Columbus Democrat

JOHN BULL AND BRO. JONATHAN.
During the last thirty years material power has been developed equally with population in the United States of America. Great Britain alone excepted, no State in Europe could now maintain the armaments in the field for any length of time. This marvelous growth is deranging all the old traditions of "balance of power." America is not only a first class state—in a few years, if no internal disorder shall occur, she will be the greatest of all. Should the 1840-50 rate of increase be maintained for fifty years, the population will then amount to 190,000,000—nearly equal to that of the whole of continental Europe! Were it possible to conceive the same ratio maintained for another fifty years, the census of 1950 would give the astounding number of 1,696,000,000! German wars and French revolutions sink into complete insignificance by the side of considerations like these. With such a comment, how well we may understand, the "roars of laughter" with which the American Senate recently received the menaces of Austria! When the United States shook off the yoke of England, their people numbered no more than 3,000,000; when they were last measured against a European power, they were not more than 8,000,000. Ten years hence they will be equal to France or Austria. There hardly seems to be a limit to their growth. The valley of the Mississippi would alone support the whole population of Europe. In its vast basin nations are now growing up as if at the bidding of enchantment. The valley already contains about thirteen millions of inhabitants:—at the beginning of this century it did not contain as many thousands! There is moral as well as a material grandeur in this great movement of the Saxon race—marching on from conquest to conquest, absorbing into itself less energetic stocks, and planting from ocean to ocean the freest institutions ever adopted by nation. America is destined for its sole inheritance: the Spaniards and the Portuguese will disappear as surely as the Gaul, the Dane and the Hollander have disappeared—and two centuries hence the English tongue will, no doubt, be spoken from the Cape of Storms to the Frozen Oceans of the North.