6554. PEOPLE, American and European.—
If all the sovereigns of Europe were
to set themselves to work to emancipate the
minds of their subjects from their present
ignorance and preiudices, and that, as zealously
as they now endeavor the contrary, a
thousand years would not place them on
that high ground on which our common people
are now setting out. Ours could not have
been so fairly put into the hands of their own
common sense, had they not been separated
from their parent stock, and kept from contamination,
either from them, or the other
people of the old world, by the intervention
of so wide an ocean.—
To George Wythe. Washington ed. ii, 7.
Ford ed., iv, 268.
(P.
1786)
