ustify his being
styled the most robust of American authors. Pointed assertions are
scattered up and down his pages. Could, for instance, one of the dangers
of a democracy be more clearly and ill-naturedly put than by his
statement, that the whole science of government in what are called free
states, is getting to be a strife in mystification, in which the great
secret is to persuade the governed that he is in fact the governor? His
books, moreover, while they reflect his prejudices, show an honest
desire to be just. He undoubtedly preferred the Continent to England.
But in his account of that country, while he had the unfairness of
dislike, he never had the unfairness of intentional misrepresentation.
There is nothing of that exulting yell with which the British traveler
of those days fell foul of some specimen of American ill-breeding or
American bumptiousness. Nor did he fail to pay a high tribute to (p. 140)
what was best in English society or English character. The gentlemen
of that country, in appearance, in attainments, in manliness, and he was
inclined to add in principles, he placed at the head of their class in
Christendom. His censure of America and the Americans was not at all in
the nature of indiscriminate abuse. The fault he found with his
countrymen was based mainly upon their mistaken opinion of themselves
and of their advantages and disadvantages. You boast, he practically
said to them, of the superiority of your scenery, in which you are not
to be compared with Europe; but you constantly abuse your climate which
is equal to, if not finer, than that of any region in the Old World. You
stand up manfully for your manners and tastes, which you ought to
correct; but you are incessantly apologizing for your institutions of
which you ought to be proud. The defects imputed in Europe to the
inhabitants of the United States, such as the want of morals, honesty,
order, decency, liberality, and religion, were not at all our defects.
These, in fact were, as the world goes, the strong points of American
character. On the other hand, those on which we prided ourselves,
intelligence, taste, manners, education as applied to all beyond the
base of society, were the very points upon which we should do well to be
silent. This is certainly not an extreme position. But men are far more
affected by the blame bestowed upon their foibles than by the praise
given to their virtues; and both in England and America the censures