ight! How
refreshing to see by the side of these nations, who sleep so tranquilly,
while regarding the inroads of slavery, a people whom, it disquiets,
whom it irritates, who refuse to take part in it, and who, rather than
conform to the evil, agitate, become divided, and rend themselves
perchance with their own hands!

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE UNITED STATES.

We are not just towards the United States. Their civilization, so
different from ours, wounds us in various ways, and we turn from them in
the ill-humor excited by their real defects, without taking note enough
of their eminent qualities. This country, which possesses neither
church, nor State, nor army, nor governmental protection; this country,
born yesterday, and born under a Puritanic influence; this country,
without past history, without monuments, separated from the Middle Ages
by the double interval of centuries and beliefs; this rude country of
farmers and pioneers, has nothing fitted to please us. It has the
exuberant life and the eccentricities of youth; that is, it affords to
our mature experience inexhaustible subjects of blame and raillery.

We are so little inclined to admire it, that we seek in its territorial
configuration for the essential explanation of its success. Is it so
difficult to maintain good order and liberty at home when one has
immense deserts to people, when land offers itself without stint to the
labor of man?--I do not see, for my part, that land is lacking at Buenos
Ayres, at Montevideo, in Mexico, or in any of the pronunciamento
republics that cover South America. It seems to me that the Turks have
room before them, and that the Middle Ages were not suffering precisely
from an excess of population when they presented everywhere the
spectacle of anarchy and oppression.

Be sure that the United States, which have something to learn of us,
have also something to teach us. Theirs is a great community, which it
does not become us to pass by in disdain. The more it differs from our
own Europe, the more necessary is impartial attention to comprehend and
appreciate it. Especially is it impossible for us to form an enlightened
opinion of the present crisis, unless we begin by taking into
consideration the surroundings in which it has broken out. The nature of
the struggle and its probable issue, the difficulties of the present,
and the chances of the future, will be clear to us only on condition of
our making