Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/27

Rh who live to-day in our hearts, deserve all praise. But that as a class they were superior to their opponents; that they were so greatly superior to those who fought for the same object in Mexico, as we have been taught to believe, is not true. Lecky, with many others, holds that they have been "very unduly extolled," and that "the general aspect of the American people during the contest was far from heroic or sublime;" while Washington himself writes in 1778 that "idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have laid fast hold of most of them; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration, and almost every order of men."

Let us then learn to omit some portion of our self-adulation in speaking of ourselves, some portion of our spread-eagle and Fourth-of-July buncombe and bombast in speaking of our country, to practise a little less hypocrisy and humbug in our politics, to say nothing of bribery and other corruption which is quite rank enough in our republic to-day.

Europe was bad enough, as we have seen, without any accentuation; monarchies were bad enough, the chief recommendation of the rulers being that they made no pretensions to honesty or piety, or rather made their piety to suit their honesty. And now with this showing of the influence from which the people of the New World determined to free themselves, I will proceed to show how it was done.