duty. He is a member of the sovereign body which elects its own representatives, who become responsible to him for their acts; he, therefore, is obliged to manifest his opinion as to their proceedings. With him the measures of his own immediate State, the acts of Congress, of his Assembly, and his county, and the contests of parties, are points of primary importance: the affairs of foreign countries, Great Britain alone excepted, are to him of less moment. No other nation dares to express its sentiments on political, financial, military, judicial, and mercantile affairs like the Americans, because no other government can take so much interest in enlightening their fellow-citizens upon matters which may more or less concern them. The newspapers, therefore, comprehend the whole life, public and private, of the Union. The complaints of any particular State, against grievances inflicted by the central government, the grievances of the traveller whose landlord or captain has ill-used him, are alike inserted in these journals. The sheriff has not a surer or less expensive mode of recovering a prisoner who has escaped, or a planter of getting back his runaway slave, than a public advertisement. Jonathan is, as it were by nature, a spy. If you enter a tavern, the first questions of the landlord will be, "Where do you come from? Where are you going? Who are you? What is your profession? What is your business?" He asks such questions, in short, as you are required to write down for the police at every inn in France, Prussia, and Austria; an unsatisfactory answer would expose you to criticisms and suspicions. It is almost impossible for a suspected person to escape; his shrewdness seldom fails to find out his man. Endowed as he is with a capacity for retaining in his memory the dress, the look, the physiognomy, and a thousand other circumstances, it will excite no wonder that out of one hundred persons advertised in the public papers, scarcely ten escape apprehension, owing to the scrutinizing eyes of this popular and gratuitous police. The advertisements before mentioned, and others relative to ships, goods, discoveries, &c., &c., sufficiently account for the astonishing number of American newspapers in circulation. Upwards of one thousand are now printed in the Union: Pennsylvania alone has one hundred and fifty. There is hardly a county as far as the falls of Ohio, which has not at least one public paper, some of them meagre enough, but they answer the purpose. The poorest man is thus enabled to keep a newspaper, the cost of which does not exceed three dollars (thirteen shillings) a year, as there is no stamp duty attached, which he is permitted to pay in produce. The central government has taken every care to facilitate the circulation of these papers, the postage of each amounting to only one cent in the State, and one and a half if sent out of it. Unrestrained in language and comment as John Bull may be, Jonathan goes beyond him; and I am sure that if some of the members of the Holy Alliance could read these papers in their original language, they would operate like physic, and relieve many an oppressed country, by visiting the readers with a bilious fever. The best public papers are reckoned to be The Richmond Enquirer, Neale's Weekly Register, Noah's Advocate, and the newspaper of Mr. Walsh, formerly a Jesuit. Religious, mercantile, and agricultural papers are published in great numbers, and as for reading-rooms, which are now to be found almost in every town containing two thousand inhabitants, they certainly may vie with any other nation. The scientific or critical journals cannot be compared with their patterns the British, though they begin to be rather more than repetitions of the Edinburgh and London Reviews. The best are the North American Review, and the Portfolio. For the ladies there are the Mirror, the Ariel, and other journals of the belles lettres. These, with a number of academies for arts and sciences, societies for the improvement of agriculture and commerce, with medical, philosophical, and physical institutions, certainly constitute a fund of popular information, which though in some instances defective, may fairly be considered as superior to that of any country of equal proportion and similar means. CHAPTER Χ. American High Life-Life in County Towns, and in the Country. DOMESTIC life in America has the appearance of being cold and formal. The foreigner who enters a private society, is inclined to think himself among people who are utter strangers to one another. The American conducts himself towards his wife and his children, with very little more familiarity than towards his neighbours : this formality seems not quite in accordance with republican manners, but, when closely considered, will not be deemed out of place. To this reserve it is principally owing, that in American families so few instances are found of that brutality which too often disgraces the lower classes of other nations. To break out into anything like impassioned feelings, would be thought highly improper, and their fire-sides exhibit the utmost decency of conduct: the cause of this is, perhaps, laid more deeply than is imagined. American life is much more before the public than that of any other people, and the citizen |