If a committee of our knowing Yankees were sent over to gain information
with regard to its actual condition, I am inclined to think they would
bring back a curious and not very favorable report. It wouldn't astonish
me, if they should pronounce the whole apparatus of the State rotten
from top to bottom, and only kept from falling to pieces by all sorts
of ingenious contrivances of an external and temporary nature,--here a
wheel, or pivot, or spring to be replaced,--there a prop or buttress to
be set up,--here a pipe choked up,--there a boiler burst,--and so on,
from one end of the works to the other. However, the machine keeps
a-going, and many persons think it works beautifully.

Everything is reduced to such perfect system in its operations, that the
necessity for individual opinion is almost superseded, and even
private consciences are laid upon the shelf,--just as people lay by an
antiquated timepiece that no winding-up or shaking can persuade into
marking the hours,--for have they not the clock on the Government
railroad station opposite, which they can at any time consult by
stepping to the window? For instance, individual honesty is set aside
and replaced by a system of rewards and punishments. Honesty is an
old-fashioned coat. The police, like a great sponge, absorbs the private
virtue. It says to conscience, "Stay there,--don't trouble yourself,--I
will act for you."

You drop your purse in the street. A rogue picks it up. In his private
conscience he says, "Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by
no means the best policy,--it is simply no policy at all,--it is sheer
stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall
and turn the corner quick?"--So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a
conscience, that _very, very_ small still voice, in very husky tones;
but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the