ich appears to us license, nor the
equality which brings with it neither good manners nor good morals, nor
the vast material progress which occupies the energies of her people, to
the exclusion of more elevating pursuits. There are moreover griefs
connected with the United States which come peculiarly home to British
interests and prejudices; the existence of slavery, for instance, in its
most revolting form, in direct opposition to the spirit of their
institutions, and to the very letter of that celebrated declaration
which is the basis of all their governments; the repudiation or
non-payment of debts contracted for the purposes of public works, of
which they are every day reaping the advantages; and the unprincipled
invasion of our Canadian frontier by their citizens during the late
disturbances in that colony. Within the last few months, more
particularly, they have committed many and grievous offences against
their own dignity, the peace of the world, and the interests of Britain.
We have heard their chief magistrate defy Christendom, and inform the
world that the American continent is, for the future, to be held as in
fee-simple by the United States; we have seen Texas forcibly torn from
feeble Mexico, and the negotiations on the subject of Oregon brought to
a close by a formal declaration, that the American title to the whole of
it is "clear and unquestionable." They have displayed, in the conduct of
their foreign relations during the past year, a vulgar indifference to
the opinion of mankind, and an overweening estimate of their own power,
which it is at once ludicrous and painful to behold. Nor is there reason
to believe that these blots on the escutcheon of a nation, so young and
so unembarrassed, are either deeply regretted or will be speedily
effaced. We see no reaction of national virtue against national
wrongdoing. For the cause of this great Republic is not, as in other
countries, dependent upon the will of the one man, or the few men, who
are charged with the functions of government, but on the will of the
great mass of the people, deliberately and frequently expressed. The
rule of the majority is in America no fiction, but a practical reality;
and the folly or wisdom, the justice or injustice of her public acts,
may, in ordinary times, be assumed as fair exponents of the average good
sense and morals of the bulk of her citizens.

We are not of those who charge the democratic institutions of the United
St