A government system fatally weakened by airy ideals of republicanism

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 31.

Above all, America’s government was a rickety experiment, indecisive and incapable of ever rising to the level of the world’s great powers. The Irish poet Thomas Moore, who visited America in 1804, saw in the vulgarity and roughness of American society a reflection of a government system fatally weakened by airy ideals of republicanism and lacking the steadying influence of a gentry and hereditary aristocracy. “The mail takes twelve passengers, “which generally consist of squalling children, stinking negroes, and republicans smoking cigars,” Moore complained. “How often it has occurred to me that nothing can be more emblematic of the government of this country than its stages, filled with a motley mixture, all ‘hail fellows well met,’ driving through mud and filth, which bespatters them as they raise it, and risking an upset at every step.”