these are declared to be equal, though the period of election should occur more frequently in the one case than the other. In Virginia, In Virginia, the governor, representatives, and senators, are chosen annually, and yet her constitution is the least democratic of any state in the Union. In the eastern, central, and western states, all the elections are thoroughly popular. In Virginia and the Carolinas the suffrage needs farther extension before they can be said to legislate truly upon American principles.

The most admirable contrivance in the frame of these governments is, the provision made in all for their alteration and amendment. The convention is at once the foundation and cornerstone in the beautiful structure of American government; by its means the constitution of the state is shaped to the wishes of the people as easily and silently as its laws; it is at once the safe-guard of the public rights, and the keeper of the public peace. The rights of this community rest not on charters or ancient usuages, but on immutable principles, which every head and heart is taught to understand and to feel. There is here no refining upon the meaning of words, no opposing of records to reason, no appealing from the wisdom of the present to that of the past; the wisdom of to-day is often the ignorance of to-morrow; what in one age is truth, in another is prejudice; what is humanity becomes cruelty; what justice, injustice; what liberty, slavery; and almost what virtue,

wickedness, and happiness, misery. All things are by comparison; the man of this generation, with views and feeling adapted to earlier ages, is cramped in å sphere of action which those before him found commensurate to their powers and their ambition. If law oppose barriers, his spirit is checked, but not quelled. The flood of knowledge gathers strength, and the mound is swept away with a sudden fury, which shakes the very foundations of society, and spreads a momentary ruin over the wide field of civilized life. Power and liberty, existing in the same state, must be at eternal war; it is only where one or other rules singly and undisputed, that the public peace can be preserved; in the one case by the free exercise of all the human energies, in the other by their extinction.

It has often been asserted by the advocates of despotism, that the elements of liberty are wild and intractable. The position is most true, where they are found in an atmosphere uncongenial to their nature, where they have to contend with other elements, with which they can never amalgamate, and which wage with them unceasing warfare. It is common to point our attention to the republics of ancient time, and to tell us that free Rome was split into factions and civil wars: without enumerating the many causes found in the distinction of ranks, the jealousy existing between the various orders of society, the powerful armies with their ambitious leaders, which combined to

throw society into chaos, we have only to refer to the ignorance of the doctrine of representation; this doctrine, so simple when once revealed, forms the whole science of a free government; this it is which gives to modern liberty a character foreign to that which she bore in ancient times; this it is which has made freedom and peace shake hands, and which renders the reign of the one coeval with that of the other.

The representative system, invented, or rather by a train of fortuitous circumstances brought into practice in England, has been carried to perfection in America; by it the body of the people rule in every thing; by it they establish their constitutions; by it they legislate according to the constitutions established; and by it again they amend their constitutions, according to the gradual advance of the public mind in political wisdom. Thus, though the form of government should in some cases be found deficient, yet as the door is ever left open to improvement, in system it may always be pronounced to be perfect. "Quelle republiche che, se le non hanno l'ordine perfetto hanno preso il principio buono e atto a diventare migliore, possono, per la occorrenza delli accidenti diventare perfette."

Considering how greatly the human mind is ennobled by liberty, and how rapidly it becomes

* Machiavelli sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio.

humanized when the book of knowledge is thrown open to its inspection, there is no calculating the progress of a people in virtue as well as power, whose successive generations shall be bred up under benign laws and liberal institutions. Who does not sympathize with the playful, wish of the benign sage and devoted patriot Franklin, who, when he saw a little fly escape from a bottle in which it had been imprisoned, exclaimed, "I wish I could be corked up as you have been, and let out a hundred years hence, just to see how my dear America is going on?"

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LETTER VII.

SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA. ANECDOTE OF A PRUSSIAN OFFICER. ANECDOTE OF MR. JEFFERSON. CHEVALIER CORREA DE SERRA. MR. GARNETT.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Philadelphia, May, 1819.

I MUST not leave this city without observing somewhat more distinctly than I have as yet done, upon the general character of the society.

It is difficult to make observations upon the inhabitants of a particular district that shall not more or less apply to the nation at large. This is the case in all countries, but more particularly in these democracies. The universal spread of useful and practical knowledge, the exercise of great political rights, the ease, and, comparatively, the equality of condition, give to this people a character peculiar to themselves. The man of leisure, who is usually for the most part the man of pleasure, may, indeed, find himself somewhat alone in this country. Every hand is occupied, and every head is thinking, not only of the active business of human life (which usually sits lighter upon this people than many others), but of matters touching the general weal of a vast empire. Each man being one