Book Description

Excerpt from The Western World, Vol. 1 of 2: Or Travels in the United States in 1846-47; Exhibiting Them in Their Latest Development, Social, Political, and Industrial; Including a Chapter on California It is now some time since a work has appeared professing to give to the English public, a general account of the social, political and material condition of the United States. At the satne time, so rapid is their development, and so great are the changes which, in every national point of view, they are constantly exhibiting, that the progress made by them each year would almost furnish sufficient material for a new work respecting them. That which I now venture to offer to the reader is not, as too many such works have been, the result of a hurried visit to the American republic. Most of those who have written upon America, have done so after a few months' sojourn in the country; but there is no country in the world less likely to be properly understood on so brief an acquaintance with it. Where populations are dense, and confined within limited areas, national life may be soon studied and appreciated. But when a country is almost continental in its dimensions, and its inhabitants are yet comparatively few, and in most cases separated widely from each other, it takes a much longer time, if not to understand national polity, at least to gain a thorough insight into national habits, pursuits, and peculiarities; in short, into every thing which enters into the social life of a people. By travelling a man may thoroughly acquaint himself with the physical aspect of a country; but he must do more than travel over its surface to understand it aright, in that which constitutes its most interesting, its moral, aspect. A people, before they can be fairly portrayed, must be studied, not simply looked at. It is impossible thoroughly to study the Americans during a six months' tour in America. A man who professes to have traversed the Union in that time, must have been almost constantly on the high-way, the railway, or the steamer. He has thus been brought in contact with American life but in one of its phases, and for reasons mentioned in the body of the work, is incompetent to form a correct judgment of society in America, in its proper acceptation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.