akings which cannot succeed without perpetual attention and
rigorous exactitude are very frequently abandoned in the end; for in
America, as well as in other countries, the people is subject to sudden
impulses and momentary exertions. The European who is accustomed to find
a functionary always at hand to interfere with all he undertakes has
some difficulty in accustoming himself to the complex mechanism of the
administration of the townships. In general it may be affirmed that the
lesser details of the police, which render life easy and comfortable,
are neglected in America; but that the essential guarantees of man in
society are as strong there as elsewhere. In America the power which
conducts the Government is far less regular, less enlightened, and less
learned, but an hundredfold more authoritative than in Europe. In no
country in the world do the citizens make such exertions for the common
weal; and I am acquainted with no people which has established schools
as numerous and as efficacious, places of public worship better suited
to the wants of the inhabitants, or roads kept in better repair.
Uniformity or permanence of design, the minute arrangement of details,
*t and the perfection of an ingenious administration, must not be sought
for in the United States; but it will be easy to find, on the other
hand, the symptoms of a power which, if it is somewhat barbarous, is
at least robust; and of an existence which is checkered with accidents
indeed, but cheered at the same time by animation and effort.

[Footnote t: A writer of talent, who, in the comparison which he has
drawn between the finances of France and those of the United States, has
proved that ingenuity cannot always supply the place of a knowledge of
facts, very justly reproaches the Americans for the sort of confusion
which exists in the accounts of the expenditure in the townships; and
after giving the model of a departmental budget in France, he adds:--"We
are indebted to centralization, that admirable invention of a great
man, for the uniform order and method which prevail alike in all the
municipal budgets, from the largest town to the humblest commune."
Whatever may be my admiration of this result, when I see the communes
of France, with their excellent system of accounts, plunged into
the grossest ignorance of their true interests, and abandoned to so
incorrigible an apathy that they seem to vegetate rather than to live;
when, on the other hand, I obs