GEORGIA

One of the most striking features of American institutions is that they form a perfectly logical chain. That is a merit to which very few peoples can aspire, and which, when one examines it close up, does not perhaps contribute as much to success as a crowd of profoundly superficial minds pretend.

Logic and uniformity in laws are two things about which a great fuss is made, much less because of their excellence than because of the weakness, mediocre intellects have for discovering their absence, and the ease with which they find they can invent theories in which these two merits are found. The fact is that there are pretty few peoples who can be understood from one end to the other. The special reason that has put the Americans in a state to be understood is that they have been able to build their social edifice from a clean start.

If it be true that each people has a special character independent of its political interest, just as each man has one independent of his social position, one might say that America gives the most perfect picture, for good and for ill, of the special character of the English race.

The American is the Englishman left to himself. The picture follows of what I mean by the English character. ...

All that is brilliant, generous, splendid, and magnificent in the British character, all that is aristocratic and not English.

Spirit coldly burning, serious, tenacious, selfish, cold, frozen imagination, having respect for money, industrious, proud and rationalist.

Nullification: nullificators or rather their secret motives. Their inability to break the Union: doubtful majority in South Carolina, not forming a party at all in the other States. South Carolina musters 700,000 whites. Tariff oppressive in some respects, but imaginary cause of real passions. Difference between the social condition of the South and North: causes [illegible word] and slaves.

Almost every 10 years the South loses representatives and the North gains them. Causes of jealousies and hatreds. But the South is progressing. Why it has no ships, no working class, slaves, bad reason for the manufacturers. Slaves, evil which one cannot remedy. Transition impossible, enormous expense to which no one would ever agree, excessive. Useless tax on importation. Little danger in slavery; if sufficiently educated to cause a serious revolt, educated enough to see that it could not succeed. Mulatto not very dangerous as nearer white than black. Free black dangerous from example. Sense of the evils caused by slavery and of the possibility of doing without it, which is growing throughout the South. Slavery continually ebbing back towards the South. Hope of seeing it disappear altogether with the centuries. Slave trade. 300,000 blacks exported from Africa, read in the registers of the Chamber of Commerce last year.

Mexico. Remains of a civilization perhaps more advanced than that of the Spaniards. Attempt as great republics made in South Africa and in Mexico, impossible. Necessity of federal system for great republics. That of Mexico copied from the United States. In progress, hope of success. One must not judge the Spaniards too severely. Coming out of the sixteenth century. Race much less mixed than people say. White skin, nobility. No blacks. Indians equal before the law. Race in fact ignorant and poor.

The most beautiful and delightful country in the world. Mistake of the European powers in expecting an outlet, there must first be needs. Dispossession of the clergy. The people even more against them than the government, but began the Revolution to seize their goods.

Indians in the United States who cannot adapt themselves to civilization will disappear. Can only civilize themselves with the help of half-castes.

Banks very useful for the United States where capital is lacking. Bank of New Orleans. Lax view of bankruptcy at least where there has not been fraud. Industrial brigandage.

Roads. Questions whether central government has the right. Sometimes by the States. More often by the counties. Badly kept up. Substantial loans in the localities. Turnpikes better system. Difficulty of getting a people used to them. Ineffectiveness of the law which allows help to counties.

President: agitation of newspapers and interests. Mass of the people indifferent. President without power, Congress which governs.

Penitentiary system: An attempt. Bad for the South. Very few white criminals. Crimes punished in the family. Impossibility for this reason of comparing the South and the North.

There is one class of man who scorns the black more than the white does , that is the mulatto. In that he behaves like the lackeys of great lords, who call the people scum.

There a thousand reasons to support republican liberty in the United States, but few are enough to explain the problem. Society there has been built from a clean slate. There is neither victor nor vanquished to be seen, neither working man nor noble, neither prejudices of birth or profession, but the whole of all America is in like case and a republic succeeds only in the United States.

The growth of the Union offers an immense field for human activity, continually diverts from disturbing the State, and offers an easy prey for industry and work. But in what part of the world could one find more fertile lands, more wonderful wilds, more superb rivers, wealth more inexhaustible and untouched than in South America, and yet South America cannot maintain a republic.

The division of the Union into little States reconciles internal prosperity with national strength, it multiplies political interests, and weakens the spirit of party by dividing it. But Mexico forms a federal republic, and Mexico is still very far from prospering.

There is one great reason which dominates all the others and which, when one has weighed everything, alone sways the balance. The American people taken in mass is not only the most enlightened in the world, but -- what I put much higher than that advantage -- is the one whose practical political education is the most advanced. It is that truth in which I firmly believe that inspires in me my one hope for the future happiness of Europe.

But this insoluble question always remains: the material and special advantages of the United States would certainly not be enough for them without their high civilization and experience. Would the latter be enough without the former?