American politics. This is so fully
recognized now by politicians, that self-depreciation, even
in the matter of knowledge, has become one of the ways of
commending one's self to the multitude, which even the
foremost men of both parties do not disdain. In talking on
such subjects as the currency, with a view of enlightening
the people, skilful orators are very careful to repudiate
all pretence of knowing anything more about the matter than
their hearers. The speech is made to wear as far as possible
the appearance of being simply a reproduction of things with
which the audience is just as familiar as the speaker.
Nothing is more fatal to a stump orator than an air of
superior wisdom on any subject. He has, if he means to
persuade, to keep carefully, in outward seeming at all
events, on the same intellectual level as those whom he is
addressing. Orators of a demagogic turn, of course, push
this caution to its extreme, and often affect ignorance, and
boast of the smallness of the educationale opportunities
enjoyed by them in their youth, and of the extreme
difficulty they had in acquiring even the little they know.
There is nothing, in fact, people are less willing to
tolerate in a man, who seek office at their hands, than any
sign that he does not consider himself as belonging to the
same class as the bulk of the voters--that either birth, or
fortune, or education has taken him out of sympathy with
them, or caused him, in any sense, to look down on them.'

Historians treat the vote of the present generation as decisive, morally
as well as practically, on the issues of the past. The people has, by
chance or caprice, passed judgment upon questions, in discussing which
consummate statesmen with intimate practical knowledge of their bearings
profoundly differed; and that judgment concludes the controversy,
determines the right or wrong, the wisdom or folly, of men like J.Q.
Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. We have seen too
much of this abject superstition in recent English historical essays, as
well as in political polemics. It is needless to point out the debasing
effect upon all discussion of such anticipatory appeal to the arbitrary
decision of Pope or posterity. No man can reason vigorously, frankly,
forcibly, and fully, who feels that he, or the heirs of his thought, may