the first feel themselves above popular opinion, those who possess the last bow to it, as the Asiatic slave bows to his master.  I wish I could think otherwise; but experience has convinced me of these facts, and I have learned to feel the truth of an axiom that is getting to be somewhat familiar among ourselves, viz.—­“that it takes an aristocrat to make a true democrat.”  Certain I am, that all the real, manly, independent democrats, I have ever known in America, have been accused of aristocracy, and this simply because they were disposed to carry out their principles, and not to let that imperious sovereign, “the neighbourhood,” play the tyrant over them.  As for personal merit, quite as fair a proportion of talent is found among the well-born as among the low; and he is but an ad captandum vulgus sort of a philosopher who holds the contrary doctrine.  Talleyrand was of one of the most ancient and illustrious houses of Europe, as was Turenne; while Mansfield, Erskine, Grey, Wellington, and a host of Englishmen of mark of our time, come of noble blood.  No—­no—­The cause of free institutions has much higher and much juster distinctions to boast of, than this imaginary superiority of the humbly born over those who come of ancient stock.

Lord Harry Dermond received me just as one of his station ought to receive one of mine; politely, without in the least compromising his own dignity.  There was a good-natured smile on his face, of which, at first, I did not know what to make.  He had a private conversation with Sennit, too; but the smile underwent no change.  In the end, I came to the conclusion that it was habitual with him and meant nothing.  But, though so much disposed to smile Lord Harry Dermond was equally disposed to listen to every suggestion of Sennit, that was likely to favour the main chance.  Prize-money is certainly a great stain on the chivalry of all navies, but it is a stain with which the noble wishes to be as deeply dyed as the plebeian.  Human nature is singularly homogeneous on the subject of money; and younger-son nature, in the lands of majorats and entails, enjoys a liveliness of longing on the subject, that is quite as conspicuous as the rapacity of the veriest plebeian who ever picked a pocket.

“I am very sorry, Captain Wallingford,” Captain Lord Harry Dermond observed to me, when his private conference with Sennit was ended, and altogether superior to the weakness of Powlett, who would have discussed the point, “that it is my duty to send your ship into Plymouth.  The French have got such an ascendency on the continent, that we are obliged to use every act of vigilance to counteract them:  then, your cargo is of enemy’s growth".”

“As for the ascendency, my lord, you will see we Americans have nothing to do with it; and my cargo, being necessarily of last year’s crops, must have been grown and manufactured in a time of general peace.  If it were not, I do not conceive it would legalize my capture.”