attraction so nearly correspond with that wonderfully beautiful one established for the government of the universe. In none, therefore, are the natural tendencies of man towards association and combination with his fellow-men so fully exhibited. Looking for the type of the system, we find it in the "bee," or union of the older members of a settlement for the purpose of raising the log-house required for their newly-arrived neighbors - starting from which point, it may be found in every operation of life. The logs are to be rolled; the roof of the barn is to be raised; or the corn is to be husked. Each of these would involve severe exertion on the part of the lonely settler; but it is rendered light by aid of the combined exertions of his neighbors. The new addition to the population has brought with him, probably, neither horse nor plough; but one neighbor lends him the former, while another supplies the latter, and thus do they enable him. speedily to obtain both horse and plough of his own. A place of worship being required, all, whether Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, or Presbyterians, unite to build it; its pulpit to be occupied by the itinerant preachers of the wilderness. The churchbringing people to the neighborhood-promotes the habit of association; while the lesson taught therein promotes the love of order, and soon the settlement is dotted over with meeting-houses, at one of which Baptists, and at another Presbyterians, meet each other, to listen to the person whom, as their teacher, they have united to select. Is one of these houses burnt, the congregation find all others of the neighborhood placed at their command until the loss can be repaired. On one day, we find them associating for the making of roads, and holding meetings to determine who shall superintend their construction and repair, and who assess the contributions required for that purpose. On another, they are meeting to determine who shall represent them at the county board, in the State Assembly, or in the Congress of the Union. -Next, they settle where the new school-house shall be built; and determine who shall collect the funds required, or select the books for the little library that is to aid their children in applying with advantage to themselves, the knowledge of letters acquired from the teacher.* - Again, they are forming associations for It is not impossible to conceive the surpassing liberty which the Americans enjoy; some idea may likewise be formed of the extreme equal mutual insurance against horse-thieves or fire; or little savings' funds, called banks, at which the man who wishes to buy a horse or a plough can borrow the little money that he needs. Little mills grow up, the property of one or two, and expand into large ones, in which all the little capitalists of the neighborhood, shoemakers and sempstresses, farmers and lawyers, widows and orphans, are interested; little towns, in which every resident owns his own house and lot, and is therefore directly interested in their good management, and in all matters tending to their advancement each feeling that the first and greatest of all is an entire security in the enjoyment of the rights of person and of property.* -The habit of association thus exercises the most beneficial influence in every action of life; and it is most seen where population and wealth most abound-in the States of New England. There, we see a network of association so far exceeding any thing elsewhere known, as to be entirely beyond comparison. The shipwright, and the merchant, and the more advanced and less active capitalist, combine with the master in the ownership of the vessel; and all unite with the crew in the division of the oil obtained. The great merchant, the little capitalist, the machinist, the foundry-master, the engineer, the workman, and the girl who tends the loom, divide among themselves the ownership of the great mill-combining their efforts for rendering the labor of each and ity that subsists among them; but the political activity which pervades the United States must be seen in order to be understood. No sooner do you set foot on the American soil, than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamor is heard on every side; and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the immediate satisfaction of their social wants. Every thing is in motion around you: here, the people of one quarter of a town are met to decide upon the building of a church; there, the election of a representative is going on; a little further, the delegates of a district are posting to the town in order to consult upon some local improvements; or in another place, the laborers of a village quit their ploughs to deliberate upon the project of a road or a public school. Meetings are called for the sole purpose of declaring their disapprobation of the line of conduct pursued by the government; while in other assemblies the citizens salute the authorities of the day as the fathers of their country. Societies are formed which regard drunkenness as the principal cause of the evils under which the state labors, and which solemnly bind themselves to give a constant example of temperance." -De Tocqueville. * The citizen of the United States is taught from his earliest infancy to rely upon his own exertions, in order to resist the evils and the difficulties of fe: he looks upon the social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he only claims its assistance when he is quite unable to do without it "— Ibid. Look where we may all more largely productive of cloth. throughout the Northern States, the same tendency to combination of action is found existing; and yet, look to what quarter we may, we find a state of things with which all that is above described is in striking "contrast ;" as will next be shown. The population of the Union is now (1856) seven-and-twenty millions, and the surface comprised within the States and territories of the Atlantic coast, and those immediately bordering on the Mississippi, exceeds a million of square miles, or 640,000,000 of acres, each of which is capable of feeding and clothing a full-grown man; and yet men are seen, by tens and hundreds of thousands, flying to Kansas and Nebraska, Oregon and California, to appropriate more land— leaving behind them the richest soils as yet undrained, and commencing the work of cultivation on the higher and drier ones of the West, far from market, and capable, under existing circumstances, of yielding but small returns to labor.* The natural tendency of man is to combine his labors with those of his fellow-man-knowing that two can roll a log that one alone could neither roll nor lift. Here, however, men are seen flying from their fellow-men, each one seeking to roll his own log, for to lift it is a task that exceeds his powers. The labor of each is thus wasted on the road, and is unprofitably employed at his journey's end. His natural tendency is to combine his axe with his neighbor's spade, lending one and borrowing the other. Here, however, the man with the axe flies from the one who has a spade. His natural tendency is to begin on the thin soil at the side of the hill, and to work down towards the rich one at its foot, gathering manure on the one with which to enrich the other; but here he flies from the rich soils that are near him, to seek the poor ones that are distant. His natural tendency is to combine with his neighbors for improving old roads; but here he flies to a distance, that he may employ his labor in opening new ones, while those already made remain unimproved; and henceforth two are to be maintained instead of one. His natural tendency is to combine with his neighbors for im * See ante, vol. i. p. 113, for the character of the lands occupied by the early settlers of Ohio and Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. proving the character of education in old schools; but here he flies from his neighbors to places where there are no schools, and where none can ever be until he himself shall build them. His natural tendency is to hold in regard old places and old houses, mellowed by time, and sanctified by the recollection of those who before had inhabited them; but here he flies from them, to cut out new places in the woods, whose harshness and hardness are quintupled by the recollection of those he has left, occupied by the friends of his early years. Why is this so? Why is it that men fly from Western New York, where railroads run through rich lands, covered with dense forests and through swamps that need drainage alone to give to cultivation the richest soils in the world-to seek the West, where they must cultivate poor soils distant from market, whose small yield decreases annually, because of the necessity for wasting on the road the manure yielded by the horses or oxen employed in the work of transportation-while the wheat itself is consumed abroad, leaving nothing whatever to be returned upon the land? Why is it that throughout that rich country, with its canals and railroads, its towns and its telegraphs, the population has ceased to grow in number, and property in the land becomes, from day to day, more and more consolidated always an evidence of declining wealth and power? The answer to these questions, and the cause of all the "contrasts" above presented for the reader's consideration, is to be found in the fact that the policy of the country has been most consistently opposed to the development of commerce while always favoring the establishment of the supremacy of trade. § 2. The tendency towards decentralization and freedom is in the direct ratio of the approximation of the prices of the raw products of the earth, and those of the commodities into which they are converted. In Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, as the reader has seen, the distance between the two is gradually lessening, with great increase of commerce. In Ireland, India, Jamaica, and other countries, it is gradually increasing, with constant augmentation in the power of trade. In the first of these two sets of states-following the lead of France-the policy that has been pursued has been that of Colbert, and the objects sought to be attained have been those indicated by Adam Smith as required for man's improvement - regarding him as a moral and responsible being. In the last-following not in the lead, but under the direction, of England- the policy has been that which, when inflicted upon the colonies, was denounced by Dr. Smith as being "a violation of the most sacred rights of mankind." The policy of the United States of America has been in harmony with neither of these; and yet - the cause of their Revolution being to be found in the determination to release themselves from the system under which Ireland and the Indies have since been so entirely exhausted-it would have been regarded as almost absolutely certain that they would have followed in the direction indicated by Colbert, and have adopted measures looking to bringing the consumer to the side of the producer, and thus relieving themselves from that first and most oppressive of taxes that of transportation. Such, indeed, were the early tendencies of the government, as shown in the elaborate report of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Washington, wherein he told his countrymen that "not only the wealth, but the independence and security, of a country appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation," as he thought, "with a view to these great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These," as he said, "comprise the means of subsistence, clothing, and defence," and, as he continued, "though it were true that the immediate and certain effect of regulations controlling the competition of foreign with domestic fabrics was an increase of price, it is universally true that the contrary is the ultimate effect with every successful manufacture. When a domestic manufacture has attained to perfection, and has engaged in the prosecution of it a competent number of persons, it invariably becomes cheaper. Being free from the heavy charges which attend the importation of foreign commodities, it can be afforded cheaper, and accordingly seldom or never fails to be sold cheaper, in process of time, than was the foreign article for which it is a substitute. The internal competition which takes place soon does away every thing like monopoly, and by degrees reduces the price of the |