Those who never have had such habits formed in
youth are under disadvantages which no benevolence of temper can
altogether remedy. They may often violate the tastes and feelings of
others, not from a want of proper regard for them, but from ignorance
of custom, or want of habit, or abstraction of mind, or from other
causes which demand forbearance and sympathy, rather than displeasure.
An ability to bear patiently with defects in manners, and to make
candid and considerate allowance for a want of advantages, or for
peculiarities in mental habits, is one mark of the benevolence of real
good-breeding.
The advocates of monarchical and aristocratic institutions have always
had great plausibility given to their views, by the seeming tendencies
of our institutions to insubordination and bad manners. And it has
been too indiscriminately conceded, by the defenders of the latter,
that such are these tendencies, and that the offensive points in
American manners are the necessary result of democratic principles.
But it is believed that both facts and reasoning are in opposition to
this opinion. The following extract from the work of De Tocqueville,
the great political philosopher of France, exhibits the opinion of an
impartial observer, when comparing American manners with those of the
English, who are confessedly the most aristocratic of all people.
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