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The man Booth, who had done this deed of blood and madness, was an unworthy member of the family of distinguished actors of that name. He was young, handsome, given to hard drinking, of inordinate vanity, and of small capacity in his profession; altogether, he was a disreputable fellow, though fitted to seem a hero in the eyes of the ignorant and dissipated classes.
Between the two classes there is a great gulf fixed, or perhaps it would be more accurately correct to say that there was such a great gulf fixed a year or two ago. The great gulf exists still, but it is beginning gradually to be a little bridged over. No doubt another twenty years will see it vanish altogether.
But no one suspected, or could have suspected, that a millionaire's yacht, and it the temporary home of the leading members of the governing classes, could have been engaged in a secret trade, highly dangerous to the peace and security of the nation.
And everywhere, in all classes of Society, men and women were starving their minds and hearts, and straining their energies to follow this phantom of fashion; the masses were kept poor because of it, and the youth and hope of the world was betrayed by it.
No intelligent American, however, fell into such an error. It was evident to the native observer, that the Workingmen's party, while aiming at certain reforms which it deemed necessary for the welfare of the laboring classes, had no felonious purposes in view to the prejudice of property, and this for the plain reason, that most workingmen were property-owners themselves.
Since it agrees so nearly, in its known properties, with the sum of the characters of the class, it is likely to resemble that class more than any other in those of its properties which are still undiscovered. Not only, therefore, are natural groups, no less than any artificial classes, determined by characters; they are constituted in contemplation of, and by reason of, characters.
Moreover, an impression was gradually making its way among the more intelligent classes that religion ought to free itself from such superstitions.
The more he gained the confidence of the lower classes, the more did he affect the philosophical tone and austere demeanour of the statesman. It was plainly perceptible in his most radical propositions, that however he might wish to renew social order he would not corrupt its elements, and that his eyes to emancipate the people was not to degrade them.
This picture, drawn by a Jacobin Deputy, is not flattering to republican fraternization. It is true, the wants of the lower classes are afflicting.
As to the lower classes, I don't think he ever speaks to them; or, if he does, what good can it do him? for he can't understand their modes of expression, nor they his: if he inquire about a matter of fact, I defy him to get the truth out of them, if they don't wish to tell it; and, for some reason or other, they will, nine times in ten, not wish to tell it to an Englishman.
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