Excerpt from On American Morals and Manners

We propose to offer some observations in this article on American morals and manners. There is, at this moment, a very extraordinary crisis of opinion in Europe with regard to this country. Our national character is not only brought into question, but it is brought into question as furnishing grounds for a decision upon the form of our Government, upon the great cause of Republican institutions.

For reasons then, deeper than those which concern our national reputation, - and yet this is not indifferent, - this subject deserves attention. We have no desire to overrate the importance of this country, but it is undoubtedly the great embodiment of the leading principle on which the history of the world is to turn for many years to come. When at some future time a philosophical history of the present age shall be written, this country will occupy a place in it, the very converse of that which it now holds in the thoughts of most men in the Old World. That future time will far better understand the map of human affairs, not to say our literal geography, than does the present. It will be seen that the tree of freedom, planted on this Western continent, has shot its roots and fibres through the whole of Europe, beneath the soil of all her ancient and venerable institutions. Whether it shall stand and flourish and lend strength to the world, or whether, overturned by whelming floods, it shall draw the world down with it, or leave it rent and torn by the disruption of its ties - this is the question.

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