million, and thus our total area now is a little more than 3,500,000 square miles. Canada and Newfoundland cover about the same extent of territory, or over 3,524,000 square miles, estimating for part of British Columbia not yet accurately surveyed. At the time of the Revolution, the latest authority on American geography was the American Gazetteer, published in London, in 1776. It gave the total area of the North American continent, with a precision not aimed at by modern statisticians, at 3,699,087 square miles. The founders of the United States did not dream that the narrow line of States they had drawn together could in a century come to include a territory of three millions and a half of square miles, and still have beyond them another area of equal magnitude, and much of it of equal fertility and natural resources, into which to expand, in the next century. But that expansion I believe it is our destiny to accomplish, and by no other means than those of peace and mutual good will. The good faith of the nation was pledged by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty against further extension to the southward, though it is doubtful whether this is still binding upon us; but the North American continent with every island on the east, and the Hawaiian group upon the west, all bound to it as satellites to their planet, will, if we continue in our historic policy as to annexation, eventually come under the flag of the United States. It has been argued with great force by an eminent authority on American constitutional law,' that our plan of government makes no provision for a colonial system. But the relations of an extra-territorial possession to the United States can never be those of a colony to a European power. Such a colony has generally been treated as an appendage held for the benefit of the commercial interests of the mother country. Its trade, conducted by others and for others, has brought little benefit to its own inhabitants, to 1 See Report of Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of Dec. 22, 1892, on Senate Bill No. 1218. 2 Judge Cooley in the Forum for June, 1893, vol. xv, p. 393. whom the navigation laws imposed upon them by a distant power have often seemed a kind of spoliation, under the name of protection. But any possessions, separated from the continent, which the United States may acquire, can rely on being governed under some system devised for the interest of all concerned, and administered by their own inhabitants, so far as they may show a capacity for self-government. Nor yet need we fear that the United States would not, if the occasion demanded, rule with a strong hand, when we recall the almost despotic system of administration which under the administration of Jefferson was forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of the Louisiana and Orleans territories, and maintained until they had learned the real qualities and conditions of American citizenship. Up to the present time the cost of such of our territory as has come to us by purchase, has been, in all, as follows: It has been cheaply bought, even if we add to these sums the expenditures in the Seminole War, which followed the Florida purchase, and of the Mexican War, which had so close a connection with those which came next. The policy of annexation, up to the time of the Civil War, was mainly pressed by Southern influence, and largely in the interest of slavery. But slavery would never have been overthrown, had not the country spread out over the Northern portions of the Louisiana purchase and the Pacific coast. It was the new States, on new territory, that turned the balance against the South in the final struggle. Into them poured the tide of immigration which Southern statesmen had vainly hoped the severity of Northern winters would repel. A Congress of Southern Governors was held at Richmond in April of this year, to devise means to attract emigrants to their section of the country. I hope their plans may prosper, but there is no stronger power in directing movements of population than that of sentiment, especially when resting on tradition. A public sentiment against slavery kept immigration from the Southern States while slavery endured, and a traditionary feeling keeps it from them still. Another generation must pass away before the Carolinas or Arkansas will be as attractive as Nebraska and Oregon, to those who seek new homes across the sea. S. E. BALDWIN. New Haven, Conn. EDWARD A. FREEMAN. MORE than a year ago, just as the April number of The Forum, with "A Review of my Opinions" from the pen of Mr. Freeman as its leading article, was passing from the press to the public, the startling announcement came that he had died suddenly at Alicante, in Spain, of the small-pox. Strange, indeed, it was that this busy man should thus have paused, just before the end of his great career, to summarize the history of his thoughts, and that that summary should have closed with a statement of the principles by which, in his own last words, "I would fain have my life and my writings judged." Wherever the principles which pervaded alike the life and the writings of the sage of Somerset are clearly understood, the fact will appear that the great influence which he so long wielded, even beyond the limits of the English-speaking world, was the result of the blending, in the rarest harmony, of intense moral conviction with a system of thought which judged all things of the present in the light of the very widest and most accurate knowledge of the past. To those who understand the full scope and purport of Mr. Freeman's life work, some of the recent, well-meaning newspaper sketches, which dwelt mainly upon the value of his researches to the history of architecture, were almost amusing. True it is that his earliest contributions to literature were in the form of criticisms upon the beauties of old cathedrals; and his appreciation of architecture as one of the great forms of human speech by the aid of which we must read the history of the social and artistic conditions of the past, lingered with him to the last. And yet this branch of study was with him but a part of a greater whole; it was but an element, perhaps an important element, in that wide system of self-culture through which he equipped himself for the interpretation of some of the greatest epochs in human history. In his marvellous account of the Norman Conquest the chapters upon Romanesque architecture and the Bayeux tapestry are not the leading features of the story, but they are invaluable side lights which show how careful the author was to exhaust every available source of knowledge in order to impart fullness and completeness to his narration. Fortunate it was for English literature that a scholar, thus equipped, should have appeared upon the scene, just at the moment when it became possible for the history of the English people to be written. The English language had grown old, and English literature had passed what has been called its golden age, before any serious attempt was ever made to open up the vast domain of English history. And when the investigation was at last begun, it was prosecuted according to the method which has prevailed in the exploration of the Nile, whose course has been mapped out by explorers who have slowly ascended from its mouths to its source. Hume began his "History of England" with the accession of the house of Stuart,-the volumes which treat of the preceding period were pinned on as an after-thought. Hallam began his “Constitutional History” with the accession of the house of Tudor,-three meagre chapters on the "Middle Ages" sufficed to contain all that he knew of the preceding period. The magnificent ruin, known as "Macaulay's History of England," really begins with the accession of the house of Stuart,-a single chapter sufficed to contain all that the most brilliant and the most. inquisitive of Englishmen has to say of the ten eventful centuries which precede that event. Some deep and serious reason must certainly have impelled three minds at once so acute and comprehensive to pass so lightly over the early and mediæval history of their country in order to begin their narrations in comparatively modern times. That reason is not hard to find. The truth is, until recently, the real history of early and medieval England has remained a sealed book. Only within the last fifty years have the charters, chronicles and memorials in which was entombed the early history of the English people been made accessible; and only within the past twenty years have they been subjected to the final analysis, which has at last extracted from |