When I went to Lowell I travelled with an American gentleman, who will, I have no doubt, corroborate my statement, and I must say that, however pure Lowell may have been at the time when the encomiums were passed upon it, I have every reason to believe, from American authority as well as my own observation, that a great alteration has taken place, and that the manufactories have retrograded with the whole mass of American society. In the first place, I never heard a more accomplished swearer, east of the Alleghanies, than one young lady who addressed me and my American friend, and as it was the _only instance_ of swearing on the part of a female that I ever met with in the United States, it was the more remarkable. I shall only observe, that two days at Lowell convinced me that "human nature was the same every where," and thus I dismiss the subject.
Mr Carey compels me to make a remark which I would gladly have avoided, but as he brings forward his comparative statements of the number of illegitimate children born in the two countries as a proof of the superior morality of America, I must point out to him what I suspect he is not aware of. Public opinion acts as _law_ in America; appearances are there substituted for the reality, and provided appearances are kept up, whether it be in religion or morality, it is sufficient; but should an exposure take place, there is no mercy for the offender. As those who have really the least virtue in themselves are always the loudest to cry out at any lapse which may be discovered in others, so does society in America pour out its anathemas in the inverse ratio of its real purity. Now, although the authority I speak from is undoubted, at the same time I wish to say as little as possible. That there are fewer illegitimate children _born_ in the United States is very true. But why so? because public opinion there acts as the bastardy clause in the new poor law bill has done in this country; and if Mr Carey will only inquire in his own city, he will find that I should be justified if I said twice as much, as I have been compelled in defence of my own country to say, upon so unpleasant a subject.
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