ier moments he wrote
down his fear that the greatest blow ever struck at liberty would be
struck by America in the failure of her mission upon the earth.

This brings us to the other ground of his alarm--the matter of liberty
of speech. Here also he was much more reasonable and philosophic than
has commonly been realised. The truth is that the lurid individualism of
Carlyle has, with its violent colours, "killed" the tones of most
criticism of his time; and just as we can often see a scheme of
decoration better if we cover some flaming picture, so you can judge
nineteenth-century England much better if you leave Carlyle out. He is
important to moderns because he led that return to Toryism which has
been the chief feature of modernity, but his judgments were often not
only spiritually false, but really quite superficial. Dickens understood
the danger of democracy far better than Carlyle; just as he understood
the merits of democracy far better than Carlyle. And of this fact we can
produce one plain evidence in the matter of which we speak. Carlyle, in
his general dislike of the revolutionary movement, lumped liberty and
democracy together and said that the chief objection to democracy was
that it involved the excess and misuse of liberty; he called democracy
"anarchy or no-rule." Dickens, with far more philosophical insight and
spiritual delicacy, saw that the real danger of democracy is that it
tends to the very opposite of anarchy; even to the very opposite of
liberty. He lamented in America the freedom of manners. But he lamented
even more the absence of freedom of opinion. "I believe there is no
country on the face of the earth," he says, "where there is less freedom
of opinion on any subject in reference to which there is a broad
difference of opinion than in this. There! I write the words with
reluctance, disappointment, and sorrow; but I believe it from the bottom
of my soul. The notion that I, a man alone by myself in America, should
venture to suggest to the Americans that there was one point on which
they were neither just to their own countrymen nor to us, actually
struck the boldest dumb! Washington Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant,
Halleck, Dana, Washington Allston--every man who writes in this country
is devoted to the question, and not one of them _dares_ to raise his
voice and complain of the atrocious state of the law. The wonder is that
a breathing man can be found with temerity enough to suggest to the