ide; but then he carries a weapon
which he is supposed to use. The Minister of the Republic carries a
weapon for ornament only. In quadruped life, it reminds me of a poodle
closely shaved all over, except a little tuft at the end of his tail,
the sword and the tuft recalling to mind the fact that the respective
possessors have been shorn of something.

Firmly convinced, from my earliest schoolboy days, of the intimate
connexion which exists between boasting and bullying, I had long blushed
to feel how pre-eminent my own country was in the ignoble practice; but
a more intimate acquaintance with the United States has thoroughly
satisfied me that that pre-eminence justly belongs to the great
Republic. But it is not merely in national matters that this feeling
exhibits itself; you observe it in ordinary life as well, by the intense
love shown for titles; nobody is contented until he obtain some rank. I
am aware this is a feature inseparable from democracy. Everybody you
meet is Captain, Colonel, General, Honourable, Judge, or something; and
if they cannot obtain it legitimately, they obtain it by courtesy, or
sometimes facetiously, like a gentleman I have before alluded to, who
obtained the rank of judge because he was a connoisseur in wine. In
these, and a thousand other ways, the love of vanity stands nationally
revealed.

I do not think Americans are aware what injustice they do themselves by
this love of high-sounding titles.[CL] For instance, in a paper before
me, I see a Deputy Sheriff calling on the mob to resist the law; I see
Governor Bigler authorizing General King to call out the military, one
naturally supposes to keep order; but observe he calls Mr. Walker, of
Erie, a traitor and a scoundrel; of the directors and managers of the
railroad, he says, "We will whip them, will whip them, will bury them so
deep electricity can't reach them--we will whip them--we will whip the
g--ts out of them!" &c.--Now, judging of these people by their titles,
as recognised by the rest of the civilized world, what a disgrace to the
higher classes of Americans is the foregoing! But anybody who really
knows the title system of the Republic will at once see that the orator
was a mere rowdy. Thus they suffer for their vanity. It pervades every
class of the whole community, from the rowdy, who talks of "whipping
creation," to the pulpit orator, who often heralds forth past success to
feed the insatiable appetite: in short, it has becom