on of politicians,
concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our
children's children who may perchance be really free. We tax ourselves
unjustly. There is a part of us which is not represented. It is taxation
without representation. We quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle
of all sorts upon ourselves. We quarter our gross bodies on our poor
souls, till the former eat up all the latter's substance.

With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially
provincial still, not metropolitan,--mere Jonathans. We are provincial,
because we do not find at home our standards,--because we do not worship
truth, but the reflection of truth,--because we are warped and narrowed
by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and
agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country-bumpkins, they
betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to
settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did
I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their "good
breeding" respects only secondary objects. The finest manners in the
world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer
intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere
courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes, out of date. It is the
vice, but not the excellence of manners, that they are continually being
deserted by the character; they are cast-off clothes or shells, claiming
the respect which belonged to the living creature. You are presented
with the shells instead of the meat, and it is no excuse generally,
that, in the case of some fishes, the shells are of more worth than the
meat. The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to
insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to
see himself. It was not in this sense that the poet Decker called Christ
"the first true gentleman that ever breathed." I repeat that in this
sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having
authority to consult about Trans-alpine interests only, and not the
affairs of Rome. A praetor or proconsul would suffice to settle the
questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the
American Congress.

Government and legislation! these I thought were respectable
professions. We have heard of heaven-born Numas, Lycurguses, and Solons,
in th