Caroline, who was the first scoundrel in Europe?

Pause yet a moment, indignant friend. Whose habits and principles would
ruin this country as rapidly as it has been made? Who are enamored of a
puerile imitation of foreign splendors? Who strenuously endeavor to
graft the questionable points of Parisian society upon our own? Who pass
a few years in Europe and return skeptical of republicanism and human
improvement, longing and sighing for more sharply emphasized social
distinctions? Who squander, with profuse recklessness, the hard-earned
fortunes of their sires? Who diligently devote their time to nothing,
foolishly and wrongly supposing that a young English nobleman has
nothing to do? Who, in fine, evince by their collective conduct, that
they regard their Americanism as a misfortune, and are so the most
deadly enemies of their country? None but what our wag facetiously
termed "the best society."

If the reader doubts, let him consider its practical results in any
great emporiums of "best society." Marriage is there regarded as a
luxury, too expensive for any but the sons of rich men, or fortunate
young men. We once heard an eminent divine assert, and only half in
sport, that the rate of living was advancing so incredibly, that
weddings in his experience were perceptibly diminishing. The reasons
might have been many and various. But we all acknowledge the fact. On
the other hand, and about the same time, a lovely damsel (ah! Clorinda!)
whose father was not wealthy, who had no prospective means of support,
who could do nothing but polka to perfection, who literally knew almost
nothing, and who constantly shocked every fairly intelligent person by
the glaring ignorance betrayed in her remarks, informed a friend at one
of the Saratoga balls, whither he had made haste to meet "the best
society," that there were "not more than three good matches in society."