If we examine the acts passed by the local legislatures at each session, we shall find that at least three-fourths relate to the banks, which give credit to the working men; to the establishment of new religious societies and churches, which are the citadels where the guardians of industry keep watch; to routes and means of communication, roads, canals, railways, bridges, and steamboats, which facilitate the access of the producer to the markets; to primary instruction for the use of the mechanic and the labourer; to various commercial regulations; or to the incorporation of towns and villages, the work of these hardy pioneers. There is no mention of an army; the fine arts are not so much as named; literary institutions and the higher scientific studies are rarely honoured with notice. The tendency of the laws is above all to promote industry, material labour, the task of the moment. In the older States, they always profess the greatest respect for property, because the legislature feels that the greatest encouragement to industry is to respect its fruits. They are especially conservative of landed property, either from a lingering remembrance of the feudal laws of the mother country, or because they are anxious to preserve some element of stability in the midst of the general change; yet the laws generally pay less regard to the rights of property than is the case in Europe. Wo to whatever is inactive and unproductive, if it can be accused, on however slight a foundation, of resting upon monopoly and privilege! The rights of industry here have the precedence of all others, efface all others, and it is on this account, that, except in in the affair of public credit, in which the towns and States pique themselves on the most scrupulous exactness in fulfilling their engagements, in every dispute between the capitalists and the producer, the latter has almost always the better.
Every thing is here arranged to facilitate industry; the towns are built on the English plan; men of business, instead of being scattered over the town, occupy a particular quarter, which is devoted exclusively to them, in which there is not a building used as a dwelling-house, and nothing but offices and warehouses are to be seen. The brokers, bankers, and lawyers here have their cells, the merchants their counting-rooms; here the banks, insurance offices, and other companies, have their chambers, and other buildings are filled from cellar to garret with articles of merchandise. At any hour, one merchant has but a few steps to go after any other, after a broker or a lawyer. This, it will be seen, is not according to the Paris fashion, by which a great deal of precious time is lost by men of business in running after one another; in this respect, Paris is the worst arranged commercial city in the world. New York is, however inferior in this particular to London or Liverpool; it has nothing like the great docks and the Commercial House.