Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

A Row. 219
example of the prodigious great scale on which everything is
transacted in this country!"
By this time I had become tired of the scene; my head ached
with the uproar of voices, mingling in all the discordant tones
of triumphant exclamation, nonsensical argument, intemperate
reproach, and drunken absurdity. The confusion was such as no
language can adequately describe, and it seemed as if all the
restraints of decency, and all the bands of law, had been broken
and given place to the wide ravages of licentious brutality.
These, thought I, are the orgies of liberty! these are manifestations of the spirit of independence l these are the symbols of man's sovereignty! Head of Mahomet I with what a
fatal and inexorable despotism do empty names and ideal phantoms exercise their dominion over the human mind! The experience of agces has demonstrated, that in all nations, barbarous
or enlightened, the mass of the people, the mob,. must be slaves,
or they will be tyrants; but their tyranny will not be long:
some ambitious leader, having at first condescended to be their
slave, will at length become their master; and in proportion to
the vileness of his former servitude, will be the severity of his
subsequent tyranny. Yet, with innumerable examples staring
them in the face, the people still bawl out liberty; by which
they mean nothing but freedom from every species of legal restraint, and a warrant for all kinds of licentiousness; and the
bashaws and leaders, in courting the mob, convince them of their
power; and by administering to their passions, for the purposes
of ambition, at length learn, by fatal experience, that he who
worships the beast that carries him on his back, will sooner or
later be thrown into the dust, and trampled under foot by the
animal who has learnt the secret of its power, by this very adoration. Ever thine, MIUSTAPHA.