There are laws of dissolution, and laws of segregation and combination
in the political as in the natural world. Great Britain may fall into
fragments because her geographical and political conditions render her
amenable to the laws of dissolution; while the United States may go on
enlarging their boundaries and becoming more stable and powerful from
the fact that their political status and local surroundings render them
the legitimate subject of the laws of political growth and geographical
enlargement. The British possessions are geographically too remote; they
may not be united together by the necessary bonds of political union.
The weakness of Great Britain may now be what the weakness of the
Spanish empire once was. Her geography is against her. The day is
gradually passing away when arbitrary power may hold distant regions in
subjection to a central despotism; the day is at hand which demands that
the bonds of union shall be natural and just, not arbitrary--bonds which
forever assert their own inherent power to unite and grow stronger, not
weaker, with the inevitable changes constantly being wrought out by the
busy hand of time.
Man's social and political life depends much on the physical conditions
by which he is surrounded. We have only to instance a mountain and
valley population.
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