a Past which possessed all the seeds of American self-government, that is, the greatness of the United States... He is a true Englishmaa, that American shipbuilder who agrees with the rail-road proprietors, with the engineer, the mechanic, tho settler, without faneying that he needs, a government to protect him, and in whose son is a rooted belief that the best society is that where everybody agrees to cominand nobody,

Take from America her spirit of Christian brotherhood, of antique Teutonism and of hardy enterprise, or any one of the three, and her prosperity will di appear.

Large and fertile neighboring territories, some nominally republican, others subject to a distant metropolis,Mexico or Canada, one with institutions copil from the United States, the other under British dominion, but with French memories: these will arrive at nothing. The Spanish republies vegetate in convulsive torpor." The French Canadian farmer, full of heart, bravery, often of cleverness, sociable, charitable, ingenions, has not been able to create a society nor even to sustain himself. "Nothing," says Lord Durham, “is more striking than the difference of situation, cultivation, and niches, between the two finction; of the saine country, inhabited and cultivated by two different races. The Canadian territory towards the great lakes is perhaps the best in Amerlea, yet it yilds scarcely anything. The vast peninsula in Upper Cauala between Lakes Huron and Erie, comprising the most fertile grain-kand on the Continent is left to nature. Between Amhersthing and the sea, the ling value of the soil is infinitely greater in the English United States than in old French Canada. The difference in some parts is as:1000 to 160. The acre sold for a dollar in Canada is worth five or six, two steps off in the United States. Opposed to the old French city of Montreal, where all is repose and silence, rises and grows the young Anglo-American city of Buffalo, Buf

falo is of yesterday, Montreal dates from the 16th century. Everywhere the same contrast; here, forests cleared, fields cultivated, houses built, farms made the most of by the AngloAmericans; there, an infructuous solitude, where a few colonists vegetate in poverty, scattered wrecks of old French families, without the spirit of enterprise, without roads or markets, and separate from each other by considerable intervals." It is the samo Christian and Teutonic genius of voluntary association, of sympathetic industry which, in Ireland, opposes the riches of the imported Scots to the poverty of the old Irish.

Persuade a Norman, Picard, or Gascon peasant to deposite his weekly gains in a central bank! Tell that vigueron who distrusts the smith, that smith who loves not the doctor, that doctor who detests the curé, to form an association-they will do nothing of the kind. All community of interest is impossible, since each treasures up what he can gain, and is on his guard against his neighbor. Suppose besides that the University man is at war with the Churchman, the tax-gatherer with the instructor, and that the thundering voice of the journals reanimate incessantly these mutual hatreds; beneath the ashes which covers and smothers them; what harmony can come from such an accumulation of antagonisms.

Listen to writers of statistics;-they tell us that in France a population of 35,000,000 produce only 520,000,000 bushels of corn of all sorts in a year; that they raise cattle in greatly inferior disproportion to the number of men; that with the finest ports and the most admirable sail, France is relatively poor. The moral main-spring ruined; the spirit of enterprise wanting, or working wrongly; the tavern taking the place of the church; present enjoyment absorbing the future; the spirit of family attacked; no local nor popular banks; a profound demoralization seizing upon the manufacturing towus;-all

this comes not from the Present, but from the Past;

and thus the loss of power, which for two centuries has not ceased to impoverish France, is sufficiently explained. What statistics could give a complete list of the capital wasted by our useless and unhappy wars, our false theories, our inactivity, our carelessness. Between 1803 and 1815 our strife with Europe cost 6,000 millions of francs and 1,000,000 men; we paid the allies 1500 other millions, and lost in products destroyed by two invasions as many more. In twelve years 9000 millions of francs. Go back to 1800 or to 1789 you will find a sum almost as great exhausted by the wars of the Revolution, and the destruction of industry. Therefore in spite of the progress of science and of light, the wound is very painful.

"I have often," says the engineer Cordier, "traversed twenty square leagues without finding a canal, a route, a manufactory, or even a domaine. The whole country seemed a desert, or a place of exile abandoned to the unfortunates whose interests and necessities are equally ill-understood, and whose distress increases constantly because of the high price of transport, and the low price of products." "The unfortunate condition of the French working classes," says the British Consul Newman, in his report to the British Commissioner of the poor laws, "has no better proof, than the resolutions recently taken by the manufacturers and the Breton farmers, to employ none who would not leave in their hands a weekly sum for the support of their wives and children. They are generally quick, active people, who make good soldiers, but the moral culture is null; nearly all the small farmers come back from the fair half-drunk, and the week's money is spent by Monday."

"It is known," says another report, "that the abuse of paternal power has enfeebled the population of the department du Nord. A father uses his child to gain a few more cen

times. He sends him to school but leaves him there only until his feeble arms become of some use to his parents. And this child, worn out before he is grown up, curses, as you can imagine, a father who has shown him no pity."

See then what the most active, ingenious, generous race of Europe has done with the fair land which God gave it. The race is not to be accused, but the Past. The tradition was

erroneous.

Despite the ameliorations of the last sixty years in material interests, it is plain that the old Celtic spirit is not yet vanquished, a spirit prompt in war, in art, yet mentally disorderly, incapable of self-government, and kindling the war which labor now wages against capital.

In the United States, contrary traditions have produced contrary effects. On-going in its force, trusting itself, expecting nothing from one's equals, demanding nothing from government, succoring one's neighbor, and being succored by him; these form the secret: these are the English habits, which, under an aristocratic form have made the prosperity of Great Britain and which America now carries out to their fullest extent.

Hence comes universal hope, general industry, ardent desire for the advancement of the race. Born of the Christian and Teutonic elements, these three forces abound in America: Charity, Good Sense, Activity. From the combination of these three forces, not one can be spared without injury to the organic play of such a state as the Union; love, intelligence, power. A proud and sympathetic tradition becomes self-government, resolves itself into the government of province by province, commune by commune, municipality by municipality, of each group by itself, of man by man. The true device of the United States is not " every man for himself," a motto of destruction, but "every man by

himself and for all;" a motto of sympathy and creation. Nothing astonishes and scandalizes, I will not say an American, but a peasant of Norway, Denmark or Scotland, so much as to hear that there is in the old Roman countries a unit Power, which acts for everybody, supports the schools, pays the clergy, builds the bridges, sustains the theatres, sells tobacco and salt, erects hospitals, keeps whole armies of clerks to copy and endorse letters. The Teuton peasant is still more amazed when he learns that if the government were to withdraw its aid, everybody would revolt.

He does not understand our two habitudes;-the rage of wishing to be governed, and that of biting the hand that

governs us.

SECTION III.

GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC-FIRST AND SECOND ERA OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

That tradition of liberty in unity, order in independence, has no need of laws to exist in America. The manufacturer is free to employ or dismiss his workmen, the workman to accept or refuse the price; the capitalist to do what he pleases with his money, the farmer and the merchant to capitalize their gains. The State and the law never interfere; moral law, the main-spring, is in the character of the people. There is no forced and theoretic association, but a sympathy of fact and habit, au Anglo-Saxon clubbing, perpetual, ineffaccable as their manners, which governs the whole country, and without which self-government would be a chimera: they unite everywhere mutually to aid one another. It is so