CASEY'S TWO YEARS ON THE FARM OF UNCLE SAM. * MR.

OssEr's volume is but a little book, and there is very little in it that is either new or informing. We all know by this time

the excellence of the New York river steamers, as regards size, splendour, accommodation, and fares. The volunteer firemen of New York, with the neatness of their appointments, their energy and courage, and their rivalry with one another, are not very new either ; any more than travel by the Erie Canal, the scenery of the Hudson, the appearance of the Prairies, the Falls of

Niagara, or the free and easy ways of American lawyers and judges in open court; though Mr. Casey's admiration of this last characteristic is a novelty.

The precise object of the writer's visit to America does not appear, but he travelled pretty well over and through the country. He ascended the Hudson ; he descended the Missis-

sippi; crossed the Alleghenies from the seaboard ; be made his

way hrough the more thinly-peopled districts of the West; and he reached New Orleans from the sea, as well as from the interior. The earlier part of his travels is presented in the form of a regular narrative ; the rest in separate sections or independent " sketches." Two years passed in such extensive explorations should have produced a better work ; but neither Mr. Casey's acquirements nor his opinions qualify him to travel with much advantage, at

least so far as writing his travels is concerned. Mr. Casey has fallen into the mistake of fancying himself a literary artist;

and he overlays his facts and observations with discussions or outpourings, which the reader wishes away. Ills opinions are those of a hot Democrat, before the aggressive and unscru- pulous spirit of American Republicans, and the total failure of Republican France, not to mention the egregious absur- dities of Continental Democrats, had thrown a damper over extreme views. He has a high-flown style of panegyric upon most of what he sees in America ; the greater portion of which is true enough as regards the general ease and comfort of the people and so forth. His predictions of the future are not quite so trustworthy. At the present rate of in- creasing population, as well by emigration as by births, many generations will not elapse before the waste lands even of the valley of the Mississippi will become private property, if they be not filled up. Population may not press even then very closely upon the means of subsistence ; but such an economical condition will put a check upon the honest, rough, and enterprising adventurer ; it will also prevent the older States from so readily purging them- selves of their scum. At present the troublesome classes emigrate

voluntarily; the dangerous and a large part of the criminal classes transport themselves. When this issue for the humours of the

body politic is stopped, it is not easy to divine what results may fol- low; and when in a few more generations the best laud is all occu- pied, and population really begins to press upon subsistence, it is hazardous to predict that the comfort, the peace, and the union of classes, may remain as it does now. It is the fashion to call the Ame- ricans great lovers of legality : they doubtless favour the law as long as it favours them, but not one step further; as soon as it clashes with their interests, there is not a more lawless-minded race. The Anti- Rent agitation in the State of New York, and the frequent popular outbreaks, prove this clearly enough. In general, the respectable

classes are quiescent in these riots ; but July 1849 at New York shows that they can act with vigour when their own " order" ja

attacked. Time with its changes very often brings adaptations to

the change; but the independent or rather the Jacobinioal spirit of the American mind, with the idea of equality which no one as

yet dares raise a word against, is but a gloomy prospect for the New World's future, when the field of industry shall have become circumscribed. The annexation of Mexico and even South America is a resource, though not very readily available, on account of dis- tance and climate. But this would be merely a question of time. The regions of South America may be occupied, and then those who are living will see what they shall see. In his zeal for liberty Mr. Casey is at least consistent. Not- withstanding his ardour for equality and fraternity, Robespierre distinguished himself from the mass by the aid of the friseur and the tailor; while the Directory appeared in "full fig." The Ame- ricans are not altogether averse to pomp and circumstance, but ' Mr. Casey is genuine in his sans-culottism. The forms of a court or of any public assembly are his aversion. He not only sees no virtue in silk or horse-hair, a wig or a gown, but he actually din- • Two Years on the Farm of Uncle Sam. With Sketches of his Location, Nephews, and Primped/. By Charles Casey. Published by Bentley.

' Human power doth there seem likest God's When mercy seasons justice?

" The woman was about forty years of age, sallow and sharp featured ; she was dressed in black, and showed no signs of excitement, though evi- dently much impressed by the solemnity of her position; she sat perfectly moveless, and two others of her children were at her knees, playing with her fingers, and laughing as if it were a merry thing to be there. In the course of the evidence her child's skull was produced, but she never moved a muscle; but when her council multiplied and recapitulated the arguments

in her defence, she looked so thankfully at him, and the tears came; in the judge's charge, though on every word hung life or death, she ooked so Vacantly that I don't think she heard a word. ' "In another court, where the jury had desks, it was quite amusing to see the result of the whittling propensity ; the desks were cut right through, carved away in all kinds of fantastic gaps and holes. This was a place of prosy cases; and the judge came down from his seat and walked about occa- sionally while a very long-winded advocate put forth his powers."

Yet Mr. Casey is exceptional even in perfect freedom. He objects to the Americans for swearing, chewing tobacco, and spitting ; and one of his arguments is that they are offensive to others. But he must mean the minority, who on his principles are nothing, since it is clear the practices are those of the majority.

Mr. Casey says that there is a strong feeling against England and Englishmen among the Americans.

"It is impossible to mix in general American society and fail to observe that there is a feeling of implacable hatred to England, as a nation, pepad- ing it. This is reasonably accounted for on the grounds of history and-tra- dition, but more particularly from the fact that there is less of human kind- liness displayed by either nation toward the other than their mutual pro- fession of Christianity and the cause of friendship demand. The animosi- ties of both are mainly traditional, and by both exaggerated by the nursing. America talks of the tyranny and injustice of England, and England quotes the rebellion, ingratitude, and contumacy of the Colonies and so the wheel revolves, and the hatchet, though buried, may at any time be dug up in a

i day, for it is buried deep. • *

"The Englishman, as an emigrant, is as much respected as any other class of settlers ; but sometimes (in fact, nearly in every case) the Englishman will keep talking, and comparing, and disparaging the country and habits, not on their essential merits, but because they differ from what he heti been familiar with. This foolish habit not unfrequently involves him in much annoyance and unpleasantness, and out West' will have more serious re- sults. There is no nation in the world winces more under criticism than England, 'nor is there any countryman in the world more doggedly patriotic than John Bull. But he should remember, that inasmuch as he would fire up at any degrading comparison instituted by a Frenchman between the habits of France and Old England, it is very probable that many a Yankee will git riled' at any derogatory analogies of a' conearned Britisher.' And when- ever I have fallen into a society of Old World folk, the staple of conversation was a national scandal, although the very people who were, then and there respectively considered, comfortable or affluent, would be spitten upon on the soil they lauded by the very conventionalities they affected to deplore."

Slavery is one of the best-handled subjects in the book. On this question the writer entertains sounder views than on almost any other. He denies the exaggerations of the Anti-Slavery people as to the cruelties, &c. of the planter, but dwells upon the mental and moral degradation of the slaves resulting from their condition. This was his first encounter with predial slavery. ' "My first impressions, coloured by unquestionable prejudice, I now give, as written at the time.

"The slaves are, however, all that I had imagined, coming up to theilark outline of fancy with terrible precision. We put in to wood at one of those places ; and there, for the first time, I saw those hewers of wood and drawers of water. A party of us went on shore to shoot. Some distance in the wood, we found two men, three women, and two boys ; there were twenty in all on this farm. The women were dressed in a rough, shapeless, coarse garment, buttoned at the back, with a sort of trousers of the same material, rough shoes and stockings, the upper garment reaching nearly to the ankle; a kind of cloth, like a dirty towel, was wound round the head.

"One of the women drove an ox-team ; she had a large and powerful whip, with which, and a surprising strength, she belaboured and tugged the unwieldy team with' great dexterity. The other woman had five children, and assisted in loading the wood : the younger, about sixteen years of age, had one child, and appeared to do nothing. The women, it seemed to me, worked harder than the men ; but I observed the almost complete absence of memory in the elder woman : she could not remember where she had left the link-chain, or goad-whip, though but a few minutes out of her hand. "I do not pretend to mawkish sensibility, or to that refined fanaticism which sees an infinite difference between the (nominally) free coal-miner of merrie England and the (so-called) slave of the United States. Yet I must confess, that, looking on that labour-crooked group, I felt a dislike, strong and definite, to that system which takes away even the hope of improvement,

covers a vice. That becoming restraint in the presence of others which alike argues self-respect and respect for your fellow men is naught to Mr. Casey. He likes to see a counsel (or, as he spells it, council) sitting with his heels as high as his head; or a judge, when tired of a prosy speaker, leaving the bench for a walk about the court.

" The law-courts are truly democratic in the first glance of the stranger's eye, who has been accustomed to see law dispensed with the auxiliaries of horse-hair, ermine, and policemen. There is no dock with spiked bar, nor crier up in a pulpit, nor council with flowing robes, high wigs, and plethoric bags. In the City Hall at New York, I entered one of the courts, consisting of a large room with an elevated seat at one end, on which was seated an ordinary-looking gentleman, dressed in plain clothes, while other similarly dressed gentlemen occupied arm-chairs, their legs and arms disposed in every conceivable attitude. It was the criminal court; a railing ran across the room, outside which were benches for the people ; at a table were seated the lawyers in the cause, and the jury at one side, in twelve chairs. At the bottom of the table sat the prisoner, a woman charged with the murder of her child. She was seated next her council; and but that I inquired, I should not have known she was the prisoner. The prosecution by the At- torney-General was lucid, forcible, but tinted with mercy ; not that ferocious bloodhound-like tenacity with which I have heard royal attorney-generals hunt down and pant after the life of an unfortunate criminal. The replies of the defence were calm, though well supported and pathetic. The Attor- ney-General did not avail himself of a reply; so the case passed into the hands of the judge,. who put it to the jury in a refined, clear, legal, yet mer- ciful charge. The jury, after a short deliberation, returned a verdict of 'Not guilty.' It was a thing of beauty to see those men, who, while scrupulously upholding justice, still leaned to the side of mercy. How well has the poet said, crushing down the principle of self-esteem in the man, until he reaches the passive and unambitious existence of the oxen which he drives. And look- ing on those women, (Negro though they were,) so unnaturally masculine, so completely unsexed, so far removed from all those attributes with which the name of woman is associated, I felt that no reason based on an asserted right, no fiction of argument, could stand in my judgment but as dust in the balance, when the question is whether a human being (no matter of what colour, whether an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him) should possess the liberty and right of securing his own happiness, to the ex- tent of his ability. Their then state—their look, bodies, mind, and manner, were so many self-evident arguments against the system, which no represent- ations, however plausible, could refute, even though coming from the lips of the great and gifted Calhoun ; and all that I had listened to from Southerners, on the voyage, disappeared like gossamer in the tempest, before the mute living picture of wretchedness presented by that group."