tence, to admit of the probability of men so
openly stamped with infamy from obtaining wives, and I think there
existed a physical inability for the propagation of the stock, since
very few women were transported at any time. Within the last few months,
two instances have occurred in the Chamber of Deputies, of members
quoting the example of America, in enforcing their arguments in favour
of the possibility of forming respectable communities by the
transportation of criminals!

I had no intention of quoting any part of the controversy on finance,
but, on reflection, it may serve a good purpose to give one or two
extracts from the letter of Mr. Harris. In order that this may be done
fairly, both as it respects the point at issue and the parties
concerned, it will be necessary to make a brief preliminary explanation.
M. Sauliner, the principal writer of the other side, had made it a
charge against our system, that nearly all the public money was derived
from the customs, which he assumed was a bad mode of obtaining revenue.
Let this be as it might, my answer, was, that, as between France and
America, there was no essential variance of system, the only difference
lying in the fact that the one got _all_ the revenue it _could_ in this
manner, and that the other got all it _wanted_. I added, a tax on
exports excepted, that all the usual means of raising revenue known to
other nations were available, at need, to the government of the
United-States. To this latter opinion Mr. Harris took exceptions,
saying, in effect, that the administration of Mr. Adams, the father,
had been broken down by resorting to excises, stamp-acts, and direct
taxation; and that since his unfortunate experiment, no administration
in America had dreamed, even in time of war, of resorting to a mode of
obtaining revenue which was so offensive as to produce the revolution of
1776! Of course Mr. Harris was reminded, that the stamp-act, of which
the colonists complained, was repealed many years before the epoch of
1776; that the revolution proceeded from a denial of the right in
parliament to tax the colonies at all, and not from any particular
imposition; and that excises and a stamp-act had all been resorted to,
in the war of 1812, without overturning the administration of Mr.
Madison, or weakening that of his successor. But of what avail was a
statement of this kind, in opposition to the allegations of one who
appeared before Europe in the character of an