THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH
AMERICA.

From the North British Review.

We feel very confident that, in the subsequent article, we have the views of the Rev. Dr. Cunningham, who recently visited us as a delegate from the Free Church of Scotland: and we are happy in finding, as we expected he would, that the Doctor treats us well!

The means of judging of a nation fully and fairly are not often possessed by foreigners. A feeling of rivalry and jealousy frequently exists between the inhabitants of different countries, which leads them to lean to the side of depreciating and disparaging their neighbors. Even differences in matters so insignificant, comparatively, as the manners and customs which regulate the daily intercourse of social and domestic life, are apt to excite prejudice, and to produce unfavorable impressions in regard to matThe United States of North America; ters much more important, when a candid their History from the Earliest Period; and impartial consideration of these differtheir Industry, Commerce, Banking ences might convince men that many of Transactions, and National Works; the habits and customs of other nations their Institutions and Character, Political, Social, and Literary; with a Survey of the Territory, and Remarks upon the Prospects and Plans of Emigrants. By Hugh Murray, F.R.S.E. With Illustrations of the Natural History. By James Nicol. Portraits, and other Engravings, by Jackson. 3 vols. Edinburgh Cabinet Library. Edinburgh, 1844.

MEN commonly form an unfair estimate of the institutions, character, manners and customs, of other nations than their own. VOL. IV.-No. I. 1

were neither less rational in themselves, nor perhaps less fitted to promote general comfort and convenience, than their own, and were unpleasant and annoying to them, merely because different from those to which they had been accustomed. The United States of North America have perhaps shared more largely than any other country in the injustice with which nations are apt to treat each other in the opinions cherished and expressed with regard to them. The history and institutions of that country are in some respects of a kind fitted to excite not very unnatural prejudice

among the nations of the old world, and tent to which these evils prevail, in order especially in Great Britain; and there are to derive from the state of matters in that still many things in the condition and cir- country an argument against democracy. cumstances of the United States, though And there is one peculiar circumstance we are disposed to regard them chiefly as connected with this matter which has tendadventitious and temporary, which afford ed greatly to strengthen the prejudice explausible grounds for an unfavorable judg- isting in this country against the United ment to those who are predisposed to regard States-we mean the notion impressed them with prejudice. We are not sure upon the minds of many worthy persons by that either in Great Britain or in the United the history of the first French Revolution, States have the feelings engendered by the and not yet wholly obliterated, of there war which terminated in American inde- being some intrinsic connexion between pendence, been altogether obliterated. democracy and infidelity. It was not very There are even yet some men in Great unnatural that the features which the Britain who are disposed to look upon the French Revolution presented, should proUnited States merely as revolted colonies duce an impression of this sort; but still which ought still to have formed a part of every enlightened and intelligent man must the British empire; and the revival of the see it to be a mere prejudice. We know doctrines of passive obedience and non- of no Scriptural grounds on which it can resistance of "the right divine of kings be established that monarchy is in itself to govern wrong," by the high churchmen more agreeable to the will of God than reof our day-men who talk equivocally of publicanism; and it cannot be shown that the lawfulness of the Reformation from the views which usually lead men to apPopery, and of the advantages which have resulted from it, and who openly condemn the Revolution of 1688 as a "national sin," -is not likely to favor the eradication of this view, and of the feelings which it is fitted to produce. And many Americans, on the other hand, are still too. much disposed to remember that Great Britain once oppressed them, and tyrannized over them, and to allow the recollection of former injuries to tinge the feelings with which they still regard her; and this state of mind and feeling is fostered by the practice still kept up in the United States, of reading publicly, on the 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence, which contains a minute and detailed enumeration of all the hardships inflicted upon the colonies by the mother-country. This custom can now have no other effect than to keep alive uncharitable and angry feelings, and would surely be "more honored in the breach than the observance."

prove of a republican form of government, have any natural tendency to make them infidels, or infidel views to make them republicans. The connexion between republicanism and infidelity, at the era of the French Revolution, was the result of circumstances, and not of any natural and inherent tendency in the things themselves. Some of the most eminent English infidels have been the defenders of absolute monarchy; not a few of those who have been most eminently honored in promoting the cause of religion, such as Calvin and others of the Reformers, were decidedly opposed to monarchical principles; and we have now, in the United States, a body of ministers, many of whom are possessed of superior talents and learning, as well undoubted piety, and have been highly honored by God in the conversion of sinners, who yet openly maintain, that upon grounds at once of reason and Scripture, a republic is greatly preferable to a monarchy The Republican government of the or an aristocracy. These facts afford no United States has tended greatly to preju- reason why we should change our views dice the subjects of European monarchies upon the subject of government; but they against the institutions of that country. If are surely sufficient to expose the folly of there exist in America a strong tendency the prejudice which many British Christo ascribe the ignorance and misery which tians entertain against the United States, are to be found in European countries to as if their republican institutions either hereditary monarchy and a hereditary sprung from, or tended to, infidelity. The legislature, there is at least an equally Declaration of Independence was indeed strong tendency in this country to ascribe the ignorance and misery which exist in the United States to their republican form of government, and to exaggerate the ex

drawn up by Jefferson, who was an infidel, though he did not venture very openly to avow his infidelity during his lifetime; but Dr. Wotherspoon was its most able and

zealous defender, on the memorable occa- | as to abandon the use of wine, and to subsion when the Congress adopted it."

stitute something else, in the celebration of Some one or more of these various pre- the Lord's Supper; and hearing of these judices to which we have referred, have things, and knowing little else about the influenced most of the British travellers state of matters, they have been ready to who have visited the United States. A regard them as attaching to the temperance considerable number of those who have movement in general, and to the great published an account of their travels in body of its supporters, whereas they attach that country, have been mere passing visit- only to a very few individuals, and are reors, who saw only the surface of things, pudiated by the great body of the friends and, of course, were very liable to be mis- of the temperance reformation-a work, taken; while not a few of them have been the success of which is an honor to the more anxious to make an amusing and United States, as it has conferred incalcuspicy book, by dwelling upon and exag-lable benefits upon the community. The gerating peculiarities, than to give a fair great body of the ministry in the United and impartial view of the general state of States have renounced the use of intoxicatmatters. And, in this country, we are ing liquors altogether, and are quite able to very apt, when we hear of any thing ridiculous or offensive as existing or occurring in the United States, to put it down as applicable to, and characteristic of, the whole nation, when probably it may attach only to a few individuals, or to some limited district of that vast region. Many people in this country have heard of some of the follies and evtravagances which have been propounded and practised in the United States, on the subject of temperance producing a present and temporary excite-of some men asserting the direct and ment, had the general sanction and countepositive sinfulness of using any intoxicating nance of the American Churches, whereas or even any stimulating liquor-of some these abuses were but local and partial, congregations excluding from communion and under the name of new measures, by all who were concerned in the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits, and even all who used them, and of some even going so far

adduce proof that their temporal and spiritual welfare, and their ministerial usefulness, have been greatly promoted by this abstinence, without falling into any of the follies and extravagances above referred to. About twelve or fourteen years ago we heard a great deal of the abuses and extravagances connected with American revivals of religion, and many of us believed that what seemed to be just artificial contrivances for

which they were usually designated, were condemned and exposed by the great body of the evangelical churches, and have now, in a great measure, disappeared. We have * There can be no doubt that French infidelity, heard of late a great deal of repudiation, i. e. infidelity produced by the writers, and sanc- and many, no doubt, in this country, have tioned by the conduct of France, did much mis- been led to attach the discredit of this dischief in the United States; but there were always honesty to the inhabitants of the United many eminent men in that country who strenuously opposed French principles and French States generally, whereas only one of the influence, and deprecated any close connexion States, Mississippi, has denied its obligawith Revolutionary France, from its tendency to tion to pay its debts; and the conduct of injure the interests of religion. Among these this State, as well as that of Pennsylvania, Dr. Dwight, who so long and so ably presided over Yale College, was conspicuous. He was (which, without denying its obligation to accustomed on days of public fasting and thanks-pay, delayed for a time to make provision giving-for these always have been, and still are, observed in the United States-to declaim against Revolutionary France, and all connexion with her, in a style which would have been perfectly satisfactory to the most zealous clerical worshippers of Pitt and Dundas. On one occasion, towards the end of last century, he wound up a pulpit philippic against France in these words, "Her touch is pollution, her embrace is death.'

One exception to this remark may be noticed. Mr. James Stuart of Dunearn, in his travels through the United States, saw, or affected to see, almost every thing couleur de rose. We have heard judicious and intelligent Americans confess that Mr. Stuart's book gave too favorable a view of their country.

for the interest of its debt, though it has done so now,) met with the strongest disapprobation in the community at large. You meet with no person in respectable society, and you can find scarcely any organ of public opinion in America, that is not cordial and decided in condemning repudiation.

* A respectable newspaper in New-York, published in July last, gave some statistical tables, showing the great want of schools and the low state of education in the State of Mississippi. The general results were, that of the whole pop