of another age upon portions
of the American soil.

In the same letter Mr. Seward also said that the monarchies of Europe
could have neither peace nor truce as long as there remained to them
one colony upon this continent.

This Mr. Seward called buying out the foreigners. In 1846 he counted the
ruler of Cuba and Porto Rico among the foreigners which should sell out
their possessions to the United States.

It was he who during his term of office purchased Alaska from the Czar
of Russia for the sum of $7,200,000. He also negotiated for the
acquisition of the Danish Antilles, but this project fell through,
chiefly for the reason that at that time the President was opposed to
it.

In politics Mr. Seward favored a system which he compared to the ripe
pear that detaches itself and falls into your hand.

One thing seemed to him certain, and that was that the United States
could not help annexing by force the people who would be too slow to
come to them of their own free will.

"I abhor war," he wrote. "I would not give one single human life for any
portion of the continent which remains to be annexed; but I cannot get
rid of the conviction that popular passion for territorial
aggrandizement is irresistible. Prudence, justice and even timidity may
restrain it for a time, but its force will be augmented by compression."

It was a half century before the explosion occurred, but when it came
its echoes resounded all over the world, carrying joy to some and fear
to others, fear of this young giant of the New World.

Again in 1852, in a speech made before the Senate upon the question of
American commerce in the Pacific, Mr. Seward thus addressed his
colleagues:

"The discovery of this continent and of those islands and the
organization upon their soil of societies and governments have been
great and important events. After all, they are merely preliminaries, a
preparation by secondary incidents, in comparison with the sublime
result which is about to be consummated--the junction of the two
civilizations upon the coast and in the islands of the Pacific. There
certainly never happened upon this earth any purely human event which is
comparable to that in grandeur and in importance. It will be followed by
the levelling of social conditions and by the re-establishment of the
unity of the human family. We now see clearly why it did not come about
sooner and why it is coming now."

At a reception given to his honor in Paris,