Any native-born citizen in the United States may become the head of the nation has he the courage of his convictions, the many accomplishments which equip the great leader, and should the hour and the man meet opportunity. This is the one prize which distinguishes America from England. The latter in other respects offers exactly as much freedom with half the wear and tear; in fact, to me the freedom of America is one of her disadvantages. Every one knows, and the American best of all, that all men are _not equal_, never were and never can be. Yet this false doctrine is their standard, and they swear by it, though some will explain that what is meant is political freedom. Freedom accounts for the gross impertinence of the ignorant and lower classes, the laughable assumptions of servants, and the illogical pretenses of the _nouveau riche_, which make America impossible to some people. Cultivated Americans are as thoroughly aristocratic as the nobility of England. There are the same classes here as there. A grocer becomes rich and retires or dies; his children refuse to associate with the families of other grocers; in a word, the Americans have the aristocratic feeling, but they have no peasant class; the latter would be, in their own estimation, as good as any one. One class, the lower and poorer, is arraigned against the upper and richer, and the gap is growing daily.
But this would not prove that the republic is a failure. What then? It is, in the opinion of many of its clergymen, a great moral failure. No nation in history has lasted many centuries after having developed the "symptoms" now shown in the United States. I quote their own press, "the States are morally rotten," and you have but to turn to these organs and the magazines of the past decade, which make a feature of holding up the shortcomings of cities and millionaires, to read the details of the tragedy. Thieves--grafters--have seized upon the vitals of the country. St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, great representative cities--what is their history? The story of dishonesty among officials, of bribery, stealing, and every possible crime that a man can devise to wring money from the people. This is no secret. It has all been exposed by the friends of morality. City governments are overthrown, the rascals are turned out, but in a few months the new officers are caught devising some new "grafting" operation.