With respect to aristocracy, we should further consider, that before the
establishment of the American States, nothing was known to history
but the man of the old world, crowded within limits either small or
overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that situation generates. A
government adapted to such men would be one thing; but a very different
one, that for the man of these States. Here every one may have land to
labor for himself, if he chooses; or, preferring the exercise of any
other industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford
a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation
from labor in old age. Every one, by his property or by his satisfactory
situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men
may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control
over their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which, in the hands
of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted
to the demolition and destruction of every thing public and private. The
history of the last twenty-five years of France, and of the last forty
years in America, nay, of its last two hundred years, proves the truth
of both parts of this observation.
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man.
Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and
the American example had kindled feelings of right in the people.
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