Introduction
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson was unimpressed with the quality of the Representatives that the people of New York sent to Congress. They were the kind of men most people would banish from their homes, but New Yorkers were quite happy to send them to the House if it meant their Party secured a majority and dipped into the pork barrel.
HOW prompt the suggestion of a low motive! Certain patriots in England devoted themselves for years to creating a public opinion that should break down the corn-laws and establish free trade. “Well,” says the man in the street, “Cobden got a stipend out of it.” Kossuth fled hither across the ocean to try if he could rouse the New World to a sympathy with European liberty. “Aye,” says New York, “he made a handsome thing of it, enough to make him comfortable for life.”
See what allowance vice finds in the respectable and well-conditioned class. If a pickpocket intrude into the society of gentlemen, they exert what moral force they have, and he finds himself uncomfortable, and glad to get away. But if an adventurer go through all the forms, procure himself to be elected to a post of trust, as of senator, or president, — though by the same arts as we detest in the house-thief — the same gentlemen who agree to discountenance the private rogue, will be forward to show civilities and marks of respect to the public one: and no amount of evidence of his crimes will prevent them giving him ovations, complimentary dinners, opening their own houses to him, and priding themselves on his acquaintance.
Précis
Writing just before the American Civil War, Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked that New Yorkers seemed to assume that all politicians were motivated by financial self-interest, and to applaud them for it. This materialist attitude, said Emerson, allowed rascals of a stamp that New Yorkers would shun at home to become popular and high-ranking statesmen.
(54 / 60 words)
Writing just before the American Civil War, Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked that New Yorkers seemed to assume that all politicians were motivated by financial self-interest, and to applaud them for it. This materialist attitude, said Emerson, allowed rascals of a stamp that New Yorkers would shun at home to become popular and high-ranking statesmen.
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