Home As Found

Excerpt: ...the question of the right, or the wrong. The people, rightly enough in the general signification of the term, they deemed to be sovereign; and they belonged to a numerous class, who view disobedience to the sovereign in a democracy, although it be in his illegal caprices, very much as the subject of a despot views disobedience to his prince. It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mr. Effingham and his cousin viewed these matters differently. Clear headed, just-minded, and liberal in all his practices, the former, in particular, was greatly pained by the recent occurrence; and he paced his library in silence, for several minutes after Mr. Bragg and his companion had withdrawn, really too much grieved to speak. "This is, altogether, a most extraordinary procedure, John," he at length observed, "and, it strikes me, that it is but an indifferent reward for the liberality with which I have permitted others to use my property, these thirty years; often, very often, as you well know, to my own discomfort, and to that of my friends." "I have told you, Ned, that you were not to expect the America on your return, that you left behind you on your departure for Europe. I insist that no country has so much altered for the worse, in so short a time." "That unequalled pecuniary prosperity should sensibly impair the manners of what is termed the world, By introducing suddenly lame bodies of uninstructed and untrained men and women into society, is a natural consequence of obvious causes; that it should corrupt morals, even, we have a right to expect, for we are taught to believe it the most corrupting influence under which men can live; but, I confess, I did not expect to see the day, when a body of strangers, birds of passage, creatures of an hour, should assume a right to call on the old and long-established inhabitants of a country, to prove their claims to their possessions, and this, too, in an unusual and unheard-of manner, under the penalty of being...