CHAPTER XX

Writing "The Yankee"

By THE absence of an irreverent press, Europe for a
thousand years has existed merely for the advantage of
half a dozen seventh-rate families called Monarchs, and
some hundreds of riffraff sarcastically called Nobles. Our
papers have one peculiarity—it is American—it exists no-
where else—their irreverence. May they never lose and
never modify it. They are irreverent toward pretty much
everything, but where they laugh one good king to death,
they laugh a thousand cruel and infamous shams and
superstitions into the grave, and the account is squared.
Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure
defense.

How superbly brave is the Englishman in the presence
of the awfulest forms of danger and death; and how ab-
ject in the presence of any and all forms of heredity rank.

Are we asked to believe that the vote of a whole nation
would voluntarily saddle upon itself any form of hered-
itary monarchy and hereditary nobility? Then we must
also believe that it would in the same way approve the
restricting, the officering of its armies and navies to per-
sons of "noble" degree—which is on its face impossible,
absurd.

Rank in the army is still restricted to the nobility—by
a thing which is stronger than law—the power of ancient
habit and superstition. Let a commoner become an officer
—he will be snubbed by all his brethren, ostracized, driven
out.