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. The evil is at any rate the fault of his forefathers rather than of himself.

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