censure passed upon him by the rest. His was a grave offence
indeed; for years before, he had risen up and said, ‘A gang of male
and female slaves for sale, warranted to breed like cattle, linked
to each other by iron fetters, are passing now along the open
street beneath the windows of your Temple of Equality! Look!’ But
there are many kinds of hunters engaged in the Pursuit of
Happiness, and they go variously armed. It is the Inalienable
Right of some among them, to take the field after THEIR Happiness
equipped with cat and cartwhip, stocks, and iron collar, and to
shout their view halloa! (always in praise of Liberty) to the music
of clanking chains and bloody stripes.
Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats; of words and
blows such as coalheavers deal upon each other, when they forget
their breeding? On every side. Every session had its anecdotes of
that kind, and the actors were all there.
Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men, who, applying
themselves in a new world to correct some of the falsehoods and
vices of the old, purified the avenues to Public Life, paved the
dirty ways to Place and Power, debated and made laws for the Common
Good, and had no party but their Country?
I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of
virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought.
Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with
public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous
newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful
trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is,
that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal
types, which are the dragon’s teeth of yore, in everything but
sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the
popular mind, and artful suppressions of all its good influences:
such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most
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depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of
the crowded hall.
Did I see among them, the intelligence and refinement: the true,
honest, patriotic heart of America? Here and there, were drops of
its blood and life, but they scarcely coloured the stream of
desperate adventurers which sets that way for profit and for pay.
It is the game of these men, and of their profligate organs, to
make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal, and so
destructive of all self-respect in worthy men, that sensitive and
delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as
they, be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. And
thus this lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in
other countries would, from their intelligence and station, most
aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the farthest from that
degradation.
That there are, among the representatives of the people in both
Houses, and among all parties, some men of high character and great
abilities, I need not say. The foremost among those politicians
who are known in Europe, have been already described, and I see no
reason to depart from the rule I have laid down for my guidance, of
abstaining from all mention of individuals. It will be sufficient
to add, that to the most favourable accounts that have been written
of them, I more than fully and most heartily subscribe; and that
personal intercourse and free communication have bred within me,
not the result predicted in the very doubtful proverb, but
increased admiration and respect. They are striking men to look
at, hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, Crichtons in
varied accomplishments, Indians in fire of eye and gesture,
Americans in strong and generous impulse; and they as well
represent the honour and wisdom of their country at home, as the
distinguished gentleman who is now its Minister at the British
Court sustains its highest character abroad.
I visited both houses nearly every day, during my stay in
Washington. On my initiatory visit to the House of
Representatives, they divided against a decision of the chair; but