I have at different times called your attention to the disadvantages here in respect of opportunities of education, and the influx of immoral strangers. In these respects the back-woods are mere colonies in comparison with the better state of society in the eastern country. Had I lived in Connecticut or Massachusetts, instead of Indiana, I might have met with fewer irregularities to relate. My acquaintance with many persons from the older communities of the Union, causes me to entertain the highest opinion of the attainments there, and convinces me that it would be nearly as unfair to collect the ingredients for forming the character of the British people in their foreign possessions, as it is to infer the state of American society from the habits and manners of people in new settlements. Adopting this view of the matter, it may be asked, in which of the British colonies is a thirty-sixth part of the soil set apart for the support of schools? which of them make their own laws, and appoint their own governors? or which has produced such an example of availing themselves of the lights of the age, as has the new State of Alabama, in rejecting usury laws. {266} There is no course of conduct that would belie my feelings more than attempting to misrepresent the character of the American people. From the time of my first landing in the country till the present, I have enjoyed intercourse with people of eminence in society, and have uniformly met with the most polite receptions, and, on many occasions, with such marks of kindness that I can never have sufficient opportunities to requite. Names would be altogether uninteresting to you, but there are many here that I cannot recal to recollection without associating them with those of the personages whom I most admire, and of the friends whom I most esteem.