ced in the midst of a new and boundless
country, which their principal object is to explore for purposes of
profit. This is the characteristic which most peculiarly distinguishes
the American people from all others at the present time. All those quiet
virtues which tend to give a regular movement to the community, and to
encourage business, will therefore be held in peculiar honor by that
people, and to neglect those virtues will be to incur public contempt.
All the more turbulent virtues, which often dazzle, but more frequently
disturb society, will on the contrary occupy a subordinate rank in the
estimation of this same people: they may be neglected without forfeiting
the esteem of the community--to acquire them would perhaps be to run a
risk of losing it.

[Footnote c: I speak here of the Americans inhabiting those States where
slavery does not exist; they alone can be said to present a complete
picture of democratic society.]

The Americans make a no less arbitrary classification of men's vices.
There are certain propensities which appear censurable to the general
reason and the universal conscience of mankind, but which happen to
agree with the peculiar and temporary wants of the American community:
these propensities are lightly reproved, sometimes even encouraged; for
instance, the love of wealth and the secondary propensities connected
with it may be more particularly cited. To clear, to till, and to
transform the vast uninhabited continent which is his domain, the
American requires the daily support of an energetic passion; that
passion can only be the love of wealth; the passion for wealth is
therefore not reprobated in America, and provided it does not go beyond
the bounds assigned to it for public security, it is held in honor.
The American lauds as a noble and praiseworthy ambition what our own
forefathers in the Middle Ages stigmatized as servile cupidity, just
as he treats as a blind and barbarous frenzy that ardor of conquest and
martial temper which bore them to battle. In the United States fortunes
are lost and regained without difficulty; the country is boundless, and
its resources inexhaustible. The people have all the wants and cravings
of a growing creature; and whatever be their efforts, they are always
surrounded by more than they can appropriate. It is not the ruin of a
few individuals which may be soon repaired, but the inactivity and
sloth of the community at large which would be fatal to suc