Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/140

 Sunday, 15th.—Killing in a duel was last month decided in a court at Halifax, to be no murder, provided the matter was fairly conducted. Thus it is that custom obtains a power superior to the law, which deems it murder. The law then, thus insulted, had better be expunged from the statute book of British America. Four grand duels have been fought this week near this metropolis by young men of the United States' navy and army, who are always practising, by shooting at targets and other marks. The President, for such crimes as these, has the power to break and disgrace any officer of either army or navy; but, such is the power of custom, that he cannot and dare not do it.

16th.—Picture of the condition of the American people, agricultural and otherwise. Low ease; a little avoidable want, but no dread of any want; little or no industry; little or no real capital, nor any effort to create any; no struggling, no luxury, and, perhaps, nothing like satisfaction or happiness; no real relish of life; living like store pigs in a wood, or fattening pigs in a stye. All their knowledge is confined to a newspaper, which they {126} all love, and consists in knowing their natural, and some political rights, which rights in themselves they respect individually, but often violate towards others, being cold, selfish, gloomy, inert, and with but little or no feeling. The government is too weak and too like-minded to support and make the laws respected, or to teach the people justly to appreciate their excellent, but affronted constitution.—"There are amongst them," says Mr. Perry, "no materials or seeds of appreciation for it. It was by mere accident that they ever had a constitution; it came not from wise choice or preference. In England only, exists such a preference and real love of liberty. She must continue to be the Great Nation in spite of all her enemies, foreign or domes