Such a statement may startle some of my New England readers, perhaps, who have never had opportunity to become acquainted with facts as they are. But can it be successfully controverted? Is it not true, that, with a few exceptions--and those more apparent than real--nations have flourished, and continued to flourish, in proportion as they have retained the more natural dietetic habits to which I have alluded; and that they have been unhappy or short-lived, as nations, in proportion as exciting food and drink have been used? Is it not true, that those individuals, families, tribes, and nations, which have used what I call excitements, liquid or solid, have been subjected by them to the same effects which follow the use of spirits--first, invigoration, and subsequently decline, and ultimately a loss of strength? Why is it that the more wealthy, all over Europe, who get flesh more or less, deteriorate in their families so rapidly? Why is it that every thing is, in this respect, so stationary among the middle classes and the poor? In short--for the case appears to me a plain one--it is the simple habits of some, whether we speak of nations, families, or individuals, which have preserved the world from going to utter decay. In ancient times, the Egyptians, the most enlightened and one of the most enduring of nations, were what might properly be called a vegetable-eating nation; so were the ancient Persians, in the days of their greatest glory; so the Essenes, among the Jews; so the Romans, as I have said elsewhere, and the Greeks. If either Moses or Herodotus is to be credited, men lived, in ancient times, about a thousand years. Indeed, empire seems to have departed from among the ancient nations precisely when simplicity departed. So it is with nations still. A flesh-eating nation may retain the supremacy of the world a short time, as several European and American nations have done; just as the laborer, whose brain and nerves are stimulated by ardent spirits, may for a time retain--through the medium of an artificial strength--the ascendency among his fellow-laborers; but the triumph of both the nation and the individual must be short, and the debility which follows proportionable. And if the United States, as a nation, seem to form an exception to the truth of this remark, it is only because the stage of debility has not yet arrived. Let us be patient, however, for it is not far off.