coaling-station well within twenty-five hundred miles, as this is, of
every point of our coast-line from Puget Sound to Mexico. Were there
many others available, we might find it difficult to exclude from all.
There is, however, but the one. Shut out from the Sandwich Islands as a
coal base, an enemy is thrown back for supplies of fuel to distances of
thirty-five hundred or four thousand miles,--or between seven thousand
and eight thousand, going and coming,--an impediment to sustained
maritime operations well-nigh prohibitive. The coal-mines of British
Columbia constitute, of course, a qualification to this statement; but
upon them, if need arose, we might hope at least to impose some
trammels by action from the land side. It is rarely that so important a
factor in the attack or defence of a coast-line--of a sea frontier--is
concentrated in a single position; and the circumstance renders doubly
imperative upon us to secure it, if we righteously can.

It is to be hoped, also, that the opportunity thus thrust upon us may
not be viewed narrowly, as though it concerned but one section of our
country or one portion of its external trade or influence. This is no
mere question of a particular act, for which, possibly, just occasion
may not have offered yet; but of a principle, a policy, fruitful of
many future acts, to enter upon which, in the fulness of our national
progress, the time now has arrived. The principle being accepted, to be
conditioned only by a just and candid regard for the rights and
reasonable susceptibilities of other nations,--none of which is
contravened by the step here immediately under discussion,--the
annexation, even, of Hawaii would be no mere sporadic effort,
irrational because disconnected from an adequate motive, but a
first-fruit and a token that the nation in its evolution has aroused
itself to the necessity of carrying its life--that has been the
happiness of those under its influence--beyond the borders which