Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/42

36 there are just complaints at present, will cease to prevail. The restless movement westward will come to a stand. More settled habits and associations will be formed. A sounder and more effective philosophy will lay its tranquillising hand on the feverish pulse of political and commercial life. If justice prevails here, Ireland will become a home to her own people, and Irish emigration will cease to flow in so dangerous a current. The volume of emigration generally will perhaps be diminished, if governments in Europe grow wiser; and the American people, as a whole, will wear less the aspect of new comers still hastening on to fresh abodes. The habits of man will be better adapted to the climate of that continent, and a limit will be set to the nervous excitability produced by it, the influence of which is at present great, and more important, perhaps, in its effects than is generally supposed. At the same time new elements and influences will come into play, as the vast federation of the North American continent, the colossal lineaments of which are at present but faintly discernible, begins to assume its perfect form. The centre of power and importance will be transferred, as it is now fast shifting, to the mighty West. The federal institutions framed for the thirteen old colonies can hardly fail to undergo some change. The infant nation has hitherto been in many things like a child in an untouched orchard of nature, filling its arms with golden fruit, and letting them drop again as it hurried on to the next bough. The boughs, though laden, will be stript in time, the boundary of the orchard will be reached, the manhood of the nation will come, and bring with it new cares and perhaps difficulties as yet unforeseen. But the past can never return: Feudalism,