ess, and with which to employ their human veneration.
The will of the majority becomes their refuge and unwritten law. The few
free-minded resist this will, when it is in opposition to their own, and
the slavish many submit. This is accordingly found to be the most
conspicuous fault of the Americans. Their cautious subservience to
public opinion,--their deficiency of moral independence,--is the crying
sin of their society. Again, the social equality by which the whole of
life is laid open to all in a democratic republic, in which every man
who has power in him may attain all to which that power is a requisite,
cannot but enhance the importance of each in the eyes of all; and the
consequence is a mutual respect and deference, and also a mutual
helpfulness, which are in themselves virtues of a high order, and
preparatives for others. In these the Americans are exercised and
accomplished to a degree never generally attained in any other country.
This class of virtues constitutes their distinguishing honour, their
crowning grace in the company of nations.--Activity and ingenuity are a
matter of course where every man's lot is in his own hands.
Unostentatious hospitality and charity might, in some democracies, be
likely to languish; but the Americans have the wealth of a young
country, and the warmth of a young national existence, as stimulus and
warrant for pecuniary liberality of every kind.--Popular vanity, and the
subservience of political representatives, are the chief dangers which
remain to be alluded to; and there will probably be no republic for ages
where these will not be found in the form of prevalent vices.--If, under
a feudal system, there is a wholesome exercise of reverence in the
worship of ancestry, there is, under the opposite system, a no less
salutary and perpetual impulse to generosity in the care for posterity.
The one has been, doubtless, a benignant influence, tempering the
ruggedness and violence of despotism; the other will prove an elevating
force, lifting men above the personal selfishness and mutual
subservience which are the besetting perils of equals who unite to
govern by their common will.

Whatever may be his philosophy of individual character, the reflective
observer cannot travel, with his mind awake, without admitting that
there can be no question but that national character is formed, or
largely influenced, by the gigantic circumstances which, being the
product of no individual mind, ar