1799 there were no shabbier Democrats than those of Connecticut. If we
may judge of the old race by a few surviving specimens, we may pardon
our poets, if they added contempt to theoretical disapprobation, and, in
their eagerness to

"Confound their politics"

and

"Expose their knavish tricks,"

allowed their feelings to exaggerate the unpleasant traits of the master
and of his disciples.

The Hartford men were on the losing side. Federalism expired with the
election of Monroe. Its degenerate successor, Whiggism, had no
principles of value, and only lagged in the rear of the Democratic
advance. Statesmanship and good sense went hopelessly down before the
discipline of party and the hunger for office; and with each year it
became easier to catch a well-meaning, but short-sighted public in any
trap baited with the usual _ad captandum_ commonplaces. We are very
frequently told that "History is philosophy teaching by example,"--one
of those copy-book apophthegms which people love to repeat as if they
contained important truth. But the teachings of history or of philosophy
never reach the ears of the multitude; they are drowned by the din of
selfish rogues or of blind enthusiasts. Poor stupid humanity goes round
and round like a mill-horse in a dreary ring of political follies. The
cast-off sophisms and rhetorical rubbish of a past generation are
patched up, scoured, and offered to the credulous present as something
novel and excellent. People do not know how often the rotten stuff has
been used and thrown away, and accept it readily. After a while, they
discover to their cost, as their ancestors did before them, that it is
good for nothing. But even if it were possible to have a grand
international patent-office for political devices, where the venerable
machines, so often reinvented to break down again, could be labelled
worthless, and exhibited to all the world, I fear that the newest pet
demagogue would persuade the voters of his district, in spite of their
eyes, that he had contrived an improvement to make some one of the
rickety old things work. No wonder that Dr. Franklin lost patience, when
he saw how sadly reason was perverted by ignorance, selfishness, and
wickedness, and wished "that mankind had never been endowed with a
reasoning faculty, since they know so little how to make use of it, and
so often mislead themselves by it, and that they had been furnished with
a good sensible instinct instead of