se. The majority
of them believe that a man will be led to do what is just and good by
following his own interest rightly understood. They hold that every man
is born in possession of the right of self-government, and that no one
has the right of constraining his fellow-creatures to be happy. They
have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man; they are of
opinion that the effects of the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily
be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all
consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a
changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they
admit that what appears to them to be good to-day may be superseded by
something better-to-morrow. I do not give all these opinions as true,
but I quote them as characteristic of the Americans.

[Footnote d: It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that by the
expression Anglo-Americans, I only mean to designate the great majority
of the nation; for a certain number of isolated individuals are of
course to be met with holding very different opinions.]

The Anglo-Americans are not only united together by these common
opinions, but they are separated from all other nations by a common
feeling of pride. For the last fifty years no pains have been spared to
convince the inhabitants of the United States that they constitute the
only religious, enlightened, and free people. They perceive that, for
the present, their own democratic institutions succeed, whilst those
of other countries fail; hence they conceive an overweening opinion
of their superiority, and they are not very remote from believing
themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind.

The dangers which threaten the American Union do not originate in the
diversity of interests or of opinions, but in the various characters and
passions of the Americans. The men who inhabit the vast territory of
the United States are almost all the issue of a common stock; but the
effects of the climate, and more especially of slavery, have gradually
introduced very striking differences between the British settler of the
Southern States and the British settler of the North. In Europe it is
generally believed that slavery has rendered the interests of one
part of the Union contrary to those of another part; but I by no means
remarked this to be the case: slavery has not created interests in the
South contrary to those of the North, but it has mod