" [Footnote: Treaty of Purchase between the United States
and the French Republic, Art. I.]
The dream faded into something undefined but greater, relieving Napoleon
and France of immediate dangers and promising more to humanity, we must
agree, than a colony administered at that distance and separated from a
young, growing nation merely by a shifting river that must inevitably have
made trouble instead of preventing it.
Whatever may be said of Napoleon's motives or compulsions in this matter
or of his service to mankind in others, he has been "useful to the
universe," not in preventing England from ruling in that valley and so
dominating America, but in making it possible for the United States to
undertake the greatest task ever given into the hands of a republic, and
at the same time enabling it to keep the good-will of that people who
might (if the other dream had been realized) have become the worst of her
enemies. It was Napoleon, whatever his motive, Napoleon in the name of the
French people, who gave the United States the possibility of becoming a
world-power.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197