Home as Found / Sequel to "Homeward Bound"

by James Fenimore Cooper

"What!" exclaimed John Effingham; "do you fancy it possible to reduce a free-man so low, as to deprive him of his stilts! No, no, young lady; you are now in a country where if you have two rows of flounces on your frock, your maid will make it a point to have three, by way of maintaining the equilibrium. This is the noble ambition of liberty."

"Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have drawn that image from your eye, instead of your imagination. It is a French, as well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."

"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked, Sir George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the ascendency of a capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest town in the country, was the political capital; but it was too much for any one community to enjoy the united consideration that belongs to extent and politics; and so the honest public went to work to make a capital, that should have nothing else in its favour, but the naked fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it will be generally allowed, that they have succeeded to admiration. I fancy Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite intolerable, that country should not be town, and town country."

"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess that I see no claims that New-York possesses, which does not equally belong to Templeton."

"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig, and a brig a ship."

"The case is different; Templeton is a town, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"

"A town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential."

"I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my notion is not a town, but a city."

"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely wandering about the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of the favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain a precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."

The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from detecting the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of the feeling that produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all opposed to him in opinion are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in which the poet asks, "what can we reason, but from what we know?" contains the principle of half our foibles and faults, and perhaps explains fully that proportion of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing of those of no small number of his countrymen. There are limits to the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man, and, as each is regulated by the opportunities of the individual, it follows of necessity, that no one can have a standard much above his own experience. That an isolated and remote people should be a provincial people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and peculiar practices and opinions, is as unavoidable as that study should make a scholar; though in the case of America, the great motive for surprise is to be found in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce so little effect. When compared with the bulk of other nations, the Americans, though so remote and insulated, are scarcely provincial, for it is only when the highest standard of this nation is compared with the highest standard of other nations, that we detect the great deficiency that actually exists. That a moral foundation so broad should uphold a moral superstructure so narrow, is owing to the circumstance that the popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is referred to a body of judges that, in the nature of things, must be of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot be a matter of wonder to the reflecting, that the decision shares in the qualities of the tribunal. In America, the gross mistake has been made of supposing, that, because the mass rules in a political sense, it has a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other matters, a practical deduction that can only lead, under the most favourable exercise of power, to a very humble mediocrity. It is to be hoped, that time, and a greater concentration of taste, liberality, and knowledge than can well distinguish a young and scattered population, will repair this evil, and that our children will reap the harvest of the broad fields of intelligence that have been sowed by ourselves. In the mean time, the present generation must endure that which cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it will have to submit to a great deal of very questionable information, not a few false principles, and an unpleasant degree of intolerant and narrow bigotry, that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and learning as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.