Newspapers are a strong evidence of the political ideas of a people;--not individual newspapers; for no two, perhaps, fully agree in principles and sentiment, and it is to be feared that none are positively honest. Not by individual newspapers must the traveller form his judgment, but by the freedom of discussion which he may find to be permitted, or the restraints upon discussion imposed. The idea of liberty must be low and feeble among a people who permit the government to maintain a severe censorship; and it must be powerful and effectual in a society which can make all its complaints through a newspaper,--be the reports of the newspapers upon the state of social affairs as dismal as they may. Whatever revilings of a tyrannical president, or of a servile congress, a traveller may meet with in any number of American journals, he may fairly conclude that both the one and the other must be nearly harmless if they are discussed in a newspaper. The very existence of the newspapers he sees testifies to the prevalence of a habit of reading, and consequently of education--to the wide diffusion of political power--and to the probable safety and permanence of a government which is founded on so broad a basis, and can afford to indulge so large a licence. Whatever he may be told of the patriotism of a sovereign, let him give it to the winds if he finds a space in a newspaper made blank by the pen of a censor. The tameness of the Austrian journals tells as plain a tale as if no censor had ever suppressed a syllable;--as much so as the small size of a New Orleans paper compared with one of New York, or as the fiercest bluster of a Cincinnati Daily or Weekly, on the eve of the election of a president. * * * * *