induced to recollect the situation of the first colonists in NewEngland, and to realize some of the hardships, which those intrepid people endured in settling this country. Among the difficulties which they had to encounter, bad roads were no contemptible one. Almost all the roads in which they travelled, passed through deep forests, and over rough hills and mountains, often over troublesome and dangerous streams, and not unfrequently through swamps, miry and hazardous, where wolves, bears, and catamounts, haunted and alarmed their passage. The forests they could not cut down, the rocks they could not remove, the swamps they could not causey, and over the streams they could not erect bridges. Men, women, and children, ventured daily through this combination of evils, penetrated the recesses of the wilderness, elimbed the hills, wound their way among the rocks, struggled through the mire, and swam on horseback through deep and rapid rivers, by which they were sometimes carried away. To all these evils was added, one more distressing than all. In the silence and

solitude of the forest, the Indian often lurked in ambush near their path, and from behind a neighbouring tree, took the fatal aim, while his victim, perhaps, was perfectly unconscious of danger." [vol. ii. pp. 280, 281.]

At Davis's Farm, a station in this thinly populated district, he met with another novel illustration of those hardships, some of which are still entailed on the descendants of these bold, laborious, and much-enduring men, in a tract, recently ravaged by one of those destructive fires, which kindled originally by the hunters to drive the prey from their coverts, often do incalculable and irreparable mischief to the neighbourhood, which they lay desolate and waste for many miles around.

"When," says Dr. Dwight, "we had reached Davis' farm, we were presented with an object entirely new, and not a little interesting. A fire, which had not long before been kindled in its skirts, had spread over an extensive region of mountains on the north-east, destroyed in its progress all the vegetation, and consumed most of the soil, consisting chiefly of vegetable mould. The whole tract, from the base to the summit, was alternately white and dappled, while the melancholy remains of half-burnt trees, which hung here and there on the sides of the immense steeps, finished the picture of barrenness and death." [vol. ii. p. 282.]

The state of RHODE ISLAND differs from most other states in New-England, of which it is the most insignificant and the least, in that the sabbath is there neither noticed by the law, nor sanctioned by any general religious observance; hence, when Dr. Dwight wrote, many years had not elapsed

since the market, the streets, and wharfs, of Providence, its capital, were little less frequented, as marts and scenes of business, on the Sunday, than on any other day. The general feeling of the inhabitants had, however, so strongly manifested itself against this profanation of the day of rest, that but few carts were then seen entering the town, (which, contrary to the usual order of things, and to experience also, was more moral than the surrounding country,) and their numbers had been yearly decreasing. The RhodeIslanders appear to be great sticklers for liberty, and even carry their attachment to it to the height of absurdity, having for many years gone without a most useful turnpikeroad, through the very heart of their state, because turnpikes, and the establishment of religious worship, had their origin in Great Britain, the government of which was a monarchy, and the inhabitants were, as they considered, slaves; as were also those of the neighbouring states of Masachusetts and Connecticut, from being compelled by law to support ministers, and pay turnpikes. These, argued they, if they chose to be slaves, undoubtedly had a right to their choice, but free-born Rhode-Islanders ought never submit to be priestridden, nor to pay for the privilege of riding on the highway. They accordingly jogged on in mud and mire, and liberty, until 1805, when the impassability of their roads compelled them to bow their free-born necks to the horrid slavery of travelling on good, in preference to bad ones. With a spirit so opposed to all improvement, and so incapable of enjoying real, whilst it prompts to unfounded clamour after fancied liberty, we are not at all surprised to find, that the general features of this state were mean houses, ill repaired miserable barns by the road-side, misnomered churches, chiefly of the Baptist denomination, and a cultivation of a piece with every thing else, rarely, if ever, exhibiting to the eye proofs either of skill or of success.

"Every thing," says Dr. Dwight, in passing the boundary of his own state, to enter that of Rhode Island, "indicates a want of energy, a destitution of all views and efforts towards improvement, a sluggish acquiescence in inconveniences and imperfections, which a more vigorous disposition would easily remove. [vol. iii. p. 28.]

Less attention is paid to education in this state than in any other of New-England, in consequence of which, its inhabitants are more vicious, and its churches worse supplied with ministers, than its neighbours. Horse-racing is here a favourite pursuit. "This gross amusement," says

our author, and we quote his words for the benefit of such of our countrymen as are enamoured of the sport, "turns polished men into clowns, and clowns into brutes." The sabbath was at this time, with very many of the people, but a day of visiting and sport, and, with others, regularly devoted to their customary labour. So little indeed were sacred things regarded there, that some of the missionary societies of the neighbouring states treated, and not, it would seem, without abundant reason, Rhode Island as missionary ground. Our readers will not, however, be surprised at the wretchedness of its moral and religious condition, when we inform them, that a considerable number of the inhabitants of its trading towns were engaged in that bane to every thing that is virtuous or good, the slave trade. Yet we are assured, that they will rejoice with us, at a very considerable amelioration in the condition of this state, in the twenty years which have transpired since the account of it was given, increasing wealth having, as we learn from a note of the American publisher of this work, imparted more liberal views to its inhabitants, particularly of the large towns, with respect to the importance of education to the community. Revivals of religion have also taken: place within these few years, in several parts of the state.

Turn we now from NEW-ENGLAND to NEW-YORK. On the constitution of this state, we need not to make many remarks, after the full account already given of that of Connecticut, as a sample of the government of the separate states of the Union, which, differing as they do from each other in minute particulars, have the same general republican and elective features. New-York has a council of revision, composed of the governor, chancellor, and judges of the supreme court, to which all bills must be sent before they are passed into a law by the legislature, and if returned within ten days to the senate, or house of assembly, according as the bill may have originated in the one or the other of those bodies, with their objections in writing, to its passing into a law, these objections must be considered, and recorded, in the nature of a protest, upon the minutes of the house; but if two-thirds of the members still adhere to the bill, it passes. Of this, the nearest approximation to our third estate, that a republican government can perhaps admit, we are inclined very cordially to approve; though we join with Dr. Dwight, in reprobating the practice of keeping the judges dependent upon the executive for the tenure of their offices; a fault common, we believe, to most of the

United States; and two other provisions of the constitution of this very important one. These are, the council of appointment, formed of a senator from each of the four districts of the state, annually elected by the house of assembly, in whom, with the chief of the executive for the time being, though he has, as president, but a casting vote, the sole patronage is vested of the great majority of offices throughout the state; all, indeed, but such as are elective in the people, or by the legislature. The consequence of this regulation is, the influencing of elections to the house of assembly and the senate, of persons likely to serve the electors ;and we have the respectable authority of Dr. Dwight for asserting, that to secure this important patronage to men likely to promote the self-interested views of its members, the house of assembly is itself rendered a scene of cabal and intrigue, often issuing in measures openly subversive of "law, principle, and decency." The other error is little less fatal to the stability of the constitution, with which the due and impartial administration of justice is intimately and inseparably connected; and in a large commercial state like New-York, that object can never be accomplished by a supreme court of errors, constituted of the senate, the chancellor, and the judges of the superior court, in which the deliberate decisions of the ablest and wisest judicial tribunals are frequently reversed by a majority of farming, mercantile, speculating, and officehunting senators, some of them without sufficient honesty," and all of them wanting in legal knowledge, for the judgment of the last resort, which it is their duty to pronounce. These defects must be remedied, or they will remedy themselves in a way not very propitious to the safety of the government, many of whose provisions exhibit great equity and wisdom, Such, in our judgment at least, is the ineligibility of ministers of the gospel to any civil employment in the state, and the enjoyment of perfectly equal rights and privileges by members of every religious sect, without discrimination or preference. To these every Englishman will be disposed, with us, to add, the preservation of the great palladium of our liberties, the trial by jury, inviolate; and the recognition, as part of the laws of the state, of such parts of our own common and statute law as were in force there in April,

1775.

Pass we now to the ecclesiastical arrangements of the state, which, as they respect the maintenance of ministers of the gospel, differ very widely from those of NewVOL. VIII.No. 1.

England, and have a much nearer conformity to the mode of supporting them, in use amongst the Dissenters of our own country, though, if men of talent, piety, and probity, they here experience but in a very slight degree; evils, the most distant apprehension of which instinctively excites our reverend tourist's wrath. Thus, for example, in describing the town of Paris, he says,

"There are three Presbyterian congregations in this township, and two clergymen. These gentlemen, though held in high estimation, and deservedly loved by their parishioners, consider themselves as holding their connexion with their congregations by a very precarious tenure. The laws of this state concerning the support of clergymen are so loosely, and so unwisely formed, as to leave them in a great measure dependent on the fluctuating feelings of parishioners, rendered much more fluctuating by the laws themselves. A voluntary contribution, except in a large town, is as uncertain as the wind; and a chameleon only can expect to derive a permanent support from this source. By several very respectable gentlemen, with whom I conversed largely on this subject, I was informed, that the opposition to supporting clergymen by law had lately very much increased among the New-England people of this region. My informants believed, that not more than one-tenth of the principal inhabitants, and not more than a twentieth of the people at large, are in favour of this system. This is a lamentable degeneracy." [vol. iii. p. 177–178.]

Nor is the reverend Doctor better satisfied with the legislative provision, authorizing religious societies of every denomination to appoint trustees of their property, which may be held to the amount of 3000 dollars, (nearly £640) per annum, although such trustees are made corporate bodies with a common seal, and empowered to regulate pew-rents, perquisites, and all matters connected with the temporal concerns of their respective churches. How infinitely less are the legal rights with which the Congregationalists and other dissenters in England are obliged to be content! for their places of worship cannot be endowed with lands even to the value of a shilling by the year, and are moreover liable to vexatious assessments for the relief of the poor, and even for the building and repairs of the parochial places of worship belonging to the Establishment.

The Sabbath is, however, directed by law to be strictly observed; and a proof that it is so in practice, more to the satisfaction of the tourist than this mode of proceeding for the maintenance of the clergy, was afforded on his journeying with his companions from Saratoga to Cambridge,

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