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she may eventually become, one of the inferior states of Europe, will boast that it is in America that she appears in her glory, where her language, her literature, and the spirit of her polity and laws, are extended from the shores of the Atlantic, to those of the Pacific Ocean, and from Lake Superior to the Straits of Magellan.

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We have said, that England may eventually become one of the inferior states of the old world. Indeed this seems inevitable, (supposing no unforeseen causes to intervene) if we have any right to believe that the other countries may at length attain the same proportionate population, and an equal eminence in knowledge and civilization. For whenever the nations shall become nearly equal in these grand attainments, the precedence in importance and influence will naturally fall to those of the number, that, possessing the widest extent of compact terri tory, have the greatest number of people at command. If therefore, in the progress of time, the greater and more southern part of the Russian empire, if Germany, consolidated, as may very possibly be, into one mighty state, and if France, though reduced to narrower limits than those to which her arms have extended her authority, should rise to the same intellectual and moral level as England, each of them will then, according to the most obvious principles of proportion, hold an immense superiority over her, in the consideration, and in the power of influencing the condition, of the world: and we cannot see any insurmountable obstacles to the possibility of their ultimate attainment of this rival improvement of the mind.As to the importance which England derives at present from her naval power, nothing can be more factitious and precarious. This cumbrou, engine, which is gradually exhausting the national vigour which actuates it, will become useless, as the larger states continue to advance in that knowledge which organizes numbers and physical resources into national power. If she maintain amity with the greater nations, she will not need this naval force, and if hostility, she will lose it. For the skill derived from progressive arts and repeated trial, combined with ampler resources supplied by nature and numbers, will enable the superior states ultimately to destroy it. And when the fighting navy of England shall be finally humbled, the commercial navy must follow in a great measure its fate. But indeed, the nations of a wiser age will probably cease to think foreign commerce worth protecting or contesting, at the expense of naval armaments. They will find a much more useful employment of their industry in the endless improvement of internal economy, fat present so miserably neglected in our own country,) than in the manufacture of luxuries for foreign markets.

While thus anticipating the declining importance of England in the rank of nations, we may feel a stronger interest in looking forward to the future greatness of America, (as soon as we ean surmount the mortification of having lost her as a dependency,) than we could feel in viewing the rising magnitude of states with which we never had any intimate connexion; because, as we have observed, it will seem to be England still, that is pre-eminent among the nations, when a vast continent is inhabited by people of English descent and names, when maxims first derived from England are the basis of their social system, and when English authors are the authors most familiarly read and admired, by perhaps, far more than a hundred millions of persons.

The character and circumstances of such a people are subjects of the highest curiosity, not from the present rank which this people holds in the civilized world, but as affording some prognostics of the future moral condition of a continent, which will probably soon become, in every part, finally independent of all the rest of the globe, and from the wide separation of all its habitable regions from the other continents, will become a world of its own. We look with great interest on the disclosure of the features and proportions of a form, which is grow ing fast toward a gigantic magnitude; and on the first symptoms of character, in a youth who is born to be a monarch.

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Knowing what long periods of time are required, even in the happiest progress of states, to eradicate evils admitted into the first constitution of the society, and that, on the contrary, time often but operates to confirm them, we look forward with a degree of apprehensiveness to a period when national foibles, as an indulgent moralist may be willing at present to denominate them," will perhaps have become aggravated into most pernicious vices, infecting cities yet unbuilt, and the unnumbered cultivators of regions darkened as yet with ancient woods, where not one civilized man has ever wandered. If we should see the corruptions of civilization advaucing far more rapidly than its refinements; if we should observe the faculties of a people matured to the perfection of cunning, while yet remaining stationary in the very rudiments of scientific speculation; if we should see a selfishness that for the most paltry advantages will slight even the plainest maxims of honesty, in a people surrounded by the inexhaustible resources and treasures which convey nature's own injunction to be liberal; we inquire anxiously after every probable counteracting cause, which may tend to interrupt the natural progress of depravity, from such beginnings in the small state, to a complete and systematical usurpation of the energy of the large one. We earnestly seek for any ground of hope, that the same general

contempt of all moral principles, and the same oppressions, rancours, and miseries, may not overspread the new continent, which have supplied the principal materials of the history of the old. With regard also to the government among such a people, it is a glorious privilege to have begun with an arrangement founded on the simplest and most comprehensive principles, an arrangement not so decidedly fixed in all its parts as to preclude many experiments and innovations, and not too authoritatively administered to allow a boundless liberty of discussion and animadversion; but we tremble lest rash exertions of popular freedom, combined with superficial notions of the theory of government, should throw the power into the hands of parties, that will leave it at last in the hands of individuals, who will sacrifice the people in their destructive contests with one another.

The double character of description and prophecy in which we receive the accounts of a people, with so vast a prospect before them, gives peculiar interest to the communications of every sensible observer of their manners. A wandering kind of residence, of many years, in America, has enabled Mr. Janson to survey all the forms of society, in almost all the United States, much more attentively and comprehensively than if he had been a mere tour-making traveller. In consequence of his long residence or sojourn, his book has the advantage over the customary travelling journals, of being less loaded with those tedious narratives of rainy days, dirty inns, bad breakfasts, and disasters to coats, hats, stockings, or boots, which have now, we believe, established their right to at least a fourth part of every volume of travels. Mr. Janson intermixes a portion of this kind of history, but it is given chiefly on occasions where it is as much a description of the manners and habits of the people, as a story of his personal adventures. His book contains, in a very immethodical form, a large share of curious and useful information; and we wish we were not compelled to perceive any of the usual symptoms of book-making, and that Mr. Janson had been induced to compress the two costly volumes (for he proposes a second) into one. There are many things inserted, which we think have no proper place in an account of the present state of America, especially some details relating purely to the war of independence, and which have been purchased and read before, or must be purchased and read again, in the regular histories of that war. As he deemed this a lawful expedient for giving the proper dimensions to the volume, we must commend his moderation, for he might easily have taken ten times as much from the same quarter. In these unnecessary details we include the biographical sketches of Gates, Putnam, Hamilton, Arnold, Pinckeney, and several

other individuals. We are not convinced of the necessity of enlarging, at this time, on the machinations of the French minister Genet, and introducing his correspondence with members of the American government; of relating at length the quarrel and judicial proceedings about a ship of a Mr. Ogden, which was employed in General Miranda's expedition; or of occupying eight pages with a clumsy burlesque " from the pen of the Hon. H. H. Blackenridge," on the order of the Cincinnati, a subject, to be sure, on which better writing would have been thrown away. The tedious and vexatious protraction of proceedings in courts of law is not such a surprising novelty, as to require long extracts from term reports, to convince us of its possible existence in America; Mr. Janson's assertion would have been quite a sufficient authority. The ample history of two rival Anglo-American companies of players, is extremely well-judged and well-timed, if it is really intended as a bitter satire on our country, which, amidst the gloomy presages and astonishing events of the present crisis, is completely at leisure, as we have occasion to perceive, to be interested about such vicious trifles. Whimsical and pompous advertisements are a harmless amusement enough, but to us our indigenous produce would have seemed too plentiful to need any importation across the Atlantic. One or two of them, indeed, have a certain nationality in their extravagance which intitled them to be introduced. The mention of Mr. Emmett, now a distinguished pleader in the courts of New York, and formerly one of the United Irishmen, is accompanied by an account of the principal persons of that society, and of some of the proceedings which terminated in the melancholy events of 1798. Now we have heard of the additional virtues imparted to wines by being taken on a long voyage and brought back again, but we cannot conceive how the clearness or importance of a historical document can be improved by being thus made to traverse thousands of miles of sea. The story of the adventures and sufferings of Generals Whalley and Goffe, who had been among the judges that condemned Charles the First, and being proscribed at the Restoration, concealed themselves many years, till their death, in Connecticut, is an article foreign to what should be the purpose of the book, yet so interesting, that the reader cannot wish it to have been omitted. The numerous extracts from news-papers would seem to indicate, that political wisdom seldom finds a more dignified vehicle in the United States. And certainly there may easily be as much eloquence and sound reasoning in the comments of a news-paper, as in a speech of Mr. Randolph or Mr. Otis ; but Mr. Janson would have been much more sparing of these extracts, if he had duly considered the difficulty of making them

look respectable, long after the occasions to which they refer, in another country which has news-papers and squabbles of its own, and in a volume which costs two guineas.

The omission of what we should deem injudiciously inserted, would deduct perhaps one third of the substance of the book. For the rest, though we may have our objections to the quality of particular parts, we think Mr. Janson has contributed very materially to extend our acquaintance with the people of America. Being disappointed in the projects with which he went to that country, suffering a ve.y serious loss, in company with many other persons, through a disgraceful proceeding of the government of Georgia, and experiencing occasionally some marks of the aversion which he informs us is still entertained by a large proportion of the Americans against Englishmen, it was perhaps inevitable for him to contemplate the American character under the influence of feelings tending to aggravate its faults. But we think we perceive the general prevalence of an equitable judgment, and that he does not consciously allow himself in any misrepresentation. His attertion has been directed in a certain degree to most of the subjects of an European's inquiries concerning the United States; the climate and face of the country, the manners, the population, the accommodations of abode and travelling, the extension of territory, the political contests, and the prospects of emigrants. We could have wished for more information respecting the state of knowledge in the several c'asses of people, and also some conjecture as to the proportions in which they are employed in the different branches of industry.

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Mr. J. has been more attentive to separate facts, than to the connection of various facts with one another, or the general deductions from the whole. Even without such deductions, it had been better if the facts had been more classified. moral map of America is dissected into such smail pieces, and these pieces are so effectually displaced, that it is difficult to arrange into a tolerable order in our minds, the information which these dislocated particulars are really adapted to supply. As Mr. J. probably, from the first, recorded facts and observations without intending to assume the privileges of the narrative series of the traveller, it might have been the best method to have had a number of distinct heads, under each of which all the articles of the same nature should have been inserted.

His testimony confirms the allegations of Volney, and very many former deponents, against the climate of the United States, as being in a high degree oppressive and insalubrious. The severest extremes of heat and cold afflict them all, except the two or three most Southern States, the heat of

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