ch is
afraid lest the Tories of Maga should gain a preponderating influence
in the minds of educated American youth. Why is it absurd to suppose
that, if given up to such teachers, the next generation of educated
Americans will be less democratic? In republican countries, the
_studiosi novarum rerum_ are always the well-bred and the travelled.
Wealth and foreign associations must produce, in a nation, the same
effects that fortune and admission to society create in a family. A
love of simplicity and of home give place to a sense of the importance
of fashion, and the value of whatever is valued by the world at large.
_Give us a king that we may be like other nations_, was not an outcry
peculiar to antiquity and to the Hebrews. In like circumstances, 'tis
the language of man's heart. It is an appetite to which all nations
come at last. Cincinnatus and his farmer's frock may do at the
beginning; but the end must be Caesar and the purple. Republics breed
in quick succession their Catilines and their Octavius. They run to
seed in empire, and so fructify into kingdoms--the staple form of
nations. The instinctive yearning for the first change is sure to be
developed as soon as the exhilaration of conquest makes evident the
importance of concentrated strength, and imperial splendour. If so,
the hour that will try the stability of this republic cannot be
distant. Already I have heard Americans complaining of the
thanklessness of bleeding for such a government as theirs; and
remarking, that under an empire, the army would return from Mexico
with Field-Marshal the Earl of Buena Vista, and Generals Lord Viscount
Vera-Cruz, Lord Worth of Monterey; Sir John Wool, Bart, and Sir Peter
Twiggs, Knight; and that the other officers would have as many
decorations on their breasts as feathers in their caps! The truth is,
that for lack of such baubles, they will all take their turns as
Presidents of the United States. But I cannot say that honest
democrats are altogether to be laughed at, for rightly estimating the
effects of a literature exclusively foreign, and generally adverse to
the manners and institutions of a people whose strength is to "dwell
alone, and not to be numbered among the nations."

If you are meditating an article for Maga on American copyright, you
may employ my information for the purpose; but it will not be fair to
leave out of view the most efficient objections which are urged by
anti-copyright politicians, two of whi