It is only necessary to look back within our own time, to note the progress of opinion, and to appreciate the value of those notions that some still cherish, as containing all that is sound and true in human policy. Thirty years ago, the opinion that it was unsafe to teach the inferior classes to read, "_as it only enabled then to read bad books_," was a common and favourite sentiment of the upper classes in England. To-day, it is a part of the established system of Austria to instruct her people! I confess that I now feel mortified and grieved when I meet with an American gentleman who professes anything but liberal opinions, as respects the rights of his fellow-creatures. Although never illiberal, I trust, I do not pretend that my own notions have not undergone changes, since, by being removed from the pressure of the society in which I was born, my position, perhaps, enables me to look around, less influenced by personal considerations than is usual; but one of the strongest feelings created by an absence of so many years from he me, is the conviction that no American can justly lay claim to be, what might be and ought to be the most exalted of human beings, the milder graces of the Christian character excepted, an American gentleman, without this liberality entering thoroughly into the whole composition of his mind. By liberal sentiments, however, I do not mean any of the fraudulent cant that is used, in order to delude the credulous; but the generous, manly determination to let all enjoy equal political rights, and to bring those to whom authority is necessarily confided, as far as practicable, under the control of the community they serve. Opinions like these have little in common with the miserable devices of demagogues, who teach the doctrine that the people are infallible; or that the aggregation of fallible parts, acting, too, with diminished responsibilities, form an infallible whole; which is a doctrine almost as absurd as that which teaches us to believe "the people are their own worst enemies;" a doctrine, which, if true, ought to induce those who profess it, to forbid any man from managing his own affairs, but compel him to confide them to the management of others; since the elementary principle is the same in communities and individuals, and, as regards interests, neither would go wrong unless deceived.