Yes, if you want to see a free people—­them that makes their own laws, accordin to their own notions—­go to the States.  Indeed, if you can falt them at all, they are a little grain too free.  Our folks have their head a trifle too much, sometimes, particularly in Elections, both in freedom of speech and freedom of Press.  One hadnt ought to blart right out always all that comes uppermost.  A horse that’s too free frets himself and his rider too, and both on em lose flesh in the long run.  I’d een a most as lives use the whip sometimes, as to be for everlastenly a pullin at the rein.  One’s arm gets plaguy tired, that’s a fact.  I often think of a lesson I larnt Jehiel Quirk once, for letten his tongue outrun his good manners.  I was down to Rhode Island one summer to larn gilden and bronzin, so as to give the finishin touch to my clocks.  Well, the folks elected me a hog reave, jist to poke fun at me, and Mr. Jehiel, a bean pole of a lawyer, was at the bottom of it.  So one day, up to Town Hall, where there was an oration to be delivered on our Independence, jist afore the orator commenced, in runs Jehiel in a most allfired hurry; and, says he, I wonder, says he, if there’s are a hog reave here, because if there be I require a turn of his office.  And then, said he, a lookin up to me and callin out at the tip eend of his voice, Mr. Hogreave Slick, says he, here’s a job out here for you.  Folks snickered a good deal, and I felt my spunk a risen like half flood, that’s a fact; but I bit in my breath, and spoke quite cool.  Possible, says I; well duty, I do suppose, must be done, though it tante the most agreeable in the world.  I’ve been a thinkin, says I, that I would be liable to a fine of fifty cents for sufferin a hog to run at large, and as you are the biggest one, I presume, in all Rhode Island, I’ll jist begin by ringin your nose, to prevent you for the futur from pokin your snout where you hadnt ought to, and I seized him by the nose and nearly wrung it off.  Well, you never heerd sich a shoutin and clappin of hands, and cheerin, in your life—­they haw hawed like thunder.  Says I Jehiel Quirk that was a superb joke of yourn, how you made the folks larf didn’t you?  You are een amost the wittiest critter I ever seed.  I guess you’ll mind your parts o’ speech, and study the accidence agin afore you let your clapper run arter that fashion, won’t you?

I thought, said I, that among you republicans, there were no gradations of rank or office, and that all were equal, the Hogreave and the Governor, the Judge and the Crier, the master and his servant, and although, from the natur of things, more power might be entrusted to one than the other, yet that the rank of all was precisely the same.  Well, said he, it is so in theory, but not always in practice, and when we do pracTISE it, it seems to go a little agin the grain, as if it warnt quite right neither.  When I was last to Baltimore there was a Court there, and Chief Justice Marshall was detailed there for duty.