There are a few of us who keep the faith, who do not bow the knee to Baäl, who hold fast to what is high and good in the doctrine of political equality; in whose hearts the altar-fires of rational liberty are kept aglow, beaconing the darkness of that “illimited inane” where their countrymen, inaccessible to the light, wander witless in the bogs of political unreason, alternately adoring and damning the man-made gods of their own stature. Of that bright band fueling the bale-fires of political consistency I can not profess myself a member in good standing. In view of this general recreancy and treason to the principles that our fathers established by the sword—having in constant observation this almost universal hospitality to the solemn nonsense of hereditary rank and unearned distinction, my faith in practical realization of republican ideals is small, and I falter in the work of their maintenance in the interest of a people for whom they are too good. Seeing that we are immune to none of the evils besetting monarchies, excepting those for which we secretly yearn; that inequality of fortune and unjust allotment of honors are as conspicuous among us as elsewhere; that the tyranny of individuals is as intolerable and that of the public more so; that the law’s majesty is a dream and its failure a fact—hearing everywhere the footfalls of disorder and the watchwords of anarchy, I despair of the republic, and catch in every breeze that blows “a cry prophetic of its fall.” I have seen a vast crowd of Americans change color like a field of waving grain, as it uncovered to do such base homage to a petty foreign princess as in her own country she had never received. I have seen full-grown, self-respecting American citizens tremble and go speechless when spoken to by an Emperor of Brazil. I have seen a half-dozen American gentlemen in evening clothes trying to outdo one another in the profundity of their bows in the presence of a nigger King of Hawaii. I have not seen a Chinese “earl” borne in a chair by four Americans officially detailed for the disgraceful service, but it was done, and did not evoke a hiss of disapproval. And I did not—thank Heaven!—observe the mob of American “simple republicans” that dogged the heels of a disreputable little Frenchman who is a count by courtesy only, and those of an English duke quietly attending to his own business of making a living by being a married man. The republican New World is no less impested with servility than the monarchical Old. One form of government may be better than another for this purpose, or for that; all are alike in the futility of their influence upon human character. None can affect man’s instinctive abasement in the contemplation of power and rank.