oductive industry, and because the poorest
as well as the most opulent members of the commonwealth are ready to
combine their efforts for these purposes. The consequence is, that a
stranger is constantly amazed by the immense public works executed by a
nation which contains, so to speak, no rich men. The Americans arrived
but as yesterday on the territory which they inhabit, and they have
already changed the whole order of nature for their own advantage. They
have joined the Hudson to the Mississippi, and made the Atlantic Ocean
communicate with the Gulf of Mexico, across a continent of more than
five hundred leagues in extent which separates the two seas. The longest
railroads which have been constructed up to the present time are in
America. But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so
much the marvellous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable
multitude of small ones. Almost all the farmers of the United States
combine some trade with agriculture; most of them make agriculture
itself a trade. It seldom happens that an American farmer settles for
good upon the land which he occupies: especially in the districts of the
Far West he brings land into tillage in order to sell it again, and not
to farm it: he builds a farmhouse on the speculation that, as the state
of the country will soon be changed by the increase of population, a
good price will be gotten for it. Every year a swarm of the inhabitants
of the North arrive in the Southern States, and settle in the parts
where the cotton plant and the sugar-cane grow. These men cultivate the
soil in order to make it produce in a few years enough to enrich them;
and they already look forward to the time when they may return home
to enjoy the competency thus acquired. Thus the Americans carry their
business-like qualities into agriculture; and their trading passions are
displayed in that as in their other pursuits.

The Americans make immense progress in productive industry, because they
all devote themselves to it at once; and for this same reason they are
exposed to very unexpected and formidable embarrassments. As they are
all engaged in commerce, their commercial affairs are affected by
such various and complex causes that it is impossible to foresee
what difficulties may arise. As they are all more or less engaged in
productive industry, at the least shock given to business all private
fortunes are put in jeopardy at the same time, and the State is