THE PHILOSOPHICAL EMPEROR: A POLITICAL EXPERIMENT; OR, THE PROGRESS OF A FALSE POSITION. DEDICATED TO THE WHIGS, CONSERVATIVES, DEMOCRATS, AND LOCO OF THE UNITED STATES. NEW-YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-ST. -1841. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York. DEDICATION. MOST HONOURED AND RESPECTED GENTLEMEN WERE I to credit what each of your honoured parties says of the others, I could not address you in the respectful terms that my present purpose and habitual good-nature render imperative. I prefer to believe what each of you says of his own party, and certainly you ought to know your own principles better than your adversaries can know them. Thus estimated, no men can be more patriotic and sagacious than you severally are; and every citizen of our confederacy should be proud that our active population is so pure and disinterested. But, gentlemen, you are liable to mistakes, and, as I once heard from the pulpit, every man will retain some human nature despite the best efforts of the clergy. These common frailties may (I will not say they have) have led your tenets sometimes (seldom, perhaps, but sometimes) a little astray-a very little. I will not particularize when and where, but only claim a little peccadillo some time or other. This is a sore point, but you will not deny me such an admission. For the benefit, therefore, of that little defect, I take the liberty of presenting to you the following narrative of a political experiment, with its incidents, that occurred in a remote region which I once visited. Of the experiment no doubt exists, as you may find by consulting the learned. The whole has been laboriously collected by me from numerous folios, and so condensed, that, if the reader shall indulge the bad practice of skipping instead of reading, he will miss the deep learning that my pages contain, and which has been seasoned so as to possess just pepper enough, salt, and other mild condiments to make it palatable as well as wholeThe admixture is humbly dedicated to you, in the confident hope of your united and immediate patronage, and of posterity's ultimate gratitude, by your very humble, some. Very dutiful, respectful, April 15, 1841. And obedient servant, THE AUTHOR. AMONG the emperors of Boresko whose fame. has descended to posterity, none seems to have excited a greater sensation among his contemporaries than the Philosophical Emperor; so called by reason of his fondness for experimenting in the science of government. Providence has created us with an appetite for what we possess not rather than for what we possess. This is beneficial, by constantly presenting us motives for activity; though a man who desires what he cannot obtain, may blame the contrivance rather than thank the contriver. The emperor, monarch over an obedient people, might be supposed to possess all he could desire; but the above principle urged him to desire more. He wanted to originate no measure that was not popular, whatever might be |