Yet
it is not the less true that aristocracies sometimes do behave with a
rashness that cannot be paralleled from the histories of democracies and
despotisms. It has been the fortune of this age to see two examples of
this rashness, such as no other age ever witnessed or ever could have
witnessed. The first of these was presented in the action, in 1860-61,
of the American aristocracy. The second was that of the Austrian
aristocracy, in 1866. The American aristocracy--the late slavocracy--was
the most powerful body in the world; so powerful, that it was safe
against everything but itself. It had been gradually built up, until it
was as towering as its foundations were deep and broad. Not only was it
unassailed, but there was no disposition in any influential quarter to
assail it. The few persons who did attack it, from a distance, produced
scarcely more effect adverse to its ascendency, than was produced by the
labors of the first Christians against the Capitoline Jupiter in the
days of the Julian Caesars. Abolitionists were annoyed and insulted even
in the course of that political campaign which ended in the election of
Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency; and not a few of the victors in that
campaign were forward to declare, that between their party and the
"friends of the slave" there was neither friendship nor sympathy.
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