Any
English Youngster Will Tell You That Americans Speak Through Their
Noses, Spit, And Hold Slaves; But How Few, Even
Of the most
intelligent, know that better English is spoken by the mass of
Americans, than by the majority of
English citizens, and that education
is practically an institution of the United States, and universal;
though at home it hardly exists as a system, and can never be extended
in any truly national direction without exciting a war of parties! Be
the reason what it may, we have been in the habit of looking down on
America. We shall soon perhaps have to look up to it.
"It is but sixty-two years since the foundation of the Republic. It
then consisted of thirteen small States. It now comprises twenty-nine
States; without reckoning the new dominions of Oregon, California, New,
Mexico, and Texas. Ten years ago its area was 2,000,000 square miles,
or more than 1,300,000,000 acres. That area has become, in 1850,
3,252,689 square miles, or 2,081,717,760 acres. It is thus nearly
thirty times the size of Great Britain and Ireland.
"The Republic now possesses an ocean coast of 5,140 miles, viz., - l,920
on the Atlantic, 1,620 on the Pacific, and 1,600 on the Gulf of Mexico.
"Its population in 1790 was less than 4,000,000; in 1840 it stood at
17,000,000; it is now 25,000,000. And if its vast territory, with a
more productive soil, and greater resources of all kinds, should some
day become as thickly peopled as our own island, it will then contain a
population of 800,000,000 of souls speaking the English tongue.
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