they do to be colonels of militia and justices of the
peace. Thus they learn to bear each other's burdens, and Dulness is
fully justified of her children. In a country where all men, at least in
theory, are equal, and where every man does in fact exercise a certain
influence on public affairs, it is not surprising that a large number of
persons should possess a certain facility of public speaking, which even
in England is far from universal, and is elsewhere possessed by very
few. No man in the United States is deterred from offering his views
upon matters of state, by the feeling that neither his education nor his
position justify his interference. It is difficult in England to realise
the practical equality which obtains as a fundamental principle in the
Republic. There every man feels himself to be, and in fact is, or at
least may be, a potential unit in the community. As a man, he is a
citizen--as a citizen, a sovereign, whose caprices are to be humoured,
and whose displeasure is to be deprecated. Judge Peddle, for instance,
from the backwoods, is not perhaps as eloquent as Webster, nor as
subtile as Calhoun, but he has just as good a right to be heard when he
goes up to Congress for all that. Is he not accounted an exemplary
citizen "and a pretty tall talker" in his own neighbourhood, and where
on "the univarsal airth" would you find a more enlightened public
opinion? It would never do to put Peddle down; that would be
_leze-majeste_ against his constituents, the sovereign people who dwell
in Babylon, which is in the county of Lafayette, on the banks of the
Chattawichee. Thus endorsed, Peddle soon lays aside his native
bashfulness, and makes the walls of Congress vocal to that bewitching
eloquence which heretofore captivated the Babylonish mind. He was
"raised a leettle too far to the west of sun-down" to be snubbed by
Down-easters, any how; he's a cock of the woods, he is; an "etarnal
screamer," "and that's a fact"--with a bowie knife under his waistcoat,
and a patent revolver in his coat pocket, both very much at the service
of any gentleman who may dispute his claims to popular or personal
consideration.

To meet the case of these volcanic statesmen,

"Aw'd by no shame, by no respect controll'd,"

and in order that the noble army of dunces (a potent majority, of
course) may have no reason to complain that the principles of equality
are violated in their persons, the House of Representatives has adopted
a