transplant them into their new world. I apprehend that
such men are wasting their time and their strength in virtuous
but unprofitable efforts. The object is not to retain the peculiar
advantages which the inequality of conditions bestows upon mankind, but
to secure the new benefits which equality may supply. We have not to
seek to make ourselves like our progenitors, but to strive to work out
that species of greatness and happiness which is our own. For myself,
who now look back from this extreme limit of my task, and discover from
afar, but at once, the various objects which have attracted my more
attentive investigation upon my way, I am full of apprehensions and
of hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward
off--mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with
a firmer hold to the belief, that for democratic nations to be virtuous
and prosperous they require but to will it. I am aware that many of my
contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters
here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and
unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or
from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false
and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but feeble men
and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely
independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal
circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide
verge of that circle he is powerful and free: as it is with man, so with
communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of
men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the
principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to
knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness.

Part I.

Appendix A

For information concerning all the countries of the West which have
not been visited by Europeans, consult the account of two expeditions
undertaken at the expense of Congress by Major Long. This traveller
particularly mentions, on the subject of the great American desert, that
a line may be drawn nearly parallel to the 20th degree of longitude *a
(meridian of Washington), beginning from the Red River and ending at
the River Platte. From this imaginary line to the Rocky Mountains, which
bound the valley of the Mississippi on the west, lie immense plains,
which are almost entirel