On the Austrian bank is a custom-house; but we were not detained longer than was necessary to examine the passport. Notwithstanding all that is said against this government, it certainly is not obnoxious to the charge of giving unnecessary trouble, except in cases that have probably excited its suspicion. Despotic governments, moreover, have a power to do polite and kind acts that free governments do not possess. In a government of equal rights, the administration of the laws must be equal, although a thousand cases occur in which this rule works injuriously to those who, it is known, might with safety be exempted from the operation of the rule; but in a government like this, instructions emanating from the power, that frames the laws may temper their administration. It is true, this faculty leads often to gross abuses; but, in an age like this, it oftener leads to an exemption from onerous, and, in the particular cases named, useless regulations. It is on this principle that men of known character and pursuits obtain passports that entitle them to proceed without the delays and trouble of the custom-house examinations. You are not to understand, however, that I had any such privilege; what I have told you of the _bonhomie_ of the authorities in reference to my own baggage, is to be taken as general, and in no manner as particular towards an individual. You well know that I am no advocate for any government but that which is founded on popular rights, protected from popular abuses; but I am thoroughly convinced that the every-day strictures on these points that are made by a large portion of our travellers, are conceived in ignorance and prejudice, and are just as worthless as are the common strictures of Europeans on our own institutions. The disposition in every government is to do justice in all ordinary cases, and we are no more peculiar in this wish than the Emperors of Austria and of Russia. The faults of these systems lie much deeper than the surface.