I think, under ordinary circumstances, and as against a logician who did not appear supported by the confidence and favour of the government of the United States of America, I might have got along with this quotation, by showing, that 800,000 is neither the half of, nor two-thirds less than 1,350,161; that Pennsylvania, so far from trebling, or even doubling her population in twelve years, had not doubled it in twenty; that Pennsylvania, at the commencement of the twelve years named, had actually a population more than twenty-five per cent. greater than that which Mr. Harris gives as the average of a period, during which he affirms that this population has, at least, doubled; and by also showing that money borrowed and invested in public works, which are expected to return an ample revenue, cannot be presented as an annual charge against the citizen until he is called on to pay it.

Having said so much about the part that Mr. Harris has had in this controversy, I owe it to truth to add, that his course has, at least, the merit of frankness, and that he is just so much the more to be commended than that portion of our ex-agents and actual agents who have taken the same side of the question, covertly.

I have dwelt on this subject at some length, because I think it is connected, not only with the truth, but with the character, of America.  I have already told you the startling manner in which I was addressed by one of the first men in England, on the subject of the tone of our foreign agents; and since that time, occasions have multiplied, to learn the mortifying extent to which this unfavourable opinion of their sincerity has spread.  If the United States has neither sufficient force nor sufficient dignity to maintain its interests abroad, without making these sacrifices of opinion and principle, we are in a worse condition than I had believed; but you will require no logic from me, to understand the effect that must be, and is produced, by this contradiction between the language that is studiously used—­used to nauseous affectation—­at home, and so much of the language that is used by too many of the agents abroad.

I very well know that the government of the Union guarantees neither the civil nor religious liberty of the citizen, except as against its own action; that any state may create an establishment, or a close hereditary aristocracy, to-morrow, if it please, the general provision that its polity must be that of a republic, meaning no more than that there should not be an hereditary monarchy; and that is quite within the limits of constitutional possibilities, that the base of the national representation should be either purely aristocratical, purely democratical, or a mixture of both.  But in leaving this option to the states, the constitution has, in no manner, impaired the force of facts.  The states have made their election, and, apart from the anomaly of a slave population, the fundamental feature of the general government is