“I feel a Stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, than to laugh at their Folly.”

From John Adams to Thomas Jefferson:

Quincy November 15 [1813].
Dear Sir
I cannot appease my melancholly commiseration for our Armies in this furious Snow Storm, in any way So well as by Studying your Letter of Oct. 28.
We are now explicitly agreed, in one important point, vizt That “there is a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents.”
You very justly indulge a little merriment upon this Solemn Subject of Aristocracy. I often laugh at it too, for there is nothing in this laughable world more ridiculous than the management of it by almost all the nations of the World. But while We Smile, Mankind have reason to Say to Us, as the froggs Said to the Boys, What is Sport to you, is Wounds and death to Us. When I consider the ,,[. . .], weakness, the folly, the Pride, the Vanity, the Selfishness, the Artifice, the low craft and mean Cunning the want of Principle, the Avarice the unbounded Ambition, the unfeeling Cruelty of a majority of those (in all Nations) who are allowed an Aristocratical influence; and on the other hand, the Stupidity with which the more numerous multitude, not only become their Dupes, but even love to be taken in by their Tricks: I feel a Stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, than to laugh at their Folly.