1st.--How I like America in general, and Lexington in particular?
2nd.--Whether I have been disgusted with the American character and habits, as many have been? or whether I dare invite others to follow the course I have taken? but above all, how I, whose notions of liberty run so high, can endure to reside in a state where personal slavery exists.
{ 6} Your first enquiry I am yet incompetent to answer to the extent you make it; for, although I have travelled from New York to Pittsburgh,--down the Ohio to this place,--I have only had a sample of this extensive country; and as you, my dear Sir, are in the habit of purchasing your goods by sample, and to my knowledge are often disappointed in the bulk, so you may not, perhaps, have a fair sample of entire America by the information I send you.
As to the great cities, they have no charms for me. You know, great cities in England, as places of residence, were the objects of my aversion; and if there is any thing in those of New York and Philadelphia which I dislike, it is because they approximate so much to similar cities of England, without those rare shows which please both infants and children of larger growth, in London.
Here are few public buildings worthy of notice. No kings going to open Parliament with gilded coaches and cream-coloured horses, with a train of dragoons at their heels.--No Lord Mayor's show.--No Towers filled with royal tigers and lions.--No old castles which beautify the rural scenes of the country, whose melancholy history informs the curious traveller, that their foundation was bedded in { 7} tyranny, and their superstructure the retainers of weeping prisoners, often of rank, as well as oppressed plebeians. No cathedrals or old churches to ornament the cities as well as the counties of England,--monuments of superstition when erected, and of injustice and oppression even to this day, having for their support tithe-proctors, and surveyors, continually obstructing the progress of agriculture, and exciting contentions and law suits to an extent for which all the preaching of the clergy of England cannot present an equivalent, or balance the evil produced by a worldly and avaricious priesthood.
America has none of these costly ornaments or beautiful monuments of oppression. I thank God she has not; and hope she may be exempt from them, although strange to tell, I have found amongst both clergy and laity some few who wish for these degradations, and am even informed there are those who sigh after a religious establishment, and revenues besides those collected by the voluntary donations which flow from affectionate and religious hearers.