FOOTNOTES:
[8] I know not why I should suppress a name that I honour.
[9] Isaiah xvi. 3.
[10] It is possible that this term may not yet be familiar to some of my English readers. It means summary punishment. The modes now in use among those who take the law into their own hands in the United States, are tarring and feathering, scourging with a cow-hide, banishing, and hanging. The term owes its derivation to a farmer of the name of Lynch, living on the Mississippi, who, in the absence of court and lawyers, constituted himself a judge, and ordered summary punishment to be inflicted on an offender. He little foresaw the national disgrace which would arise from the extension of the practice to which he gave his name.
[11] I preserve the original name, which is that of the first French missionary who visited these parts. The place is now commonly called Juliet; and a settlement near has actually been named Romeo: so that I fear there is little hope of a restoration of the honourable primitive name.
CHAPTER I. AGRICULTURE.
"Plus un peuple nombreux se rapproche, moins le gouvernement peut usurper sur le Souverain. L'avantage d'un gouvernement tyrannique est donc en ceci, d'agir à grandes distances. A l'aide des points d'appui qu'il se donne, sa force augmente au loin, comme celle des léviers. Celle du peuple, au contraire, n'agit que concentrée: elle s'évapore et se perd en s'étendant, comme l'effet de la poudre éparse à terre, et qui ne prend feu que grain à grain. Les pays les moins peuplés sont ainsi les plus propres à la tyrannie. Les bêtes féroces ne règnent que dans les déserts."
Rousseau.
The pride and delight of Americans is in their quantity of land. I do not remember meeting with one to whom it had occurred that they had too much. Among the many complaints of the minority, this was never one. I saw a gentleman strike his fist on the table in an agony at the country being so "confoundedly prosperous:" I heard lamentations over the spirit of speculation; the migration of young men to the back country; the fluctuating state of society from the incessant movement westwards; the immigration of labourers from Europe; and the ignorance of the sparse population. All these grievances I heard perpetually complained of; but in the same breath I was told in triumph of the rapid sales of land; of the glorious additions which had been made by the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and of the probable gain of Texas. Land was spoken of as the unfailing resource against over manufacture; the great wealth of the nation; the grand security of every man in it.