"I venerate," he says, "the men and their writings; I venerate the literature, the laws, the institutions, and the charities of the land of my fathers. But I deprecate the effects of a blind acquiescence in the opinions of men, and the passive reception of everything that comes from a foreign press. My mind revolts at the reverence for foreign authors, which stifles inquiry, restrains investigation, benumbs the vigor of the intellectual faculties, subdues and debases the mind. I regret to see the young Hercules of genius in America chained to his cradle.... I left college with the same veneration for English writers, and the same confidence in their opinions, which most of my countrymen now possess, and I adopted their errors without examination. After many years of research, I am compelled to withdraw much of that confidence, and to look with astonishment upon the errors and false principles which they have propagated; some of them of far more consequence than any which have been mentioned in the preceding remarks. I wish to be on good terms with the English; it is my interest and the interest of my fellow-citizens to treat them as friends and brethren. But I will be neither frowned nor ridiculed into error, and a servile imitation of practices which I know or believe to be corrupt. I will examine subjects for myself, and endeavor to find the truth, and to defend it, whether it accords with English opinions or not. If I must measure swords with their travelers and their reviewers, on the subject under consideration, I shall not decline the combat. There is nothing which, in my opinion, so debases the genius and character of my countrymen as the implicit confidence they place in English authors, and their unhesitating submission to their opinions, their derision, and their frowns. But I trust the time will come when the English will be convinced that the intellectual faculties of their descendants have not degenerated in America; and that we can contend with them in LETTERS with as much success as upon the OCEAN.