ishes America from
England. The latter in other respects offers exactly as much freedom
with half the wear and tear; in fact, to me the freedom of America is
one of her disadvantages. Every one knows, and the American best of all,
that all men are _not equal_, never were and never can be. Yet this
false doctrine is their standard, and they swear by it, though some will
explain that what is meant is political freedom. Freedom accounts for
the gross impertinence of the ignorant and lower classes, the laughable
assumptions of servants, and the illogical pretenses of the _nouveau
riche_, which make America impossible to some people. Cultivated
Americans are as thoroughly aristocratic as the nobility of England.
There are the same classes here as there. A grocer becomes rich and
retires or dies; his children refuse to associate with the families of
other grocers; in a word, the Americans have the aristocratic feeling,
but they have no peasant class; the latter would be, in their own
estimation, as good as any one. One class, the lower and poorer, is
arraigned against the upper and richer, and the gap is growing daily.

But this would not prove that the republic is a failure. What then? It
is, in the opinion of many of its clergymen, a great moral failure. No
nation in history has lasted many centuries after having developed the
"symptoms" now shown in the United States. I quote their own press, "the
States are morally rotten," and you have but to turn to these organs and
the magazines of the past decade, which make a feature of holding up
the shortcomings of cities and millionaires, to read the details of the
tragedy. Thieves--grafters--have seized upon the vitals of the country.
St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, great representative
cities--what is their history? The story of dishonesty among officials,
of bribery, stealing, and every possible crime that a man can devise to
wring money from the people. This is no secret. It has all been exposed
by the friends of morality. City governments are overthrown, the rascals
are turned out, but in a few months the new officers are caught devising
some new "grafting" operation.

I have it from a prominent official that there is not an honest State or
city administration in America. What can a nation say when for years it
has known that a large and influential lobby has been maintained to
influence statesmen, a lobby comprising a corps of "persuaders" in the
pay of business