CHENEYS AND THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL. °:
Hitherto no great state has been able to sustain
itself in a front place without aristocracy of some
kind maintained on the hereditary principle. On
this point the answer of history is uniform. The
United States may inaugurate a new experience,
With the one exception of the Adams’s, the great
men who have shown as yet in American history
have no representatives to stand at present in the
front political ranks. There are no Washingtons,
no Franklins, no Jeffersons. no Clays or Randolphs,
now governing States or leading debates in Congress,
How long this will continue, how long the determin-
ation that all men shall start equal in the race of
life will prevail against the instinetive tendencies of
successful men to perpetuate their names, is the most
interesting of political problems. "The American
nationality is as yet too young for conclusions to be
built on what it has done hitherto, or has forborne
to do. We shall know better two centuries hence
whether equality and the ballot-box provide better
leaders for a people than the old methods of birth
and training. France was cut in pieces in the revo-
lution of 1793, and flung into the Medean caldron,
expecting to emerge again with fresh vitality.
The rash experiment has not succeeded up to this
time, and here too we must wait for what her future