It would be morally impossible for Europe to retrograde to the coarseness and open oppression that existed eighty years since, without the occurrence of some violent revolution: nor is it any longer easy for any particular community so far to isolate itself from the general sisterhood of states, as to retain many of the flagrant abuses that outrage the spirit of the age. There is still something to gain in these particulars, beyond a doubt; but the progress is steadily onward, and twenty years more of peace and of continued intercourse will create a standard of moral civilization below which no people can fall and keep its place in the scale of nations. This is the right sort of public opinion; not one which invades the sacred precincts of private life, subjecting the sentiments and actions of individuals to the supervision of a neighbourhood, and giving birth to a wrong as great as any it removes,--but a controlling judgment that settles great principles and throws its shield before the wronged and the feeble--a public opinion that benefits all without doing injustice to any. In this respect, Europe enjoys an immense advantage, from which we are almost entirely excluded by position. I think the effect very apparent, when one comes to analyze the modes of thinking of the two hemispheres; and in nothing is this effect more obvious than in the circumstance to which I have had occasion so often to allude in these letters, of the manner in which opinion precedes facts here, and facts precede opinion with us. This, after all, when one has made a proper allowance for the influence of time on physical things, is the great distinctive feature between the people of most of Europe and the people of America.