italic type and made prophetic:—

“Lift up your heads, O ye Gates [of Columbina], and be ye lift up, ye Everlasting Doors, and the KING of Glory shall come in.”[321]

MARQUIS D’ARGENSON, 1733.

From the Puritan son of New England, pass now to a different character. René Louis de Voyer, Marquis d’Argenson, a French noble, was born 18th October, 1694, and died 26th January, 1757; so that his life lapped upon the prolonged reigns of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth. At college the comrade of Voltaire, he was ever afterwards the friend and correspondent of this great writer. His own thoughts, commended by the style of the other, would have placed him among the most illustrious of French history. Notwithstanding strange eccentricities, he was often elevated, far-sighted, and prophetic, above any other Frenchman except Turgot. By the courtiers of Versailles he was called “the Stupid” (la Bête), while Voltaire hailed one of his productions, yet in manuscript, as the “work of Aristides,” and pronounced him “the best citizen who had ever reached the ministry,” and the Duc de Richelieu called him “Secretary of State for the Republic of Plato.”[322]

Except a brief subordinate service and two years of the Cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs, his life was passed in meditation and composition, especially on subjects of government and human improvement. This was his great passion. “If I were in power,” he wrote, “and knew a capable man, I would go on all fours and seek him, to pray him to serve me as counsellor and tutor.”[323] Is not this a lesson to the heedless partisan?

In 1725 he became an active member of a small club devoted to hardy speculation, and known, from its place of meeting at the apartment of its founder, as l’Entre-Sol. It is to his honor that he mingled here with the Abbé Saint-Pierre, and sympathized entirely with the many-sided, far-sighted plans of this “good man.” In the privacy of his journal he records his homage: “This worthy citizen is not known, and he does not know himself.… He has much intelligence, and has devoted himself to a kind of philosophy profound and abandoned by everybody, which is the true politics destined to procure the greatest happiness of men.”[324] In praising Saint-Pierre our author furnished a measure of himself.

His “Considérations sur le Gouvernement Ancien et Présent de la France,” a work which excited the admiration both of Voltaire and Rousseau, was read by the former as early as 1739, but did not see the light till some years after the death of the author. It first appeared at Amsterdam in 1764, and in a short time there were no less than four editions in Holland. In 1784 a more accurate edition appeared in France, and in 1787 another at the command and expense of the Assembly of Notables. Here was a recognition of the people, and an inquiry how far democracy was consistent with monarchical government. Believing much in the people and anxious for their happiness, he had not ceased to believe in kings. The book was contained in the epigraph from the “Britannicus” of Racine:—

Other works followed: “Essays in the Style of those of Montaigne”; and the “Journal and Memoirs,” in nine volumes, published tardily. There still remain in manuscript: “Remarks while Reading”; “Memoirs of State”; “Foreign Affairs, containing Memoirs of my Ministry”; “Thoughts since my Leaving the Ministry”; and especially, “Thoughts on the Reformation of the State.” In all these there is a communicativeness like that of Saint-Simon in his “Memoirs,” and of Rousseau in his “Confessions,” without the wonderful talent of either. The advanced ideas of the author are constantly conspicuous, making him foremost among contemporaries in discerning the questions of the future. Even of marriage he writes in the spirit of some modern reformers: “It is necessary to press the people to marriage, waiting for something better.”[325] This is an instance. His reforms embraced nothing less than the suppression of feudal privileges and of the right of primogeniture, uniformity of weights and measures, judges irremovable and salaried by the State, the dismissal of foreign troops, and the residence of the king and his ministers in the capital embellished by vast squares, pierced by broad streets, “with the Bois de Boulogne for country.” This is the Paris of latter days. Add to this the suppression of cemeteries, hospitals, and slaughter-houses in the interior of Paris,—and many other things, not omitting omnibuses, and even including balloons. “Here is something,” he records, “which will be treated as folly. I am persuaded that one of the first famous discoveries to make, and reserved perhaps for our age, is to find the art of flying in the air.” And he proceeds to describe the balloon.[326]

His large nature is manifest in cosmopolitan ideas, and the inquiry if it were not well to consider one’s self “as citizen of the world” more than is the usage. Here his soul glows:—

“What a small corner Europe occupies on the round earth! How many lands remain to be inhabited! See this immense extent of three parts of the world, and of undiscovered lands at the North and South! If people went there with other views than that tiresome exclusive property, all these lands would be inhabited in two centuries. We shall not see this, but it will come.”[327]

And then, after coupling morals and well-being, he announces the true rule: “An individual who shall do well will succeed, and who shall do ill will fail: it is the same with nations.”[328] This is just and lofty. In such a spirit he cherished plans of political reconstruction in foreign nations, especially in Italy. The old Italian cry was his: “The Barbarians must be driven from Italy”; and he contemplated “a republic or eternal association of the Italian powers, as there was a German, a Dutch, an Helvetic,” and he called this “the greatest affair that had been treated in Europe for a long time.” The entry of Italy was to be closed to the Emperor; and he adds: “For ourselves what a happy privation, if we are excluded forever from the necessity of sending thither our armies to triumph, but to perish!”[329]

The intelligence that saw Italy so clearly saw France also, and her exigencies, marking out “a national senate composed equally of all the orders of the state, and which, on questions of peace and war, would hold the kings in check by the necessity of obtaining supplies”; also saw the approaching decay of Turkey, and wished to make Greece flourishing once more, to acquire possession of the holy places, to overcome the barbarians of Northern Africa by a union of Christian powers, which, “once well united in a kind of Christian Republic, according to the project of Henry the Fourth detailed by the Abbé Saint-Pierre, would have something better to do than fighting to destroy each other as they now do.”[330] Naturally this singular precocious intelligence reached across the Atlantic, and here he became one of our prophets:—

“Another great event to arrive upon the round earth is this. The English have in North America domains great, strong, rich, well regulated. There are in New England a parliament, governors, troops, white inhabitants in abundance, riches, and, what is worse, a marine.

“I say that some fine morning these dominions may separate from England, rise and erect themselves into an independent republic.

“What will happen then? Do people think of this? A country civilized by the arts of Europe, in a condition to communicate with it by the present perfection of its marine, and which will thus appropriate our arts in proportion to their improvement,—patience! such a country in several centuries will make great progress in population and in refinement; such a country in a short time will render itself master of America, and especially of the gold-mines.”

Then, dwelling on the extension of commercial freedom and the improvement of the means of communication, he exclaims, with lyrical outburst:—

“And you will then see how beautiful the earth will be! what culture! what new arts and new sciences! what safety for commerce! Navigation will precipitate all nations towards each other. A day will come when one will go about in a populous and orderly city of California as one goes in the stage-coach of Meaux.”[331]

The published works of D’Argenson do not enable us to fix the precise date of these remarkable words. They are from the “Thoughts on the Reformation of the State,” and the first three paragraphs appear to have been written as early at least as 1733, while his intimacy with the Abbé Saint-Pierre was at its height; the fourth somewhat later;[332] but all preceding Turgot and John Adams. Each, however, spoke from his own soul, and without prompting.

TURGOT, 1750, 1770, 1776, 1778.

Among the illustrious names of France few equal that of Turgot. He was a philosopher among ministers, and a minister among philosophers. Malesherbes said of him, that he had the heart of L’Hôpital and the head of Bacon. Such a person in public affairs was an epoch for his country and for the human race. Had his spirit prevailed, the bloody drama of the French Revolution would not have occurred, or it would at least have been postponed: I think it could not have occurred. He was a good man, who sought to carry into government the rules of goodness. His career from beginning to end was one continuous beneficence. Such a nature was essentially prophetic, for he discerned the natural laws by which the future is governed.

He was of an ancient Norman family, whose name suggests the god Thor. He was born at Paris, 1727, and died, 1781. Being a younger son, he was destined for the Church, and began his studies as an ecclesiastic at the ancient Sorbonne. Before registering an irrevocable vow, he announced his repugnance to the profession, and turned aside to other pursuits. Law, literature, science, humanity, government, now engaged his attention. He associated himself with the authors of the “Encyclopédie,” and became one of its contributors. In other writings he vindicated especially the virtue of Toleration. Not merely a theorist, he soon arrived at the high post of Intendant of Limoges, where he developed talent for administration and sympathy with the people. The potato came into Limousin through him. But he continued to employ his pen, particularly on questions of political economy, which he treated as a master. On the accession of Louis the Sixteenth he was called to the Cabinet as Minister of the Marine, and shortly afterwards gave up this place to be the head of the Finances. Here he began a system of rigid economy, founded on curtailment of expenses and enlargement of resources. The latter was obtained especially by removal of disabilities from trade, whether at home or abroad, and the substitution of a single tax on land for a complex multiplicity of taxes. The enemies of progress were too strong at that time, and the King dismissed the reformer. Good men in France became anxious for the future; Voltaire, in his distant retreat, gave a shriek of despair, and addressed to Turgot remarkable verses entitled “Épître à un Homme.” Worse still, the good edicts of the minister were rescinded, and society was put back.

The discarded minister gave himself to science, literature, and friendship. He welcomed Franklin to France and to immortality in a Latin verse of marvellous felicity. He was already the companion of the liberal spirits who were doing so much for knowledge and for reform. By writing and by conversation he exercised a constant influence. His “ideas” seem to illumine the time. We may be content to follow him in saying, “The glory of arms cannot compare with the happiness of living in peace.”[333] He anticipated our definition of a republic, when he said “it was founded upon the equality of all the citizens,”[334]—good words, not yet practically verified in all our States. Such a government he, living under a monarchy, bravely pronounced “the best of all”; but he added, that he “never had known a constitution truly republican.”[335] With similar plainness he announced that “the destruction of the Ottoman Empire would be a real good for all the nations of Europe,” and he added, still further, for humanity also, because it would involve the abolition of negro slavery, and because “to despoil an oppressor is not to attack, but to vindicate, the common rights of humanity.”[336] With such thoughts and aspirations the prophet died.

But I have no purpose of writing a biography, or even a character. All that I intend is an introduction to Turgot’s prophetic words. When only twenty-three years of age, while still an ecclesiastic at the Sorbonne, the future minister delivered a discourse on the Progress of the Human Mind, in which, after describing the commercial triumphs of the ancient Phœnicians, covering the coasts of Greece and Asia with their colonies, he lets drop these remarkable words:—

“Les colonies sont comme des fruits qui ne tiennent à l’arbre que jusqu’à leur maturité: devenues suffisantes à elles-mêmes, elles firent ce que fit depuis Carthage,—ce que fera un jour l’Amérique.”

“Colonies are like fruits, which hold to the tree only until their maturity: when sufficient for themselves, they did that which Carthage afterwards did,—that which some day America will do.”[337]

On this most suggestive declaration, Dupont de Nemours, the editor of Turgot’s works in 1808, remarks in a note:—

“It was in 1750 that M. Turgot, being then only twenty-three years old, and devoted in a seminary to the study of theology, divined, foresaw, the revolution which has formed the United States,—which has detached them from the European power apparently the most capable of retaining its colonies under its dominion.”

At the time Turgot wrote, Canada was a French possession; but his words are as applicable to this colony as to the United States. When will the fruit be ripe?

In contrast with this precise prediction, and yet in harmony with it, are the words of Montesquieu, in his ingenious work, which saw the light in 1748, two years before the discourse of Turgot. In the famous chapter, “How the laws contribute to form the manners, customs, and character of a nation,” we have a much-admired picture of “a free nation” “inhabiting an island,” where, without naming England, it is easy to recognize her greatness and glory. And here we meet a Delphic passage, also without a name, pointing to the British Colonies:—

“If this nation sent out colonies, it would do so more to extend its commerce than its dominion.

“As people like to establish elsewhere what is found established at home, it would give to the people of its colonies its own form of government; and this government carrying with it prosperity, we should see great peoples formed in the very forests which it should send to inhabit.”[338]

The future greatness of the Colonies is insinuated rather than foretold, and here the prophetic voice is silent. Nothing is said of the impending separation, and the beginning of a new nation; so that, plainly, Montesquieu saw our future less than Turgot.

The youthful prophet did not lose his penetrating vision with years. In the same spirit and with immense vigor he wrote to the English philosopher, Josiah Tucker, September 12, 1770:—

“As a citizen of the world, I see with joy the approach of an event which, more than all the books of the philosophers, will dissipate the phantom of commercial jealousy. I speak of the separation of your colonies from the mother country, which will soon be followed by that of all America from Europe. It is then that the discovery of this part of the world will become truly useful to us. It is then that it will multiply our enjoyments much more abundantly than when we purchased them with torrents of blood. The English, the French, the Spaniards, etc., will use sugar, coffee, indigo, and will sell their products, precisely as the Swiss do to-day; and they will also, like the Swiss people, have the advantage, that this sugar, this coffee, this indigo will no longer serve as a pretext for intriguers to precipitate their nation into ruinous wars and to oppress them with taxes.”[339]

It is impossible not to feel in this passage the sure grasp of our American destiny. How clearly and courageously he announces the inevitable future! But the French philosopher-statesman again took the tripod.

This was in the discharge of his duties as minister of the Crown, and in reply to a special application. His noble opinion is dated 6th April, 1776. Its character appears in a few sentences:—

“The present war will probably end in the absolute independence of the Colonies, and that event will certainly be the epoch of the greatest revolution in the commerce and politics, not of England only, but of all Europe.… When the English themselves shall recognize the independence of their colonies, every mother country will be forced in like manner to exchange its dominion over its colonies for bonds of friendship and fraternity.… When the total separation of America shall have cured the European nations of commercial jealousy, there will exist among men one great cause of war the less; and it is very difficult not to desire an event which is to accomplish this good for the human race.”[340]

His letter to the English Dr. Price, on the American Constitutions, abounds in profound observations and in prophecy. It was written just at the time when France openly joined against England in our War of Independence, and is dated March 22, 1778, but did not see the light until 1784, some years after the death of the author, when it was published by Dr. Price.[341] Its criticism of the American Constitutions aroused John Adams to his elaborate work in their “Defence.”[342]

Of our Union before the adoption of the National Constitution he writes:—

“In the general union of the provinces among themselves I do not see a coalition, a fusion of all the parts, making but one body, one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregation of parts always too much separated, and preserving always a tendency to division, by the diversity of their laws, their manners, their opinions,—by the inequality of their actual forces,—still more by the inequality of their ulterior progress. It is only a copy of the Dutch Republic: but this Republic had not to fear, as the American Republic has, the possible enlargement of some of its provinces. This whole edifice has been supported hitherto on the false basis of the very ancient and very vulgar policy: on the prejudice that nations and provinces, as bodies, can have interests other than that which individuals have to be free and to defend their property against brigands and conquerors; a pretended interest to carry on more commerce than others,—not to buy the merchandise of the foreigner, but to force the foreigner to consume their productions and their manufactures; a pretended interest to have a vaster territory, to acquire such or such a province, such or such an island, such or such a village; an interest to inspire fear in other nations; an interest to surpass them in the glory of arms, and in that of arts and sciences.”[343]

Among the evils to be overcome are, in the Southern Colonies, too great an inequality of fortunes, and especially the large number of black slaves, whose slavery is incompatible with a good political constitution, and who, even when restored to liberty, will cause embarrassment by forming two nations in the same State. In all the Colonies he deprecates prejudice, attachment to established forms, a habit of certain taxes, fear of those which it might be necessary to substitute, the vanity of the Colonies who deem themselves most powerful, and the wretched beginning of national pride. Happily he adds: “I think the Americans destined to aggrandizement, not by war, but by husbandry.”[344] And he then proceeds to his aspirations:—

“It is impossible not to desire earnestly that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the human race. They can become its model. They are to prove to the world, by the fact, that men can be free and tranquil, and can dispense with the chains of all kinds which the tyrants and charlatans of every cloth have pretended to impose under the pretext of the public good. They are to give the example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum which they open to all the oppressed of all nations is to console the earth. The facility thereby afforded for escape from a bad government will force the European governments to be just and enlightened. The rest of the world, little by little, will open their eyes to the nothingness of the illusions in which politicians have indulged. To this end it is necessary that America should guard against them, and should not again become, as your ministerial writers have so often repeated, an image of our Europe, a mass of divided powers, disputing about territory or commercial profits, and continually cementing the slavery of the peoples with their own blood.”[345]

After these admirable thoughts, so full of wisdom and prophecy, Turgot alludes to the impending war between France and England:—

“Our two nations are going to do each other reciprocally much evil, probably without either of them obtaining any real advantage. The increase of debts and charges and the ruin of a great many citizens will be, perhaps, the only result. England seems to me even nearer to this than France. If instead of this war you had been able to yield with good grace from the first moment,—if it had been given to policy to do in advance what infallibly it will be forced to do later,—if national opinion could have permitted your Government to anticipate events,—and, supposing that it had foreseen them, it had been able to consent at once to the independence of America without making war on anybody,—I firmly believe that your nation would have lost nothing by this change. It will lose now what it has already expended, and what it shall yet expend. It will experience for some time a great falling off in its commerce, great domestic disturbances, if it is forced to bankruptcy, and, whatever may happen, a great diminution of political influence abroad. But this last matter is of very small importance to the real welfare of a people; and I am not at all of the opinion of the Abbé Raynal in your motto.[346] I do not believe that this will make you a contemptible nation, and throw you into slavery. On the contrary, your troubles will perhaps have the effect of a necessary amputation; they are perhaps the only means of saving you from the gangrene of luxury and corruption. If in your agitations you could correct your Constitution by rendering the elections annual, by apportioning the right of representation in a manner more equal and more proportioned to the interests of those represented, you would gain from this revolution as much, perhaps, as America; for your liberty would remain to you, and with this and by this your other losses would be very speedily repaired.”[347]

Reading such words, the heart throbs and the pulse beats. Government inspired by such a spirit would become divine, nations would live at peace together, and people everywhere be happy.

HORACE WALPOLE, 1754, 1774, 1777, 1779.

Most unlike Turgot in character, but with something of the same spirit of prophecy, and associated in time, was Horace Walpole, youngest son of England’s remarkable Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. With the former, life was serious always, and human improvement the perpetual passion; with the latter, there was a constant desire for amusement, and the world was little more than a curious gimcrack.

Horace Walpole was born 5th October, 1717, and died 2d March, 1797, being at his death Earl of Orford. According to his birth he was a man of fashion; for a time a member of Parliament; a man of letters always. To his various talents he added an aggregation of miscellaneous tastes, of which his house at Strawberry Hill was an illustration,—being an elegant “Old Curiosity Shop,” with pictures, books, manuscripts, prints, armor, china, historic relics, and art in all its forms, which he had collected at no small outlay of time and money. Though aristocratic in life, he boasted that his principles were not monarchical. On the two sides of his bed were hung engravings of Magna Charta and the Sentence of Charles the First, the latter with the inscription “Major Charta.” Sleeping between two such memorials, he might be suspected of sympathy with America, although the aristocrat was never absent. His Memoirs, Journals, Anecdotes of Painting in England, and other works, are less famous than his multifarious correspondence, which is the best in English literature, and, according to French judgment, nearer than any other in our language to that of Madame de Sévigné, whom he never wearied in praising. It is free, easy, gossipy, historic, and spicy.

But I deal with him now only as a prophet. And I begin with his “Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second,” where we find the record that the Colonists were seeking independence. This occurs in his description of the Duke of Newcastle as Secretary of State for the Colonies, during the long Walpole administration. Illustrating what he calls the Duke’s “mercurial inattention,” he says: “It would not be credited what reams of papers, representations, memorials, petitions from that quarter of the world [the Colonies], lay mouldering and unopened in his office”; and then, showing the Duke’s ignorance, he narrates how, when it was hinted that there should be some defence for Annapolis, he replied, with evasive, lisping hurry: “Annapolis, Annapolis! Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended,—to be sure, Annapolis should be defended;—where is Annapolis?” But this negligence did not prevent him from exalting the prerogative of the Crown; and here the author says:—

“The instructions to Sir Danvers Osborn, a new governor of New York, seemed better calculated for the latitude of Mexico and for a Spanish tribunal than for a free, rich British settlement, and in such opulence and of such haughtiness that suspicions had long been conceived of their meditating to throw off their dependence on their mother country.”[348]

This stands in the “Memoires” under the date of 1754, and the editor in a note observes, “If, as the author asserts, this was written at the time, it is a very remarkable passage.” By direction of the author the book was “to be kept unopened and unsealed” until a certain person named should attain the age of twenty-five years. It was published in 1822. Perhaps the honesty of this entry will be better appreciated, when it is noted, that, only a few pages later, Washington, whom the author afterwards admired, is spoken of as “this brave braggart” who “learned to blush for his rodomontade.”[349]

As the difficulties with the Colonies increased, he became more sympathetic and prophetic. In a letter to Sir Horace Mann, 2d February, 1774, he wrote:—

“We have no news, public or private; but there is an ostrich-egg laid in America, where the Bostonians have canted three hundred chests of tea into the ocean; for they will not drink tea with our Parliament.… Lord Chatham talked of conquering America in Germany. I believe England will be conquered some day or other in New England or Bengal.”[350]

In May, 1774, his sympathies again appear:—

“Nothing was more shocking than the King’s laughing and saying at his levee that he had as lief fight the Bostonians as the French. It was only to be paralleled by James the Second sporting on Jeffreys’s ‘campaign in the West.’”[351]

And under date of 28th May, 1775, we have his record of the encounter at Lexington, with the reflection:—

“Thus was the civil war begun, and a victory the first fruits of it on the side of the Americans, whom Lord Sandwich had had the folly and rashness to proclaim cowards.”[352]

His letters to the Countess of Ossory, written during the war, show his irrepressible sentiments. Thus, under date of 9th November, 1775:—

“I think this country undone almost beyond redemption. Victory in any war but a civil one fascinates mankind with a vision of glory. What should we gain by triumph itself? Would America laid waste, deluged with blood, plundered, enslaved, replace America flourishing, rich, and free? Do we want to reign over it, as the Spaniards over Peru, depopulated? Are desolate regions preferable to commercial cities?”[353]

Then under date of 6th July, 1777:—

“My humble opinion is, that we shall never recover America, and that France will take care that we shall never recover ourselves.”[354]

“Friday night, late,” 5th December, 1777, he breaks forth:—

“Send for Lord Chatham! They had better send for General Washington, Madam,—or at least for our troops back.… No, Madam, we do not want ministers that would protract our difficulties. I look on them but as beginning now, and am far from thinking that there is any man or set of men able enough to extricate us. I own there are very able Englishmen left, but they happen to be on t’other side of the Atlantic. If his Majesty hopes to find them here, I doubt he will be mistaken.”[355]

“Thursday night,” 11th December, 1777, his feelings overflow in no common language:—

“Was ever proud, insolent nation sunk so low? Burke and Charles Fox told him [Lord North] the Administration thought of nothing but keeping their places; and so they will, and the members their pensions, and the nation its infamy. Were I Franklin, I would order the Cabinet Council to come to me at Paris with ropes about their necks, and then kick them back to St. James’s.

“Well, Madam, as I told Lord Ossory t’other day, I am satisfied: Old England is safe,—that is, America, whither the true English retired under Charles the First: this is Nova Scotia, and I care not what becomes of it.… Adieu, Madam! I am at last not sorry you have no son; and your daughters, I hope, will be married to Americans, and not in this dirty, despicable island.”[356]

All this is elevated by his letter of 17th February, 1779, where he says:—

“Liberty has still a continent to exist in. I do not care a straw who is Minister in this abandoned country. It is the good old cause of Freedom that I have at heart.”[357]

Thus with constancy, where original principle was doubtless quickened by party animosity, did Horace Walpole maintain the American cause and predict a new home for Liberty.

JOHN ADAMS, 1755, 1765, 1776, 1780, 1785, 1787, 1813, 1818.

Next in time among the prophets was John Adams, who has left on record at different dates predictions showing a second-sight of no common order. Of his life I need say nothing, except that he was born 19th October, 1735, and died 4th July, 1826. I mention the predictions in the order of utterance.

1. While teaching a school at Worcester, and when under twenty years of age, he wrote a letter to one of his youthful companions, bearing date 12th October, 1755, which is a marvel of foresight. Fifty-two years afterwards, when already much of its prophecy had been fulfilled, the original was returned to its author by the son of his early comrade and correspondent, Nathan Webb, who was at the time dead. After remarking gravely on the rise and fall of nations, with illustrations from Carthage and Rome, he proceeds:—

“England began to increase in power and magnificence, and is now the greatest nation upon the globe. Soon after the Reformation, a few people came over into this New World for conscience’ sake. Perhaps this apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks likely to me: for, if we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people, according to the exactest computations, will in another century become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have, I may say, all the naval stores of the nations in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas; and then the united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us. Divide et impera. Keep us in distinct colonies, and then some great men in each colony desiring the monarchy of the whole, they will destroy each other’s influence, and keep the country in equilibrio.[358]

On this his son, John Quincy Adams, famous for important service and high office, remarks:—

“Had the political part of it been written by the minister of state of a European monarchy, at the close of a long life spent in the government of nations, it would have been pronounced worthy of the united penetration and experience of a Burleigh, a Sully, or an Oxenstiern.… In one bold outline he has exhibited by anticipation a long succession of prophetic history, the fulfilment of which is barely yet in progress, responding exactly hitherto to his foresight, but the full accomplishment of which is reserved for the development of after ages. The extinction of the power of France in America, the union of the British North American Colonies, the achievement of their independence, and the establishment of their ascendency in the community of civilized nations by the means of their naval power, are all foreshadowed in this letter, with a clearness of perception and a distinctness of delineation which time has hitherto done little more than to convert into historical fact.”[359]

2. Another beautiful instance followed ten years later. In the beginning of 1765, Jeremy Gridley, the eminent lawyer of Colonial days, formed a law club, or Sodality, at Boston, for the mutual improvement of its members. Here John Adams produced the original sketch of his “Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,” which appeared in the “Boston Gazette” of August, 1765, was immediately and repeatedly reprinted in London, and afterwards in Philadelphia.[360] The sketch began:—

“This Sodality has given rise to the following speculation of my own, which I commit to writing as hints for future inquiries rather than as a satisfactory theory.”[361]

In this Dissertation, the writer dwells especially upon the settlers of British America, of whom he says:—

“After their arrival here, they began their settlement, and formed their plan, both of ecclesiastical and civil government, in direct opposition to the canon and the feudal systems.”[362]

This excellent statement was followed, in the original sketch communicated to the Sodality, by this passage, which does not appear in the printed Dissertation:—

“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”[363]

On these prophetic words, his son, John Quincy Adams, remarks:—

“This sentence was perhaps omitted from an impression that it might be thought to savor not merely of enthusiasm, but of extravagance. Who now would deny that this magnificent anticipation has been already to a great degree realized? Who does not now see that the accomplishment of this great object is already placed beyond all possibility of failure?”[364]

His grandson, Charles Francis Adams, alluding to the changes which took place in the original sketch, says:—

“As not infrequently happens, however, in this process, one strong passage was lost by it, which at this time must be regarded as the most deserving of any to be remembered.”[365]

Thus again, at an early day, did this prophet discern the future. How true it is that the mission of this Republic is “the illumination of the ignorant,” and, still further, “the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth”! Universal enlightenment and universal emancipation! And the first great stage was National Independence.

3. The Declaration of Independence bears date 4th July, 1776, for on that day it was signed; but the vote which determined it was on the 2d July. On the 3d July, John Adams, in a letter to his wife, wrote:—

“Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among men.… I am surprised at the suddenness as well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with wisdom. At least this is my judgment. Time must determine. It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever.… The day is passed. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore. You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.”[366]

Here is a comprehensive prophecy, first, that the two countries would be separated forever; secondly, that the anniversary of Independence would be celebrated as a great annual festival; and, thirdly, that posterity would triumph in this transaction, where, through all the gloom, shone rays of ravishing light and glory: all of which has been fulfilled to the letter. Recent events give to the Declaration additional importance. For a long time its great premises, that all men are equal, and that rightful government stands only on the consent of the governed, were disowned by our country. Now that at last they are beginning to prevail, there is increased reason to celebrate the day on which the mighty Declaration was made, and new occasion for triumph in the rays of ravishing light and glory.

4. Here is another prophetic passage, in a letter dated at Paris, 13th July, 1780, and addressed to the Comte de Vergennes of France, pleading the cause of the Colonists:—

“The United States of America are a great and powerful people, whatever European statesmen may think of them. If we take into our estimate the numbers and the character of her people, the extent, variety, and fertility of her soil, her commerce, and her skill and materials for ship-building, and her seamen, excepting France, Spain, England, Germany, and Russia, there is not a state in Europe so powerful. Breaking off such a nation as this from the English so suddenly, and uniting it so closely with France, is one of the most extraordinary events that ever happened among mankind.”[367]

Perhaps this may be considered statement rather than prophecy; but it illustrates the prophetic character of the writer.

5. While at Amsterdam, in 1780, Mr. Adams met a gentleman whom he calls “the giant of the law,” Mr. Calkoen. After an unsatisfactory attempt at conversation, where neither spoke the language of the other, it was arranged that the latter should propound a series of questions in writing, which the American minister undertook to answer. The questions were in Dutch, the answers in English. Among the questions was this: “Whether America in and of itself, by means of purchasing or exchanging the productions of the several provinces, would be able to continue the war for six, eight, or ten years, even if they were entirely deprived of the trade with Europe, or their allies, exhausted by the war and forced to make a separate peace, were to leave them?” To this question our prophet replied:—

“This is an extreme case.… Why, then, should we put cases that we know can never happen? However, I can inform you that the case was often put before this war broke out; and I have heard the common farmers in America reasoning upon these cases seven years ago. I have heard them say, if Great Britain could build a wall of brass a thousand feet high all along the sea-coast, at low-water mark, we can live and be happy. America is most undoubtedly capable of being the most independent country upon earth. It produces everything for the necessity, comfort, and conveniency of life, and many of the luxuries too. So that, if there were an eternal separation between Europe and America, the inhabitants of America would not only live, but multiply, and, for what I know, be wiser, better, and happier than they will be as it is.”[368]

Here is an assertion of conditions essential to independence of “the most independent country upon earth,” with a promise that the inhabitants will multiply.

6. In an official letter to the President of Congress, dated at Amsterdam, 5th September, 1780, the same writer, while proposing an American Academy “for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language,” predicts the extension of this language:—

“English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is obvious,—because the increasing population in America, and their universal connection and correspondence with all nations, will, aided by the influence of England in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way, if any such there should be.”[369]

In another letter, of unofficial character, dated at Amsterdam, 23d September, 1780, he thus repeats his prophecy:—

“You must know I have undertaken to prophesy that English will be the most respectable language in the world; and the most universally read and spoken, in the next century, if not before the close of this. American population will in the next age produce a greater number of persons who will speak English than any other language, and these persons will have more general acquaintance and conversation with all other nations than any other people.”[370]

David Hume, in a letter to Gibbon, 24th October, 1767, had already written:—

“Our solid and increasing establishments in America, where we need less dread the inundation of Barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration to the English language.”[371]

But these more moderate words, which did credit to the discernment of the philosopher-historian, were then unpublished.

The prophecy of John Adams is already accomplished. Of all the European languages, English is most extensively spoken. Through England and the United States it has become the language of commerce, which sooner or later must embrace the globe. The German philologist, Grimm, has followed our American prophet in saying that it “seems chosen, like its people, to rule in future times in a still greater degree in all the corners of the earth.”[372]

7. Another field was opened by a European correspondent, John Luzac, who writes from Leyden, under date of 14th September, 1780, that, in pleading the cause of American Independence, he has twenty times encountered, from sensible and educated people, an objection which he sets forth as follows:—

“Yes, but if America becomes free, she will some day give the law to Europe. She will take our islands, and our colonies at Guiana; she will seize all the Antilles; she will absorb Mexico, even Peru, Chili, and Brazil; she will carry off our freighting commerce; she will pay her benefactors with ingratitude.”[373]

To this Mr. Adams replied, in a letter from Amsterdam, 15th September, 1780:—

“I have met often in Europe with the same species of reasoners that you describe; but I find they are not numerous. Among men of reflection the sentiment is generally different, and that no power in Europe has anything to fear from America. The principal interest of America for many centuries to come will be landed, and her chief occupation agriculture. Manufactures and commerce will be but secondary objects, and always subservient to the other. America will be the country to produce raw materials for manufactures, but Europe will be the country of manufactures; and the commerce of America can never increase but in a certain proportion to the growth of its agriculture, until its whole territory of land is filled up with inhabitants, which will not be in some hundreds of years.”

After referring to tar, iron, and timber as American articles, he says:—

“In fact, the Atlantic is so long and difficult a navigation, that the Americans will never be able to afford to carry to the European market great quantities of these articles.”

If the prophet fails here, he is none the less wise in the suggestion with which he closes:—

“If Europe cannot prevent, or rather if any particular nations of Europe cannot prevent, the independence of America, then the sooner her independence is acknowledged, the better,—the less likely she will be to become warlike, enterprising, and ambitious. The truth is, however, that America can never unite in any war but a defensive one.”[374]

Had the prophet foreseen the increasing facilities of commerce, the triumphs of steam, the floating masses of transportation, the wonders of navigation, quickened and guided by the telegraph, and to these had he added the diversified industry of the country, extending, expanding, and prevailing, his remarkable vision, which already saw so much, would have viewed other glories in assured certainty.

8. There is another prophecy, at once definite and broad, from the same eminent quarter. In a letter dated London, 17th October, 1785, and addressed to John Jay, at the time Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the Confederation, John Adams reveals his conviction of the importance of France to us, “while England held a province in America”;[375] and then, in another letter, dated 21st October, 1785, reports the saying of people about him, “that Canada and Nova Scotia must soon be ours; there must be a war for it,—they know how it will end,—but the sooner, the better; this done, we shall be forever at peace,—till then, never.”[376] These intimations foreshadow the prophecy found in the Preface to his “Defence of the American Constitutions,” written in London, while minister there, and dated Grosvenor Square, 1st January, 1787:—