ue or
vice is the result of the particular circumstances amidst which the
society exists.

The circumstances in which a prevalent virtue or vice originates, may or
may not be traceable by a traveller. If traceable, he should spare no
pains to make himself acquainted with the whole case. If obscure, he
must beware of imputing disgraces to individuals, as if those
individuals were living under the influences which have made himself
what he is. He will not blame a deficiency of moral independence in a
citizen of Philadelphia so severely as in a citizen of London; seeing,
as he must do, that the want of moral independence is a prevalent fault
in the United States, and that there must be some reason for it. Again,
he will not look to the Polish peasant for the political intelligence,
activity, and principle which delight him in the log-house of the
American farmer. He sees that Polish peasants are generally supine, and
American farmers usually interested about politics; and that there must
be reasons for the difference.

In a majority of cases such reasons are, to a great extent,
ascertainable. In Spain, for instance, there is a large class of
wretched and irretrievable beggars; and their idleness, dirt, and lying
trouble the very soul of the traveller. What is the reason of the
prevalence of this degraded class and of its vices? A Court Lady[C]
wrote, in ancient days, piteous complaints of the poverty of the
sovereign, the nobility, the army, and the destitute ladies who waited
upon the queen. The sovereign could not give his attendants their
dinners; the nobility melted down their plate and sold their jewels; the
soldiers were famishing in garrison, so that the young deserted, and the
aged and invalids wasted away, actually starved to death. The lady
mentions with surprise, that a particularly large amount of gold and
silver had arrived from the foreign possessions of Spain that year, and
tries to account for the universal misery by saying that a great
proportion of these riches was appropriated by merchants who supplied
the Spaniards with the necessaries of life from abroad; and she speaks
of this as an evil. She is an example of an unphilosophical
observer,--one who could not be trusted to report--much less to account
for--the morals and manners of the people before her eyes. What says a
philosophical observer?[D] "Spain and Portugal, the countries which
possess the mines, are, after Poland, perhaps the two most beggar