o
the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man, and, as each is
regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it follows of
necessity, that no one can have a standard much above his own
experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial
people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and peculiar practices
and opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar;
though in the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be
found in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce so
little effect. When compared with the bulk of other nations, the
Americans, though so remote and insulated, are scarcely provincial,
for it is only when the highest standard of this nation is compared
with the highest standard of other nations, that we detect the great
deficiency that actually exists. That a moral foundation so broad
should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow, is owing to the
circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is
referred to a body of judges that, in the nature of things, must be
of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter of
wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities
of the tribunal. In America, the gross mistake has been made of
supposing, that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has
a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a
practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable
exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped,
that time, and a greater concentration of taste, liberality, and
knowledge than can well distinguish a young and scattered population,
will repair this evil, and that our children will reap the harvest of
the broad fields of intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves.
In the mean time, the present generation must endure that which
cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it will have to
submit to a great deal of very questionable information, not a few
false principles, and an unpleasant degree of intolerant and narrow
bigotry, that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and learning
as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.

We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to point out a
multitude of things in which that professed instructor and Mentor of
the public, the editor of the Active Inquirer, had made a false
estimate of himself, as well as of his fellow-creatures. That such a
man should be i