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Untitled Article
and rights . This is not , with me , a matter of statistics , or of poKtfctl generalities . Down into the bosom of society , down among the sweet domestic charities of ten thousand million homes , down among the sore and quivering fibres of human hearts unnumbered , and innumerable—the iron of accursed despotism has been driven ! At length , from the long dark night of oppression , I see the people rising to reclaim and assert their rights . I see them taking the power , which to them indubitably belong-s , into their own hand . I rejoice to see it . I rejoice , and
yet I tremble . I tremble lest they should retaliate the wrongs they have endured . 13 ut yet what do I see ? I see the people showing singular moderation . I repeat it—I see the people of France and England , in the great reforms which they have undertaken during the last fifteen years , showing singular moderation . Shall I not honour such nations ? The people of my own country I know still better ; and for that reason , probably , I honour them still more . I firmly believe in the general disposition of the public mind in America to do right . Faults and danger ^
there are among us , and on these I mean to comment freely ; but that there is any general tendency to lawlessness and violence , I utterly deny . "—Vol . ii . p . 284—286 . There is a grandeur in the author ' s anticipations which is rarely associated with an ironical mode of expression . " Suppose that every thing goes down , as it is called , to republican forms ; that all is levelled , aristocratic pride and kingly state together ;
will not truth and virtue , science and sanctity , humanity and Christianity , be left on earth ? And will there be no dignity in paying homage to these ? Doubtless there will be shocking things in the world—things unheard of , and incredible . Not only will * the toe of the peasant gall the kibe of the courtier / but people will stand face to face—will meet in the same company and actually talk together—between whom there will be nothing on earth in common , but that they are men f Alas ! what a sad history will be written of those times ! ' Then , ' will it
be said , ' men were respected , not for their titles , but for their merits . It was an all-levelling age , in which nothing was venerated but virtue . Nay , so besotted were mankind , that they worshipped virtue and truth , though they were stripped of all outward magnificence and power . The highest places in society were sometimes occupied—proh pudor !— -by poor men . Yes , it was an age in which the horribly vile aristocracy of talent and virtue prevailed . If there was a man of wisdom and genius among them , men went mad about him ; they seemed to feel as if his
notice and friendship were as honourable to them , as if he had been a lord or a prince . Yes , Christian * though they were , they fell towards the degradation of those Grecian and Roman times , when Diogenes was honoured in his tub , and Ciiicinnatus was called from his plough . *" - —• Voj . ii . p . 300—302 .
To our apprehension , the author 'lifts both truly described tfrid rationally analysed whatever is most conspicuously defective in the manners and morale of America . He lias trace&it to " &e yet unexhausted herita ^ fe of false feudal maxims . " Thq transitWn tof | nsdtuiion 8 is accomplished . ; that of manners arid nwdes df 'tftottght has littlp more than commenced ite progress * Tbfe
Untitled Article
£ 06 The Old World and { he New .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 606, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/18/
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