What is most worthy of admiration in the history of America is not merely the spirit of liberty which has ever animated her people, but their perfect acquaintance with the science of government, which has ever saved that spirit from preying on itself. The sages who laid the foundation of her greatness possessed at once the pride of freemen and _the knowledge of English freemen_; in building the edifice, they knew how to lay the foundation; in preserving untouched the rights of each individual, they knew how to prevent his attacking those of his neighbor: they brought with them the experience of the best governed nation then existing; and, having felt in their own persons the errors inherent in that constitution, which had enlightened, but only partly protected them, they knew what to shun as well as what to imitate in the new models which they here cast, leisurely and sagely, in a new and remote world. Thus possessed from the beginning of free institutions, or else continually occupied in procuring or defending them, the Colonies were well prepared to assume the character of independent States. There was less of an experiment in this than their enemies supposed.[3] Nothing, indeed, can explain the obstinacy of the English ministry at the commencement of the Revolutionary struggle but the supposition that they were wholly ignorant of the history of the people to whom they were opposed. May I be forgiven the observation, that the inquiries of ... have led me into the belief that some candid and well-informed English gentlemen of the present day have almost as little acquaintance with it as had Lord North. Respecting the Revolution itself, the interest of its military history is such as to fix the attention of the most thoughtless readers; but in this, foreigners sometimes appear to imagine, was expended the whole virtue of America. That a country which could put forth so much energy, magnanimity, and wisdom, as appeared in that struggle, should suddenly lose a claim to all these qualities, would be no less surprising than humiliating. If we glance at the civil history of these republics since the era of their independence, do we find no traces of the same character? Were we to consider only the national institutions, the mild and impartial laws, the full establishment of the rights of conscience, the multiplication of schools and colleges to an extent unknown in any other country of the world, all the improvements in every branch of internal policy which have placed this people in their present state of peace and unrivalled prosperity, we must allow them to be not only wise to their interests, but alive to the pleas of humanity; but there are not wanting instances of a yet more liberal policy.