Page:A letter on "Uncle Tom's cabin" (1852).djvu/30

26 system of hereditary honors, that what honors you have are bestowed much more wisely than ours. For I should beg leave to doubt that.

Nor, again, is it in government alone that the drollery I have spoken of before is visible. Success in ordinary life often depends as much upon defects and redundancies as upon merits. There are even instances of men who succeed in life by the fear and aversion of their fellow-men; and these disagreeable persons are got rid of by being pushed up higher and higher in consequence of the very qualities which their good parents always labored to correct in them. In the mean time, persons of real worth are too much prized by those around them to be advanced. Thoughtful men have often fretted over-much, as it seems to me, about such things; for, putting aside higher views, without these motley occurrences in life, where would be its tragedy, or its comedy, or its tragi-comedy, all so deeply interesting and so instructive?

Well, what I wanted to come to is, that, if the systems of perfect good which men often propose to themselves in their fond imaginations were adopted, all wit, humor, contrast, forbearance in the highest sense, bravery, and independence would run some chance of being done away with. This may be a sufficient answer to any weak repinings