In speaking as I have here done of American taste and American politics, I must allude to a special class of Americans who are to be met more generally in New York than elsewhere—­men who are educated, who have generally traveled, who are almost always agreeable, but who, as regards their politics, are to me the most objectionable of all men.  As regards taste they are objectionable to me also.  But that is a small thing; and as they are quite as likely to be right as I am, I will say nothing against their taste.  But in politics it seems to me that these men have fallen into the bitterest and perhaps into the basest of errors.  Of the man who begins his life with mean political ideas, having sucked them in with his mother’s milk, there may be some hope.  The evil is at any rate the fault of his forefathers rather than of himself.  But who can have hope of him who, having been thrown by birth and fortune into the running river of free political activity, has allowed himself to be drifted into the stagnant level of general political servility?  There are very many such Americans.  They call themselves republicans, and sneer at the idea of a limited monarchy, but they declare that there is no republic so safe, so equal for all men, so purely democratic as that now existing in France.  Under the French Empire all men are equal.  There is no aristocracy; no oligarchy; no overshadowing of the little by the great.  One superior is admitted—­admitted on earth, as a superior is also admitted in heaven.  Under him everything is level, and, provided he be not impeded, everything is free.  He knows how to rule, and the nation, allowing him the privilege of doing so, can go along its course safely; can eat, drink, and be merry.  If few men can rise high, so also can few men fall low.  Political equality is the one thing desirable in a commonwealth, and by this arrangement political equality is obtained.  Such is the modern creed of many an educated republican of the States.

To me it seems that such a political state is about the vilest to which a man can descend.  It amounts to a tacit abandonment of the struggle which men are making for political truth and political beneficence, in order that bread and meat may be eaten in peace during the score of years or so that are at the moment passing over us.  The politicians of this class have decided for themselves that the summum bonum is to be found in bread and the circus games.  If they be free to eat, free to rest, free to sleep, free to drink little cups of coffee, while the world passes before them, on a boulevard, they have that freedom which they covet.  But equality is necessary as well as freedom.  There must be no towering trees in this parterre to overshadow the clipped shrubs, and destroy the uniformity of a growth which should never mount more than two feet above the earth.  The equality of this politician would forbid any to rise above him instead of inviting all to rise up