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Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America. 4 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book 2 0 Browse Search
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Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America., III: a word more about America. (search)
cause. Sir Henry Maine, in an admirable essay which, though not signed, betrays him for its author by its rare and characteristic qualities of mind and style--Sir Henry Maine, in the Quarterly Review, adopts and often reiterates a phrase of M. Scherer, to the effect that Democracy is only a form of government. He holds up to ridicule a sentence of Mr. Bancroft's History, in which the American democracy is told that its ascent to power proceeded as uniformly and majestically as the laws of b healthy case, and having this healthy consciousness, the community there uses its understanding with the soundness of health; it in general sees its political and social concerns straight, and sees them clear. So that when Sir Henry Maine and M. Scherer tells us that democracy is merely a form of government, we may observe to them that it is in the United States a form of government in which the community feels itself in a natural condition and at ease; in which, consequently, it sees things s
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, The New world and the New book (search)
resulted, as a political inference, universal suffrage; that is, a suffrage constantly tending to be universal, although it still leaves out one-half the human race. This universal suffrage is inevitably based on the doctrine of human equality, as further interpreted by Franklin's remark that the poor man has an equal right to the suffrage with the rich man, and more need, because he has fewer ways in which to protect himself. But it is not true, as even such acute European observers as M. Scherer and Sir Henry Maine assume, that democracy is but a form of government; for democracy has just as distinct a place in society, and, above all, in the realm of literature. The touchstone there applied is just the same, and it consists in the essential dignity and value of the individual man. The distinctive attitude of the American press must lie, if anywhere, in its recognition of this individual importance and worth. The five words of Jefferson—words, which Matthew Arnold pronounced n