and then present a public functionary as much to be laughed at as can well be conceived, but they ought to be philosophers enough to bear the inconvenience for the sake of the convenience.

Their mode of government is the last thing to be considered. For this, though they are continually squabbling about it among themselves, they demand from us implicit reverence. We must

say that it is an unreasonable demand. We can see defects in their constitution as clearly as they can see defects in ours! and we beg leave to remind them that they are not very squeamish in pointing out the mote in our eyes. If, as the North American reviewer tells the Quarterly, there are presses out of the reach of the Bridgestreet Association; we, in return, may inform him, that presses as uncomplaisant exist out of reach of the tarring and feathering of New York. But we have no fancy for recrimination. A sound philosopher would come to the conclusion, that a monarch is best fitted for a rich and densely peopled country, and a republic for a thin and infant nation. We do not see the necessity of quarrelling about such things at all, and yet it is at the bottom of all the anger on both sides. This is the whole truth. If the Americans do not understand this, we shall explain it better by a sentence from the last Edinburgh Review

"There is a set," says the honest reviewer, "of miserable persons in England, who are dreadfully afraid of America, and every thing American-whose great delight is to see that country ridiculed and vilified, and who appear to imagine that all the abuses which exist in this country acquire additional vigour and charm of duration from every book of travels which pours forth its venom and falsehood on the United States.” No. 80, p. 427.

Lest we should be in any doubt as to who those miserable people are, he calls them "Government runners" towards the end of his article; but, indeed, we did not want this key, when we know what this scribe and his brethren are in the habit of calling abuses, and see a little farther down a panegyric on Mr. Joseph Hume. In the North American Review, No. 43, p. 424, an artiele from the first number of the Westminster is quoted, in which also government people are severely censured for a dislike of America-and in that so quoted article, a studied, and, as the American reviewer would admit, a false comparison between England and the States is drawn very much to the disparagement of the former.

Now it is these people who put any writers among us on the qui vive to find out holes in the coat of America. A party, or two parties exist among us-they are one in baseness, though two in proposed plans of operation for doing mischief-who are determined to overthrow the constitution established among us, per fas et nefas, and one of the engines which they consider as most conducive to the furtherance of their design is the constitution of the United States. They have laid it down as a principle, that every accident, even to a hurricane off the coast, or a bad harvest, is at

tributable to a want of due preponderance of the democratical part of the state. What they ultimately wish we know, and what galls them more, they know we know it but the pretext is purely a reform. From these we hear nothing but eternal praise of the institutions of America, mixed with all kinds of insulting slanders on our own. In general, they do not give themselves the trouble of inquiring about the truth of the facts which they so confidently allege; and Cobbett has in one or two instances successfully shown the utter ignorance of old Bentham, one of their great authorities, on some of the main points by which he supported his most important conclusions. This being the case, can the Americans wonder, that we, who have our constitution at heart, should make inquiries whether these praises, brought up in offence of us, are well founded or not? and having satisfied ourselves that many things in this so lauded constitution are not good per se, much less applicable to our state of society and civilization, is it to be expected that we are to permit our adversaries uncontradicted to lord it over us in argument, for fear that telling the truth should injure the sensitive ears of people who lay it down as one of the chief prerogatives of freemen, to speak as we think? This is the real reason why any allusion whatever is at any time made to the mode of government in America-and if that allusion be at all angry, it is beyond question the anger of self-defence. If their institutions were not invidiously cried up as a pattern for us, we should let them alone; but as they very unceremoniously treat what we consider entitled to veneration, honour, and respect, they should not be angry at finding us disposed to question whether their establishments conduce to the absolute felicity of the human race, any

more than our own.

So far have we run over the principal topics of American complaints, and shown, we trust satisfactorily, that among no class of British subjects does there exist any intention of insulting them, or hurting their feelings. We of course cannot say that there is no individual so actuated-nor do we think it worth our while to expostulate with any American who would require so absurd an unanimity in favour of a foreign country. Travellers used to better things, will complain of bad travelling accommodation; and the hectoring assumption of independence, which too many underbred Americans think it their duty and their privilege to assume, will offend such as are not accustomed to it. Our saints will be indignant at their slave trade-and so will their own Quakers. Some of us will not like the dominion of King Mob, and many among us fail to discover all the social and political blessings which we are told such a dominion bestows. Few, very few of us, wish for a similar government here; but that we submit, ought not to make them angry; for, after all, we are of the elder house. We fancy that they have got no literature, but would be very happy to be convinced of the contrary. This, we believe, is the true state of the case, as far as affects us. Let us take the test of experiment.

Has ever an American who has come among us, experienced any incivility? Have we ever refused to respect a man of honour, or patronize a man of genius, from that country?--Never.

They should not be so thin-skinned, for it is a bad feature. Let them laugh at jest, and despise malignity. Many of the things which offend them are true-it would be better to correct them, than to quarrel with those who expose them. The Scotch of fifty years ago were sadly galled by Doctor Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides. Why? Because he told what was too like the truth to be agreeable. If any person wrote a similar tour at present-Dr. J. of course would not, for the facts exist no longer-would any body in Scotland be angry? Not one. The tourist would be scraped gently, or torn to pieces amusingly, in Blackwood's Magazine, with the accustomed civility of that eminent periodical, and there would be an end of it. You would hear no nonsense about "embittered feelings." The English are the most tolerant of nations in this respect. We remember when we were in Paris, shortly after Waterloo, that the caricature shops were filled with derisive pictures of the allies, which the proprietors had not time to remove before the occupation of the city. The Prussians and Austrians were indignant-threatened to sabre the shop-keepers-swore all manner of German oaths-and compelled the trembling Frenchmen to take them down. On the contrary, though the caricatures against us were much more pointed, the shops were filled with English buying them, and laughing over them, until their fat sides. shook again. Which party acted with more magnanimity-or, if that word be too big for such an occasion, with more good sense and good humour? Jonathan never could have stood it. We have him here prancing mad at Gifford--he was wincing under Matthews. Yet the Scotch are able to keep their temper at the representation of Sir Pertinax M'Sycophant; English company crowd to see the polite Frenchman perform Les Anglais pour rire; and the Irish can laugh obstreperously at Dennis Bulgruddery, or Murtoch Delany. Will the Americans show less sense than even the Irish?

With regard to the threatened recrimination against us, we must own that we hold such things very cheap. Somebody in America has done this already, and by a diligent raking up of our Old Bailey reports, Newgate Calendars-rather delicate ground, we should think, for touching on in our old plantations-newspaper paragraphs, and other such sources, contrived to display a very copious mass of wickedness existing in England. The North American reviewer treads in his footsteps. He makes a pointed allusion to a case which is not so much a disgrace to the country where the wickedness occurred, or the order to which the wretched culprit belonged, as to human nature. Alas! this is but poor work for gentlemen and scholars to be employed upon. In every society, and in all ages, until there be a regeneration of the race of mankind, there will never be wanting materials enough, and more than

enough, to supply the jealous or malignant with food for his unhappy disposition to revel in, and to fill the man of honour or philanthropy with shame and sorrow. We are not exempt. The eager hunting out of crime, and the impartiality with which culprits of all ranks are dragged before justice, render the amount of crime in England apparently much greater, than in countries where the police is more relaxed, or the chances of evasion more numerous. The unexampled publicity, too, which we give every case-a publicity unknown in any other country-even America, where, though the newspapers are numerous, they are not so well organized with reporters as ours, to say nothing of the intense nationality which frequently stimulates them to suppress what they consider disgraceful to the country-gives a facility, impossible elsewhere, to the collector of such facts. We wish such a person joy of his honourable and useful vocation. The real disgrace to a country would be, if such things, when committed, were not duly punished; it would be more to the honour of New Orleans, for instance, if a murderer were hanged there every week, although neighbouring people might taunt them with the fact, that fifty men were hanged for murder in a year, than that, while the murders were committing, a New Orleans man might be able to boast that no person had been hanged in their State for such a crime, and appeal to the paucity of executions as a test of the purity of his city. We do not dread comparison, even in this respect, with any country. Lands thinly peopled and poor, will exhibit less crime, no doubt, because there is less temptation; but that is evidently not a fair standard. Some of our neighbours make matter of jest and impunity what we regard with loathing, but that does not alter the quantity of crime among them. A fair way of looking at this part of the subject would be to take two cities of about the same grade in America and in England, say New York and Edinburgh-New Orleans and Norwich, &c., and test them together. We must object to putting London in contrast with an American wild, or a settlement of Quakers or Harmonites. When there is no property to steal, theft, fraud, and robbery, will be unknown. Where paper money does not exist, or is worth nothing, you will never hear of forgery. In villages, where almost all classes blend into one family, you will not find the evils which accompany a vast population of females, rendered irresponsible from the various causes of irresponsibility which exist in overgrown cities. A comparison instituted in such a spirit might be even philosophical, as tending to show the different effects of dense or rare population; in any other, would be absurd in conception, and filthy in execution.

Our American reviewer talks of comparison between the members of the respective governments. This is sheer nonsense. In a court where wealth and splendour abound, the vices attendant on wealth and splendour will exist; in a government depending on popular support, the vices of demagogism (let us take a Trans-Atlantic privilege of coining a word) will be found. The rake, the

sycophant, the roué, the parasite, are the nuisances of the one; the bully, the swaggerer, the brawling drunkard, the professed duellist, of the other. Let him fish up specimens of the former from us, and we engage to find him plenty of the latter from his own land. If, however, by government he means ministers, we must demur as to his being able to substantiate any personal charges against our great statesmen for a long period-say since America obtained a substantive existence. Fox is the only exception which occurs to our memory; and with all his faults, personal and politicalwith all his failings and vices, Tories as we are, we can readily imagine him to have been, what Burke called him, "a man to be loved." We should be sorry if among us the idol of the whole nation were such a man as the hero of the south, General Jackson, and yet we have scarcely met an American who did not seem proud of the achievements of this man; the very greatest of which is one of the commonest and cheapest pieces of generalship, or rather partizanship, displayed in every war by some dozen officers on all sides. Such as it is, however, it appears sufficient to cast every imperfection into the shade, and to dignify a blustering bully with the title of a hero. As to our being compelled to bestow the names of Grace and Majesty on people who are neither graceful nor majestic, we must wonder that the American reviewer is so absurd as to make such a remark. He very properly, in a former number, has laughed at that dull dog Hodgson, for complaining that companies of negro slaves were called by the degrading title of gay, justly remarking, that "tyrant custom capriciously invests technical terms with the trappings of authority and use." When we addressed Queen Caroline, for instance, by the name of "Majesty," we had no more notion of giving her the attributes attached to that word, when used untechnically, than the editor of the North American Review has of acknowledging the lordship of him whom he calls "Sir," the dominion of him whom he calls "Master," or "Mister," or the honour of any rogue who may, by official situation in America, be entitled to the addition of "Honourable."

We are happy to perceive the spirit of one part of his article, though we do not at all agree with him in the way in which he applies it. We mean that part in which he so eagerly rebuts the charge of irreligion thrown out by the Quarterly Review. We are happy, we repeat, to find so vivid an indignation excited by this grave, and, as we know, unjust charge. America, at the heart, we are sure, is a religious country. The exceptions are more glaring than numerous. Jefferson tended more than any other man to make us Europeans imagine that irreligion was the order of the day in the states of which he, an avowed enemy to religion, was the chief. The Quarterly Reviewer was writing against his knowledge when he brought the charges.-Is the American reviewer writing according to his knowledge where he retorts it on us? Does he believe that Bishop Watson's living away from his see, or