Mr. Dodge was as good as his word, and the account appeared. The press throughout the country seized with avidity on any thing that helped to fill its columns. No one appeared disposed to inquire into the truth of the account, or after the character of the original authority. It was in print, and that struck the great majority of the editors and their readers, as a sufficient sanction. Few, indeed, were they, who lived so much under a proper self-control, as to hesitate; and this rank injustice was done a private citizen, as much without moral restraint, as without remorse, by those, who, to take their own accounts of the matter, were the regular and habitual champions of human rights!
John Effingham pointed out this extraordinary scene of reckless wrong, to his wondering cousin, with the cool sarcasm, with which he was apt to assail the weaknesses and crimes of the country. His firmness, united to that of his cousin, however, put a stop to the publication of the resolutions of Aristabulus's meeting, and when a sufficient time had elapsed to prove that these prurient denouncers of their fellow-citizens had taken wit in their anger, he procured them, and had them published himself, as the most effectual means of exposing the real character of the senseless mob, that had thus disgraced liberty, by assuming its professions and its usages.
To an observer of men, the end of this affair presented several strong points for comment. As soon as the truth became generally known, in reference to the real ownership, and the public came to ascertain that instead of hitherto possessing a right, it had, in fact been merely enjoying a favour, those who had commit ted themselves by their arrogant assumptions of facts, and their indecent outrages, fell back on their self-love, and began to find excuses for their conduct in that of the other party. Mr. Effingham was loudly condemned for not having done the very thing, he, in truth, had done, viz: telling the public it did not own his property; and when this was shown to be an absurdity, the complaint followed that what he had done, had been done in precisely such a mode, although it was the mode constantly used by every one else. From these vague and indefinite accusations, those most implicated in the wrong, began to deny all their own original assertions, by insisting that they had known all along, that Mr. Effingham owned the property, but that they did not choose he, or any other man, should presume to tell them what they knew already. In short, the end of this affair exhibited human nature in its usual aspects of prevarication, untruth, contradiction, and inconsistency, notwithstanding the high profession of liberty made by those implicated; and they who had been the most guilty of wrong, were loudest in their complaints, as if they alone had suffered.
"This is not exhibiting the country to us, certainly, after so long an absence, in its best appearance," said Mr. Effingham, "I must admit, John; but error belongs to all regions, and to all classes of institutions."
"Ay, Ned, make the best of it, as usual; but, if you do not come round to my way of thinking, before you are a twelvemonth older, I shall renounce prophesying. I wish we could get at the bottom of Miss Effingham's thoughts, on this occasion."
"Miss Effingham has been grieved, disappointed, nay, shocked," said Eve, "but, still she will not despair of the republic. None of our respectable neighbours, in the first place, have shared in this transaction, and that is something; though I confess I feel some surprise that any considerable portion of a community, that respects itself, should quietly allow an ignorant fragment of its own numbers, to misrepresent it so grossly, in an affair that so nearly touches its own character for common sense and justice."
"You have yet to learn, Miss Effingham, that men can get to be so saturated with liberty, that they become insensible to the nicer feelings. The grossest enormities are constantly committed in this good republic of ours, under the pretence of being done by the public, and for the public. The public have got to bow to that bugbear, quite as submissively as Gesler would have wished the Swiss to bow to his own cap, as to the cap of Rodolph's substitute. Men will have idols, and the Americans have merely set up themselves."
"And you, cousin Jack, you would be wretched were you doomed to live under a system less free. I fear you have the affectation of sometimes saying that which you do not exactly feel."
Chapter XVII.
"Come, these are no times to think of dreams--
We'll talk of dreams hereafter."