a jack. We
use "another kind of common sense." At the very foundation of our
political system lies the denial of hereditary and artificial rank. Our
fathers created this government as a protest against all that, and all
that it implies. They virtually declared that kings and noblemen could
not breathe here, and no American loyal to the principles of the
Revolution which made him one will ever say in his own country "Your
Majesty" or "Your Lordship"--the words would choke him and they ought.

There are a few of us who keep the faith, who do not bow the knee
to Baal, who hold fast to what is high and good in the doctrine of
political equality; in whose hearts the altar-fires of rational liberty
are kept aglow, beaconing the darkness of that illimitable inane where
their countrymen, inaccessible to the light, wander witless in the bogs
of political unreason, alternately adoring and damning the man-made
gods of their own stature. Of that bright band fueling the bale-fires
of political consistency I can not profess myself a member in good
standing. In view of this general recreancy and treason to the
principles that our fathers established by the sword--having in constant
observation this almost universal hospitality to the solemn nonsense
of hereditary rank and unearned distinction, my faith in practical
realization of republican ideals is small, and I falter in the work
of their maintenance in the interest of a people for whom they are
too good. Seeing that we are immune to none of the evils besetting
monarchies, excepting those for which we secretly yearn; that inequality
of fortune and unjust allotment of honors are as conspicuous among us as
elsewhere; that the tyranny of individuals is as intolerable, and that
of the public more so; that the law's majesty is a dream and its failure
a fact--hearing everywhere the footfalls of disorder and the watchwords
of anarchy, I despair of the republic and catch in every breeze that
blows "a cry prophetic of its fall."

I have seen a vast crowd of Americans change color like a field of
waving grain, as it uncovered to do such base homage to a petty foreign
princess as in her own country she had never received. I have seen
full-grown, self-respecting American citizens tremble and go speechless
when spoken to by the Emperor of Brazil. I have seen a half-dozen
American gentlemen in evening clothes trying to outdo one another in the
profundity of their bows in the presence of the nig