, wholly
unpractised in self-government and incapable of assimilation by American
habits and methods. But the finances of our towns, where the native
tradition is still dominant and whose affairs are discussed and settled
in a public assembly of the people, have been in general honestly and
prudently administered. Even in manufacturing towns, where a majority of
the voters live by their daily wages, it is not so often the recklessness
as the moderation of public expenditure that surprises an old-fashioned
observer. "The beggar is in the saddle at last," cries Proverbial
Wisdom. "Why, in the name of all former experience, doesn't he ride to
the Devil?" Because in the very act of mounting he ceased to be a beggar
and became part owner of the piece of property he bestrides. The last
thing we need be anxious about is property. It always has friends or the
means of making them. If riches have wings to fly away from their owner,
they have wings also to escape danger.

I hear America sometimes playfully accused of sending you all your
storms, and am in the habit of parrying the charge by alleging that we
are enabled to do this because, in virtue of our protective system, we
can afford to make better bad weather than anybody else. And what wiser
use could we make of it than to export it in return for the paupers which
some European countries are good enough to send over to us who have not
attained to the same skill in the manufacture of them? But bad weather
is not the worst thing that is laid at our door. A French gentleman, not
long ago, forgetting Burke's monition of how unwise it is to draw an
indictment against a whole people, has charged us with the responsibility
of whatever he finds disagreeable in the morals or manners of his
countrymen. If M. Zola or some other competent witness would only go
into the box and tell us what those morals and manners were before our
example corrupted them! But I confess that I find little to interest and
less to edify me in these international bandyings of "You're another."

I shall address myself to a single point only in the long list of
offences of which we are more or less gravely accused, because that
really includes all the rest. It is that we are infecting the Old World
with what seems to be thought the entirely new disease of Democracy. It
is generally people who are in what are called easy circumstances who can
afford the leisure to treat themselves to a handsome c