The writer does not expect much favor for the political opinions that occasionally appear in these letters. He has the misfortune to belong to neither of the two great parties that divide the country, and which, though so bitterly hostile and distrustful of each other, will admit of no neutrality. It is a menacing symptom that there is a disposition to seek for a base motive, whenever a citizen may not choose to plunge into the extremes that characterize the movements of political factions. This besetting vice is accompanied by another feeling, that is so singularly opposed to that which every body is ready to affirm is the governing principle of the institutions, that it may do no harm slightly to advert to it. Any one who may choose to set up a semi-official organ of public opinion, called a newspaper, however illiterate, base, flagrantly corrupt, and absolutely destitute of the confidence and respect of every man in the community, may daily pour out upon the public his falsehoods, his contradictions, his ignorance, and his corruption, treating the national interests as familiarly as "household terms," and all because he is acting in an admitted vocation; the public servant, commissioned to execute the public will, may even turn upon his masters, and tell them not only in what light they are to view him and his conduct, but in what light they are also to view the conduct of his associates in trust; in short, tell them how to make up their judgments on himself and others; and all because he is a public servant, and the public is his master: but the private citizen, who merely forms a part of that public, is denounced for his presumption, should he dare to speak of matters of general concernment, except under such high sanction, or as the organ of party. It may be well to say at once, that this peculiar feeling has not been permitted to influence the tone of these letters, which have been written, in all respects, as if the republic did not contain one of those privileged persons, honored as "patriots" and "godlikes," but as if both classes were as actually unknown to the country as they are certainly unknown to the spirit and letter of its institutions. The spirit of these observations seems to be carried out (we cannot say with what degree of justice,) in many other portions of the book. On page 71, vol. i, we observe what follows.