The New England States are the great seat of manufactures in the Union; and in Boston especially, it is impossible to mix at all in society without hearing discussions on the policy of the Tariff Bill. I was prepared to encounter a good deal of bigotry on this subject, but on the whole found less than I expected. Of course, here, as elsewhere, men will argue strenuously and earnestly on the policy of a measure, with which they know their own interests to be inseparably connected; but both the advocates and opponents of the Tariff are to be found mingled very sociably at good men's feasts, and I have not been able to discover that antagonism of opinion has been in any degree productive of hostility of feeling.

On this question, as on many others, the weight of numbers is on one side, and that of sound argument on the other. It is the observation, I think, of Hobbes, that were it to become the interest of any portion of the human race to deny the truth of a proposition in Euclid, by no power of demonstration could it ever after command universal assent. This may be going too far, but we know how difficult it is, in the less certain sciences, to influence the understanding of those in favour of a conclusion, whose real or imagined interests must be injuriously affected by its establishment.