1795, stipulated for them a precarious right of navigating the noble river to the sea, with a right of deposit at New Orleans.  This subject was for years the turning-point of the politics of the West; and it was perfectly well understood that, sooner or later, she would be content with nothing less than the sovereign control of the mighty stream from its head-spring to its outlet in the Gulf.  And that is as true now as it was then.”

This is well put.  It describes with force the desires, ambition, and necessities of a great nation, and it tells with historical truth the story of the success of that nation.  It was a great thing done when the purchase of the whole of Louisiana was completed by the United States—­that cession by France, however, having been made at the instance of Napoleon, and not in consequence of any demand made by the States.  The district then called Louisiana included the present State of that name and the States of Missouri and Arkansas—­included also the right to possess, if not the absolute possession of all that enormous expanse of country running from thence back to the Pacific:  a huge amount of territory, of which the most fertile portion is watered by the Mississippi and its vast tributaries.  That river and those tributaries are navigable through the whole center of the American continent up to Wisconsin and Minnesota.  To the United States the navigation of the Mississippi was, we may say, indispensable; and to the States, when no longer united, the navigation will be equally indispensable.  But the days are gone when any country such as Spain was can interfere to stop the highways of the world with the all but avowed intention of arresting the progress of civilization.  It may be that the North and the South can never again be friends as the component parts of one nation.  Such, I take it, is the belief of all politicians in Europe, and of many of those who live across the water.  But as separate nations they may yet live together in amity, and share between them the great water-ways which God has given them for their enrichment.  The Rhine is free to Prussia and to Holland.  The Danube is not closed against Austria.  It will be said that the Danube has in fact been closed against Austria, in spite of treaties to the contrary.  But the faults of bad and weak governments are made known as cautions to the world, and not as facts to copy.  The free use of the waters of a common river between two nations is an affair for treaty; and it has not yet come to that that treaties must necessarily be null and void through the falseness of politicians.