Page:A letter on "Uncle Tom's cabin" (1852).djvu/22

18 I fondly trust are not equalled in absurdity, not only in any part of this planet, but in any other planet that circles round the sun: the history of many a great law case is a thing which, if really well written, would convulse the world with tears and laughter. In many of our ways and habits we are so constrained by the most thoughtless conformity with the past, that the nation is like a tall boy of poor parents who is painfully tight in his clothes. Then, in any great question submitted to the public here, religion, or rather religious rancor, springs up like the vines which, at the will of Bacchus, rose suddenly from the earth and entangled the feet of some poor mythical person—whose name I now forget, but you, as being later from a university, will know all about him. Again, we, as well as you, have constitutional difficulties to contend with. Before any thing wise or good can be done, innumerable people have to be persuaded, or outvoted, or tired out. All the possible folly that can be said on any subject has to be answered, and borne with, and exhausted. The chaff has to be winnowed away many times before the grain can be got at at all. One conclusion from all this in my mind is, that, as more power of all kinds is allowed to the individual in modern constitutions (as for in-