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April 5. --- I am almost devoured by ennui.
Pundit is the only conversible person on board; and he, poor soul! can speak of
nothing but antiquities. He has been occupied all the day in the attempt to
convince me that the ancient Amriccans governed themselves! --- did ever anybody
hear of such an absurdity? --- that they existed in a sort of
every-man-for-himself confederacy, after the fashion of the "prairie
dogs" that we read of in fable. He says that they started with the queerest
idea conceivable, viz: that all men are born free and equal --- this in the very
teeth of the laws of gradation so visibly impressed upon all things both in the
moral and physical universe. Every man "voted," as they called it ---
that is to say meddled with public affairs --- until at length, it was
discovered that what is everybody's business is nobody's, and that the
"Republic" (so the absurd thing was called) was without a government
at all. It is related, however, that the first circumstance which disturbed,
very particularly, the self-complacency of the philosophers who constructed this
"Republic," was the startling discovery that universal suffrage gave
opportunity for fraudulent schemes, by means of which any desired number of
votes might at any time be polled, without the possibility of prevention or even
detection, by any party which should be merely villainous enough not to be
ashamed of the fraud. A little reflection upon this discovery sufficed to render
evident the consequences, which were that rascality must predominate --- in a
word, that a republican government could never be any thing but a rascally one.
While the philosophers, however, were busied in blushing at their stupidity in
not having foreseen these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new
theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the name of Mob,
who took every thing into his own hands and set up a despotism, in comparison
with which those of the fabulous Zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and
delectable. This Mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), is said to have been the most
odious of all men that ever encumbered the earth. He was a giant in stature ---
insolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena
and the brains of a peacock. He died, at length, by dint of his own energies,
which exhausted him. Nevertheless, he had his uses, as every thing has, however
vile, and taught mankind a lesson which to this day it is in no danger of
forgetting --- never to run directly contrary to the natural analogies. As for
Republicanism, no analogy could be found for it upon the face of the earth ---
unless we except the case of the "prairie dogs," an exception which
seems to demonstrate, if anything, that democracy is a very admirable form of
government --- for dogs.
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