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Untitled Article
strengthened by im observation i > f foreign Hnds . His address is tmh ? affe ctionate ax * d Christian , resembling what we have * ead in the discourses of some of the primitive bishops of the church , who spoke from the chair of instruction as fathers amongst
children . In his warmest eulogies of his native country , he is however anxious not to give offence to Englishmen , of whom he speaks in terms sufficiently laudatory to satisfy those amongst us that do not arrogate to ourselves all
that is good and great , desirable jand honourable in the earth . We cannot follow kirn in his survey of all the " blessings , physical , literary , civil and religious , " which he attributes to
the United States beyocd all other lands ; hut ive shall take notice of a few passages , that the reader may see ia what light a zealous episcopalian regards free political institutions , and to what extent a pious and learned
man , who agrees m the principles of our sational church , ol ^ ects to its secular character and conceives that it stands in « eed © f reform to make it what it professes to be , a pqne church of Christ .
Dr . Hobart allows that with regard 1 o the riches , the jbeauty aikl the grandeur of nature , it would be absurd for Americans "to urge a superiority over some other lands , or altogether an equality with them ; " but ,
lie says , the comparison was less adverse to the claims of his country than he had supposed . Having stated various points of comparison that on this head meet the view of the traveller , he concludes in the following animated passage :
< c But he can see one feature of every landscape here , one charm of American scq uery , which more than repays for the absence of these monuments of the
power , and the grandeur , and the ^ alth , and the taste of the rich and * he mighty of other lands—and which "o other land affords . The sloping sides a m * summits of our hills , and the extensive plains that stretch before our l ^ w , are studded with the substantial tt
« " « eat and commodious dwellings of / wwe »— independent freemen , owners the spjl—men who can proudly walk V- i- their laud , and exultingly say—It is lu . ; 1 hold it tributary to no one ; it liv ?! " Na lan ( i scape here is alloyed y -He painful consideration , that the a > vhich towers in grandeur was
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firmed py # ie hard JflKW f > t dfgjacled vassal ; pr t ^ at | ha mgj ^ eiit ; sfcructare ^ Jch rises jq tj ^ e ipxe&ilHg $ M en ^ b ^^ lisied doin ajp , presents a p ^ lnfa l
contrast tp the meaner habit ^ tldnS , rind sometinaes the miserable hovels that mark a dependent , always a dependent ^—ateis , sometimes a wretched peasantry / —Pp . 6 , 7 .
The preacher ventures to poiat out some advantages ivhich the institutions for Education in the United States possess over those of England . He seems to have overlooked that there are other Universities in Great Britain besides those of Oxford and Cambridge .
It is , however , in her eivil and re-Ugious institutions , tbat the Bishop asserts for America ' * the pre-eminence ; though he candidly acknowledges that for most that is excellent in these the daughter is indebted to the mother .
He describes the principles of civil freedom derived by his country from ours > aad points oat the supposed superiority of his own in the applicatiw of those prictcipjes : ** "Th . ese are the principle of representation y * the division of the legislative
executive ^ and judiciary departments ; the check on the exercise of the power of legislation by its distribution among three branches ; the independence of the judiciary on all influence , except that of the constitution and the laws ; aud its
accountability , and that of the executive , to the people , in the persons of their representatives ; and thus what constitutes the characteristic blessing of a free people , a government of laws securing to all the enjoyment of Kfe , of liberty , and of property .
" But even , in this , next to our own , the freest of nations , it is impossible not to form a melancholy contrast between the power , and the splendour , and the wealth of those to whom the structure of society , and the aristocratic nature of
the government , assign peculiar privileges of rank and of political consequence , with the dependent and often abject condition of the lower orders ; and not to draw the conclusion , that the one is the unavoidable result of the
other . " Advantages confessedly there may be in privileged orders , as constituting
* «* The principle , I say ; fov in England it is only partially carried into practice /*
Untitled Article
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1826, page 543, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2552/page/35/
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