MY

Y DEAR COUSIN,-I have elected myself a representative of twenty-three millions of constituents, black and white included, and design, in that capacity, to open a brief correspondence with you. Our entrance upon a new year of existence-an occasion which always suggests a candid review of the past, and a considerate forecast of the future-is the only apology I shall offer for this frankness.

It is nearly seventy years, you know, since my countrymen undertook a bold and somewhat hazardous experiment in this new world. They did so, in the face of many prevailing convictions, and against the confident prophecies of civilized mankind. It was quite generally expected that the career which they then marked out for themselves, would prove a disastrous failure; and loud, and long-continued was the merriment, or the obloquy, as parties chose to take it, with which the mistakes and awkwardnesses of their rude beginnings were received.

Now I wish to show you that their attempt has not failed; that their experiment is no longer an experiment; that time has sanctioned and fulfilled their most swelling hopes; that what was once a timid and shrinking conjecture-vague aspiration rather than firm faith-has become a victorious fact; and that doubt and dismay no more beset our path, which, on the contrary, we tread with the buoyancy of assured success. The ominous cloud is passed, and across its receding folds we see the many-colored iris of suffused and tranquil sunshine.

I am aware that you will exclaim, at this slightly elated outset of mine, "Oh! that boastful and vainglorious people! will it never have done? Are we doomed to hear for ever its reverberating flatulencies about the "model republic" and the "greatest nation of all creation?" Let me answer you frankly, that I hope not! The bombast into which or irritable vanity has been too often betrayed, is as distasteful to most of us as it can be to you: but at the same time, bear in mind, that I for one shall not allow myself to be frightened into any tameness of statement, in what I may have to say, by the menaces of your wit. Ridicule is terrible to me-as terrible perhaps as an army with banners-and yet there is a thing still more terrible. It is this-want of fidelity to my most cherished convictions; untruth in the assertion of my character and aims. We Americans are devoted to democracy from our mothers' breasts, and are therefore

forward and proud to proclaim whatever we suppose will further its claims to regard.

What I wish to present to you is, the influence of that democracy on the physical, political, social, and moral condition of the people. Looking upon it as the central and organic principle of our nationality, working itself out freely, through all the ramified forms and interests of society, it is the very heart and fountain of our life; nor are its effects as such, speculations or theories with us, but facts. We study it in its actual phenomena; we see its practical operations; and whether these be for good or ill, we know that they are at least well-authenticated, tangible, and permanent. A recent census of the United States, moreover, places it in our power to show just what they are, what attainments they have made in every sphere of national progress, and to demonstrate triumphantly, as I am sure, the solidity and the beneficence of popular government.

Such a demonstration is needed all over Europe, and scarcely less in England than elsewhere. This country has never been adequately represented by travellers and statisticians, who have taken its case into their hands. We find ourselves aspersed ra ther in many quarters, needless to be mentioned here, by the most unfounded statements, the most illogical inferences, the most damaging insinuations, and the most outrageous caricatures. Our prosperity is often ascribed to any but its true causes; our errors of a day are set down as permanent characteristics; the eccentricities of a part of us are imputed to the whole of us, as cherished principles of conduct; occasional rudenesses of manner are treated as innate vulgarity; and that devotion to practical ends, which is inevitable in a state of youthful and ruddy prosperity, degraded into a mean, prostrate, and abandoned worship of money. Indeed, could we believe some accounts that are given of us, we should be forced to confess that slavery was our only "institution," and a sharp practice with the bowieknife, our most delectable amusement. Meanwhile, these wilful or bigoted tourists, do not see the deeper pulses of life beating beneath the surface, and they say nothing of the nobleness and generosity that may be in our heart, nor of the exalted and blissful destiny that we are, consciously and unconsciously, working out for humanity.

Let all this pass, however, and let us

try, under better information or motives, to come at a truer picture of the condition and prospects of the American people.

The United States, to begin at the beginning, John, are a league or confederation, of thirty-one separate and independent republics. They cover a territory which extends from the 26th degree of latitude south, to the 47th degree north, and, in the other direction, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. Consequently, they enjoy every variety of climate, from the freezing to the torrid zones, though the greater part of them lie in the temperate regions; they possess every kind of valuable soil, capable of the diversified productions of every kind; and they are exposed, on hill-sides and valleys, to all the genial heats of the sun, and to all the fertilizing influences of the gentle summer rains. The public lands, belonging to the central government alone, amount to more than (12,000,000,000) twelve thousand millions of acres, which, according to the present estimates of the population of the world, is more than an acre a piece for every man, woman, and child on the globe. Adding to this the land belonging to the separate States, and that in the possession of private individuals, and you have an area of three millions, two hundred and twenty-one thousand, five hundred and ninety-five square miles (3,221,595) in extent. Now Great Britain, exclusive of Ireland, contains 34,000 square miles. The extent of the United States is therefore 95 times as great as that of the Island of Great Britain. France contains an area of 197,400 square miles-a territory less than one fifteenth the size of that of the United States. Austria, including Hungary and the Italian dependencies, contains but 300,000 square miles. Russia is the only nation which exceeds the United States in extent of territory. She has, including her immense Asiatic possessions, a territory of about 4,000,000 square miles. The whole of Europe contains only 3,807,195 square miles, which exceeds by less than one-fifth, or 545,600 square miles, the territory of the United States. The greater part of these immense tracts is almost spontaneously fertile; wherever you strike in the spade or the plough, the corn springs and waves; mines of iron, more extensive than those of Sweden, and of coal, as inexhaustible as those of England, to say nothing of the gold of California, are deposited in its bowels; rivers, which, with one exception, are the largest in the world, and inland lakes like seas, connect and lace its fields; its immeasurable forests stand thick with oak, hickory, locust, fir, and woods of the finest fibre; while the great watery highways of the nations, stand

ready to roll its products to Europe on the one side, and on the other to India, and the farthest East.

Such is the theatre on which the Americans are called to play their parts, and you see that Providence has placed no physical obstacle, at least, in the way of the freest action. Never, indeed, was a more rich, varied, or magnificent residence prepared for any portion of our race. Europe is ten thousand fold more splendid in the accumulations of art; in grand historical monuments; in the treasures of libraries; in the means and appliances of luxurious living; in the numbers of its people; but in all that nature can do to make a dwelling-place for men, the New World is beautiful and blessed beyond

measure.

But who are the actors who are placed on this new theatre? Are they worthy of the great drama in which their parts are cast? and will they conduct it to a catastrophe or a triumph?

The American people are almost as varied in character as the origins from which they sprung, or the climates under which they live. That stereotyped Yankee, in a long-tailed blue coat, and short striped pantaloons, with a nasal twang to his voice, and a prodigious fondness for exaggerated stories; who appears periodically upon your stage, and who furnishes the staple of stale wit to Nova Scotia bookmakers, is an amusing fellow enough, and he would be nowhere more amusing and wonderful than in nearly every part of the United States. He is the type of a class unknown to all, save diligent antiquarians, or those who sedulously explore the curiosities of natural history. Some remote and scarcely decipherable antitype of him, might be found in the nooks of New England, but at the West and the South, he would seem to every body about as much like an American, as a dodo resembles an eagle, or the hippopotamus a cart-horse.

The American, John, with some odd variations here and there-don't start!is an Englishman, without his caution, his reserve, his fixed habits, his cant, and his stolidity. He has all the independence of the original stock, all the pluck and determination, with more of quick and restless enterprise. At the East, he displays some of the canniness or cunning of the Scot; at the South, the vivacity and light, graceful air of the Frank, and at the West, the humor of the Irish crossed with German enthusiasm. But every where practical energy predominates in his composition. He is facile, changeable, ever open to adventure, taking up a business in the morning which he discards at night,

and sleeping in his boots, that he may be ready for a fresh start the next day. Yet if success beckons him to the end of any race, he will persist in it for years, will pursue doggedly for a lifetime what others despise, and if he fails at last, unbroken by care or old age, he will "pick up his traps," and move onward with his children to a new settlement. His weary bones are never laid until he is quite dead, when some successor, indefatigable and elastic as himself, resumes and continues his projects. The house of his prosperity and comfort is always a building, and never built. It is no part of his life plan to retire on a plum; he eats his plum as he makes it; then makes and eats it again. In short, then, the American is an inventive, intelligent, driving, and invincible man, with an unexampled adaptability to circumstances, and a sense of personal freedom, so strong, that if I wished to overturn the firmest empire, I would rather turn into it a score of uneasy inquisitive Yankees, than a considerable army of others.

Every year adds more than a quarter of a million of the population of the old world to the new. The sedate and prudent Englishman, the impulsive Irishman, the volatile Frenchman, and the plodding German, all rush to our "fresh fields and pastures new;" but they are soon caught up and absorbed by the influences around them, and long before the second generation, they are dashed forward with the prevailing activity. They forget the stale habits of thought, and of manner, which they left behind them, and they soon exhibit as much eagerness, courage, and enterprise, as the "oldest inhabitant." Thus, an incessant bustle and tumult comes to characterize our society; a noise of awakening life and busy preparation; of vast industrial hosts going forth to battle the stormy elements, and stubborn glebe; of a young, hardy, glowing nation, putting in order and embellishing the homes of uncounted millions yet to come. In comparison with this universal mobility, the slow advances of Europe seem like the decrepit and tottering steps of an old man, whose life, rich though it be, is hidden in the dim past; while we are the suple and smart youth, radiant with the flushes of undisciplined vigor, and rushing impulsively on to a future filled with images of increasing splendor and power. The most favored portions of Europe grow only at the rate of 1 per cent. per annum, while we grow at the rate of 3-say the figures.

Figures are unhandsome things to introduce into polite writing-and very dull too-but they are unfortunately often ne

Supposing population to double every twenty-five years, which is less than the actual rate of increase. Thus, you find, that the child is living who will see one hundred millions of brother freemen on this side of the Atlantic!

Well, having before you the scene and the actor-an open broad theatre, and a free energetic people in the possession of it-the next point that interests us, is how the play is going forward. We are democrats, operating unobstructedly under mere democratic impulses, with an almost unlimited space to operate in-what, thus far, are the results?

I will begin the answer, where every thing human begins, with our physical and external relations to the earth and man. Our gross annual product in 1851, was $2,445,300,000; that of Great Britain, as given by Spachman in 1846, was $1,182,221,236. Other statisticians have made the amount much larger than this, but, as I think, without sufficient grounds.

Here also is a table, corrected from the Belfast Mercantile Journal, which shows the amount of the shipping and tonnage, entered and cleared by the leading nations of the world.

Or, in other words, our exports and imports have more than doubled in value in ten years, and our tonnage nearly doubled.

The steam marine of Great Britain was reckoned in 1850, at 1200 vessels, including ferry boats and coal barges; that of the United States, in 1851, was 1489, which were divided as follows:-Ocean steamers 95, tonnage 91,475; propellers 119, tonnage 27,974; ferry boats 130, tonnage 22,744; first-class river steamers 1,145, tonnage, 275,000. Other computations make the number of steamers 1800, but I prefer the lowest statement. At the same time, I forbear any comparison of the respective merits, as to speed and beauty, between the different descriptions of vessels in the two nations.

But the growth of our internal communications, in other respects, are quite as worthy of note. On the first of January, 1853, there were, in the United States, 13,219 miles of completed railroad, 12,928 miles of railroad in various stages of progress, and about 7,000 miles in the hands of the engineers, which will be built within the next three or four years,-making a total of 33,155 miles of railroad which will soon traverse the country, and which, at an average cost of $30,000 (a well ascertained average) for each mile of road, including equipments, &c., will have consumed a capital amounting to $994,650,000, as follows:

The canals of the United States are 5,000 miles in length; the electric telegraph wires, 16,000; and the rivers actually navigated, 47,355 miles by the shore line.

It is worth while to remark, that these successes refer only to the developments of the past, and insufficiently indicate the more accelerated and prodigious strides we shall make in the future. They have been achieved in the midst of difficulties of every kind-difficulties incident to the want of wealth, of machinery, of skill, and of a knowledge of the best industrial methods. But in the future these defects will be repaired; every new discovery in practical art will quicken the passage to others, and the attainment of accumulated capital will put within our command resources that are now utterly beyond our reach. Our people have already spread themselves over the long extent of the Pacific coast, and are opening new springs and channels of trade in those vast and fertile regions. They will soon enter into the competition for the opulent trade of the East. A ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama, or a railroad to California from the Mississippi Valley-projects now vehemently agitated-will bring us nearly two thousand miles nearer to China and the East Indies, than any of the nations which have heretofore possessed the lucrative trade of Asia. What the result must be, as well upon the reduction of the commerce of other nations as upon the growth of our own, no one who comprehends the increasing and indomitable enterprise of the Americans need be told.

It behooves England especially to take this suggestion into profound consideration. With an ambition on the part of Russia, to extend her possessions down to the Mediterranean, so as to form a complete barrier to European trade in Asia, she has a vital interest in this movement. Should the despotic powers of the continent cut off or interrupt the possibility of her overland communication with the prolific magazines of Southern and Eastern Asia, England will have none but the old routes of travel left her, in which event, the route across America would soon absorb the entire trade of the East. As the Argosies of the East once passed from Venice and the Italian Republics into her own hands, so they may hereafter pass from hers into those of the western world. But this is anticipating!

You are a sensible man, John; no man more so; and will appreciate these facts, which I italicize, to impress them on your mind. Our annual product surpasses that of Great Britain; our domestic commerce also surpasses yours; our foreign tonnage is almost equal to yours, and

in five years will be greater than yours; our means of internal communication by railroad equal yours, with the Continent thrown in; our telegraphic lines exceed you, by nearly the same measure; and in every other physical element of national superiority we cannot well consent to hold the candle to you.

Let your neighbors the despots know this, will you? and tell them, too, not to be so shallow as to try to account for this vast and increasing prosperity, as they have hitherto done, by ascribing it to the extent of our landed possessions. Russia has land enough in all conscience; is a young nation, moreover; yet Russia cannot compare with us, in solid and swift development. Your Colony of Lower Canada has plenty of land; but how far it lags behind the States, which are only separated by a river! There is a whole continent of fertile land in South America, but where is the population, the trade, the thrift, the peace? No! this land theory will not suffice; it cannot hold water; and it were better for your aforesaid neighbors to concede at once, that we are what we are, because of those free institutions, which give the reins without a curb, to the native enterprise of the people. We are prosperous because we are free, as every nation is prosperous just to the extent of its freedom, which is so abundantly evinced by your own history.

It must be confessed, however, that a nation's, like a man's life, "consisteth not in the abundance of the things that it possesses." All the wealth of the world would do us no good, if it were unaccompanied by the richer treasures of intelligence, virtue, and religion. It is a part of my task, therefore, to show the effects which democracy has had upon these; and, I think, in pursuance of it, I shall be able to make it clear that we are about as well-educated, moral and orderly a people as you can find; or in other words, that our intellectual, social, and religious progress has kept pace with our physical development.

Reading and writing is a fair test of popular intelligence, or, which amounts to the same thing, the number of children who go to school, and the number of adults who take newspapers, periodicals, and books. Now, the people of this republic esteem it one of their first duties to make ample provision for the gratuitous instruction of youth. Their public schools are open every day, except Sundays, to every class of citizens, are furnished with competent teachers and libraries, and have an immense average attendance of pupils. Adding to these the private and grammar schools, the young ladies' seminaries and

colleges, and the theological and medical institutes, in all just 100,000, and the number of pupils will reach 4,000,000; which you will see, according to the usual proportion of persons under twenty years of age, comprises nine-tenths of our adolescence, or one out of every five persons. I have seen it stated that less than 2,000,000 of your youths go to any school, and that the amount of your government grants in aid of primary instruction falls short of £100,000, while only half your men and one-third of your women can read! Why, the State of New-York alone, with only 3,000,000 of inhabitants has a school-fund of 6,641,930 dollars, and spends $2,249,814 annually, on 11,537 different free schools, in which 862,507 children are recipients of their bounties, besides 36,183 at the private academies. Thus, more than one quarter of the whole population of the State receives education in the district schools. It is true, that Mr. Combe says that much of the instruction in these common schools is exceedingly defective; and certainly it is not equal to that of the colleges; but it is better than none; it begets the habit of learning, and lays the foundation for future superior attainments.

That it is not wholly inefficient is evident, in that so many of our children grow up to be readers. Here is a little statement, for instance, of the issues of our periodical and newspaper press, which speaks much:

That is, nearly seventeen copies a year, of some publication or other, to every man, woman, and child in the nation; or, excluding infants, aged and diseased persons, and those who can't read, at least a newspaper each week to every family. Accordingly I do not believe that there is an American family in the land which does not take in some newspaper or magazine. I am not now arguing as to the character of these publications, which, by the way, are as good generally as those of other nations, but only as to the fact of their almost universal circulation. In the United Kingdom there is not a daily paper printed out of London: of those that are printed in London, all are too costly to be taken by the poorer classes; which is true also of the quarterlies and monthlies; and of the weekly or local