ic was in the people, and they
justified the fathers and the institution.

Here, therefore, was opened in all the directions of human inquiry and
action a new world of hope and promise. The people were no longer bound
by old traditions, nor clogged by any formulas of state religions, nor
hampered by the dicta of philosophical authority. Their minds were free
to choose or to reject whatever propositions were presented to them from
the wide region of speculation and belief. The Constitution was the only
instrument which prescribed laws and principles for their unconditional
acceptance and guidance; and this was a thing of their own choice, the
charter and seal of their liberties, to which they rendered a cheerful
and grateful obedience.

With this mighty security for a platform, they pursued their daily
avocations in peace, trusting their own souls, and working out the
problem of republican society, with a most healthy unconsciousness.
Sincere and earnest, they troubled themselves with no social theories,
no visions of Utopia, nor dreams of Paradise and El Dorados, leaving the
spirit which animated them to build up the architecture of its own
_cultus_, with an unexpressed but perfect faith in the final justice and
satisfaction of results.

Religion, therefore, and politics--literature, learning, and art--trade,
commerce, manufactures, agriculture--and the amenities of society and
manners, were allowed to develop themselves in their own way, without
reference to rule and preconcerted dogmas. Hence the peculiarities which
mark the institutions of America--their utter freedom from cant and the
shows and pageantry of state. Bank, titles, and caste were abolished;
and the enormous gulfs which separate the European man from the European
lordling were bridged over by Equality with the solid virtues of
humanity.

What a stride was here taken over time and space, and the historic
records of man, in the fossil formations of the Old World during the
ante-American periods! It had come at last, this long-prophesied reign
of Apollo and the Muses, of freedom and the rights of man. Afar off, on
the summits of imaginative mountains, were beheld, through twilight
vistas of night and chaos, the proud ruins of dead monarchies, and the
cruel forms of extinct tyrannies and oppressions, crowned and mitred no
more; whose mandates had once made the nations tremble, and before whose
judgment seats Mercy pleaded in vain, and Justice muffled up