acy.
Reflecting on this subject, I have been struck by the fact that no such
flights of the imagination are ever indulged in by those who speak of
Switzerland. That which is termed the rudeness of liberty and equality,
with us, becomes softened down here into the frankness of mountaineers,
or the sturdy independence of republicans; what is vulgarity on the
other side of the Atlantic, is unsophistication on this, and truculence
in the States dwindles to be earnest remonstrances in the cantons!

There undeniably exist marked points of difference between the Swiss and
the Americans. The dominion of a really popular sway is admitted nowhere
here, except in a few unimportant mountain cantons, that are but little
known, and which, if known, would not exercise a very serious influence
on any but their own immediate inhabitants. With us, the case is
different. New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio, for instance, with a
united population of near five millions of souls, are as pure
democracies as can exist under a representative form of government, and
their trade, productions, and example so far connect them with the rest
of Christendom, as to render them objects of deep interest to all who
look beyond the present moment, in studying the history of man.

We have States, however, in which the franchise does not materially
differ from those of many of the cantons, and yet we do not find that
strangers make any material exceptions even in _their_ favour. Few think
of viewing the States in which there are property qualifications, in a
light different from those just named; nor is a disturbance in Virginia
deemed to be less the consequence of democratic effervescence, than it
is in Pennsylvania.

There must be reasons for all this. I make no doubt they are to be found
in the greater weight of the example of a large and growing community,
of active commercial and political habits, than in one like this, which
is satisfied with simply maintaining a quiet and secure existence; in
our total rejection of the usual aristocratical distinctions which still
exist, more or less, all over Switzerland; in the jealousy of commercial
and maritime power, and in the recollections which are inseparable from
the fact that the parties once stood to each other, in the relation of
principals and dependants. This latter feeling, an unavoidable
consequence of metropolitan sway, is more general than you may imagine,
for, as nearly all Europe once had colonie