grand projects, but hardly ever convert any of them
to much practical good. The opinions of the people are formed on habits
of great saving, and it requires older calculations, greater familiarity
with risks, and more liberal notions of industry, and, possibly, more
capital than is commonly found in their enterprises, to induce the
people to encounter the extra charges of these improvements, when they
can have recourse to what, in their eyes, are simpler and safer means of
making money. The government employs men of science, who conceive well;
but their conceptions are but indifferently sustained by the average
practical intellect of the country. In this particular France is the
very converse of America.

The project of making a sea-port of Paris, is founded on a principle
that is radically wrong. It is easier to build a house on the sea-side,
than to carry the sea into the interior. But the political economy of
France, like that of nearly all the continental nations, is based on a
false principle, that of forcing improvements. The intellects of the
mass should first be acted on, and when the public mind is sufficiently
improved to benefit by innovations, the public sentiment might be
trusted to decide the questions of locality and usefulness. The French
system looks to a concentration of everything in Paris. The political
organization of the country favours such a scheme, and in a project of
this sort, the interests of all the northern and western departments
would be sacrificed to the interests of Paris. As for the departments
east and south of Paris, they would in no degree be benefited by making
a port of Paris, as goods would still have to be transshipped to reach
them. A system of canals and railroads is much wanted in France, and
most of all, a system of general instruction, to prepare the minds of
the operatives to profit by such advantages. When I say that we are
behind our facts in America, I do not mean in a physical, but in a moral
sense. All that is visible and tangible is led by opinion; in all that
is purely moral, the facts precede the notions of the people.

I found, at a later day, many droll theories broached in France, more
especially in the Chamber of Deputies, on the subject of our own great
success in the useful enterprises. As is usual, in such cases, any
reason but the true one was given. At the period of our arrival in
Europe, the plan of connecting the great lakes with the Atlantic had
just