lf sat down to a dinner party to which I had been invited, with a
defaulter to government on each side of me. I knew one that was setting
up for Congress, and, strange to say, his delinquency was not considered
by the people as an objection. An American author [Voice from America]
states, "On the 17th June, 1838, the United States treasurer reported to
Congress _sixty-three_ defaulters; the total sums embezzled amounting to
one million, twenty thousand and odd dollars."

The tyranny of the majority has completely destroyed the moral courage
of the American people, and without moral courage what chance is there
of any fixed standard of morality?

M. Tocqueville observes, "Democratic republics extend the practice of
currying favour with the many, and they introduce it into a greater
number of classes at once: this is one of the most serious reproaches
that can be addressed to them. In democratic States organised on the
principles of the American republics this is more especially the case,
where the authority of the majority is so absolute and irresistible,
that a man must give up his rights as a citizen, and almost abjure his
quality as a human being, if he intends to stray from the track which it
lays down.

"In that immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in the United
States, I found very few men who displayed any of that manly candour,
and that masculine independence of opinion, which frequently
distinguished the Americans in former times, and which constitutes the
leading feature in distinguished characters wheresoever they may be
found. It seems, at first sight, as if all the minds of the Americans
were formed upon one model, so accurately do they correspond in their
manner of judging. A stranger does, indeed, sometimes meet with
Americans who dissent from these rigorous formularies; with men who
deplore the defects of the laws; the mutability and the ignorance of
democracy; who even go so far as to observe the evil tendencies which
impair the national character, and to point out such remedies as it
might be possible to apply; but no one is there to hear these things
beside yourself, and you, to whom these secret reflections are confided,
are a stranger and a bird of passage. They are very ready to
communicate truths which are useless to you, but they continue to hold a
different language in public." See note 2.

There are a few exceptions--Clay and Webster are men of such power as to
be able, t