Origin and Causes of Democracy in America

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Excerpt from Origin and Causes of Democracy in America: A Discourse by George W. BurnapThe existence and wonderful prosperity of this nation, are fixed facts, and the lesson they read is not likely to be lost upon the world.Nations, like individuals, have their peculiar organic type, by which they are distinguished from each other. It is early manifested, and when once fixed, has the power of perpetuating itself through countless generations. Nationality seems to have a mysterious, creative, and transforming power. Like that vital energy, which determines the species of the trees of the forest, it has the power of assimilating all things to itself. The oak and the pine spring up, side by side, out of a common soil, and draw nourishment from the same elements, yet one converts those elements into the peculiar wood and foliage of the straight and lofty pine, the other into the low and gnarled oak. So nationality, operating upon the elements of a common humanity, assimilates it to its own type, transmits that type from age to age, and transforms to its own liken whatever foreign element is thrown into it. What can be more different from each other, than the two nations which the British Channel separates? The Alps and the Pyrenees divide nations no less diverse from each other. It is not soil, it is not climate, for what more different than the ancient Roman and the modern Italian? What more dissimilar than the magnanimous soldiers of Alexander, and the cowering slaves who have so long kissed the footstool of the Ottoman throne?We have existed long enough to develop and to exhibit our national characteristics. The most prominent of these, as I have already said, is Democracy. I mean, of course, in no sectarian or party sense. I mean a government constituted and administered by the people themselves. I mean a Democracy, in contradistinction to a Despotism, a Monarchy an Aristocracy, and as equally distinguished from Anarchy, Agrarianism, and Socialism.The formation of this great Republic in the western hemisphere, was a result wholly unforeseen and unpremeditated.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.