WEALTH AND REFINEMENT OF DIFFERENT PARTS. 403 



CHAPTER VII. 



Wealth and refinement of different parts Writers on American 

 Manners Plainness Civility New England Character 

 Unfair dealing Emigrant s Situation and Character Govern 

 ment United States and Upper Canada. 



THE comparative wealth and refinement of the eastern 

 parts of the United States, arises from the annual savings of 

 the combined exertions of nature and industry having had 

 time to accumulate and affect the inhabitants ; and the gradual 

 falling off in these attributes, which takes place towards the 

 west, is owing to most of the settlers having originally been 

 operatives in the east, and not having had time to accumulate 

 wealth, or adopt refinements. 



Although I did not often witness the domestic manners of 

 the Americans, my opportunities of meeting the inhabitants of 

 the United States in public were frequent, and the impres 

 sions imbibed during my intercourse with them were different 

 from what the accounts of others led me to expect. Many 

 travellers who have written on the subject were perhaps ill 

 qualified to form a just estimate of American manners and 

 character, from the sphere of society in which they themselves 

 had previously moved. No scion nor associate of British 

 aristocracy, who has not been brought into familiar inter 

 course with the middling and lower orders of his own country 

 men, is likely to do justice to the Americans, and the tenor of 

 many of the remarks which have been given to the world on 

 the subject is evidence of the writers never having before 

 associated with the class of people to whom they allude. The 

 inhabitants of Britain, in private and public life, being divided 

 into grades, some individuals are altogether unacquainted 

 with the manners and customs of the classes below them. 

 And as Englishmen of high pretensions and refinement, on 



