[Pg v]
ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
W. Greatbatch, sc.
MARTIN VAN BUREN,
President of the United States.
London, Published by Richard Bentley, 1839
ARISTOCRACY IN AMERICA.
FROM THE
SKETCH-BOOK OF A GERMAN NOBLEMAN.
EDITED BY
FRANCIS J. GRUND.
AUTHOR OF “THE AMERICANS IN THEIR MORAL, SOCIAL,
AND POLITICAL RELATIONS.”
“Why should the poor be flatter’d?
No: let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning.”
Shakspeare’s Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 2.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1839.
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
I dedicate to you the following pages, written by one of yourfellow-citizens, who, though a European by birth, is firmly anddevotedly attached to his adopted country.
If their contents should in any way offend you,—if the seriousor ironical arguments contained in them should meet with yourdispleasure,—I entreat you to consider the purity of the Author’sintention, who, even where he employs personal satire, wishes but toexpose error for the purpose of reform, not of ridicule.
Neither must you look upon them as containing aught against the lawsand institutions of your country. Not those glorious monuments of thevirtue and wisdom of your fathers, but the men who would turn them to[Pg vi]vicious and selfish purposes are justly upheld to derision.
A people like yourselves, great, powerful, and magnanimous, is as muchbeyond the reach of personal satire as it is proof against the weaponsof its foes: not so the men who, claiming for themselves a specificdistinction, cannot properly be considered as identified with yourprinciples and character.
Against these then, and against these alone, is the following work—ofwhich I am but the Editor—directed, in the hope of thereby renderinga service to the Public, which, both in the capacity of a writer anda citizen of the United States, I readily acknowledge as my Lord andSovereign. What other object, indeed, could he have, whose wishes,hopes, and expectations are identified with your own, and who considersno earthly honour equal to that of being
Your humblest servant andFellow-citizen,
Francis J. Grund.