"Would have brooked
Th' eternal devil to keep his state ….
As easily as king,"
Aristocracy found more favour, but likewise perished; "no title of nobility stall be granted;" honours are not devisable. Despotocracy, the worst institution of the middle ages—the leprosy of society—came over the water: the slave survived the priest, the noble, the king. Must the axe of a more terrible Cromwell shear that also away? Shall it be a black Cromwell? History points to St Domingo. The future also has much to teach us. The declaration of principles and of purposes would annihilate slavery; the Constitution nowhere forbids it, but broods over that egg which savage selfishness once laid. How could the liberty-loving North join with Carolina, which rejoiced to fetter men? The unity of action was no longer military—it was commercial, union for trade. Thus the idea of America became an act!
The truths of the Declaration went abroad to do their work. The French Revolution followed with its wide-reaching consequences, so beneficial to mankind; it still goes on. The ground-swell has come near the surface, and all the European sea now foams with tumult. Foreign opposition withdrew; America was left to herself, the sole republic of the world, with the wilderness for her stage and scene, and her great ideas for plot. The two antagonistic elements, the old selfishness which loves those four traditions of the past, the new benevolent instinct of progress which seeks the development of all man's nobler powers, were to fight their battle, while with hope and fear the world looks on. The New World has now broken with the Old—once and for ever.
The peculiar characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon appear now more prominent in the American than in the Britons; yet he is not altered, only developed. The love of individual liberty triumphs continually; the white man becomes more democratic—in Church, State, community, and family. The invasive character appears in the individual and national thirst for land and our rapid geographic spread. Materialism shows itself in the swift growth of covetousness, in the concentration of the talent and genius of the nation upon the acquisition of riches. The
