ce to be more
circumspect and less confident of the future. They are always by way of
fighting for their national security and integrity. With possible or
actual enemies on their several frontiers, and with their land fully
occupied by their own population, they need above all to be strong, to
be cautious, to be united, and to be opportune in their policy and
behavior. The case of France shows the danger of neglecting the sources
of internal strength, while at the same time philandering with ideas
and projects of human amelioration. Bismarck and Cavour seized the
opportunity of making extremely useful for Germany and Italy the
irrelevant and vacillating idealism and the timid absolutism of the
third Napoleon. Great Britain has occupied in this respect a better
situation than has the Continental Powers. Her insular security made her
more independent of the menaces and complications of foreign politics,
and left her free to be measurably liberal at home and immeasurably
imperial abroad. Yet she has made only a circumspect use of her freedom.
British liberalism was forged almost exclusively for the British people,
and the British peace for colonial subjects. Great Britain could have
afforded better than France to tie its national life to an over-national
idea, but the only idea in which Britons have really believed was that
of British security, prosperity, and power. In the case of our own
country the advantages possessed by England have been amplified and
extended. The United States was divided from the mainland of Europe not
by a channel but by an ocean. Its dimensions were continental rather
than insular. We were for the most part freed from alien interference,
and could, so far as we dared, experiment with political and social
ideals. The land was unoccupied, and its settlement offered an
unprecedented area and abundance of economic opportunity. After the
Revolution the whole political and social organization was renewed, and
made both more serviceable and more flexible. Under such happy
circumstances the New World was assuredly destined to become to its
inhabitants a Land of Promise,--a land in which men were offered a
fairer chance and a better future than the best which the Old World
could afford.

No more explicit expression has ever been given to the way in which the
Land of Promise was first conceived by its children than in the "Letters
of an American Farmer." This book was written by a French immigrant,
Hector