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They went in; and while the sleek, well-tied parcels of “Men’s Beavers” and “York Tan” were bringing down and displaying on the counter, he said—“But I beg your pardon, Miss Woodhouse, you were speaking to me, you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my amor patriae. Do not let me lose it. I assure you the utmost stretch of public fame would not make me amends for the loss of any happiness in private life.”

He admitted that slaveholding rendered his own class depraved “despots,” and destroyed the “amor patriae” of their bondsmen.

But as we look deeply into just what our own amor patriae means, and whether it can hold together, we might think hard about what inscriptions we want written on the memory stones of our own times.

As Americans consider the survival of their own amor patriae we might reflect on just how old our story is.

The most that could be asked from governments of the Old World was to promote virtue and to maintain justice; honor, "amor patriae" and fear were the essential principles on which rested the governments described by Montesquieu.