TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-1847. 343 



eloquent Senator to whose remarks I have taken liberty to reply 

 when he says 



I confess to a pang of envy and grief that there should be one drop or one morsel 

 more of the bread or water of intellectual life tasted by the European than by the 

 American mind. Why should not the soul of this country eat as good food and as 

 much of it as the soul of Europe? 



It grieves me not that the fantastic taste of some epicure in learn- 

 ing may chance to find on the book shelves of Paris some literary 

 morsel of choice and ancient flavor, such as our own metropolis sup- 

 plies not. I feel no envy if we republicans are outdone by luxurious 

 Europe in some high-seasoned delicacy of the pampered soul. Enough 

 have we to console ourselves objects of national ambition, how much 

 higher, how infinitely nobler than these objects of national pride, 

 before which these petty antiquarian triumphs dwarf into utter insig- 

 nificancy! Look abroad over our far-spreading land, then glance 

 across to the monarchies of the Old World, and say if I speak not the 

 truth. 



I have sojourned among the laborers of England; I have visited 

 amid their vineyards the peasantry of France; I have dwelt for years 

 in the midst of the hardy mountaineers of Switzerland. I have seen 

 and conversed and sat down in their cottages with them all. I have 

 found often among them simple goodness. Ignorance, oppression can 

 not trample out that. I have witnessed patience under hopeless toil, 

 resignation beneath grievous wrongs. I have met with civility, kind- 

 ness, a cheerful smile, and a ready welcome. But the spirit of the 

 man was not there the spirit that can lift up its brow with a noble 

 confidence and feel that while it is no man's master, neither is it any 

 man's slave. Between them and the favored of capricious fortune, 

 one felt they felt there was a great gulf fixed, broad, impassable. 



Far other is it even in the lowliest cabin of our frontier West. It 

 is an equal you meet there; an equal in political rights; one to whom 

 honors and office, even the highest, are as open as to yourself. You 

 feel that it is an equal. The tone in which hospitality is tendered to 

 you, humble though means and forms may be, reminds you of it. The 

 conversation, running over the great subjects of the day, branching 

 off, perhaps, to questions of constitutional right or international law, 

 assures you of it. 



I have heard in many a backwoods cabin, lighted but by the blazing 

 log heap, arguments on government, views of national policy, judg- 

 ments of men and things, that, for sound sense and practical wisdom, 

 would not disgrace any legislative body upon earth. 



And shall we grudge to Europe her antiquarian lore, her cumbrous 

 folios, her illuminated manuscripts, the chaff of learned dullness that 

 cumbers her old library shelves? A "pang of envy and grief" shall 

 we feel? Out upon it! Men have we; a people; a free people, self 



