PATRICK TRACY JACKSON.

THE rapid development of the natural resources of the United States, within the last half century; the material, intellectual, and, in some points of view, the moral progress witnessed throughout our land, have attracted the attention of the philosophers of Europe, and given rise to many ingenious, and some profound disquisitions. The nature of our institutions has been differently viewed, according to the partiality of the observers. With some, what was admitted to be good, has been attributed to a happy chance; while a great preponderance of evil, inseparable from republican institutions, has been supposed to be lurking in the background, ready, at some not very distant day, to neutralize or overpower all these apparent advantages. With others, the inherent energy of free institutions has been the assumed explanation of all that was admirable in our progress, and a future of still increasing prosperity fondly predicted.

To those of us who are accustomed to regard man less as a mere machine, the plaything of external circumstances; who view him as a being of strong powers and high responsibilities, the solution will be different. We shall recur to the history of New England, and trace, in the stern energy of the virtues of its founders, the cause, at once, of our institutions and of our success.

Not all the constitutions of the Abbé Sieyes could inspire the French people with a love of genuine liberty. The degraded descendants of the heroic Spaniards will crouch under military despotism, or bow to a foreign in