George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[219]

I pray, therefore, we may all remember, at the North, that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait.’ And I pray, too, we may all remember that the condition of the master, if rightly considered, is hardly more to be envied than that of the slave, and needs quite as much tenderness, and forecast in its treatment.

To Miss Maria Edgeworth, Edgeworthtown.

Boston, March 30, 1844.

my dear Miss Edgeworth,—. . . . On looking over your letter, which is now lying before me, I am struck anew with the substantial similarity of the interests, great and small, that agitate society on both sides of the Atlantic, and, I dare say, on both sides of the globe. ‘Man,’ as a wise friend¹ once said to me, ‘is, after all, an animal that has only a few tricks.’ . . . . Only think for a moment what a resemblance there is between that Rhode Island question, about which you did me the honor to read the long story I wrote to Mr. Lyell, and your Irish question; what counterparts your Daniel O'Connell and our Governor Dorr are, both in the motives that govern them and in the ends they pursue. Why, ‘half the platform just reflects the other,’ though here I must needs be permitted to say, that I think we have a little the advantage of you,—a thing that comes rarely enough, to be sure,—but I really think we have a little the advantage of you. For the Rhode-Islanders have not only put Governor Dorr in prison, but they keep him there . . . . . And there, I think, he will have to remain, till he is willing to come out and take the oath of allegiance to the government he has endeavored to overturn. . . . .

But to leave politics,—though these questions are much deeper than mere party politics, which are always odious,—to leave politics and come to another of your exciting topics,—Puseyism,—we have, in proportion to the number of persons in the United States who belong to the Episcopal or Anglican church, just as much Puseyism, and just as bitter quarrels about it, as you have. In New England—thanks to the wisdom, I believe, of the Anglican clergy—we have not been much infected either way; but New York is full of the matter, and its newspapers too. Then, too, our tariff question, which is annually shaking the nation, is exactly your corn-law question turned upsidedown;