An Unbounded
Extent Of Fertile Soil, With An Increasing Population, Were
Circumstances Which Of Themselves Were Sufficient To Create A
Strong desire for the improvement of internal communications; as,
without common roads, rail-roads, or canals, the interior of the
Country would have been unfit to be inhabited by any but absolute
barbarians. All the first settlers of America wanted was to be left
to themselves.
When we compare the progress of Great Britain with that of North
America, the contrast is sufficiently striking to attract our
attention. While the progress of the former has been the work of
ages, North America has sprung into wealth and power almost within
a period which we can remember. But the colonists of North America
should recollect, when they indulge in such comparisons, that their
British ancestors took many centuries to civilise themselves, before
they could send free and intelligent settlers to America. The
necessity for improvements in the internal communications is vastly
more urgent in a widely extended continent than in an island, no
part of which is far removed from the sea-coast; and patriotism,
as well as self-interest, would readily suggest such improvements
to the minds of a people who inherited the knowledge of their
ancestors, and were besides stimulated to extraordinary exertions by
their recently-acquired independence. As the political existence of
the United States commenced at a period when civilisation had made
great progress in the mother-country, their subsequent improvement
would, for various reasons, be much more rapid than that of the
country from which they originally emigrated.
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