CHAPTER VIII.
Return Home.—A Passage from the Edinburgh Review, apologetical of American Federalism.—Speculation on the Subject.—Little Reward of Democracy in the United States.—The Higher Classes contending for the Purse.—Consequence of this Policy.—Declaration of an American Reviewer with regard to American Poets—their Reward in Europe.—Falling asleep.—The Nightmare.
“The earth has bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them.”
Macbeth, Act i. Scene 3.
On my return home, I found it impossible for me to go to sleep. The events of the day were yet fresh upon my mind, and I required some abstraction to set my thoughts to rest, and efface the disagreeable impressions produced by the conversation of the stranger. Undetermined as to the means of escaping from my own reflections, I searched the books and papers on my writing-table; where, unfortunately for my quiet, I happened to glance my eye on an American republication of the “Edinburgh Review,” and a few scattered numbers of the “Southern Literary Messenger.” I mechanically opened the first, and, as misfortune would have it, found my attention at once riveted by the following passage:—
“Purge the British constitution of its corruptions,” said Adams, “and give to the popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect institution ever devised by the wit of man.”
“Purge it of its corruptions,” replied Hamilton, “and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government that ever existed.”
These remarks, I thought, proceeding from the two saints by which the American Whigs still swear on solemn occasions, prove at least Hamilton to have been the abler statesman, though they are both clearly indicative of the spirit which pervaded some of the leading patriots of the revolution.
Anxious to learn the opinion of a British writer on so interesting a subject, I read on, and was struck with the following good-natured apology for the doctrines and sentiments of the old Federalists.
“The leaning of the Federalists towards monarchy and aristocracy,” says the reviewer, “has probably at all times been a good deal exaggerated by their antagonists. That there is, at the present time, hardly any such feeling, may be easily admitted; and it has probably been wearing out by degrees ever since the revolution, in proportion as men saw that realised without a struggle (!), which many in America, and still more in England, had deemed impossible,—the firm establishment of a republican government over many millions of people, with sufficient power to preserve order at home, and sufficient energy to maintain the relations of peace and war. But, at the first, no reasonable doubt can be entertained of the fondness for monarchical institutions which prevailed among the leading Federalists.”