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racter. Enterprise, public spirit, intelligence, faction and love of country are natural to such a people. No series of ages is requisite to form or consolidate their character. At the earliest date the legend is most decided; and though it may be aggravated, is seldom improved by years or refinements.

Wherever we find foreign commerce, there also we find polished manners.* It is commerce that harmonizes the intercourse and dissipates the prejudices of nations; softens their native peculiarities, and approximates their national characters to one common standard.† Commerce, and trade, and manufactures, grew under the same shade in which learning flourished.+

Such opinions, from such authority, are unanswerable. It is to North America only that their justice is denied. In Europe at least it is a prevailing notion to associate the commercial habits of the United States, with sordid fraud, a distaste for noble pursuits, and a dread of war: and the Americans have incurred the odium and contempt, which will be the lot of any nation that is considered by others to be tame, mercenary and base-spirited. But the policy of the government has been mistaken for the genius of the people. Alert, impetuous, alive to news and public discussions, the vibrations of popular sympathies are in no country so rapid and pervading.

*Montesq. Esp. des Loix, 1. 20. c. 1.

† Robert. Charles V. vol. 1. s. 1. p. 97.

Burke's Reflect. on the French Rev. p. 115.

As individuals, and as a community, they have exhibited and continue to exhibit every day, the most decided proofs of courage and impetuosity.

The appeal to duels for the decision of private disputes is more frequent in the United States than in any other country whatever: and these privaté combats are conducted with a scientific ferociousness, and terminate in general with a fatality unknown elsewhere. The severest statutes have in vain pointed their artillery against this chivalric custom, which seems to be inveterate among impassioned and opini ated freemen. It is certain that men have become less free, less courageous, less disposed for great enterprises, than they were in the days of Rome and of suicide, when, as Montesquieu expresses it, they ap pear to have been born with a greater aptitude for heroism, and by exerting this inconceivable power over themselves, could bid defiance to all other human power. The modern duel is an offspring of this heathen sacrifice, in which similar causes lead to nearly the same effect. The prevalence of the Catonis nobile lethum of the Romans may not be an evidence of their good sense or their fortitude; nor the frequency of fatal duels in this country of the superior bravery of its inhabitants. But they prove at least the sensibility of both to that romantic and inexplicable point of honour, which, however indefensible its votaries may be in the eyes of both God and rational man, has ever been a shrine sacred to the brave and high minded.

*

Montesq. Grand. et Decad. c. 12, p. 134.

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As a community, the Americans have always shown themselves no less forward, than as individuals, to face their enemies and aggressors. In most countries it is the government that provokes, declares and maintains wars. But the United States have exhibited continual struggles between the government and the people, in which the latter have been clamorous for hostilities, at one time with one foreign power, at another time with another, while all the influence and forbearance of their rulers has been exercised to restrain this martial intoxication. The revolution was lighted up by a national instinct for independence, called early into action by the allurements of liberty and republicanism; when certainly no incapacity for war was evinced. How illustrious indeed should the conduct and termination of that contest render the Americans, when contrasted with the pusillanimous facility with which the most compact and warlike nations of Europe have lately fallen under the arms of their invaders! The American colonies would not have ventured a war singlehanded with the first maritime power of the world, about a trifling tax on tea, had not that military impulse, which inflamed alike the sturdy east, and the impatient south, prompted them to unite for the assertion of their independence. It was not oppression that goaded them upon emancipation. But their instinct for liberty: as the author of their epic, with his peculiar propriety of expression, describes their feelings at the time,

"Fame fir'd their courage, freedom edg'd their swords."

A long interval of profound tranquillity and multiplied commerce may have tarnished the fame, perhaps relaxed somewhat the tone of this people. But it was the government, not the nation, who compromised with endurance for emolument; and the same spirit which was once displayed, is still ready to show itself when summoned into action. The same valour, good faith, clemency and patriotism still animate the bosoms of America, as the first burst of their hostilities, whenever it takes place, will convince their calumniators.

Legitimate commerce, instead of demoralizing or debasing a community, refines its sentiments, multiplies its intelligence, and sharpens its ingenuity. Where are the evidences to the contrary in this country?—The Americans, far from being a sordid or venal, are not even a thrifty people. Subsistence is so easy, and competency so common, that those nice calculations of domestic economy which are a branch almost of education in Europe, are scarcely attended to in America; and that long, disgusting catalogue of petty offences, through which the lower classes of other nations are driven by indigence and wretchedness, has hardly an existence here, though death is almost proscribed from the penal code. Native Americans are very seldom to be met with in menial or the laborious occupations, which are filled by blacks and foreigners, mostly Europeans, who are also the common perpetrators of the smaller crimes alluded to. Though the government is supported by the customs, and the punishments for their contravention are merely pecuniary, yet such delinquencies are infinitely less frequent than in Europe or even Asia. The

salaries of the public officers are very inconsiderable : yet malversation is a crime of rare occurrence; and that essential venality, which pervades almost every department of government in other countries, is altogether unpractised in this.

In their foreign traffic the Americans have been exposed to all the contumelious indignities which superior power and rapacity could inflict. But have the accusations charged upon them been substantiated? When a young and unarmed people have no other reliance for their advancement than their industry and acuteness, and nevertheless, owing to these and their territorial advantages, succeed against the jealous restrictions and overwhelming maritime strength of older states, it is as natural for the latter to stigmatize them with dishonesty and encroachment, as it was for Rome, when Carthage was half subdued, to proclaim the instability of Punic faith. But the charge contradicts itself: for how could the Americans pursue a successful and augmenting commerce, if their frauds were as numerous as they are declared to be, after the whole world are put on their guard, and in arms, to suppress them? The American merchant can have no other convoy than his neutrality and fairness and if he have common sense, must perceive that honesty is his only policy. The unfairness with which the trade of these states is charged, is ascribable, not to the American, but to the many desperate foreigners, who assume a neutralized citizenship for the designs of dishonest speculation, and in too many instances abuse the privilege by simulation and iniquity.

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