exertion. So that in fact, this state parsimony is the worst of all pos sible state extravagance; inasmuch as it blights the growth of intellect, and squanders away the mind of the country.

Mr. Thomas Paine, in his celebrated compendium of modern politics, called The Rights of Man, undertakes to demonstrate, that no free people, if they be wise, will ever give more than three thousand two hundred and fifty dollars a-year to their chief magistrate, whether called president or king; and he proceeds to prove how any nation might easily procure a discreet man, able to ride on horse-back, fully competent to discharge all the functions of executive government, for such a limited yearly stipend. It is however surmised, that the profound observations of Mr. Paine on the science of political economy, are not now quite in such good odour, either in the United States, or in France, as they were towards the close of the eighteenth century. It is necessary, in order to ensure the progressive power and permanent exaltation of a country, to affix large salaries to all the great offices of state, and to all those public situations to the discharge of whose functions it is for the common benefit that ambition should invite high talents.

get the work done for less No doubt, a cobler, or a without practice, will paburden of governing the

It is mere insanity to say, the people can money, and therefore they ought to give less. retail dealer in small wares, or an attorney triotically consent to take upon himself the country, in any one of the great executive departments of state, for a small stipend; because the wages of office, though comparatively low, afford a larger income than either of these enlightened politicians can derive from the profits of his individual profession. But the business of the nation will not be well done. Nay, even in a money point of view, the nation will be a loser by employing underlings at a small salary, to conduct the government; because such men will actually destroy more public property, in twelve months of mal-administration, by restraints on commerce, by bounties on manufactures, by crippling the growth of productive industry, and by numberless other political blunders, than would suffice to pay the most magnificent stipends to executive officers for a hundred years. And if we add to this the much higher considerations of the loss of national honour, and the degradation of national character, which an incapable administration always inflict upon their country, we cannot hesitate to pronounce, that the system of under-paying public officers has a direct tendency to ensure the perpetual weakness and disgrace of a community.' pp. 132-134.

The consequences of this republican frugality, in underpaying our government officers, are, that the governors and judges of some of the States are actually employed in prosecuting some other calling in addition to that of discharging the functions of the executive and judicial; for instance, in keeping taverns, selling tenpenny nails, dealing in flour, and many similar employments, equally well adapted to the sciences of political philosophy and jurisprudence.' p. 500.

The better informed portion of the American people are, it seems, not ignorant of the disadvantages and the dangers conpected with their ultra-democratic constitution.

The distinguishing features of all the American constitutions, as they now stand, are, that they make every office elective, as contradistinguished from the hereditary tenures prevailing in monarchical and aristocratic forms of government; and also, that while they provide amply for the protection of personal liberty, and the property of individuals, which is, indeed, the only sure foundation of all good government, they do not sufficiently attend to promoting the two other great requisites of good government; namely, putting a strong and permanent disposable force into the hands of the executive, and developing the national mind on a great scale, by instituting and encouraging large and liberal systems of general instruction. In most other countries, the government is all, and the people nothing; in the United States, the people are all, and the government nothing.' pp. 205, 206.

It is the more to be lamented, that the federal government should have been ever administered on democratic principles, because it is, in its essential conformation, too weak at once to balance the weight of the separate state sovereignties, to maintain its own steady dominion over all the portions of its immense Union, and to build up the nation at large, by certain steps, into a paramount power, influencing and controlling the greater potentates of the elder quarters of the globe. The great statesmen (led by Washington himself, and illumined by the transcendent genius of Hamilton) who framed the federal constitution, earnestly deprecated the notion of its being considered or conducted as a democracy. And many very elaborate and able arguments, founded on a careful induction from facts recorded in history, and resting on the basis of the most approved principles of political philosophy, were adduced to prove that the general government of the United States is not a democracy, but that care had been taken by the General Convention, which met at Philadelphia, in the year 1787, to infuse as much as existing circumstances would allow of the wisdom and energy of aristocracy, to temper and restrain the turbulence, the fluctuation, and the weakness of unbalanced democracy, which they emphatically declared to be the greatest misfortune that could be inflicted on any country.

These illustrious sages and practical politicians knew full well, that an uncontrolled democracy had destroyed Athens, and Carthage, and Rome, and the Italian republics of the middle ages, and the United Provinces of Holland to which melancholy muster-roll of perdition may now be added the dominion of revolutionary France. They, therefore, feared that the prevalence of an unchecked democracy throughout the United States, would consign to destruction the liberties, the wealth, the honour, the character, the happiness, the religion, the morals, the whole august fabric of public prosperity and private worth, which have, at some auspicious periods of their history, so peculiarly distinguished the national career of the confederated states of America. pp. 207, 208.

Our Author pretty confidently anticipates that the regular progression of things will gradually introduce a system that shall' place, and permanently fix, the helm of government in the hands of the men of talent and property, as the only safe and

'legitimate sources and guardians of all political power.' At present, he says, the general government of the United *States'

'can never depend upon the long-continued support of the popular favour for enabling it to prosecute any permanent measures of enlarged and liberal policy. Being altogether a representative republic, it is obliged to exist too much by exciting and following the passions and prejudices of the multitude, to control and regulate; which is the bounden duty of every wise and upright government, since the ignorance and violence of the multitude have an invariable tendency to defeat the execution of every intelligent and long-sighted national scheme. If the American government oppose the hasty clamours of a misguided po pulace, the officers of that government will soon be converted, by dint of universal suffrage, into private citizens; and the Union is of course condemned to a perpetual oscillation of political movements.

It is not in the ordinary course of human affairs for such a state of things to be permanent; and it is to be apprehended, that the present general government of the United States will either assume a new form, or (what is much more desirable) will retain its name, but gradually become more stable and efficient, by fixing its rule upon the broad and firm foundations of property and talent; and, by progressively augmenting the power of the executive, enable it to mould the feelings, habits, and manners of the people to its own growth in strength and influence; and thus render the national government secure at home and respectable abroad.' pp. 217, 218.

Wishing to avoid the appearance of joining in the vulgar outcry against America, we feel some difficulty in quoting from the latter portion of the volume before us, which treats of the literature, habits, manners, and character of the United States. Almost the whole of what Mr. Bristed says on these topics, is in a tone of disparagement. In fact, we suspect that a little illtemper, or some wounded feeling, has influenced his representations. Finding his literary character and liberal acquirements rather lightly appreciated in the store-keeping Republic, he is impelled perhaps, by way of self-defence, to indulge in a little sarcasm. That America does not abound with writers and philosophers of the first class, is a fact which hardly needs be formally affirmed. But this acknowledged deficiency, inevitably resulting from the present condition of the country, by no means justifies the inference, hastily drawn from it, that the mass of the people are in a proportionate degree inferior to the correspoudent ranks in England, or France, in point of general information or taste for intellectual pleasures. Our Author seems sometimes to affirm, and sometimes to deny such an inference; he, however, strenuously opposes the supposition of any national intellectual inferiority, and occupies himself in tracing the causes

of the acknowledged low condition of learning and science. Among these causes is, he says,

to be particularly noticed, the unfortunate practice of entering upon active life at too early an age. Partly from the condition of society, and partly from the eager appetite for wealth, which especially characterizes all young and thinly settled countries, divines, lawyers, phy. sicians, and merchants, rush into the occupations of active life, almost before they reach that period which the wisdom of common law allots as the termination of infancy. Plunging so early into the minuter details of practical employment, prevents the due development of the intellectual faculties; and after a while renders the mind, from disuse, both unable and unwilling to direct its attention to the more abstracted pursuits of literature and science.

There is a salutary adage in the old law books, which runs thus, "In juvene theologo conscientiæ detrimentum; in juvene legislatâ bursæ detrimentum; in juvene medico cemeterii incrementum :" the consciences of his parishioners suffer by a young clergyman; the purse of his clients diminishes in the hands of a young lawyer; and the churchyard increases by the labours of a young physician. This adage, however, has not yet found its way into the United States, where the young people of all classes are precipitated into business during childhood, pp. 313, 314.

The consequences of this precocious publicity are, a superficial elementary education, a perpetual pruriency of prattle upon all subjects, without a due fathoming of the depths of any one of them, and an entailed disability of fully developing the understanding, which is narrowed in early life, by being prematurely absorbed in the minute but necessary details incident to every practical calling. Whence, with their due proportion of genius, in common with all other nations, and with the advantage of a more general diffusion of popular intelligence than is to be found in any other community, too many of our citizens, in all the learned professions, begin, continue, and end their career, on much narrower ground than their native capacity, properly unfolded by previous general information, would enable them to cover. p. 315.

'Another obstacle to the growth of literature in the United States, arises from the great propensity to consume the talent of the country in the effusion of newspaper essays and political pamphlets, instead of con-centrating it in the production of some regular, consecutive work. In consequence of these desultory intellectual habits, periodical journals, as Reviews and Magazines, seldom last long. The author can obtain little or no assistance from others in his literary efforts; the persons competent to aid him in such an undertaking being comparatively few throughout the Union, and those, for the most part, actively employed in some laborious calling; and it is not in the power of any one man, however gifted with talent, adorned with knowledge, and armed with industry, to execute, alone, a literary journal as it cught to be executed. Add to this, the universal vice of the United States, a perpetual craving after novelty. The charge which Demosthenes brought against his own

countrymen, that they were continually running about, and asking, Is there any thing new?" is equally applicable to the Americans. This eternal restlessness and desire of change, pervade the whole structure of our society: the same man will start into life as a clergyman, then turn lawyer, next convert himself into a farmer and landjobber, and, taking a seat in Congress, or some state legislature, by the way, end his days as a merchant and money-broker. The people are incessantly shifting their habitations, employments, views, and schemes: the residence of a servant does not average two months in each place; the abode of a whole household is generally changed once a year, and sometimes oftener; numerous families, that have been longer settled in the elder states of New-York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, are continually migrating into Ohio, or the territories of Alabama, Illinois, and Mississippi; the executive, the legislators, the magistrates, and officers of all kinds, are changed biennially, or annually or half-yearly, according to the greater or less infusion of the restless spirit of democracy into our various forms of government.

'Such being the temper, disposition, and habits of the people, new periodical publications are continually starting up, receive a little eager, capricious encouragement, languish a brief space, and die, leaving the same sickly course to be run by a race of successors, equally sanguine and short-lived. It is doubtful, if any one of the best European journals, most distinguished for the magnificent display of genius and knowledge, were to issue from the American press, as a native production, whether it would reach the second year of its unsupported existence. Some years since, a very respectable body of men, in New-York, selected from all the three learned professions, started a periodical work, called "The American Review, and Magazine," which was ably conducted, and perished for want of patronage. The "Boston Anthology," supported by the labours of some of the best literary men of all callings in that town, some time after, shared the same fate. And, at a more recent period, the "American Review," edited by Mr. Walsh, was suffered to expirc, notwithstanding the splendid talents and various erudition of its conductor.' pp. 316, 317.

The subject of domestic slavery, we must for the present pass over. With respect also to the state of religion in America, we can only make one or two quotations. Mr. Bristed, we confess, does not inspire us with that degree of confidence in his judgement, and candour, and discrimination, which would tempt our taking the occasion to hazard any observations on so weighty a matter.

During the greater part of the eighteenth century, the kings and princes, the nobles and ambassadors, the politicians, writers, and people of almost every nation on the European continent, strove in wretched rivalry for a vile pre-eminence in the guilt of rejecting the Scriptures of God, and calumniating the religion of Christ. As the necessary conse quence of this universal speculative unbelief, as universal a deluge of immorality, baseness, and corruption, private and public, national as