AMERICA. (E. REVIEW, 1824.)

1. Travels through Part of the United States and Canada, in 1818 and 1819. By John M. Duncan, A. B. Glasgow, 1823.

2. Letters from North America, written during a Tour in the United States and Canada. By Adam Hodgson. London, 1824.

3. An Excursion through the United States and Canada, during the Years 1822-3. By an English Gentleman. London, 1824.

THERE is a set of miserable persons in England, who are dreadfully afraid of America

ally than that of the historian of Leo X. The primary duck-stealer would, we think, be as effectually deterred from repeating the offence by the terror of our imprisonment, as by the excellence of Mr. Roscoe's education-and, what is of infinitely greater consequence, innumerable duckstealers would be prevented. Because punishment does not annihilate crime, it is folly to say it does not lessen it. It did not stop the murder of Mrs. Donatty; but how many Mrs. Donattys has it kept alive! When we recommend severity, we re

commend, of course, that degree of severity which will not excite compassion for the sufferer, and lessen the horror of the crime. This is why we do not recommend torture and amputation of limbs. When a man has been proved to have committed a crime, it is expedient that society should make use

of that man for the diminution of crime: he belongs to them for that purpose. Our primary duty, in such a case, is so to treat the culprit that many other persons may be rendered better, or prevented from being worse, by dread of the same treatment; and, making this the principal object, to combine with it as much as possible the improvement of the individual. The ruffian who killed Mr. Mumford was hung within forty-eight hours. Upon Mr. Roscoe's principles, this was wrong; for it certainly was not the way to reclaim the man:— We say, on the contrary, the object was to do any thing with the man which would render murders less frequent, and that the conversion of the man was a mere trifle compared to this. His death probably prevented the necessity of reclaiming a dozen murderers. That death will not, indeed, prevent all murders in that county; but many who have seen it, and many who have heard of it, will swallow their revenge from the dread of being hanged. Mr. Roscoe is very severe upon our style; but poor dear Mr. Roscoe should remember that men have different tastes and different methods of

whose great

and every thing American delight is to see that country ridiculed and vilified - and who appear to imagine tha all the abuses which exist in this country acquire additional vigour and chance of duration from every book of travels which pours forth its venom and falsehood on the United States. We shall from time to time call the attention of the public to this subject, not from any party spirit, but because we love truth, and praise excellence whereever we find it; and because we think the example of America will in many instances tend to open the eyes of Englishmen to their

true interests.

The Economy of America is a great and important object for our imitation. The salary of Mr. Bagot, our late Ambassador, was, we believe, rather higher than that of the President of the United States. The Vice-President receives rather less than the second Clerk of the House of Commons; and all salaries, civil and military, are upon served than America! Mr. Hume has at the same scale; and yet no country is better last persuaded the English people to look a little into their accounts, and to see how sadly they are plundered. But we ought to suspend our contempt for America, and consider whether we have not a very momentous lesson to learn from this wise and cautious people on the subject of economy. A lesson on the importance of Religious Toleration, we are determined, it would seem, not to learn, either from America, or from any other quarter of the globe. The high sheriff of New York, last year, was a Jew. It was with the utmost difficulty that a bill was carried this year to allow the first duke of England to carry a gold stick before the King-because he was a Catholic! and yet we think ourselves entitled to indulge in impertinent sneers at America, as if civilisation did not depend more upon making wise laws for the promotion of human happiness, than in having

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going to work. We feel these matters as deeply as he does. But why so cross upon this or any other subject?

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ment, which is the perfection of wisdom, will never allow the Canadian merchants to trade direct to

China, in order that (from pure charity) the whole United States.'-Excursion, pp. 394, 395.

profit of the tea trade may be given up to the

America is exempted, by its very new ness as a nation, from many of the evils of the old governments of Europe. It has no mischievous remains of feudal institutions, and no violations of political economy sanctioned by time, and older than the age of reason. If a man find a partridge upon his ground eating his corn, in any part of Kentucky or Indiana, he may kill it even if his father be not a Doctor of Divinity. The Americans do not exclude their own citizens from any branch of commerce which they leave open to all the rest of the world.

One of them said, that he was well acquainted with a British subject, residing at Newark, Upper Canada, who annually smuggled from 500 to 1000 chests of tea into that province from the United States. He mentioned the name of this man, who, he said, was growing very rich in consequence; and he stated the manner in which the fraud was managed. Now, as all the tea ought to be brought from England, it is of course very expensive; and therefore the Canadian tea dealers, after buying one or two chests at Montreal or elsewhere, which have the Custom-house mark upon them, fill them up ever afterwards with tea brought from the United States. It is calculated that near 10,000 chests are annually consumed in the Canadas, of which not more than 2000 or 3000 come from Europe. Indeed, when I had myself entered Canada, I was told that of every fifteen pounds of tea sold there thirteen were smuggled. The profit upon smuggling this article is from 50 to 100 per

cent., and, with an extensive and wild frontier like

Canada, cannot be prevented. Indeed it every year increases, and is brought to a more perfect system. But I suppose that the English Govern

'You will readily conceive, that it is with no small mortification that I hear these American merchants talk of sending their ships to London and Liverpool, to take in goods or specie, with which to purchase tea for the supply of European often taunt me, by asking me what our Government can possibly mean by prohibiting us from engaging in a profitable trade, which is open to them and to all the world? or where can be our boasted liberties, while we tamely submit to the infraction of our natural rights, to supply a mo

nopoly as absurd as it is unjust, and to honour the caprice of a company who exclude their fellow subjects from a branch of commerce which they do not pursue themselves, but leave to the enterprise of foreigners, or commercial rivals? On such occasions I can only reply, that both our Government and people are growing wiser; and that if the charter of the East India Company be renewed, when it next expires, I will allow them to infer, that the people of England have little influence in the administration of their own affairs.'-Hodgson's Letters, II. 128, 129.

Though America is a confederation of republics, they are in many cases much more amalgamated than the various parts of Great Britain. If a citizen of the United States can make a shoe, he is at liberty to make a shoe any where between Lake Ontario and New Orleans, -he may sole on the Mississippi, heel on the Missouri, — measure Mr. Birkbeck on the little Wabash, or take (which our best politicians do not find an easy matter) the length of Mr. Munro's foot on the banks of the Potowmac. But woe to the cobler, who, having made Hessian boots for the aldermen of Newcastle, should venture to invest with these coriaceous integuments the leg of a liege subject at York. A yellow ant in a nest of red ants -a mouse in butcher's dog in a fox-kennel — a bee-hive,-all feel the effects of untimely intrusion;-but far preferable their fate to that of the misguided artisan, who, misled by sixpenny histories of England, and conceiving his country to have been united at the Heptarchy, goes forth from his native town to stitch freely within the sea-girt

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limits of Albion. Him the mayor, him the alderman, him the recorder, him the quarter sessions would worry. Him the justices before trial would long to get into the treadmill*; and would much lament that, by a recent act, they could not do so, even with the intruding tradesman's consent; but the moment he was tried, they would push him in with redoubled energy, and leave him to tread himself into a conviction of the barbarous institutions of his corporation-divided country.

Too much praise cannot be given to the Americans for their great attention to the subject of Education. All the public lands are surveyed according to the direction of Congress. They are divided into townships of six miles square, by lines running with the cardinal points, and consequently cross

* This puts us in mind of our friend Mr. Headlam, who, we hear, has written an answer to our Observations on the Tread-mill before Trial. It would

have been a very easy thing for us to have hung

Mr. Headlam up as a spectacle to the United

Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the principality of Wales, and the town of Berwickon-Tweed; but we have no wish to make a worthy and respectable man appear ridiculous. For these reasons we have not even looked at his pamphlet, and we decline entering into a controversy upon a

point, where, among men of sense and humanity

(who had not heated themselves in the dispute), there cannot possibly be any difference of opinion. All members of both Houses of Parliament were unanimous in their condemnation of the odious and

nonsensical practice of working prisoners in the tread-mill before trial. It had not one single advocate. Mr. Headlam and the magistrates of the North Riding, in their eagerness to save a relic of their prison system, forgot themselves so far as to petition to be intrusted with the power of putting prisoners to work before trial, with their own consent-the answer of the Legislature was, "We will not trust you," the severest practical rebuke ever received by any public body. We will leave it to others to determine whether it was

deserved. We have no doubt the great body of magistrates meant well. They must have meant well-but they have been sadly misled, and have thrown odium on the subordinate administration of justice, which it is far from deserving on other

occasions, in their hands. This strange piece of nonsense is, however, now well ended.-Requiescat in pace!

ing each other at right angles. Every township is divided into 36 sections, each a mile square, and containing 640 acres. One section in each township is reserved, and given in perpetuity for the benefit of common schools. In addition to this the states of Tennessee and Ohio have received grants for the support of colleges and academies. The appropriation generally in the new States for seminaries of the higher orders, amount to one fifth of those for common schools. It appears from Seybert's Statistical Annals, that the land, in the states and territories on the east side of the Mississippi, in which appropriations have been made, amounts to 237,300 acres; and according to the ratio above mentioned, the aggregate on the east side of the Mississippi is 7,900,000. The same system of appropriation applied to the west, will make, for schools and colleges, 6,600,000; and the total appropriation for literary purposes, in the new states and territories, 14,500,000 acres, which, at two dollars per acre, would be 29,000,000 dollars. These facts are very properly quoted by Mr. Hodgson; and it is impossible to speak too highly of their value and importance. They quite put into the back-ground every thing which has been done in the Old World for the improvement of the lower orders, and confer deservedly upon the Americans the character of a wise, a reflecting, and a virtuous people.

It is rather surprising that such a people, spreading rapidly over so vast a portion of the earth, and cultivating all the liberal and useful arts so successfully, should be so extremely sensitive and touchy as the Americans are said to be. We really thought at one time they would have fitted out an armament against the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and burnt down Mr. Murray's and Mr. Constable's shops, as we did the American Capitol. We, however, remember no other anti-American crime of which we were guilty, than a preference of Shakspeare and Milton over Joel Barlow and Timothy Dwight. That opinion we must still take the liberty of retaining. There is nothing in Dwight comparable to the finest passages

of Paradise Lost, nor is Mr. Barlow ever humorous or pathetic, as the great Bard of the English stage is humorous and pathetic. We have always been strenuous* advocates for, and admirers of, America-not taking our ideas from the overweening vanity of the weaker part of the Americans themselves, but from what we have observed of their real energy and wisdom. It is very natural that we Scotch, who live in a little shabby scraggy corner of a remote island, with a climate which cannot ripen an apple, should be jealous of the aggressive pleasantry of more favoured people; but that Americans, who have done so much for themselves, and received so much from nature, should be flung into such convulsions by English Reviews and Magazines, is really a sad specimen of Columbian juvenility. We hardly dare to quote the following account of an American rout, for fear of having our motives misrepresented,-and strongly suspect that there are but few Americans who could be brought to admit that a Philadelphia or Boston concern of this nature is not quite equal to the most brilliant assemblies of London or Paris.

'A tea party is a serious thing in this country; and some of those at which I have been present, in New York and elsewhere, have been on a very large scale. In the modern houses the two principal apartments are on the first floor, and communicate by large folding-doors, which on gala-days throw wide their ample portals, converting the two apartments into one. At the largest party which I have seen, there were about thirty young ladies present, and more than as many gentlemen. Every

sofa, chair, and footstool were occupied by the ladies, and little enough room some of them appeared to have after all. The gentlemen were obliged to be content with walking up and down, talking now with one lady, now with another. Tea was brought in by a couple of blacks, carrying large trays, one covered with cups, the other with cake. Slowly making the round, and retiring at intervals for additional supplies, the ladies were gradually gone over; and after much patience the gentlemen began briates;" still walking about or leaning against to enjoy the beverage "which cheers but not inethe wall, with the cup and saucer in their hand.

'As soon as the first course was over, the hospitable trays again entered, bearing a chaos of preserves - peaches, pineapples, ginger, oranges, citrons, pears, &c. in tempting display. A few of the young gentlemen now accompanied the revolution of the trays, and sedulously attended to the pleasure of the ladies. The party was so numerous that the period between the commencement and the termination of the round was sufficient to justify a new solicitation; and so the ceremony continued, with very little intermission, during the whole evening. Wine succeeded the preserves, and dried fruit followed the wine; which, in its turn, was supported by sandwiches in the name of supper, and a forlorn-hope of confectionary and frost work. I pitied the poor blacks who, like Tantalus, had such a profusion of dainties the whole evening at their finger ends, without the possibility of partaking of them. A little music and dancing gave variety to the scene; which to some of us was a source of considerable satisfaction; for when a number of ladies were on the floor, those who cared not for the dance had the pleasure of getting a seat. About eleven o'clock I did myself the honour of escorting a lady home, and was well pleased to have an excuse for escaping.'-Duncan's Travels, II. 279, 280.

cumstances differ. American institutions are too new, English institutions are ready made to our hands. If we were to build the house afresh, we might perhaps avail ourselves of the improvements of a new plan; but we have no sort of wish to pull down an excellent house, strong, warm, and comfortable, because, upon second trial, we might be able to alter and amend it,'-a principle which would perpetuate demolition and construction. Our plan, where circumstances are tolerable, is to sit down and enjoy ourselves.

of their recollection. The great inconvenience of American inns, however, in the eyes of an Englishman, is one which more sociable travellers must feel less acutelywe mean the impossibility of being alone, of having a room separate from the rest of the company. There is nothing which an Englishman enjoys more than the pleasure of sulkiness, of not being forced to hear a

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