'To my native country AS my home--yes, also.' 'You imply some reservation,' said Martin.
'Well,' returned his new friend, 'if you ask me whether I came back here with a greater relish for my country's faults; with a greater fondness for those who claim (at the rate of so many dollars a day) to be her friends; with a cooler indifference to the growth of principles among us in respect of public matters and of private dealings between man and man, the advocacy of which, beyond the foul atmosphere of a criminal trial, would disgrace your own old Bailey lawyers; why, then I answer plainly, No.' 'Oh!' said Martin; in so exactly the same key as his friend's No, that it sounded like an echo.
'If you ask me,' his companion pursued, 'whether I came back here better satisfied with a state of things which broadly divides society into two classes--whereof one, the great mass, asserts a spurious independence, most miserably dependent for its mean existence on the disregard of humanizing conventionalities of manner and social custom, so that the coarser a man is, the more distinctly it shall appeal to his taste; while the other, disgusted with the low standard thus set up and made adaptable to everything, takes refuge among the graces and refinements it can bring to bear on private life, and leaves the public weal to such fortune as may betide it in the press and uproar of a general scramble--then again I answer, No.' And again Martin said 'Oh!' in the same odd way as before, being anxious and disconcerted; not so much, to say the truth, on public grounds, as with reference to the fading prospects of domestic architecture.
'In a word,' resumed the other, 'I do not find and cannot believe and therefore will not allow, that we are a model of wisdom, and an example to the world, and the perfection of human reason, and a great deal more to the same purpose, which you may hear any hour in the day; simply because we began our political life with two inestimable advantages.' 'What were they ?' asked Martin.
'One, that our history commenced at so late a period as to escape the ages of bloodshed and cruelty through which other nations have passed; and so had all the light of their probation, and none of its darkness.
The other, that we have a vast territory, and not--as yet--too many people on it.

These facts considered, we have done little enough, I think.' 'Education ?' suggested Martin, faintly.
'Pretty well on that head,' said the other, shrugging his shoulders, 'still no mighty matter to boast of; for old countries, and despotic countries too, have done as much, if not more, and made less noise about it.

We shine out brightly in comparison with England, certainly; but hers is a very extreme case.

You complimented me on my frankness, you know,' he added, laughing.
'Oh! I am not at all astonished at your speaking thus openly when my country is in question,' returned Martin.

'It is your plain-speaking in reference to your own that surprises me.' 'You will not find it a scarce quality here, I assure you, saving among the Colonel Divers, and Jefferson Bricks, and Major Pawkinses; though the best of us are something like the man in Goldsmith's comedy, who wouldn't suffer anybody but himself to abuse his master.