Writers on the United States have too much said the _thing which is not_, and too little the thing which is; consequently I entered the country with impressions which have almost all been totally changed by actual observation. We have been told that suits at law are here quickly heard and as quickly determined: walking the other day in Philadelphia with a gentleman, he pointed to some buildings we were passing, and surprised me by observing that he had for _many years_ been disputing at law the possession of them. My landlady too is engaged in a lawsuit of many years standing, and of which she knows not the probable termination. Whether these evils are some for which they may thank our administration is {173} not here worth enquiring, as a wise nation should have remedied them when it formed for itself a Constitution; but in this and many other instances they still suffer under many of the evils of which we complain. In a statement of grievances drawn up by a Grand Jury at a late county Assize in Pensilvania, it is complained that improper persons are put into the commission of the peace, and of the improper conduct of such in their magistracy: it also contains a strong remonstrance against the practice in prisons of putting the tried and untried culprits together: the bringing before the Grand Jury causes of a petty nature, and which therefore should have been tried in inferior courts, is also objected to. The militia laws here bear hard upon the Foreigner, towards whom they are a vexatious tax. A residence in the country of, I believe, only six months renders him liable to be called out, and enrolled, or to pay a fine for absence; yet were a war to take place with the government to which an enrolled stranger is subject, he is sent up the country, instead of accepting of his military services; as it happened to the English who were resident here during the last war, to the great detriment of their affairs. The foreigner of course generally submits to pay the fine rather than be {174} subject to the demand of a military duty so unjust towards him; but that the practice of procuring substitutes, should be gaining ground among the citizens themselves, proves pretty clearly a falling off from the republican spirit. I have somewhere met with the remark that the Athenians were so wholly devoted to public life that they neglected the private virtues: the moderns on the contrary, and the remark may be applicable equally elsewhere as here, may be said to neglect their public interests in a constant attention to their private affairs; when this is the case, parties may hold intemperate language, journalists may snarl at each other, but all will not preserve the liberties of a people who have ceased to be true to themselves, when, from whatever cause, they shall hold back from their public duties, more especially those which are military; they then soon sink into effeminacy, lose that manliness of character which such