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occurrences, but to circumstances which I have myself observed, and which belong to our own time.
An attentive examination of what is going on in the United States, will easily convince us that two opposite tendencies exist in that country, like two distinct currents flowing in contrary directions in the same channel. The Union has now existed for forty-five years, and in the course of that time a vast number of provincial prejudices, which were at first hostile to its power, have died away. The patriotic feeling which attached each of the Americans to his own native state is become less exclusive; and the different parts of the Union have become more intimately connected the better they have become acquainted with each other. The post,[1] that great instrument of intellectual intercourse, now reaches into the backwoods; and steamboats have established daily means of communication between the different points of the coast. An inland navigation of unexampled rapidity conveys commodities up and down the rivers of the country.[2] And to these facilities of nature and art may be added those restless cravings, that busymindedness, and love of pelf, which are constantly urging the American into active life, and bringing him into contact with his fellow-citizens. He crosses the country in every direction; he visits all the various populations of the land; and there is not a province in France, in which the natives are so well known to each other as the thirteen millions of men who cover the territory of the United States.
But while the Americans intermingle, they grow in resemblance of each other; the differences resulting from their climate, their origin, and their institutions, diminish; and they all draw nearer and nearer to the common type. Every year, thousands of men leave the north to settle in different parts of the Union: they bring with them their faith, their opinions, and their manners; and as they are more enlightened than the men among whom they are about to
- ↑ In 1832, the district of Michigan, which only contains 31,639 inhabitants, and is still an almost unexplored wilderness, possessed 940 miles of mail-roads. The territory of Arkansas, which is still more uncultivated, was already intersected by 1,938 miles of mail-roads. (See report of the general postoffice, 30th November, 1833.) The postage of newspapers alone in the whole Union amounted to 254,796 dollars.
- ↑ In the course of ten years, from 1821 to 1831, 271 steamboats have been launched upon the rivers which water the valley of the Mississippi alone. In 1829, 259 Bteamboats existed in the United States. (See Legislative Documents, No. 140, p. 274.)
