One of the
vulgar lately said to an American woman who owned that we did not
yield an equal personal fealty to all our Presidents, "Oh yes,
but you know that it is only your _people_ that choose the
President, but _God_ gave us the King." Nothing could be
opposed to a belief so simple, as in the churches of the eldest
faith the humble worshipper could not well be told that the
picture or the statue of his adoration was not itself sacred. In
fact, it is not going too far, at least for a very adventurous
spirit, to say that loyalty with the English is a sort of
religious principle. What is with us more or less a joke,
sometimes bad, sometimes good, namely, our allegiance to the
powers that be in the person of the Chief Magistrate, is with
them a most serious thing, at which no man may smile without
loss.
I was so far from wishing myself to smile at it, that I darkled
most respectfully about it, without the courage to inquire
directly into the mystery. If it was often on my tongue to ask,
"What is loyalty? How did you come by it? Why are you loyal?"--I
felt that it would be embarrassing when it would not be
offensive, and I should vainly plead in excuse that this property
of theirs mystified me the more because it seemed absolutely left
out of the American nature.
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