America's Future.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 40, 8 March 1884, Page 4

America's Future.

These last seven years have given occasion to the Americans and to their foreign friends to give utteranco to many congi-atu-lations about the happy result of that strugI gle of a century ago — the war of indepenence. Every one has been saying, with all degrees of eloquent emphasis that never since the world began has there been such progress seen as has been seen between the Atlantic and the Pacific Shores since then. People point to maps of a hundred or fifty, or twenty years ago, and show us with exultantwonderthe difference between each pair. With the peace of Paris, the United States reached out to the Mississippi, and excluded New Orleans and Florida ; and vast reigons of that track were uninhabited and uncleared. We need not dwell on the change that each year, each week, has brought forth, on the extension of territory westward and northward, on the hundreds of great cities the myriads ot towns, the tens of thousands of miles of railway, the mines, the manufactures, the machinery. AU this is familiar to every one. What is less obvious is the goal to which this vast material progress is tending : a question which has perplexed reflecting minds since De Tocquville's day, and which is exercising America not a little at this moment. The United States have now formed and established themselves, not without one struggle of tremendous proportions ; their material resources are secured to them ; they are safe for a long time to come against many of the trials which beial the older civilization of Europe. But it is already almost a commonplace to say that their real trials are only just beginning. When the era of supplement is over that of internal development will begin. What will be the moral and intellectual aspect of it ? What will be the gift of America to the common stock of iieas ? The question is one that can only be vaguely asked as yet ! time alone can answer it. But meanwhile it would be vain to deny that the century-old republic is giving every indication of a future as remark able in the region of morals and of ideas as in the material region. Literature is beginning to take a character, and a very charming character, of its own. In art the Americans are showing, if not independence, at least an extraodinary facility which must lead them to better things before long. They are eager for all that Europe can send them in the \yay of letters, the drama or pictures. There is no " evacuation of New York" on the part of English lectures, English actors or English writers. The keen American mind is turning with eagerness, uninformed with criticism, toward the best that the modern world can give it. The intellectual feature of such a race is not likely to disappoint the most sanguine of the prophets. — London Times

Five members of the crew of the American vessel Sarah W. Hunt have left Christchurch for Auckland, en route for San Francisco.