private soldiers as by the officers.  The politics of the country and the nature of its Constitution are familiar to every laborer.  The very wording of the Declaration of Independence is in the memory of every lad of sixteen.  Boys and girls of a younger age than that know why Slidell and Mason were arrested, and will tell you why they should have been given up, or why they should have been held in durance.  The question of the war with England is debated by every native pavior and hodman of New York.

I know what Englishmen will say in answer to this.  They will declare that they do not want their paviors and hodmen to talk politics; that they are as well pleased that their coachmen and cooks should not always have a newspaper in their hands; that private soldiers will fight as well, and obey better, if they are not trained to discuss the causes which have brought them into the field.  An English gentleman will think that his gardener will be a better gardener without than with any excessive political ardor, and the English lady will prefer that her housemaid shall not have a very pronounced opinion of her own as to the capabilities of the cabinet ministers.  But I would submit to all Englishmen and English women who may look at these pages whether such an opinion or feeling on their part bears much, or even at all, upon the subject.  I am not saying that the man who is driven in the coach is better off because his coachman reads the paper, but that the coachman himself who reads the paper is better off than the coachman who does not and cannot.  I think that we are too apt, in considering the ways and habits of any people, to judge of them by the effect of those ways and habits on us, rather than by their effects on the owners of them.  When we go among garlic eaters, we condemn them because they are offensive to us; but to judge of them properly we should ascertain whether or no the garlic be offensive to them.  If we could imagine a nation of vegetarians hearing for the first time of our habits as flesh eaters, we should feel sure that they would be struck with horror at our blood-stained banquets; but when they came to argue with us, we should bid them inquire whether we flesh eaters did not live longer and do more than the vegetarians.  When we express a dislike to the shoeboy reading his newspaper, I apprehend we do so because we fear that the shoeboy is coming near our own heels.  I know there is among us a strong feeling that the lower classes are better without politics, as there is also that they are better without crinoline and artificial flowers; but if politics, and crinoline, and artificial flowers are good at all, they are good for all who can honestly come by them and honestly use them.  The political coachman is perhaps less valuable to his master as a coachman than he would be without his politics, but he with his politics is more valuable to himself.  For myself, I do not like the Americans of the lower orders.