Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/80

74 ; tastes ridiculed, and we decide wrong, from the practice of submitting to a preconceived and an unfounded prejudice, the most active and the most pernicious of all the hostile agents of the human mind.

The migratory propensities of the American people, and the manner in which the country has been settled by immigrants from all parts of the christian world, have an effect in diminishing prejudices of a particular kind, though, in other respects, few nations are more bigotted or provincial in their notions. Innovations on the usages connected with the arts of life are made here with less dificulty [sic] than common, reason, interest and enterprise proving too strong for prejudice; but in morals, habits and tastes, few nations have less liberality to boast of, than this.

America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies. The quakers, or friends, proscribed the delightful and elevated accomplishment of music, as, indeed, did the puritans, with the exception of psalmody. The latter confined marriage ceremonies to the magistrates, lest religion should be brought into disrepute! Most of those innocent recreations which help the charities, and serve to meliorate manners, were also forbidden, until an unnatural and monastic austerity, with a caustic habit of censoriousness, got to be considered as the only outward signs of that religious hope, which is so peculiarly adapted to render us joyous and benevolent.

False and extravagant notions on the subject of manners, never fail to injure a sound morality, by mistaking the shadow for the substance. Positive vice is known by all, for happily, conscience and revelation have made us acquainted with the laws of virtue, but it is as indiscreet unnecessarily to enlarge