l they touch the shores of the
Pacific, and then, they are so much accustomed to water, that _that's_ a
facility, and no obstruction!

So much, Gentlemen, for this branch of the English race; but what has
happened, meanwhile, to England herself since the period of the
departure of the Puritans from the coast of Lincolnshire, from the
English Boston? Gentlemen, in speaking of the progress of English power,
of English dominion and authority, from that period to the present, I
shall be understood, of course, as neither entering into any defence or
any accusation of the policy which has conducted her to her present
state. As to the justice of her wars, the necessity of her conquests,
the propriety of those acts by which she has taken possession of so
great a portion of the globe, it is not the business of the present
occasion to inquire. _Neque teneo, neque refello._ But I speak of them,
or intend to speak of them, as facts of the most extraordinary
character, unequalled in the history of any nation on the globe, and the
consequences of which may and must reach through a thousand generations.
The Puritans left England in the reign of James the First. England
herself had then become somewhat settled and established in the
Protestant faith, and in the quiet enjoyment of property, by the
previous energetic, long, and prosperous reign of Elizabeth. Her
successor was James the Sixth of Scotland, now become James the First
of England; and here was a union of the crowns, but not of the
kingdoms,--a very important distinction. Ireland was held by a military
power, and one cannot but see that at that day, whatever may be true or
untrue in more recent periods of her history, Ireland was held by
England by the two great potencies, the power of the sword and the power
of confiscation. In other respects, England was nothing like the England
which we now behold. Her foreign possessions were quite inconsiderable.
She had some hold on the West India Islands; she had 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 th