[DU] It has already been mentioned that Massachusetts has lately
adopted the new policy in regard to public works. [And it might be
added in respect to the school-system.--TRANSL.]
[DV] In 1834, the Ohio legislature incorporated a Life and Trust
Company, with very great powers; the company was organised in 1835,
and in 1836, a proposition was made in the legislature the effect of
which would have been indirectly to abolish it. Happily the legislature
saw the necessity of keeping up the credit of the State by a faithful
adherence to its engagements, and the proposition was rejected. Mr
Dallas, of Philadelphia, who has been a Senator of the United States,
has quite recently urged the adoption of _ex post facto_ measures, with
the object of annulling the charter of the United States Bank.
[DW] The English aristocracy is accessible to every man of superior
qualities. The king can and often does make a peer of a commoner,
and the order of knights, which is the lowest degree of nobility, is
essentially an aristocracy of talents and personal services, not being
hereditary. But if the aristocracy of intellect has thus got a footing
in the aristocracy of birth, the latter has also encroached upon the
former; for with the constitution of the Anglican church, and in the
absence of monasteries and the numerous gratuitous institutions of the
olden time, it is more difficult for a swine-herd, like Sixtus V., to
rise in the establishment at the present day, than it would have been
for him to reach the summit of the Catholic hierarchy in the Middle
Ages.
[DX] The French aristocracy which fought the fight with Richelieu was
Protestant, and was more enlightened than the English aristocracy of
the same day. French protestantism was the flower of Europe in every
respect, even in industry. It is well known that the English and German
manufactures made great progress immediately after the revocation of
the edict of Nantes, which drove four hundred thousand of our fellow
countrymen from France.