ABSTRACT
Emigrants to America, like converts to a new religion, elevated above their former rank, considered government and public affairs as part of their own concern, for which they were to pay the expense, and they watched them with circumspection. They soon found that government was not that complicated thing which church and state, to play into each other’s hands, had represented it, and that to conduct it with proper effect was to conduct it justly. Common sense, common honesty, and civil manners qualify a man for government; and besides this, put a man in a situation that requires new thinking, and he will grow up to it. Man is but a learner all his life.—Thomas Paine.
