Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/100

94 well born, (for birth is by no means indispensable to the character,) his satisfaction is in being allied to men of the same qualities as himself, and not to a senseless pride in an accident. The vulgar-minded mistake motives that they cannot feel; but he, at least, is capable of distinguishing between things that are false, and the things which make him what he is.

An eminent writer of our own time, has said in substance, that a nation is happy, in which the people, possessing the power to select their rulers, select the noble. This was the opinion of a European, who had been accustomed to see the liberal qualities in the exclusive possession of a caste, and who was not accustomed to see the people sufficiently advanced to mingle in affairs of state. Power cannot be extended to a caste without caste's reaping its principal benefit; but happy, indeed, is the nation, in which, power being the common property, there is sufficient discrimination and justice to admit the intelligent and refined to a just participation of its influence.

AN ARISTOCRAT AND A DEMOCRAT.

We live in an age, when the words aristocrat and democrat are much used, without regard to the real significations. An aristocrat is one of a few, who possess the political power of a country; a democrat, one of the many. The words are also properly applied to those who entertain notions favorable to aristocratical, or democratical forms of government. Such persons are not, necessarily, either aristocrats, or democrats in fact, but merely so in opinion. Thus a