The project of making a sea-port of Paris, is founded on a principle that is radically wrong. It is easier to build a house on the sea-side, than to carry the sea into the interior. But the political economy of France, like that of nearly all the continental nations, is based on a false principle, that of forcing improvements. The intellects of the mass should first be acted on, and when the public mind is sufficiently improved to benefit by innovations, the public sentiment might be trusted to decide the questions of locality and usefulness. The French system looks to a concentration of everything in Paris. The political organization of the country favours such a scheme, and in a project of this sort, the interests of all the northern and western departments would be sacrificed to the interests of Paris. As for the departments east and south of Paris, they would in no degree be benefited by making a port of Paris, as goods would still have to be transshipped to reach them. A system of canals and railroads is much wanted in France, and most of all, a system of general instruction, to prepare the minds of the operatives to profit by such advantages. When I say that we are behind our facts in America, I do not mean in a physical, but in a moral sense. All that is visible and tangible is led by opinion; in all that is purely moral, the facts precede the notions of the people.
I found, at a later day, many droll theories broached in France, more especially in the Chamber of Deputies, on the subject of our own great success in the useful enterprises. As is usual, in such cases, any reason but the true one was given. At the period of our arrival in Europe, the plan of connecting the great lakes with the Atlantic had just been completed, and the vast results were beginning to attract attention in Europe. At first, it was thought, as a matter of course, that engineers from the old world had been employed. This was disproved, and it was shown that they who laid out the work, however skilful they may have since become by practice, were at first little more than common American surveyors. Then the trifling cost was a stumbling-block, for labour was known to be far better paid in America than in Europe; and lastly, the results created astonishment. Several deputies affirmed that the cause of the great success was owing to the fact, that in America we trusted such things to private competition, whereas, in France, the government meddled with everything. But it was the state governments, (which indeed alone possess the necessary means and authority,) that had caused most of the American canals to be constructed. These political economists knew too little of other systems to apply a clever saying of their own--_Il y a de la Rochefoucald, et de la Rouchefoucald_. All governments do not wither what they touch.