If a man would study human nature in and for itself, he must take a much Printed for private circulation only. OXFORD: Printed by T. Combe, Printer to the University. M.DCCC.XLIII. PREFACE. THE contents of the following pages are really what their title imports-the hasty Memoranda, set down at my earliest convenience, in relation to such matters as seemed worthy of notice during each day of my sojourn in the New World; and as it has been my wish, that they should continue.to convey the actual impression left upon my mind at the time by the incidents that presented themselves, I have been careful, in revising the original manuscript, to make only such additions to it, as seemed necessary, in order to develope more fully the meaning of those passages which appeared obscure, or to supply omissions as to matters of detail which struck me upon the subsequent perusal of my Notes. Under such circumstances, I have naturally felt reluctant to offer to the world under my name a production of a character so immature, and as there seems in reality but little difference between the wide distribution of an unpublished work, and the act of its publication, I have purposely confined the impression of this little volume to the number of one hundred copies. It has therefore appeared to me, that in a Work of such limited circulation, no greater degree of delicacy was called for in mentioning the names of the individuals with whom I had been thrown into contact, than ought in propriety to have been observed respecting them, in the general intercourse of society, or in one's correspondence with private friends. As however I should have acted in this respect differently, had my Notes been designed for publication, it is my hope, that if they should chance to share the fate, which has befallen so many Works, both bad and good, written by Englishmen on the United States, and be seized upon hereafter, without my sanction, by some American Publisher, the latter will at least have the good taste to omit, in his Edition, the names of individuals, moving only in a private circle, which occur in the course of my Narrative. If it be moreover inquired, why I should have been at the pains and expense of printing for distribution amongst friends, a production confessedly of too slender pretensions to be deemed worthy of being offered to the public-it may be replied, that I cherished, in the first place, a natural wish to shew, PREFACE. that I had reaped some fruits during so long an absence from the scene of my duties at home-that I was likewise actuated by a desire to afford a kind of answer to the embarrassing question so often put to me since my return, "What do you think of the United States?" and that, independently of these motives, I have been also encouraged to this step by the favourable reception which, if I may judge from a newspaper sent to me by a friend in Philadelphia, has been experienced by the Preface to my little "Sketch of the Geology of North America," embodying, as it does, in a few brief sentences, those impressions with respect to the people, of which the present Journal may be regarded as supplying the groundwork and the justification. It has, I own, been my ambition to shew, that the citizens of the United States are capable of receiving without displeasure a view of their manners given by an Englishman, whose position in the Old World is one certainly not calculated to impart to him an undue bias in favour of popular rule; who, devoted to that Constitution in Church and State, which was fixed by the glorious Revolution of 1688, and averse to any further changes in either, excepting such as may be called for by the different aspect which society has since assumed, or are manifestly involved in the principles then established, is as little disposed to overlook the evil workings of a democracy in another country, as he would be to welcome its |