It is with painful sensations that I recollect of the illiberal and ungenerous reflections, uttered by the minions of a faction in your country, against supposed barbarism in this. Their favourite topics, as to officers in the Militia becoming tavern-keepers, and tavern-keepers acting as Justices of the Peace; the derided punishment of whipping, and the equality of a sovereign people, might at least be mixed with some allowances for local circumstances; or, if they please, in making a contrast with the boasted condition of Great Britain, it is obviously uncandid to draw the subjects of their animadversions from the fag end of the United States, in the very act of being peopled by a heterogeneous mixture, uniting in it a considerable proportion of the most uncultivated of Americans and Europeans; not excluding fugitives, who have fled before their creditors, and the public prosecutors of England. Waving this consideration altogether, a very striking comparison may be made out in detail. The officers of the United States’ Militia are not professional soldiers, but citizens. They are not disposable tools, to be employed in foreign aggressions, or removed in time of peace from Maine to Georgia, and _vice versa_, to intimidate into submission fellow citizens who are not their personal acquaintances or immediate {175} kindred; but remain at home, where they attend trainings, voluntarily and gratuitously. They are at liberty to follow tavern-keeping, or any other kind of honest industry, and do not burden their country with a half pay list. Justices of the Peace, however unqualified they may be, and whatever disgrace the conduct of individuals brings upon themselves, are not appointed by the influence of a faction. They are not the “thorough paced” ministerialists who “have been recruiting officers for the war, instead of Justices of the Peace;”[105] nor are they the hirelings who promote the revenue from which their own pensions are drawn, by levying ruinous fines _upon an unrepresented people_, for the slightest infractions on excise laws, or game laws. The punishment of whipping has been already mentioned, with the causes of its being adopted in the back-woods. Perhaps it might be difficult to assign reasons equally satisfactory for resorting to it in the populous city of Dublin. The practice is comparatively humane in America, as it is applied in cases that would be punished with death in Great Britain. The States of Kentucky and Ohio have erected penetentiaries, not for the purpose of punishment alone, but also for the reformation of offenders. The horrible prison scenes witnessed by Howard, Neild, Bennet, Buxton, Fry, and other philanthropists in Britain, have no counterpart in America.[106] We know of no examples here of imprisonment for a debt of a shilling,[107] or for a supposed fraud of one penny.[108] Nor have I ever heard of the verdict of an American {176} coroner’s inquest, announcing in their