“John admitted things were not conducted on the most approved principle; but as the business belonged to the old gentleman, who was very testy in the exercise of his power, he was at a loss to conceive what we had to do with it.  That became very easy to explain; for whereas Young America claims a right to dictate principles that will aid in working out manifest destiny, so also does he take upon himself the right of pointing out the evil of all political misgovernment that falls under his notice.  It was not the honorable manner in which a government acquired new territory or incorporated weak provinces, that Mr. Smooth had to deal with, but the dishonorable government that followed.  Wherever waste and misery meet the eye of an energetic man, who discovers the palpable cause at the door of wrong-headed government, his natural feelings revolt against the powers that be; and to an American, trained in the New England school of universal industry, the desolation seems calling upon him to take the initiative of working out its improvement.

“With me, a feeling, inspired by the best of motives, prompted the advancing some rules of improvement; but, conscious of Uncle John’s obstinacy to being instructed by youth, and with a just sense of the obstacles my tattered garments would present, the inclination failed.  Indeed, John, as dogged as he is old in experience, views his son Jonathan as a bold, reckless, and discontented fellow, whose notions of progress he would receive with the same cautious hand he would his, to him, preposterous principles of republicanism.  He, while entertaining some good feeling for us, hath an inert prejudice which views us as levellers, always reforming or abusing reforms.  Swelled, he says, by large notions of ourselves, generous in our expectations, and never ceasing in our love of excitements until we are safely landed in the grave, we are become dangerous to the great family compact.  In the devil’s department, says John, your Young America would prove his energetic nature by devising some new arrangement, addition, or modification of that gentleman’s sin-roasting machinery.  Failing in that, he would plan some enterprise, propose some joint-account operation with Mr. Jones, and content himself with ‘truck-and-dicker,’ or charcoal, for his half of the spoils.  In heaven, your Young American would be discontented, unless he were devising some improvement, getting up spiritual intrigues, or laying the foundation of some new species of glory—­perhaps claiming a right to entire possession.

“‘You must understand, Mr. Smooth,’ said John, ’we have long been meditating a new policy for this great and fertile empire, now so desolate; but we pursue ends most patiently, letting our thoughts have the benefit of time, before reducing them to practice.  Manchester wants cotton—­wants it free-grown—­that she may relieve herself from the yoke of King Slavery; but she cannot yet solve the problem by which the throbbings of her manufacturing philanthropy may be set at rest.  She thinks long and strong of it, but there it rests—­and there’s the rub.  John is blind, and Cotton is king.’