eedom--of the
relations between a people and those who administer its affairs--which
are all but universally current among us.

It is this last point which is clearly and forcibly presented in the
article of our contributor, and which it will behoove the Reformers not
to overlook. Nothing is more characteristic of the American mind, in
reference to political ideas, than its strong conservatism. This fact,
which has often puzzled foreign observers accustomed to connect
democracy with innovating tendencies and violent fluctuations, is yet
easily explained. Though ours is a new country, its system of government
is really older than that of almost any other civilized country. In the
century during which it has existed intact and without any material
modification the institutions of most other nations have undergone a
complete change, in some cases of form and structure, in others of
theory and essence. Even England, which boasts of the stability of its
government and its immunity from the storms that have overturned so many
thrones and disorganized so many states, has experienced a fundamental,
though gradual and peaceable, revolution. There, as elsewhere, the
centre of power has changed, the chain of tradition has been broken, and
new conceptions of the functions of government and its relations to the
governed have taken the place of the old ones. But in America nothing of
this kind has occurred: the "old order" has not passed away, nor have
its foundations undergone the least change; the municipal and colonial
institutions under which we first exercised the right of
self-government, and the Constitution which gave us our national
baptism, are still the fountain of all our political ideas; and our
party struggles are not waged about new principles or animated by new
watch words, but are fenced and guided by the maxims transmitted by the
founders of the republic. This is our strength and our safeguard against
wild experiments, but it is also an impediment to every suggestion of
improvement. It binds us to the letter of tradition, leads us to
confound the accidental with the essential, and gives to certain notions
and certain words a potency which must be described as an anachronism.
We still use the language of the Revolutionary epoch, recognize no
perils but those against which our ancestors had to guard, and put faith
in the efficacy of methods that have no longer an object, and of phrases
that have lost their original si