great and dreadful revolution of 1793, which convulsed not only France
but the whole civilised world. But caste, thank God, has never existed
in England, since at least the first generation after the Norman
conquest.

The vast majority, all but the whole population of England, have been
always free; and free, as they are not where caste exists to change their
occupations. They could intermarry, if they were able men, into the
ranks above them; as they could sink, if they were unable men, into the
ranks below them. Any man acquainted with the origin of our English
surnames may verify this fact for himself, by looking at the names of a
single parish or a single street of shops. There, jumbled together, he
will find names marking the noblest Saxon or Angle blood--Kenward or
Kenric, Osgood or Osborne, side by side with Cordery or Banister--now
names of farmers in my own parish--or other Norman-French names which may
be, like those two last, in Battle Abbey roll--and side by side the
almost ubiquitous Brown, whose ancestor was probably some Danish or
Norwegian house-carle, proud of his name Biorn the Bear, and the
ubiquitous Smith or Smythe, the Smiter, whose forefather, whether he be
now peasant or peer, assuredly handled the tongs and hammer at his own
forge. This holds true equally in New England and in Old. When I search
through (as I delight to do) your New England surnames, I find the same
jumble of names--West Saxon, Angle, Danish, Norman, and French-Norman
likewise, many of primaeval and heathen antiquity, many of high nobility,
all worked together, as at home, to form the Free Commoners of England.

If any should wish to know more on this curious and important subject,
let me recommend them to study Ferguson's "Teutonic Name System," a book
from which you will discover that some of our quaintest, and seemingly
most plebeian surnames--many surnames, too, which are extinct in England,