Excerpt from Of the Rise and Progress of the United States, and of Their Present Condition
Again, we have also seen the imense region of Louisiana re-ceded by Spain to France, and finally ceded by the latter to the United States; and at last, we have beheld East and West Florida recovered by Spain from Great Britain, in the year 1783, recently pass into their hands; thus giving an extension to our maritime frontier, from the north eastern coast of the State of Maine, to the mouth of the Sabine, in the Gulph of Mexico. And these immense acquisitions have been made within the short space of forty years, and by means to human view so inadequate, that we must attribute them to an all-wise and superintending Providence, beyond doubt intending thereby to accomplish some permanent and great good to the human race, not yet fully developed, nor yet perhaps wholly concealed. May we not, then, with humble pride, regard ourselves like the Israelites of old, a chosen people, appointed by omnipotent wisdom to spread over this immense space, the genuine principles of freedom, springing from, and supported by, the benign precepts of that revelation imparted to mankind by Christ, in which our duties to God, to ourselves, and to society, are so plainly laid down, that no other rules of conduct would be required for the government of man, if he would obey these. Then might laws and magistrates be dispensed with, and temporal punishments and rewards become unnecessary.
Viewing ourselves in this light, what an awful responsibility devolves on this nation! How just, how forbearing, how self-denying, how patient, how sedulously studious, ought we to be, to accomplish the benevolent designs, of the Almighty; thus founding our fame on the general spread of pure and undefiled piety and virtue, and their inseparable concomitants, liberty and happiness; looking with contempt on the bloodstained glory of war, and the reeking spoils of foreign conquests; building our power and our prosperity on the immoveable rocks, benevolence, charity, and justice, and the industrious improvement of those great natural resources, which a bountiful God has bestowed on the country which we possess.
It is a happy circumstance, that our system of government is, perhaps, better organised to accomplish this divine scheme of human order and human happiness, than any which has preceded it, if we should have the art and steadiness to preserve the proper action in the complicated machine.
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