The moveable, moneyed aristocracy of our times I consider as the greatest enemy of mankind, in comparison to which all the terrors of the feudal system are as nothing. The nobility of the middle ages offered to the people protection for vassalage, and set them the example of chivalry and valour. A mere moneyed aristocracy, on the contrary, enslaves the people without giving them an equivalent, introducing everywhere the most sordid principles of selfishness, to the exclusion of every noble and disinterested sentiment. A mere moneyed preponderance of one class of citizens over the other, does not form an historical link between the present and the past; neither does it, like the masses, represent the interests of mankind in general. All its tendencies are downwards, reducing a people gradually to a degree of moral degradation, from which perhaps they might have been saved by the presence of a powerful nobility of family.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Public opinion sways the country in all respects except in matters of taste, which are entirely settled by the higher orders.
CHAPTER III.
Maternal Affections of American Ladies—their Cause.—Want of Romance in the Lives of American Gentlemen.—Moral and Religious Cant.—Daniel Webster’s Principle of resisting arrogant Innovation.—Reflections on the Democratic, Aristocratic, and Monarchical Forms of Government.—The Bunker Hill Monument.—Want of Patriotism in the Higher Classes of Americans.—The English Feeling in Boston.—Americans passing for Englishmen in Europe.—Anecdotes.—The American Aristocracy take the House of Lords under their Protection.—Their Contempt for the Western Settlers.—The American Character not understood in Europe.
“And as for Heaven ‘being love,’ why not say ‘honey
Is wax?’ Heaven is not love, ’tis matrimony.”
Byron.
“When I again saw my cicerone, I communicated to him my surprise at seeing so few women frequenting theatres, concerts, and other places of amusement. To one lady seen at the theatre there are at least three or four gentlemen; whereas at church the relation is the reverse, proving the ladies to be much more piously inclined than the men.
“Our women,” he said, “are too much confined at home, attending on their children; and yet this, and going to church, constitute their only pleasures in this world. Ours is yet a country in which preachers are better paid than actors and musicians; and a seat in a pew of one of our fashionable ‘meeting-houses’ is offered you with the same ceremonious politeness, as, in Italy, a box at the opera.”