I have
made, or the deductions I have drawn, are merely the prejudices of a
traveller brought up under a constitutional monarchy, I will add a
passage showing the conclusions at which one of the ablest men in
America has arrived.

Bishop Hopkins, in an address delivered before the House of Convocation
of Trinity College, Hartford, after eulogizing the wisdom and
patriotism, of the founders of his country, as being "the wise master
builders of the noblest republic in the world," asks what is its present
state after seventy years' brief experience? Behold the reply:--"First,
then, we hear on every side the charge of political corruption. Bribery
is practised in all our elections. The spoils of office are expected as
a matter of course by the victorious party. The President of the United
States dares not be impartial; for, if he were, he would lose the
confidence of his friends without gaining the confidence of his enemies.
The oldest statesmen, and the most prominent, cannot follow the dictates
of their own judgment and conscience without being reproached as though
they were laying a trap for the presidential chair. The very laws of
Congress are set down as the results of personal venality or ambition.
The House of Representatives, or even the Senate Chamber, are disgraced
every year by fierce passion and violent denunciation. The barbarous and
unchristian duel is anticipated as quite inevitable unless it be averted
by explanations which may satisfy worldly honour, in utter contempt of
all religious principle. And no member of either House can go to the
performance of his public duties with any security that he may not be
insulted by coarse invective before the day is closed. Yet our rulers
are never weary of lauding the character of Washington, as if they were
quite convinced that the time had passed by when they might be expected
to verify the language of praise by the act of imitation. When we look
into the other classes of the community, the same charge of venality and
corruption meets us again. Our merchants are accused of all sorts of
dishonest management; our brokers, of stock-jobbing; our city aldermen,
of bribery; our lawyers, of knavery; our justices, of complicity with
the guilty. The same worship of Mammon seems to govern the whole, and
the current phrase, 'the almighty dollar,' is a sad but powerful
exponent of the universal sin which involves the mass of our
population."

Being perfectly aware what a "gla