no disparagement to a
Gentleman born, especially to a younger Brother," yet I conceive that he
would hardly have made a like exception in favour of the particular
trade in question. Nor do I believe that such aristocracy as exists at
the South (for I hold, with Marius, _fortissimum quemque
generosissimum_) will be found an element of anything like persistent
strength in war,--thinking the saying of Lord Bacon (whom one quaintly
called _inductionis dominus et Verulamii_) as true as it is pithy,
that, "the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies." It is odd
enough as an historical precedent, that, while the fathers of New
England were laying deep in religion, education, and freedom the basis
of a polity which has substantially outlasted any then existing, the
first work of the founders of Virginia, as may be seen in Wingfield's
_Memorial_, was conspiracy and rebellion,--odder yet, as showing
the changes which are wrought by circumstance, that the first
insurrection in South Carolina was against the aristocratical scheme of
the Proprietary Government. I do not find that the cuticular aristocracy
of the South has added anything to the refinements of civilization
except the carrying of bowie-knives and the chewing of tobacco,--a
high-toned Southern gentleman being commonly not only _quadrumanous_,
but _quidruminant_.

I confess that the present letter of Mr. Sawin increases my doubts as to
the sincerity of the convictions which he professes, and I am inclined
to think that the triumph of the legitimate Government, sure sooner or
later to take place, will find him and a large majority of his
newly-adopted fellow-citizens (who hold with Daedalus, the primal
sitter-on-the-fence, that _medium tenere tutissimum_) original
Union men. The criticisms toward the close of his letter on certain of
our failings are worthy to be seriously perpended, for he is not, as I
think, without a spice of vulgar shrewdness. As to the good-nature in us
which he seems to gird at, while I would not consecrate a chapel, as
they have not scrupled to do in France, to _Notre Dame de la
Haine_, Our Lady of Hate, yet I cannot forget that the corruption of
good-nature is the generation of laxity of principle. Good-nature is our
national characteristick; and though it be, perhaps, nothing more than a
culpable weakness or cowardice, when it leads us to put up tamely with
manifold impositions and breaches of implied contracts, (as too
frequently in