--Shakspeare.
The Anglo-American is apt to boast, and not without reason, that his
nation may claim a descent more truly honourable than that of any
other people whose history is to be credited. Whatever might have been
the weaknesses of the original colonists, their virtues have rarely
been disputed. If they were superstitious, they were sincerely pious,
and, consequently, honest. The descendants of these simple and
single-minded provincials have been content to reject the ordinary and
artificial means by which honours have been perpetuated in families,
and have substituted a standard which brings the individual himself to
the ordeal of the public estimation, paying as little deference as may
be to those who have gone before him. This forbearance, self-denial,
or common sense, or by whatever term it may be thought proper to
distinguish the measure, has subjected the nation to the imputation of
having an ignoble origin. Were it worth the enquiry, it would be found
that more than a just proportion of the renowned names of the mother-
country are, at this hour, to be found in her ci-devant colonies; and
it is a fact well known to the few who have wasted sufficient time to
become the masters of so unimportant a subject, that the direct
descendants of many a failing line, which the policy of England has
seen fit to sustain by collateral supporters, are now discharging the
simple duties of citizens in the bosom of this republic.
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