a rational opinion upon
a question which offers so many difficulties to the most experienced
statesmen. The Bank is a great establishment which enjoys an independent
existence, and the people, accustomed to make and unmake whatsoever it
pleases, is startled to meet with this obstacle to its authority. In the
midst of the perpetual fluctuation of society the community is irritated
by so permanent an institution, and is led to attack it in order to see
whether it can be shaken and controlled, like all the other institutions
of the country.

Remains Of The Aristocratic Party In The United States

Secret opposition of wealthy individuals to democracy--Their
retirement--Their taste for exclusive pleasures and for luxury at
home--Their simplicity abroad--Their affected condescension towards the
people.

It sometimes happens in a people amongst which various opinions prevail
that the balance of the several parties is lost, and one of them obtains
an irresistible preponderance, overpowers all obstacles, harasses its
opponents, and appropriates all the resources of society to its own
purposes. The vanquished citizens despair of success and they conceal
their dissatisfaction in silence and in general apathy. The nation seems
to be governed by a single principle, and the prevailing party assumes
the credit of having restored peace and unanimity to the country. But
this apparent unanimity is merely a cloak to alarming dissensions and
perpetual opposition.

This is precisely what occurred in America; when the democratic party
got the upper hand, it took exclusive possession of the conduct of
affairs, and from that time the laws and the customs of society have
been adapted to its caprices. At the present day the more affluent
classes of society are so entirely removed from the direction of
political affairs in the United States that wealth, far from conferring
a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of
attaining to it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the lists,
through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain,
against the poorest classes of their fellow citizens. They concentrate
all their enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy
a rank which cannot be assumed in public; and they constitute a private
society in the State, which has its own tastes and its own pleasures.
They submit to this state of things as an irremediable evil, but they
are careful