gue, who flatters their
opinions, asserts their supremacy, and yields to their arbitrary
demands, is the one selected by them for place and power. Thus do they
demoralise each other; and it is not until a man has, by his abject
submission to their will, in contradiction to his own judgment and
knowledge, proved that he is unworthy of the selection which he courts,
that he is permitted to obtain it. Thus it is that the most able and
conscientious men in the States are almost unanimously rejected.

M. Tocqueville says, "It is a well-authenticated fact, that at the
present day the most talented men in the United States are very rarely
placed at the head of affairs; and it must be acknowledged that such has
been the result in proportion as democracy has outstepped all its former
limits: the race of American statesmen has evidently dwindled most
remarkably in the course of the last fifty years."

Indeed, no high-minded consistent man will now offer himself, and this
is one cause among many why Englishmen and foreigners have not done real
justice to the people of the United States. The scum is uppermost, and
they do not see below it. The prudent, the enlightened, the wise, and
the good, have all retired into the shade, preferring to pass a life of
quiet retirement, rather than submit to the insolence and dictation of a
mob.

M. Tocqueville says, "Whilst the natural propensities of democracy
induce the people to reject the most distinguished citizens as its
rulers, these individuals are no less apt to retire from a political
career, in which it is almost impossible to retain their independence,
or to advance without degrading themselves."

Again, "At the present day the most affluent classes of society are so
entirely removed from the direction of political affairs in the United
States, that wealth, far from conferring a right to the exercise of
power, is rather an obstacle than a means of attaining to it. The
wealthy members of the community abandon the lists, through
unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the
poorest classes of their fellow-citizens. They concentrate all their
enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy a rank which
cannot be assumed in public, and they constitute a private society in
the State which has its own tastes and its own pleasures. They submit
to this state of things as an irremediable evil, but they are careful
not to shew that they are ga