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Untitled Article
the United States . We do not mean that there are any profound disquisitions in his book ; he picks no quarrel with Moses ; he attempts no history of pre-Adamite ages ; we really do not know whether he is a Neptunist or a Vulcanist ; he may be either Wernerian or Plutonian ; but he attends to facts , and records phenomena . Whenever he found himself in a favourable situation , he seems always to have had his eyes in his head , and his hammer in his pocket ; we should rather say , in his hand . His pages are not overloaded with specimens , but what he does mention is to the purpose ; he jots down what he saw , in a brief and business-like way .
Another peculiarity , and a source of more general interest in these travels , is , that Mr . Finch had personal and familiar intercourse with several of the ex-presidents , and has preserved various opinions expressed to him in conversation , by Adams , Madison , and Jefferson . Fragments of the conversation of the two last mentioned , fill several pages , which will be read with curiosity and pleasure . These men , and whoever else may follow them in their high office , ought to be studied . They are one of the results of the great experiment . The old theory was , that chaos would come again , whenever the chief magistracy was made elective . It was even piously surmised , that Providence had especial care over the fecundity of royalty , in order to save a nation from the calamity of being called upon to make a choice . And yet the Americans have gone on making kings , and
powerful ones , too , each for a shorter period than we choose a member of Parliament , without having yet made a single blunder of any moment . Of different characters , intellectually and morally , they have yet all been men fitted for their work . Not one ot ^ them unworthy of the glory of being so chosen ; not one of them but would have been a royal phoenix in the longest line of hereditary succession . Only think how Jackson has turned out ! of whom , in this country , we expected nothing less than that immediately
on his election he would have seized the bank , to bribe the militia , and have crowned himself emperor with a grenadier ' cap . The fact was , that we knew nothing about Jackson . A circumstance which we began to suspect , as soon as we found that the quakers of Philadelphia were voting the old soldier into the chair . Nature will wonderfully mend her manners , before she produces n similar succession of able men . It would never have been thus , had they come in the kingly way , and had the history been , of Jackson , which was the son of Quincey Adams , which was ( he son of Monroe , which was the son of Madison , which was the son of Jefferson , which was the son of John Adams , which was the son of Washington , the father of his country . It also deserves mentioning , for the sake of many in whose eyes this circumstance will confer value on Mr . Finch ' s book , that he is the grandson of Dr . Priestley ; and that one object of
Untitled Article
Finch ' s Travels in America . 847
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 847, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/43/
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