UNITED STATES NATIONAL LOYALTY.

381

English constitution; and there are monarchial lineaments distinctly visible in the executive branches of the American constitutions, both state and federal. This was more peculiary the case, as long as the presidency of General Washington continued; for the force of public opinion and sentiment, attached to his person throughout the whole of the United States, bore a striking resemblance to that kind of magical power and illusion, which many most distinguished political writers attribute to the pervading influences of monarchy, under the name of loyalty to the reigning sovereign.

This sentiment, however, did not survive the executive magistracy of Washington; the strange and wayward conduct of President Adams, together with the schism in the federal party during his administration, forbade all personal attachment to him. And Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison avowedly administered the federal government altogether on democratic principles and views, which cut up by the root all possibility of personal attachment, stifle every generous feeling of enthusiasm and reverence, and degrade the government of a country from the high eminence of a national administration, into the deep abyss of the dominion of a faction. Mr. Monroe, indeed, has lately been making progress through the United States, and "buying golden opinions from all sorts of men," with the hope of rekindling that flame of loyalty and national attachment to their executive chief, which glowed in the bosoms of the American people for the illustrious Washington, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens."

It is surprising, that M. Talleyrand, who has made so many profound remarks, and drawn such wise and comprehensive inferences, in his Memoir to the National Institute, should so egregiously have mistaken the character of the Americans. He says, that as a people newly constituted and formed of different elements, their national character is not yet decided. They remain English from ancient habit; and because they have not yet had time to become completely Americans

Their climate is not yet formed: their character still less. If we consider those populous cities filled with English, Germans, Irish, and Dutch, as well as with their indigenous inhabitants; those remote towns so distant from each other; those vast uncultivated traets of soil, traversed rather than inhabited by men who belong to no country, what common bond can we conceive in the midst of so many incongruities? It is a novel sight to the traveller, who, setting out from a principal city where society is in perfection, passes in succession through all the degrees of civilization and industry, which he constantly finds growing weaker and weaker, until in a few days he arrives at a misshapen and rude cabin, formed of the trunks of trees lately cut down.

Such a journey is a sort of practical and living analysis of the origin of people and states: we set out from the most compounded mixture, to arrive at the most simple ingredients: at the end of every day we lose sight of some of those inventions which our wants, as they have increased, have rendered necessary; and it appears as if we travelled backwards in the history of the progress of the human mind. If such a sight lays a strong hold upon the imagination; if we please ourselves by finding in the succession of space what appears to belong only to the succession of time, we must make up our minds to behold but few social connexions, and no common character amongst men, who appear so little to belong to the same association. In many districts the sea and the woods have formed fishermen and woodcutters. Now, such men have no country; and their social morality is reduced within a very small compass. Man is the disciple of that which surrounds him. Hence, he whose bounds are circumscribed by nothing but deserts, cannot receive lessons with regard to the social comforts of life. The idea of the need which men have of each other does not exist in him; and it is merely by decomposing the trade which he exercises, that one can find out the principles of his affections and the sum of his morality.

COURSE OF COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS.

383

The American wood-cutter does not interest himself in any thing; every sensible idea is remote from him. Those branches so agreeably disposed by nature, beautiful foliage, the bright colour which enlivens one part of the wood, the darker green which gives a melancholy shade to another; these things are nothing to him; he pays them no attention; the number of strokes of his axe required to fell a tree fills all his thoughts. He never planted; he knows not its pleasures. A tree of his own planting would be good for nothing in his estimation, for it would never during his life be large enough to fell. It is by destruction he lives; he is a destroyer wherever he goes. Thus, every place is equally good in his eyes; he has no attachment to the spot on which he has spent his labour, for his labour is only fatigue, and unconnected with any idea of pleasure. In the effects of his toil he has not witnessed those gradual increases of growth so captivating to the planter; he regards not the destination of his productions; he knows not the charm of new attempts; and if, in quitting the abode of many years, he does not by chance forget his axe, he leaves no regret behind him.

The vocation of an American fisherman begets an apathy almost equal to that of the wood-cutter. His affections, his interest, his life, are on the side of that society to which it is thought he belongs. But it would be a prejudice to suppose him a useful member. For we must not compare these. fishermen to those of Europe, and think that the fisheries here are, like them, a nursery for seamen. In America, with the exception of the inhabitants of Nantucket, who fish for whales, fishing is an idle employment! Two leagues from the coast, when they have no dread of foul weather; a single mile, when the weather is uncertain; is the sum of the courage which they display; and the line is the only instrument of which they know the practical use. Thus their knowledge is but a trifling trick; and their action, which consists in constantly hanging one arm over the side of the boat, is little short of idleness. They are attached to no place; their only connexion with the

land is by means of a wretched house which they inhabit. The sea affords them nourishment; and a few cod-fish, more or less determine their country. If their number seems to diminish in any particular quarter, they emigrate in search of another country, where they are more abundant. The remark, that fishing is a sort of agriculture, is not solid; all the qualities and virtues attached to agriculture are wanting in him who lives by fishing. Agriculture produces a patriot, in the truest acceptation of the word; fishing can only form a cosmopolite.

So that it is not only by reason of their origin, language, and interest, the Americans so constantly find themselves to be Englishmen; an observation which applies more especially to the cities. When one looks upon the people wandering among the woods, upon the shores of the sea, and by the banks of the rivers, the general observation is strengthened with regard to them, by that indolence, and want of native character, which renders this class of Americans more ready to eceive and preserve a foreign impression. Doubtless, his will grow weaker, and altogether disappear, when the constantly increasing population shall, by the culture of so many desert lands, have brought the inhabitants nearer together. As for the other causes, they have taken such deep root, that it would require a French establishment in the United States to successfully counteract their ascendency. Undoubtedly, such a political project should not be overlooked by the government of France. No confutation of such positions can be neces

sary.

M. Talleyrand, however, has discovered his usual sagacity in tracing the settlement of colonies, and the sources of their population, when he says, the different causes which gave rise to colonial establishments have been seldom pure. Thus, ambition and the ardour of conquests carried the first colonies of the Phoenicians. and Egyptians into Greece: violence, that of the Tyrians to Carthage; the misfortunes of war, that of the fugitive Trojans to Italy; commerce, and the love of

COLONIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES.

1

385

riches, those of the Carthaginians to the isles of the Mediterranean, and the coasts of Spain and Africa; necessity, those of the Athenians into Asia Minor, the people becoming too numerous for their limited and barren territory; prudence, that of the Lacedemonians to Tarentum, to deliver themselves from some turbulent citizens; and urgent policy, the numerous small and unimportant colonies of the Romans, who showed their wisdom in giving up to their colonists a portion of the conquered countries; because they appeased the people, who incessantly demanded a new division of the land, and because they thus formed of the discontented themselves a sure guard in the countries which they had subdued. The ardour for plunder, and the fury of war, much more than the excess of population, sent the colonies, or rather irruptions of the people of the north into the Roman empire; and a romantic piety, greedy of conquest, those of the European croisaders into Asia.

After the discovery of America, the folly, injustice, and avarice of individuals thirsting after gold, threw them upon the first countries to which their, barks conveyed them. The more rapacious they were, the more they separated; they wished not to cultivate, but to lay waste. Those, indeed, were not true colonists. Some time afterward, religious dissensions gave birth to more regular establishments; thus the puritans took refuge in the north of America; the English catholics in Maryland; the quakers in Pennsylvania; whence Dr. Smith concludes, that the vices, not the wisdom of European governments, peopled the new world. Other great emigrations likewise, were owing to a gloomy policy, falsely called religious. Thus Spain rejected the Moors from her bosom; France the protestants; almost all governments the Jews; and every where the error which had dictated such deplorable counsels was recognized too late. They had discontented subjects, and they made them enemies who might have served, but were forced to injure, their country.

The inhabitants of the United States consist of Europeans and their descendants, African negroes and

се