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having its principal professors men of decided piety. But the noble Theological Institution at Andover, liberally endowed, formed for the express purpose of raising up able champions to contend earnestly for the faith at home, and accomplished missionaries to diffuse it abroad, blest with learned and pious professors ardently engaged in the great objects of their institution, presents perhaps the most cheering view. The only confident assurance, however, of the triumph of truth, is to be found in the promises of Him who has infallibly predicted its universal reception. I am glad I have done. It is a painful office to remark on what appear to be the doctrinal errors of others, when conscious of so many practical errors of our own. But I could not refuse your request.

Salem, 26th February, 1821. In my letter of the 24th I had no room to advert to the state of morals and manners in the United States; and as these were among the topics on which you requested in formation, I avail myself of a little leisure to-night to comply with your wishes. I must, however, remind you, that I do not pretend to give you an accurate picture of American morals (a task to which I feel myself incompetent, although I have purposely deferred writing on the subject till on the very eve of embarking), but merely to send you the observations of a solitary traveller-the impressions I have received in passing rather hastily over this extensive country.

If I were writing to a less judicious friend, I would also remind him that I do not feel myself responsible for any general conclusions he might draw from particular facts, or bound to reconcile the discordant inferences he might deduce from my statements. I am answerable for the facts only; and if they sometimes leave you in an unsatisfactory state of suspense, from which you are strongly tempted to relieve yourself by jumping to a

conclusion, I can only assure you, that I am often in the same predicament, and would gladly relieve us both by some bouncing assertions, if I could do it with sincerity; but there have been bounces enough on the subject of America already.

The state of morals differs so much in different parts of America, that no general description would be applicable to the whole. Indeed, one might almost as well attempt to include in any general description the various countries of Europe as the United States of America; for although an uniform system of government produces many prominent features of a common character in all the members of this great confederation, yet the wide range of climate embraced by its extensive limits, the great variety of habits, objects, and feelings, and especially of political and religious sentiments, which prevailed among the first settlers of the different States, the diversified pursuits and occupations of the present inhabitants, the admission or proscription of slavery, and a thousand other circumstances, have contributed to establish the most marked distinctions, and often to present the most striking contrasts, between the several sections of the Union. All this must render any general account of American morals a little prolix and perplexed. I will rely, therefore, on your indulgence, and will commence with what has long been considered a crying sin thoughout the Union-intemper

ance.

The habitual use of ardent spirits is indeed very general. Even in the Eastern States it is not uncommon; but in the Middle; and still more in the Southern, States it prevails to a lamentable extent. Under the denominations of anti-fogmatics, mint julep, and gin sling, copious libations are poured out on the altars of Bacchus by votaries who often commence their sacrifices at an early hour in the morning, and renew them at

intervals during the day; and yet I have not seen six instances of brutal intoxication since I landed in America,-nor, except among the poor corrupted frontier Indians, twenty cases in which I had reason to believe the faculties were in any degree disordered. The decanters of brandy which are placed on the dinner tables at the inns for the guests to help themselves, without additional charge, I have never seen used but with moderation; and, on the whole, I would say decidedly that, taking America generally from Maine to Louisiana (you know that I have seen few of the Western States), the sin of drinking to excess prevails less extensively there thau in England -that, whatever may be the injury to the constitution from the common use of spirits instead of malt liquor, there is less derangement of the faculties, less waste of time, and perhaps of money, and far less misery entailed on suffering families from intemperate drinking in this country than in our own. There is, indeed, a far more dreadful squandering of time in bar-rooms in many parts of America; but it is in cigar-smoking, aud is not generally attended with pinching effects, or a deserted wife or hungry children.

Drams are taken, as it were, "en passant," solitary, and in a parenthesis; not in a social circle round a blazing fire, where I at this moment see John Bull sitting in an old arm chair, a three-legged deal table before him, his heart expanding as his blood warms, one hand on the knee of his next neighbour, or patting him on the back, the other pushing round the common tankard, the bond of good fellowship, which after a few more circuits will too probably convert this exhibition of rude enjoyment into a melancholy scene of intoxication, in which man defaces the image of his Maker, and degrades himself to a level with the brutes.

In the higher classes, there is

great moderation in the pleasures of the table, in the Eastern and Middle States at least; and, as far as my experience goes, in the highest circles in the South. In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, even parties seldom dine later than three o'clock (there are some exceptions), and they usually disperse after taking two or three glasses of wine. What may be the case at the parties of dissipated young men, or at public dinners; whether there is a Madeira guage for Republicanism, as we measure loyalty by Port, I do not know. At a public agricultural dinner, at which I was present, where there were one or two hundred persons in the company, there was the greatest order and moderation; and all rose to return home in about an hour after dinner.

Indeed, I

With regard to some other immoralities, if they exist in the same degree as with us, which I am disposed, from the prevalence of early marriages, to question, it is under the shade of secrecy; for the cities, except New Orleans, present nothing of the disgusting effrontery and unblushing profligacy which the streets of our large towns exhibit after dark; and in the country, as you may have observed in my letters, the female manners are distinguished by a very remarkable degree of propriety. hardly know any thing which has struck me more in America than the respectable demeanour of the females of all ranks of life, and the evident attention in the domestic economy even of taverns or inns to exclude them from situations in which they might be exposed to insult. In New Orleans, indeed, the picture is almost totally reversed. It must not be forgotten, however, that New Orleans is still in many respects rather a French or Spanish than an American city, and that it is improving just in proportion as it becomes American. The French inhabitants have still an ascendency in the councils of

the city; and the effect is no less conspicuous in the dirty streets and tainted air, than in its moral pollution. Before long, I trust, its streets will be cleansed by conduits from the Mississippi, for which it is admirably situated, and its moral atmosphere purified by the benign influence of religion, which the Christians in the Eastern States, with their accustomed activity, are exerting themselves to extend.

Pilfering, housebreaking, highway robbery, and murder are far less common here than with us: the last three, indeed, are very uncommon, although I have heard of the mail being robbed at least twice since I have been bere, and once (in the wild parts of the country, where it is carried on a horse,) with murder and aggravated circumstances of cruelty. Duelling, except in the Eastern States, is more common, and more deadly.

The bribery of subordinate custom-house officers, so disgracefully common in England (not indeed to defraud the revenue, but to obtain dispatch) is very rare here. I have been informed by active respectable merchants in New York and Philadelphia, that they never knew an instance, and should be extremely surprised to hear of one; that in the only case in which they had known of it being even offered, the officer considered himself insulted, and knocked the offender down. In Boston I omitted to inquire on this subject; but in point of morals there is every reason to infer that it stands at least as high as New York and Philadelphia.

ous. This I attribute principally to the wretched system of the insolvent laws in this country, and the laxity of morals in pecuniary matters which they are calculated to produce. For the particulars of this system, so repugnant to the general intelligence and morality of the country, I refer you to your commercial friends. It is a perfect anomaly, and cannot long exist. Indeed, the Bankrupt Bill has already passed the Senate; and although other business may interrupt its progress through the House of Representatives, it must, in some form or another, ere long become a law, and supersede a system over which, were I an American, I should never cease to mourn, deprecating it as calculated to injure the reputation of my country, and to depress her moral tone.

Lotteries and horse-racing are not uncommon here: the latter is most prevalent in the Southern States, where private race-courses are frequent. Gambling, in the Middle States, I should imagine from all I saw, is about as common as in England: it is far more so as you proceed to the southward, and dreadfully prevalent in New Orleans, where a license to authorise gambling-houses is sold either by the city or the state authorities: I forgot to inquire which; though in the one case it would throw the blame on the French,-in the other, on the Americans. The licenser is reported to realize a large income from this iniquitous traffic; and the Kentucky boats, which for above a mile line the shores of the Mississippi, are said on Sundays to form one line of gambling-shops. These, with the open theatres, the dances of the slaves in all the environs of the city, and the weekday work which is going on at the wharfs, to perhaps one-third of its ordinary extent, present a Sundayevening prospect you would be grieved to witness.

To what extent smuggling, slave. trading, and privateering, under Spanish colours, are carried on, I found it difficult to learn; since these practices, though by no means uncommon, are considered as disreputable as with us, and shun the light. The instances of breaches of trust in responsible situations, especially in banks, of which I have heard in the last twelve Indelicate and profane language months, are disgracefully numer is less common in the Eastern CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 247.

31

tion; better fed, better clothed,
better educated than I ever saw
before, and more intelligent, and
at least as moral as the correspond-
ing classes even of our own coun-
trymen. Instead of a succession of
slave plantations, whose owners by
supplying them wholesale, prevent
the existence of villages or towns,
except at very distant intervals,
(the 2000 slaves of one slave-holder,
like General
would make

at least one respectable village of
themselves,) I find handsome, thriv
ing country towns on every side;
and I have already told you how
beautiful a New-England town is,
with its white frame-bouses, its
little courts, its planted squares,
its fine wide streets, or rather
avenues, and most especially its
numerous spires. From one spot
I have counted more than twenty-
five spires; and yet I have been
asked, in England, if there were
any churches, or places of worship,
in America!

States than with us, perhaps equally industrious, enterprising populaprevalent in the Middle, and far more so in the Southern Atlantic States; but it is prevalent to an awful degree on the shores of the Gulph of Mexico. These indeed are emphatically, in a moral sense, the benighted regions of America: and yet their natural aspect is bright and beautiful. Often, when at New Orleans, walking out at sunrise, on the banks of the Mississippi, which a few hours before had been parched and cracked by yesterday's meridian fervour, but were then saturated with the heavy dews, which at that season fell nightly like showers on the mown grass, I have thought that I had never before seen so much to delight the eye, regale the senses, or kindle the imagination;-orange groves with their golden fruit and fresh green leaves; hundreds of cattle half hid in the deep wet clover, which grows wild and luxuriant on the rich alluvian; the sugar and cotton plantations on the opposite bank; and the forest behind them stretching to the boundless prairies of the Attacapas and Opelousas ;-above all, the noble Mississippi flowing majestically to the sea, and carrying the imagination thousands of miles up its current, to the sources of some of its tributary streams, near the rocky mountains. I have before alluded to the beauties of the close of day, in a climate so delicious, at that bour, and the succeeding ones, when the vault of heaven has a deeper blue than with us, when

"Milder moons dispense serener light, And brighter beauties decorate the night."

And yet, when I think of the moral pollution which pervades New Or leans, and the yellow fever which annually depopulates it, or of the intermittents and slavery which infest its vicinities, the rocky shores of New England have a thousand times more charms for me. There I see on every side a hardy, robust,

(To be continued.)

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

As an individual who feels anxiously for the public welfare, I beg leave to call the attention of my countrymen to a subject which de serves the serious consideration of every friend of morals and good order; I mean the horrid practice of boxing, now carried to a most afflicting and disgraceful extent in this country. It must strike every considerate observer as a strange national inconsistency, that while we are laudably sending Bibles and Missionaries to foreign nations, such spectacles as that described in the following extract from our newspapers are permitted to be exhibited in the land. What would those poor unhappy heathen, whom we are endeavouring to enlighten and to save, think of our religion and our rulers, if they knew that such scenes and practices are tole

rated amongst us.
I am sure I was
never so much affected even with
Dr. Buchanan's afflicting descrip-
tion of the scene at the temple of
Juggernaut, as I have been with
the account of some late pugilistic
battles; reflecting that these pro-
ceedings took place in a Christian
country, among a people profess-
ing to teach the way of salvation
to the ignorant and superstiti-
ous devotees of heathenism. It
is certainly delightful to see so
many individuals in our land, both
in and out of Parliament, using
every means to put a stop to the
burning of Hindoo widows, and
other enormities in foreign nations;
but surely something ought to be
done towards suppressing barba-
rous and outrageous practices at
home *. The passage to which I
allude is as follows:-

roads leading from Bristol, Oxford,
Gloucester, &c., were crowded with
amateurs, anxious to reach the
scene of action. Numbers came
from Tewkesbury, and even from
Birmingham. Most of the sporting
characters of the metropolis were
of course there. All the inns at
Hungerford and Newbury were
filled, and the beds were engaged
for some days previous.

“ BOXING.. Great Fight between Hickman and Neat, for Two Hundred Guineas a-side. This anxiously expected contest, which was to decide the championship of England, took place between the above combatants, on Hungerford Common, about half a mile from that town. So much interest did the battle excite in the sporting world, that several persons left London so early as Saturday last for Newbury. The road on Sunday, Monday, and all night, up to Tuesday at twelve o'clock, from the metropolis, was thronged with vehicles of every description, all going to the destined spot. The

I need scarcely remark, that these observations furnish no argument against

the continuance of our most zealous efforts for the moral and religious welfare of the heathen; because between them and us there is this essential difference, that their vices and enormities are often in concurrence with, or prompted by, their avowed principles, whereas ours are in direct opposition to the religion which we profess. We are not to withold Christianity from a perishing world because all our own country. meu have not profited by its divine

lessons.

An

"At an early hour in the morning the ground was chosen, and a strong 24 feet ring was formed with ropes and stakes brought from the metropolis, being the same that are used in all the great fights. outer ring was formed, consisting of numerous waggons and of the various vehicles which brought the spectators to the field. This ring was full 40 yards in diameter; and under the judicious management of Mr. Jackson, every thing was so well arranged, that 20,000 persons, who it is calculated were present, had all an excellent sight of the battle. About eleven o'clock the interior of this space was cleared by numerous chicks of the fancy, who with long whips drove all around them to the borders of the circle, and the ring was left to amateurs and well-known prizefighters."

I omit nearly a column of the details of this ferocious combat, couched in the disgusting technicalities of the pugilistic circles! It is added, in conclusion,

"Every person present (save and except those who had bet on Hick. man) retired from the ground with a feeling of complete gratification at what they had witnessed! Such was the intense feeling excited at Bristol by the above combat, that the streets were crowded as if an election contest was at its height, all eagerly inquiring the result."

I have only one or two points to notice respecting this scene. The first is, the painful fact, that among the members of this disgraceful and illegal assembly were

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