When I mentioned to him the difference I perceived between the
inhabitants of New England and of the Southern States, he remarked: 'I
esteem those people greatly; they are the stamina of the Union and its
greatest benefactors. They are continually spreading themselves too,
to settle and enlighten less favored quarters. Dr. Franklin is a New
Englander.' When I remarked that his observations were flattering to
my country, he replied, with great good-humor, 'Yes, yes, Mr. Bernard,
but I consider your country the cradle of free principles, not their
armchair. Liberty in England is a sort of idol; people are bred up in
the belief and love of it, but see little of its doings. They walk
about freely, but then it is between high walls; and the error of its
government was in supposing that after a portion of their subjects had
crossed the sea to live upon a common, they would permit their friends
at home to build up those walls about them.' A black coming in at this
moment with a jug of spring water, I could not repress a smile, which
the general at once interpreted. 'This may seem a contradiction,' he
continued, 'but I think you must perceive that it is neither a crime
nor an absurdity. When we profess, as our fundamental principle, that
liberty is the inalienable right of every man, we do not include
madmen or idiots; liberty in their hands would become a scourge. Till
the mind of the slave has been educated to perceive what are the
obligations of a state of freedom, and not confound a man's with a
brute's, the gift would insure its abuse.
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