in the ways of the world. Their immediate fathers have done such a deed as the world never saw; and the children have not yet passed out the intoxication of success. With far less of vanity and presumption than might have been looked for from their youth among the nations, with an extraordinary amount of shrewdness and practical talent shared among individuals, the American people are as imaginative as any nation I happen to have heard or read of. They reminded me every day of the Irish. The frank, confiding character of their private intercourses, the generous nature of their mutual services, the quickness and dexterity of their doings, their fertility of resource, their proneness to be run away with by a notion, into any extreme of absurdity—in all this, and in everything but their deficiency of moral independence, (for which a difference of circumstances will fully account,) they resemble the Irish. I regard the American people as a great embryo poet: now moody, now wild, but bringing out results of absolute good sense: restless and wayward in action, but with deep peace at his heart: exulting that he has caught the true aspect of things past, and at the depth of futurity which lies before him, wherein to create something so magnificent as the world has scarcely begun to dream of. There is the strongest hope of a nation that is capable of being possessed with an idea; and this kind of possession has been the peculiarity of the Americans from their first day of national existence till now. Their first idea was loftier than some which have succeeded; but they have never lost sight of the first. It remains to be, at intervals, apprehended anew; and whenever the time shall arrive, which cannot but arrive, when the nation shall be so fully possessed of the complete idea as by a moral necessity to act it out, they will be as far superior to nations which act upon the experience and expediency of their time as the great poet is superior to common men.
This time is yet very far distant; and the American people have not only much to learn, and a painful discipline to endure, but some disgraceful faults to repent of and amend. They must give a perpetual and earnest heed to one point; to cherish their high democratic hope, their faith in man. The older they grow, the more must they "reverence the dreams of their youth." They must eschew the folly and profaneness so prevalent in the old world, of exalting man, abstractedly and individually, as a piece of God's creation, and despising men in the mass. The statesman in a London theatre feels his heart in a tumult, while a deep amen echoes through its chambers at Hamlet's adoration of humanity; but not the less, when he goes home, does he speak slightingly, compassionately, or protectingly of the masses, the population, the canaille. He is awestruck with the grandeur of an individual spirit; but feels nothing of the grandeur of a congregated million of like spirits, because they happen to be far off. This proves nothing but the short-sightedness of such a man. Such shortness of sight afflicts some of the wisest and best men in the new world. I know of one who regards with a humble and religious reverence the three or four spirits which have their habitation under his roof, and close at hand; who begins to doubt and question, in the face of far stronger outward evidence of good, persons who are a hundred miles off; and has scarcely any faith left for those who happen to be over the sea. The true democratic hope cannot coexist with such distrust. Its basis is the unmeasured scope of humanity; and its rationale the truth, applicable alike to individuals and nations, that men are what they are taken for granted to be. "Countrymen," cries Brutus, dying,
"My heart doth joy that yet in all my life,
I found no man but he was true to me."
The philosophy of this fact is clear; it followed of course from Brutus always supposing that men were true. Whenever the Americans, or any other people, shall make integrity their rule, their criterion, their invariable supposition, the first principles of political philosophy will be fairly acted out, and the high democratic hope will be its own justification.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Jefferson writes, September, 1798, "The most long-sighted politician could not, seven years ago, have imagined that the people of this wide extended country could have been enveloped in such delusion, and made so much afraid of themselves and their own power, as to surrender it spontaneously to those who are manœuvring them into a form of government, the principal branches of which may be beyond their control."
Again, March, 1801:—"You have understood that the revolutionary movements in Europe had, by industry and artifice, been wrought into objects of terror in this country, and had really involved a great portion of our well-meaning citizens in a panic which was perfectly unaccountable, and during the prevalence of which they were led to support measures the most insane. They are now pretty thoroughly recovered from it, and sensible of the mischief which was done, and preparing to be done, had their minds continued a little longer under that derangement. The recovery bids fair to be complete, and to obliterate entirely the line of party division, which had been so strongly drawn."—Jefferson's Correspondence, vol. iii. pp. 401, 457.
CHAPTER II. APPARATUS OF GOVERNMENT.
"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people."
Jefferson.
Though it be true that the principles of government are to be deduced more from experience of human nature than experience of human governments, the institutions in which those principles are to be embodied must be infinitely modified by preceding circumstances. Bentham must have forgotten this when he offered, at sixty-four, to codify for several of the United States, and also for Russia. He proposed to introduce a new set of terms. These could not, from his want of local knowledge, have been very specific; and if general, what was society to do till the lawyers had done arguing? How could even a Solomon legislate, three thousand miles off, for a republic like that of Connecticut, which set out with taking its morals and politics by handfuls, out of Numbers and Deuteronomy? or for Virginia, rank with feudal prejudices and methods? or for Delaware, with its monarchical martyr spirit? or for Louisiana, compounded of Spain, France, and America? Though at the time of the framing of the constitution, the States bore a strong general resemblance in their forms of government, endless minor differences existed, mainly arising from the different tenure on which they had been held under the English crown. Some had been provinces, governed by royal commissions, according to royal convenience. These were New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Others had been under proprietary government; as Maryland, held under patent, by Lord Baltimore; and Pennsylvania and Delaware, held by William Penn. Others, again, were under charter governments; ruled and altogether disposed of by political corporations. Such were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Within the memory of middle-aged men, the governor of New Hampshire used to travel in a coach and six, while the governor of the much more important Massachusetts went on a horse, with his wife on a pillion. It is within the memory of living men how Massachusetts rose up in rejection of the imposition of a clergy by England; while the colonial law of Virginia ordained parsons to be paid yearly six thousand weight of prime tobacco, in addition to marriage, burial, and birth-fees; in which days, an unholy pastor, appointed by Lord Baltimore, was seen to ride about with the church key in one hand, and a pistol in the other. It is absurd to suppose that communities, where wide differences of customs, prejudices, and manners still exist, can be, or ought to be, brought into a state of exact conformity of institutions. Diversities, not only of old custom, but of climate, productions and genealogy, forbid it; and reason does not require it. That institutions should harmonise with the same first principles, is all that is requisite. Some, who would not go so far as to offer to codify for countries where they have not get their foot, are yet apt to ask the use of one or another institution, to which the Americans seem to be unreasonably attached. It is a sufficient general answer that institutions are rarely sudden
