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.
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