LETTER I.

The Voyage—Royal Debt—Slavery—Bay of New York—Astor Hotel—The Streets—Temperature.

Astor House, Yew York , 30 th May , 1848.

At half-past three o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, the 13th of May, we sailed from Liverpool on board the Hibernia. For twenty-four years I had scarcely been a week absent from an employment which required great and unremitting mental effort, and involved considerable business care; and when I felt the waves bound beneath me, and when the fresh breeze courted my somewhat toil-worn and age-worn cheek, I dismissed, as well as I could, all the regret one naturally feels at leaving objects of esteem and affection, and gave myself up to the anticipations of a tour which would greatly gratify a rational curiosity, and add to my stock of knowledge and health. The voyage was delightful while we coasted round the north of Ireland, with the blue hills of the western islands of Scotland on our right; but when we had left the extreme north-west point of Ireland, and encountered the long swell of the Atlantic, the equanimity of the passengers was “pretty considerably” disturbed, and on Monday morning, with the exception of about half a dozen, they appeared not, and certain sounds, from the little boxes in which they were shut up, indicated that they were not very comfortable there. Lady P—and her daughter, and a young Virginia lady, bravely kept above during the whole voyage, a New York democrat, a A 0008 6 Virginia whig, and myself keeping them company, but Mrs. B—, who had walked the deck with a stately step and an air that said she would not be easily subdued, was speedily obliged to retreat below. Mr. Brooks was completely horsdu-combat , and at one time I was seriously alarmed for the consequences, but in a few days he rallied and came on deck, with others who had disappeared on Sunday night. When we came near the banks of Newfoundland a great change of the temperature took place, the thermometer falling to within five degrees of the freezing point; and when we had attained the longitude of the eastern part of Nova Scotia, the cold was accompanied by an uncomfortable fog. The entrance of the harbour of Halifax at midnight, under such circumstances, was a beautiful thing in navigation. We had steered, for ten days out of sight of land, right to the entrance of the harbour, and the manner in which Captain Shannon wound his way through the crowd of vessels, and laid his own great sea monster alongside the quay, was a sight to be seen. Our two American gentlemen were sorry that we had not the opportunity of observing the state of Halifax, in order that we might compare or rather contrast it with that of New York, and thus see the difference between the deadening influence of British protection and the activity and prosperity prevailing under free institutions. We took on board a Scotch gentleman from Cape Breton, who confirmed what had been stated by the Americans as to the condition of the colony. That island, now attached to Nova Scotia, abounds in minerals, but they are a monopoly in the hands of Rundell and Bridges, of London, handed over to them in part payment of a debt which was owing to them by the late Duke of York! There are 120 square miles of workable coal field on the island, and it is rented at £3,000 a year, but in the hands of the lessees the produce is only about 80,000 tons a year. At a reduction of a few shillings a ton the demand would be fourfold, greatly to the 0009 7 advantage of the colony; but the monopolists, like the old-fashioned tradesmen, prefer a large profit on small to a small profit on large returns. I had had some good humoured banter with the New York democrat and the Virginia whig about their republican institutions, and I expected that they would have retaliated by a little sarcasm on this proof of the folly of our support of branches of the royal family by conferring monopolies upon them; but they magnanimously let me alone, probably seeing that I was mortified enough without any retaliating banter.

During our voyage, slavery was the frequent subject of conversation. I had resolved that I should not obtrude my opinions on that question, but, at the same time, that I should not shrink, whenever it was introduced, from the full expression of my conviction that the institution, however derived, was a deep stain on the national character of the United States. Our Virginia gentleman, a noble fellow, who would have been an abolitionist had he been born and educated in Connecticut, stoutly defended the “domestic institutions” of the south, and said that Englishmen had no right to interfere with them. “We may, however,” I said, “express an opinion about them. We should not close your mouth, if in our country, you pointed out the defects of our constitution. You surely would not have us close our mouths in yours, and sneak through it as slaves who did not dare to denounce a wrong when we saw it before our eyes. An injustice perpetrated any where, is a fair subject of condemnation every where.” “But you retard the cause you wish to advance,” he rejoined: “You, and the New-England men, rouse the passions of the south, by calling us names. Had you let us alone, we should have gone on gradually in the work of emancipation; but we will not be forced into it.” “That,” I said, “is the sort of talk we had from our landowners, when we denounced them for the inhumanity of taxing the bread of the poor. They 0010 8 would do nothing on compulsion; but we went on denouncing the wrong, till they were compelled to abandon it.” “Now,” said he, “with all your feeling for your black brethren , would you give your daughter in marriage to one of them?” “If I had a daughter,” I replied, “I should not willingly permit her to marry an Irish hodman, nor a person of uncultivated intellect, but I would not, because I might think him unfit to marry my daughter, deprive him of his political rights. I would not take possession of him as a chattel. I would not scourge him with a cowhide whip. I would not shoot him, if he attempted to better his condition by getting out of my reach.”

On Saturday morning, the 27th instant, a great change took place in the temperature, and the sun, shining in splendour, dispersed the fog. On remarking the change, our New York friend said, “Ah, you are now coming within the influence of our elastic atmosphere.” We had seen only five vessels while sailing from the north of Ireland to Nova Scotia, but we had them now at every point of the compass, and by the time we approached Sandy Hook we had more than one hundred and fifty in sight at once. Passing that point, a noble and well-protected bay opened out to us, the Jersey coast on our left, exceedingly English in its appearance, with sloping woods, and studded with little villages. Before we reached that point, a river steamer, sent out by the newspaper offices, was seen approaching us, borne over the waves with the speed of a sea-bird. Coming alongside, a bag of newspapers was dropped upon her deck, and she instantly took her course to the nearest point of Long Island, there to telegraph the news along the line of railroad, and let the good folks of New York know who were coming. A circuit, to avoid the sand deposited at the mouth of the Hudson, or North river, brought us to the entrance of the Narrows, and here another but smaller bay was opened out, brilliantly illuminated by the noon-day sun, 0011 9 and glowing with beauty and activity; Staten Island, with its splendid villas on our left, shining out in their whiteness from the surrounding verdure—“more green than even the idea of greenness;” Long Island, with its beautiful suburban Brooklyn on our right; New York, with its spires and forests of masts before us; the whole bay crowded with noble vessels, with their canvass white as snow; while, ever and anon, splendid steamers, crowded with passengers, shot along with railway speed. Nothing could be more beautiful as a scene—as a mere picture—nothing more illustrative of the activity of our republican brothers. Their nation was going a-head, and here was proof of it. Lady P—, who had so boldly kept the deck in all weathers, said the scene was worth coming across the Atlantic to see, even though the spectator should turn home again without landing; and Mr. Brooks, in his delighted survey, forgot all his previous sickness. Preparation was now made for landing. The quarantine doctor took the captain's word that we were all in good health; his attention was required for the inspection of some very large emigrant ships that lay near us. There had been 4,700 emigrants landed on the previous Thursday, and we learned on Monday that 10,035 had arrived on the Saturday and Sunday, principally Germans, each possessed of a small capital, and all ready to proceed instantly to the various German settlements in the interior, without staying to waste their means in New York. The Custom-house officer's duty was a mere form. We landed on the New Jersey side, and Mr. Brooks and I entered a vehicle which drove right on board a river steamer, and the moment we touched the New York shore it was driven on, and we were on the streets, remarking in our short drive four things,—the shocking bad pavement of the carriage way, made of round boulders ranging from three inches in diameter to twelve, and, with holes here and there three or four feet wide and from a foot to eighteen inches deep, affording 0012 10 very provoking shakes; the absence of all heavy vehicles, and the abundance of light spring waggons; drawn at great speed by light active horses; the great quantity of merchandise of all sorts covering the foot pavement, under awnings; and the heaps of stones and bricks piled up in the streets, as if every third house was about to be rebuilt. Mr. Brooks, said it appeared as if every body had been removing, and had not yet had time to put things straight.

As we wished to do at Rome what they do at Rome, we resolved to go to a thoroughly American hotel, and so drove to the Astor House, which can splendidly accommodate more than four hundred inmates. It is an immense and handsome pile of buildings, enclosing a court-yard like the quadrangle of an Oxford college. The three fronts are of a beautiful granite like that of which London Bridge is built. The bustle in the wide corridore was like that on the Manchester Exchange, and we thought it would be difficult to find comfort in so public a place. The dinner, to which 150 persons sat down, was exceedingly luxurious. I could not help remarking the quiet and gentlemanly demeanour of the company, a great portion of whom were tall finely-grown men, with a very intellectual cast of countenance. As we did not find two seats together, a gentleman said courteously, “You are strangers, and would like to sit together. I will find another seat for myself.” There was no hurry—the Americans do not seem to be in a hurry—but they get on. In thirty-five minutes after, the covers were removed, the cloth was taken off, and the dessert placed on the table; and in half an hour more there were only five of the hundred and fifty left. Many, no doubt, had gone off to business, but a number had only removed to the great entrance, where they sat smoking cigars, their feet up on the white marble ballustrade, and spitting on the marble floor. Four were in the handsome drawing-room with a spittoon before them, and, as each spat once in a minute 0013 11 on the average, there was a bending towards the spit-box every quarter of a minute. Others had their feet as high as their heads on the arms of chairs, and one who could not find such accommodation had his planted firmly against the wall. I sat down on a sofa, musing on the different habitudes of different countries, until I was awakened from my reverie by Mr. Brooks saying: “Well, Prentice, you look very comfortable with your feet up, and your snuff-box in your hand.”

“O that some power the gift would gi'e us To see ourselves as others see us!”

We lounge on sofas in England, and laugh at Jonathan, who puts his feet on the window sill. However, wishing well to our younger brother I should like to see him spit less.

In our walks through the city we have been exceedingly struck with its appearance of universal activity. Broadway seems to have almost as many omnibuses as the Strand in London, and the beautiful ferry boats on the East and North rivers are in constant requisition. The houses are mostly built of brick of a fine colour and smooth surface, four, five, and six stories in height. The signs have black letters on an ample white ground, the doors and all the wood-work are white; the steps and the door pillars of the better class of houses are of white marble, or the light grey Siennite granite. All this, and the absence of smoke, give an exceeding lively air to the whole aspect of the city, We have nothing to match it in that respect in the old country. We have been much struck also with the great number of good dwelling-houses in proportion to the population. There are miles of streets in which there is not a house worth less than 500 dollars, or £100, per annum, and many of them worth three or four times that amount. We have been over to Brooklyn, and were delighted with the aspect of the dwellings there, each side of each street being planted with 0014 12 trees, most refreshing to the sight, and giving the appearance of a quiet retirement that is really delightful. The weeping willow here assumes the most graceful appearance: imaginable, attaining the height of fifty feet, suspending slender perpendicular drooping strings of the richest and yet most delicate foliage and of twenty feet in length. The view from Brooklyn, of New York, and of the East River, with its shipping, is very fine.

This is a great city, and is daily becoming greater. In 1845 the population of New York was 370,000, and of Brooklyn 60,000. At the previous ratio of increase the number of inhabitants will exceed half a millign in 1850. Its present appearance, at once substantial and lively, will improve as the population increases. Everywhere the old wooden houses are being pulled down and replaced by capital edifices of brick, and the old brick buildings are coming down to be replaced by others of granite and white marble.

One of the newspapers of this morning says, “The temperature is delightfully cool, the thermometer standing at only 75 in the shade.” We should call that pretty hot in the old country; but I find it exceedingly pleasant, and shall not complain if it do not become more than ten degrees higher. We had strawberries to dinner yesterday, not grown in the neighbourhood, however, but brought from the south. Eaten with iced cream they formed a very pleasant part of our dessert. Ice is an article of great consumption. At table your tumbler is supplied from a great jug one fourth filled with lumps of ice; a lump of ice is put into your champaign glass; and a lump of ice is on every piece of butter set down. We have found a tumbler of milk with a piece of ice in it a great luxury after breakfast and tea. Probably the most effective means to mitigate the fervour of the climate is the temperance generally practised in respectable society. At our dinners in the 0015 13 Astor House, at which not fewer than a hundred and fifty have sat down, we have not seen ten or a dozen persons taking wine, and we have not seen a single instance of the use of malt liquors. Gin-slinging and sherry-cobbling are vulgarities confined to the bar-room, which in this hotel is modestly kept out of sight in the ground floor.

LETTER II.

The Wharves—River Boats—Increase of Population—Emigrants—Splendid Shops—Building Materials—Supply of Water.

Astor House, New York , 3 rd June , 1848.

It might be predicated from a person's previous pursuits what objects would be most likely to arrest his attention in a foreign land. After our long labours for the promotion of free trade, and especially for the free importation of corn, it might be supposed that a country's capacity for the production of food would always be to us a matter of deep interest. Accordingly, we have not gone to the Five Points to observe and describe the squalid misery that is there to be found—the result of vice and improvidence which are everywhere to be found, or to Broadway to observe and laugh at the vanity which is an abundant product in the village as well as in the city; but our walks have been to the wharves, where vessels lie deeply laden with the means of sending luxury to the tables of the wealthy, and substantial A 2 0016 14 comforts into not only the houses of the industrial classes here, but into the wretched cottages of our own half-starved population at home. Here bright visions arise in the imagination of the utilitarian. He sees the farmer on the Hudson, the Mohawk, the Ohio, the Illinois, the Miami, and the lakes Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, cheerfully labouring in his own fields for the sustentation of the Manchester spinner and weaver; he sees the potter of Hanley, the cutler of Sheffield, the cloth-manufacturer of Yorkshire, and the sewer and tambourer of Glasgow, in not hopeless or unrewarded toil, preparing additional comforts and enjoyments for the inhabitants of the American woods and prairies. He conjures up a great co-operative community all working for the mutual benefit; and sees in the universal competition the universal good. He sees the individual and the general advantage combined, and the world as only one vast brotherhood.

They are strange things these Hudson river-boats—strange, unwieldly, and helpless-looking things, but with a wise adaptation in them. Jonathan is not wedded to old custom. He has no reverence for the form of ship in which Hendrick Hudson entered the Narrows. He found out that there was a great loss of labour in hoisting his sheep and oxen, his corn and his butter, up to the deck and then lowering them down into the hold; in hoisting them up to the deck again and then lowering them down to the quay. He cut away his ship down to the water's-edge, planked it over, drove his cattle and carried his corn and hay right on to the deck, put posts up and laid planks upon them to form a shed, on that shed heaped up all that the rain and sun could not spoil, and then, when a steam-boat passed, hooked his vessel to it and had it laid, hundreds of miles off, alongside a projecting pier, where it could be unladed with as much ease as it had been laded. Here, on the North river and on the East, are hundreds of these strange floats, improved 0017 15 upon that original model, covered rather than filled with all kinds of agricultural produce, some of which has come more than a thousand miles, each forming, when laid alongside its wharf, an open market, where the farmer sells directly to the consumer. These boats come by the Erie canal and down the Hudson, from Oswego, Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto, Sandusky, Detroit, and the far west Chicago, distant nearly a thousand miles, bringing the products of an immense continent which, little more than half a century ago, had been the hunting grounds of wild and scattered Indians.

No place can be better situated than New York for a vast commerce. Its bay would hold all the navies of the world; its river is the outlet for the best corn producing country in the world; its merchants are probably the most active in the world, native-born or drawn from every country where there is commercial enterprise. The city is not so much American as Cosmopolitan. English, Scotch, German, and French names abound in the directory and on the sign-boards. Even the Irishman becomes commercial. If a wise and unintermeddling external policy, and free trade, and domestic tranquillity prevail, it will become the largest city of the world. It has already made wonderful advances and claims to be fifth in the rank of great commercial cities, yielding the precedency only to London, Paris, St. Petersburgh, and Constantinople. When the British evacuated the city, November 25th, 1783, it contained about 25,000 inhabitants. In 1790, the population was 33,131; in 1800, it had increased to 60,489; in 1810, to 96,373; in 1820, to 123,706; in 1830, to 202,089; in 1840, to 312,710; and in 1845, to 371,223—Brooklyn, separated from it by a river of only 700 or 800 yards wide, having at the same period a population of 60,000. The present population of the two united is supposed to be nearly 500,000!

The state of the working men in so large a community 0018 16 is a subject of deep interest. Much misery must prevail. Tens of thousands of immigrants land here and linger here without a definite object; but yet the wages of common labour are about fifty per cent. more than they are in England, and the price of food is one-third less. It is true that rent, clothes, and coals are fifty per cent. higher; but where a man has scarcely earned more than has kept him in food, the change by coming here is decidedly to his advantage, always premising that he brings the kind of labour which is in demand. If the labourer has earned three shillings a day in England, he will earn four shillings and sixpence here. Let us compare his relative position in the one country and the other. At home his food has cost him twelve shillings a week, and his rent, clothes, and coals, six shillings, absorbing all his wages. Let him live in the same style here, and he will pay eight shillings for his food, and nine shillings for his rent, clothes, and coals, leaving him ten shillings a week of clear savings. The misfortune is that whisky is only a shilling a gallon—very wretched stuff, no doubt—not at all the “real Glenlivit”—But men get drunk upon it for a trifle, and either die, or half-starve, or seek refuge in the almshouse. There is encouragement for sober and industrious men. Irish labourers save a few pounds, enter into some small street trading, ultimately take a store of one kind or another, and their sons become respectable merchants—a process which we never observe in Manchester. German agricultural labourers come in great numbers, and an association of their own countrymen have made arrangements for passing them instantly into the western parts of the states of New York and Pennsylvania, to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, where the German language continues to be spoken, until the next, or even to a succeeding generation: English, Irish, and Scotch unskilled labourers should follow their example, and proceed westward at once, if they cannot find immediate employment here. 0019 17 Emigrants of the working classes should not leave out of their calculation the enervating effects of a hot climate. To-day the thermometer is at 82° in the shade, and I can get no one to say that it is hot or even warm weather. The reply is: “It is pleasant, and we shall have it warmish in a day or two.” Mr. Brooks and I do not find the heat oppressive, but we find ourselves more disposed to lounge in the wide lobbies of the Astor, than to observe our wonderfully shortened shadows on Broadway.

I had occasion to remark in my last letter on the great extent of streets containing dwelling-houses worth a hundred pounds a year and upwards, probably to five hundred. In the enjoyment of New York hospitality we have seen the interior of some of the best, and their elegance is, if equalled, not surpassed by any I have seen anywhere in Great Britain. The shops—stores they call them here—give evidence of the existence of, if not a very wealthy class, at least one demanding the appliances of great luxury and splendour. One silversmith and jeweller in Broadway has a shop far surpassing in splendour anything of the kind I have ever seen. That street, for three miles, has shops on each side, hundreds of which have a front of twenty-five feet, and a depth of a hundred and twenty, and scarcely one of them is rented at less than three hundred pounds a year. In one pile of buildings there is a draper, an upholsterer, and a looking-glass and picture-frame maker, each of whom pays six hundred pounds a year; and their premises are nothing like those of Stuart and Co., drapers, which have a front of a hundred feet, four stories high, all of beautiful white marble, the interior, independently of its uses, being an example of architectural magnificence. In that fashionable locality I found Stodart, the piano-forte maker, whose reputation here is equal to his uncle's in London, when he and the Broadwoods had almost the monopoly of the trade.

So long a member of the Improvement Committee of the 0020 18 Machester Town Council, and taking a warm interest in its proceedings, it may be supposed that I have looked curiously at the appearance of the streets with regard to width and external effect. The old part of the city has been immensely improved by the calamity of great fires; comparative palaces have risen out of the ashes of the old wooden and old brick edifices, and every opportunity of widening streets has been taken. The whole island, thirteen and a half miles in length by an average of a mile and a half in width, has been laid out on a fixed plan, to which every one must build. The avenues, running lengthwise, vary from 80 to 100 feet in width, and the cross streets have a width of from 60 to 80 feet. From Broadway, the middle avenue, the streets beyond “Fourteenth,” slope gradually down to the East River on one side, and to the North River on the other, giving the eye relief by the sight, at every crossing, of water and the passing of ships and steamers, the heat at the same time being tempered by the sea breezes. The new part of the city is rapidly enlarging—the old part is rapidly improving. Granite, furnishing single blocks for columns thirty-five tons in weight, is abundant; while marble, ready prepared in polished blocks, by the prisoners at Sing Sing, is brought by a water conveyance of only thirty miles; the old red sandstone obtained in the immediate neighbourhood, is of an exceedingly close grain, is of great durability, and of an agreeable light brown colour; and the brick is of good quality and colour, and looks very well with marble, granite, or brown sandstone door and window dressings. Thus New York may become not only the largest but the finest city in the world.

The supply of water is calculated for the future rather than the present city, being at the rate of sixty millions of gallons in the twenty-four hours, three times the quantity proposed, also with a view to futurity, to be supplied to Manchester under its new water-works bill. It is brought 0021 19 from the Croton river, a distance of nearly fifty miles, by an aqueduct, sometimes tunnelled through rocks, and crossing valleys by embankments, till it reaches Haarlem river, which separates the island of New York from the mainland, crossing by a bridge of stone 1400 feet in length, having eight arches of eighty feet span and seven others of 50 feet span each,—the height 114 feet above tide water. The aqueduct is of stone and brick, arched over and under, and is six feet three inches wide at the bottom and seven feet at the top, and eight feet five inches high, with a descent of thirteen inches in the mile. This magnificent work was finished at a cost of 13,000,000 dollars, or £2,700,000 sterling! Notwithstanding the immense supply there is a very limited use of water in cleansing the ill-scavenged streets.

There is no want of churches in this city though there is no state-supported “Establishment.” The following is a list.:—

Baptist 23

Congregational Calvinistic 7

Ditto Unitarian 7

Friends 4

Synagogues 9

Lutheran 3

Methodist Episcopal 30

Ditto Protestant 1

Mormon 1

New Jerusalem 2

Presbyterian 32

Presbyterian Reformed 3

Presbyterian Association Reformed 2

Ditto Associate 3

Protestant Episcopal 41

Roman Catholic 16

Universalist 4

Welsh Presbyterian 1

Ditto Methodist 1

Ditto Baptist 1

Miscellaneous 12

Total 215

About the same population in Manchester and its immediate neighbourhood has only 114 places of worship. The 60,000 population of Brooklyn has thirty churches, most of them spacious and handsome. The various sects live in comparative amity one with another, there being no state-spoils to fight about. A rather hot war between protestants 0022 20 and catholics was waged a few years ago, the catholics complaining that the system of education in the Common Schools excluded their children. The dispute has been allayed by the establishment, in addition to the Common Schools, of Ward Schools, the managing committees of which are elected by the inhabitants of the ward, so that where the majority consists of catholics there is a catholic committee, or at least one that satisfies catholics that there will be no attempt to proselyte to protestantism. It may be supposed, therefore, that whatever religious instruction is given will be in accordance, or at least not at variance, with the religious opinions of the majority in the ward.

Some writers have complained of an offensive familiarity on the part of American citizens. I have seen nothing of it. The look and demeanour of the men at this immense hotel, with its four hundred inmates, is rather staid and aristocratic than otherwise. Self introductions are made respectfully, but without grimace and without the affected gesture of an overstrained courtesy. Yesterday an old gentleman came and, sitting down beside me, said: “Well, Sir, do you see anything worth looking at in our city?” I said that there was a great deal worth looking at; there were a beautiful city, great commerce, and an active go-a-head people. “Ah,” he said, “we have considerable of activity.” “But,” I remarked, “some people in our country say that your activity keeps you in a constant turmoil, and that your whole year is one continued contested election.” “Well,” he replied, “that now is a mis take. We have eighty thousand persons here who might vote if they liked, but there is seldom half of that number who vote. Loafers run about talking and debating about elections because they won't work, and old men like me because we have retired from business and have nothing else to do. The noisy talkers make themselves heard, and the quiet people are out of sight. You would think that heaven and earth would come 0023 21 together if we do not elect some particular man, but the moment the election is over all goes on just as before.” To-day this gentleman brought another gentleman, a large woollen-manufacturer from Boston, and introduced me to him as one who was taking the very same tour to the southwest which we intended to take. When this ceremony was over, I turned to the Boston gentleman and said: “Now, Sir, will you be good enough to introduce me to the gentleman who has introduced me to you.” He laughed and did so. Amongst the small storekeepers and working men the familiarity with persons of, in the parlance of the old country, superior station, would no doubt be offensive to fastidious gentlemen who have been accustomed to a deference which is paid rather to their wealth or rank than to the man. I see nothing more shocking in this than in the manners of the quaker, who does not pull off his hat to you and call you “Sir.” No offence is intended, and he would be a fool who took offence. I believe that here, and everywhere, the man who is really entitled to respect will receive it.

There has been a strong expectation, with some an exulting anticipation, that, following the example of the revolutionists in France, the chartists of Great Britain and the repealers of Ireland would succeed in establishing a republic in each of those islands. The coercion resorted to by our Government, seemed to be a conclusive proof that our affairs were in a deplorable state. A newspaper placard with the words “DREADFUL CAM IN IRELAND,” put all the England haters on the eager look-out for news of the storm that was to follow. To those who expressed to me their fears that such might be the result, I did not administer much apparent consolation when I assured them that in our country there was a very general belief that a better constitution was not likely to be had by fighting: that the physical-force chartists had put themselves down before the 0024 22 Government professed to put them down; and that the physical-force repealers had already been well thrashed by the moral-force repealers, and had become nothing. “We gained something by fighting,” said one gentleman, “when we threw off the thraldom of England.” I laughed, and said: “Yes, you gained the continuance of the liberty to cowhide your niggers; you threw off the small impost on tea, to tax yourselves to the amount of twenty-five per cent. on all you put on your backs; you emancipated yourselves from our Government, to follow all the absurdities of our commercial policy. We may become republicans sometime or other, but it will not be until we see some republic setting an example of rational legislation.” Men of another class expressed a genuine regret that anything should occur in Great Britain or Ireland to retard the progress of reform, which seemed inevitable, if the middle classes were not alarmed by insane appeals to arms.

We purpose to go to Philadelphia to-day, and thence onward, after staying a couple of days in the Quaker city, to Baltimore, Washington, Cumberland, over the Alleghanies to Pittsburg or Wheeling, and down the river to Louisville, the extreme limit, westward, of our intended journey.

LETTER III.

New Jersey—The Forest—Philadelphia—Cemeteries—The Whig Convention—Journey to Baltimore.

Baltimore , 7 th June , 1848.

We left New York in one of the splendid river steamers. The deck projected considerably over the water, being made flush with the outside of the paddle-wheels, obtaining thus a width of sixty feet. The length was two hundred and forty feet. On this wide platform, room being left for a promenade, were erected the gentlemen's saloon, about thirty feet in length, very handsomely fitted up; the ladies' saloon rather larger and more magnificently furnished, having all the elegance of a drawing-room; and between these two apartments were a dining room, forty-eight feet in length, the engine-house, and kitchen with its adjuncts. Below was an extensive bar-room. Over the entrance to the dining-room was the inscription: “Gentlemen will not take their seats until the ladies are seated.” Our course was across the inner bay, and we had another opportunity of surveying its beauty. We had formerly passed on the north of Staten Island, and we had now to pass it on the west side, through a channel some eighteen miles in length, resembling a river rather than an arm of the sea, the width being seldom more than three hundred yards. The whole western shore of the island was studded with villas, many of them adorned with porticos. A ridge long the centre of the island, richly wooded, strongly reminded me of the Corstorphine Hills near Edinburgh. The New Jersey shore 0026 24 was flatter, but at a little distance from the strait the abundance of well-grown trees gave it very much the look of Trafford Park, near Manchester, as seen from the Eccles side of the Irwell. I could scarcely believe a gentleman who told me that the woods were remnants of ancient forests, full of unwholesome swamps, and not worth reclaiming. The English-like beauty was evidence of sterility to the more experienced eye of the American.

Emerging from this narrow channel, with its home-like banks, into the outer bay of New York, we shot across to Amboy, New Jersey, where we first set our feet on the American continent, and in a few minutes were on the railway and in the forest. On we went for nearly twenty miles without seeing more than little clearings here and there, and these of such barren sand as to be utterly worthless, some of them without a particle of vegetation, and others hearing a miserably thin crop of rye that would scarcely repay the cost of reaping. There were some orchards of peach-trees, however, which seemed thriving. There was not, barren as the tract was, wanting beauty of a certain sort. Sometimes the forest assumed the appearance of a copse of underwood, sometimes of a new and thriving plantation; and, bad as the soil was, there was a vigorous growth of numerous kinds of hardwood trees and a foliage of bright and healthy verdure. Passing through this sterile country we came upon more fertile and leveller land, and the Delaware was before us, a majestic river, two hundred yards wide, rolling its deep waters slowly towards the bay to which it gives its name. The soil was now more fertile, and extensive fields were seen of wheat and Indian corn, but the country was flat and swampy, and the cultivation seemed to be of an inferior sort. Passing down the east bank of the river we arrived opposite Philadelphia, in six hours from our departure from New York. We were soon ferried across, and at tea in the United States Hotel, the 0027 25 waiters not Irishmen and Germans, but blacks, of various shades of colour and various indications of intelligence.

Philadelphia, like New York, lies between two rivers, the Delaware (we thought of the De-la-warres of Manchester) and the Schuylkill, but the New York rivers are arms of the sea, and thus more important to commerce. Philadelphia has not increased so rapidly as New York. The inhabitants, to use Mr. Brooks's comparison, have got into their houses and put things straight. There is not such pulling down and building up as there is in the northern metropolis, but there is a great number of new and good buildings going on, the streets bear evidence that many have recently been erected, and the population is steadily advancing. It has not such a country opened up behind it as New York has, but it is the port and the mart of a beautiful and productive state, having a population of nearly two millions. Its canal and railroad to the west will secure the progress of its trade; its command of coal is causing the establishment of numerous small manufactures; and its quietness and beauty, and its comparative healthiness, are making it the residence of retired capitalists from the south. The streets have much greater liveliness than I expected, considering their stiff regularity. The private dwellings are elegant and substantial, and the liberal use of white marble in the steps and door-pillars give many of them an air of great magnificence. The public buildings have not so much magnificence as I expeoted from their valuable and durable material. The Custom House, formerly the United States Bank, has indeed a massive white marble portico at each end, like the Parthenon, but the sides are of whitened brick, without either columns or pilasters, and the interior is gloomy and dirty looking. The centre building of the Girard College, columned on all sides, is a Parthenon reproduced, and grows upon the eye till it becomes magnificent. To the Post Office and Exchange Buildings, also of 0028 26 marble, the term elegant would be more appropriate. We visited, with a feeling of reverence, the old City Hall, where the declaration of independence was signed, and one of strong regret that the noble men who vindicated the freedom of their own race, had not provided for the future, if not the immediate emancipation of their fellow-men of another colour, and thus rescued their country from what is at once a serious calamity and a deep stain. The small square behind the hall is filled with fine trees, and many of the principal long and wide streets are similarly graced, the effect, under a bright sun, being exceedingly refreshing.

I had expressed to an old schoolfellow my disappointment at the appearance of the country between New York and Philadelphia. “Show me,” said I, “some good trees, some good wheat, some good Indian corn.” “You shall see them all; aye, and shall admire them, too,” he said. He drove us out in the direction of Laurel Hill, and I was again struck with the English appearance of the scenery—of decorated English scenery, such as is to be seen in the immediate neighbourhood of a nobleman's park; and here there is not merely the semblance of fertility. A rich loamy clay produced good clover, good pasture, good wheat, good Indian corn, and beautiful trees, especially the elms, maples, white oaks, walnuts, and chestnuts. It was England under a warmer sun—our own land with a little more luxuriance of growth upon its surface. A pleasant undulation rendered the whole more park-like. Our drive extended to the Cemetery, which occupies a steep bank over-looking the Schuylkill, the hollow being so filled with trees of the richest foliage as almost to hide the noble river from sight. Here I was compelled to confess that nothing more beautiful in trees had I ever witnessed. It was not their size, although in that way they were not to be despised, but it was the freshness and vigour of the vegetation which I so much admired. Nothing was stunted, nothing “scrimped” of its 0029 27 fair proportions. There was vegetable life in its very perfection. On our return, we visited the Fairmont water works, from the elevated reservoirs of which we had a splendid view of Philadelphia. Forcing pumps raise the water of the Schuylkill ninety feet, at the rate of twenty millions of gallons in the twenty-four hours. A liberal use is made of this supply in watering the streets and washing the fronts of the houses; and, should more be needed, as the population increases, double the quantity might be easily had from the pure and abundant waters of the river, or brought from a few miles further up, should increasiug manufactures, encouraged by the abundanace of iron and coal, contaminate them.

I visited another cemetery in this city, called “Ronaldson's” in the olden maps. Ronaldson, who was a type-founder, a native of the vicinity of Edinburgh, had been applied to by one of his workmen for a loan of eight pounds, to enable him to bury one of his children, and found that it was principally for burial fees. He said,—“It is a shame that working men should be put to such expense; bury the child in that field, and I will have it made into a regular grave yard.” This was done. The ground was enclosed, and trees were planted, which are now in great beauty. Amongst the marble monuments one was inscribed to the memory of “Helen, the wife of John Cochran”—my sister. When I stood beside her grave, the scene I had witnessed nearly forty years ago, when she left her native home, came vividly into my recollection. She was going to reside with our elder brother, David, then an engineer in Philadelphia, afterwards the Fulton of the great western river navigation. Amidst the deep grief at parting with one so dearly beloved, my brother John hastily declared his intention of going with her. My mother exclaimed in a tone of agony: “Are all my bairns going to leave me?” My brother did not leave her. Up to that time there had not been a death in 0030 28 our closely knit together family. Now, the graves of a household are far asunder; the father's and the mother's on their native vale of the Clyde, one son's on the banks of the Hudson, a daughter's and a son's on the Schuylkill, and another daughter's on the Ohio.

We had taken up our abode at the United States Hotel, which happened to be the principal rendezvous of delegates to the great Whig Convention, held to decide who, of that party, should be brought forward as a candidate for the presidentship. I never saw, in an assemblage of three or four hundred, so many fine, tall, noble-looking men. It might have seemed that their constituents had chosen them, as the Israelites did Saul, for their stature. One half of the number overlooked me, although I have not usually need to look up to many. Some dozen were about six feet two, two or three were six feet four, and two were six feet six. The under part of the house, American fashion—and, in hot weather, a very comfortable fashion—was one great open hall, the promenade and the place for discussion. Here paced, stately, the tall delegates in deep discourse on the merits of the candidates to be proposed. As the talk became more animated, they stopped, and groups gathered around. The casual remark swelled into a speech; more gathered round; there must be a reply, and it also must be a speech. The hearers rally round their favourites. Each orator forms the centre of a crowd; each is speaking from his own “stump”—till all is confusion. Then a voluntary dispersion of each little distinct mob is made. The stately walk is resumed and the calm discussion. Anon, somebody stops in warmth and speaks—there is a ring; some other person forms his ring; there are ten separate speakers to ten separate mobs. The absurdity is seen, loud laughter is heard—the stately walk is resumed; and in ten minutes more, ten men have again a circle round each, to be broken up with laughter once more, and once more resumed.

0031 29

We did not take a very warm interest in the subjects of these discussions. General Cass had previously been nominated by the democrats. The whigs wished to put forward Henry Clay, the champion of their party. The slave question was tabooed altogether at this convention. Clay was a peace man, but a furious protectionist. Cass was a free trader, but a furious man of war. At home our peace men are all free traders—our free traders are all peace men. The principles seem inseparable—peace promoting trade and trade promoting peace. Cass would admit English goods at a low duty, but would eagerly take Cuba from Spain, and Canada from England. Clay would oppose conquest and annexation, but he would tax everybody to protect some little manufacture which holds up its sickly frame and says: “Nourish me till I become a giant.” I said to some of the gentlemen:—“It would be a very curious thing, in this great republic of yours, if the bitterness between your two great parties should run so high as to induce you to join together and elect a man who belongs to neither. You whigs will, very probably, set General Taylor's military reputation against Henry Clay's statesmanship to gain the votes of democrats who approve of the Mexican war. You will have a compromise president—a man whose only recommendation to both parties is that he has not hitherto belonged to either. In our country we think that the best sovereign is the one who the least meddles with party; and the probability is that, as the democrats will not let you have a whig, and as you will not have a democrat, you will so far follow our example as hereafter to choose one who is known to have no opinions at all” Before we left Philadelphia we had come to the conclusion that the soldier would be preferred to the statesman—that, the appeal to the vulgar love for military glory would conciliate many of the war-loving democrats—and that Taylor, B 0032 30 a man unheard of except for his success in the field of destruction, would be president of the republic.

The population of Philadelphia, which at the time of the declaration of independence was short of 6,000, had increased to 228,691 in 1840, and is now more than 250,000. For this number there are 150 churches, a much larger proportion to the population than we have in Manchester; so that it does not seem that the absence of State aid to the building and endowment of places of religious worship has had much effect in hindering the supply. It would be presumption in one who has been so short time a visitor to say anything as to the religion and the morality of the city; but I can safely say that the external observance of the Lord's Day was probably as strict as it is to be found in Edinburgh and Glasgow; and that if there be vice, as there must be everywhere, there is a decent concealment of its grosser manifestations.

Railways come right into the centre of the city along the middle of two of the widest streets, but the engines are detached at the outskirts and horses substituted. I have observed as we passed through villages that the rails were on the level of the common road and run along the lines of the streets. I thought it would be well if the “charters” of the various companies contained the late Richard Potter's clause that no railways should be on the level of common roads; but I was assured that accidents very seldom occur.

On Tuesday afternoon we took our departure from Philadelphia to Baltimore. Our course was down the river Delaware to Newcastle, a distance of thirty-five miles. We again remarked the exceedingly English character of the scenery, especially on the Pennsylvania side, and I could easily comprehend the character that had been given of the State, that it abounded in fertile land, and excelled in the productions of the dairy. From Newcastle we run across, by railway, a distance of sixteen miles, and there we were 0033 31 launched on a little creek called Elk river, for a voyage of some sixty miles down Chesapeake bay. The appearance of this little creek astonished and delighted me. It was completely land-locked, an exquisite little lake, the banks fringed to the water's edge with trees of the richest verdure, and happiest form; little semicircular bays bending out, and little peninsulas jutting in, as if taste herself had dictated the arrangement of the simple materials for pictorial beauty and richness of effect. While gazing on it in rapture, as it presented picture after picture of exquisite beauty, the light being as if made of the very degree that suited the subject illuminated, the sun sunk below the horizon, to the sudden diminution of light, and in half an hour (so short is the twilight in this southern latitude) we were in total darkness. We arrived at Baltimore six hours after our departure from Philadelphia. This alternation of steam-boat and railway conveyance is exceedingly pleasant, and the charges are very moderate, the fare from New York to Philadelphia being 12s. 6d., and the same from Philadelphia to Baltimore.

Finding that the House of Representatives has adjourned till the conclusion of the convention at Philadelphia, and that Washington is almost deserted, we have resolved on proceeding westward at once, following up the course of the Potomac to the Alleghany ridge, and crossing the mountains to Pittsburg. The weather hitherto has been delightful, the heat having been felt oppressive only for a few hours in the middle of the day at Philadelphia on Sunday, when the thermometer was at 85° in the shade. We are told that persons coming from England do not feel the first summer's heat so oppressive as the second. Perhaps we of the old country are the better able to bear heat from having been spared the infliction of a winter when the thermometer stands ten degrees below zero. Our individual experience has been that of a temperature exceedingly favourable for 0034 32 a pleasure excursion, although, when I have seen men hoeing Indian corn, under the ardent sun at noon-day, I have not had the slightest inclination to join them in their rural labour. Musquitos have not yet introduced themselves to our notice, and we are told that they are not troublesome till the height of hot weather, untempered by breezes, of August. By that time we shall be ready to leave such annoyances behind us.

LETTER IV.

Baltimore—A Winding Railway—Harper's Ferry—Crossing the Alleghanies—The Monangahela.

Monangahela Hotel. Pittsburg , 10 th June , 1848.

Baltimore claims to be the fourth city in the States in point of population, which was 102,313 in 1840, being a few hundreds in advance of New Orleans, standing the next in rank. In ten years more Cincinnati, in the free State of Ohio, will have greatly outstripped both of those slave cities. Baltimore has much of the sea-port look, but contains, like New York and Philadelphia, a great proportion of capital dwellings. It has the most magnificent monument to the memory of Washington which the United States possess. It is a column of white marble 160 feet in height. There is another handsome monument which I could not see without deep pain. It is erected to the memory of the officers 0035 33 who fell in the attack on the city by the British army, in 1814. The warfare then waged against the States was not justified by necessity, was characterised by the wanton and irritating attempt, at the defenceless capital, to destroy a national building, usually respected in contests between civilised nations; and it revived and perpetuated, amongst our transatlantic brethren, that bitter war-spirit, engendered by the revolution, which was beginning to fade away.

The view of the surrounding country from an eminence is beautifully undulating and, spite of slavery, very English. It happens that this tobacco-growing State is also a great wheat-growing country, and in Baltimore and its neighbourhood there are upwards of seventy flour mills. I believe that wherever the soil and climate are favourable to wheat they are unfavourable to the existence of slavery. Delaware has nearly cleansed itself from the stain, the corn growing part of Maryland is preparing to follow the good example, and although the gentlemen of the south of Virginia constitute the most influential of the non-abolitionists, there are symptoms of revolt in the northern division of the State, where slavery, if it be not utterly profitless, yields no return equivalent to the opprobrium incurred. Nor are there men wanting who would make some sacrifice of pecuniary interest rather than be charged with injustice, even although they are not yet prepared to acknowledge that there is injustice in man holding property in man. I shall have other opportunities of making observations on this subject. In the meantime, I rejoice that in this fair portion of God's creation—so much fairer than I had anticipated—there is a reasonable prospect of the speedy arrival of a time when all who tread its soil shall be free. In skirting along the border of the regions afflicted with the moral contamination I gave a sigh to the oppressed, and to those who feel that they are instruments of oppression although they have not yet acquired the courage necessary to emancipate themselves 0036 34 from the degradation of holding property in their fellowmen. Mercy is twice blessed; it blesses him who gives and him who receives. Slavery is twice cursed; it curses alike him who suffers and him who inflicts. This is beginning to be acknowledged, and the acknowledgment of the disease will, in time, lead to the cure.

We intended to go from Baltimore to Washington to see and to converse with some of the celebrities of that capital; we had letters of introduction to the President, and to some of the most distinguished men of the Senate and House of Representatives, but as both branches of the legislature had adjourned on account of the holding of the Whig Convention, and as the officials were likely to avail themselves of a few days' absence, we resolved to proceed westward. We left Baltimore by the “cars,”— i. e. , the railway carriages. Emerging from the dusty streets, we came to higher ground, which, with gentle undulations, stretches inwards from the bay. We were now seeing a country not from a river or from the sea, but as we were passing through it. A nearer view of the fields certainly did not render them more attractive. The remaining stumps suggested the idea of obstruction and difficulty in cultivation. I could not imagine the ploughman cheerily whistling as he held the plough, but fretting and fuming at the tarnal obstructions. But still there were the remnants of the ancient forests in every variety of beauty and form, as if planted expressly to gratify and refresh the eye. At one of the stopping-places—stations they cannot be called—where a small river swept in a graceful curve round a meadow, enclosed by well-wooded heights, I was reminded of some of the choicest bits of landscape that can be found on our Shakspere's own Avon. An American gentleman, though pleased that an Englishman could admire anything in the new country, was astonished at my expressions of delight. “Yes,” said he, “it would look considerable well if it were not for the trees.” 0037 35 We were soon in a narrow valley and were obviously ascending. By and by, rocks, high and with trees growing in their fissures, began to hem in our path on each side; now an opening resembled the Esk below Langholm by sylvan Canonbie; then we were in a wild Highland glen. Upwards and upwards we went till our river become a trout stream, with little rocky linns, and here and there tiny pools where “a lang-legged callant” in a blue kilt, catching minnows, would have been appropriate to the scene. And then came winding after winding of our little stream, and our railroad faithfully followed them all, now to the right, now to the left, in all imaginable curves and all imaginable gradients, very beautiful certainly but excessively rough and shaky and jumpy to the passengers, who began to long for a return once more to the unpicturesque monotony of the level and the straight. At one place we had a semicircular curve to the right with a radius of fifty yards, and then one to the left of the same radius and extent. I thought of the railway down the valley of Todmorden, where, for the attainment of the straight line, every spur from the steep hill side is tunnelled through, and every ravine is crossed by a high bridge.

At length we escaped from the narrow defile, and I thought that, in the manner of our own country, we should find ourselves on a heath-covered hill, or some drearily-extended Langwhang Moor. But we had only come to the shedding of the waters, woody as ever, the brook as winding as the one we had left, the railway faithfully taking all its curves and all its gradients, now rounding away on one side, now on the other, till the valley began to widen and to present to us clearings from the forest, producing wheat and Indian corn, growing up amongst the stumps. The country improved as we went on, and just before the sun went down we came upon a larger river, and a scene lay before us of singular beauty, resembling the valley of the Tweed near 0038 36 Melrose, the resemblance aided by a blue ridge like the Eildon hills. I had again occasion to lament the short twilight, and in the dark we were hurried on to Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, a place famed in America for its grand and picturesque scenery, and where we had determined to stop that we might, next day, compare our own impressions with those of the people whom we had come to visit.

At the Astor House, in New York, at the United States Hotel, in Philadelphia, and at the United States Hotel, in Baltimore, the gong was sounded at seven in the morning, the signal for at least fifty persons sitting down to breakfast—the first of a succession, at half hours' intervals, of breakfasters. At the United States at Harper's Ferry, about the same number sat down at six, and made room for a like company at half-past six. Before this early meal I was out to see the famed confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah. Previously I had seen splendid scenery where I had expected none; here I had expected great grandeur, and was disappointed. The rocks were not so high, the rivers were neither so broad nor so full as I expected. But the anticipated grandeur grew upon me. I found by pacing the railway bridge—a wooden tunnel—that the Potomac was 250 yards in width; I saw, by comparison, that the Shenandoah must be 150 yards wide; I learned that the perpendicular rock, facing the inn, was 300 feet in height, and that the woody ridge that crowned those stupendous rocks was nearly 900 feet high; and thus, by degrees, I obtained a perception of the promised magnificence. The two rivers were, with equal grandeur, hemmed in and confined, and the long stretch, after their waters were united, had, if possible, an aspect of still greater grandeur and majestic beauty. Mr. Brooks and I afterwards ascended a high rocky point behind the inn, where we looked down on the river and its two forks. The view up the Shenandoah reminded me, though its stream was three times larger, of 0039 37 the Clyde, at Auld-Brig-End, near Lanark, and I could see the place where Cartland Crags might have been, if the Americans had possessed a Michael Scott, to command obedience to his behests on the part of a powerful, but ill-spoken-of personage.

At the inn we found an obliging gentleman, the agent of a company who had purchased a quantity of land, and 1,700 horses' power of waterfall, on the Shenandoah, with the capacity of being easily increased to 2,500. They intend to erect a paper mill, and woollen factory, and offer facilities to other persons to erect factories. There are some power-loom cloths made, principally by women, the wages expected by men being more than the manufacturers can afford to give. The women earn from 10s. 6d. to 12s. 6d. a week. The expense of living is not more than one-half of what it is in Manchester, so that, although the wages are not high, they give a greater command over the necessaries of life. A portion of the waters of the Potomac is applied to the machinery used in the works established by the government for the manufacture of fire arms, but a very much greater power might be commanded for spinning and weaving when there can be a corresponding command of labour. No great amount of expenditure would be required to create a water-power equal to that of 10,000 horses, and there is a strong desire to rival New as well as Old England in manufactures. Breakfasting at six we were ready for dinner by twelve, and at one o'clock we entered the “cars,” and again went westwards towards the Alleghany Mountains.

For a short time we proceeded between the Potomac and the high rocky and woody ridge on its left bank, from whence we diverged through a country pretty well cleared, but not very well cultivated. We again came upon the Potomac, and were astonished and delighted with the variety of beauty that presented itself in constant succession. B 2 0040 38 At one place we had the Tay, with its hill of Kinnoul, brought to remembrance; at another, the richest part of Wharfdale; at another, the links of the Forth, the railroad following its grand windings; the banks, however, being high and wooded, scarcely ever allowing us a view of a quarter of a mile before us. Sometimes these banks came so close to the river as only to leave room for the railroad on one side, and the Chesapeake canal on the other, and sometimes they receded, leaving half a mile of cultivated land on each side of the river. The grand, the rich, the beautiful, the riant , followed in constant change. I scarcely regretted that there was little evidence of improvement, little evidence of good cultivation, and the frequent proof that the clearings were reverting rapidly to their original forest state; the discovery had been made that it was not profitable to employ slave-labour in cultivating the land. In a few years Germans of indefatigable industry, and of economy carried to the extreme, will obtain little patches, and cultivate them like a garden. These men are the hewers of wood and drawers of water now, and their descendants will be the owners of the land, the water, and the woods, and the Potomac will be a more beautiful Rhine.

At six o'clock we arrived at Cumberland and left the cars for heavy stage coaches, in which we were to cross the Alleghanies. Our first ascent was along the banks of a rapid stream, climbing up and up for miles and miles together. I thought we must surely, with such a steep ascent so long together, be nearly attaining the summit, when after some two or three hours' painful jolting over a road rougher than any that has existed in England these last forty years, we began to descend again, the wheels all locked—again to ascend for hours together, then to descend, then again to ascend—tired beyond all endurance, unable to sleep from the frequent jolting, and unable to keep awake from excessive fatigue. I never in my life, and I have travelled much, 0041 39 encountered such a journey, and Mr. Brooks was almost beaten into a jelly. Imagine Pendle Hill thrown down alongside Blackstone Edge, and Rivington Pike alongside of that—that half-a-dozen of Alderley Edges have been tumbled down on each side of this triple ridge—cover them with closely-growing wood, from the bottom of the deepest ravine to the top of the highest ridge—cut a line of road through the trees, right over the hills, and right down the hollows between them—macadamize this perilous way with stones the size of a man's head—you will then have some idea of a journey of some fifty-six miles which occupied from six o'clock in the evening to seven o'clock in the morning. We did get a transient view of the western country as we were upon the last ridge, but tired and sleepy, I grumbled out to Mr. Brooks that the view over Nottinghamshire from the high ground near Newark was worth half-a-dozen of it. We found, on our arrival at Union Town, that our caravan consisted of seven coaches full, each having six passengers and each drawn by four capital horses. Having breakfasted, we pushed on to Brownsville, where we went on board a steamer, and sailed down the Monangahela, there about a hundred yards wide. We were now in the coal country, and on the steep banks of this placid river, from Brownsville to Pittsburg—a distance of forty miles—were seen a succession of small tunnels running horizontally into the hill side, from whence the coal was discharged into boats upon the river. No steam-engines, no horse gins to raise the coal or pump out the water; the seams cropped out on the banks ready to be dug out. I understood that the price on board was from twopence halfpenny. to threepence per cwt. We saw flat-bottomed boats—a sort of barge—square, shallow chests, without lids, being filled for New Orleans, distant more than two thousand miles, where the chests are broken to pieces for fire wood and other purposes. Iron was in abundance in the same locality. 0042 40 There can be no doubt that, with abundance of coal and iron, the western part of Pennsylvania will become a great manufacturing district, at least in articles in the price of which labour is not the principal constituent. From the conversation on board the steamer I could learn that more “protection” was earnestly coveted, and that there was no little jealousy of the northern states as monopolisers of the right to tax the whole republic for their own especial benefit. A person who had been very civil to us, complained grievously that the last tariff was ruining “the cut nail trade” of Pittsburg. “I have no objection,” he said, “to low duties, but the home manufactures of the country ought not to be destroyed by foreign competition.” I told him he ought to be ashamed to ask protection with coal and iron so cheap and abundant. He said if we opened our markets to American produce, he would not object to our manufactures being received on a moderate duty. I reminded him that our corn laws were repealed, and that there was now no duty on the importation of cotton. “No thanks to you for that,” he said; “You cannot do without our corn and cotton. It is a matter of necessity that you take both. It is not a matter of necessity with us to take your cut-nails.” “How many makers of cut-nails have you?” I asked. “Oh, not a great many.” “How many persons use cut-nails?” “Why, almost everybody.” “Then,” said I, “you tax almost everybody for the benefit of some half-dozen nail-makers.” He could not see that this was argument. Another person complained that the competition of England had made the production of iron rails unprofitable, and that this was a national as well as an individual loss. I endeavoured to show him that the cheapness of iron was a great national gain. I said that ninetenths of the land in the States was lying valueless for want of the means of communication; that every mile of rail would give a new impulse to agriculture and to commerce; 0043 41 and that so far from grumbling at English competition in this particular manufacture, every man who had a particle of patriotism in his bosom ought to rejoice and be thankful that England was thus enriching his country.

We sailed up to Pittsburg under a cloud of smoke worse than we have that annoyance in Manchester, for it seemed as if unable to find its way upwards from the valley, and a crowd of large steamers, each with two great funnels, kept augmenting the density of the cloud.

LETTER V.

Pittsburg—Protection—Beauty of the Ohio—Charles Dickens—Cincinnati.

Cincinnati , 13 th June , 1848.

Pittsburg presents every indication of increasing prosperity. Above it and around it is a fertile and improving country, the produce of which may be conveyed either to the lakes and thence to the great port of New York, or down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans; and it has great store of iron and coal. It must be commercially important, and it may become largely manufacturing if the labour of its population be directed into a course in which it does not come into competition with cheaper foreign labour. With cheap materials, close at hand, it can find profitable employment for its workmen, without making 0044 42 Sheffield whittles, or “cut-nails.” With 60,000 inhabitants in close vicinity, it will be able, by and by, to demand protection, which means that unprofitable labour should be made remunerative, by taxing the country to make up the difference. It is to be hoped that the agricultural consumer will see that while it is better that he should get a certain quantity of heavy iron implements for four bushels of wheat from Pittsburg, than that he should give five bushels for the same quantity from England, he will also see that it is better that he should give four bushels for light iron articles from England, than to give five bushels for them from Pittsburg. I can scarcely meet a manufacturer of any kind, who does not think it necessary and right, that the country should support him in whatever way he may choose to invest his capital or direct his labour. If a man with a small capital, instead of buying a farm and raising wheat in the growth of which no English farmer can compete with him, buys a clay-pit and commences a pottery, he demands protection against the produce of the cheap labour of Staffordshire. He diverts his capital from the employment of profitable labour to the employment of unprofitable labour, and then asks his country to make up the loss. “If,” I said to one manufacturer, “you take a blacksmith from the making of horse-shoes, by which he earns a dollar and a half or two dollars a day, and set him to make needles, by which, in competition with the cheap labour of England, he can earn only half a dollar, is there not only an individual but a national loss?” He acknowledged that there would be, but would not allow that a general rule could be drawn from the particular case.

The most interesting view of the new towns in the west is to regard them not as they are, but as what they may become. Pittsburg has wide streets, fast being filled up with substantial stores and good dwelling-houses, and gives the promise of soon becoming a great city. The Monangahela 0045 43 Hotel seems to have been built with reference to the future rather than the present. It is on the model of the Astor House, in New York, with improvements. It has twenty-six large and handsomely furnished public rooms, immense corridores, and 225 bed-rooms, with 300 beds. The custom of all dining at an ordinary, a table d' hôte , enables the occupier to give magnificent repasts at half the price which they would cost in England. Nobody remains in the refectory after breakfast, dinner, or tea; the ladies retire to their magnificent drawing-room, and the gentlemen to their large parlours, or letter-writing room, or news-room. There is no loss of time at repasts; but there is no indecent hurry. Tourists complain that there is no conversation during meals; but there is abundance of it elsewhere in the house. If Englishmen have it not, it is their own fault. They seldom invite conversation, and the American's think them reserved and haughty, and do not wish to come between the wind and their nobility. I think the custom is a good one, of not remaining in a dining-room, redolent of the scents of the cuisine, where there are other handsomer and airier apartments to retire to.

We had been told that there was no reliance to be placed on announcements of the sailing of steamers. We did not find it so. There are regular packets which keep to the announced time of sailing, and we found the Messenger more prompt in this respect than some of the steamers between Liverpool and Greenock, or from Fleetwood to Ardrossan. At eleven o'clock on the forenoon of Saturday, we were moving down a river which, there of the width of the Thames at London, flows onwards more than two thousand miles ere it discharges itself into the sea—an internal stream nearly as long in its majestic course as the distance from our western shore to the continent of America! There was something exciting in the thought; and the man whose imagination was not aroused by the mere consciousness of 0046 44 such a fact, would pass unmoved over Marathon and Iona. Neither my compagnon-du-voyage nor myself were disposed to regard the river as a mere utility—but even if it were, what a canal this Ohio was! The very coal-seams (for coal is your great advancer of civilization), cropping out on the face of the banks, were a sight worth looking at. We did not expect much beauty on a large slowly-flowing river, with its narrow margin of meadows hemmed in by steep banks. We even expected a tiresome continuity of the same forms, broken clay-bluffs and rounded sand-hills, following each other till the eye sunk fatigued under the infliction. A glance at Dickens's Notes, reprinted in New York and sold for twelvepence-halfpenny, did not tend to raise my expectations. Reading his description again, after I have had the opportunity of testing its truth, I am tempted to transcribe it as a curious specimen of the author's utter indifference to the beautiful in scenery under which he remained sitting in “the little stern gallery” of the ladies' cabin, rather than mounting on the paddle box or on the upper deck, to see that which it is to be presumed he went to see. He says:—

“A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than in others: and then there is usually a green island, covered with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally, we stop for a few minutes, may be to take in wood, may be for passengers, at some small town or village (I ought to say city, every place is a city here); but the banks are for the most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, which, hereabout, are already in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life or trace of human footstep; nor is anything seen to move about them but the blue jay, whose colour is so bright, and yet so delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At lengthened intervals, a log cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat, 0047 45 which is full of great unsightly stumps, like earthy butchers' blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared: the felled trees lying yet upon the soil, and the log-house only this morning begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler leans upon his axe or hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the world. The children creep out of the temporary hut, which is like a gipsy tent upon the ground, and clap their hands and shout. The dog only glances round at us, and then looks up into his master's face again, as if he were rendered uneasy by any suspension of the common business, and had nothing more to do with pleasurers. And still there is the same eternal foreground. The river has washed away its banks, and stately trees have fallen down into the stream. Some have been there so long, that they are mere dry grisly skeletons. Some have just toppled over, and having earth yet about their roots, are bathing their green heads in the river, and putting forth new shoots and branches. Some are almost sliding down as you look at them. And some were drowned so long ago, that their bleached arms start out from the middle of the current, and seem to try to grasp the boat, and drag it under water. Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine takes its hoarse sullen way.”

What might be expected, after this description, but an unbroken solitude and an eternal monotony relieved only by an occasional deformity? The map of the country through which the river flows might show that a considerable population, and immense tracts of cultivated land, are close upon its banks; a look at the “river guide” might show that between Pittsburg and Cincinnati there are no fewer than forty seven landing places, most of them at rising towns and villages; and it might thence be concluded that the solitude is not exactly such as Daniel Boone and Charles Dickens found it. But still there might be expected the absence of all beauty; still it might be expected, from Dickens's description, that the eye would be more strongly arrested by the mere dry grisly skeletons of trees than by luxuriant foliage; still it might be expected that, so far as the beautiful and the picturesque were concerned, 0048 46 there was nothing to be found between the Dan of Pittsburg and the Beersheba of Cincinnati—nothing to tempt a passenger to leave the ladies' cabin for the roof of the deck. The passengers do not sit sociably after dinner in the cabin—don't they? Why, no man with an eye in his head could sit still to pass unseeing a single turn in this Belle Riviere , as the French truly named it. Constantly winding, every quarter of a mile presents a new form of beauty. At one place we have steep hills on each side, clothed with trees growing as if they never could grow old; at another the ends of ridges, with magnificent monarchs of the forest filling the hollows between them; at another the high banks receding half a mile or a mile on each side, presenting a combination of lawns and trees such as might be expected around an English nobleman's seat; at another islands of surpassing beauty; at another vineyards and orchards; and at every opening, clearings which indicate the cultivation that is going on behind. I grudged every moment spent at the breakfast, dinner, or tea table. I spent hours alone at the highest elevation, where the steersman, perched aloft for a good long look-out, steered the long light steamer through its tortuous course; and after the brief twilight, I felt as one might feel after listening a whole day to the grandest and most beautiful strains of music, sorry that it was over, yet fatigued with the very intensity of pleasure enjoyed. The next day was Sunday, and we enjoyed the same succession of splendid pictures; and I thought of the time when, fresh from the Creator's hand, the earth was seen rejoicing in its loveliness. And then the sunset! It was worth while to cross the great Atlantic for that sight alone. We were in a bend of the river, seemingly completely land-locked. When the sun went down behind the western bank, a deep shade was thrown on the trees on that side, while those on the opposite bank were of a brighter and livelier hue; and then the shadow went upwards from 0049 47 the bottom of the deep slope, and upwards, with a distinctly marked line, till that bank was also in the shade. And then the bright white clouds—as white as snow—began to change to all manner of bright colours, the orange predominating, in a gorgeousness of which the imitative art could convey no idea; and all this splendour was reflected by the little inland lake—not perfectly, for that would have been a repetition, but reflected from a liquid surface slightly in motion, the colour becoming more golden till there lay before us “a living sheet of molten gold.” Early next morning we found the vessel, lying in-shore in a fog so dense that we could not see ten yards on each side,—strange contrast to the scene of the preceding night. Perhaps in such a mist Charles Dickens might have come down the river, only he does not say so. The sun soon dispelled the fog, and then the river was before us again in all its glory, widening, and its high banks receding—the white houses and villages, and small cities increasing in number, as we went onwards.

Our steam vessel was so constructed as to draw only four feet of water, and, even with this shallow draught, was frequently in danger of running aground on sand banks. The navigation of the Monongahela on which we had sailed down from Brownsville to Pittsburg had been improved by the erection of locks, through which vessels could pass where there were shallows, but nothing had been done for the improvement of the Ohio, which, from Pittsburg to Louisville, a distance of more than six hundred miles, notwithstanding its great width, had not depth enough for the large steamers for New Orleans and St. Louis. The river is not confined to any one state, but flows between the boundary of Virginia and Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, &c. Each state has a deep interest in its improvement, but it cannot be expected that any one state should improve for the benefit 0050 48 of all the others. Nor could it be easily arranged in what proportion each should bear its share in the expenditure. The whole confederation of states, eastern and western, would benefit by the improvement of the navigation. The river is a great national highway and ought to be improved at the national expense. But the northern states want harbours, and claim “appropriations” from the general revenues; and the southern states want harbours and river improvements, and they claim “appropriations;” and thus the Ohio, which might be made the first navigable river in the world, remains incapacitated, during the greater part of the summer months, for the reception of vessels drawing more than four feet of water.

In the afternoon of Monday we arrived at Cincinnati, Here we took leave of two gentlemen—a gentleman is the same all over the world—who in return for our talk of the authors and public men of the old country gave us much interesting information relative to the institutions, and especially of the recently-admitted state of Iowa, for the reception of emigrants from Europe. We experienced great civility from a number of persons on board the steamer, and although there was a little too much importunity to make us admire the Ohio, and a familiarity from some who in our own country would not have ventured upon it, there was so evident a desire to oblige that we could neither take offence nor draw ourselves up in a haughty reserve. We were amused at Cincinnati by the porters who came on board to take luggage on shore. Each of these men has a light waggon and a pair of horses, and they are very independent sort of persons. One of them, a tall good looking young man, of about six feet two, well-dressed, but with his coat off and apron on, coolly walking up and down in our handsome saloon, took his cigar from his mouth, and, with a patronising air, said: “Now, gentlemen, I am quite ready to take your luggage.” Another, 0051 49 a squat old Irishman, quietly sat down beside Mr. Brooks in the cabin, and looking him kindly and complacently in the face, as a brother magistrate would in asking him to dinner, said, “Shall I take your trunks for you?”

We take the steamer to-day to Louisville, intending to return here and stay a day on our way northwards to Lake Erie. We have been much tempted to go down the Ohio, up to St. Louis on the Mississippi, and up the Illinois and on to Chicago, but the time to which we have limited ourselves will not permit our taking so extended a route. We have at length found two or three persons who acknowledge that the weather is warm , and we are beginning to speculate how we shall feel when there is an acknowledgment that it is hot. The evening air is balmy and delicious; but we do not feel, at noonday, at all desirous to go out a-hoeing potatoes.

LETTER VI.

Cincinnati—Irish Labourer—Bowie Knifes—The Ohio—Louisville—Slavery—Soil and Wages.

Louisville, Kentucky , 20 th June , 1848.

Cincinnati being a point to which we should have occasion to return, we postponed our survey of that city and its neighbourhood, and resolved to proceed onwards to the south western extremity of our journey. In walking out, we saw a man shovelling down large round stones, none of them less than a man's fist, upon a street which had been macadamized, but which was sadly out of repair. I asked him 0052 50 if they were not to be broken down into smaller and more angular pieces, remarking that they never could consolidate in that state. “Faith, sir,” said he, “I know that, and if I was my own master, I would order myself to break them.” “You are from Ireland, I hear.” “Indeed, I am.” “Have you any wish to return?” “Return! Would you have a man go from a dollar a-day to eightpence? I left Ireland because I was turned out of my little farm for voting against the will of my landlord. I would not go back even if I could get my farm again, much less to work at eightpence a-day with dear taties and meal.” “You can live cheap here, I suppose?” “I pay two dollars a-week, and am well lodged, and get whatever I like to eat.” “So that after paying for your meat and lodging, you have 16s. left?” “It is more than that, sir; it is 16s. 8d.” “Can you stand the heat?” “Indeed, I can sir; it gives me no trouble at all. I wish it was summer all the year round, for I get a dollar a-day in the summer, and I get only 80 cents (3s. 4d.) in the winter.” “Then this is a rare place for a working man.” “Deed it is, sir; a man that can do hard rough work, and can keep from the drink, need never look behind him.” At a short distance from the place where this Irishman was at work, we saw, in a distance of a hundred and fifty yards, four glass cases, set out on the pavement, filled With pistols of all kinds, murderous bowie knives, and large clasp-knives with long dagger-like blades. The habit continues with many in the new communities in the west, of carrying about with them these instruments of destruction, and many instances occur of their fatal use when the passions are excited. Time was, though quaker experience is to the contrary, when the strong hand and the keen knife might be needed to guard the head; but no Englishman can regard as harmless this remnant of barbarism, or look without a feeling of either detestation or deep regret on a state of public opinion which can find any 0053 51 apology for the use of the pistol or dagger in avenging what the perpetrator may deem to be an insult.

We left Cincinnati on Tuesday forenoon in a new boat of great dimensions, and of great elegance in all its interior arrangements, named the Benjamin Franklin. It was something to find that name thus honoured in a country which, like our own, is carried away from sober thinking by the glare of a false glory. On board this splendid batiment , in a splendidly finished cabin, two hundred and forty feet in length, we steered down a river, the waters of which, seventy years ago, were broken only by the oar of the wild Indian. The scenery below the city closely resembled what we had previously seen in its general characteristics, but the high ground receded more from the river; there were more glimpses of cultivated fields, more and snugger-looking detached houses, more villages, more towns, and here and there vineyards on the steep-sloping banks, evidences of the patient industry of the ever-patient and industrious Germans. There was a very good band on board, led by Mr. Tosso, an excellent violinist; and when the splendid chandeliers were lit up, dancing, conducted with great propriety, was commenced, and continued till a late hour. There could not have been a gayer assembly in the old country than on this recently wild-Indian river. We were detained some hours at Utica, a few miles above Louisville, in consequence of some slight defection in the newly-used machinery, and here I was teazed out of all patience by an American, who made great demands for my admiration of his country in general, and this river in particular. “Now,” said I, “here is the way in which America is treated unjustly by English tourists. You will not let them admire silently. You are constantly pressing for admiration. You cannot believe that the Englishman has an eye for either the grand or beautiful. You tire him to death with your constant fishing for praise, and he revenges 0054 52 himself by withholding instead of bestowing it. Your river is both grand and beautiful, but why should you pride yourself about that? You did not make it; you do not even mend it. We might brag of our Clyde, which had not more than eighteen inches of water, but which has been deepened to fourteen feet. If you want to be praised do not be so confoundedly importunate for praise.” “Your English writers do us very great injustice,” said he. “We heaped all possible honours on Dickens, and the ungrateful fellow's only return was abuse.” “He served you right,” I said. “You tried to bribe him to praise, and he would not agree to your terms; and no doubt he felt besides that you bestowed honours on the mere novelist, which you would have denied to the patriot or philosopher.” “We bestowed great honours upon your great philosopher, the editor of the Edinburgh Review. ” “And who might he be, pray?” “Why, Dr. Lardner.” “Dr. Lardner!” I said; Dr. Lardner, editor of the Edinburgh Review! Dr. Lardner our great philosopher! Why he was the man who proved that steamers could never cross the Atlantic.” “Neither they have,” he said; “they have to stop at Halifax to take in coal.” There was a laugh at this and I said: “Now there I leave you. You are libelling the mechanical genius not not only of my country, but of your own.” Passing the group a little afterwards, I over-heard some gentlemen remonstrating with him for bringing his country into contempt with the foreigner.

At daylight next morning we were at the landing place at Louisville, and there stood a dear brother whom I had not seen for nearly twenty years, who, broken down by deep affliction, could only silently wring my hand. His eldest son had expired on the previous day, smitten down, in the highest vigour of life, by the hand of an assassin. I had not lamented without cause the practice of carrying instruments 0055 53 of death about the person, ready for use to avenge a presumed or alleged insult. I had the melancholy satisfaction of being in time to follow the earthly remains of my nephew to the grave. When I sat at the bedside of his mother she said: “I never thought that I should see you again, and far less that you should come here to follow my son to the grave and find me dying.” It was but too obvious that she would not survive him many days.

We were now to be a week in a slave state. There were slaves in the fields, slaves in the stores, slaves in the houses, and the children of slaves in the streets, of every variety of indicated intelligence, from the miserable-looking wretch apparently of the very lowest degree of human intellect to him who possessed the European thoughtful cast of countenance. I did not wonder that, self-interest and the prevailing habit of thinking considered, the one was believed to be an inferior race, born to do the work of the dominant whites; but it was impossible to look on the other without astonishment that he should be considered as of an unimprovable race, and without deep sympathy for the degradation to which he is condemned. I was particularly struck with the appearance of one little girl, who had a beautifully-formed head, and whose large mild eye looked appealingly to me, when I gazed upon her, and, when I smiled, the bright sunny beam of intelligence that passed over her dark countenance showed that cultivation alone was wanted to develop the moral and intellectual faculties. We saw slavery in its mildest form. There was not labour in the cane-brake under an almost vertical sun; in a wheat-growing and grazing country there was the assurance of abundance of food; and, in the immediate vicinity of a free state, there was a public opinion repressive of open cruelty. I was told that the poor creatures were happy; I saw that they were light-hearted and thoughtless; but I knew that there was a law to prevent their discovering that they had higher destinies C 0056 54 than the lower animals which shared their labours in the field. I was asked to visit more southerly plantations that I might see how well the black race were kept, but I said that I denied the authority to keep. I saw with pleasure, that there was, in the minds of some, a lurking doubt of the justice of holding fellow-creatures in bondage; and I heard with pleasure, from others, an acknowledgment of the existence of a great social evil, and the expression of a desire that it should be removed. I could only say to the latter, that where there was the will, there was the way.

We have attended a ratification meeting of whigs. The convention at Philadelphia had agreed to put General Taylor forward as a candidate for the presidentship, and the meeting was called to give the citizens an opportunity of giving in their adhesion to that nomination. The hearers were a little more noisy than a similar class would be on a similar occasion in England, and the speakers a little more declamatory. There was more of eulogy on the candidate than of elucidation of principle; and I thought there was too much allusion to the military glory he had achieved, from a party which, very properly, takes its stand on peace principles. One speaker lauded the General because, although he had protested against the Mexican war, he had bravely fought his country's battles; but I thought that a higher morality would not have separated the conscience of the soldier from the conscience of the man, and that killing, under such circumstances, was little better than murder. Another speaker, in an ad captandum appeal, denounced the government for permitting the foreign labourer at sixpence a-day to compete with the labour of freemen, in a free country; perfectly unconscious, he, of the absurdity, while there is so great a demand for productive labour, to enter into such unprofitable competition. The whigs are for peace and protection; the democrats for free-trade and annexation. I had to tell persons of both parties 0057 55 that the country would, by-and-by, require a new political division, and that the real friends of peace amongst the whigs, and the real friends of free-trade amongst the democrats, would have to come out from those whose cry was for war and protection, and form a new party.

We have made several excursions in the neighbourhood of Louisville, and thus have seen part of the fine and extensive valley which extends to Lexington, called, from its productiveness, the garden of the States. On one extensive farm we saw a field containing one hundred acres, all in potatoes. It was supposed that they would bring 25 cents, or twelvepence half-penny, per bushel of 65 lbs, equal to 4s. for our load. The price of new potatoes was two-thirds of a penny a pound. The crop is planted without manure, as are the crops of corn (Indian) and wheat. This would be excessively exhausting were it not that the cattle eat off the clover crop every third or fourth year, and thus keep the land in some “heart.” We should call the wheat a poor crop, the average yield, even on this rich soil, not being more than twenty bushels an acre; whereas, under more liberal cultivation, the yield might be from thirty two to forty. In the immediate vicinity of the city much of the land is in what we should call “market gardens,” on which there is a greater produce. Such land sells, out and out, at from £20 to £30 an acre. The Dutch are the only people who compete with slave labour, and by very hard work, and very penurious living, they contrive to gather together a little money, and to place their children in a position for further advancement. I believe that land might be purchased in the three states of Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky to pay a large return for the capital invested. Extensive tracts, now unprofitable for the production of a filthy weed, are to be obtained cheap, and there are instances of great profits being derived by the cultivators of the soil for the growth of articles of food. 0058 56 But the black stain of slavery rests upon the whole of these states, not only most injuriously affecting their moral and religious condition, but greatly retarding their prosperity. Kentucky is the garden of the republic,—over-grown with weeds, choking up the useful and the beautiful. Free, it would be, comparatively, a second Garden of Eden.

Louisville is not progressing so rapidly as some of the cities in the free states, to which the tide of emigration flows in greater strength. However, although its foundation is in the memory of not very old men, it has now about 40,000 inhabitants, and there are symptoms of continued increase. It is the port for the tobacco and other produce of Kentucky, a very fertile state, and it is sharing with Cincinnati in the salting and packing of pork. A large trade with England would rise up, if that kind of produce could be sent in good condition; but there is not sufficient capital to establish a more immediate communication, and in the delay that takes place at New Orleans the meat is often completely spoiled. There is a large margin for profit were this difficulty overcome. Pork is had for three halfpence a pound; and I tasted some excellent sugar-cured ham which had cost threepence half-penny, and a more common quality is to be had for a penny less.

We have visited the prison for the State of Indiana, which is situated across the river from Louisville. It contains only 125 prisoners, the whole number of persons under sentence in a population of 800,000! They are set to work in yards and workshops as coopers, joiners, blacksmiths, &c., and provisions are so cheap that the sale of the produce of their labour yields a profit to the state of £1,600 a year, after deducting all the expense of their maintenance, including the salaries of their officers. They are not permitted to converse together while at work, and are locked up in separate cells during the night. Some are working in brick-fields outside the walls, and do not attempt to 0059 57 escape. I thought the silent system was carried quite far enough, but I was told in Louisville that the utmost vigilance could not prevent those evil communications which corrupt even good manners and make bad morals worse. The older state of Kentucky, also with above 800,000 inhabitants, has only 160 convicted prisoners, and a considerable profit accrues from their labour, after defraying the cost of their maintenance.

The condition of working people here is on the whole one of considerable comfort. For highly-skilled artificers the wages, called here “compensation,” or “equivalent,” are not much higher than in the mother country, but provisions are very low, and since the filling up or draining of the ponds, which formerly emitted most pestilential effluvia, the town has been healthy. Carpenters earn from 5s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. a day; cabinet-makers, from 6s. 3d. to 7s.; shipwrights, 7s. to 8s. 4d.; blacksmiths, bricklayers, and plasterers, from 6s. 3d. to 7s. 6d.; moulders, from 7s. 3d. to 9s.; and printers, from 7s. to 8s. Flour is 1⅜d. a pound, beef at 2½d. to 3½d., pork 1½d., good black tea at 1s. 9d. to 2s., and good moist sugar at 2½d. The wages of labour and the prices of provisions are much the same in the adjoining states of Ohio and Indiana, where emigrants escape the contamination which is the result of the loose morality of the slave states. If an artisan does not disdain, when out of employment in his own trade, to turn his hand to common day labour, he can earn from three shillings to four shillings and twopence a day. Farm labourers, engaged by the year, have half a dollar, two shillings and a penny of our money, a day with board, or three shillings and threehalfpence without board.

Amongst the lions of Louisville is Mr. James Porter, who stands seven feet eight inches in his stockings, the only man of his height I ever saw with a good head on his shoulders and good legs beneath him. He is much respected, and has been one of the council-men of the city. He 0060 58 told me that Lord Morpeth called upon him at his coffeehouse, and that he was much pleased with his lordship's plain, unpretending manner. He did not like Dickens, who had sent for him. “He had a double gold chain outside his waistcoat,” said Porter, “and such breast-pins, that I thought he looked like one of our river gamblers;” a class of persons who, it seems, particularly affect a show of jewellery.

Here is our turning point. Our journey was intended to be mainly for pleasure, and we are unwilling to incur the pain of witnessing more of a system which was revolting to our feelings. Besides, I confess that I have not sufficient temper calmly to answer sophistications drawn from the assumption that the man with a black skin is an inferior order of creature, intended by the Almighty Father to be the beast of burthen to another who happened to have less colouring matter under the cuticle. We had another reason for not going further south. Coming on a journey of recreation, we had no inclination to place ourselves under a broiling sun, and within reach of the musquitos. Hitherto we have not suffered from the heat, although the thermometer has frequently stood higher than 80°, and the mornings and evenings have been of a delicious temperature. We purpose to start to-morrow for Cincinnati, and to proceed thence, right through the heart of the state of Ohio to Sandusky, on the shore of Lake Erie.

LETTER VII.

Establishment of Manufactures Anticipated—Railroads—The Little Miami—Prospect for Farmers and Small Capitalists.

Urbana, State of Ohio, June 23, 1848.

During our stay at Louisville I had a long conversation with Mr. Hamilton Smith, one of the partners in a company of about a dozen gentlemen who have purchased several thousand acres of land in Indiana, on the north bank of the Ohio, about 120 miles below Louisville. Mr. Smith told me that he had no desire to conceal the fact that they wished to draw capital and population to a part of the western coal-field in which they had a personal interest, but he believed that their own interest would coincide with those who might be disposed to join in the object of bringing that coal into use for manufacturing purposes. He asked if I thought it was likely that English capitalists and English workpeople might be tempted to seek a new field of action?

I said that our spinners and manufacturers were not likely to risk their capital in producing either yarn or goods in a country that required a protective tariff; and that workpeople, before they could be induced to go into a new country would require either a guarantee of employment or payment of the expenses of emigration, or both. “What,” I asked, “would be the chance of success to a spinner or manufacturer who might be disposed to start under the only permanent system, a perfectly free import of foreign manufactured goods?”

0062 60

He said that the Illinois coal-field covered at least 70,000 square miles in the very centre of the Mississippi valley; that it was found, not from 1000 to 2000 feet in the bowels of the earth, but in the hills, and above the ordinary level of the country; that it was reached by drifts instead of shafts—horizontally, not perpendicularly; that the mines were self-draining and self-ventilating, requiring neither railroads nor canals; that the coal, equal in heat-producing power to the best of England, could be produced at four cents per bushel of 80 lbs., or 4s. 6d. per ton; and that the freight of cotton from New Orleans to Indiana was a great deal less than the freight to England.

I acknowledged that cheap coal and cheap freights gave a great advantage to the American manufacturer, but I asked how he accounted for it that the Lowell manufacturers, although they had cheap water power, and were near the market for purchase and for sales, could not compete with us without being held up, like ricketty children in a go-cart, by a protective tariff?

He said that the Lowell manufacturers did successfully compete with us in the heavy goods where the value of the labour was small in proportion to the cost of the raw material, but that water power was generally much more expensive than steam power; that the new factories now erecting in New England are to have steam as a motive power; and that there coal costs five or six times what it costs on the Ohio.

“There can be no doubt,” I said, “that America will ultimately be a manufacturing nation, if she is wise enough to make what she cannot obtain cheaper elsewhere. But supposing you had spinners and manufacturers at Cannelton, and that you had workpeople from England, how are you to induce the latter to remain? A man will not keep toiling in your mills, tied to fixed hours, when he can have good prairie land at five shillings an acre, and be 0063 61 his own master and his own landlord.” “They find workpeople at Lowell,” he said. “Workwomen they do find,” I said; “but not workmen. The farmers' daughters go for a period, earn a few hundred dollars, and then go off and get married. The agricultural excess of population must precede the demand for manufacturing labour. You must have the farmer and the farm-labourer, before you can have for your factories the farmers' daughters and the labourers' daughters. You must put the horse before the cart.” “Well,” said he, “we can do that. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of land, of a good quality, in a free state, as healthy as any in the Union. If your farmers and farm-labourers were to come here they would do well in their own occupations, and, being so near iron and coal, their children, by the time they are fit for labour, would find employment in our rising manufactures.”

Mr. Smith, on the day before I left Louisville, gave me a pamphlet, not quite finished, which he is putting through the press, and I may hereafter have occasion to refer to it; but in the meantime I may say that I have heard ample testimony as to the truth of his remark on the healthiness of Indiana. The winter is not so cold and the summer is not so hot as in Canada. Ague is disappearing as the woods get cleared and the swamps drained. Avoiding the undrained prairie, and the swampy woodland, the small farmer, the farm-labourer, the blacksmith, and the country joiner of England, Scotland, and Ireland, would greatly improve their condition by a removal to that state, and, with care, might become inured to the climate without any very serious previous sickness. Much of the illness suffered is from the want of caution, and much from poverty. A decent house to live in, sheds for horses that they may be found in the morning when wanted, instead of being hunted for through the long wet prairie grass, C 2 0064 62 would save many a fit of ague, and many long hours of deep despondency.

The Ohio at Louisville is of magnificent width, and the rapids, though obstructing its navigation, add much to its beauty. It was something to say, “We have sailed more than six hundred miles down a RIVER, and we might continue our river-voyage for fifteen hundred more!” The immensity of this inland navigation gave a deep interest even to the bare names and figures in a little twopenny map of the Ohio which we had purchased. The perusal helped the imagination to realise the vastness of the distance through which this placid river rolled its waters to the ocean. Animated as it was now by the crowd of steamers, what will it be when, its whole valley from Pittsburg to New Orleans cultivated, and the stain of its slavery washed out, it is filled with a free people!

We left Louisville on Wednesday, June 21. The wheat harvest had commenced and everywhere the scythe was at work. On our return to Cincinnati we had the opportunity of seeing a part of the river which we had, the week before, passed in the dark, and of observing evidences of progress on both sides of the river. Everybody, slave owners included, agreed that the free states of Indiana and Ohio on the one side of the river were making far more rapid strides than the slave state of Kentucky on the other. Land is higher in price, labour in better demand, and population more rapidly advancing. The one is nearly stationary in its agriculture, commerce, and manufactures; the others are advancing at a pace which astonishes even Americans, accustomed as they are to see things “go a head.” The state of Ohio, which, sixty years ago, had not a dozen white inhabitants, has now a population of nearly two millions, and in ten years more will rank next to the state of New York; and Indiana, which, fifty years ago, was almost unknown, 0065 63 has now nearly a million of inhabitants. On the slave side of the river the population of Kentucky, an old state, and of unexampled fertility, has not yet a million. To the one no immigrants find their way but the plodding, saving, Germans; to the others the tide of immigration is constantly flowing, promising soon to make both states the most populous in the union. As the representation in Congress is regulated by the numbers of inhabitants, Ohio and Indiana are rapidly increasing in representative power, while the slave states of Kentucky and Virginia are rapidly diminishing in relative political importance. These facts cannot but suggest serious considerations to the slave owners. A Virginia gentleman, bitterly opposed to the abolitionists, and holding that the negroes were a race intended by the Creator to be the slaves of the more gifted and intellectual whites, told me that he had serious thoughts of selling his property in Virginia and investing his money in land in Indiana. “In my own state,” he said, “in twenty years my property may be worth nothing. In Indiana it might probably be increased five-fold.”

The inhabitants of Cincinnati say that they are 100,000 in number. I can scarcely suppose that they can be so many. The population in 1840 was 46,338, and from present appearances I would judge that it had increased to 75,000. In 1789 it contained only a few log cabins. It has canal and railroad communications, right through the centre of the states, to the Lakes, and thence to the port of New York, and with these and its position on the Ohio, there are guarantees for a great further increase of its commercial and manufacturing importance. We went into one foundry and machine shop where from 300 to 350 hands are employed at wages rather better than are given at first-rate establishments of the kind in Manchester and Liverpool, so that with such “compensation,” as wages are here called, and with provisions at half the price which 0066 64 they bring in the old country, notwithstanding a higher rate for clothes and rent, working men are in a position to make considerable savings. “I could make about as good wages in Liverpool as I can here,” said one of the English workmen; “but if I were to propose to go back, my children would object, for all the young folks here have got the notion into their heads that this is the only free country on the face of the earth.” A Scotchman said: “It is a fine country, sir, if they wadna brag and blaw so much aboot it.” A large water power is obtained by the surplus water of the Miami Canal, and coals are cheap, so that to the foundries, machine shops, cotton mills, saw mills, planing-machine mills, &c., it is likely that other manufacturing establishments for the production of articles where labour does not make a heavy component part of the value, will speedily be added.

We left Cincinnati on Friday morning by the railway for Sandusky on Lake Erie. Its level is about fifty feet above the Ohio, so that we had an opportunity of looking down upon the bottoms which were seldom seen from the river. They were more extensive and more fertile than we imagined; and here, as at Louisville, we found ourselves, at midsummer, in the middle of the wheat harvest. The scythe is universally in use, and the wheat is laid ready for being put in sheaves by the use of “cradles,” attached to the blade and handle of the scythe. The crops of this grain were very light, the temperature of the country being too high for its abundant production. The hilly bluffs rising up behind the bottoms or, scoticé , “holms,” appeared to greater advantage than when seen from the river. “Folks go a great way to see Alderley Edge,” said Mr. Brooks; “but here are hundreds of Alderley Edges, on each side the river, one after the other, all the way from Pittsburg to Louisville—six hundred miles of Alderley Edges on one side the river, and six hundred miles of them 0067 65 on the other.” The comparison was a happy one, for the irregular face which Alderley Edge presents to Wilmslow is exceedingly like the bluffs, which, in endless succession, present themselves on the ever winding ever placid, ever beautiful Ohio.

The American railroads are of the cheapest possible construction; the stations are mere sheds; the curves frequent and short; the gradients those of the surface of the ground almost without cutting or embankments; and the rails are only narrow slips of iron an inch thick, nailed down to horizontal sleepers. An average of fifteen miles an hour on railways so constructed, is considered as a fair speed. It is slow work in our estimation, but it is flying compared to the stage coach, which, on many roads here, does not accomplish more than four miles an hour. This line from Cincinnati to Sandusky, 219 miles in length, connects the navigation of the Ohio with that of the Lakes. Constructed as the English railroads are, it would not have stretched more than forty miles into the interior, and would have been almost useless. Jonathan has calculated wisely that it should supply the means for its own completion. In our own country it would have saved thousands from ruin had his example been followed.

After following upwards for a few miles the course of the Ohio, the railroad diverged to the banks of a small river. I asked its name, and was told that it was the Little Miami. The Little Miami! What a train of recollections that name conjured up! Thirty years ago I had formed the scheme, and several friends had joined me in it, of leaving our own land, which seemed to be delivered up to the tender mercies of the boroughmongers, and forming a community on the banks of some small stream, contributory to a large navigable river in the Western States of America. We had fixed on surveying the Little Miami first; and here, after a lapse of thirty years, I was on it without being 0068 66 aware. And how did it answer the idea that so long ago I had formed of it? It was wonderfully like. The bottoms were richer, and the uplands were more stony and barren, but the general resemblance was in accordance with what I had imagined. It was our own Clyde above Lanark, but fertile and wooded. Near the Ohio it was sometimes like the Clyde about Bothwell Brig, and sometimes like the Irwell about Agecroft Bridge. Farther up, the valley narrowed, but still there were the rich alluvial bottoms, and the woody rising grounds. Farther up still, the valley widened, the river becoming a small stream, flowing through well cultivated fields, with here and there a thriving, well-built, cheerful-looking little town, amongst which Wanesville and Xenia were the most attractive. In this beautiful part of the country, I found that land, having the rich alluvial soil all in a state of cultivation, and the woodlands partially cleared, with a good substantial farm house, and the necessary farm offices, might be had at from £7 to £8 an acre. A well informed farmer was in the train with us, who said: “If a young man comes on uncleared land, he is completely worn out before he has his work done, and dies when he should be beginning to enjoy himself; but he escapes almost all the hardships if he begins with a good bit of cleared land, and has a house to go into, and a shed to put his cattle into.” I asked him what an English farmer could do who should bring £1,000 into such a country. “Do!” he said. “Why he could buy and stock a farm of a hundred acres of capital land, and live like a gentleman.” Land partially cleared can frequently be had very cheap. It may sell for ten or twenty times more than it originally cost the clearing purchaser, and would be much cheaper than the forest land at five shillings an acre. The tendency is still westward. A farmer has four or five sons, and he desires that each should have a farm of his own. He sells his eighty acre lot for a sum which will enable him 0069 67 to purchase five hundred acres farther west, and there, with a hundred acres for each son, he says: “Now lads, clear away.” He has been the pioneer into the forest west of the Ohio, and is quite ready to become the pioneer west of the Wabash. His sons will have the same migratory spirit. As their sons grow up, each father will sell his hundred acres that he may purchase five hundred west of the Illinois or the northern branch of the Mississippi. Thus can the English farmers always find small lots, purchaseable at a rate cheap in comparison with the cost of clearing land, with a dwelling house and cattle sheds all ready; and thus he may avoid the fever and ague, which are almost certain to attack the northern Europeans who venture to break ground in the dank forest or swampy prairie.

Money may be lent on good mortgage security in this state at eight per cent., payable half yearly. I thought it probable that the high rate of interest and the facility of obtaining small portions of land, transferable at a mere trifle of expense, would hereafter induce a class of persons to emigrate whose aim would not be to work hard for a living, but to live easily on a small capital already acquired. We have hundreds of tradesmen in our towns who cannot continue in business without the fear of losing all, and who have not accumulated sufficient money to retire upon. A man of such a class in England cannot live upon the interest of £1,000; but here, for £200 he could purchase and stock a little farm of twenty-five acres, which would enable him to keep a horse and cow, sheep, pigs and poultry, and supply his family with every article of food, while his £800 at interest would give him an income of £64 a year. He could even have his own sugar from his own maple trees to sweeten his cup and preserve the peaches from his own fruit trees, and almost all he would need to buy, besides clothes, would be tea, which may be had, of good quality, at from twenty-one pence to two shillings a pound. Still 0070 68 farther west he could have ten per cent. interest for his money.

After travelling 85 miles on the railway, from Cincinnati, we had fourteen miles to go by stage, to get to Urbana, from whence the railway was completed to Lake Erie. In this higher part of the country where the brooks seem to stand still, to consider whether they shall flow to the Ohio or to the Lakes, there are extensive tracts of very level and very fertile land, but dry as the season had been, I could see that in wet weather the whole would form an extensive swamp, perfectly impassable during the wet seasons. At present it was covered with rich crops of Indian corn and wheat. We were more than three hours in coming these fourteen miles, and are glad to have a rest, after this tiresome travelling, in this little town, situated in the very centre of the State of Ohio.

LETTER VIII.

Prospect for Immigrants—Buffalo—The Falls of Niagara—Rapids of the St. Lawrence—Lake Champlain.

Saratoga Springs , 1 st July , 1848.

In the centre of the State of Ohio there is a great extent of level ground, which seems to have been a swampy prairie. In the wetter portions the earth closely resembles in appearance the peat of Chat Moss, and it produces, in that state, nothing better than a coarse herbage growing in tufts. Where there happens to be a fall towards a stream, the soil, with nearly the same appearance, becomes a friable black mould, so full of decomposed matter, ready to furnish the food of vegetables, that white crops may be raised in succession for twenty years, without any exhaustion of fertility. When these central plains are drained the country will be at once rich and healthful; but the English farmer would do well to avoid the temptation which they present, and be content to make a slower progress, in localities less liable to disease. The railroad from Urbana to Sandusky, a distance of a hundred and twenty miles, runs through a country still almost entirely covered with the original forest, of which great portions may yet be had at the government price of one dollar and a quarter per acre. The partially-cleared ground may be had at a comparatively cheap rate. The current of population flows towards the prairie land of Indiana and Illinois, and numbers of men there are who will abandon their improvements if they can sell an acre of land at a price which would purchase four 0072 70 or five acres of the tempting prairies of the west. This affords an excellent opportunity to the agricultural immigrant from the old country. He can buy cleared land cheaper than he can clear it; he can have a house and cattle-sheds ready for use; fields ready to yield him produce; and he will escape the fever and ague which pertinaciously follow the breaker of fresh ground. The man with a large family of boys, who, disregarding present comfort, will risk something of present health, for the sake of a good future provision for them, may be better to have woodland or prairie (part of both is best); but he who has a small family, who is not disposed to sacrifice the present health for the future wealth, would do better by buying land, with buildings erected, and some portion of it in cultivation. Even if one-tenth were cleared out of a lot of a hundred acres he would be saved much actual suffering and much of dreary despondency, and he might clear the ninety acres just as he could afterwards find labour to bestow upon it. On any decent line of road affording conveyance to a market, an industrious man, with such a beginning as I recommend, would, in a very few years, be in more comfortable circumstances than the majority of small farmers in Great Britain and Ireland. Farm labourers may have two shillings and a penny a day, say twelve shillings and sixpence a week, and their board; or, if they do not take the board, they may have eighteen shillings and ninepence a week, with provisions at half the price they cost in the old country; so that they, if industrious, sober and saving, may very soon become small owners of land themselves. A decent competence is to be had where in the old country there would be poverty and wretchedness; but no farmer need come here to become rich in money. The necessaries and many of the comforts of life may be had in the woods and on the prairies; but very few of its luxuries. There will be a rough plenty and the relief from anxious cares 0073 71 about provision for a family; but elegancies and luxurious ease need not be expected.

In the sail from Sandusky to Buffalo, on Lake Erie, the shore, near to which our vessel kept the whole way, presented the appearance of a forest, broken only here and there by small clearings. At Cleveland, however, a very thriving town, increasing rapidly in population and importance, there were abundant indications of a comparatively populous interior, the produce of which finds its way to the Lakes through the Ohio canal. There seems full faith in its future increase, for here is one of those splendid hotels, in this town of 10,000 inhabitants, which surpasses the greatest in London. We took a walk through the streets, which were straight and wide, and shaded on each side by luxuriantly growing trees. Altogether the place bad a look of great promise. We were much struck with Buffalo after our sail of 250 miles on a fresh water lake. It had all the appearance of a thriving sea-port town, and the main street, of great width and length, had a substantiality of appearance which we did not expect in so new a place, the buildings being principally of brick and stone, and from three to five stories in height. The population, which was only about 1,000 in 1814, when the British burnt down the town to the ground, is now 35,000, and it is likely to increase, as the town is at the termination of the navigation of the great lakes, and at the eastern termination of the Erie canal, which opens up a communication through the Hudson river to New York. The following extract from the Financial Report of the Legislature of New York, published a few years ago, will more particularly explain the causes of this extraordinary increase:—

“The western termination of the Erie canal looks out upon the Lake Erie, the more southerly and central of that great chain of navigable lakes, which stretches far into the interior from our western boundary. Around these inland 0074 72 seas, a cluster of five great states is rapidly rising. The territory which they comprise, and which is to become tributary to the canal, embraces that great area, extending from the lakes on the north to the Ohio on the south, and from the western confines of this state to the upper Mississipi, containing 380,000 square miles. To measure its extent by well known objects, it is fifteen times as large as that part of the state of New York west of the county of Oneida—nearly twice as large as the kingdom of France—and about six times as extensive as the whole of England. It contains 180,000,000 acres of arable land, a large portion of which is of surpassing fertility.”

After adverting to the great increase of population in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and even in the territory beyond the upper Mississippi, the report continues:—

“This group of inland states has two outlets for its trade to the ocean; one by the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico; the other through Lake Erie and the navigable communications of the state of New York to the Atlantic. Whether it be attributable to similarity of origin, or laws, or habits, or the ties of consanguinity, or superior salubrity of climate, their people evidently prefer the market in the Atlantic, and they are making prodigious efforts to reach it. Three great canals, (one of them longer than the Erie canal,) embracing in their aggregate length about one thousand miles, are to connect the Ohio with Lake Erie, while another deep and capacious channel, excavated for nearly thirty miles through solid rock, unites Lake Michigan with the navigable waters of the Illinois. In addition to these broad avenues of trade, they are constructing lines of railroads, not less than 1,500 miles in extent, in order to reach, with more ease and speed, the lakes through which they seek a conveyance to a seaboard. The undaunted resolution of this energetic race of men is strikingly evinced by the fact, that the cost of the works which they have thus undertaken, (and most of which are in actual progress,) will exceed forty-eight millions of dollars—a sum far exceeding all that New York, with two millions of inhabitants, and two hundred years of accumulated wealth, has ever attempted. The circumstance, moreover, is particularly important, that the public works of 0075 73 each of these great communities are arranged on a harmonious plan, each having a main line supported and enriched by lateral and tributary branches, thereby bringing the industry of their whole people into prompt and profitable action, while the systems themselves are again united on a grander scale, in a series of systems, comprising an aggregate length of more than 2,500 miles, with Lake Erie as its common centre.”

A short ride on the railway brought us from Buffalo to the village of Niagara and the Cataract Hotel, close to the back of which are the great falls. I was soon on the point of rock on the American side, where they are in full view. It takes some boldness to avow that I was less awe-struck than tourists generally profess to be; but I was delighted by the exceeding beauty of the scene. Close at hand the falling water was broken into millions of resplendent diamonds; farther off it was a perpendicular fall of snow; in the middle it was the rush of the green ocean-wave into a chasm opened in the great deep; and again in the distance was the gentle snow-fall; all illuminated by a brilliant sun, and all gentle and lovely. There was no rage, no discord, no tumultuous chafings of the immense flood. There was the quietness as of a conscious possession of power; perfect harmony; perfect beauty. I saw no death of the stream as it fell—no tremendous “ghost of spray and mist.” No voices spoke to me from out the thundering water. There was the majestic, softened by the beautiful;—calm, gentle, tranquil, exceeding loveliness.

We had a different aspect of the falls from the deck of a small steam-boat which took us right up the river, the rocks on each side rising 200 feet in almost perpendicular height, to the spray which always keeps the lower half of the falls veiled in its cloud. The sublimity was fearful as our little boat was tossed on the surface of the agitated basin into which rushed the great cataract. On the Canadian side, the view from Table Rock combined the magnificent and 0076 74 the beautiful, and both grew upon us as we gazed and compared. Two of our company, not quite satisfied that their sensations had been sufficiently excited, went across the river, about two miles below the falls, in a basket suspended from a wire, 800 feet in length and 200 in height above the river, which forms the commencement of a grand suspension bridge to connect the Canadian and the United States, just above the rapids, where the whole body of the river pours itself along at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, although the depth of the water is more than a hundred feet.

In the ride down to Lewis-town, we had, for several miles, the Niagara river on our left hand, two hundred feet sheer down from our level, and a magnificent sight it was. About half-way between the falls and Lewis-town, the level of the land suddenly was lowered from that of Lake Erie to that of Lake Ontario. Before our descent we saw a wide extent of rich cultivated country lying below us, level as if the lake had at one time come up to the base of the higher table-land. From this sight I could easily suppose that agriculture had made much greater progress upon the shores of Ontario than upon those of Erie; and it is represented to be one of the finest tracts of land in the United States. In our steam-boat sail across the lake to Toronto, the comparative merits of the south and north shores of the lakes as settlements for British emigrants, became the subject of conversation. Lower Canada was left out of the comparison, on account of its long and severe winter. There was a general agreement that the triangular territory of which two sides are formed by the lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron, is as fertile as any tract of the same extent in the States; but it was also agreed that improvement made much more rapid progress in the States than in this the most favoured portion of Canada. Canada as a whole has not had a favourable start. The Habitans retain the old 0077 75 French philosophy of being contented with little; they would be “canty wi' mair” if more could be had without much trouble. The Highlanders are not much more disposed to “go ahead.” It was much in their favour that they came in large bodies and formed extensive Highland settlements, for they brought home and neighbourhood with them; but after their first years of struggle their clanship was a great injury instead of being an advantage. They form a community by themselves; they retain their old indolent habits; they were penuriously saving rather than actively industrious and enterprising; and Canadian Glengary is, as yet, little better than Highland Glengary. A man settled in Canada with a certain amount of capital, industry, and enterprise, may be as successful as another under the same circumstances in the United States, so far as individual exertions go; but the man in the States profits not only by his own activity but by the activity of all around him. His farm is not only improved by his own labour and skill, but it is increased in value by the rapidly-increasing populousness of the district in which it is placed. It is probable that the, as yet, very thinly-populated but fertile district on the lakes may take great strides in advance of the rest of Canada; and a well-informed farmer, who is settled about twenty miles back from Toronto, told me that a British farmer possessing from £200 to £500, accustomed to work and to plain living, could not fail to do well. I asked how a man with £1000 could do. “He could do anything,” he said. “He could be either a farmer or a dealer; he could either grow wheat or corn, or buy and sell it; or he could do both. Bless you, sir, a thousand pounds of your money makes a considerable snug man either in Canada or the States.”

We went ashore at Toronto and, hiring a vehicle, were soon through the main streets, which are wide and well-built. Altogether there was as much outward appearance 0078 76 of advancement as in the towns on the American side. Our republic friends looked curiously at the house of a real state-paid bishop, whilome a minister of the Scotch Relief Kirk; and at real British soldiers, a part of our standing army. They affected great forbearance towards us in their comments upon these novelties, but I could see that they were exulting within themselves at such proofs of British inferiority, and I overheard one say to another, sotto voce , “pretty considerable tarnation set of fools,” which I am afraid was intended to designate our great and enlightened nation. While sailing near the shore from Toronto to Cobourg we saw many beautiful openings in the forest land, giving intimation that active cultivators were at work, and that much more was doing in the way of improvement on this northern shore of Ontario than on the southern and American shore of Erie. We went during the night from Cobourg to Kingston, at which latter place the British soldiers were again the subject of comment with our American friends. One of them asked me: “Cannot you trust the defence of your colonies to the colonists?” He was a whig, and had previously been condemning the Mexican war. I said: “No, there are thieves abroad. We will not let you take Canada. If you asked us to give it you in a present, we should give the proposal our most serious consideration.”

At Kingston we left the lake boat and went on board an iron steamer admirably constructed for the rather hazardous navigation of the rapids on the St. Lawrence. We were soon amongst the “Thousand Islands,” and here, as at most places much praised, I was somewhat disappointed. The islands were flat and the wood was stunted and thin. The scenery was little better than we see in England when a river has overflown its banks, leaving only the hedge-rows and little hillocks visible above the water. But the islands became larger, rose more abruptly from the river, and increased in magnitude, till, instead of a wide lake studded 0079 77 with islands, we had an endless succession of canals cut in the solid rock—now straight, now curved; now wide, now narrow; now running in a strong torrent; now placid as the surface of a mirror. It was not until very recently that the steam boats went through from Kingston to Montreal, the navigation of the rapids being considered too hazardous; and the passengers were thrice landed and thrice had to proceed portions of the way by stage coaches. Now, the vessels go right through, for although the mighty stream flows with extreme rapidity, there is a great depth of water, and little real danger if the steersmen do their arduous duties faithfully. The passage down one of these rapids is rather an exciting scene. Although the rocks are far down in the depth of the river, the surface is agitated like the face of the sea in a brisk gale. Through the high waves the ship dashes bravely. The danger is only from careless steering; but one feels that the slightest blunder would dash the ship to pieces on the rocks that line the rapids on each side. There is life and excitement in the scene; and we, who had been much urged to take a voyage on the sluggish and muddy Mississippi, rejoiced that we had chosen rather to entrust ourselves on this magnificent and impetuous outlet to the great inland fresh water seas. At Lachine our noble steamer stopped all night; the rapids between that place and Montreal being too hazardous to be passed except in broad daylight. Many of our passengers took the railway thence to the city, a fine steamer having been lost in the strongest of the currents only a few days before, in consequence of coming upon an unperceived raft of wood, and the passengers rescued with difficulty We thought there might be safety in the additional vigilance that would be exercised after an accident, and we were rewarded by the sight of a beautiful and highly exciting scene. While carried downwards at an alarming velocity, rocks rising up at each side, in the middle, now here now there, often as if we D 0080 78 were inevitably upon them till a sudden twitch of the wheel changed our course, we enjoyed a sight not to be forgotten. There were six men at the wheel on the fore part of the deck, and their muscular strength was constantly in full requisition. I know not which was finest, the look downwards to the raging stream, or upwards to the eagle glances of the Indian pilot and his assistants, whose looks betokened their deep sense of the great responsibility they had undertaken. When we were safely through the greatest chute We again breathed freely.

I had been told that Montreal had much the appearance of an old continental city; but it was as fresh in its look as any of the new towns in the States. Fires had done their part towards improvement; but there were evidences that there was a gradual progress in pulling down the old quaint looking wooden buildings and putting handsome and substantial stone erections in their place. Our American friends were rather surprised to see so many fine large vessels in this far inland port. One gentleman from Louisiana and another from Massachusetts, accompanied us in a drive round the “mountain”—a barren, uncultivated, unadorned elevation—and they were delighted with the extensive and beautiful view from its summit, especially the Louisiana gentleman, accustomed to the scenery of the sluggish Mississippi. It was the festival of St. Peter, and the catholics were at the Cathedral, which is the largest place of worship ever saw, there being room for 7,000 or 8,000 persons seated. There was much ceremonial going on, many genuflections of priests, much waving of censers, much blaze of enormous candles. “Well,” said one of our republican friends, “it is all right that men should be permitted to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, but I do think it is a little too much when they ask other people to pay for this sort of thing.”

On Thursday evening we crossed over the river from 0081 79 Montreal to Laprairie, and Went thence to St. John's at the lower end of Lake Champlain, passing through a very level and very poorly cultivated country, which might be made exceedingly productive if that part of the country possessed a more active population than the Habitans. Putting our baggage on board the steamer, we took our tea in the village; and here again were British soldiers strutting about, giving our American friends again the opportunity of standing a little taller than we did. Next morning, soon after daybreak, we began our voyage up the lake, which at first, under the rising sun, was characterised by no more than sweetness and placidity; but as we proceeded it swelled out into the dimensions of our own Windermere at its widest part, wanting only mountains to give it grandeur. These were soon supplied. As the lake widened, two mountain ridges approached nearer and nearer—one, westward, of a deep green, the commencement of that long chain which divides the eastern states from the valley of the Ohio—the other, eastward, of the various tints of blue which distinguish our Westmoreland and Highland hills. These mountain chains a little nearer to the lake, a little closer to the eye, would have given to the scene a close resemblance to the upper and grandest part of Windermere. The mountains on the left, part of the chain which gives its name to Vermont, formed as fine an outline against the sky as any we have in our finest mountain scenery in Scotland, and my eye turned to them with ever-renewed delight. The resemblance to the Ambleside head of Windermere was greatly increased by the woody heights, which to the elevation of one, two, or three hundred feet, rose from the shores of the lake, covered with trees clothed in the richest verdure. The scene was worth coming, direct from Loch Lomond, to see. Burlington, the capital of the State of Vermont, overlooks the grandest portion of the lake, and, it is something to say of a town, detracts neither from its 0082 80 beauty nor its grandeur. Here some thirty Irish immigrants, male and female, were landed, to encounter much hard work, sickness and despondency, and for months, perhaps for years, the yearning after their old homes in the green island; but to find hope growing up in the lovely valleys sheltered by those high green hills—hope, which could not have been entertained in their old homes, of ease in their old age, and the prospect of their children taking respectable stations in the unburthened land. A man, probably of thirty-five years of age, took leave here of a woman about the same age. Hard featured they were, and ill-looking. I knew not their history; they might be brother and sister, or they might be lovers not yet to be united, after long waiting for the favourable time. Most unlikely subjects they for fine emotion; but I saw when the time came for parting that their hard thin lips were firmly compressed, to keep concealed the expression of feeling. They kissed awkwardly, as if such salutation was new to them. The meeting of those hard dry firmly-compressed lips, and the quick walk in opposite ways, neither man nor woman daring to look back, had much of pathos in it.

We were now on battle scenes,—battles in the war of conquest waged against our so-called “natural enemies” the French,—battles with the descendants of our own countrymen in the revolutionary war. I took no interest in them. I wished that there could be no battle fields to be looked on in all God's fair creation. I had not come to revive the history of men's folly and men's wickedness, but to see present beauty, and to anticipate future prosperity to the Anglo-Saxon race, and future peaceful blessedness to the family of man.

We saw Lake George at a disadvantage, the evening being cloudy and cold. I could imagine how beautiful it would be in the gorgeous tints of autumn. It appeared to 0083 81 me, however, that this sheet of water had been overrated, and Champlain underrated. At particular places, however, it greatly resembled Ulswater. We slept on Friday night at Caldwell, situated at the top of the lake, and this morning a ride of twenty-seven miles, which took us seven hours by stage coach, over a rolling country, brought us to this Harrogate of America, where we shall probably remain for a week.

LETTER IX.

The Representative System of the United States—Limitations of the Suffrage—Vote by Ballot—Redistribution of Seats—The Climate, &c.

Saratoga Springs, July 8 th , 1848.

I take the opportunity of quiet and leisure in this retirement to note down some particulars as to the extent of suffrage enjoyed in some of the largest states of the union, believing that they will not be uninteresting in England at the time when a great movement has been originated for a reform of the Reform Bill.

Maine. —The government is vested in a governor, senate, and house of representatives, who are elected annually. The right of suffrage is possessed by every male citizen of the United States, 21 years of age (excepting paupers, persons under guardianship, and Indians not taxed), who shall have resided in the state for three months next preceding an election.

Massachusetts. —The governor, lieutenant governor, 0084 82 senate, and house of representatives are elected annually. The governor and lieutenant governor must each own a freehold worth £1,000, and declare his belief in the Christian religion. Senators must possess a freehold of £300 and a personal estate of £600; representatives must possess a freehold of £300. Every male citizen over 21 years of age (except paupers and persons under guardianship), who has resided in the state one year, and in the town or district in which he claims to vote, six months, and shall have paid a (direct) tax in the commonwealth within two years, enjoys the suffrage.

New York. —The governor is elected biennially. The senate is elected for two years, one-half going out annually. The assembly is elected annually. The suffrage is possessed by white male citizens 21 years of age, who have resided one year in the state, and four months in the county where they claim to vote; and persons of colour, who have resided three years in the state, and who possess a freehold of 250 dollars, and have held it one year previous to the election, and paid a tax on it.

Pennsylvania. —The governor is chosen for three years; the senate and the house of representatives annually. Every white male citizen of the age of 21 years, who has resided in the state for one year, and in the district ten days, and has paid a state or county tax, enjoys the suffrage.

Virginia. —The senators and delegates are apportioned anew among the counties every ten years. The senators are elected for four years, one-fourth going out annually; the delegates are chosen for one year. All appointments are made openly and not by ballot. The right of suffrage is extended to every male white citizen 21 years of age, entitled to vote under the old constitution, or who owns a freehold valued at twenty-five dollars, or who for twelve months shall have been a housekeeper or head of a family, and paid the taxes assessed by the commonwealth.

0085 83

Ohio. —The governor is elected by the people for two years. The senators are elected biennially, and are apportioned according to the number of male white inhabitants over 21 years of age. The representatives are apportioned among the counties according to the number of inhabitants over 21 years of age. The right of suffrage is enjoyed by all white male citizens over 21 years of age, who have resided in the state for one year next preceding the election, and who have paid or been assessed with a state or county tax.

North Carolina. —The senate and house of representatives are chosen biennially. The senate is chosen by districts, the number being apportioned by the amount of state taxes paid. The representatives are apportioned among the counties according to their population. The right of suffrage extends to all free white persons 21 years of age, who have resided for twelve months in the state; but in order to vote for a senator, a freeman must possess a freehold of fifty acres of land.

South Carolina. —The senate is elected for four years, and representatives, apportioned according to population, to two. The representatives, and one half of the senators, are chosen every second year. Every free white male citizen 21 years of age, who has resided in the state, and who is possessed of a freehold of fifty acres of land; or not possessing this freehold, who shall have resided in the election district in which he claims to vote, six months before the election, and have paid a tax of three shillings sterling to the support of the government, enjoys the suffrage.

Georgia. —All the free white male inhabitants who shall have resided within the state six months previous to the election, and shall have paid taxes for the year previous, have the right to vote.

Alabama. —The representatives are elected annually, and are apportioned according to the population. The electors 0086 84 are the free white male citizens 21 years of age, who have resided for one year next preceding the election, and the last three months within the county.

Tennessee. —The representatives are elected biennially, and according to the number of qualified voters. Every white person over 21 years of age, who is a freeholder in the county where he offers his vote, and has resided in the county six months, has a vote.

Indiana. —The representatives are chosen annually, and apportioned every four years according to the population qualified as electors. Every male citizen, 21 years of age, who has resided one year in the state, has a vote.

Kentucky. —Every free white male citizen, 21 years of age, who has resided two years in the state, or in the county in which he claims to vote one year next previous to the election, has the suffrage. Votes are given viva voce , and not by ballot.

Property qualifications are required in Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Payment of taxes and citizenship are required in the above states, and in New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio. Citizenship, and residence in the state of three to twelve months are required in Maine, Maryland, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Indiana and Michigan. The right of voting is limited to the whites in all the states, except the six states of New England, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. In the state of New York coloured persons may vote if they possess a freehold of 250 dollars.

These are the limitations on universal suffrage, but even with these requirements there are two millions and a half of voters in a population of twenty millions, while in our country we have fewer than a million in a population of twenty-seven millions. In the United States one person out of eight has a vote. In Great Britain and Ireland one 0087 85 person out of twenty-eight has a vote. There is not much fault found, even amongst conservatives, with this wide extension of the suffrage. The great complaint is that foreigners acquire the right to vote long before they can make themselves acquainted with the legislative requirements of the country, and especially that the Irish immigrants, of impulsive temperament, and accustomed at home to constant agitation, are admitted, either by defective registration, or by the required residence being too short, to exercise rights of citizenship which require prudence and knowledge. I have heard this complaint bitterly urged by persons who do not scruple, when votes are to be gained, to bestow the grossest flattery upon the “noble and generous-hearted Irish who have, in their ardent love of liberty, become citizens of the republic!” Complaint is also made that the Germans are admitted too early to the exercise of the elective right, not on account of any unmanageable vivacity on their part, but because they have a very troublesome aversion to putting their hands into their pockets. A writer in Putnam's “ American Facts ,” on the Pennsylvanian-Bonds repudiation, says: “The really blameable parties are the agricultural German settlers, who possess a majority in some of the counties; many of them cannot either write or read in any language; almost all are unable to understand the English language, and place a ban upon any descendant who should so far forget the manners of his forefathers as to make any attempt to assimilate himself by his acquirements to these people among whom he dwells. At present there are nearly as many German newspapers published in Pennsylvania as English ones. Now, however, that the Germans have been made to understand that deep dishonour has fallen upon their state, and that Faderland sees with sorrow the contempt into which they have fallen, they have readily come forward with their hard dollars, and contributed to remove the stigma.” D 2

0088 86

A periodical apportionment of representation, or re-distribution of seats, has place in the voting for members of Congress, and the choice of President. The following table of the votes allowed to each state will show that as the states change in relative importance they change also in their relative shares of representation:—

STATES. Fourth Term. 1841 to 1845. No. of Electors. Fourteenth Term. 1841 to 1845. No. of Electors. New Hampshire 6 7 Massachusetts 16 14 Rhode Island 4 4 Connecticut 9 8 Vermont 4 7 New York 12 42 New Jersey 7 8 Pennsylvania 15 30 Delaware 3 3 Maryland 10 10 Virginia 21 23 Kentucky 4 15 North Carolina 12 15 Tennessee 3 15 South Carolina 8 11 Georgia 4 11 Total 138 States. Maine 10 Ohio 21 Louisiana 5 Mississippi 4 Indiana 9 Illinois 5 Alabama 7 Missouri 4 Arkansas 3 Total 294

Thus the free state of New York, which, in 1801, had only a little more than an eleventh part of the representation, had so increased as to be entitled, in 1841, to one-seventh; and the slave state of Virginia, which, in 1801, had a seventh part, had so retrograded, relatively , as to have only a thirteenth in 1841. The slave state of Maryland had a four-teenth part in 1801, and only a twenty-ninth part in 1841; 0089 87 while the free state of Ohio, which had no representation at all in 1801, returned, in 1841, a fourteenth of the whole number of representatives sent by the twenty-six states. Had we, in our country, had periodical apportionments, according to population, or to assessment—for both gave about the same results, property usually being according to population—we should not have 300,000 persons, in 50 boroughs, returning 72 members, whilst Manchester and Salford, with their 300,000 inhabitants, send only three.

The slaveholders have, however, taken care that they should have more than their own fair share in the representation. In the constitution of the United States, it is provided, article I, section II, that “representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons. ” The “other persons,” of whom five are to be counted as three in apportioning the number of representatives for a state, are slaves. Thus, supposing that after an apportionment of a certain number of representatives to a state at one period, and that there has been one representative for every 60,000 of the population, it should be found at another that there has been an increase of 30,000 whites, and 50,000 slaves, another representative will be apportioned to that state, although the slaves, counted as equal to three-fifths of the value of whites, cannot enjoy political rights. Thus the white man possessing five slaves has a vote four times the value of that of a white in a free state. John Quincy Ad ams says of this arrangement under the constitution: “Yes!, it cannot be denied—the slaveholding lords of the south prescribed, as a condition of their assent to the constitution, three special provisions to secure the perpetuity of their dominion over 0090 88 their slaves. The first was the immunity, for twenty years, of preserving the African slave trade; the second was the stipulation to surrender fugitive slaves—an engagement positively prohibited by the laws of God, delivered from Sinai; and thirdly, the exaction fatal to the principles of popular representation, of a representation for slaves—for articles of merchandize, under the name of persons. Its reciprocal operation upon the government of the nation is, to establish an artificial majority in the slave representation over that of the free people, in the American congress, and thereby to make the preservation, propagation and perpetuation of slavery the vital and animating spirit of the national government.”

I recollect asking Mr. Cobden, when he returned from the United States, how the people talked of the Ballot, and his saying that it was not a subject of discussion at all, that the mode of voting was settled, and nobody talked about it, for nobody thought of altering it. I have had almost the same answer from every one to whom I have put the question here. Another question is often put in return: “Why should we not have the ballot? What right has any one to know how I vote? I am not a delegate, and I am not answerable to any one how I vote.” “Do you not find,” I have asked, “that it is generally known how a man votes?’ “It is not known ,” has been the reply; “we may guess , but we do not know. We may know how a very decided man will vote, but one-third, often one-half, of our electors are not decided party men, and we never know how they will vote. If we knew how men would vote, we should have no contested elections.” “The fact is, however,” I have urged, “that the votes of a great many men are known?’ “Yes no doubt a correct conjecture may be made as to the way many men vote, but that is no reason why we should proclaim from the housetops how everybody votes.” One gentleman said: “Sheep will be stolen, no matter how much 0091 89 care is taken to prevent the theft, but we are not therefore to pass a law to legalise it.” “They give votes viva voce in Kentucky and Virginia,” I said. “Kentucky and Virginia are slave states,” was the reply.

We arrived in the United States about the time when the Democrats nominated Cass for the presidentship, and on the day after we left Philadelphia the Whig convention met, and put Taylor in nomination. In the five weeks that have elapsed since the latter period we have travelled more than two thousand miles, and have scarcely heard the subject made one of discussion. In England we should have heard ten times as much of Villiers being proposed for South Lancashire, or of Cobden for the West Riding of Yorkshire. We have seen enough of it in the newspapers—more than we had any desire to read—but it would seem as if the public were disposed to leave the matter, for the present at least, in the hands of the newspaper editors, and the orators at ratification meetings. An English lady, a bold thinker, and a clever writer, told us that the United States year was only one bitter contested election, from the first of January to the thirty-first of December. We have not yet seen that there is either more earnestness or more animosity in an American than in an English election.

Of the climate, as affecting English constitutions, we cannot report with accuracy. The temperature has been to us most delightful. We have seen notices of very hot weather in New York, where the thermometer has been at 86 repeatedly during the last half of June, and at Washington it has reached 94; but where we have been it has never risen beyond 82 in a fair shade without reflected heats. We felt that as hot certainly, and the Americans confessed that it was warm; but while we have been speculating how we should bear a continuance of that degree of heat, a change has suddenly taken place, the thermometer falling to from 70 to 75. People concur in opinion that the 0092 90 heat is more moderate west of the Alleghanies than it is on the Atlantic shores, and that the winters are very much milder. We have not had more than two hot days together. Here the weather has been cold according to the American notion of temperature. For a week the thermometer has been as low as 50 during the night, and has never risen above 72 in the hottest part of the day. Thursday, yesterday, and to-day the ladies have been crowded before a great wood fire in their drawing room, and even the gentlemen have craved the same luxury for their backgammon room. There is evidence in the appearance of the persons we meet, especially in the countenances of the ladies, that there is a much more relaxing degree of heat experienced than we have yet encountered. In form and feature the females are attenuated to a degree that an Englishman cannot reconcile with his notions of beauty; and yet the girls, before they have passed the period of shuttlecocks and skipping ropes, are very lovely. It appears as if the women of America lead too artificial a life to enjoy vigorous health. At this place they sit, dressed, from morning to night, scarcely ever stirring out, although the walks in the neighbourhood would tempt English ladies to make long excursions daily. The men look much more healthy; they use more exercise in the open air; they permit perspiration to carry off the extra heat. The ladies dare not go to that vulgar extent, and insulted nature has her revenge. There is no chance of a mother of thirty-six years of age being taken for the daughter's oldest sister; and at forty she is an old woman.

On Tuesday was celebrated here, as at every town in the states, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The place was crowded all day with country people, who came in the Jersey waggons of which every farm furnishes one, with a couple of exceedingly active wiry horses, that pull those light vehicles at a trot of twelve or fifteen miles an hour. The waggon is a box about seven feet long, three 0093 91 feet and a half wide, and from nine inches to a foot deep, placed upon four light wheels of rather large diameter. With two light spirited horses put to this vehicle, farm produce is conveyed to market at a great speed. On visiting or gala days, one, two, or three seats, each to hold two persons, and each with grasshopper springs, are placed across the box, and then the farmer drives along his wife and his daughters in as good style, bating the glare and glitter, as can be assumed by any nobleman in our land.

The procession was no great thing, but a great number of persons gathered in the open air to hear the declaration read and the oration delivered. The declaration contains a summary of the tyrrany exercised by the King of England—an indictment of twenty-eight counts—certainly justifying the determination to achieve the establishment of an independent government. It is well to keep alive the patriotic spirited by a commemoration of so great an event. Whether it is well to keep alive feelings of animosity, after the noble achievement, I have some doubt. It seems a little too much akin to our hanging up the conquered flags of other nations in St. Paul's. The people of Britain were to be held, according to the declaration, as “enemies in war,” but “in peace, friends;” and it scarcely seems like the cultivation of peaceful relations, this annual enumeration of old wrongs. However, the wrongs were perpetrated, and we now have not much reason to find fault that a periodical complaint is made of a war-loving King, a profligate Ministry, and a corrupt Parliament, representing not the people, but the boroughmongers. One sentence in the Declaration is worth repeating, not only annually, but daily:—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that amongst these are life, liberty , and the pursuit of happiness.” One-half of the United States have recognised these truths; the other half cannot, in 0094 92 common decency, continue, in all pomp and solemnity, to declare them, and, in their practice, deny them.

The country around this place is what is called “rolling.” To call it “hilly” would not describe it accurately, for the elevations do not deserve the name of hills. “Undulating” is not a much more appropriate designation, for it gives the idea of longer and gentler surface waves. “Knolly” or “hillocky” would be more accurately descriptive, if care were taken not to imagine the knolls or hillocks as very small. At Manchester some idea may be formed of this sort of country, when I say that it is like what we see on the field footway going off from the Cheetham Hill road by the back of Mr. Loyd's house, along by Mr. Alexander Henry's grounds, and past Crumpsall Hall up to Whitesmithy Bar. The soil, though in many places light and stony, bears good crops of clover, potatoes, Indian corn, and rye; the latter just about ready for the scythe. The cleared and cultivated land ranges in price from six pounds to twenty pounds an acre, according to proximity to the market, a few miles, so heavy are the roads, making a great difference in value. A man who possesses fifty acres close to the town, one who has one hundred at a distance of from one to two miles, and one who has one hundred and fifty at a distance of from three to four miles, are persons well to do in the world. The farm labourer has two shillings and a penny a day with board, and six shillings and threepence a week extra if he finds his own lodgings and food.

Saratoga consists principally of a wide street, a mile in length, one side occupied by large and handsome hotels, with their gardens. On the other side are good shops and dwelling houses. The settled population is about 2,000, but in a full season there are as many as 3,000 strangers here, at one time, from all parts of the Union, but more especially from the south, to take the benefit of the waters, which are very efficacious in bilious complaints. Our hotel, 0095 93 the “Union,” is far from being the largest in the place, the “United States” being nearly twice the size, but it contains 220 bedrooms, can make up 300 beds, and its dining room can accommodate 350 persons. There is great attention and civility, and every possible comfort is provided at the charge of ten dollars, or two guineas, a week. At eight in the morning all meet at breakfast, at two for dinner, and at seven for tea, with additions, which is called supper. During the whole week I have seen no liquors taken except one pint bottle of porter, which a gentleman shared with his wife, and on the celebration day there were only seen two persons drunk, of all the multitude that attended, one of whom was an Irishman, and the other a young American farmer. What with the medicinal water, the pure and mild but bracing air, the quiet, the rest, and the comfort of our hotel, Mr. Brooks is greatly renovated in health, and says he is quite ready to take his part, on his return to England, in the proposed new movement for the extension of popular rights.

LETTER X.

Migration of Southerns Suggestive—Manufactures on the Hudson—Scenery of the Hudson—New York.

New York , 14 th July , 1848.

A New York gentleman who was at Saratoga when we were there, and who usually spends a week or ten days in its comparatively cool air when the heat is greatest in the eastern part of the state, remarked to us that it was a curious thing to note the improvement in the health of persons from the southern states after a few days use of the water. They arrive languid and sallow, dying-like. The eye begins to recover its brilliancy, then the yellow tinge gradually leaves the complexion; in the course of a fortnight or three weeks, activity and cheerfulness are restored, and then the patients are able to take a tour to Champlain, Montreal, Quebec, Niagara, and the great Lakes, before their return to the relaxing heats of the south. This tour becomes an annual necessity, and with many of the planters an annual luxury. We were told of one gentleman who, bringing his family with him, spends £3,000 sterling every season in pursuit of health in the country, and amusement in the great towns; and of two others who each spend £2,000 in their northern trip. The following is an analysis of the Congress water, the kind which is most in use:— 0097 95

Chloride of Sodium 390.246

Hydriodate of Soda 6.000

Carbonate of Soda 9.213

Carbonate of Magnesia 100.981

Carbonate of Lime 103.416

Carbonate of Iron 1.000

Silex and Alumina 1.036

Solid contents in a gallon 611.892

Carbonic Acid Gas 383.777

Atmospheric Air 2.361

Gaseous contents in a gallon 386.138

When taken fresh from the spring the water tastes pleasantly sharp, like the soda water of our shops, and is a pleasant beverage rather than a nauseous dose. Four half-pint glasses before breakfast are commonly taken, and one young lady told us that she usually took eight! Great quantities are bottled, the corks being wired down, and sent to every part of the states. At New York it is sold in the shops at twenty-five cents, or twelvepence halfpenny the quart.

The annual migration of the southerns is very suggestive. It is acknowledged that south of 36′ 30° no white man can labour in the fields—cannot even enjoy health without the northern reviving excursion. It is one of the arguments for slavery that, south of that latitude, the land could not be cultivated without negro labour. The great attempt at present, and it is likely to be successful, is to get the consent of Congress to what is called the “Missouri Compromise.” The slaveholders demand, as a right, to take their property to any new state, the acquisitions from Mexico opening a new field for slave labour. Others stand upon the “Wilmot Proviso,” that slavery shall not be admitted into new states. The abolitionists contend against any provision that shall stand in the way of ultimate emancipation. In the conflict it seems likely enough that there will be an agreement upon the Missouri compromise, that is, that the line of 36′ 30° 0098 96 shall separate the free from the slave states. That line separates Virginia from North Carolina, Kentucky from Tennessee, and Missouri from Arkansas. The amount of slavery will not be lessened by this plan; it will be concentrated southward. The black population in proportion to the white will be greatly increased in the southern, and greatly decreased in the northern. The entire flow of immigration will be into the free states. The increase of black inhabitants will be confined to the southern states. There, ultimately, the concentrated black population will become too powerful to be held in thraldom by the white. The question will then be: Will the free assist the slave states should there be a revolt of the negro race? I may venture to say, that they will not; and I have urged this almost inevitable result on slave-owners, as a reason why they should agree with the adversary quickly, whilst he is in the way, lest he should deliver them to the judge.

We left Saratoga on Monday morning, by the railway “cars” for Troy, passing through a country which gave evidence that a constant succession of white crops raised without manure and without the rotation of green crops, does not tend to increase the fertility of the soil. It is a question agitated in the states, whether it is most profitable to have a small produce from a small outlay of money and labour, or a large return from a large outlay. The farmers between Saratoga and Schenectady, seem to have decided in favour of the former. My own impression is, that a hundred acres, carefully cultivated, would yield far more profit than two hundred on the mere surface-scratching System that seems to be the rule. At Schenectady we came upon the Mohawk river, wide and shallow, like parts of the Tweed, flowing rapidly over a bed of rock and pebbles, very Scotch like, and to my eye very beautiful. A short ride brought us into the valley of the Hudson, in which Troy stands—a real valley, not a mere narrow water-course—a 0099 97 valley raising gradually from a great river, presenting a fine variety of corn fields and woodland—yellow, gold, and deep bright green. The locomotive which drew our train was named the “Ben Marshall,” after a Manchester gentleman who has long been a resident at Troy, whose judgment and enterprise has added much to the prosperity of the city, and whose benevolence has been actively and extensively exerted in behalf of its philanthropic institutions.

Troy is the capital of Rennselaer County. The Rennselaer estates, which are of great extent, are by some sort of entail, having the sanction or guarantee of the state, unsaleable, and consequently the occupiers are tenants paying a yearly rent. They have occupied the land so long as now to hold it to be their own, and they have ceased to pay rents, resisting the collectors by the force of arms. They say that entails are contrary to the principles of the American constitution; but they do not demand the breaking of the entail, that the land may be brought into the market, where they might buy from the owners what they now rent. Their argument is: “Entails are injurious to the country, ergo , it will benefit the country if we take this land as our own property.” Their deduction is the same on which the eviction of the Indians is justified. The government, both before and after the revolution, said of them: “We can make a better use of the land than you can, and therefore we will take it.” It is the same on which the occupation of part of Mexico is justified. “We can make a better use of it than you can, and therefore we must have it.” On the same principle the United States might claim Canada and Cuba, and we might claim the United States. It is, however, a dangerous doctrine to be held by either governments or individuals. It is not for the government, or the individual who is to be profited by the transfer of property, to judge of the public utility of the transfer. It would be a 0100 98 strange thing to leave it to my decision, whether the public would be benefitted by my possession of the large property of my fellow-traveller, Mr. Brooks. I might argue that I should make a better use of it than he does, but common sense would decide that the propriety of the transfer should not be left to my decision.

Troy city is increasing rapidly in population and importance, while Albany, only six miles distant, is understood to be making little progress. Troy is at the extremity of the steam navigation of the Hudson, and is consequently a great depôt for the fertile back country with which it communicates by railway and canal. It has also the advantage of a considerable amount of water power. Mr. Marshall possesses a fall of two hundred and forty feet. His extensive factories for spinning, weaving, and calico printing, illustrate the mischiefs inflicted by a government which acts in ignorance or defiance of the true principles of political economy. A high tariff was passed, retaliatory towards England, ostensibly protective of domestic manufactures. It was found that prohibitory duties were not revenue-producing, and the tariff was lowered, greatly to the injury of those who had erected factories on the faith that they were to continue in the enjoyment of a home monopoly. The demand now is for increased import duties; and all the old fallacies with which our landlord class here urged against the repeal of the corn laws, are urged in favour of additional protection to “native industry.” I am afraid that this demand of the northern states will make them less zealous than they have been for the abolition of slavery, and that the desire of the southern states to retain their “peculiar domestic institution” will make them less active in resisting the manufacturers' monopoly. The interested opponents of liberty of person, and the equally interested opponents of freedom of trade, are already accused of a favourable leaning towards each other, just as our West 0101 99 India interest and our landed interest leagued themselves together in defence of their respective monopolies. There is an operation called “log-rolling” in the process of clearing the forest. “Help me to roll my logs,” says one, “and when you have logs to roll I will help you.” “Help me to roll my log,” says the slave-owner to the manufacturer who is asking for further protection , “and I will help you to roll yours.” If it were not to preserve their “domestic institution” of slavery, the southern states would not submit to have a heavy tax inflicted on them for the benefit of the northern manufacturers; and if it were not that they wanted more protection, the northern states would take care that there should be no Missouri compromise—no introduction of slavery into new states.

Let no man visiting America trust himself in the heavy, lumbering vehicles called stages. If he cannot find lake or river steam-boats, or railways, let him walk , if he wishes to spare himself from fatigue and to save time. With the choice of railroad and river we took the stage to Albany, and suffered accordingly. We found it a much larger and a much handsomer town than we anticipated. The public buildings, some of them marble, are even magnificent, and long lines of stores and of stately dwellings bear evidence that it is an important place, whatever may be its comparative state of progress. In a branch of the river lay nearly one hundred large canal boats, fitted for the conveyance of both goods and passengers; and it was rather a pretty sight to look down upon their white roofs or decks, while at the same time it gave a lively idea of the traffic to and from the lakes. On sailing down the Hudson to New York, I saw a steam-tug with a dozen of these boats in tow, not behind, but six on each side—accompanying, not following.

After seeing the Ohio and the St. Lawrence, it was difficult to command the admiration due to the Hudson. At Albany, a hundred and fifty miles above the outer bay of 0102 100 New York, it was more than the width of the Thames at London, and the land sloped up gradually and beautifully from the water's edge. To an American it must present a picture of great beauty, for with him cleared space is evidence of a progression from the rudeness of the dark and dank native forest; but, grown fastidious in taste, after seeing so much to delight the eye, I grudged that the uplands were so much cleared—so much denuded of that rich foliage which with us is considered as an indication of fertility. The scenery gained in grandeur as we descended the river, and at Catskill, where an opening on the right disclosed the high mountain of that name, some ten miles distant, its summit shrouded in clouds, it was magnificent exceedingly. At West Point, on the right bank, where the river makes an angle, the combination of mountain and river scenery was grand and picturesque. The Highlands, in name and appearance, recall the entrance to the mouth of the Clyde, but the hills have not the altitude of those of Argyle. They are precipitous, rocky and woody, or rather, to coin a word, underwoody, like so many Dumbuck hills thrown down together, through amongst which the Hudson has to find its way. Below the Highlands great bays swell out, adorned with numerous snow white sails of vessels tacking about on all points of the compass. And then commence the Palisades, so named, I presume, from the vertical cleavage of the basaltic rocks, giving the perpendicular face of the cliffs not so much a columnar as a paling-like appearance. For three or four miles of their great extent they rise almost perpendicularly to the height of four hundred feet, resembling a great straightened-out range of the Salisbury Crags, which overhang the city of Edinburgh—magnificent, beautiful Edinburgh, not to be forgotten amidst the splendid things of America. A sail of ten hours, in a vessel not regarded as a “crack” one, either in size or speed, brought us to New York, a distance of 145 miles. I was 0103 101 scarcely more impressed with the extent, bustle, and handsome appearance of New York when I visited it for the first time than when I re-visited it after a six week' absence.

I had now the opportunity of looking into one of the public schools and of seeing the kind of education which is there given. I was introduced to Mr. George Trimble, an excellent member of the Society of Friends, who takes a deep interest in educational institutions. He kindly accompanied me to “Public School No. 7,” which contained two large, clean, light, and well ventilated apartments, one for boys, of whom about 300 were in attendance, and one for girls, of whom there were about the same number. An able master and an assistant directed in the boys' room, and an able mistress and an assistant in the girls'. They had all salaries sufficient to prevent the temptation to leave the school for any ordinary occupation. There was great order amongst the pupils, and a cheerfulness and look of intelligence that betokened kindness and attention on the part of the teachers; and the propriety of accentuation and emphasis in reading showed that the pupils understood what they read. When we first went into the girls' school Mr. Trimble, his fine countenance beaming with benevolence, asked: “Is not this pleasant sight?” And truly so it was. Clean faces and clean hands, nicely combed and nicely arranged hair, clean frocks, clean stockings, and clean shoes; and intelligent, cheerful, and happy countenances certainly did make it “a pleasant sight”—and long may you live, George Trimble, to enjoy it! It was a pretty drawing-room scene, I found they were the daughters of smiths, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, porters, waiters, draymen, and men of like classes. In the neighbourhood of this school was a “Primary School,” in two departments, E 0104 102 one containing about 150 boys, and the other about 150 girls, of from four to seven years of age, who undergo tuition somewhat similar to what is given in our schools for infants, having rather more of individual, and rather less of general or “gallery” teaching. On the whole, from what I have seen here and at other places in the States, and from what I have heard in answer to numerous inquiries, I believe that the schools intended for the children of the working classes are creditable to the country, and fulfil, to a certain and considerable extent, the intentions of their promoters. The question as to their support by assessment, involving as it does very grave difficulties, I will not now enter upon. I must however say, such is the absence of sectarian rancour and jealousy, in consequence of there being no established, state-paid, and dominant church, that I do not find those difficulties regarded so seriously here as I continue to regard them. Mr. Trimble gave me the Report of the Committee for 1848, to which I may here-after refer to show the obstacles which have retarded the diffusion of instruction amongst the classes which need it most.

In talking with a New York bookseller about the law of copyright, I said, in reference to a heap of English novels, republished at a cheap rate, that lay upon his counter: “Well, you may say of yourselves that if you do steal from us you only steal trash.” In justice, however, to the American reading public, it must be acknowledged that a fair encouragement is given to the authors and publishers of expensive works. Mr. Putnam in his “American Facts” says:—

“As illustrative of the demand in the United States for original works of this character, it may be repeated, that of Mr. Prescott's “Ferdinand and Isabella,’ in three expensive octavos, nine editions were called for in four years; and of his ‘Conquest of Mexico,’ 5,000 copies were printed as the 0105 103 first edition from the stereotype plates. Each of these works is elegantly printed, and costs about a guinea and a half per copy. The first volume of Bancroft's. ‘History of the United States’ was published in 1834; and the last edition was the tenth. The three volumes cost the same as Prescott's. The writings of Washington, collected by Mr. Sparks, form twelve illustrated octavos—an expensive set; those of Franklin fill ten volumes; yet no less than 6,500 sets of the former, and 4,500 of the latter, have actually been printed, and purchased by the not ungrateful countrymen of those two great men. A similar taste and demand exist for good books of travels. The first two works of Stephens, although published anonymously, and the subject not very novel, had an immediate and extensive sale worthy of their subsequent reputation; and no less than 12,000 copies of his expensive work on Central America were called for in less than three years. Of Dr. Robinson's Biblical researches in Palestine, in three octavos, which even the ‘Quarterly’ was ready to praise, the first edition consisted of 2,500 copies. The great work on the Government Exploring Expedition to the South Seas speaks for itself. It is in five large volumes, with all atlas, magnificently published at a heavy cost; and this work and the expedition itself shew that the Government has done something for the advancement of science, as well as of commerce. The Journal of the American Oriental Society gives a list of sixty-three volumes of American works on Asia, Africa, and the South Seas.

“All these, be it observed, are instances of original American works, the copywright of which yields the authors a suitable and handsome compensation, though the publishers might reprint foreign works for nothing. To prove that science is not utterly neglected, it may be mentioned that Dr. Bowditch, the self-taught, ci-devant cabin boy, translated and published, in four large quartos, La Place's Mécanique Celeste , adding a commentary of abstruse calculations and problems, about equal in bulk to the text. The legislature of New York appropriated 200,000 dollars (£40,000) for the preparation of the ‘Natural History’ of that state, in twelve quarto volumes. Professor Silliman, as already stated, has continued his quarterly ‘Journal of Science’ more than a quarter of a 0106 104 century; the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia has, for nineteen years, issued a monthly ‘Journal’ of their transactions; Mr. Audubon, whom Americans are proud to mention as their countryman, had, in Boston, United States, alone, twelve subscribers for his great work on birds, at 180 guineas each; and 800 American subscribers to the smaller work at about £24 each; and is now producing a splendid work on quadrupeds, beautifully executed at Philadelphia, and costing sixty guineas per copy; the American Philosophical Society sends forth ten quartos on science; and other societies and individuals have contributed many works of much scientific value.”

LETTER XI.

Leaving New York—Steam the Great Civiliser—Yale. College—Hartford—Descendants of the Puritans.

Boston , 18 th July , 1848.

We left New York on Friday afternoon. There is a pain in leaving agreeable persons when you think you are never to see them again. There is a like pain in leaving agreeable places, perhaps because places and persons are associated, when there is no prospect of revisiting them; but, independently of this feeling, we were unwilling to think that we should not again see a city which, notwithstanding our English associations, and, it may be, our pride of country, we could not help regarding as on a course of 0107 105 rapid progress towards the first rank in this “age of great cities.” Franklin jocularly expressed a wish that his life could be revived at the end of a century, that he might see what the United States had become. Probably my fellow-traveller and myself, should we live to the age of our fathers, might have occasion to rejoice in the fact that forty millions of persons in those states, and forty millions in the British islands and territories, were in the full, undisturbed, and undisturbable possession of the civil, religious, and commercial freedom, for which, in our own humble sphere, we have earnestly contended,—that eighty millions of the most energetic of existing races spoke one common language and had one common interest,—that the language of the English translation of the Bible, and of Shakspere and Milton, was not only the commercial language of the world, but the medium through which all that was great in truth, in thought and in sentiment, was communicated to every nook and corner of the earth. Would that men in both countries would drop all narrow jealousies, and, looking to the great mission of the Anglo-Saxon family, earnestly and honestly resolve that the sole struggle between those of its branches, only geographically separated, should be which most jealously and most energetically should labour to christianise and civilise the whole human race!

The romance of the passage through the narrow part of Long Island Sound has been destroyed by the power of steam. A few miles on our way to Newhaven we passed through Hell Gate, without having the slightest conception that there ever could be any danger encountered there. When told, some time after, that we had gone through this far-famed place, we did recollect that we had noticed a rock or two, and that there was something like a current. I suspect that the novelists have made a little too much it. The rapids of the St. Lawrence created high excitement on board when our noble vessel shot down the swift and surging 0108 106 volume of water; but we were much disposed to vote Hell Gate a humbug. Mind has triumphed over physical obstruction, and the sublimity is now in the steamboat, notwithstanding all that Tom Moore or Fenimore Cooper may have to say to the contrary. In five hours we were borne on to Newhaven, a distance of seventy-eight miles, and we found next day that the Connecticut , a new steamer which we met on its way to New York, had performed the voyage in three hours and three quarters. Could the same speed be attained on the ocean, the passage between Boston and Liverpool might be made in less than six days! Is not the realisation of this within the category of things possible? With a reduction of one half of the time and one half of the expense, I do think that there could be no more wars between the two countries. The citizens of the United States do not dislike Englishmen individually; on the contrary they are rather pre-disposed to like them, and to pay them most kind and respectful attention when they visit America. Their dislike is to John Bull—the traditional big, bullying, boroughmongering and monopolist John Bull—the John Bull as he was at the time of the American and the French revolutions; before Catholic Emancipation and Negro Emancipation; before repeal of Orders in Council; before the Reform Bill; before amended Tariffs; before the repeal of the Corn Laws; and before any movement to amend the Navigation Laws. And we do not dislike the citizens of the United States; on the contrary we are pre-disposed to like them and to give them a cordial welcome amongst us. Our dislike is to Jonathan—bragging, annexing, and repudiating Jonathan. The individual likings will become the national in proportion to the greater intercourse of the individuals of both nations. Give us then the quick and cheap steam-boat. The paddle-wheel is the emblem of civilisation and peace. Why may it not be regarded as one of the means, in the hand of God, 0109 107 to hasten that happy time when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and shall learn the art of war no more?

We landed at Newhaven at nine o'clock, and in our drive to the Tontine Hotel we passed through a succession of avenues of tall elms behind which rose up, in the bright moon-light, handsome white pillared villas and high white church spires. Next morning I had some difficulty to find out the town amidst the groves of luxuriant trees, and was rather surprised to find it bustling and active, for I had expected an air of academic quietude about it. The old brick buildings of the university, half hid by the lofty elms, for which the place is remarkable, were, however, secluded enough for the purpose of uninterupted study. In the town, outside of the park in which the college buildings, the state house, and three churches are enclosed, there are numerous small manufactures requiring a good head and a skilful hand, aided, not superseded, by little steam-engines, making little noise and little smoke, working away quietly in little back workshops. Carriages, combining lightness and strength, are made here in great number, and exported to all the sea-board of North and South America. There is nobody very poor and nobody very rich—a very happy little community seemingly; not destitute of the means of religious instruction, for, to a population of about 15,000, there are twenty churches, erected and supported without state aid; while for the instruction of the young there is an equal number of schools, partly supported from the Connecticut State Education Fund, and partly by voluntary taxation of the citizens in the township. For a professional education, and for the completion of the studies of young men likely to hold an elevated station in society, the college offers the advantages of professors favourably known, even in Europe, for their piety, learning, and scientific acquirements, and of an economy which may be compared with 0110 108 that of the Scottish and contrasted with that of the English universities. The annual charges in the treasurer's bill are:—

Dollars.

For instruction 33.00

For rent of chamber in college, 9 to 15 dols. average 12.00

For ordinary repairs and contingencies 2.40

For general damages, sweeping, &c 3.60

For expenses of recitation schools 3.00

54.00

or £11 5s. sterling. The following maybe considered as a near estimate of the necessary expenses without including apparel; pocket money, travelling, and board in vacation:

Dollars. Dollars.

Treasurer's bill, as above 54,00 ” 54.00

Board forty weeks, from 60.00 to 90.00

Fuel and lights, from 6.00 to 15.00

Use of books rented and stationery 5.00 to 15.00

Use of furniture, bed, and bedding 5.00 to 15.00

Washing 5.00 to 15.00

Taxes in the classes 5.00 to 6.00

Total, from 140.00 210.00

or from £29 3s. 4d. to £43 15s. sterling. I was told that a great desire is manifested on the part of young men of the humblest class in this industrious state of Connecticut to avail themselves of the opportunity thus afforded of obtaining a prafessional education. Sisters, to aid brothers in this ambition, will go into factories for a few years, devoting all their savings to that purpose; and many lads will perform services for their richer companions in study, or keep the books of small manufacturers, to enable them to attend the classes. The competition of these determined young students has a favourable effect on those who are born to inherit more wealth, for the son of a rich merchant does not like to be outstripped by the son of his father's porter or carman. There are twenty-three professors in the faculty, and eleven tutors in the languages, mathematics, and drawing. The following is a summary of the students: 0111 109

Theological students 44

Law students 41

Medical students 45

Scholars of the house 2

Students in philosophy and the arts 11

Seniors 89

Juniors 103

Sophomores 92

Freshmen 95

Total number of under graduates 379

Total number 522

On Saturday we proceeded by railway to Hartford, a distance of thirty-six miles, which was gone over in an hour, being more than double the speed on the western lines. The country was far from being fertile, the rocks everywhere protruding through the thin dry soil, except in little marshy bottoms, which were generally in grass. It seemed the very country to furnish emigrants for the far west. An educated, enterprising people, on comparatively unproductive land, are sure to send off swarms to the more fertile soil. The farmer's son, brought up in the enjoyment of plain comforts, will not permit himself to sink into the rank of the day-labourer. If he cannot find a farm—and all farmer's sons in a long-settled country cannot be farmers—or if he cannot have a good reward for his toil as a mechanic or manufacturer, he betakes himself to the west, and the prairie or the forest witnesses his energy and his skill. I regarded this district with interest not only as the abode of the descendants of the puritan fathers, but as the place whence the great west was to receive a leavening of the high moral and religious tone of the ancient puritanic spirit, united with the clearer notions of modern times with respect to religious liberty.

We had met, on the lakes, a gentleman and his wife, both descendants of the early settlers of Hartford, and both members of the same congregational church in which more than two hundred years ago their forefathers worshipped. My descent from covenanters in Scotland, who E 2 0112 110 would have been of the number of puritan emigrants, had they not determined, after deliberate consideration, to remain and shed their blood, if need were, in defence of religious liberty at home, led me to take a deep interest in the information given us about Hartford. “You must see our charter oak,” said the lady, and we resolved to do so. Here is its history. In 1639 a constitution of government was adopted by the associated freemen of the colony. All the public authorities were annually appointed by the whole body of the freemen, and the election was by ballot. Up to the time of obtaining the charter of 1662 there is not to be found, in the records of the colony, the slightest recognition of the jurisdiction of the crown of England. That charter did little more than assure and ratify the constitution of 1639, and Connecticut was a complete republic in everything but the name. The wonder is that such a charter should have been granted to a colony in the very year in which the act of conformity banished two thousand English ministers from their pulpits. In 1687 (the dark hour before the dawn) Sir Edmund Andross was sent over with authority to vacate all the charters of the New England colonies. Having arrived at Hartford, with a guard of sixty men, to demand the charter of the assembly then in session, it was found convenient to postpone the debate thereupon till the evening, when, suddenly, the lights were extinguished, and a Captain Wadsworth, seizing the charter as it lay on the table, conveyed it to a place of safe keeping in the hollow of an oak on Wylly's Hill. In less than two years afterwards, Sir Edmund, with about fifty of his associates, was seized at Boston and placed in confinement, and the people of Connecticut then brought forth their charter from the hollow of the oak, and the chartered government was resumed. “Let that tree stand,” says the Rev. Dr. Hawes, the present pastor of the first congregational church, “and still bear the honoured name of the Charter Oak. While it remains we shall seem to stand 0113 111 nearer to the age of our fathers. One monument will remain to remind us of the care of our ancestors to preserve for their descendants the great deed of their civil and religious liberties.”

As soon as we arrived in Hartford, we set out to see the oak, which stood in a field on the outskirts of the town, the footway to it worn like the path up to the martyr's grave in the Old Grey Friars' Churchyard, in Edinburgh. Great care has been taken for its preservation, and a noble living monument it is of the olden time. The stem or bole has not much height before its great branches, each a tree in itself, are sent out; but the circumference, at five feet from the ground, is thirty feet. On our return a carriage was suddenly stopped, and we were cordially hailed by our lake friends, who were going out to take an airing with their daughter, but whose purpose was immediately changed, that we might be driven to all the objects of interest in and near the town. Our first visit was to the churchyard where the fathers of the community slept, and here we found the grave-stones of nine of the pastors who had successively filled the office and died in the charge, during a period of nearly two hundred years, no one having left his church and congregation during all that time until death separated the pastor from his flock. Our friend obtained from Dr. Hawes the copy of a sermon he had preached in 1836, at the close of the second century from the first establishment of the church, from which I give a list of the pastors:—

Ordained. Died. Aged. Ministry. Rev. Thomas Hooker 1633 July 7, 1647 61 14 years. ” Samuel Stone 1633 July 20, 1663 61 30 ” ” John Whiting 1660 —1689 — 10 ” ” Joseph Haines 1664 May 24, 1689 38 15 ” ” Isaac Foster 1679 Jany. 7, 1683 — 3 ” ” Tim. Woodbridge 1685 April 13, 1732 — 47 ” ” D. Wadsworth 1732 Nov. 12, 1744 43 16 ” ” Edward Dorr 1748 Oct. 20, 1772 50 25 ” ” Nathan Strong 1974 Dec. 25, 1817 69 40 ” ” Joel Hawes 1818 still in the charge. 0114 112

Mr. Whiting was also pastor of the South Church from 1670 to 1689, the first of the three churches organised from the overflowings of the first.

Braintree church-rate case in England this year of 1848 came into my mind. From Braintree, in Essex, came the fathers of this church, out of which these churches sprung, escaping from oppression in the old country, and seeking religious liberty in dreary forests, then the haunts of murderous savages. Of Hooker, their pastor, and their leader in the wilderness, it is said, that though kind and affable in his common intercourse, he appeared in the pulpit with such majesty and independence as if “while engaged in his Master's work, he could put a king in his pocket.”

I regretted much that I had not leisure to inspect more minutely the valuable and interesting Museum and Library in the Wadsworth Museum, a noble institution, most creditable to the enlightened public spirit of Hartford. The Library has been enriched by a donation—for he has stipulated for only a small life income—from the Rev. Dr. Robbins, who, at the age of upwards of fourscore, still delights in showing its treasures, now open to the public. Mr. Buckingham, who had visited Dr. Robbins at Matapoisett, where the venerable collector had been a pastor for more than forty years, much beloved and much respected, thus describes the library before it was so generously devoted to the public use:

“We were conducted by him over his library, which for such a spot is both extensive and valuable, and particularly rich in antiquarian and biblical lore. He has collected also vast numbers of pamphlets and other works on the early history of America, which are all so well classified and arranged, as to be immediately available for the illustration of any point of American history, and form altogether perhaps the most valuable and expensive collection of historical memorials in the state—the number of the separate pamphlets exceeding 4,000. In addition to these 0115 113 there are upwards of 3,000 volumes in general history, the belles lettres, and theology; and amongst them no less than 300 ponderous folios, many of them printed between 1450 and 1500. The richest part of his library is, however, his collection of ancient bibles, among which are a copy of Cranmer's, another of the Geneva bible, and several of King James's, one of 1613, and one of 1630 in black letter, a copy of Coverdale's bible, and a very fine copy of St. Jerome's, printed at Venice in 1478. He has also a copy of Elliott's bible, translated by that missionary into the language of the Naragansett Indians, who formerly occupied these parts, printed at Cambridge, near Boston, so long ago as the year 1683. Having passed some hours, when in England, with the late Dr. Adam Clarke, in examining the Duke of Sussex's collection of bibles at Kensington, I advised Dr. Robbins to open a communication with his royal highness, on the subject of biblical literature, which might be productive of mutual gratification.”

Dr. Robbins adopted the advice of Mr. Buckingham, and addressed the duke, offering him a duplicate copy of Elliott's bible, and expressing a desire to obtain a copy of the “Bishop's Bible.” The venerable old gentleman showed me the duke's reply which had accompanied a copy of the bible he wished to procure, declining to deprive him of the copy of Elliott's bible, as he already had one in his library at Kensington. It was more gratifying to me to see this gracious document in the hands of a successor of the puritan divines, than to hear, as I had at Halifax, of a crippling monopoly having been handed over by the Duke of Sussex's brother in part payment of a debt due to his silversmith.

I cannot but express the pleasure I had in witnessing, on the Sunday morning, the retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, one of the Associate Judges of that court, and the Judge of the County Court, members of Dr. Hawes' church, each presiding over a class in the Sabbath school. It was particularly interesting to watch the animated countenances of four or five young men 0116 114 as they sat at the feet and listened to the instructions of the ex-chief-justice—a Christian Gamaliel. We are here, at Boston, on our way to the new manufacturing town of Lowell, and we intend to sail for England by the Niagara to-morrow week.

LETTER XII.

Lowell—Its Manufactures—Its Population—Its Moral Machinery—Churches and Schools.

Gloucester, Cape Anne, July 22, 1848.

We left Hartford on Monday last, travelling to Boston on a very well constructed railway, passing through a country neither fertile nor beautiful, except along the banks of the Connecticut river, where the soil is comparatively rich and the trees luxuriant. We spent the afternoon of Monday and the whole of Tuesday in Peninsulate Boston—the Venice of New England; but the weather being intolerably hot, we resolved to proceed to Lowell on Wednesday morning, distance twenty-six miles, by one of the numerous railways which branch out from the capital of Massachusetts. I found this new manufacturing town a much larger and more important place than I had anticipated. A description written half a dozen years ago is now out of date, so rapid has been the progress. In 1822 the population was only 200; in 1825 it had increased to 2,500; in 1836, to 18,000; and it is now 33,000! From the statistics now lying before me, in this sea side retreat, I am enabled to give an account of the extent of its principal manufactures, and the number of persons employed in each.

0117 115

PRINCIPAL MANUFACTURES, AND NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED IN EACH.

UNITED STATES.

Name of Company. Capital, in dols. Operatives. Female Male. Spindles Looms Consumption per annum. Cotton, lbs. Production. Began operations. Yards. Merrimac Man. Co. 2,000,000 1,600 650 68,000 1,900 4,100,000 16,000,000 prints. 2,000,000 sheetings. 1823 Hamilton 1,200,000 900 360 36,000 1,000 3,100,000 5,000,000 prints and dyed goods. 5,000,000 flannels, sheetings, &c. 1825 Appleton Company 600,000 500 120 18,000 530 2,600,000 6,500,000 sheetings and shirtings, No. 14. 1828 Lowell Man. Co. 1,500,000 550 300 3,400 * 7,100 † 51 220 700,000 2,600,000 350,000 carpets. 2,000 rugs. 5,000,000 coarse cottons. 1828 Middlesex Company 1,000,000 930 820 16,500 * 420 1,700,000 * 1,000,000 cassimeres. 120,000 broadcloths. 1830 Suffolk Company 600,000 400 100 14,500 † 450 2,300,000 † 5,700,000 drillings, No. 14. 1832 Tremont Mills 600,000 460 120 13,000 480 2,000,000 6,700,000 sheetings and shirtings, No. 14. 1832 Lawrence Man. Co. 1,500,000 1,200 200 45,000 1,260 5,000,000 13,500,000 printg. cloths, sheetgs., & shirtgs. 1833 Boott Cotton Mills 1,200,000 870 160 34,500 970 3,600,000 10,500,00 ” ” ” 14 to 40. 1836 Massachusetts 1,800,000 1,250 250 45,700 1,500 7,800,000 25,000,000 drillings, ” 14. 1840 Total 12,000,000 301,700 8,781 33,100,000 * 79,900,000 cotton cloths. 2,400,000 † 21,000,000 prints. Lowell Bleachery 210,000 20 200 1,300,000 dyed. 13,200,000 bleached. 1832 Lowell Machine Shop 600,000 — 900 5,000 tons cast and wrought iron Machinery, locomotive & stationary engines. 1845 12,810,000 8,680 4,180

* Wool.

† Cotton.

0118 116

The general rate of increased production during the last twelve years is indicated by the increase at three of the principal factories.

The Merrimack Company, in 1836, had 35,704 spindles, used 2,288,000 pounds of cotton, and produced 9,568,000 yards of cloth. In 1848 it has 68,000 spindles, uses 4,100,000 pounds of cotton, and produces 18,000,000 yards of cloth.

The Lawrence Company, in 1836, had 31,000 spindles, used 3,328,000 pounds of cotton, and produced 10,400,000 yards of cloth. In 1848 it has 45,000 spindles, uses 5,000,000 pounds of cotton, and produces 13,500,000 yards of cloth.

The Massachusetts Company, established in 1840, has now 45,700 spindles, uses 7,800,000 pounds of cotton, and produces 25,000,000 yards of (drillings) cloth.

In addition to the mills belonging to the large companies enumerated, are a number of small factories, saw mills, planing machines, and other works necessary to the construction and maintenance of manufacturing establishments, producing to the amount of a million of dollars, or more than £200,000 annually.

The operatives, 13,000 in number, employed in the twelve larger establishments, have strict rules to follow. The following are the regulations to be observed by all persons employed in the factories of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company:—

The overseers are to be always in their rooms at the starting of the mill, and not absent unnecessarily during working hours. They are to see that all those employed in their rooms are in their places in due season, and keep a correct account of their time and work. They may grant leave of absence to those employed under them, when they have spare hands to supply their places, and not otherwise, except in cases of absolute necessity.

All persons in the employ of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company are to observe the regulations of the room where 0119 117 they are employed. They are not to be absent from their work without the consent of the overseer, except in cases of sickness, and then they are to send him word of the cause of their absence. They are to board in one of the houses of the company, and give information at the counting-room where they board, when they begin, or whenever they change their boarding place; and are to observe the regulations of their boarding-house.

Those intending to leave the employment of the company, are to give at least two weeks' notice thereof to their overseer.

All persons entering into the employment of the company, are considered as engaged for twelve months, and those who leave sooner, or do not comply with all these regulations, will not be entitled to a regular discharge.

The company will not employ any one who is habitually absent from public worship on the Sabbath, or known to be guilty of immorality.

A physician will attend once in every month at the counting room, to vaccinate all who need it, free of expense.

Any one who shall take from the mills or the yard, any yarn, cloth, or other article, belonging to the company, will be considered guilty of stealing, and be liable to prosecution.

Payments will be made monthly, including board and wages. The accounts will be made up to the last Saturday but one in every month, and paid in the course of the following week.

These regulations are considered part of the contract, with which all persons entering into the employment of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company engage to comply.

John Avery, Agent.

The females, after their labour is over in the factories, are not removed from the superintendence of the manager. The following are the regulations for the boarding-houses of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company:—

The tenants of the boarding-houses are not to board, or permit any part of their houses to be occupied by any person except those in the employ of the company, without special permission.

They will be considered answerable for any improper 0120 118 conduct in their houses, and are not to permit their boarders to have company at unreasonable hours.

The doors must be closed at ten o'clock in the evening, and no person admitted after that time, without some reasonable excuse.

The keepers of the boarding-houses must give an account of the number, names, and employment of their boarders when required, and report the names of such as are guilty of any improper conduct, or are not in the regular habit of attending public worship.

The buildings, and yards about them, must be kept clean and in good order; and if they are injured, otherwise than from ordinary use, all necessary repairs will be made, and charged to the occupant.

The sidewalks, also, in front of the houses, must be kept clean, and free from snow, which must be removed from them immediately after it has ceased falling; if neglected, it will be removed by the company at the expense of the tenant.

It is desirable that the families of those who live in the houses, as well as the boarders, who have not had the kinepox, should be vaccinated, which will be done at the expense of the company, for such as wish it.

Some suitable chamber in the house must be reserved, and appropriated for the use of the sick, so that others may not be under the necessity of sleeping in the same room.

John Avery, Agent.

The hours of attendance at the mills are thirteen and a half; an hour and a half is allowed for meals, making the actual working time twelve hours. From what cause has the large amount of manufactures in this new town arisen, and how have the proprietory companies attained the power to dictate such regulations in a country where labour is so scarce?

The establishment of manufactures is mainly to be attributed to the English Corn Law, the operation of which gave rise to a general desire throughout the states that a home market for agricultural produce should be created. The more immediate impulse was given by the war of 1813, 0121 119 occasioned by our impolitic Orders in Council, and our rigorous enforcement of the right of search. “The interrupted commerce and high prices,” says Mr. Miles in his Lowell As It Is , “which attended the last war with England, turned the attention of monied men, in various parts of this country; to manufactures.” There was a prospect not only of great profit, but of great popularity, to those who would contribute to make the United States less dependent on England for textile fabrics, and the erection of a cotton mill came to be regarded as an act of the most exalted patriotism.

Profit and popularity combined offered the strongest motive for speculation. Your acute American has always a sharp eye for the discovery of an available water privilege. The shores of the Merrimack river were covered with forest trees, and it was found that the falls of Pawtucket offered a serious obstruction to the floating of timber down to Newburyport, at the mouth of the river. A company was established in 1792 which formed a canal a mile and a half in length, having four locks, to accomplish the descent of thirty-two feet. The speculation, however, was. not a profitable one, for in 1804 another canal was completed which connected the Merrimack with Boston harbour, and much of the timber which had previously been sent down to Newburyport found its way to Boston, where there was more ship-building. After the impulse given to home manufactures in 1813, several small factories had been erected on the banks of the canal, but it was not for some years that its full value as a water privilege was discovered. The success of the Waltham Mills, commenced in 1814 and in 1820 employing more than four hundred hands, gave encouragement to greater undertakings. Mr. White relates that in the latter year Mr. Paul Moody had charge of the Waltham Mills, and a friend of his, Mr. Ezra Worthen, a former partner in business, was connected with the manufacturing 0122 120 establishment at Amesbury. From his childhood Mr. Worthen had been acquainted with the neighbourhood of the Pawtucket Falls; and when the profitableness of the manufacturing business led to inquiries for water power, the immense advantage which this place held out soon struck his eye. While on a visit to Waltham, he expressed a wish to Mr. Patrick T. Jackson, one of the principal directors of the company there, that they would set up works in some new place, and give him employment in conducting them. Mr. Jackson replied, that they would willingly do this, if he would find a good water power. Immediately Mr. Worthen named the Pawtucket Falls; and with a piece of chalk drew a map of the river and canal on the floor. The rude sketch was enough to give Mr. Jackson a favourable impression, and he requested Mr. Moody to visit, with Worthen, the place which the latter had described. It was not long before they explored the whole neighbourhood, tracing the course of the canal, surveying the adjoining land and shores, and satisfying themselves that the place afforded great facilities for building up a large manufacturing town. Soon after the reception of their highly favourable report, the directors of the Waltham Company resolved to procure this eligible site.

Land was purchased to the extent of four hundred acres, the whole stock of the canal company was bought, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company was incorporated, and operations were vigorously commenced, the first of which was to enlarge the canal to sixty feet in width and eight in depth. In November, 1823, the first cloth was produced by the Merrimack Company. Additional joint-stock manufacturing companies were formed, and additional water power became necessary. A new and large canal has been constructed during the last two years, at an expense of upwards of £100,000, which renders a great portion of the river available. Its water section is 1500 square feet, being 0123 121 generally 100 feet wide and 15 feet deep; in places the width is narrower, but the depth has been increased so as to still have the same section, the depth being at the river 20 feet. A covered canal, or under ground aqueduct, is now in the course of construction, from the New or Northern Canal to the Merrimack Canal, to distribute the advantages of the new supply, and to maintain the level in the other feeders. Owing to these late improvements, the available fall at the mills may be reckoned at 33 feet; the flow of the river in its lowest stages is 1700 cubic feet per second, and since this is used but 13 hours out of the 24, and the pond made by the dam is of sufficient capacity to retain the water, the supply during working hours is 3,140 cubic feet per second; of this water and fall from 80 to 90 per cent. is made effective by the use of the turbines constructed by Boyden. As the result from the above data, we have the available and effective power on the jact-shaft, the equivalent of 10,000 horse power. To make constant, and to increase the power of the river during the dry months, the large lakes at the source of the Winnipiseogee and Squam, covering an extent of above 100 square miles, have been secured, and by this means not only will the water power of Lowell, but for the whole extent of the river, be increased. This increase may be estimated at 50 per cent., giving a total of 15,000 horse power as the supply of the Merrimack at Lowell. The turbine , by which so large a per centage of the water power is made available, is a horizontal water-wheel with a vertical axis and curved float-boards. The whole is “boxed-in,” as it were, with solid granite round the circumference and at top and bottom, so that none of the water, which enters at the upper part of one side and escapes at the lower part of the other, is wasted; and the wheel works although the back water is level with its upper surface if the top of the column from which it comes be on a higher level. The principle is a 0124 122 modification of one that has been long in use in Languedoc and Guyenne, in the south of France, where the water flows upon a horizontal wheel in the shape of an inverted cone with spiral float-boards.

Water in abundance, and the use of mechanical means for its economical application, the question was, where were the workpeople to come from? To obtain the supply of labour there was an admirable union of philanthropy and worldly wisdom. The sagacious founders of the town knew that unless the various manufacturing establishments made a moral provision which would satisfy parents, in a country where much of the religious strictness of the early puritans prevailed, young people would not be permitted to become mill operatives. Amongst the well-educated community of New England, where the standard of morality stands confessedly high, it was necessary to offer high moral temptations—to give unequivocal assurance not only that there should be none of the evil communications which corrupt good manners, but that the means of religious, moral, and intellectual teaching should be amply provided. In reading the regulations of the boarding-houses the Englishman wonders why, in a country where labour is scarce, the workpeople submit to so much strictness of rule. The fact is, that without strict regulation workpeople could not be had. The managers have to exercise the strictness of parental rule that parents may feel the conviction that their children are safe. Mr. White says:—

“The productiveness of these works depends upon one primary and indispensable condition—the existence of an industrious, sober, orderly, and moral class of operatives. Without this, the mills in Lowell would be worthless. Profits would be absorbed by cases of irregularity, carelessness, and neglect; while the existence of any great moral exposure in Lowell would cut off the supply of help from the virtuous homesteads of the country. Public morals and private interests, identical in all places, are here seen 0125 123 to be linked together in an indissoluble connection. Accordingly, the sagacity of self-interest, as well as more disinterested considerations, has led to the adoption of a strict system of moral police.

“There is one consideration bearing upon the character of our operatives, which must all the while be borne in mind. We have no permanent factory population. This is the wide gulf which separates the English manufacturing towns from Lowell. Only a very few of our operatives have their homes in this city. The most of them come from the distant interior of the country.

“To the general fact, here noticed, should be added another, of scarcely less importance to a just comprehension of this subject,— the female operatives in Lowell do not work, on an average, more than four and a half years in the factories. They then return to their homes, and their places are taken by their sisters, or by other female friends from their neighbourhood. Returns will hereafter be given which will establish the fact of the average above named.

“Here, then, we have two important elements of difference between English and American operatives. The former are resident operatives, and are operatives for life, and constitute a permanent, dependent factory caste. The latter come from distant homes, to which in a few years they return, to be the wives of farmers and mechanics of the country towns and villages. The English visiter to Lowell, when he finds it so hard to understand why American operatives are so superior to those of Leeds and Manchester, will do well to remember what a different class of females we have here to begin with—girls well educated in virtuous rural homes; nor must the Lowell manufacturer forget that we forfeit the distinction, from that moment, when we cease to obtain such girls as the operatives of the city.

“To obtain this constant importation of female hands from the country, it is necessary to secure the moral protection of their characters while they are resident in Lowell. This, therefore, is the chief object of that moral police referred to.

“It should be stated, in the outset, that no persons are employed on the Corporations who are addicted to intemperance, or who are known to be guilty of any immoralities 0126 124 of conduct. As the parent of all other vices, intemperance is most carefully excluded. Absolute freedom from intoxicating liquors is understood, throughout the city, to be a pre-requisite to obtaining employment in the mills, and any person known to be addicted to their use is at once dismissed. This point has not received the attention, from writers upon moral condition of Lowell, which it deserves; and we are surprised that the English traveller and divine, Dr. Scoresby, in his recent book upon Lowell, has given no more notice to this his subject. A more strictly and universally temperate class of persons cannot be found, than the nine thousand operatives (now 13,000) of this city; and the fact is as well known to all others living here, as it is of some honest pride among themselves. In relation to other immoralities, it may be stated, that the suspicion of criminal conduct, association with suspected persons, and general and habitual light behaviour and conversation, are regarded as sufficient reasons for dismissions, and for which delinquent operatives are discharged.”

A part of the moral machinery employed is that all the boarding-houses are the property of and under the direction of the various corporations. We visited one in a long range of excellent three-story houses, with a good pavement in front and a row of trees. They were such dwellings as would let for £40 a-year in Manchester, private looking, each having a brass plate with the name on the door, well finished inside and out, scrupulously clean, with two carpetted and neatly-furnished parlours, fifteen feet square each, used as the sitting-rooms of the young women, and the bed-rooms such as one might expect to find in a respectable English boarding-house for young ladies. I observed that every boarder had her little library, generally of religious books, and that a number had well-engraved and well-framed portraits of their respective ministers. In the spinning and weaving-rooms of the Merrimack Company I saw the young women at work, plainly but neatly dressed in dark-coloured prints or ginghams coming up to the throat, all bearing evidence of good health, although the 0127 125 actual working time is twelve hours a day. I regarded their appearance as a corroboration of a theory I had formed that women in America who had work to do were likely to have better health than those who had none. I saw them going to dinner, in twos and threes, arm-in-arm, all with hoods or bonnets, and perhaps one-half of them with green veils, having the look of farmers' daughters in our own country when, in their ordinary clothing a little tidied, they go an errand into the village shop. At night I went out into the main street, and saw hundreds of them “a shopping,” in the perfect security that in this town of more than thirty thousand inhabitants there was not one person who dared to offer them an insult, either by word or look! These young women receive on an average three dollars a week, out of which they pay a dollar and a quarter for board, so that out of their savings, put out at interest in the savings' bank, they can accumulate, during their five years' stay, a pretty little marriage portion.

The Savings' Bank was incorporated in 1829, since which time it has received two millions five hundred thousand dollars, and paid out one million eight hundred thousand. Of the two thousand depositors in the bank, about one-half are factory girls, the amount of whose funds is a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, or £25,000 sterling. Many of the young women have £40 or £50 deposited, and some have as much as £100. Two per cent. interest is paid every six months, which, if not withdrawn, is added to the the principal, thus compounding interest every year. New England being rather a sterile country, many of the young men emigrate to the far west, carrying with them the sober, industrious, and moral habits of their fatherland—and young wives of similar habits, with a “tocher” or portion derived from their labour and saved by their economy at Lowell. F

0128 126

There are in Lowell twenty-three regularly-constituted religious societies, viz., one Episcopal, four Congregational Orthodox, one Congregational Unitarian, three Baptist, three Universalist, two Episcopal Methodists, two Wesleyan Methodists, two Roman Catholics, two Free-will Baptists, two Christians, and one Free Chapel, connected with the Ministry at large. These societies have erected nineteen churches, at a cost of three hundred and eight thousand dollars; and two new churches have been commenced this season. They are served at the present time by twenty-two ministers, whose support, with other expenses of public worship, amounts to twenty-five thousand dollars per year. Connected with these societies there are six thousand one hundred and twenty-three Sunday-School pupils and teachers, constituting about a fifth part of the entire population of the city. Though all these societies are composed altogether of working people, and many of them almost exclusively of factory operatives, yet their charities are many in number, and are considerable in their aggregate amount. Contributions of four hundred dollars have repeatedly been made, in a single church, for missionary purposes. One of these societies raised, two years ago, one thousand dollars for the purchase of a pastor's library. Another has established, within a few years, a parish library of two thousand six hundred volumes, of permanently valuable books, and has recently undertaken the support of a Ministry at large, pledging itself for this purpose to the amount of eight hundred dollars a year, It has been ascertained that the charities of the religious societies of the city, during the past year, beside what was raised for their ordinary expenses, amounted to ten thousand three hundred and twenty-six dollars.

I had occasion, in a previous letter, to remark on the comparative absence of rancourous feeling amongst the 0129 127 various religious sects in this country. Mr. White, the historian of a city which has only a twenty years' history, says of the above numerous body:—

“A better feature still of the Lowell churches is that higher kind of charity, which the Apostle has placed above the bestowing even of all one's goods to feed the poor. Few are the places which, on the whole, are more exempt from bigotry, intolerance, and the little arts of persecution and censoriousness so often suggested by sectarian zeal. The clergymen of the city often meet together, to consult and act in concert, to promote some moral end; and such meetings have encouraged generous feelings between the professors of different forms of faith. The factory girl, who comes to Lowell, finds a church professing the creed in which she has been educated; and many become interested in their Sunday-school, and attached to their pastor, and have occasion to remember this city with gratitude, as the birth-place of that higher life to which they have here been awakened.”

But I must bring my letter to a close. We were exceedingly pleased with our visit to Lowell. I said to the kind and hospitable family with whom we were guests: “It is all very delightful; but I think I could form something nearly as good in England if it were possible to give me the privilege of taxing all the other inhabitants to the amount of twenty-five per cent. on all that my community produced.” The mills, though enjoying this protection, do not yield more profit than could be had by ordinary investment on mortgage; but it is believed that even additional outlay will be safe, and new factories of various kinds, in the neighbourhood, and where water power can be had, are in the course of erection, the capitalists either expecting additional protection, or calculating on the effects of our Ten Hours' Bill, and believing that young women who can earn their marriage portion in five years will not call for such a change as would compel them to work six years for that object.

LETTER XIII.

Character of New Englanders—Gloucester—Abolitionists—Oliver Caswell—On Board the Niagara—American Economy.

On board the “Niagara.”

We left Lowell on Thursday, the 20th, for Boston, but with the resolution of passing onwards to Gloucester for a few days' enjoyment of the cool sea breezes of the latter port, which lies on a small and beautiful bay on the southwestern side of Point Anne. The railway was carried through a country one-half level salt marsh and one-half a slightly elevated ground, the granite everywhere breaking through the thin soil. The puritans were not very fortunate in the selection of a home in the bay of Massachusetts. Plymouth, Boston, Salem, and Gloucester offered little scope to the agriculturists, and an early emigration to Newhaven and Hartford took place, where a greater extent of fertile land was available. Thus generation after generation sent forth its active young men, widening their conquests over the forest and the swamp, till all New England became well peopled. In the same manner emigration goes on now, and a frugal, active, and rapidly increasing population, pressing closely as Malthus would say, on the means of human subsistence in this stony territory, keeps sending out hardy adventurers to the more fertile states of the west, there to set an example of activity, industry, sobriety, scrupulous regard to the moral obligations of life, and a decent, and seemingly a very sincere, observance of religious requirements. Was it chance that the early settlers should set themselves down in a country so sterile that their moral and religious habits might remain uncontaminated 0131 129 by the looser principles of men who sought, not freedom from persecution for conscience sake, but merely the means whereby to live? Was it accident that they settled where there was so little room for increase that they had to send their well-instructed sons and daughters out farther into the wilderness to subdue it? Was it a “fortuitous combination of circumstances,” that, two hundred years after their settlement on this rocky land, their descendants, inheriting their principles, are constantly sending out detachments to all the rest of the free states in the Union? To me, it appears not chance but provision, design—design to furnish the leaven for leavening the future great mass.

In the southern states, the New Englanders, nicknamed Yankees, are held in much dislike. Their decency of manners rebukes the licentiousness, and their frugality, the extravagance of the south. Achille Murat speaks the prevalent opinion of the slave states when he says:—“They betray a shameless avidity after profit, and, like Petit-Jean, candidly tell you—

‘Que, sans argent, honneur n'est qu'une maladie.’ This spirit of calculation and avarice is strangely blended with the strict observance of the Sunday, which they call Sabbath, and of all the puritanical practices of the Presbyterian religion which they have generally adopted. Morality, according to them, consists much more in not swearing, singing, dancing, or walking on Sunday, than in not making a fraudulent bankruptcy. This species of hypocrisy is so natural to them, that the greater number practice it as a thing of course. They glory in calling themselves'the country of steady habits,' not because they are more virtuous than other people, but because they assume a contrite air once a week, and eat nothing on Saturdays but cod-fish and apple pies.” Mr. Dickens, in his notice of Hartford, has adopted a little of this southern imputation of hypocrisy. 0132 130 Murat seems to think that without swearing, singing, and dancing, there can be no cheerfulness, and no honesty without Sunday walks. One can only report the ford as one finds it. I saw more cheerfulness in Connecticut than I saw in all the other states put together.

Nothing could be more delightful than the weather during the five days that we remained at Mr. Hudson's very comfortable hotel at Gloucester. We heard of the thermometer being at 93° in Boston, while it was not more than 82° with us; and the air was so pure and elastic, that to breathe it was a positive, at once-felt luxury, and the bathing was delicious. I regretted that before we went on our voyage we had made up our minds to be home again in three months, for I saw Mr. Brooks improving so much in health, and enjoying himself so much, that I felt assured he would entirely recover his strength by a further residence of a couple of months, not necessarily at Gloucester, for in the beautiful Indian summer we could have moved about anywhere. The sea breeze was always refreshing. If, when the thermometer was at 82°, we walked to an old windmill on a granite mount which overlooked the little bay, the temperature was pleasantly cool; and in the evening, when the heat was indicated at no more than 65° or 70°, we found our woollen coats more comfortable than our light “Moses” jackets.

I had a good deal of conversation with a Boston abolitionist on the difficulties which were thrown in the way of the anti-slavery movement. I found, with deep regret, that the timidity or cowardice of a number of ministers of religion had led many abolitionists to doubt the power of religous principle in the repression of cruelty and injustice. They saw zealous professors of Christianity either silently submitting to, or faintly protesting against, the atrocities of the slave system, but most energetically exerting themselves for the “better observance of the sabbath,” and they were 0133 131 running into the illogical conclusion that a strict observance of that day was an obstacle to the progress of anti-slavery principles. They were hearing of ministers who were using the Bible to justify slavery, and because this mistake was made, they were running into the greater mistake of believing that the Bible was unworthy of credit. Satan was quoting scripture for his own purpose, and the inconsequential inference was that scripture was of the devil. It is deeply to be lamented that the ministers of religion should shrink from the full expression of its dictates—and more deeply still to be lamented that benevolent men, honestly striving to promote the happiness of their fellow-men, should fall into the blunder of charging upon religion itself the faults or errors of its professors.

We left Gloucester for Boston on Monday. The city has not the regularity of New York and Philadelphia, and the streets are much narrower; but it has some splendid public buildings, and the warehouses and stores, many of them recently built, being of a fine greyish white granite, have an air of great substantiality and beauty. We had not left ourselves time to visit the various philanthropic institutions, which prove that the New Englanders, whether hypocrites, as Achille Murat calls them, or not, have set an example to all the world in the works of active benevolence. One establishment I had resolved to see, that in which Laura Bridgman, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl, and Oliver Caswell, a boy suffering the same calamities, had been educated, but I had an opportunity without visiting the asylum, of seeing the latter. When we went on Tuesday to see the Niagara , the noble vessel in which we were to sail, I saw on board a young man, talking in the finger signs to a blind lad, and as that mode of communication was not necessary with the merely blind, I concluded that the lad was Caswell, and was right. He had come to see the vessel, and to hear all about her, and to say what he 0134 132 thought about her. He examined all that he could reach, and was incessantly asking for an explanation of uses. He asked if the vessel was built in England—if the officers and sailors were English, and if there were to be English passengers in her? I requested the tutor to say that an English passenger would be glad to shake hands with him. He laughingly held out his hand and cordially returned my grasp. He wished to know if the ship had cannons. I asked—“What does he know of cannons?” “He feels the concussions when guns are fired in the bay.” I have with me the fifteenth report of the trustees of the asylum, which contains a special report by Dr. Howe on the cases of Laura Bridgman and Oliver Caswell. Laura had passed through a period of illness, and had been on the brink of the grave without knowing her danger. Before her illness she had been a happy and a merry child; since then she has been a thoughtful girl, from whom “the spontaneous joy of childhood has departed, and who is cheerful or sad in sympathy with the feelings of those about her.” She was beginning to understand that there was an obligation to the worship and love of God; and some complaints were uttered that her teacher was not sufficiently desirous to convey to her the knowledge that was necessary to eternal salvation. He defends himself by saying that her parents, who were pious and orthodox people, had left her religious instruction entirely to him, and he says:—

“Her friends, and to the credit of humanity be it said, they are a multitude, need not be alarmed; the form of faith which I shall try to give her will be catholic and charitable; it will be charity and good will to all men—love and obedience to God. I shall explain to her the bible as I understand it; I shall try to make her believe, as I do, that it contains a revelation of God's attributes, and that it points out to us all the way to happiness through the path of duty. It is already something more to her than a cold and barren abstraction. If she does not understand its doctrines, she begins to feel its spirit. On the last occasion of her manifesting 0135 133 any impatience, she said to Miss Wight, ‘I felt cross, but in a minute I thought of Christ, how good and gentle he was, and my bad feelings went away.’ For some months she has been in the habit of asking her teacher every Sunday about the sermon she heard.”

Dr. Howe reports that Oliver Caswell, during the previous year had been in good health, and continued to be the the same gentle and amiable boy as ever. He says:—

“His progress in learning language and acquiring intellectual knowledge is comparatively slow, because he has not that fineness of fibre, and that activity of temperament which enable Laura to struggle so successfully against the immense disadvantages under which they both labour. Still he continues to make gradual improvement, and can express his thoughts pretty well upon all ordinary subjects.

“His case proves, therefore, very clearly, that the success of the attempt made to instruct Laura Bridgman was not owing solely to her uncommon capacity. Oliver is a boy of rather unfavourable organization, and of sluggish temperament; he had been deaf and blind from infancy; he received no instruction until he was twelve years old, consequently he lost the most precious years for learning; nevertheless he has been taught to express his thoughts by the finger language and by writing; he has become acquainted with the rudiments of the common branches of education, and is an intelligent and morally responsible person. Henceforward there can be no excuse for leaving any deaf and blind mute, who has ordinary capacity, in a state of irresponsible idiocy to which persons in his situation have heretofore been condemned by high legal authorities, as well as by public opinion.

“Oliver's memory is not tenacious. A great part of what has been taught him he forgets in a month afterwards. This is true of all the intellectual branches, especially of those in which objects are not used as illustrations; but it is not true of the mechanical arts, of the knowledge of persons and things with which he comes in contact. He is a very apt learner at any handiwork; he delights in the use of tools, and excels most of his companions in the workshop. He never forgets a lesson which has been taught him there, because it is a lesson upon objects. ” F 2

0136 134

At one o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, July 26, we went on board a small steamer which conveyed us to the Niagara , lying off the light house, about ten miles from Boston. In build and model she extremely resembles the Hibernia , but is of larger dimensions, and of much greater engine power. An ordinary passage to Halifax is made in thirty-six hours, but our speed was so rapid that we could have been in the harbour before nine o'clock on Thursday evening, but for the dense fog which made the attempt dangerous. At nine o'clock on Friday morning we were again on our passage eastward, and just as the wind was filling our sails, and the steam had been got up to its full power, and as we were careering onwards at the rate of twelve knots an hour, a gun from a steamer, which was recognised as her Majesty's war-ship, the Scourge , tried the patience of Captain Ryrie. On his passage out, it had been similarly tried by guns from a Dutch vessel ten or twelve miles out of his course. Fearing that she might be short of provisions or water, his humanity impelled him to put about and go to her, to find, when he hailed her, that all the captain wanted was to know what news there were from Paris! The Scourge had tried the previous evening to get into Halifax harbour, but failing, we had to stop our career and take in her letter bags. Once more we pursued an uninterrupted course, and after a few days sailing, the captain and his mates began to talk pretty confidently of arriving in Liverpool on the Sunday!

I have brought with me several volumes of statistics and reports of public institutions, intending to take advantage of the leisure on board to condense the information they contain, but smooth as our course is, the vibration occasioned by the working of the engines makes writing rather too much of a task; and I find that, although I escape sea sickness, a close application to statistical figures is very apt to bring on a squeamishness that is anything but comfortable. 0137 135 I would not advise any one to leave work undone, which might be done on land, in the belief that he can make up for it by working at sea when he has nothing else to do. He will have enough to do to take care he does not become sea-sick. Here are, however, some gleanings.

In my letter upon the manufactures of Lowell, I mentioned that, notwithstanding the advantage of protection to the amount of 25 per cent., the several joint-stock companies did not divide more than what might have been obtained on mortgage. The following is the par and market value of the most prominent manufacturing companies of New England on the 1st January:—

Companies. Par value. Market value. Amoskeag, (Manchester) 1000 dols. 1070 dols. Boston, (Waltham) 900 ” 500 ” Stark, (Manchester) 1000 ” 925 ” Massachusetts, (Lowell) 1000 ” 950 ” Appleton, do 1000 ” 1100 ” Boott, do 1000 ” 1010 ” Hamilton, do 1000 ” 750 ” Laurence, do 1000 ” 1010 ” Lowell, do 1000 ” 900 ” Merrimack, do 1000 ” 1200 ” Middlesex, do 1000 ” 1170 ” Suffolk, do 1000 ” 1010 ” Tremont, do 1000 ” 950 ” Jackson, (Nashua) 800 ” 820 ” Nashua, do 500 ” 570 ” Cocheco, (Dover) 650 ” 530 ” Great Falls 420 ” 200 ” Salmon Falls 500 ” 500 ” Cabot, (Springfield) 1000 ” 900 ” Chicopec, do 1000 ” 600 ” Dwight, do 1000 ” 850 ” Perkins do 1000 ” 900 ” Palmer, (Palmer) 1000 ” 930 ” Thorndike, do 1000 ” 750 ” Salisbury 1000 ” 1250 ” Bartlett, (Newburyport) 500 ” 455 ” York, (Saaco) 1000 ” 1180 ” Manchester 5000 ” 3750 ” N. E. Worsted, (Framingham) 100 ” 80 ” Sandwich Glass Company 100 ” 83 ”

Mr. White is the historian of Lowell, a town with only a twenty years' history. I have before me the labours of an 0138 136 historian of Laurence—a town which has not more than a three years' history, although it has a population of 7,000 persons.

Laurence is situated on the Merrimack river, nine miles below Lowell, and, like Lowell, is to be a manufacturing town. With this object in view, a company of manufacturers purchased some thousands of acres of land during the summer and autumn of 1844, and on the 20th March, 1845, the charter of the “Essex Company,” empowering them to build a dam and canal, and create water power for manufacturing purposes, with a capital of one million of dollars, was signed by the Governor of Massachusetts. The Essex Company was organised April 16, 1845. On the 1st of August, 1845, the excavation for the foundation of the dam commenced near the Methuen shore, and the first stone of the dam was laid on the 19th of September. The progress of the new city was very rapid. At the winter session of the legislature, in 1846, the following charters were granted: Bay State Mills, for manufacture of wool, capital 1,000,000 dollars; Atlantic Cotton Mills, for manufacture of cotton, capital 2,000,000 dollars; Union Mills, for manufacture of wool, 1,000,000 dollars; Bleaching and Dyeing Company, capital 500,000 dollars. The incorporated capital thus far, amounted to 5,500,000 dollars. The laying out of the Bay State Mills was commenced April 11, 1846. The first sale of land by the Essex Company, at auction, was on the 28th April, 1846. Ground was first broken for the Atlantic Cotton Mills, June 9, 1846. The frame of the Essex Company's saw-mill, at the head of the canal, was raised June 25, 1846. In the meantime the erection of dwelling-houses and shops was going on, and at the present time the population is estimated at SEVEN THOUSAND.

The dam which the Essex Company has made is from 25 to 36 feet in height, varying with the bed of the river. The overfall is 900 feet in length, and the water falls 25 to 0139 137 27 feet. The wing walls extend from 200 to 300 feet in shore. The dam is all on rock foundation, and is built of solid stone masonry, laid in cement. It is 36 feet thick at the bottom. The front or down-stream side, which has a slope of one inch to a foot, is of granite stone, hammered on the bed and build, and vertical joints. The remainder is of rubble stone of large dimensions, laid in cement. The whole work contains more than 20,000 yards of masonry. The canal is one mile long, 12 feet deep, 100 feet wide at its upper end, and 60 at its lower, and parallel with the river, from which it is about 400 feet distant. Already the town has two weekly newspapers, one of which obtains nearly a hundred advertisements; and there are already six places of worship, twelve physicians, and nine attornies! All this argues great faith in the progress of manufactures under the protective system. The manufacturers ask protection until they become strong, and no doubt will use their strength to secure its continuance.

In discussions on free trade, I should not be afraid to match one of our well-informed handloom-weavers against Henry Clay, confident that the plain common-sense of the one would destroy, one by one, all the fallacies of the great orator and statesman; and on the question of slavery, whether regarded as one of principle or policy, I would be content to leave the issue, before unprejudiced judges, to an argument between any moderately-intellectual Sunday-school teacher of England or Scotland and John Calhoun. But let no man from the old country, of whatever amount of ability, attempt to defend its extravagant expenditure. Especially let him avoid any justification of the enormous expense of our court, the great salaries of our state officers, or the cost of our army with a general for every regiment, and our navy with an admiral for every ship, or our hierarchy with its bishops each receiving more “pay” than their 0140 138 president. On such subjects the citizens of the republic, be they democrats or whigs, would soon make him look “pretty considerable tarnation small.” Let an Englishman hold his head as high he likes on other points, he is obliged to bend when assailed with the torrents of ridicule—the loud “guffaws,” of interminable laughter—with which he is assailed when he tries to persuade them that the Master of the Buckhounds is entitled to an annual salary nearly equal to that on which their chief magistrate maintains a decent dignity. Lords of the Gold-stick, and Lords of the Bed-chamber, so far from exciting their reverence only excite risibility. There is some respect for our youthful and virtuous Queen, but the “barbaric pomp” with which she is surrounded alike arouses their laughter, contempt, and scorn; and they cannot, for the life of them, see any reason why we should give the King of Hanover three times as much, Prince Albert eight times as much, and the Queen Dowager nearly twenty times as much, as they give to the man who fills the chair of Washington and Jefferson. And how they do laugh at our Ambassadors, with their large salaries and splendid outfits—sent out to dance attendance upon courts instead of practical men whose business should be to attend to the great commercial interests of their country!

But, passing over the trappings of our court, and the ineffective part of our army and navy, they point with exultation to their superior economy in procuring the services of able men for indispensable offices. Their President has £1041 13s. 4d. a-year—the Viceroy of Ireland has £20,000. Their Secretary of State has £1250—our Home Secretary has £5000. Their Secretary of the Treasury has £1250—our First Lord of the Treasury has £5000, and a board of well-paid junior Lords. Their Secretary of War has £1250—our Foreign Secretary has £5000, and our 0141 139 Colonial Secretary has £5000. Their Secretary of the Navy has £1250—our First Lord of the Admiralty has £4500, with a board of well-paid junior Lords.

They can also obtain the services of able lawyers, as well as able statesmen, at a much cheaper rate than we can—cheaper being applied to quality as well as to price. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States has £1041 13s. 4d. a-year, and each of the eight Associate Judges has £937 10s.£our Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench has £10,000, and the other four Judges have £5,500 each—the Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas has £8,000, and the four Judges have £5,500 each—the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer has £7000, and the four Barons have £5,500 each. Besides the difference of incomes, the American judges retire, some at the age of 60 and some 70—our judges remain as long as they are able to sit on their benches.

The same economy prevails in the Judiciary of the different states. The Chief Justice of the Supreme and Superior Court of Connecticut, has £229 3s. 4d., and each of the four Associate Judges has £218 15s., and I was told that, so highly is the distinction of such appointments appreciated, there is no difficulty of obtaining good and efficient lawyers. Compare their salaries with those of the chairmen of Quarter Sessions in England—with those for instance of Mr. Trafford, in Salford, who from the position of a junior barrister, inexperienced and almost briefless, was appointed at a salary of £800 a-year. Compare the men as well as the salaries. Compare the venerable Chief Justice Williams, and the chairman of the Salford Quarter Sessions, and the disproportionate reward appears the more preposterous. And yet Chief Justice Williams made no complaint of the inadequacy of remuneration when he quitted his lucrative profession for the dignity of the bench.

An Englishman, or a Canadian more English than the 0142 140 English, will sometimes contend that when the general taxation by the United States government, and by the government of each particular State are taken together, the aggregate will not amount to much less than the taxation of England; and he will point, as an instance of double expense, to the salaries of the Governors of some thirty different states. He will sometimes say: “You have not one President, but thirty Presidents.” Figures easily dispose of this appeal to ignorance. The Almanac tells me that the Governors of twenty-nine states have, on the average, a salary of £517 each. I suspect that a much larger aggregate sum is paid to the Chaplains of County Jails in England alone. I suspect that a much larger sum is paid to the County Jailers, called Governors, in England alone. Let us look to the official returns, which I have with me, of the total expenditure of the state of Kentucky, to see whether it bears out the assumption that the taxation in individual states is an immense addition to the general taxation. The revenue of the United States is raised by taxes on imports. The revenues of the respective states are raised by direct taxation on land, town lots, slaves, horses, cattle, &c., from a valuation and a numeration made annually, furnishing, collaterally, much useful statistical information. From the Auditor's Report of the Revenue and Expenditure of Kentucky for the fiscal year ending October 10th, 1847, contained in a closely printed volume, I find the following items and valuations:—

Items. Value in dollars.

18,767,505 acres of land 121,974,164

27,536 town lots 24,906,120

189,549 slaves 58,115,984

356,231 horses and mares 10,743,492

37,426 mules 1,318,779

2,227 jennies 101,031

459,026 cattle 1,779,634

2,909 stores 7,423,921

Value under the equalisation law 28,353,058

Total 254,716,183

0143 141

The receipts under these and other items of taxation are:—

Dollars.

On the above valuation 382,074

On carriages and barouches 3,119

On buggies 1,242

On pianos 1,418

On gold spectacles 548

On gold watches 5,367

On silver levers 1,340

Tax on auditors' list 3,476

Tax on clerks' list 869

Total revenue 399,453

This is equal to rather more than £80,000 sterling.

The expenditure for the year was 284,934

Leaving for the sinking fund a supply of 114,519 399,453

The following is a statement of the probable expenditure of the State of Kentucky, for the year to end 10th October, 1848:—

Dollars.

For the salaries of Commonwealth Attorneys 5,500

For the pay of members of the Legislature, including appropriations and all incidental expenses 55,000

For criminal prosecutions 17,000

For amounts to be paid by Clerks in aid of the Jury Fund 25,000

For Clerks' services, record books, &c 11,000

For taking in lists of taxable property 15,000

For expenses under the head of contingencies 3,000

For Clerks' accounts overpaid 200

For distributing Acts and Journals 400

For the Deaf and Dumb Asylum 4,000

For the Blind Asylum 2,600

For the Decisions of the Court of Appeals 1,800

For the expenses of the Executive Offices 1,500

For rewards and expresses 1,000

For the support of Idiots 16,000

For the services of Jailers 12,000

For interest, &c., for the Lexington and Ohio Railroad. 18,000

For military expenditures 1,500

For money refunded 100

For public communications 600

For the purchase of books for the Library 500

Carried forward 191,700

0144 142

Brought forward 191,700

For the salaries of the Executive and Judicatory Departments 43,000

For Sheriffs comparing polls 500

For deficits of the Jury Fund 8,000

For Common Schools 15,000

For slaves executed 3,000

For Sheriffs' accounts overpaid 200

For the killing of wolves 500

For the public printing 8,000

For the public binding 1,500

For paper for the Public Printer 2,500

For stationery for the public use 1,200

For the board of Internal Improvement 500

For the killing of wild cats 200

Total amount of supposed expenditures for the year to end on the 10th day of October, 1848 275,800

This is equal to £57,500, to be borne by a population of about 800,000, being rather less than eighteen-pence a-head. It will be easy to compare this with the expenditure of the crown-appointed and irresponsible county magistrates of England. I have used the report for Kentucky simply because it is the only one I brought with me.

River Mersey, Sunday morning , 6 th August.

Our experienced Captain was right when he said we should reach Liverpool on Sunday. We are now sailing up the river to the mooring ground of the Niagara , and, by my watch, which I have kept at Boston time, it is one o'clock. Thus the time between port and port has been ten days and a half, and, deducting the twelve hours' stoppage at Halifax, exactly ten days' sailing. The distance is 2950 miles. In 1815, before steam vessels ventured out to sea, I was the same time in making the voyage from Glasgow to Liverpool.