Francis J. Grund

“ There are toad-eaters in politics as well as in society. A man may be a toad-eater to the mob as well as to those above him; and I do not know which of the two kinds is the worst. We have a set of political sycophants who fawn and cringe before every party that is in power, and who are always the first to desert them at the least mauvais contretemps. Our democracy has no greater enemies than those twaddles. ”

“ What noble principles which they cherish, will thereby be trodden in the dust? What protection which they give to arts and sciences, will thereby suffer? Echo must answer, ‘What?’—Daniel Webster, the gentleman there with the hawk-eyes, told us that the war between the democrats and the aristocracy is a war of the poor against the rich; and I am inclined to think he is half right,—as far, namely, as concerns his own party. But if wealth form the only distinction, the only claim to supremacy in our country, the sooner we get rid of its influence the better. ”

“ General Jackson has a peculiar way of addressing himself to the feelings of every man with whom he comes in contact. His simple, unostentatious manners carry into every heart the conviction of his honesty; while the firmness of his character inspires his friends with the hope of success. His motto always was, ‘Never sacrifice a friend to an enemy;’ or, ‘Make yourself strong with your friends, and you need not fear your foes.’ These things, however, must be born with a man; they must be spontaneous, and felt as such by the people, or they lose the best part of their effect. ”

“ Here is a free people voluntarily reducing itself to a state of the most odious social bondage, for no other object but to maintain an imaginary superiority over those classes in whom, according to the constitution of their country, all real power is vested; and here are the labouring classes, probably for the first time permitted to legislate for themselves, worshipping wealth in its most hideous colours! Here, then, is a society formed as nearly as possible on the abstract theory of equality ”

“ It is high time for the Americans to leave off the barbarous and ridiculous notion that a man, in order to be a statesman, a lawyer, an orator, or a man of business, must necessarily be a bore in society. I was once present when an American, who was in the habit of delivering gratuitous lectures on morality, was asked by a Frenchman what sort of impression the sight of a beautiful and lovely woman made upon him? ”

“ In the same manner it has been said of General Jackson that he is incapable of writing a good English sentence, as if this were the standard by which to measure the capacity of a political chief, especially in America, where, out of a hundred senators and representatives, scarcely one has received what in Europe would be called a literary education. If classical learning were to constitute the scale by which to measure the talents of our statesmen, how far would they not rank behind the paltriest Prussian schoolmaster! ”

“ If Michel Chevalier is right in believing that the nature of man is too corrupt to be governed by a pure democracy, then I would, with my Boston cicerone, prefer at once an aristocracy of family and hereditary property, with chivalrous notions of honour and justice, to a cold, calculating preponderance of moneyed men, which, though it may to a certain extent stimulate enterprise and industry, establishes nevertheless a mean numerical scale of worth, the most distressing of all to the lofty aspirations of high-minded men. ”

“ I believe I am not altogether wrong in asserting that the American daily press, though its influence on national politics is prodigious, is nevertheless in its composition, character, and moral force, scarcely to be compared to the mass of talent employed in this branch of literature in Europe.
There is scarcely a paper in any of the large cities of the United States which has a decided political character—advocating some great historical principle, and employing in its warfare other weapons than common-place dialectics, and constant appeals to the passions of its subscribers. ”

“ There is a species of republicanism which may assume all the odious features of aristocracy; and there is an aristocracy, in the true sense of the word, which may act as a stimulus to liberty and national honour. If there be one truth which the history of modern times has proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, it is this,—that the wealthy bourgeoisie, where it succeeded in obtaining power, has been a ruder tyrant of the lower classes than the hereditary nobility whom it deprived of their political influence. ”

“ The aristocracy of the Quakers consists not so much in wealth as in family, and this circumstance has given to the society of Philadelphia a tone decidedly superior to that of New York. Though much more exclusive and less hospitable than the New-Yorkers, the Philadelphians are more agreeable and elegant in their manners. They have more of the à-plomb of gentlemen. There is less motion and more dignity in their carriage; and you can see, from an hundred little circumstances, that the higher classes have the advantage of a generation over the ordinary run of aristocrats in the United States. ”

“ As long as the rich men in America think it more creditable to themselves to compete with the wages of the poor by assuming a part of their labour, than by cultivating the higher branches of knowledge to increase the floating intellect, American society may abound in common sense, but it will prove the grave of talent and genius. ”

“ I never want to see an aristocrat until he is ready to put on white gloves; our ‘ungloved,’ ‘unwashed’ aristocrats are to me an object of horror. No tyranny is more odious than that of an overgrown bourgeoisie. Being less removed from the lower classes, their tyranny is more felt; and not being placed sufficiently above competition, they are incapable of taking any lofty, disinterested views with regard to the government of the people, whom they half fear and half despise. ”

“ There is no other real distinction of parties in the United States, except, that one really does or means to do what it says; while the other is saying one thing, and preparing or hoping to be able to do another. There is more political hypocrisy in this country than perhaps anywhere else,—not among the people, but among ‘the upper classes;’ owing to the basis of our society being purely democratic, and the superstructure a lamentable imitation of the usages of Europe. ”

“ Is not every such sympathy expressed by our people—I mean by the mass of our population—laughed to scorn by our ‘respectable’ citizens; and are not nine-tenths of all the Americans travelling in Europe a living parody of our republican institutions? Has not even Cooper written half a dozen books on England, Italy, France, &c. as if his main purpose were to teach his countrymen good manners, and to convince them that he is a competent instructor, having himself been admitted into the best society? ”

“ The Washington Hotel, therefore, is frequented by such gentlemen and ladies as have acquired competency without wealth, respectability without family dating of more than one generation, and a common-place routine of fashion without having had the advantage of a trip to Europe,—in short, by such as in Boston form the second society, and with whom the first society never, even by chance, exchange any kind of civility. ”

“ I speak of the rich, calculating Bostonians, who really live on their property; not of your wealthy men in New York, who live on nine months’ credit. Besides, you yourself will allow that your aristocracy is far from being generally well educated, and I do not see how this fault is to be remedied as long as wealth constitutes the chief title to good society.
“Your aristocracy, therefore, has not the power of dazzling the lower classes with that air of self-possession and dignity by which gentlemen of rank are at once recognised in Europe. ”

“ There is nothing so vulgar as imagination without taste.—And you men of family, without fashion! study aristocracy in the classics, rather than in the newspaper polemics of the day; or, if this should prove too tedious, read the history of the Italian republics. There was a time in Florence when every nobleman was obliged to have a trade, and yet Florence produced the Medici; why should you be ashamed to imitate so high an example? or are you afraid lest all your tradespeople should wish to become noblemen? ”

“ If such is the tendency towards decay in all human institutions, how jealous ought the people to be of the most trifling privileges, arrogated exclusively by certain classes.
And what species of tyranny is worse than that which attempts to control a man’s private actions, his worship, his domestic arrangements, and his pleasures? What can be more absurd than for a certain class, for the most part not a whit better educated than the rest, to assume the dictatorship in all matters relating to politics, religion, or the arts? ”

“ I prefer a downright aristocracy with avowed [Pg 102] motives and principles, to a jesuitical nobility of ‘influential citizens.’ You must respect the perseverance and iron consequence of a Duke of Wellington; but you cannot but despise the cringing pride of our Tory politicians. If we are doomed to have artificial distinctions,—if we must have an aristocracy after the model of that of Europe,—let us, for mercy’s sake! import it ready made; the gradual process of growing it ourselves is too tedious, and the minute details too disgusting, not to put the best of us out of humour. ”

“ We constantly refer each other’s manners, doctrines, and principles to those which are current in Europe; but, when an European ventures to imitate our example, we cannot contain our wrath at his impertinence. We do not object to the standard of comparison, but to the comparison itself; because we claim for ourselves the exclusive faculty of arriving at just conclusions. Our best society is but a sorry caricature of that of Europe, and yet we get angry when an European attempts to depict it. Our fate is indeed the most singular. No one can understand us ”

“ To judge of a man like General Jackson, one must not analyze him after the manner of a chemist; one must not separate his talents—his oratory—his style of composition—his generalship, &c.; but take the tout ensemble of the man, and I venture to say there is not such another in the United States. It is useless to draw envious comparisons between him and Washington, Wellington, Napoleon, Jefferson, and so forth. Great men always wear the imprints of the times and circumstances which call their talents into action ”

“ I have heard more talk about aristocracy and family in the United States than during my whole previous life in Europe. You embitter your enjoyments and pleasures by endeavouring to exclude from them all that come after you; and, in doing so, wound the feelings of many an honest man, who, but for a little more urbanity on your part, would be your friend instead of your enemy. ”

“ Politics with him do not consist in a mere series of cold rules and maxims, in order to obtain a particular object; he is an enthusiast, full of faith in the people and in the perfectibility of human nature, and deeply imbued with the purest religious sentiments. No abstract argument can drive him from his position, for he is nothing separate. He is a politician, a soldier, an enthusiast for the rights of the people, and a Christian at the same time. If the politician is convinced, there remain still the soldier, the enthusiast, and the Christian to be satisfied ”

“ I have seen the wives of planters watch at the sick-bed of their slaves, and perform acts of charity which the misconstrued self-esteem of our Northern people would have deemed menial, merely because the feelings of kindness and gratitude, which are strongest in the Southern States, are, with us, construed into obligation and payment; two things which effectually destroy all poetry of life, even in the relation of parents to their children. I am not here disposed to underrate the miseries of slavery, as they will always appear to the mind of an European ”

“ If you believe them, no other people but the English are born with a political understanding or forecast: why then should the English, who come here, not apply the same doctrines also to the Americans? and why should they not, occasionally, join our own fashionable people in depreciating the advantages of our government, and speak disrespectfully of those whom ourselves are accustomed to treat with so little ceremony? ”

“ If any of the two great parties which divide the United States, as they do the rest of the world, should ever succeed in breaking up and destroying the other; if any one of them were to establish itself so firmly in power, as to make its political antagonists wholly despair of overthrowing it by constitutional means; then one of two great evils would necessarily ensue,—political indifference on the part of a great number of industrious and wealthy citizens; or a lawless opposition, not to the party in power, but to the institutions under which they hold it. ”

“ I have heard gentlemen in the Northern States boast of having worked sixteen hours a day in a manufactory, or in a store, as if they had actually benefited the world with their manual labour. The thought never struck them that they might have been more useful to society by employing poor men to do the same work for them, and reserving their faculties, if such they had, for some occupation that had some relish of intellect in it. ”

“ In a country in which so large a portion of the people consider the acquiring of a fortune the only rational object of pursuit,—in which so great and so exclusive an importance is attached to money, that, with a few solitary exceptions, it is the only means of arriving at personal distinction,—a character like Jackson’s, so perfectly disinterested, and so entirely devoted to what he at least deemed the good of his country, could not but excite astonishment and admiration among the natural, and therefore more susceptible, people of the Western States. ”

“ What astonished me most was, that most of the gentlemen, very unlike those of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, did not leave table in order immediately to attend to business; but merely to walk or stand on the piazza, smoke, read the papers, or talk politics.
Washington, as I observed before, is the only city of idlers in the whole Union; and, for a man that is not a manufacturer or a merchant, quite an agreeable residence. ”

“ The Capitol is, in point of fashion, the opera-house of the city; the House of Representatives being the crush-room. In the absence of a decent theatre, the Capitol furnishes a tolerable place of rendezvous, and is on that account frequented during the whole season—from December until April or May—by every lounger in the place, and by every belle that wishes to become the fashion.
After speaking and talking is over in the Senate, the idlers commence the regular performance of eating, which is no sort of amusement to any one in America who is obliged to dine at an ordinary. ”

“ Hardly one besides our entertainer, who, though perhaps no longer equal to what he was, possesses, nevertheless, more business tact, and writes better English, than any one of his colleagues. And yet all these men have pretensions to literature, and imagine themselves capable of judging the literary productions of others. What man of talent would under such circumstances not rather appeal to England, and be judged by his peers, than trust to the decisions of his countrymen? ”