The great error into which nearly all foreigners and most
Americans fall, who write or speak of society in this
country, arises from confounding the political with the
social system. In most other countries, in England, France,
and all those nations whose government is monarchical or
aristocratic, these systems are indeed similar. Society is
there intimately connected with the government, and the
distinctions in one are the origin of gradations in the
other. The chief part of the society of the kingdom is
assembled in the capital, and the same persons who legislate
for the country legislate also for it. But in America the two
systems are totally unconnected, and altogether different in
character. In remodelling the form of the administration,
society remained unrepublican. There is perfect freedom of
political privilege, all are the same upon the hustings, or
at a political meeting; but this equality does not extend to
the drawing-room or the parlour. None are excluded from the
highest councils of the nation, but it does not follow that
all can enter into the highest ranks, of society. In point of
fact, we think that there is more exclusiveness in the
society of this country, than there is in that even of
England--far more than there is in France. And the
explanation may perhaps be found in the fact which we hate
mentioned above. There being there less danger of permanent
disarrangement or confusion of ranks by the occasional
admission of the low-born aspirant, there does not exist the
same necessity for a jealous guarding of the barriers as
there does here. The distinction of classes, also, after the
first or second, is actually more clearly defined, and more
rigidly observed in America, than in any country of Europe.