There is a strong body of police here, and some of their powers are autocratically autocratic:  thus, a person once committed as a vagrant is liable to be re-imprisoned by them if met in the street unemployed.  Now, as it is impossible to expect that people in business will take the trouble to hunt up vagrants, what can be conceived more cruelly arbitrary than preventing them from hunting up places for themselves?  Yet such is the law in this democratic city.[V] A gentleman told me of a vagrant once coming to him and asking for employment, and, on his declining to employ him, begging to be allowed to lie concealed in his store during the day, lest the police should re-imprison him before he could get on board one of the steamers to take him up the river to try his fortunes elsewhere.  At the same time, a person in good circumstances getting into difficulties can generally manage to buy his way out.

The authorities, on the return of Christmas, having come to the conclusion that the letting off of magazines of crackers in the streets by the juvenile population was a practice attended with much inconvenience and danger to those who were riding and driving, gave orders that it should be discontinued.  The order was complied with in some places, but in others the youngsters set it at defiance.  It will hardly be credited that, in a nation boasting of its intelligence and proud of its education, the press should take part with the youngsters, and censure the magistrates for their sensible orders.  Yet such was the case at New Orleans.  The press abused the authorities for interfering with the innocent amusements of the children, and expressed their satisfaction at the latter having asserted their independence and successfully defied the law.  The same want of intelligence was exhibited by the press in censuring the authorities for discontinuing the processions on the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans—­“a ceremony calculated to excite the courage and patriotism of the people.”  They seem to lose sight of the fact, that it is a reflection on the courage of their countrymen to suppose that they require such processions to animate their patriotism, and that the continuance of such public demonstrations parading the streets betokens rather pride of past deeds than confidence in their power to re-enact them.  Although such demonstrations may be readily excused, or even reasonably encouraged, in an infant community struggling for liberty, they are childish and undignified in a powerful nation.  What would be more ridiculous than Scotland having grand processions on the anniversary of Bannockburn, or England on that of Waterloo?  Moreover, in a political point of view, it should not be lost sight of, that if such demonstrations have any effect at all on the community, it must be that of reviving hostile feelings towards those to whom they are united most closely by the ties of blood, sense, and—­though last, not least—­cents.  I merely mention these trivial things to show the punyizing effects which the democratic element has on the press.