Bloomington Herald

The United States.—Look abroad over this country: mark her extent, her wealth, her fertility, her boundless resources; the giant energies which every day develope, and which seem already bending in that fatal race—tempting, yet always fatal to republic—the race for physical greatness and aggrandizement. Behold, too, that continuous and mighty tide of population, native and foreign, which is forever rushing through the great Valley of the West towards the setting sun, sweeping away the wilderness before it, like grass before the mower; wakening up industry and civilization in its progress; studding the solitary rivers of the West with marts and cities; dotting its boundless prairies with human habitations; penetrating every green nook and vale; climbing every sterile ridge, and still gathering and pouring onward to form new States in those vast and yet unpeopled solitudes where the Oregon rolls his majestic flood, and hears no sound save his own dashing

Mark all this; and then say, by what bonds will you hold together so mighty a people, and so immense an empire? What safeguard will you give us against the dangers which must inevitably grow out of so vast and complicated an organization? In the swelling tide of our prosperity, what a field will open for political corruption! What a world of evil passions to control, and jarring interests to reconcile! What temptations will there be to luxury and extravagance! What motives to private and official cupidity!—What prize will hang glittering at a thousand goals to dazzle and tempt ambition!

Do we expect to find our security against these dangers, in rail-roads and canals, in circumvallations and ships of war? Alas! when shall we learn wisdom from the lessons of history? Our most dangerous enemies will grow up from our own bosom. We may erect bulwarks against foreign invasion; but what power shall we find in walls and armies to protect the people against themselves. This is but one sort of "internal improvement,"—more thoroughly internal than that which is cried up by politicians—that is able to save this country: we mean the improvement of the minds of her people.