on any part of its debt. In point of fact, it paid 6 per cent. on less than half, in 1826 and in 1828, on only about 25,000,000 dols.—on 13,000,000 dols. it paid only 3 per cent.

"The statement of Mr. Hall, in reference to the ratio of contributions of the citizens to the Government of the United States is liable to the following objections. It is valueless, since the expenditure is stationary, or in its nature diminishing rapidly, while the population is rapidly progressive. It is erroneous, since he has not given, by half a million, enough people, and because he takes the gross amount of payments of the Treasury as the gross amount of expenditure. The miscellaneous expenditures of the United States are chiefly sums invested in canals, &c. I am much mistaken in the time if it was not during the three years of Mr. Hall, that England paid 1,200,000 dols. for spoliations, which would, of course, pass through the Treasury, and appear in the gross amount of payments. Again, the Federal Government has been paying, from time to time, sums to different States, and this money, Mr. Hall, on his principle of aggregate amounts would charge twice against the citizen. Is it fair to charge reductions of debt as annual contributions? It is true the citizen pays it, but under what circumstances. The policy of the United States exacts a Tariff, and, will ye nill ye, we have a revenue of 25,000,000 dols. In a few years, say four at the most, the debt will be paid, and then something is to be done with this money, or the Tariff abandoned. Admitting that we should appropriate a few millions more annually to the navy, as probably will be done, there will be an excess of 10,000,000 dols. to dispose of. One plan is to divide this money, among the States, according to population. New York would get 1,400,000 dols. annually. Her canals are giving an increasing revenue each year, and her canal debt being paid, she will have, under this regulation 3,000,000 dols. a year to pass through her Treasury. Admitting that the State buys English Consols with this money, according to Mr. Hall's table, her citizens will suffer an imposition in proportion to their riches.

"It should be remembered that the American system of government is intended to meet the wants of a vast population. The great size of the territory compels expenditures for objects that just now are of no great importance, but which, ten years hence, will become

so.

Thus Mr. Hall takes 1,611,307 as the population of New York in 1828, and calculates his ratio of contribution with this division; whereas, had he waited until to-day, he would have had, with the same dividend, a division of 2,000,000. The citizen of New York, instead of contributing even the eighteen cents to his state-government, as I have shown he did in 1828, contributed to-day only fifteen!

"You may say that a stranger cannot readily understand all these details. Why write about them? Every stranger has access to my authorities, and I have not set forth a single fact that is not obtained from a printed document, Mr. Hall's included!

The three volumes are filled with errors and misconceptions. I do not mean Mr. Hall is mistaken or misconceives when he says, we are not the 'wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best' people going; but my allusion is simply to facts. There are so many of these mistakes that I scarcely know which to expose. He greatly misconceives the

spirit of the constitution. He talks of innovations on the prerogatives of the President, and on the sacred rights of the Judges, without seeming to know that all these offices can be constitutionally abolish ed, if we please. All that he says of invasion of the prerogative of the President, (who, by the by, has no strict prerogative) is a mistake, the Constitution never having been touched at all, as respects that officer, except in correcting an oversight in the manner of his election. It is curious to see the Englishman reasoning here, on this subject, according to English ideas. With you, the Constitution is altered by Parliamentary enactments, more or less direct, but no such thing happens with us. We have a particular way of altering the Constitution constitutionally. I dare say Mr. Hall can say that this or that American descanted to him 'gravely on the reverse of my statement; but this is one of those cases in which we use the same terms meaning different things. I shall exhibit one more of Mr. Hall's misconceptions, for it is a good example to show how difficult it is for an European to understand a question purely American, and then quit the subject. T

T

"In page 293, Vol. II., Mr. Hall has a comparative view of the length of time the Members of Parliament and of Congress respec tively have served, with a view to show the vacillating quality of popular fame, and the consequent inexperience in legislation of the representatives of democracy. To begin, Mr. Hall says, that a representative in a State Legislature, or in Congress, must not only represent a particular spot, but that he must have resided actually on that particular spot a certain time previously to his election.I was amused when I found a Scotchman calling an American Con gressional district, a spot. At all events, each of these spots must have forty thousand inhabitants, and some of them have several hun dred thousands. He is in error as to Congress. A Member of Congress need not be an inhabitant of the district he represents, of necessity, though the people ordinarily choose that he shall be perhaps always. The constitution requires, for reasons connected with the nature of a Confederacy, that each Member should be a citizen of the State he represents. As for the local selfishness which influences the representative under such a system, I would ask if it be not quite as useful as the selfishness which controls the member for Grampound or Old Sarum? But the most extraordinary mistifi cation in this extraordinary book is in the eight or ten pages taken to prove that Members do not sit as long in Congress as in Parlia ment. When I reflect that the work is written by a man who actually read the Constitution of the United States, and who took leisure for his task, I scratch my head and ask when will an Englishman think straight about America? You will remember that I say nothing as to whether long or short service is best for a country-I am deal ing only with facts. In the first place, there were probably Mem bers in Parliament in 1828 who sat before there was a Congress at all. In the next place, we have had what is called the Old Congress, and what is called the New; or, the Congress of the Confederation and the Congress of the Union. The latter dates only from 1789, and Mr. Hall, although in another part of his book he struggles hard to show that an institution ought to date from the time when a change

"

was made in the form of choosing the President, says nothing of any anterior service. Again, we have State Legislatures, and few men go to Congress who have not sat in these Legislatures, where the habits of legislation are just as well obtained as in Congress itself. And finally, and the most destructive to his calculation of all, the number of the members is periodically increased in America, and in the nature of things a great many must be of that date in the house. Thus in New York in 1789, there were but seven members, whereas to-day there are thirty-four, and in the next Congress there will be thirty-eight if not forty. Again, in 1789 there were but thirteen States in the American Union, and now there are twenty-four. The eleven new States were admitted at different times, and of course brought in their members with them. Now Mr. Hall gravely tells us, under these notorious circumstances, that Members of Congress, under an average of the services of the respective members of the year 1828, do not sit as long as Members of Parliament, there having been no change in the latter within the life of man, except in the admission of the Irish members thirty years ago. In point of fact, in the old emigrating States of America, as in New England, and Georgia, the Carolinas, &c. a respectable man is almost certain to serve his constituents as long as he pleases. The same is true in the old stationary districts of other states, as, for instance, in New York, whose population has augmented from less than 400,000 to 2,000,000 since 1789. Thus Mr. Samuel Smith of Maryland has been in Con gress, one house or the other, ever since the New Constitution 1 Mr. Macon of North Carolina, Mr. Wood and Mr. Taylor of New York, &c. &c. are all examples of what I have just said. A far greater proportion of the Members of Congress voluntarily retire, than of Parliament, and for obvious reasons. Neither our habits, nor our laws, admit of pluralities in office. A Member of Parliament (can hold a foreign mission, but a Member of Congress cannot. Officers in the army and navy can sit in Parliament, but they cannot in Con gress. A great many Members left Congress in 1812 to join the army. If a Member of Congress, as often happens, is elected Go vernor of his own State, or if he be made a Supreme Judge, either in his own State or under the United States, or a Collector, or enter the cabinet, or indeed accepts anything else of moment, he is obliged to quit Congress, so that what is in truth a greater evidence of the continuance of popular favour, is, by Mr. Hall, supposed to be evidence of popular jealousy and popular vacillation. Did the Ame rican law act in Parliament, Sir James Graham, Mr. Stanley, Mr. Spring Rice, Lord Althorp, and a hundred others who serve to swell out his time of average service, would not be able to sit at all. When Mr. Hall brings the comparisons to the Senate of the United States, he is still more glaringly absurd. Did it never strike him to compare the length of service between the French and the English Peers? They sit, or did sit, by the same tenure, and the result might have upset his theory. I shall apply to Mr. Hall an extract from his own book.to

For my part, I acknowledge fairly, that after some experience in the em barrassing science of travelling, I have often been so much out of humour with the people amongst whom I was wandering, that I have most perversely derived

pleasure from meeting things to find fault with; and very often, I am ashamed to say, when asking for information, have detected that my wish was rather to prove my original and prejudiced conceptions right, than to discover that I had previously done the people injustice. The melancholy truth is, that when once we express any opinions, especially if we use strong terms for that purpose, a sort of parental fondness springs up for the offspring of our lips, and we are ready to defend them for no better reason than because we gave them birth. Travellers, therefore, and others, should be cautious how they bring such a fine family of opinions into the world, which they can neither maintain respectably, nor get rid of without a certain degree of inconsistency, generally painful, and sometimes ridiculous."

The tone of Mr. Hall, in speaking of our navy, is good, but he says the discipline is more severe than in his own, and he accounts for it by a process which is greatly in favour in Europe, and which is a chief reason why Europe knows so little of America. He says the insubordinate habits of the people, with their ideas of liberty and equality, require a strong arm to bring them to the necessary training at sea! This is an opinion, and not so easily disposed of as his facts, but in my opinion it is equally erroneous. Here is what I conceive to be the truth. The navy of the United States was created in 1797, at a time when the navigation of the United States had a forced and unnatural increase, during a great European war. The officers were taken from merchant ships. The latter had not the habit of military command, and like all new beginners their ideas were exaggerated. In addition to this leading fact, the men were of all nations, including the most profligate of our own; for it was rare, in a time of peace, that a good, sober, American seaman would ship in a vessel of war. Perhaps such crews required a stronger arm than common. An American officer could not send his boat, and take the best man out of a merchant ship as is done in England, but he was obliged, at a time when good sailors in merchant ships were receiving from twenty to thirty dollars a month, to accept such as offered. A short time after the war with England had commenced, first-rate American crews offered, and the hand of authority immediately became lighter. In short, every seaman knows that of his class, there is no sailor more easily governed by reason and kind treatment than the American. It is in the nature of things. The people have the same order, or even more than other nations, with far less personal restraint, and why should their habits and characters change because they have gone on ship-board?

"It would require a book as large as his own properly to dissect the three volumes of Mr. Hall. I must repeat, that so far as facts are concerned, he is constantly in error, and from that sort of misconception which is nearly inseparable from the different habits of the two countries. You will remember that a year in America is not like a year in France or England. One may see a great deal of most countries in a year, but the size of the United States, the scattered nature of its population, and the time which is unavoidably wasted on the road, diminishes the period of observation there greatly.

"Mr. Hall has been innocently enough misled in another particular. He was in America when the people were struggling to turn out an unpopular cabinet. Now had he visited it at any time between 1815 and 1823, he would scarcely have heard politics mentioned. If he thinks we are always excited by politics he is greatly mistaken.

"There is one more point that I shall consider before I conclude. Most Englishmen who go to the United States complain that they are offended by allusions to the late war in the prints, on the highways, and in the steam-boats, &c. I do not know it is pretended that these allusions are personal at all, but as an Englishman happens to understand the language, and has ears to hear, his ears or eyes are necessarily offended. The inference seems to be that we entertain an increasing and lasting dislike to the English nation, and an overweening love for ourselves. In the course of many long, and free, and friendly conversations that I have had with Englishmen, since my last arrival in Europe, I have been told distinctly, that they, liberal men on most subjects, thought our declaration of war in 1812, betrayed a particularly hostile spirit to England, especially as it came at a moment when she was struggling for, the freedom of the world, against all the world, and with all her energies. Now I think you will agree with me that this latter is the vulgar opinion of England on the point in question.

"You will remember that our two wars with England embrace nearly all of our military exploits. Were we to say nothing of them, we should be silent altogether on those subjects which in every country are oftenest alluded to by those who are fond of extolling their own deeds. I apprehend the people say rather less of these sort of things among us than in other nations. I am sure far less is said in Congress than is said in Parliament, or the French Chambers, either of what we have done, or of what we can do in this way: no reasoning is necessary to show why the least allusion of this sort should be offensive to an Englishman. But how, for instance, does a Frenchman fare in England? You hang out your conquered banners in your churches, pile your cannon in your parks, and invent a thousand clap-traps for the stage. We have conquered standards too, but they offend the eye of no traveller; our captured cannon is in the arsenals, and otherwise we make far less display of military triumph than is even usual. Really from long observation of both Europe and America, I must say that we are not particularly offenders in this

way.

seamen.

As to the declaration of war, what were the facts? We complained of depredations on our commerce, and of the impressment of our On these points we negotiated twenty years without effect. Your orders in council were continued, and England still took our seamen, making any lieutenant in her own service a judge of the national character of the man. I will tell you an anecdote. About five-and-twenty years since, I first visited England. We made the channel in a snow-storm, and ran into St. Helens' roads and anchored in thick weather. When it cleared up, we found ourselves lying inshore of an English fleet. I remember the character of our crew perfectly, and as it was no bad epitome of our men-of-war and other vessels in that day, I will give it to you in detail. The captain and first mate were Americans, the second mate was a Portuguese, shipped only for the outward passage. The cook was an American negro, and the cabin boy an English lad. We had ten before the mast; of these, five were American born, one was a Scotch lad whose