France -- Description and travel; France -- Social life and customs
[Footnote 6: The change in this respect during the last ten years is
_patent_. No European nation has, probably, just at this moment as much
real respect for America as the English, though it is still mixed with
great ignorance, and a very sincere dislike. Still, the enterprise,
activity, and growing power of the country are forcing themselves on the
attention of our kinsmen; and if the government understood its foreign
relations as well as it does its domestic, and made a proper exhibition
of maritime preparation and of maritime force, this people would hold
the balance in many of the grave questions that are now only in abeyance
in European politics. Hitherto we have been influenced by every
vacillation in English interests, and it is quite time to think of
turning the tables, and of placing, as far as practicable, American
interests above the vicissitudes of those of other people. The thing is
more easily done than is commonly imagined, but a party politician is
rarely a statesman, the subordinate management necessary to the one
being death to the comprehensive views that belong to the other. The
peculiar nature of the American institutions, and the peculiar
geographical situation of the country, moreover, render higher qualities
necessary, perhaps, to make a statesman here than elsewhere.]
In order to understand why I mention any other than the French, in the
capital of France, you will remember that there are many thousands of
foreigners established here, for longer or shorter periods, who, by means
of their money (a necessary that, relatively, is less abundant with the
French), materially affect society, contriving to penetrate it in all
directions, in some way or other.
LETTER VII.
English Jurisprudence.--English Justice.--Justice in
France.--Continental Jurisprudence.--Juries.--Legal Injustice.--The Bar
in France.--Precedence of the Law.
To JACOB SUTHERLAND, ESQ. NEW YORK.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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