THE United States DEMOCRATIC REVIEW. November, 1858. CIVILIZATION AND COMMERCE IN CHINA-RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES. HE treaties of amity and commerce, lately negotiated at TH Tien-tsin in the Chinese Empire, between the rulers of that Celestial dynasty and the representatives of the four great and preponderating powers of Christendom, the United States, Russia, France, and Great Britain, respectively stand forth as additional testimonials of the virtue and power of the civilization of the present age, the advancing strides and magnificent achievements of which, in the varied channels of science, enterprise, diplomacy, and conquest, are being so rapidly developed upon the world's plane, and successively recorded in contemporaneous history. The march of revolution, once begun, is onward, progressive, and irresistible. Men may falter, nations may fall, but the pre-ordained decrees of destiny are inevitable. The omnipotent laws of Nature must prevail alike over nations as over men. That law ordains universal progress which is the consequence and result of revolution and change. So uniform and momentous have been the victories of mind over matter, of science over indiscriminate material force in the ultimate overthrow of the barriers of superstition, the rupture of the bonds of ignorance, isolation, immobility, and inborn chronic vassalage, as to vindicate conclusively the majesty and omnipotence of that element of regeneration which is founded in superior mental capacity, social independence, and civil and religious freedom. Intelligence is and has ever been the ruling power of the earth. Intellect is at once monarch and master of the universe; and as a nation preponderates or excels in this great primitive faculty of strength and dominion, in that proportion will it assert and maintain its importance, supremacy, stability, and power, for good or for evil, over the interests, institutions, and doctrines of that people whose condition is otherwise, and whose resources, though equal in all other relations, are inferior in this paramount and indispensable attribute. The history of the last eighteen hundred years has placed this proposition beyond the sphere of rational dispute, and imbeded it among those axioms, the potency and permanence of which are universally assumed as self-evident and impregnable. Therefore it is that America, originated as a nation, upon the most liberal and expansive ideas of popular intelligence, and adhering steadily to this fundamental law of liberty and enlightened progress, has advanced in the unfolding of her resources, the increase and general improvement of her people, and the enlargement and perfection of her nationality and greatness in a degree without parallel or example either in rapidity, happiness, or grandeur, in the records of any age or nation in the civilized world. The Chinese, constituting nearly one-third of the population of the entire globe, have, during numberless and successive centuries, been sunk and submerged in the lowest bondage, servility, and thraldom. Possessed, as a people, of the fairest and most fruitful heritage allotted to any portion of |