And Now, Being Formally Declared To Have Been Legally Chosen, He
Again Bowed Most Profoundly, And Returned Thanks For The Great
Honour Done Him, When A Well-Dressed Man, Whose Name I Could Not
Learn, Stepped Forward, And In A Well-Indited Speech Congratulated
Both The Chosen And The Choosers.
"Upon my word," said a gruff
carter who stood near me, "that man speaks well."
Even little boys clambered up and hung on the rails and on the lamp-
posts; and as if the speeches had also been addressed to them, they
too listened with the utmost attention, and they too testified their
approbation of it by joining lustily in the three cheers and waving
their hats.
All the enthusiasm of my earliest years kindled by the patriotism of
the illustrious heroes of Rome. Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and
Antony were now revived in my mind; and though all I had just seen
and heard be, in fact, but the semblance of liberty, and that, too,
tribunitial liberty, yet at that moment I thought it charming, and
it warmed my heart. Yes, depend on it, my friend, when you here see
how, in the happy country, the lowest and meanest member of society
thus unequivocally testifies the interest which he takes in
everything of a public nature; when you see how even women and
children bear a part in the great concerns of their country; in
short, how high and low, rich and poor, all concur in declaring
their feelings and their convictions that a carter, a common tar, or
a scavenger, is still a man - nay, an Englishman, and as such has his
rights and privileges defined and known as exactly and as well as
his king, or as his king's minister - take my word for it, you will
feel yourself very differently affected from what you are when
staring at our soldiers in their exercises at Berlin.
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