ABSTRACT
The abominable practice of duelling had occupied them at Judge Bee’s; the lawman wanted offenders deprived of citizenship for life. ‘This would stab their cursed, contemptuous and dastardly honour to the quick,’ snorted Rhees. The cattle Rhees found stunted and ill-bred, however. Americans, he asserted, and he was to repeat it in Kentucky, were unsuited to experiment and innovation. ‘Strangers to Want and no ambition to excel, they still pursue the old beaten track.’ Moreover, the ebb of principle, the slough of short-sighted materialism were inherent in the very bounty of their hard-won commonwealth. Legislatures boast of an attachment to France and bawl for liberty, at the same time as they keep in Egyptian bondage a great proportion of their fellow creatures.
