This truth cannot be too strongly brought forward, for undoubtedly change is the mania of the day; and as, in a free country, all constitutional changes must have a liberal tendency, it behoves our legislators to study deeply and patiently the effect produced upon any country whose constitution is more democratic than our own, so as to enable them, while steadily advancing with the age, to know when the well-being of their country requires them, as true patriots, to resist those measures which threaten injury to the social fabric committed to their guidance.  No field can afford them more profitable subjects for reflection than the United States.  Independent of the fact that her institutions are more democratic than our own, she possesses natural advantages that enable her to carry them out, such as we do not; and, therefore, the British statesman may always study her career with profit when any great liberal movement is being agitated in his own country.

Lest any one should be disposed to imagine that the statements I have made, or the deductions I have drawn, are merely the prejudices of a traveller brought up under a constitutional monarchy, I will add a passage showing the conclusions at which one of the ablest men in America has arrived.

Bishop Hopkins, in an address delivered before the House of Convocation of Trinity College, Hartford, after eulogizing the wisdom and patriotism, of the founders of his country, as being “the wise master builders of the noblest republic in the world,” asks what is its present state after seventy years’ brief experience?  Behold the reply:—­“First, then, we hear on every side the charge of political corruption.  Bribery is practised in all our elections.  The spoils of office are expected as a matter of course by the victorious party.  The President of the United States dares not be impartial; for, if he were, he would lose the confidence of his friends without gaining the confidence of his enemies.  The oldest statesmen, and the most prominent, cannot follow the dictates of their own judgment and conscience without being reproached as though they were laying a trap for the presidential chair.  The very laws of Congress are set down as the results of personal venality or ambition.  The House of Representatives, or even the Senate Chamber, are disgraced every year by fierce passion and violent denunciation.  The barbarous and unchristian duel is anticipated as quite inevitable unless it be averted by explanations which may satisfy worldly honour, in utter contempt of all religious principle.  And no member of either House can go to the performance of his public duties with any security that he may not be insulted by coarse invective before the day is closed.  Yet our rulers are never weary of lauding the character of Washington, as if they were quite convinced that the time had passed by when they might be expected to verify the language of praise by the act of imitation.  When we look into the other classes of the community, the