I arrived here about a fortnight since, in order to see the town, and to witness a ceremony that took place yesterday. Before attempting a description of the latter, I shall give a brief answer to your question concerning the movements of your countryman.

During my recent excursions to the south, I frequently met La Fayette, who has now been in nearly all, if not in every one, of the twenty-four states of this Union. So far from the warmth and cordiality of his reception having in the least abated, he is just as much the object of affectionate and sincere attention to-day as he was the hour he landed. We were in New York together lately, when there was a constant succession of entertainments in his honour, and as earnest a desire manifested to press about his person as in the interviews I have so often related.

Among the different public exhibitions got up on this occasion, there was one which is worthy of being particularly mentioned, by its singularity. There is a great deal of wood used in the construction of most American houses. Until within the last twenty years a great many in New York (more especially in the less pretending quarters of the town) were built of this material altogether. There are, consequently, an extraordinary number of fires in that city. Fires are infinitely more frequent in all parts of America than in Europe, from this very cause.

Washington, as it contains all the public offices, is the best place to ascertain the general statistical facts connected with the condition of this country. I have hitherto purposely avoided touching on the marine of the United States, until I should have an opportunity of getting the information necessary to do it justice. On no occasion, however, have I neglected to examine the ships and the navy yards as I passed through the sea ports, though I have reserved all my remarks until I had something material to communicate. It is my intention to dispose of the subject altogether in this letter.

Until the period of the war which separated the two countries, the American mariners performed most of their military service in the navy of Great Britain. The history of the colonies, however, is not altogether destitute of nautical incidents, that were rather remarkable for skill and enterprise. The privateers of this hemisphere were always conspicuous in the colonial contests; and they were then, as they have always been since, of a character for order and chivalry that ought not to be too confidently expected from a class of adventurers who professedly take up arms for an object so little justifiable, and perhaps so ignoble, as gain. But men of a stamp altogether superior to the privateersmen of Europe were induced, by the peculiar situation of their country, to embark in these doubtful military enterprises in America.

After having ascended the Hudson as far as Albany, in company with La Fayette, and taken our leave of the veteran, our faces were turned west. At that place we saw a few remaining evidences of the Dutch, in the names and in the construction of a good many houses, but the city (containing about 16,000 inhabitants) is chiefly modern. Our route, for sixty or seventy miles, was along one of the great thoroughfares of the interior, when we inclined to the south, and having traversed a considerable tract of country to the southward of the beaten track of travellers, we entered the state of Pennsylvania, west of the Susquehannah, and proceeded to Pittsburgh. Thence we descended the Alleghany river to the Ohio, made a wide circuit in the state of the same name, and returned, by the way of Lake Erie, to Buffalo (in New York), which is a thriving freshwater lake-port. We spent, of course, a few days examining the mighty cataract of Niagara, and in visiting the shores of Lake Ontario. On our return east, we followed the line of the great canal as far as Utica, where we made a diversion towards the north, for a couple of hundred miles, in order to permit Cadwallader to visit an estate of which he is proprietor.

The day after we had quitted Cooperstown, we saw a collection of people assembled in front of an inn, which was the principal edifice in a hamlet of perhaps a dozen houses. Cadwallader told me this was the first day of the state election, and that this spot was one of the polls, a name which answers in some degree to the English term, “hustings.” Fortunately, the stage changed horses at the inn, and I had an opportunity of examining the incipient step in that process which literally dictates all the national policy of this great republic.

Although each state controls its own forms, not only in the elections, but in every thing else, a description of the usages of one poll will be sufficiently near the truth to give a correct general idea of them all. I now speak literally only of the state of New York, though, generally, of the whole Union. The elections occur once a year.

They last three days. In the large towns, they are stationary, there being no inconvenience in such an arrangement where the population is dense, and the distances short. But in the country they are held on each successive day at a different place, in order to accommodate the voters. The state is divided into counties which cover, on an average, 900 square miles each. Some are however, larger, and some smaller.

I feel that a description of this ancient city of the United Provinces is due to you. In dwelling on its admirable position, its growing prosperity, and its probable grandeur, I wish to excite neither your hopes, nor your regrets. I have seen enough of this country already, to know, that in losing the New Netherlands in their infancy, you only escaped the increased misfortune of having them wrested from your power by their own efforts at a more advanced period, when the struggle might have cost you, like that which England has borne, and Spain still suffers–an incalculable expenditure of men and money. You are thrice happy that your dominion in this quarter of America did not endure long enough to leave, in its train, any mortifying and exasperating recollections. The Dutch are still remembered here with a feeling strongly allied to affinity, by thousands of their descendants, who if, among their more restless and bustling compatriots of the east, they are not distinguished for the great enterprise which is peculiar to that energetic population, have ever maintained the highest character for thrift, undeniable courage, and inflexible probity. These are qualities which never fail to create respect, and which, by some unfortunate construction of the human mind, as rarely excite envy as emulation.

The name of the town, itself, is far from being happy. The place stands on a long narrow island, called Manhattan, a native appellation which should have been perpetuated through that of the city.

THE CLAIMS OF WEST AFRICA, &c.

The colony of Sierra Leone, interesting and important as it is, when regarded as a station inhabited by Africans from more than thirty different tribes, has not yet, it must be allowed, exhibited all those encouraging marks of advancement, either in civil or religious knowledge, which have been anxiously desired, and which indeed are still hoped for by many who look to this colony as a point from which, through the favour of Divine Goodness, may one day be extended the blessings of civilization and Christian instruction to many nations on the wide and almost unexplored continent of Africa.

This station having been formed and maintained on a principle of benevolent concern for the good of Africa, and as a place of reception for the unhappy victims of cruelty and oppression, when rescued from the slave-ships, presents a very peculiar and a very powerful claim to our interest and regard; and the enquiry ought to be fairly met as to what really is its present state, and what the impediments to its more rapid advancement.

If from feelings of individual compassion a Christian philanthropist had rescued from the hold of a slave-ship one helpless child, and placed it under care for shelter and instruction, would he not feel so much interest for his rescued charge, as fully to inform himself from time to time how the child was cared for and instructed?—whether its physical wants as to food, shelter, and medical care were suitably provided for, and its mind receiving the advantages of appropriate instruction and judicious Christian care?

—You know not what you ask! I have already sent you an imperfect account (I must confess) of the jurisprudence of the United States, and now you ask me for what you are pleased to call an outline of its civil and criminal law. Do you know there are four-and-twenty states, one district, and four territories in this country, and that each of them has its own laws, varying in some particulars of form and of policy from those of all the rest? My answer shall, therefore, be very short, nor should it be given at all, did I not know that various absurdities are circulated in Europe, in this very matter, by men who travel here, and who rarely possess a knowledge of, or give themselves the trouble to inquire into, the true condition of society, whether considered in reference to its conventional tone, or to its positive institutions.

The criminal law of the United States is more sanguinary than that of any particular state. Piracy, treason, murder, robberies of the mail, in which the life of the person in charge is endangered, and a few other offences, are punished with death. Crimes committed on the high seas, in certain reservations, such as forts, light-houses, &c, are also punished by the laws of the confederation. Smaller offences are punished by fines, or imprisonment, or by both. Some of the states inflict death for a variety of offences, especially the slave-holding communities; others again are very tender of human life.