they were transplanted to your own favored
coasts? Why, sir, there is more sectionalism in the country you would
transport these people to, than in any one nation I ever heard of; every
one of your States is a petty principality; it has its own separate
interests; its own bigoted boundaries; its conventionalisms; its pet laws;
and as for its prejudices, I will just ask you, as a candid man, not as a
Yankee, but as a traveller like myself, a cosmopolite, if you please, what
you think of the two great eternal States of Massachusetts and South
Carolina, and whether prejudices and sectionalisms are to be fairly
charged upon these colonies, and upon them only?"

"Picton, I will be frank with you. The States you name are looked upon as
the great game-cocks of the Union, and we give them a tolerably large
arena to fight their battles in. Either champion has flapped its wings and
crowed its loudest, and drawn in its local backers, but the great States
of my country are not these two. I feel at this moment an almost
irrepressible desire to instance a single one as an example; but insomuch
as nobody has ever flapped wing or crowed because of it, I will not be the
first to break the silence. This much I will say, there are some States,
and those the very greatest in the Union, that neither claim to be, nor
make a merit of being _provincial_."

"But, even in your State, you have your stately prejudices," said Picton,
with a marked emphasis upon the "stately."

"No, sir, we have no stately prejudices, at least among those entitled to
have them, the native-born citizens; nor do I believe such prejudices
exist in many of the States with us at home, sir."

"But as you admit there is a sectional barrier between your people," said
Picton, "I do not see why our form of government is not as wise as your
form of government."

"The difference, Picton, is simply this: your government is foreign, and
almost unchangeable; ours is local, and mutable as the flux and reflux of
the tide. As a consequence, sectionalism is active with us, and apathetic
with you. Your colonists have nothing to care for, and we have everything
to care for."

"Then," said Picton, "we can sleep while you struggle?"

"Yes, Picton, that is the question----

'Whether 'tis best to roam or rest.
The land's lap, or the water's breast?'

We think it is best to choose the active instead of the stagnant; if a man
cannot take part in the great mechanism of humani