ependent
destiny,--seems to be the hardest task imposed upon the American
democracy. The preference of race and language is so profound, the
influences of the commercial life are so far-reaching, the admiration
for political stability is so natural, the domination of centralized
wealth is so overwhelming, and the allurements of consolidated power so
well calculated to fascinate the masses, that even American democracy
has found it hard to break the British tie and sail away uncabled and
disenchanted on the sea.

This deluded instinct of attachment to Great Britain, and this unnatural
lack of sympathy for France have cost us dearly. The two sentiments have
modified our national life, and have left a result different by not a
little from what it would have been if influenced by other and more
wholesome dispositions on our part. Our nationality has lost much force
on both counts--on the score of our illogical attachment to Great
Britain on the one hand, and of our unnatural indifference to France on
the other. Under the one influence we have become _tolerant of
subserviency_ as a national trait, and under the other we have become in
a measure _incapable of enthusiasm_. The addition of British
subserviency has been aggravated with the subtraction of French
enthusiasm from our public and private life.

All this had been better otherwise. All this--even after the lapse of a
hundred and twenty-one years from the great summer of our
Independence--ought still to be bettered with amendment. It is not
needed, stiff as we have already become in our national instincts and
methods, to go forward by going backwards. To approximate Great Britain
is to go backwards. The English _people_ are among the greatest of the
historic races, but the British _monarchy_, with its mediaeval
pretensions, its humbug of a throne and a crown, its subordinated ranks
of society, its military and naval despotism, and its vast skein of
_tentaculae_ stretching to every valuable thing in the world,--is perhaps
the one thing that modern civilization should most dread and put away
from the field of its desires.

On the other hand France is, in nearly all respects, admirable. Her
mobility is life, and her warmth is a fructifying force. France gives
forth more than she takes from the nations. Her republic is a splendid
piece of political workmanship. Her spirit is patriotic. Her people,
instead of straggling over the world like adventurers and pirates,
remain