[John O’Sullivan], ‘The Great Nation of Futurity’, United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 6:23 (1839), pp. 426–30.

The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High – the Sacred and the True. There is a tendency to imitativeness, prevailing amongst our professional and literary men, subversive of originality of thought, and wholly unfavorable to progress. The halls of legislation and the courts of law in a Republic are necessarily the public schools of the adult population. Being in early life devoted to the study of the laws, institutions, and antiquities of other nations they are far behind the mind and movement of the age in which they life: so much so, that the spirit of improvement, as well as enfranchisement, exists chiefly in the great masses – the agricultural and mechanical population.