hich has been the cause
of their prosperity. The Americans think otherwise, and, as I have
before observed, they are happy in their own delusions--they do not make
a distinction between what they have gained by their country, and what
they have gained by their institutions. Everything is on a vast and
magnificent scale, which at first startles you; but if you examine
closely and reflect, you are convinced that there is at present more
show than substance, and that the Americans are actually existing (and
until they have sufficient labourers to sow and reap, and gather up the
riches of their land, must continue to exist) upon the credit and
capital of England.

The American republic was commenced very differently from any other, and
with what were real advantages, if she had not been too ambitious and
too precipitate in seizing upon them. A republic has generally been
considered the most primitive form of rule; it is, on the contrary, the
very last pitch of refinement in government, and the cause of its
failure up to the present has been, that no people have as yet been
sufficiently enlightened to govern themselves. Republics, generally
speaking, have at their commencement been confined to small portions of
territory having been formed by the extension of townships after the
inhabitants had become wealthy and ambitious. In America, on the
contrary, the republic commenced with unbounded territory--a vast field
for ambition and enterprise, that has acted as a safety-valve to carry
off the excess of disappointed ambition, which, like steam, is
continually generating under such a form of government. And, certainly,
if ever a people were in a situation, as far as education, knowledge,
precepts and lessons for guidance and purity of manners could enable
them, to govern themselves, those were so who first established the
American independence.

Fifty years have passed away, and the present state of America I have
already shown. From purity of manners, her moral code has sunk below
that of most other nations. She has attempted to govern herself--she is
dictated to by the worst of tyrannies. She has planted the tree of
liberty; instead of its flourishing, she has neither freedom of speech
nor of action. She has railed against the vices of monarchical forms of
government, and every vice against which she has raised up her voice, is
still more prevalent under her own. She has cried out against
corruption--she is still