62    UNITED STATES GAZETTEER,

warns the tyrant. It directs the efforts of art, science, and benevolence; connects distant
times and places with our own period and abode ; makes us denizens almost of a world; and
kindles a glowing interest in the affairs of our whole race.

The “ enlightened European " might disdain to look for lessons of wisdom to the compara-
tively obscure settlers of American wildernesses ; but it may be successfully maintained that
even from them he could be taught. A population laborious and sober, frugal yet free, pos-
sessing and consulting the sacred records of divine revelation, and unobstructed in the reduction
of their precepts into practical life, must afford a development to the human faculties rarely
seen. The old world presents the many as made subservient to the few; the new world
has afforded the prospect of the multitude engaged in promoting their own benefit, and framing
their institutions in such manner as to secure it.

Let a thoughtful reader peruse the history of the republics of Italy, as written by their
enlightened and faithful historian Sismondi, and study the tablet it presents of lawless ambition,
ruthless war, and keen suffering, of heartless oppression and wrong, and that for centuries;
then let him turn over the records of our own American states, and institute a comparison.
Will he not conclude that humanity has gained somewhat in the lapse of ages ?

In Maine, for instance, an example has been set for the instruction of the world, in the
single circumstance of the creation of its territory into a sovereign state, without the
shedding of a drop of human blood, or the existence of angry debate. Peaceful and deliberate
discussion, weighing critically the advantage or the injury, and honestly bringing each to the
light for impartial examination, formed the prelude; and the consequent success of the measure
has been between the sister states a subject of mutual congratulation, each of the parties
having unquestionably gained.

It cannot be denied that in the circumstances of these two masses of population, amounting
in the aggregate to 700,000 souls, the withdrawing of one third part might have furnished fuel
for an extensive and ruinous conflagration. Causes of minor consequence often inflamed the
ancient republics of Greece, and incited them to ruinous wars; and Italian history, before
alluded to, is full of scenes of bloodshed where far less was at stake. But Massachusetts
submitted to lose much of her weight and influence in the general union of the states, and
Maine was content with the division of the public property. Each State has since advanced
in opulence, and in all that distinguishes American society, without the slightest relic of any
ancient grudge, or the traces of political jealousy or envy.

No enlightened lover of mankind can contemplate such a picture, it would seem, without
emotion. How many bloody revolutions would have been prevented, how many precious lives
been saved, had such a course been uniformly held!' The wars of Holland with Spain, in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, and that of Great Britain with the colonies in the eighteenth,
would have had no place in history ; and could the now remaining colonies pursue a similar
course, it might be expected to issue in mutual benefit; as might, perhaps, the wasting desola-
tions of Hungary and Italy, in our own day, have been prevented by it. Force and fraud have
done for ambition the work of selfish aggrandizement too long already: we may hope that the
time approaches when “ the greatest good of the greatest number " is to be the acknowledged
aim of the rulers of men.

Among the Eastern or New England States, extent of territory is the prominent distinction
of Maine. So great is this, comparatively, that it early gave occasion to a significant toast
from a tourist * of South Carolina — “ The District of Maine, the main district of Massachu-
setts ! " But it rises to a higher consequence, for its area, which is now stated at 32,628 square
miles, nearly equals the aggregate of all the other states comprised in the above-named division,
and in population it stands among them the second only to Massachusetts.

Nor are these distinctions the sole recommendations of this state to our regard. Its length-
ened sea-coast, indented with harbors almost innumerable, and extending more than 200 miles,
point it out as offering advantages of navigation and commerce superior to any coast of equal
extent possessed by any of the states of our broad confederacy — advantages which have been

Major Pinckney, in 1809.