Views of Society and Manners in America: In a Series of Letters from that Country to a Friend in England, During the Years 1818, 1819, and 1820

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E. Bliss and E. White, 1821 - Scholars - 387 pages
This little volume of letters provides a very early look at the United States through the "eyes of a foreigner." The topics of the letters range freely and broadly across a large spectrum of American life. Subjects include "Appearance and manners of the young women," "Abolition of the salve-trade," "Penal code," Manners of the working classes," "American farmer" and "Indian village." It seems there was little the author did not witness and write about. This is an informative and delightful read for anyone who enjoys correspondence, history or people of strong opinion.
 

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Page 317 - Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry.
Page 76 - My son is of age, and has a will of his own ; if I should write to him in the terms you request, it would have no effect : he would only conclude, that confinement and persuasion had softened me.
Page 300 - But the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions, in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint. The public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions, on a full hearing of all parties ; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness.
Page 299 - During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science, are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness, and to sap its safety ; they might.
Page 317 - We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil.
Page 239 - Their governments are popular in a high degree ; some are merely * popular ; in all, the popular representative is the most weighty ; and this share of the people in their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from 2 whatever tends to deprive them of their chief importance.
Page 225 - And whose duty it shall be to enquire whether the constitution has been preserved inviolate in every part; and whether the legislative and executive branches of government have performed their duty as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves, or exercised other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the constitution...
Page 300 - Nor was it uninteresting to the world, that an experiment should be fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth— whether a government, conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution, with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and defamation.
Page ii - Bowen, of the said district, have deposited in this office the title of a book, th« right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words following, to wit: " The Tales of Peter Parley about Africa.

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