llous speed; that the clearing of
new lands and the building of new cities have been such as to outstrip
the most sanguine calculations; that among them the working classes have
been, in no common degree, well paid and prosperous; that a feeling for
the national honour is in no country stronger; that the first elements
of education have been most widely diffused; that many good and brave
men have been trained and are training to the service of the
Commonwealth. But have their independent institutions made them, on the
whole, a happy and contented people? That, among themselves, is often
proclaimed as undeniable; and certainly among themselves it may not
always be safely denied. That, however, is not always the impression
conveyed to him who only sojourns in their land, by the careworn faces,
by the hurried steps, by the unsocial meals which he sees, or by the
incessant party cries which he hears around him; by the fretful
aspirations and the feverish hopes resulting from the unbounded space of
competition open to them without check or barrier; and by the
innumerable disappointments and heartburnings which in consequence
arise. On the true condition of North America, let us mark the
correspondence between two of the greatest and most highly gifted of her
sons. There is now open before me a letter which, in August, 1837, and
on the annexation of Texas, Dr. Channing wrote to Mr. Clay. In that
letter, as published in Boston, I find the following words (and what Dr
Channing said in 1837 has been illustrated in scores of instances since
that time, and greatly enhanced by the events of the civil war):

"'I cannot do justice to this topic without speaking freely of our
country, as freely as I should of any other; and unhappily we are so
accustomed, as a people, to receive incense, to be soothed by flattery,
and to account reputation a more important interest than morality, that
my freedom may be construed into a kind of disloyalty. But it would be
wrong to make concessions to this dangerous weakness. * * Among us a
spirit of lawlessness pervades the community which, if not repressed,
threatens the dissolution of our present forms of society. Even in the
old States, mobs are taking the government into their hands, and a
profligate newspaper finds little difficulty in stirring up multitudes
to violence. * * Add to all this the invasions of the rights of speech
and of the press by lawless force, the extent and toleration of which