All forms of government have their strength and their weakness. They are
not equally suitable to all races and to all circumstances. It was
this obvious truth that Jefferson tore to shreds before the eyes of his
compatriots. He persuaded them to accept his vague generalities as
a sober statement of philosophic truth, and he aroused a hatred of
kingship in America which was comic in expression and disastrous in
result. It was due to his influence that plain citizens hymned the
glories of "Guillotina, the Tenth Muse," and fell down in worship before
a Phrygian cap. It was due to his influence that in 1793 the death
of Louis XVI. was celebrated throughout the American continent with
grotesque symbolism and farcical solemnity. A single instance is enough
to prove the malign effect of Jefferson's teaching. At Philadelphia the
head of a pig was severed from its body, and saluted as an emblem of the
murdered king.
"Each one," says the historian, "placing the cap of liberty upon his
head, pronounced the word 'tyrant'! and proceeded to mangle with his
knife the head of the luckless creature doomed to be served for so
unworthy a company." And the voice of Jefferson still speaks in the
land. Obedient to his dictate, Americans still take a sentimental
view of Liberty. For them Liberty is still an emotion to feel, not a
privilege to enjoy. They are willing to believe that a monarch means
slavery. America is the greatest republic on earth, they argue, and
therefore it is the chosen and solitary home of Freedom.
So, ignoring the peculiar enslavements of democracy, forgetting the
temptations to which the noblest republic is exposed, they proclaim a
monopoly of the sovereign virtue, and cast a cold eye of disdain upon
the tradition of older countries. The author of 'Triumphant Democracy,'
for instance, asserts that he "was denied political equality by his
native land." We do not know for what offence he was thus heavily
punished, and it is consoling to reflect that the beloved Republic has
made him "the peer of any man." It has not made any other man his peer.
He is separated far more widely by his wealth from the workmen, whom he
patronises, than the meanest day-labourer in England from the dukes to
whom he is supposed to bend the knee; and if Mr Carnegie's be the
fine flower of American Liberty, we need hardly regret that ours is of
another kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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