"more honoured in the breach than the observance." In no city on the
Eastern side of the Alleghany Mountains did I meet a single drunken
American in the street. The few whom I did detect in that plight were
manifestly recent importations from Great Britain and Ireland!


5. I also greatly admire their _secular enterprise_. They afford a
fine illustration of the idea conveyed in their own indigenous phrase,
"Go a-head."




LETTER XXXVII.

Slavery--Responsibility of the North--District of Columbia--Preponderance
of the Slave Power--Extermination of the Indians--President Taylor and
his Blood-hounds--Conclusion.


But there is a class of things among them which men of well-regulated
minds and habits cannot but detest. These, as they have come under my
notice, I have pointed out. The chief of all is _slavery_. This stared
me in the face the moment I entered the States; and it presses itself
on my notice now that I have retired from the American shore. It is the
beginning and the ending of all that is vile and vicious in this
confederation of Republics. In England, you have been often told by
American visiters that the Northern States of the Union are not at all
identified with slavery, and are, in fact, no more responsible for its
existence in the South than we are for the existence of a like system