d looked upon society rather in the mass than in
detail, and who regarded the happiness of America but as the first
link in a series of universal victories; for his full faith in the
power of those results of civil liberty which he saw all around him
led him to foresee that it would, erelong, prevail in other countries,
and that the social millennium of Europe would usher in the political.
When I mentioned to him the difference I perceived between the
inhabitants of New England and of the Southern States, he remarked: 'I
esteem those people greatly; they are the stamina of the Union and its
greatest benefactors. They are continually spreading themselves too,
to settle and enlighten less favored quarters. Dr. Franklin is a New
Englander.' When I remarked that his observations were flattering to
my country, he replied, with great good-humor, 'Yes, yes, Mr. Bernard,
but I consider your country the cradle of free principles, not their
armchair. Liberty in England is a sort of idol; people are bred up in
the belief and love of it, but see little of its doings. They walk
about freely, but then it is between high walls; and the error of its
government was in supposing that after a portion of their subjects had
crossed the sea to live upon a common, they would permit their friends
at home to build up those walls about them.' A black coming in at this
moment with a jug of spring water, I could not repress a smile, which
the general at once interpreted. 'This may seem a contradiction,' he
continued, 'but I think you must perceive that it is neither a crime
nor an absurdity. When we profess, as our fundamental principle, that
liberty is the inalienable right of every man, we do not include
madmen or idiots; liberty in their hands would become a scourge. Till
the mind of the slave has been educated to perceive what are the
obligations of a state of freedom, and not confound a man's with a
brute's, the gift would insure its abuse. We might as well be asked
to pull down our old warehouses before trade has increased to demand
enlarged new ones. Both houses and slaves were bequeathed to us by
Europeans, and time alone can change them; an event, sir, which, you
may believe me, no man desires more heartily than I do. Not only do I
pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can already foresee
that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the
existence of our Union, by consolidating it in a common bond of
principle.'