inion, comes as near the truth as a fortune-teller who is
venturing his prediction in behalf of a stranger.[33]

[Footnote 33: I can give no better illustration of the state of
dependence to which men are reduced in America, by this spirit of
meddling, than by the following anecdote: A friend was about to build a
new town-house, and letting me know the situation, he asked my advice as
to the mode of construction. The inconveniences of an ordinary American
town-house were pointed out to him,--its unfitness for the general state
of society, the climate, the other domestic arrangements, and its
ugliness. All were admitted, and the plan proposed in place of the old
style of building was liked, but still my friend hesitated about
adopting it. "It will be a genteeler and a better-looking house than the
other." "Agreed." "It will be really more convenient." "I think so,
too." "It will be cheaper." "Of that there is no question." "Then why
not adopt it?" "To own the truth, I _dare not build differently from my
neighbour!_"]

In France the right of the citizen to discuss all public matters is not
only allowed, but _felt_. In America it is not _felt_, though it is
allowed. A homage must be paid to the public, by assuming the disguise
of acting as a public agent, in America; whereas, in France, individuals
address their countrymen, daily, under their own signatures. The
impersonality of _we_, and the character of public journalists, is
almost indispensable, with us, to impunity, although the mask can
deceive no one, the journalists notoriously making their prints
subservient to their private passions and private interests, and being
_impersonal_ only in the use of the imperial pronoun. The
_representative_, too, in America, is privileged to teach, in virtue of
his collective character, by the very men who hold the extreme and
untenable doctrine of instruction! It is the fashion to say in America,
_that the people will rule!_ it would be nearer the truth, however, to
say, _the people will seem to rule_.

I think that these distinctions are facts, and they certainly lead to
odd reflections. We are so peculiarly situated as a nation, that one is
not to venture on conclusions too hastily. A great deal is to be imputed
to our provincial habits; much to the circumstance of the disproportion
between surface and population, which, by scattering the well-bred and
intelligent, a class at all times relatively small, serves greatly to
less