hat five
hundred girls should live among a population of fifteen hundred, or
more, all pure and virtuous, and all dressed in silks and satin.

When I went to Lowell I travelled with an American gentleman, who will,
I have no doubt, corroborate my statement, and I must say that, however
pure Lowell may have been at the time when the encomiums were passed
upon it, I have every reason to believe, from American authority as well
as my own observation, that a great alteration has taken place, and that
the manufactories have retrograded with the whole mass of American
society. In the first place, I never heard a more accomplished swearer,
east of the Alleghanies, than one young lady who addressed me and my
American friend, and as it was the _only instance_ of swearing on the
part of a female that I ever met with in the United States, it was the
more remarkable. I shall only observe, that two days at Lowell
convinced me that "human nature was the same every where," and thus I
dismiss the subject.

Mr Carey compels me to make a remark which I would gladly have avoided,
but as he brings forward his comparative statements of the number of
illegitimate children born in the two countries as a proof of the
superior morality of America, I must point out to him what I suspect he
is not aware of. Public opinion acts as _law_ in America; appearances
are there substituted for the reality, and provided appearances are kept
up, whether it be in religion or morality, it is sufficient; but should
an exposure take place, there is no mercy for the offender. As those
who have really the least virtue in themselves are always the loudest to
cry out at any lapse which may be discovered in others, so does society
in America pour out its anathemas in the inverse ratio of its real
purity. Now, although the authority I speak from is undoubted, at the
same time I wish to say as little as possible. That there are fewer
illegitimate children _born_ in the United States is very true. But why
so? because public opinion there acts as the bastardy clause in the new
poor law bill has done in this country; and if Mr Carey will only
inquire in his own city, he will find that I should be justified if I
said twice as much, as I have been compelled in defence of my own
country to say, upon so unpleasant a subject.

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Note 1. Bigamy is not uncommon in the United States from the women