Though it be true that the principles of government are to be deduced more from experience of human nature than experience of human governments, the institutions in which those principles are to be embodied must be infinitely modified by preceding circumstances. Bentham must have forgotten this when he offered, at sixty-four, to codify for several of the United States, and also for Russia. He proposed to introduce a new set of terms. These could not, from his want of local knowledge, have been very specific; and if general, what was society to do till the lawyers had done arguing?

How could even a Solomon legislate, three thousand miles off, for a republic like that of Connecticut, which set out with taking its morals and politics by handfuls, out of Numbers and Deuteronomy? or for Virginia, rank with feudal prejudices and methods? or for Delaware, with its monarchical martyr spirit? or for Louisiana, compounded of Spain, France, and America? Though at the time of the framing of the constitution, the States bore a strong general resemblance in their forms of government, endless minor differences existed, mainly arising from the different tenure on which they had been held under the English crown.

The idea of travelling in America was first suggested to me by a philanthropist's saying to me, “Whatever else may be true about the Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and mercy in the treatment of the least happy classes of society which we may be glad to learn from them. I wish you would go and see what they are.” I did so; and the results of my investigation have not been reserved for this short chapter, but are spread over the whole of my book. The fundamental democratic principles on which American society is organised, are those “principles of justice and mercy” by which the guilty, the ignorant, the needy, and the infirm, are saved and blessed.

Some men travel for their amusement,—others to acquire knowledge, and not a few in search of health; I was unfortunately of the latter class. That most severe of all human ailments, gout, had made such inroads upon a constitution, otherwise sound, and had so-enfeebled a frame, originally strong, that before I was fifty years of age I could with difficulty walk a hundred yards, and was seldom free from pain and suffering for a week together. The usual remedies had failed to produce any permanent relief, and as a last chance it was recommended that I should try the effects of a warm climate.

When the opinion of friends so entirely coincides with one's own wishes, as this did with mine, it is pretty certain their advice will be followed. I therefore was not long in soliciting to be placed on the full pay of my commission as a Deputy Inspector General of Army Hospitals, being well aware that wherever an officer of my rank might be required, it would be in a more southern latitude than that of England. My request, after a reasonable time, was granted. I expected to have been sent to the Mediterranean, where the vacancy had occurred that admitted of my being employed, but in this was disappointed; an officer was removed from Barbados to Corfu, and I was ordered to the West Indies. I cannot say that I felt it as any very great disappointment.

The pride and delight of Americans is in their quantity of land. I do not remember meeting with one to whom it had occurred that they had too much. Among the many complaints of the minority, this was never one. I saw a gentleman strike his fist on the table in an agony at the country being so “confoundedly prosperous:” I heard lamentations over the spirit of speculation; the migration of young men to the back country; the fluctuating state of society from the incessant movement westwards; the immigration of labourers from Europe; and the ignorance of the sparse population. All these grievances I heard perpetually complained of; but in the same breath I was told in triumph of the rapid sales of land; of the glorious additions which had been made by the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and of the probable gain of Texas.

The whole of the land that has hitherto been cultivated in the province of British Guiana, and many millions of acres in addition, have been gained from the sea since the boundaries of the Atlantic Ocean were originally fixed. The accumulation of earthy particles and vegetable matter that form this land, is nearly 150 feet deep, close to the shore. At highwater, and especially during spring-tides, the sea still rises several feet above the ordinary level of the land, and would certainly overflow it to an extent of many miles, if it were not prevented by artificial embankments; we may therefore form some idea of the extent of the deposit; but it would be folly to offer any conjecture as to the ages that may have elapsed since the commencement of its formation.

The three great rivers which have given their names to the several colonies of the province, derive their chief sources from that chain of mountains which rises under the equator, near the mouth of the Amazon, in longitude 50°, and extends to the west, with an inclination northerly, to about 66° west of Greenwich, and which may be called the Lesser Cordilleras, as the Andes are the Greater. But as it is now certain that the River Essequibo has a communication with the Oronoko, and that the Oronoko communicates by the Rio Negro with the Amazon, it is no great stretch of the imagination to suppose, that part of the soil that forms the islands in the Essequibo, and which is considered the most fertile in the colony, may have been brought from a far greater distance.

Previous to 1832, Berbice continued to be a separate and distinct colony from the previously united colonies of Demerara and Essequibo. It had its own chief magistrate (a Lieutenant-Governor), its Civil and Criminal Courts, its own peculiar laws and customs, and its own current money.

His present Majesty,—who understands our colonial affairs better than most men,—has a perfect and personal knowledge of the whole of our West India possessions, and has given much consideration to the measures upon which, in a great degree, the prosperity of these possessions must ever depend,—was pleased, soon after his accession, to direct the consolidation of the whole provinces, and to order that in all acts and deeds they should in future be known and recognised as British Guiana. Major-General Sir Benjamin D'Urban, a most able and excellent man, and long known as a brave and gallant soldier, was the first Governor-General of these united provinces.

I am anxious to put on record this fact, because the future history of these colonies will become a matter of far greater importance than their past has been; and the men who have contributed to lay the foundation of their boundless prosperity upon so sure a basis, will have their memories honoured and revered, as are the Washingtons and Franklins of a more northern division of the same continent.

The Dutch laws and customs, as they existed in 1803, were maintained in all their integrity till three or four years ago.

There is but one method by which most nations can express the general mind: by their literature. Popular books are the ideas of the people put into language by an individual. To a self-governing people there are two methods open: legislation is the expression of the popular mind, as well as literature.

If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order; so much less violence to the first principles of morals is exhibited there than in any other social arrangements that the world has yet seen.

My book must come to an end; but I offer no conclusion of my subject. I do not pretend to have formed any theory about American society or prospects to which a finishing hand can be put in the last page. American society itself constitutes but the first pages of a great book of events, into whose progress we can see but a little way; and that but dimly. It is too soon yet to theorise; much too soon to speak of conclusions even as to the present entire state of this great nation.

Meantime, some prominent facts appear to stand out from their history and condition, which it may be useful to recognise, while refusing to pronounce upon their positive or comparative virtue and happiness.

By a happy coincidence of outward plenty with liberal institutions, there is in America a smaller amount of crime, poverty, and mutual injury of every kind, than has ever been known in any society. This is not only a present blessing, but the best preparation for continued fidelity to true democratic principles.

However the Americans may fall short, in practice, of the professed principles of their association, they have realised many things for which the rest of the civilised world is still struggling; and which some portions are only beginning to intend. They are, to all intents and purposes, self-governed.

Mr. Madison remarked to me, that the United States had been “useful in proving things before held impossible.” Of such proofs, he adduced several. Others, which he did not mention, have since occurred to me; and, among them, the pursuit of the à priori method in forming a constitution:–the à priori method, as it is styled by its enemies, though its advocates, with more reason, call it the inductive method. Till the formation of the government of the United States, it had been generally supposed, and it is so still by the majority of the old world, that a sound theory of government can be constructed only out of the experience of man in governments; the experience mankind has had of despotisms, oligarchies, and the mixtures of these with small portions of democracy.

The most common diseases in Barbados are chest-complaints, and dysentery, with inflammation of the eyes, from the reflected glare of the sun, and the quantity of finely-pulverized chalk always floating in the atmosphere. There is a horrid and loathsome species of the Elephantiasis, vulgarly known as the Barbados leg: it was formerly far more severe and common amongst the negro and coloured population than it is now; still we cannot walk half a mile without seeing some cases of it,—some poor wretch trailing a limb larger than the body, and covered with excrescences and ulcers. Dr. Stewart, a physician, resident in Bridgetown, while I was in Barbados, found quicklime, mixed with warm sea-water, a valuable remedy; but I suspect that if the disorganization of the tissues has gone to any extent, the disease is incurable.

Dr. Maycock assured me that tetanus was epidemic in the island; but, except the bilious remittent fever, the scourge of all our colonies, I am not aware that there is any malignant disease peculiar to Barbados.

The island may be said to have been healthy for some years past; but when the epidemic does make its appearance, it is very fatal, and very soon assumes a contagious or virulent character. The last visitation was a very severe one, and many of the inhabitants, as well as of the military, were carried off.

Nature has done so much for the United States in this article of their economy, and has indicated so clearly what remained for human hands to do, that it is very comprehensible to the traveller why this new country so far transcends others of the same age in markets and means of transport. The ports of the United States are, singularly enough, scattered round the whole of their boundaries. Besides those on the seaboard, there are many in the interior; on the northern lakes, and on thousands of miles of deep rivers. No nook in the country is at a despairing distance from a market; and where the usual incentives to enterprise exist, the means of transport are sure to be provided, in the proportion in which they are wanted.

Even in the south, where, the element of wages being lost, and the will of the labourer being lost with them, there are no adequate means of executing even the best-conceived enterprises, more has been done than could have been expected under the circumstances. The mail roads are still extremely bad. I found, in travelling through the Carolinas and Georgia, that the drivers consider themselves entitled to get on by any means they can devise: that nobody helps and nobody hinders them.