ater power of patronage and personal influence than the Queen. The
real difference is not between the forms of government, but between the
innate flunkeyism of the Briton and the independence of the American.
If we had the British government in every detail, and if John Bull were
to adopt our system, the countries would stand where they were, and each
gradually 'reform' itself, according to its ideas of reform, back into
the old routine. The Englishman, needing 'my Lord' and 'Her Gracious
Majesty,' and as unable to live without his golden calves of 'superiors'
as bees are to exist without a queen, would soon create them; while the
American blood, sprung from the republican Puritan, and developed into
strength on a continent, would very soon, after a nine days' fete to his
new fetish, kick it over, and instituting caucuses and primary
ward-meetings, or 'town-meetings,' (a ceremony which no European in
existence, save the Russian, is capable of properly managing,) would
soon have all back again in the old road.

Democracy among the 'Yankees' as well as all North-Americans who are
free from a servile respect for simple rank and money, is something very
different from that mere form which Brougham, and with him nearly all
Europe, believe it to be. We are not Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or
Orientals, to quietly sit down under any kind of government which chance
may impose, and exclaim: 'It is fate.' Democracy with us is not the mere
form which they imagine. It is, like the English government, like the
German, like the Pachalik of the Oriental, something as much a part of
us as our national physiognomy. A very great proportion of the
Englishmen who come here, remain flunkeys to the end--an American, other
than a soul-diseased disciple of Richmond sociology, or some weak
brother or sister dazed by court ball-tickets--quite as generally remain
a despiser of men who acknowledge other men as their betters by mere
birth. A love of freedom is in our blood, in our life, in our habits. We
are fond, it is true, of temporarily lionizing great people, but we soon
reduce them to our own level. America has shaken down more eminencies
into notorieties than any other country in the world--it is a severe and
terrible ordeal for great foreigners. Our eagerness to behold them is
simply a keen curiosity and a natural love of amusement which is soon
appeased. An American would crowd foremost to see Queen Victoria for the
first time in his life--the