A great revolution has happened — a revolution made, not by chopping and changing of power in any of the existing states, but by the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe. It has made as great a change in all the relations, and balances, and gravitations of power, as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar world.As for my esteeming it a hard destiny which should force me to visit the United States, I will borrow Goethe's words, and say, that “not the spirit is bound, but the foot” ; with the best will in the world, I have never yet been able to
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that the great admixture of Germans had now made the people of the United States as much German as English, has not yet prevailed with me. I adhere to my old persuasion, the Americans of the United States are English people on the other side of the Atlantic.
I learned it from Burke.
But from Burke I learned, too, with what immense consequences and effects this simple matter — the settlement of a branch of the English people on the other side of the Atlantic — was, from the time of their constitution as an independent power, certainly and inevitably charged.
Let me quote his own impressive and profound words on the acknowledgment of American independence, in 1782:--
Boston. De Wolfe, Fiske &c Co. 361 and 365 Washington Street. 1888.
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