Acadia, or Nova Scotia, which King James granted, by wholesale, for the endowment of the knights whom he created by hundreds.  And what has been her progress?  Did she then possess Gibraltar, the key to the Mediterranean?  Did she possess a port in the Mediterranean?  Was Malta hers?  Were the Ionian Islands hers?  Was the southern extremity of Africa, was the Cape of Good Hope, hers?  Were the whole of her vast possessions in India hers?  Was her great Australian empire hers?  While that branch of her population which followed the western star, and under its guidance committed itself to the duty of settling, fertilizing, and peopling an unknown wilderness in the West, were pursuing their destinies, other causes, providential doubtless, were leading English power eastward and southward, in consequence and by means of her naval prowess, and the extent of her commerce, until in our day we have seen that within the Mediterranean, on the western coast and at the southern extremity of Africa, in Arabia, in hither India and farther India, she has a population ten times as great as that of the British Isles two centuries ago.  And recently, as we have witnessed,—­I will not say with how much truth and justice, policy or impolicy, I do not speak at all to the morality of the action, I only speak to the fact,—­she has found admission into China, and has carried the Christian religion and the Protestant faith to the doors of three hundred millions of people.

It has been said that whosoever would see the Eastern world before it turns into a Western world must make his visit soon, because steamboats and omnibuses, commerce, and all the arts of Europe, are extending themselves from Egypt to Suez, from Suez to the Indian seas, and from the Indian seas all over the explored regions of the still farther East.

Now, Gentlemen.  I do not know what practical views or what practical results may take place from this great expansion of the power of the two branches of Old England.  It is not for me to say.  I only can see, that on this continent all is to be Anglo-American from Plymouth Rock to the Pacific seas, from the north pole to California.  That is certain; and in the Eastern world, I only see that you can hardly place a finger on a map of the world and be an inch from an English settlement.

Gentlemen, if there be any thing in the supremacy of races, the experiment now in progress will develop it.  If there be any truth in the idea, that those who issued from the great Caucasian fountain, and spread over Europe, are to react on India and on Asia, and to act on the whole Western world, it may not be for us, nor our children, nor our grandchildren, to see it, but it will be for our descendants of some generation to see the extent of that progress and dominion of the favored races.