directly to the opposite conclusion.
When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, can
climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America,
without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee
before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is
safe from its attacks; when any social confidence is left unbroken
by it, or any tie of social decency and honour is held in the least
regard; when any man in that free country has freedom of opinion,
and presumes to think for himself, and speak for himself, without
humble reference to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance
and base dishonesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart;
when those who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it
casts upon the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare
to set their heels upon, and crush it openly, in the sight of all
men: then, I will believe that its influence is lessening, and men
are returning to their manly senses. But while that Press has its
evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in
the state, from a president to a postman; while, with ribald
slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature
of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a newspaper,
or they will not read at all; so long must its odium be upon the
country’s head, and so long must the evil it works, be plainly
visible in the Republic.
To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to
the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe; to those who
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are accustomed to anything else in print and paper; it would be
impossible, without an amount of extract for which I have neither
space nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful
engine in America. But if any man desire confirmation of my
statement on this head, let him repair to any place in this city of
London, where scattered numbers of these publications are to be
found; and there, let him form his own opinion. (1)
It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American people as
a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal somewhat more.
It would be well, if there were greater encouragement to lightness
of heart and gaiety, and a wider cultivation of what is beautiful,
without being eminently and directly useful. But here, I think the
general remonstrance, ‘we are a new country,’ which is so often
advanced as an excuse for defects which are quite unjustifiable, as
being, of right, only the slow growth of an old one, may be very
reasonably urged: and I yet hope to hear of there being some other
national amusement in the United States, besides newspaper
politics.
They certainly are not a humorous people, and their temperament
always impressed me is being of a dull and gloomy character. In
shrewdness of remark, and a certain cast-iron quaintness, the
Yankees, or people of New England, unquestionably take the lead; as
they do in most other evidences of intelligence. But in travelling
about, out of the large cities – as I have remarked in former parts
of these volumes – I was quite oppressed by the prevailing
seriousness and melancholy air of business: which was so general
and unvarying, that at every new town I came to, I seemed to meet
the very same people whom I had left behind me, at the last. Such
defects as are perceptible in the national manners, seem, to me, to
be referable, in a great degree, to this cause: which has
generated a dull, sullen persistence in coarse usages, and rejected
the graces of life as undeserving of attention. There is no doubt
that Washington, who was always most scrupulous and exact on points
of ceremony, perceived the tendency towards this mistake, even in
his time, and did his utmost to correct it.
I cannot hold with other writers on these subjects that the
prevalence of various forms of dissent in America, is in any way