Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/97

Rh while these, again, mindful of her years and increasing infirmities, feel it a source of pleasure to anticipate her little wants, and to increase her comforts. The conditions of master and servant are those of co-relatives, and when they are properly understood they form additional ties to the charities and happiness of life. It is an unhappy effect of the unformed habits of society in this country, and of domestic slavery, that we are so much wanting in this beautiful feature in domestic economy.

The social duties of a gentleman are of a high order. The class to which he belongs is the natural repository of the manners, tastes, tone, and, to a certain extent, of the principles of a country. They who imagine this portion of the community useless, drones who consume without producing, have not studied society, or they have listened to the suggestions of personal envy, instead of consulting history and facts. If the laborer is indispensable to civilization, so is also the gentleman. While the one produces, the other directs his skill to those arts which raise the polished man above the barbarian. The last brings his knowledge and habits to bear upon industry, and, taking the least favorable view of his claims, the indulgence of his very luxuries encourages the skill that contributes to the comforts of the lowest.

Were society to be satisfied with a mere supply of the natural wants, there would be no civilization. The savage condition attains this much. All beyond it, notwithstanding, is so much progress made in the direction of the gentleman, and has been made either at the suggestions, or by the encouragement of those whose means have enabled, and whose tastes have induced them to buy. Knowledge is as necessary to the progress of a people as physical force, for, with our knowledge, the beasts of burthen who now toil for