sufficiently wide eligibility to feed the fires of patriotic ambition.
All could not be Smiths, but many could marry into the family.

The Harrison "progress" left its heritage of shame, whereof each abaser
would gladly have washed the hands of him in his neighbor's basin. All
this was in due order of Nature, and was to have been expected. It was
a phenomenon of the same character as, in the loves of the low, the
squabbling consequent upon satiety and shame. We could not slink out
of sight; we could deny our sycophancy, albeit we might give it another
name; but we could somewhat medicine our damaged self-esteem by dealing
damnation 'round on one another. The blush of shame turned easily to the
glow of indignation, and many a hot hatred was kindled at the rosy flame
of self-contempt. Persons conscious of having dishonored themselves are
doubly sensitive to any indignity put upon them by others. The vices and
follies of human nature are interdependent; they do not move alone,
nor are they singly aroused to activity. In my judgment, this entire
incident of the President's "tour" was infinitely discreditable to
President and people. I do not go into the question of his motive in
making it. Be that what it may, the manner of it seems to me an
outrage upon all the principles and sentiments underlying republican
institutions. In all but the name it was a "royal progress"--the same
costly ostentation, the same civic and military pomp, the same solemn
and senseless adulation, the same abasement of spirit of the Many before
the One. And according to republican traditions, ten thousand times a
year affirmed, in every way in which affirmation is possible, we fondly
persuade ourselves, as a true faith in the hearts of our hearts,
that the One is the inferior of the Many! And it is no mere political
catch-phrase: he _is_ their servant; he _is_ their creature; all that
in him to which they grovel (dignifying and justifying their instinctive
and inherited servility by names as false as anything in ceremonial
imposture) they themselves have made, as truly as the heathen has
made the wooden god before which he performs his unmanly rite. It
is precisely this thing--the superiority of the people to their
servants--that constitutes, and was by our fathers understood to
constitute, the essential, fundamental difference between the monarchial
system which they uprooted and the democratic one which they planted in
its stead. Deluded men! how li