n which human actions are held in the two
hemispheres. The Americans frequently term what we should call cupidity
a laudable industry; and they blame as faint-heartedness what we
consider to be the virtue of moderate desires.

In France, simple tastes, orderly manners, domestic affections, and the
attachments which men feel to the place of their birth, are looked upon
as great guarantees of the tranquillity and happiness of the State. But
in America nothing seems to be more prejudicial to society than these
virtues. The French Canadians, who have faithfully preserved the
traditions of their pristine manners, are already embarrassed for room
upon their small territory; and this little community, which has so
recently begun to exist, will shortly be a prey to the calamities
incident to old nations. In Canada, the most enlightened, patriotic,
and humane inhabitants make extraordinary efforts to render the people
dissatisfied with those simple enjoyments which still content it. There,
the seductions of wealth are vaunted with as much zeal as the charms of
an honest but limited income in the Old World, and more exertions are
made to excite the passions of the citizens there than to calm them
elsewhere. If we listen to their eulogies, we shall hear that nothing is
more praiseworthy than to exchange the pure and homely pleasures which
even the poor man tastes in his own country for the dull delights of
prosperity under a foreign sky; to leave the patrimonial hearth and
the turf beneath which his forefathers sleep; in short, to abandon the
living and the dead in quest of fortune.

At the present time America presents a field for human effort far more
extensive than any sum of labor which can be applied to work it. In
America too much knowledge cannot be diffused; for all knowledge, whilst
it may serve him who possesses it, turns also to the advantage of those
who are without it. New wants are not to be feared, since they can be
satisfied without difficulty; the growth of human passions need not be
dreaded, since all passions may find an easy and a legitimate object;
nor can men be put in possession of too much freedom, since they are
scarcely ever tempted to misuse their liberties.

The American republics of the present day are like companies of
adventurers formed to explore in common the waste lands of the New
World, and busied in a flourishing trade. The passions which agitate
the Americans most deeply are not their politic