the crowded population of a capital town, there are many
incentives to refinement, public virtue, and even piety, that are
not to be met with elsewhere. In this respect we apprehend that
good and evil are more nearly balanced among us than is commonly
supposed; and we doubt if it were possible to render the laws a
dead letter in the streets of New York, as has been done around
the bell of the Capitol at Albany, and strictly among its rural
population, directly beneath the eyes of the highest authority of
the State. The danger to valuable and movable property would be
too imminent, and those who felt an interest in its preservation
would not fail to rally in its defence. It is precisely on this
principle that in the end property will protect itself as against
the popular inroads which are inevitable, should the present
tendencies receive no check. Calm, disinterested, and judicious
legislation is a thing not to be hoped for. It never occurs in
any state of society except under the pressure of great events;
and this for the very simple reason that men, acting in factions,
are never calm, judicious, or disinterested.

{around the bell of the Capitol = Cooper is alluding to the
public ferment in upstate New York, during the "anti-rent wars"
of the 1840s, resulting in laws infringing, in Cooper's view, on
the legal contractual and property rights of landowners}

Nevertheless, the community will live on, suffer, and be deluded:
it may even fancy itself almost within reach of perfection, but
it will live on to be disappointed. There is no such thing on
earth, and the only real question for the American statesman is
to measure the results of different defective systems for the
government of the human race. We are far from saying that our