The Southern Enterprise

The greatness of Great Britain in future ages, will rest on her policy and capacity for colonization. The present form of government may be overthrown. Her colonies grown into empires, may fall off from her. Her ascendency on the ocean, which has produced, and upheld her vast colonial expansion, by the progress of science and skill, in the structure and movements of ships, may be destroyed. The superior advantages, which her greater commercial marine has hitherto given her, is already half neutralized, by the inventions of steam and the structure of iron vessels of war. They reduce the ocean, very much to the condition of land, in military contests. Steamers have very little advantage over soldiers. The security of the British Isles, therefore, in consequence of her sea girt position, which has saved her from invasion from the continent of Europe, since the battle of Hastings, is very much impaired. In a struggle on land in England, her colonies will not aid her. The continental powers can extend and expand their dominion, by the aggregation of peoples around them, but this is impossible with a people inhabiting islands. They must be comparatively stationary in population; and after a certain density of population, on account of the limited area of land—they must decrease. She, like all other nations hitherto, will have her fall. But she will be the greatest parent of nations the world ever saw. At this moment more people speak her language than the language of any other nation in the world; and her great fame, although paralyzed or annihilated in the British Isles, will be taken up and spread abroad over the world, by the great empires she will have founded in all quarters of the globe.

In the East, she is the one great Caucasian ruler. Her aptitude to rule the yellow races, seems to be peculiar. Her very name seems to be a symbol of conquest. The late Abyssinian expedition—which, according to the wisest speculations—seemed to be so hazardous, turns out to be a success so marvelous, that the British Premier compares it to the conquest of Mexico by Cortes. Not a single soldier killed in battle: and only sixteen wounded: and a region is subdued greater than the British Isles! That Great Britain will refrain from extending, by her old policy of colonization, her dominion over Abyssinia, no one supposes. The population of Abyssinia is not negro—but Arabic; and Sir Samuel Baker thinks, admirably adapted for improvement and civilization. All that is wanted, is a government which will protect property; and all the productions of the temperate zone, including Cotton, may be produced in abundance. Making Abyssinia a British colony, the thorough exploration of Africa, is a natural consequence. Commanding the sources of the Nile, her prestige, will protect her explorers in all parts of Africa. In twenty years from this time British steamers may be navigating the two great lakes discovered by Speke and Baker.

And at home, this conquest must be a great stay against the overthrow of the Tory party in England. The Tories have ever been the great fighting party of England. Under the Whigs, England has fallen in influence over Europe very nearly to a second rate power. She, who used to settle the balance of power in Europe, is now hardly deemed worthy of consideration, in all great continental complications. Is this because she is really so comparatively weak. Or is it because she withdraws herself for the sake of money-making. Is her word and her honor, to become an affair of trade? The first great symptom of the decline of England, will be her loss of that which has made her great—the high and unflinching spirit, with which she has conquered Abyssinia.