time United States, at the time of the Declaration of
Independence, were perhaps the most moral people existing, and I now
assert that they are the least so; to what cause can this change be
ascribed? Certainly not wholly to the spirit of gain, for it exists
every where, although perhaps nowhere so strongly developed as it is
under a form of government which admits of no other claim to
superiority. I consider that it arises from the total extinction, or if
not extinction absolute bondage, of the aristocracy of the country, both
politically as well as socially. There was an aristocracy at the time
of the Independence--not an aristocracy of title, but a much superior
one; an aristocracy of great, powerful, and leading men, who were looked
up to and imitated; there was, politically speaking, an aristocracy in
the senate which was elected by those who were then independent of the
popular will; but although a portion of it remains, it may be said to
have been almost altogether smothered, and in society it no longer
exists. It is the want of this aristocracy that has so lowered the
standard of morals in America, and it is the revival of it that must
restore to the people of the United States the morality they have lost.
The loss of the aristocracy has sunk the Republic into a democracy--the
renewal of it will again restore them to their former condition. Let
not the Americans start at this idea. An aristocracy is not only not
incompatible, but absolutely necessary for the duration of a democratic
form of government. It is the third estate, so necessary to preserve
the balance of power between the executive and the people, and which has
unfortunately disappeared. An aristocracy is as necessary for the
morals as for the government of a nation. Society must have a head to
lead it, and without that head there will be no fixed standard of
morality, and things must remain in the chaotic state in which they are
at present.

Some author has described the English nation as resembling their own
beer-froth at the top, dregs at the bottom, and in the middle excellent.
There is point in this observation, and it has been received without
criticism, and quoted without contradiction: but it is in itself false;
it may be said that the facts are directly the reverse, there being more
morality among the lower class than in the middling, and still more in
the higher than in the lower. We have been designated as a nation of
shopkeepers