AMERICA, the progeny of Europe, differs from the generator in many of the most salient features of her social and political organisms, differs in public and domestic life. To point out these dissimilarities, to ascertain their sources, is the aim of the following pages.

A rapid and succinct view of human affairs and events, as far back as the dimmest light of history extends, shows that the diversified aspects of civilization have been successively elaborated through different people and at different eras. It demonstrates that the civilizing impulses have been inherent, inborn in man, of almost all historical races and nations, and in various regions and climates. A higher principle has inspired, mightier laws have presided over the destinies of mankind, than the exclusively physical law of races. Humanity soars above races and nationalities. However active, and at times, however seemingly all-powerful may have been the agency of the law of races, it has never been paramount.

In the progressive development of man, in the march, the oscillations of civilization, the law of races, now scarcely perceptibly, then more distinctly but well-nigh uninterruptedly, has receded

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before the more elevated, nobler, and more truly humane principles and incentives of man's mental faculties, aspirations, and actions. In America these principles and laws have been put in action with a fulness unwonted and impossible in the old world, generating here a social state and evolving institutions almost unknown to the past.

The social and historical standpoint reached by America, solves several problems, which up to this time have been distinctly regarded as nearly insoluble, from epoch to epoch, from generation to generation.

Man as a unit, in the free untrammelled development of his individuality, has been more or less thoroughly absorbed in various aspects and ways for the benefit of the whole; and was so even in the freest ancient or European communities and states. In principle and in fact, individuality has been and is still limited, circumscribed, compressed. This is the case in the still surviving social structures, as well as in the ancient and modern theories of initiators, innovators, socialists, reformers, of whatever name and principle, with a few rare exceptions. For the first time in free America, man's individuality has been normally fixed and established, its rights asserted and realized. Fourier's theories of association, hitherto abstract and unrealizable, but wantonly and ignorantly confounded with what is commonly called socialism-these theories alone reveal a higher, more scientific, and therefore fuller scope and guarantee for the developement of individuality, for the play of its moral, mental, and

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physical powers and activities. But America fills the present, throws effulgent rays into the future.

Authority and liberty have always struggled for pre-eminence and leadership over the historical development, and the domestic hearth of nations. The past has witnessed countless centuries of the reign of authority, religious, political, social, and governmental; and comparatively, only lightning-like flashes of that of liberty. The former always endeavoring to recover the lost ground, to seize the supremacy over man's mind and his social economy. Moralists, men of genius as Dante, philosophers, statesmen, have continually attempted to conciliate the two antagonistic principles and forces, to modify or reduce their extremes, to bring them into peaceful juxtaposition, to find in their combination an equipoise for society. Some way or other, however, authority gets the lion's share in theory as in practice. Here the relations of authority and lib erty to each other and to man have received a new and elementary realization.

The principles from which the institutions of America have been evolved, form the source of her material prosperity. It does not enter within the range of this work to detail the giant steps of her progress, nor to present statistical comparisons. Statistics, even the most detailed and complete, never axiomatic and conclusive in themselves, serve only to elucidate and verify the soundness and potency of a dominant social and governmental system. And the universally admitted prosperity of America, wants not a statistical confirmation.

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Generalizations always embrace all existing or presumable exceptions. To specify these, would have been tedious or altogether impossible. For good or for bad, for large or smaller contingencies, exceptions are implied in the generalizations, which constitute the strictures of comparison between America and Europe, or relate to customs, manners, habits, and usages. A few scattered mountains or hills do not constitute the general physiognomy of a country, a few warm or cold months do not make a soft or a rigid climate, a few brave men or cowards do not make an army fight, win, or run. The same axiom applies to social and political conditions, to the appreciation of the most various and minute public or private relations, to the moral, social, and domestic character of a land and its inhabitants.