might suffice, we should imagine, to convince reasonable persons of the utter absurdity of comparing the two countries together, at least in the very confident style we see done every day.

In the first place, America is a wide, almost a boundless country, not one-tenth part occupied, and consisting, over its greater part, of a fertile and virgin soil, yielding its fruits almost without toil; while England is small, strictly limited, thickly peopled, with a soil fertile, indeed, but only at the cost of an immense labour and outlay of capital. Secondly, the United States may be said to have no neighbours; for the Canadas on one side, and the rickety mock-governments of the Mexican republics on the other, give them no more trouble, politically speaking, and cost them no more money or anxiety, than the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Ocean do in a physical sense-whereas England is closely pressed upon by powerful neighbours, whose interests, passions, and actual forces, she is absolutely constrained to watch and keep in check, or otherwise modify, in order to preserve her own existence; and this at a vast expense of time, trouble, and treasure. In the third place, it may be observed, that in fully four-fifths of the settled portion of the United States the labouring population consists of slaves. The question is not now, how this came about whether so grievous a curse was entailed upon the colonies by the mother country-nor whether it is or is not necessary to augment its amount by the agency of an extensive internal slave-trade ;-we have only at present to do with the undoubted fact, that over the most fertile, and, in other respects, the most wealthy portion of the union, the working population consists of negro slaves. There are certain ingenious American writers, backed, too, by some of our own precious democrats, who seek to make out that the labouring classes of England are fully as much slaves as the negroes of the United States; but we hardly fancy this similarity will be considered so great, in the opinion of the persons we are addressing, as to take our third item out of the catalogue of contradistinctions.

A fourth point of difference is the climate. In England we are vexed with fogs and damps, and easterly winds, and clouds and storms in abundance,-but we have no sickly season, nor is any healthy man, woman, or child, obliged periodically to leave home, and fly to another residence, as from certain death. Such a change may be made for comfort or convenience, or by way of luxury, but no person here is compelled to abandon his house to slaves, while he travels away from the malaria. On the contrary, almost all the southern or slaveholding states of America are nearly uninhabitable during half the year-many of them for more than half the year. Even Philadelphia and New York are subject to the yellow fever,

and

We

and its ravages, if not perennial over Pennsylvania and New Jersey, are sufficiently frequent to render even that high latitude so insalubrious for a considerable portion of the year, that every mortal, who can possibly afford it, scampers off to the Canadas, or to the northern corners of the union. The banks of the innumerable rivers, great and small, which form such a wonderful net-work of water-courses over the United States, are peculiarly unhealthy during seven or eight months of the year; and this leads us to a fifth important distinction between the two countries. allude to the internal navigation by steam. If we beat Jonathan in roads, he repays us the compliment in his internal steam transport. We are not now asking which is best-a good road or a navigable river-but simply stating the fact, that in this respect America is altogether differently circumstanced from England. Every one must have heard this before; but few persons in this country seem to be aware of one very important point of distinction between the countries in respect to steam navigation. The Americans have no steam vessels which go to sea-or so few, that they need hardly be counted in a rapid sketch such as this. A few boats make passages up and down the strait which lies between Long Island and the main land of the state of New York, and one or two run from Boston to the ports to the northward; but, with these exceptions, the steam navigation of America, magnificent as it is, may be considered as confined to the fresh water, while that of Britain may be said to be as yet exclusively on the ocean. Nor is this adduced as a mere point of curious distinction; it involves in its essence a difference of the highest national importance. The steam-boats of America. are not fit, either by their form, or the nature of their materials, to stand the action of the sea for ten minutes; and, in like manner the men by whom they are navigated (so to call it) are not seamen in any sense of the word. It is very true that an American is a hardy, active, and ingenious fellow,-up to anything and everything, but, for all this versatility of talent and ductility of purpose, it is not possible all at once to convert him into a salt-water sailor, any more than it is possible to render his river steam-boat a sea-going craft. On the coasts of this empire, on the other hand, we are daily bringing up in our steamers an additional set of seamen, as valuable as any which the coasting trade has given birth to in past times, while all our ôld sources of supply remain untouched. Be it noticed, too, that a seafaring steamerman will find less difficulty in learning the art of using his paddles in fresh water, than a river hand will in acquiring a knowledge of seamanship.

If we turn to moral and political points of difference between

us,

us, we are first struck with the absence of several features in the government of America, the presence of which exerts a prodigious influence on England through all ranks of its society. A simple enumeration of the most important of these missing features will perhaps be considered enough, without much further comment. But, before stating them, we must again remark, that our present purpose is not to draw invidious comparisons, but merely to claim attention to points which many writers of the day appear apt to drop out of consideration altogether when treating of the United States.

There is not only no king or no court in America, but nothing to supply their place in the smallest degree. There is no hereditary aristocracy of rank of any sort; and although some persons in this country fancy there is in America something like an aristocracy of wealth, and another of talents, there is absolutely no such thing. For, in the first place, there are no entails; and, in the next, the money which may happen to be amassed in the hands of individuals, being the fruit of industry, thrift, and bargain-driving, imparts to its possessors none of the generous character of an aristocracy. As to the aristocracy of talents, this is a mere play upon words. Clever and highly-endowed persons in all countries must acquire ascendency, more or less, over their neighbours; but there is not in America, and cannot be anywhere, a class or body of men united to any practical purpose by the agency of mere talents. In such a society as that of America, there must, of course, be differences in station, arising out of differences in fortune; but there is no distinct or recognized classification of society as there is with us-the duties and advantages of which are not merely well understood by the members of each of the classes respectively, but so fully understood by those both above and below them in the graduated scale of society, that no man has any chance of general success who fails to perform, in the first instance, the well-known obligations of his own particular rank. Thus, people in England, as a matter of necessity, fall into what are called established habits. Whereas, in America, from the highest to the lowest, no man's habits are settled, or his relations to the people about him at all regulated by any usages so well known, as to have virtually the binding effect of a law. Neither is it conceivable how such conventional forms could be established in a democracy, the very essence of which is to have no man's head higher than another's. We are not censuring the Americans, however, for this, any more than for the other points of dissimilarity which we have pointed out, but merely showing that such differences do actually exist.

Again, there is no established church, and the consequences are two-fold;

two-fold ;-the absence of such an institution essentially modifies religious sentiment, religious principle, and, we may add, as a matter of course, religious practice, in that country; and, secondly, its consequences are felt at every moment in the administration of state affairs. We allude chiefly to that uniformity in the action of government which is produced by the powerful momentum of a wealthy and highly educated body of men dispersed over the country, but co-operating by means of an exact system of discipline, subject to no material or sudden changes. The utility of a church establishment, considered merely in its political view, in regulating the movements of the social machine, has been compared to the drag which is applied to a carriagewheel when descending a steep road. But we conceive this simile to be signally defective and unfair to the church, as it would limit its power to the process of retardation. To those who are acquainted with the fly-wheel of an engine, a much happier illustration is at hand; the fly has weight enough in itself to compel the other parts of the machinery to observe its regularity in a considerable degree ;-when affairs are going too slow, it accelerates them, when they are going too fast, it gradually tempers their

movements.

We think it fully clear, too, that the effect of an established church on that widely-diversified religious body, falling under the denomination of the Dissenters, is very great indeed; and we have long been of opinion, that to the church of England the various sects in this country are mainly indebted for their doctrine, discipline, and their unquestionable utility in the grand scale of religious society. Be all this as it may, there is no established church in America, and the consequent difference in the aspect of spiritual and political affairs is prodigious.

The total absence of a national debt is an eighth contradistinguishing feature of immense importance. Many persons consider that as to this point of dissimilarity the advantages lie entirely with the Americans. We are not of this opinion, and shall take an early opportunity of showing why, in detail. For the present we shall merely remark, that a large national debt acts like a sheet-anchor to the nation, chiefly by giving to a very great number of influential persons in the country a direct and perfectly obvious personal interest in the stability of public affairs; it likewise diffuses a sincere feeling of wholesome caution over the land; and as it becomes, in such a case, every man's interest to maintain the good faith of the government,-and as this public faith, like public strength or public wealth, can be made up only of individual strength or wealth, so it becomes the immediate interest of every man to preserve his own and his neighbour's integrity.

integrity. It is not, of course, pretended that the entire mass of wisd good faith in the country is due to this source; nor is it proposed to show how much of it is to be accounted for in this way; but it seems quite clear, that if the eight and twenty millions sterling worth of pecuniary interest, actually resting on the stability of government, were withdrawn, our body politic would be liable to those violent paroxysmal convulsions which have torn other countries to pieces. Why America is not thus disturbed is a question which it will be time enough to answer, if ever it be asked, when the two countries come to be equally peopled,—or when the fermenting processes, at present in operation, shall have had a little longer time to try their elasticity. At all events-be these reasonings sound (or otherwise in the total absence of a national debt in one country, and its existence to an immense extent in another, we have before us a point of national distinction which cannot fail to pervade every branch of society, and to influence the feelings of almost every individual towards the government under which he lives.

The love of change in the Americans, and their absence of respect for old usages, are features in their character singularly contrasted with our disposition in England to abide by established customs, and our unwillingness to try new-fangled projects. The Americans in strictness respect nothing;-they love their country, and they doat upon themselves to idolatry; but still they respect neither the one nor the other;-they change their laws, their institutions, and their own professions with the most astonishing facility. The instant any custom or practice wears the slightest degree of inconvenience, straightway they alter it; so that nothing, by possibility, can remain so long fixed as to become what we call habitual. There is no such thing amongst them as prescriptive rights; everything must show on its face the evidence of actual utility, or it is not for them: consequently there exist in that country none of those fixed habits of thought, sentiment, and conduct, which are sometimes called prejudices, in this country, but which we take leave to consider amongst the most valuable principles of our conservative system,-principles which are so rooted in us as to defy (in the long run) the attempts of internal enemies to tear them up. The political tempests, the wars, and other national struggles in which we have been engaged, have hitherto had no other effect than giving additional vigour to the growth of that constitution which, for a thousand years, has braved the battle and the breeze of party, and which, we hope and trust, will continue for many thousands of years to brave them and flourish under them still. The Americans say the same thing of their constitution; and we should be inclined to respect what they say, provided we

could