poor to-day may be rich to-morrow; while they dupe the unthinking with the old Agrarian song which befooled the Romans under the Gracchi, and the English mob under Jack Cade, and will never fail, till the world be wiser, to lift the demagogue another round of the ladder, and crush the poor fellows of whom he has made his steppingstone; while they teach that all rule is tyranny, and all subordination degrading, they are preparing the happiest consummation for the enemies of republican government. No union of foreign legitimists could break our bulwarks. All the power of Europe would only, like pressure on an arch, compact us more closely. Open assault, though gigantic and reiterated, would put us on our strong national points of resistance; nor do I believe there is the power on earth which could force a king upon America. The blood of the old free colonists runs proudly yet. All fourth of July harangues to the contrary notwithstanding -we never were slaves; we never can be-unless we sell ourselves.

I am alarmed to hear quiet men expressing themselves in new phrases; as if our great experiment had almost failed. They have no reason to say so, except the rampant licentiousness and turbulent ferocity of certain agitators. But these occasional outbreaks tend to loosen our anchorage, to strain our holdfasts, and even when we wish to weigh and be off, the cables may part just when the anchors come a-peak. Principles are wearing

away silently but fast, in some very useful minds, which might be of great service to us at a pinch; and this change is owing entirely to the revulsion caused by licentious temerity.

I am not one of those who dread so much from the direct influence of mobs and riots. There is, in the worst of them more show of teeth than bloodshed, more powder than ball; thanks to Providence that it is so. More lives are lost in a dozen street-fights, or one steam-explosion, than in the riots of ten years. We are a strong people, and can resist a number of partial shocks, just as we resisted Shays' insurrection, and the Whisky Boys. Our Anglo-Saxon reserve holds off the supreme, ultimate force of repression as long as possible; but it comes out at last, like Neptune, to still the waves. "A disorderly multitude," says Addison, in one of his works, which we have learned from British tories to neglect,* "a disorderly multitude contending with the body of the legislature, is like a man in a fit under the conduct of one in the fulness of his health and strength. Such a one is sure to be overruled in a little time, though he deals about his blows, and exerts himself in the most furious convulsions while the dis ́temper is upon him." But my apprehensions are of another sort. Our danger is from the disgust which is likely to arise in a large and influential portion of society, upon beholding the destructive efforts of ambitious or disaffected citizens. The

* The Freeholder, No. 28.

frame of our government, as left us by the heroic men who planned and established it, is the masterpiece of political architecture; it was often and justly compared to a Temple of Freedom.

66

"But

now," we may say with an ancient poet, "they break down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers." There is perhaps no man, of any trade, who does not think himself wise enough to tinker at a state constitution.

With the aid of my friend Mr. Appletree, the schoolmaster, and my favourite Plutarch, I could easily multiply instances of the dangers of licentiousness and excess among a free people. The ancient histories are full of this. So are the eventful stories of modern Italy. A volume might be filled with the turmoil of Florence alone. And all these examples go to show how important it is for our young men to set out in life with proper principles, and to maintain the golden mean betwixt Scylla and Charybdis. For there are two extremes. On the one side is the scented, girlish, long-haired fopling, fresh from Paris or London, who tries to acquire distinction by disparaging American institutions. Though his grandfather, perhaps, wrought with his own hands, the stripling looks on all republicanism as ungenteel. And on the other side is the braggart and ruffian, who would resign every question to the mob as the source of power, and have the country convulsed by annual popular elections of every functionary from a judge to a constable. “A usurping popu

lace," said Swift, "is its own dupe, a mere underworker, and a purchaser in trust for some simple tyrant, whose state and power they advance to their own ruin, with as blind an instinct as those worms that die with weaving magnificent habits for beings of a superior order. The people are more dexterous in pulling down and setting up, than at preserving what is fixed: and they are not fonder of seizing more than their own, than they are of delivering it up again to the worst bidder, with their own into the bargain."

The upshot of the matter is this: people should be taught from their cradles what true freedom is, and how it is to be maintained; how it differs from lawlessness and misrule, and how closely it is connected with popular virtue. The boy at school and in the shop should be taught, that nothing can be done without order; that there can be no order without law; that all law demands obedience; and that in such obedience to rightful authority, there is nothing which either injures or degrades. The apprentice and the journeyman should learn betimes, that to loosen a single pin of the social machine is like loosening the pin of a steam-engine; and wherever the disorganization may begin, it will never stop till it ruins those who have begun it. When public disorders, and civil broils, and revolutionary violence once enter, the very class of persons who always bear the worst of the tempest, is that for whose benefit I am writing-the honest, temperate, home-loving, industrious, frugal working-men.

XXII.

THE WORKING-MAN IN A STRANGE LAND.

"But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Lev. xix. 34.

On a cold Saturday night, I stepped into a hatter's shop, in New York, to supply the loss of a beaver, which had been hopelessly injured in a crush at a public meeting. The gas-light before the door threw its gleam directly in the face of a young woman who was sitting near the counter. I perceived in a moment that she was thin, pale, and sorrowful. Her dark hair was ready to fall over her cheeks, as if she had forgotten to fasten it; her lips seemed to move; and the folds of a scanty black woollen shawl could not so far hide her hands but that I perceived she was wringing them. I remained some minutes in the shop, and, during that time, saw at least seven or eight young women and girls come into the place with work which they had been doing, after delivering which they received their payment. But still this sad creature kept her seat. At length the young man of the establishment said, in a tone somewhat