travel among them without being struck with the universal
intelligence they possess as to its constitution, its politics, its
laws, and all general subjects connected with its prosperity or its
requirements; and if they do not always convey their information in the
most classical language, at all events they convey it in clear and
unmistakeable terms. The Constitution of their country is regularly
taught at their schools; and doubtless it is owing to this early insight
into the latent springs by which the machinery of Government is worked,
that their future appetite for more minute details becomes whetted. I
question very much if every boy, on leaving a high school in the United
States, does not know far more of the institutions of his country than
nine-tenths of the members of the British House of Commons do of theirs.
At the same time it should not be forgotten, that the complications
which have grown up with a nationality of centuries render the study far
more difficult in this country, than it possibly can, be in the giant
Republic of yesterday. And in the same way taxation in England, of which
30,000,000l. is due as interest on debt before the State receives one
farthing for its disbursements, is one of the most intricate questions
to be understood even by enlarged minds; whereas in the United States,
scarcely any taxation exists, and the little that does, creates a
surplus revenue which they often appear at a loss to know how to get rid
of.

Doubtless, the intelligence of the community sometimes exhibits itself
in a 'cuteness which I am not prepared to defend. A clear apprehension
of their immediate material interests has produced repudiation of
legitimate obligations; but those days are, nationally speaking, I hope,
gone by, and many of their merchants stand as high in the estimation of
the commercial world as it is possible to desire. At the same time, it
is equally true that the spirit of commercial gambling has risen to a
point in the States far above what it ever has in this country,--except,
perhaps, during the Railway epidemic; and the number of failures is
lamentably great.

With their intelligence they combine an enterprise that knows no
national parallel. This quality, aided by their law of limited
liability, has doubtless tended to urge forward many works and schemes
from which the Union is deriving, and has derived, great wealth and
advantage; at the same time it has opened the door for the unscrupul