Dear ——­,

In the morning the Director-General of Public Instruction called to obtain some information on the subject of the common school system in America.  I was a little surprised at this application, the Finance controversy having quite thrown me into the shade at the Tuileries, and this court being just now so dependent on that of France.  You will smile at this opinion, but even facts are subject to such circumstances, and great men submit to very little influences occasionally.[20] The old ground of explaining the power of the States had to be gone over, and the affair was disposed of by agreeing that written querries should be sent to Paris.  I had a similar application from a French functionary not long since.  A digest of the facts, as they are connected with the State of New York, was accordingly prepared, and handed to the Minister of Public Instruction.  This gentleman rose in debate with the document in his hand, and got on well enough until he came to the number of children in the schools (near half a million), which appeared to him to be so much out of proportion to whole numbers (a little exceeding two millions) that, without hesitation, he reduced them on his own responsibility one half!  As a proof that no more was meant than to keep within reasonable bounds, he immediately added, “or all there are.”  Now this is a fair specimen of the manner in which America is judged, her system explained, and her facts curtailed.  In Europe everything must be reduced to a European standard, to be even received.  Had we been Calmucks or Kurds, any marvel might go down; but being deemed merely deteriorated Europeans, tanned to ebony, our facts are kept closely within the current notions.  Such a disproportion between adults and minors being unknown in this hemisphere, it was at once set down as an American exaggeration, to pretend to have them in the other.  What were our official returns to a European prejudice!

[Footnote 20:  A few months before this, a friend, not a Frenchman, called on the writer at Paris.  He began to make inquiries on the subject of American Parliamentary Law, that were entirely out of the track of his usual conversations, and finally submitted a series of written questions to be answered.  When the subject was disposed of, the writer asked his friend the object of these unusual investigations, and was told that they were for the use of a leading Deputy, who was thoroughly juste milieu.  Surprised at the name, the writer expressed his wonder that the application had not been made to a certain agent of the American government, whose name had already figured before the public, as authority for statistical and political facts against him.  The answer was, in substance, that those facts were intended for effect!]