He Prefers That All These Opinions Of His Shall Bring Themselves Out And Operate By Their Own Intrinsic Weight.

Nor does he at all confine himself to voting, in his anxiety to get the sense of the country.

He takes it in any way that it will show itself, uses it for what it is worth, or perhaps far more than it is worth, and welds it into that gigantic lever by which the political action of the country is moved. Every man in Great Britain, whether he possesses any actual vote or no, can do that which is tantamount to voting every day of his life by the mere expression of his opinion. Public opinion in America has hitherto been nothing, unless it has managed to express itself by a majority of ballot-boxes. Public opinion in England is everything, let votes go as they may. Let the people want a measure, and there is no doubt of their obtaining it. Only the people must want it - as they did want Catholic emancipation, reform, and corn-law repeal, and as they would want war if it were brought home to them that their country was insulted.

In attempting to describe this difference in the political action of the two countries, I am very far from taking all praise for England or throwing any reproach on the States. The political action of the States is undoubtedly the more logical and the clearer. That, indeed, of England is so illogical and so little clear that it would be quite impossible for any other nation to assume it, merely by resolving to do so. Whereas the political action of the States might be assumed by any nation to-morrow, and all its strength might be carried across the water in a few written rules as are the prescriptions of a physician or the regulations of an infirmary. With us the thing has grown of habit, has been fostered by tradition, has crept up uncared for, and in some parts unnoticed. It can be written in no book, can be described in no words, can be copied by no statesmen, and I almost believe can be understood by no people but that to whose peculiar uses it has been adapted.

In speaking as I have here done of American taste and American politics, I must allude to a special class of Americans who are to be met more generally in New York than elsewhere - men who are educated, who have generally traveled, who are almost always agreeable, but who, as regards their politics, are to me the most objectionable of all men. As regards taste they are objectionable to me also. But that is a small thing; and as they are quite as likely to be right as I am, I will say nothing against their taste. But in politics it seems to me that these men have fallen into the bitterest and perhaps into the basest of errors. Of the man who begins his life with mean political ideas, having sucked them in with his mother's milk, there may be some hope.

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