Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/41

31 vast countries of which I have spoken, but to spread itself over all the regions of the New World. But the prophecy is as ridiculous, as the hypothesis upon which it is founded is extravagant. If the causes, which have produced the great increase of population and wealth in the United States, were ordinary and permanent, the calculation would not be too exaggerated, and the prophecy might be admitted. But who does not know, that the United States owe the increase of their population and wealth, of which they boast so much, to the revolution of France, and the extraordinary events which it produced? They acquired from these causes all the French population of the island of St. Domingo, and a great part of the inhabitants and colonists of the other French islands; and a constant emigration has flowed in from France, Switzerland, Italy, the Low Countries, Holland, Germany, and Ireland, up to the end of the last year. During the long period of war in Europe, the American was the only free and neutral flag in every sea. The Americans then enjoyed a long and advantageous period, not only for supplying the European and Spanish American markets with the productions of their own soil at high prices, but for carrying the produce and merchandize of all other nations, from the markets and ports of one to those of the others. The insurrection in Spanish America, opened a field equally flattering to their avarice and ambition; they fomented the disorder