With regard to the jest itself, we must remark that Mr. Greeley saw
this only in a translation, where it had lost whatever of light and
graceful in its manner excused a piece of raillery very coarse in its
substance. We will admit that, had he seen it as it originally stood,
connected with other items in the playful chronicle of Pierre Durand,
it would have impressed him differently.
But the cause of irritation in the _Courrier_, and of the sharp
repartees of its manifesto, is, probably, what was said of the
influence among us of "French literature and French morals," to which
the "organ of the French-American population" felt called on to make a
spirited reply, and has done so with less of wit and courtesy than
could have been expected from the organ of a people who, whatever may
be their faults, are at least acknowledged in wit and courtesy
preeminent. We hope that the French who come to us will not become, in
these respects, Americanized, and substitute the easy sneer, and use
of such terms as "ridiculous," "virtuous misanthropy," &c., for the
graceful and poignant raillery of their native land, which tickles
even where it wounds.
We may say, in reply to the _Courrier_, that if Fourierism
"recoils towards a state of nature," it arises largely from the fact
that its author lived in a country where the natural relations are, if
not more cruelly, at least more lightly violated, than in any other of
the civilized world.
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