l familiarity. Why
should equality mean that all men are equally rude? Should it not rather
mean that all men are equally polite? Might it not quite reasonably mean
that all men should be equally ceremonious and stately and pontifical?
What is there specially Equalitarian, for instance, in calling your
political friends and even your political enemies by their Christian
names in public? There is something very futile in the way in which
certain Socialist leaders call each other Tom, Dick, and Harry;
especially when Tom is accusing Harry of having basely imposed upon the
well-known imbecility of Dick. There is something quite undemocratic in
all men calling each other by the special and affectionate term
"comrade"; especially when they say it with a sneer and smart inquiry
about the funds. Democracy would be quite satisfied if every man called
every other man "sir." Democracy would have no conceivable reason to
complain if every man called every other man "your excellency" or "your
holiness" or "brother of the sun and moon." The only democratic
essential is that it should be a term of dignity and that it should be
given to all. To abolish all terms of dignity is no more specially
democratic than the Roman emperor's wish to cut off everybody's head at
once was specially democratic. That involved equality certainly, but it
was lacking in respect.

Dickens saw America as markedly the seat of this danger. He saw that
there was a perilous possibility that republican ideals might be allied
to a social anarchy good neither for them nor for any other ideals.
Republican simplicity, which is difficult, might be quickly turned into
Bohemian brutality, which is easy. Cincinnatus, instead of putting his
hand to the plough, might put his feet on the tablecloth, and an
impression prevail that it was all a part of the same rugged equality
and freedom. Insolence might become a tradition. Bad manners might have
all the sanctity of good manners. "There you are!" cries Martin
Chuzzlewit indignantly, when the American has befouled the butter. "A
man deliberately makes a hog of himself and _that_ is an Institution."
But the thread of thought which we must always keep in hand in this
matter is that he would not thus have worried about the degradation of
republican simplicity into general rudeness if he had not from first to
last instinctively felt that America held human democracy in her hand,
to exalt it or to let it fall. In one of his gloom