I. Our forefathers regarded, with natural terror, the passage of the mighty deep. Navigation, notwithstanding the great advances which it had made in the sixteenth century, was yet, comparatively speaking, in its infancy. The very fact, that voyages of great length and hazard were successfully attempted in small vessels, a fact which, on first view, might seem to show a high degree of perfection in the art, in reality proves that it was as yet but imperfectly understood. That the great Columbus should put to sea, for the discovery of a new passage across the Western Ocean to India, with two out of three vessels unprovided with decks, may indeed be considered the effect, not of ignorance of the art of navigation, but of bitter necessity.* But that Sir Francis Drake, near a hundred years afterwards, the first naval commander who ever sailed round the earth, enjoying the advantage of the royal patronage, and aided by the fruits of no little personal experience, should have embarked on his voyage of circumnavigation, with five vessels, of which the largest was of one hundred, and the smallest of fifteen tons,†

* See Note B.

+ Biographia Brittanica, III. 1732,

must needs be regarded as proof, that the art of navigation, in the generation preceding our ancestors, had not reached that point, where the skilful adaptation of means to ends supersedes the necessity of extraordinary intrepidity, aided by not less extraordinary good fortune. It was therefore the first obstacle, which presented itself to the project of the pilgrims, that it was to be carried into execution, across the ocean, which separates our continent from the rest of the world.* Notwithstanding, however, this circumstance, and the natural effect it must have had on their minds, there is no doubt that it is one of those features in our natural situation, to which America is indebted, not merely for the immediate success of the enterprise of settlement, but for much of its subsequent growth and prosperity.

I do not now allude to the obvious consideration, that the remoteness of the country, to be settled, led to a more thorough preparation for the enterprise, both as respects the tempers of those who embarked in it, and the provisions made for carrying it on; though this view will not be lost on those, who reflect on the nature

*See Note C.

of man, by which difficult enterprises (so they be not desperate) are more likely to succeed, than those which seem much easier. Nor do I allude to the effect of our distance from Europe, in preventing the hasty abandonment of the colony, under the pressure of the first difficulties; although the want of frequent and convenient reconveyance was doubtless a considerable security to the early settlements, and placed our fathers, in some degree, in the situation of the followers of Cortez, after he had intrepidly burned the vessels, which conveyed them to the Mexican coasts.

The view, which I would now take of the remoteness of America from Europe, is connected with the higher principles of national fortune and progress.

The rest of the world, though nominally divided into three continents, in reality consists of but one. Europe, Asia, and Africa are separated by no natural barriers, which it has not been easy in every age for an ambitious invader to pass; and apart from this first consequence of the juxtaposition of their various regions, a communication of principle and feeling, of policy and passion, may be propagated, at all times, even to

their remote and seemingly inaccessible communities. The consequence has been, on the whole, highly unfavorable to social progress. The extent of country inhabited or rather infested by barbarous tribes, has generally far outweighed the civilized portions; and more than once, in the history of the world, refinement, learning, arts, laws, and religion, with the wealth and prosperity they have created, have been utterly swept away, and the hands, as it were, moved back, on the dial plate of time, in consequence of the irruption of savage hordes into civilized regions. Were the early annals of the East as amply preserved as those of the Roman empire, they would probably present us with accounts of revolutions, on the Nile and the Euphrates, as disastrous as those, by which the civilized world was shaken, in the first centuries of the Christian era.-Till an ocean interposes its mighty barrier, no citadel of freedom or truth has been long maintained. The magnificent temples of Egypt were demolished in the sixth century before our Saviour, by the hordes, which Cambyses had collected from the steppes of Central Asia. The vineyards of Burgundy were wasted in the third century of our era, by

Foving savages from beyond the Caucasus. In the eleventh century, Gengis Khan and his Tartars swept Europe and Asia from the Baltic to the China Sea. And Ionia and Attica, the gardens of Greece, are still, under the eyes of the leading Christian powers of Europe, beset by remorseless barbarians from the Altai Mountains.

Nor is it the barbarians alone, who have been tempted by this facility of communication, to a career of boundless plunder. The Alexanders and the Cæsars, the Charlemagnes and the Napoleons, the founders of great empires and authors of schemes of universal monarchy, have been enabled, by the same circumstance, to turn the annals of mankind into a tale of war and misery. When we descend to the scrutiny of single events, we find that the nations, who have most frequently and most immediately suffered, have been those most easily approached and overrun;-and that those who have longest or most uniformly maintained their independence, have done it by virtue of lofty mountains, wide rivers, or the surrounding sea.

In this state of things, the three united continents of the old world do not contain a single spot, where any grand scheme of human im