as a complete view of the condition and prospects of the United States; as throwing a new and brilliant light upon the nature of democracy, and as explaining the destinies of the Old World by help of the New. We are afraid that we cannot quite join in these high panegyrics. M. de Tocqueville's appears to us the work of a very accomplished Frenchman, abounding in acute observations and vivacious epigrams, and continually hinting at truths which, if extracted by study and meditation from his rhetoric, would be of the highest worth. Mixed with these, however, we have found vague and vulgar generalizations, well contrived to furnish men with opinions and talk, little likely to assist them in thinking. Nor have we been able to ascertain that, with all his gifts of classification and analysis, the author has the least power of looking straightly and distinctly at an object, or really conversing with human characters-a power surely of some importance to one who attempts to represent the Life of a nation. But though on these grounds we cannot go the full length of M. de Tocqueville's admirers, we are bound to acknowledge the very great service which he has rendered to the study of America and its people, by the pains which he has taken to fix our thoughts on the circumstances of its original colonization. It is a very simple and obvious consideration, that the character and faith of the people who went out from England, from Holland, or from France, in search of new habitations, may have had a considerable effect in determining what those habitations now are, and what is the position of the people who are dwelling in them. But it was a point which previous travellers and speculators had strangely left out of consideration. They had fancied that, by noticing the manners of the people among whom they might chance to be thrown, or by rough conclusions formed from imperfect information respecting the effect of their institutions, it was possible to ascertain how far these institutions belong to the people; how far they are likely to be retained or lost; what issues await the country in which they have been growing up. Judgments formed

on such data, by such methods, whether by partisans of the Old World or of the New, by admirers or haters of democracy, could be worth very little. By drawing our thoughts to the temper and feelings of the original settlers, as we get them from the history of our own land, or as we find them embodied in their own early laws, M. de Tocqueville has given a hint which cannot be forgotten by any student of these colonies, or of colonies generally; and which, we fancy, is of more substantial value, not only than all his large remarks on the manners of a people whom he seems to know merely in the abstract, but even than his really

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interesting comments upon their municipal forms and institutions. is a hint, moreover, which may serve to counteract the partial and mischievous effect which parts of his book would make upon our minds. We do not for a moment wish to deny the reaction even of the most purely civil and arbitrary institutions, upon the characters and intellects of those who live under them; but it is also very important to know what the men were who first gave form and life to these institutions, lest we should fancy that certain external arrangements are the ultimate origin of that which is good or evil in men.

There is scarcely a circumstance in the condition of America, in the present day, which does not receive a new light, when we consider the character of the persons who originally settled it; scarcely one that is capable of any clear interpretation, if we look merely at the history of the Revolution in 1775, and suppose Franklin, Washington, and Maddison to be the authors of the Commonwealth which is established there. It was the great object of these last to form the different States into a united body. But in spite of the existence of a common language, and the many circumstances of relationship to a common country, and of danger from a common enemy, which had for a hundred years been preparing them for this amalgamation, there are in the States different feelings, interests, jealousies, which seem to make their general name often almost a mockery. How could this be accounted for, unless we remembered that the persons who founded these States, though they came from the same land, were governed by different maxims and habits of thought; that their predominant opinions were such as they could not easily change or throw aside from any motives of self-interest, or any desire of a wider fellowship; that they were the dearest possessions of men of strong, rugged characters and intellects, who were likely to express, in all their most permanent acts and words, and to transmit to their descendants that which influenced their own lives? The strong individuality of these early men, so very unlike the temper which distinguished the century in which the heroes of the Revolution were born, has, in like manner, stamped itself, as De Tocqueville has remarked, upon all American habits and institutions. Nowhere else does the sense of religion, as a personal obligation, so easily mix itself with the most selfish and moneygetting propensities; nowhere does this sense prompt so many combinations and associations, or prove itself so unable to sustain them; nowhere does it constitute a more powerful element of a nation's life; nowhere is its tendency more to divide the members of that nation from each other. To this must be added, how little the feeling of what is deep and invi

sible has availed to produce a literature, the effect of such a feeling in every country of the Old World where it has operated with any strength. These circumstances, with a thousand other peculiarities of manners, opinions, and conduct, which proceed from them, and react upon them, can never be considered as the mere results, for good or for evil, of democracy in itself. Democracy must rather be considered as the result of that in which all these peculiarities originated; as the legitimate fruit of that SECT Spirit from which America has derived all its characteristics of strength or of weakness. So strikingly is it proved, by the history of this land, that the moral state-the education, in other words—of those who go out to settle a country, determines what that country shall be— modifies to its own shape all the events and revolutions which afterward befal it.

But does America teach us nothing more than this? De Tocqueville and other travellers testify to the existence of various tendencies in America, which seem to show that this sect life cannot last. He thinks that something larger and more comprehensive must supersede it, and that Popery and Unitarianism, or rather the Pantheism which has grown out of it, will at last divide America between them. We shall not consider the reasonableness of this fearful prophecy. There are some among us who believe that there is a mustard seed in the American soil, of which the French traveller has taken little account, which will become a more and more goodly tree. If these hopes for the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, which we in England fondly entertain, should be frustrated for a time; if those two systems, of which M. de Tocqueville speaks, should be destined for a time to overshadow the landthe utmost vagueness alternating with, and bordering upon the narrowest tyranny; the worship of idols and the worship of an abstraction reproducing each other-we believe, and we say it with deep sadness, the American Church will have itself to blame. With many noble and glorious gifts and graces, free from many gross sins, for which she may and ought to reprove her English parent, she has lacked one grace; she has not proclaimed a free communion to people of every kindred and colour. The sects cannot do this: we, at least, cannot blame them for not fulfilling the great duty of the universal Church, when we believe that they have parted with some of the great characteristics of it. The States, very possibly, cannot abolish the degrading distinction. It was the Church which extinguished slavery in Europe: it is the Church which must do it in America. The Romanists have admitted the white and the black together to their communion; and we fear that the Protestant body can

not maintain its position in the sight of God and man, while it denies practically that all are one in Christ Jesus. But, at all events, this seems to be admitted, that America must have some faith which lays claim to universality-which comes forth, on some ground or other, to say that it has a right and a power to unite men, and not to separate them. Pantheism, Romanism, Protestant Episcopacy, each on its own ground, boasts to be catholic. We believe that God, in his own time, will say which boast is true, and will confound whatever assumes the name without preserving the reality; but meanwhile the fact is established that, even in the country which was originally established upon another basis, some such pretension is felt to be grounded in the wants and cravings of men. We may, then, it would seem, fairly draw the inference, that the education which America received is not one that is applicable to this time.

But, were it otherwise, such education is not easily to be obtained. Settlers will not now go forth under the influence of the motives which prompted the settlers in our revolted colonies. Men now have a sufficient vent for all strange opinions and plans at home. If they are inclined to condemn existing institutions, or to complain against the luxury of the upper classes, they are much more sure of a sympathising audience in Grosvenor Square than among the backwoodsmen. If they have some new scheme of society to substitute for the old one, they find, as Mr. Owen and others have done, that the corruptions of our country furnish them with their best arguments . for a change, as well as their best excuses for any unfortunate failures, and that nothing is so inconvenient as to try the experiment under perfectly favourable circumstances. Supposing even there were some persons who felt England oppressive, and sought for a purer air and freer scope far uttering their thoughts in Australia and New Zealand, how very different an impression would they make from that which the Puritans made in America; what a very different position would they occupy with respect to the rest of the settlers, from that which they occupied! In the one case, the earnest discontented men were the lawgivers of the community; they gave the shape and tone to the thoughts of those who went out with them: all the projectors and speculators who might chance to mingle in their society, exercised an influence most insignificant when compared with theirs. Now the commercial part of the enterprise is clearly and definitely organized; the principles upon which it is to be conducted, discussed and settled by shrewd and clearheaded men; all its machinery adjusted and managed with the utmost

skill and precision. Imagine what kind of relation a few spirits, who had found Europe too dull and mechanical for them, or who had gone out to realize some great conception, would bear to such a community as this. What calculus could ascertain the infinitesimal portion of power which they would be able to put forth in constructing or regulating the new Society!

These remarks ought, we think, to be taken into consideration by thoughtful men in England. We do not believe that there are any persons who steadily and seriously contemplate the establishment of a set of merely commercial colonies, upon which no sort of moral or spiritual influences shall operate. Far, very far, are we from thinking, that the authors of these speculations, though probably differing very widely from us on most subjects, look forward to any such result, or could regard it without dismay. Many of them fancy, no doubt, that all the forms of European civilization may re-produce themselves, without difficulty, in the New World; that Adelaide and Port Philip will just as naturally have churches as theatres, and that thus all necessary influence of a higher kind will be readily supplied. Others there are among them, men of deeper minds and characters, who know that, by merely providing the material with which moral influences are to work, you do not provide the moral influence itself. This, perhaps, they expect will reach their colony through the agency of individual men, going out from some strong impulse. We fully believe them; but we think we have shown that the impulse must be one of an entirely different kind from that by which the founders of the New England States were actuated. We have not said that impulse was evil; we have fully admitted that there was good in it, or the good which we find in America would not have resulted from it. But we have said, that the impulse, right or wrong, has nothing corresponding to it in our day. We have taken up the fashionable mode of argument, and said-"This kind of moral education might be very good two centuries ago, but it is obsolete." What is to be the substitute for it? What is that impulse which may act upon the new colonies as strongly as the old Puritan influence acted upon the colonies of North America? In answering this question, we turn to the Churchmen of England. We have contended earnestly that, in the Education of England, the Church is able to do what no other body can do; we have not said the Church backed by the State, can do this; we have said the Church, without the State, nay, with the State opposed to her, can do it, and ought to do it. We have said the Church has powers which the State has not; powers