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THE

AMERICAN

"TO STAND BY THE CONSTITUTION."

NEW SERIES, VOL. V.-WHOLE VOL. XL

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED AT 118 NASSAU STREET,

1850.

£.i6.Whei^ley-. Mezz

From a, Dajf^.*

ir.S. SilNji::u^: j: :^ul^ TEKKLOI^

THE

AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW,

No. XXXT.

FOR JULY, 1850

INTRODUCTOKY TO VOL. VI.

The first page of a new volume — the
sixtli of the present series, gives occasion
for a few remarks upon the course which we
feel it our duty to pursue, as conduc-
tors of the Whig Review. Our efforts will
he directed toward the re-establishment of
those party lines which have been in some
degree obscured by sectional agitations.
The grand doctrines of beneficent protec-
tion to every species of labor, and to in-
ternal as well as to external commerce, are
beginning to be argued from new points of
view, upon grounds more practical, and
from a more home-felt necessity of reform.
For nearly an entire year, discussion has
been paralyzed, and political action sus-
pended, by the slave controversy. The
policy of our political adversaries has not
been wholly unsuccessful ; the policy, name-
ly, of dividing and weakening our ranks
by hurling sectional jealousies amongst us.

Had it not been for the solidity and

VOL. VI. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

strength of our principles and the vastness
of those Interests of Labor which they sus-
tain, the terrible agitations which have pre-
vailed during the past year, would, doubt-
less, have torn the party into many hostile
factions. Prudence, calmness, and intelli-
gence, have averted so calamitous an issue,
and while those whom we oppose find
themselves without a single principle of
organization, we have only to remember
the great truth, that governments exist for
Beneficent and Protective ends, as well as
for Offence and Suppression, and with this
thought, we become at once united and firm
For the course which we have felt ifc
necessary to pursue, in admitting articles
and biographies representing both ex-
tremes of opinion, in regard to Slavery
and its extension, we must beg leave to
refer our readers to the first page of our
last number, where it is distinctly explain-
ed.

Political Paradoxes,

July,

POLITICAL PAEADOXES,

PARADOX I.

Ad Valorem.

By the present system of tariffs, tlie im-
porter of a foreign article is made the asses-
sor ofthe value of his own goods. The lower
the price named by the importer, or by the
ao-ent of the foreigner employed to sell his
goods in this country, the less tariff he will
have to pay, A fabric worth three dollars,
if valued by the importer at that price, will
pay perhaps 90 cents of tariff to the gov-
ernment. If, on the other hand, the im-
porter names two dollars as its price, the
tariff will be only 60 cents. Now it is a
question of moral casuistry whether a mer-
chant, on being forced to tell at what price
he values his wares, ought, in all cases, to
name the highest. Let casuists settle the
question as they will for the right or wrong
of the matter, we know very well, and eve-
ry man of business is aware, that human
nature has just enough of the beggarly ele-
ment in it as to take full advantage of
such an arrangement. If I swear that my
goods cost me on the average two dol-
lars, when in fact they cost three dollars,
I can save myself thereby six or eight thou-
rsand dollars a year from government. Now
as your foreign free-trader holds all tariffs to
l)eunjust and contrary to nature, he readily
shuts his eyes upon the dubious morality
'of a false valuation, by which the effect of
the "iniquitous tariff" system" is eluded.
It is not our intention here to present a few
partial statements taken from custom-house
returns, to show, what we are well assured
is the fact, that the present system of
valuations defrauds the government of a
good part of its revenue. Such statements
would only encumber the present inquiry;
which is not of the facts, but of the common
sense reasonings to be used in practical le-
gislation upon this system of tariffs.

The political paradox to which we would

now draw attention, is the peculiarly radi-
cal one of putting no faith in what is fami-
liarly termed "human nature," or the dis-
position of men, and more especially of men
in business. To put no faith in human
nature is to put no f lith in the laws of na-
ture. The more extensive and mature
one's observation of men, the more certain-
ly we predict their conduct under given
circumstances and temptations. It is a
matter of common observation, however,
that the virtue of mo t men, though it may
average well under ordinary pressure, will
yet give way under a heavy and steady force
of temptation. They will give way after a
time, yielding, as they imagine, to an irre-
sistible necessity — but, in reality, to a
strong attack upon their virtue. So much
we may assume, perhaps, without contra-
diction, or seemino; too dosrmatic.

Among all the virtues, that of strict al-
legiance to that indefinable power called a
government, appearing usually in the form
of a Secretary of the Treasury, is perhaps
the rarest and the most to be admired. It
is a paramount and unquestionable duty to
pay taxes to the government when they are
lawfully demanded. It is a grand exer-
cise of patriotism to do this when one may
easily avoid it. Very few persons look upon
it as a crime to smuggle a few articles in
their trunks from France to America. A
genuine and well-founded faith in " the
laws of human nature," will, perhaps, in-
duce the moralist to look well into the mat-
ter before he comes down with too harsh a
censure upon sins of this degree of veniali-
ty. That they are wrong we make no
question — but that they are crimes of as
deep a dye as murder or stealing, we have
our doubts.

That governments, in general, exercise a

1850.

Political Paradoxes.

strong faith in the "laws of human nature,"
every revenue cutter and custom-house offi-
cer is a perpetual witness. The people
themselves and the people's representa-
tives in Congress, have but little confi-
dence in human honesty, else they would
not go to the expense of revenue cut-
ters and custom-houses. They would con-
tent themselves with imposing a certain
tariff, and leaving it to the conscience of the
importers to pay it fully and promptly.
Nothino-, therefore, could be more absurd
or inconsistent than for government to
declare its want of confidence by one act,
and its fullness of confidence by another ;
to send an armed vessel to secure the pay-
ment of a tax, and then to ask the owner
to fix the amount of that tax himself.

A custom house oath is a form of law,
and brings the swearer in danger of the
law. It is by no means a rare, solemn, and
religious oath, but a common, vulgar, and
absurd one. For all purposes of law, it
were as good to demand a plain assevera-
tion, yea or nay — and the violation of that
should be a lie, punishable by certain pen-
alties. A custom house oath, falsely
sworn, is, we venture to say, no more than
an interested lie, of exactly the same cali-
bre and criminality with the shopman's,
who lies you into the belief that he paid
more for his stuffs than he asks you for
them : with this difference only, that the
small shopkeeping liar is not amenable to
the law, whereas the great shopkeeping
liar is so amenable. In a newspaper of the
day we have seen a great deal of virtuous
indignation expressed at the charge made
against foreign importers, that they allow
false valuations to be made of their goods
at the custom house, to escape the payment
of the full duty. This delicate minded de-
fender of injured virtue might as wisely
have expended his indignation upon the
government of the United States, for em-
bodying its suspicions of importers in the
shape of revenue cutters and custom hoiifee
officers. A revenue cutter is certainly a
disgrace to human virtue, but it is none the
less esteemed to be, like the watchman's
cudgel, a necessary instrument for the exe-
cution of the laws. The entire police force
of government, both by sea and land, mu-
nicipal and national, standing or occasional,
exists in open declaration of war against
every punishable kind of fraud and violence.

Prevention is one half the duty of the law.
Our Democratic friends will not deny that
we too hold it a principle that temptations
ought never to be held out to men in
business ; hence, our opposition to every
species of monopoly. But with this
ad valorem arrangement, by which the im-
porters are made to fix the amount of duty
they may see fit to pay, there is not only a
temptation held out to individuals to de-
fraud the government, but it is simply im-
possible for them to do business upon any but
a fraudulent system ; a necessity of such
force and of such an imposing character as
few can resist. There are rogues in every
business. No sooner was the ad valorem
system adopted, roguish importers began to
undervalue their goods They immediate-
ly found it possible to sell them just as much
cheaper as they had been more dishonest
than their neighbors. If their dishonest
undervaluation was 20 per cent., their pro-
fits were so much larger as their honesty
was less ; either by larger sales or higher
proceeds.

The honest importers, meanwhile, who
had had the courage to reveal the true
values of their goods, were losing to the
exact amount of their honesty. The law
had so arranged it that their losses should
be strictly proportioned to their piety. The
more conscience the less profit. It became
a very nice piece of casuistry to discover
whether a government which made laws for
the protection of dishonesty ought to be
regarded as a moral agent — and whether
oaths made to escape ruin, might not be, like
Sunday tasks — " works of necessity and
mercy."

One of the most remarkable and unac-
countable peculiarities of "human nature,"
and in which most practical men have an
unlimited faith, is, that whatever is custo-
mary ceases after a while to appear crimi-
nal. Were it a religious custom in Ame-
rica to commit suicide at meetings for wor-
ship, (as it is in India,) it would not ap-
pear criminal. The hanging of Quakers
was once customary and certainly not re-
garded as a crime ; whereas, to hang a
Quaker at this day, would be esteemed a
more criminal act than any other ; persons
of the old Quaker sect, being commonly es-
teemed the most useful and virtuous mem-
bers of society. Were it an established
custom to punish criminals by perpetual

Political Paradoxes.

July.

imprisonment, their execution by halter
would be looked upon as a crime.

By the working of the same law, or pecu-
liarity of our nature, custom-house oaths,
made for the undervaluation of imported
goods, cease to be regarded, by those who
make them, as sinful oaths. It is very ge-
nerally known among merchants, and by
the officers of the law, that the oaths are
false, and they are looked upon as a mere idle
ceremony. A custom of undervaluation is
very soon thoroughly established and ceases
to be thought criminal. Goods worth two
dollars are uniformly sworn in at one dol-
lar. The same is done by all. One man is
not more guilty than his neighbor ; neces-
sity establishes uniformity, and uniformity
removes the stain of criminality.

The financier who established the system
of ad valorem duties certainly had a high
opinion of the virtue and integrity of foreign
importers, and for this they may well ap-
plaud him ; much more would he have
earned their applause had he carried out
his principle of confidence^ and abolished
the entire system of surveillance and cus-
toms vigilance. Why any oaths at all }
Why these armed vessels and expensive
bond warehouses ? The faith of a merchant
tried by an oath and found good, is good in
all other things. If the importer rates his
goods at their true value, notwithstanding
the loss he thereby suffers, he needs no
compulsion nor " bond" to get from him
the payment of a duty. In a word, to
carry out and perfect the system of ad val~
orems^ as it now exists, the revenue ser-
vice and the warehouse system should be
immediately abolished. The importers
need only be asked how much they owe the
government, and they will tell it truly, and
will pay it when desired.

" Lead us not into temptation," is the
prayer of a divine humility and wisdom.
To expose others to temptation is per-
haps, if not wickedness, at least a gross
folly. Governments established upon the
confidence principle never last beyond
the cooling of a first enthusiasm ; those
on the other hand which are based upon
the "laws of human nature,'' last while
their foundations remain. It is good and
amiable to place confidence in the fco-

ple^ but by no means so to place the
same confidence in that mixture of roo-ues
and swindlers which form the small and
mischievous minority of every community,
and whose want of confidence gives them a
temporary advantage. The protective
function of government, like its repressive
one, was given it to enable honesty and
virtue to thrive ; and government violates
a sacred trust when it puts promiscuous
confidence in knaves and honest men alike,
that is to say, in the entire population.

It is a democratic rule to place no confi-
dence in the good-will or integrity of men
in office subject to temptation. Hence
the strenuous opposition of democrats to
every species cf monopoly. Government
ought to adopt the same rule, and place as
little confidence in those whom it controls
as they have placed in it.

Under these considerations lies the para-
dox of Democratism, i. e.

'•'■All confidence is to be placed in the
people."

'''■No confidence is to be placed in the
government."

If the majority of the people were not
by nature and education inclined to virtue,
republican institutions could not exist, for
it is an accepted maxim, that Republics are
founded on virtue. In a well-established
Republic, consequently, it is necessary to
confide, to a very great extent, in the moral
sense of the community.

In every large community, however,
under the present system of social educa-
tion, there is a pretty strong minority , small
in numbers, but active and practical, of
knaves and deceivers. Against these, as a
defence, the honest majority have provided
a protective system, or government.

When one speaks of the people, the
roguish minority are tacitly excluded ; —
and hence the paradoxical expression, " all
confidence must be placed in the people."
Substitute the word "population," and the
paradox appears ridiculous. No man in
his senses ever put moral confidence in a
mass of mere " population."

If a virtuous people elect virtuous
rulers, all confidence should be placed in
these rulers, and yet it is a democratic rule
to entertain no such confidence.

1850.

Political Paradoxes,

PARADOX II.

^' Free Trade the lest:''

Freedom of intercourse with foreign na-
tions, for the exchange of products will be
the natural condition of a nation carried
by internal industry and suitable protec-
tion to the height of fortune.

It will be not only a natural condi-
tion but one necessary to the highest com-
mercial prosperity.

If any condition of trade can be said to
be natural and normal in the same sense
that a state of peace is the natural and nor-
mal condition of a people, it is that of free
exchange, and from the considerations al-
ready suggested, we may believe that the
ability to maintain a tree commerce is a
sure criterion of national prosperity, as
far as prosperity is given by superior in-
dustry and economy. The industrial pros-
perity of a people is at its height when they
are able to open an unrestricted commerce
with every nation.

We affirm, then, our belief that the at-
tainment of this desirable condition is, or
should be, the aim of national economy ; as
far as that economy is affected by legis-
tion ; and we hold that all legislation should
be directed to the attainment of an open
trade with all nations.

In the same manner it may be shown
that the prosperity of the farmer is at its
height when he is able to supply the man-
ufacturer in a free market without fear of
competition or restriction.

But it is necessary to distinguish very
accurately between the criterion of our
prosperity and its cause. We believe that
foreign trade is the criterion ^VLQt'^Xk:^^ cause.
The cause of our prosperity is clearly the
industry and economy of the people aided
by a protective legislation.

Analogously, peace is the criterion, not
the cause of the political strength and gran-
deur of the people — a people to whom
peace is necessary, whose habits are like
those of the Chinese, normally and abso-
lutely peaceful, are subject to be overrun
and subjugated by every invader. A
powerful nation at peace with its neigh-
bors, stands in a position of respecta-
bility and credit ; it is able to defend itself
and cannot be invaded with impunity ; its
peaceful state is therefore only the criteri-
on of its prowess and martial courage.

To bring an industrious people to that
height of prospei'ity that shall permit them
to open a free and and unrestricted trade
with other nations it is necessary to give an
early and efficient protection to their first
industrial endeavors. They require to be
protected against the capital and the mature
and experienced economy of those whom
they wish to rival, and who have already
enjoyed the same advantages of protection.

The larger the capital employed in a
manufacture and the longer and more varied
the experience, the greater will be the cer-
tainty of success ; thiough the ability, first,
of cheap production, and then of pre-occu-
pying the markets of the world. The
manufacturer who begins with a very small
capital must reap a large profit to live. A
capital of a million yielding one per cent, is
indeed no better than one of half a million
yielding two per cent., but it covers a lar-
ger ground and brings its products more
cheaply into the market. The rate of in-
terest, or in other words of profit upon
capital, expected in England, is not more
than one half of what is expected in Ameri-
ca. The English capitalist will conse-
quently produce twice as much as the Ame-
rican capitalist and be content with half as
large a profit. In a country where nume-
rous small capitals are employed, as in
America, assisted by the labor of their own-
ers, larger profits are expected by those
owners, and must be had : If one has but
a thousand dollars to eno-ao;e with in busi-
nsss, the proceeds of that thousand, and of
the credit which it engenders, must be
made a means of support ; and that is the
state of things in this country. The inge-
nuity and industry of the people is expend-
ed in making small means produce a large
resuit, and the effect is a higher rate of in-
terest for money as money is made more
productive, and is consequently more valu-
able to its owners. Rates of interest are
indeed made high by other circumstances
less favorable than these ; the uncertainty
of investments is perhaps one cause, but it
is at least a sufficient one for our present
enquiry that money is worth more in pro-
portion as it is made to produce more.

To illustrate the disadvantages of Ame-
rican capitalists compared with those of

Political Paradoxes.

Eno;lancL let us take a sino-le instance. It
is an indisputable fact that the blacksmiths
of America are supplied with English iron ;
that the iron used for railroads is chiefly
English ; that the manufacturers of iron
in America, in the Atlantic states, find it
difficult if not impossible to enter into com-
petition with English iron-traders. Excep-
ting the forges in the interior of Ohio, and
elsewhere, where the cheapness of coal and
ore somewhat lessens the cost of produc-
tion; — at points to which the conveyance
of the heavy foreign material adds perhaps
a third to its price ; — profits continue to be
made on the manufacture of the coarser va-
rieties. It is even conjectured that the
manufacturers of the West will soon be
sufficiently protected in their own neighbor-
hoods, against English competition, by the
mere effi3ct of distance, and costs of trans-
portation from the sea-coast to the interior ;
this is their good fortune, and adds force
to every argument for the protection of
those manufacturers who are not as much
favored by nature and accident.

Those Western manufacturers of iron
will never be able to enter into competition
with England in the markets of the sea-
coast ; English iron, of equal qualities,
carried into the interior, is there on a
level with iron manufactured on the spot,
after the addition of perhaps a third or a
fourth to its price, as costs of transportation.
Western iron brought to the Atlantic
States has twice that difference to contend
with. Let us suppose that a bar of steel,
brought from Michigan to New York, has
one dollar added to its cost for expenses of
commission and transportation ; a bar of
English steel carried from New York to
Michigan would have had the same addition,
and would be then, even in Michigan, on a
par with steel made upon the spot, and to
whose price nothing had been added by
transportation. The consequence is, a bar
of Michigan steel ought to cost in New
York in the proportion of two dollars more
than the same of English steel.

From these considerations we gather that
if protection is needed at all, it is needed
as much by the manufacturers of the West
as by those of the Atlantic States, and
that the market of the Atlantic States will
never be supplied by Western manufactur-
ers while the cost of production in the

July

Western country are the same as, or great-
er than in England.

We have said that English manufactur-
ers are content with lower profits than those
of America ; and the reason is, they employ
larger capital. The iron works of Wales,
England and Scotland are conducted upon
an immense scale, by proprietors who live
upon their estates, magnificently indeed,
but by no meaas realizing from their prop-
erty profits which would content an Amer-
ican capitalist. We have it from the au-
thority of an iron-master of our own State,
whose mills are now standinsr idle throua:h
the effect of English competition, that, on
the iron estates which he visited in Eng-
land, not long ago, he found the proprietors
content with an investment of millions,
yielding them only a subsistence and no in-
crease Coal and iron mines, worked upon
a stupendous scale, that for five years to-
gether had supplied the English market
and inundated the American, without a
particle of profit to their owners, who were
content if they paid their expenses. These
proprietors have been living for years in
expectation of the time when American
democracy should do away with the pro-
tective system. They are well informed of
the state of things in this country ; they
know the imitative character of our poli-
tics, and that there has been, for many
years, prevailing amongst us a free trade
anglo-mania. These capitalists have been
long waiting for the time which is now come,
or is fast coming, when the profits of the
foreign trade should compensate them for
their forbearance and patience during the
years of no gain.

English iron manufacturers are, then, at
the highest point of their commercial pros-
perity, when they can make the trade in
iron free between themselves and America ;
that is to say, when they can undersell and
annihilate the American iron-master.

American iron manufacturers are at their
highest point of commercial prosperity when
they can open a free trade with Great Bri-
tain and her provinces; that is to say, when
they can undersell and annihilate the pro-
prietors of mines and forges in Wales,
England and Scotland. Let the American
politician pause upon the consideration, and
ask himself, whether the iron-masters of
Eno-land, Wales and Scotland will suffer

1850.

Political Paradoxes.

themselves to be ruined by admitting Ame-
rican iron, should it have become cheaper
than their own, free of duty ?

The reader will now, perhaps, under-
stand us, when we say that the ability of
free trade is the criterion of industrial pros-
perity ; that the power of declaring a free
commerce with foreigners is one and the
same ivith the power of producing better
and cheaper com^nodities than are p)^o-
duced hy any other nation.

We are therefore ready to admit that a
free trade is the normal and natural con-
dition of commerce in America, because
the normal and natural condition of the
American 'people is to be the first and the
most powerful and skiUfal of industrial
producers ; that the time will come when it
will be necessary for America to open her
ports and invite the competition of foreign-
ers we do verily believe, because of the
prodigious natural advantages wdiich she
has over other countries, and the certainty
which we feel that these advantages will be
cherished and carried to their utmost use by
the establishment of PROTECTION as a
part of the permanent policy of our govern-
ment. When that time comes we shall give a
scornful permission to foreigners to compete
freely with ourselves — a permission which
they will take good care not to use.

The title of the present article was " Po-
litical Paradoxes" : the paradox of the free
traders, that a free trade is the natural,
and the best, condition of a people, is
perhaps the most important that can at
present occupy the attention of the logical
inquirer, because the consequences of the
fallacy which it conceals are the most dis-
astrous. We have now the following ana-
lysis of this dangerous paradox :

1st. The industry of a nation needs no

protection when its products are better and
cheaper than those of other nations.

2nd. Its trade will be best when it needs
no protection, i.e. when it can supply the
markets of the world with the best and
cheapest commodities.

3d " Free trade is," therefore, " the
best," — i.e., when trade is at the best it
needs no protection.

Our so called " free trade" party have
made an unhappy application of the para-
dox, that " free trade is the best," and
that too in contravention of the laws of na-
ture and of business. It is a maxim of
common sense that the substance should be
thought of before the form. The glory of
manhood is its freedom, the pleasure of
wealth is the credit that it brings ; but
infancy must be cherished and protected
before the man can go free and self depen-
dant ; and the substance of w^ealth must
be accumulated, or the credit cannot be
sustained. Freedom and strength cannot
be conferred upon a young commercial
people by destroying their armaments^ or
abolishing their tariffs.

Unprotected manhood, like unprotected
industry is, indeed, " the best ;" but it is
necessary to protect unripe youth, lest in
hastily conferring freedom we leave unful-
filled the most sacred of all duties, the duty
of guardianship. The paradox that mis-
leads the free traders is so foolish, and its
fallacy so obvious, however, we are lead to
suspect something more in their advocacy
than a strict adherence to theory. We are
compelled by long observation to attribute
the movements of free trade legislation to a
taint of John Bullism, showing itself in an
imitation of the fashions and the ways of
thinking of the English, more than to any
other cause.

PARADOX III.

^^ Necessity^ the

It seems to be necessary to establish the
Right to Govern upon some more stable
foundation than tradition ; for, though each
believer is satisfied with the scripture of
bis own sect, dangerous dissensions arise
between different sects, and between con-
structions of the same written traditions.

No less uncertain and dangerous an au-

Tyrant s Plea.'*''

thority for the Right to Govern, is the con-
sent of a majority : since the minority are
not bound thereby, unless there be a pre-
vious agreement that the thing at issue shall
be determined by that method.

We shall assume, therefore, that neces-
sity, and that alone, is the true foundation
of the Right to Govern.

Political Paradoxes.

July,

It is absolutely necessary (in a moral
sense) to exist. For every practical pur-
pose it is safe to say so, since the first ob-
ject of man's endeavor is the preservation
of his own life and the lives of those whom
he looks upon as parts of himself. Affec-
tion, patriotism, and self-interest, reason
with themselves alike, that it is necessary to
make all things bend to the happy existence
of the beloved object.

Many things are looked upon as neces-
sary by men, but existence as the prime ne-
cessity. The existence of men in cities and
in every civilized condition, is acknowledged
to rest upon property and security. The
Right to Govern is consequently derived
from two kinds of necessity — that of safety
and that of possession : the enjoyment of
one's own, and security of life and limb :
and we hold, by consequence, that the
right to govern is inherent in every indi-
vidual, equally with the duty of obedience.

Though it be true, therefore, that "ne-
cessity is the tyrant's plea," it is no less
the plea of all government.

It is necessary that men should exist so-
cially.

Security and possession are the means of
social existence.

Security and possession are, therefore,
necessary.

Again:

Security and possession are necessary to
social existence.

Government, of some kind, is the only
means of security and possession.

Government is, therefore, necessary to
social existence.

The position of a tyrant is such that to
maintain it, is the same with defendino- his

■I • • •

own life. He is identified with his func-
tion. To preserve his own liberty and life
he must destroy that of others. Hence the
paradox, "Necessity the tyrant's plea."
But his necessity is by no means that of the
people he governs. Their necessity is to
be rid of him upon any terms, since with all
men the first necessity is that of exist-
ence.

PARADOX IV.

" The test government is

The modern maxim of the best govern-
ment beinsc that which governs least, is a
paradox founded on the opinion that it is
the best people which requires least go-
verning; and the best people will very
naturally produce the best government ; who
will therefore have the least governing to
do. To make the paradox plain :

1. The best people will require least go-
verning.

2. But they will construct the best go-
vernment.

3. The best government will consequent-
ly have the least governing to do ; and,
therefore,

4. The best government is that which
has least governing to do — i. e. '"'' jpara-
doxically^'' — " which governs least."

that which governs least. ''"'

By the same reason the best clergymen
are those who give the least instruction to
the children of the people ; because a vir-
tuous and free people will give so much in-
struction to their children at home, and
will be at so much pains to maintain the
best clergymen ; these latter will have less
to do in proportion as the youth whom they
instruct are better — and hence the para-
dox : —

The bc^st clergy will be those who
^ have the least instructing to do ;
\ ''''who instruct the least .,^''

Political paradoxes being founded upon
ambiguity of expression, contain just enough
of truth to live, and yet serve their intend-
ed purpose of deception.

PARADOX V.

^^ The people have declared their will.''^

Demagogical newspapers and orators fre-
quently assert that "the will of the people
has been manifested" by such and such a

vote. Now, whichever way an election is
decided, it is still a manifestation of the
" will" or opinion of the majority ; and this

1850.

Political Paradoxes,

majority is of equal authority on all occa-
sions, and for all opinions. The orator of
Vermont is struck with awe by the mani-
festation of the popular will in favor of a
tariff: his brother orator, of New Hamp-
shire, is equally overcome by the same vox
jpopuli against it. Which, then, is the
more "awful" of the two — Vermont or
iS^ew Hampshire }

And yet, paltry as it is, this fear, pre-
tended or real, of the majority of the voices,
requires a great deal of moral courage to
meet it. The deception lies hid in a popu-
lar paradox, which requires a logical analy-
sis to detect its falsity.

A convention of people assembled to con-
stitute a state, are there in a representa-
tive capacity. Each represents not only
his own necessities, but those of his child-
ren and dependants, whoever they may be.
Representation, it thus appears, is found-
ed in necessity, and is the natural method
of constitutino; a state.

This convention agree upon a chairman
or president, who represents the unity of
the assembly, and his being there, and the
power with which he is invested, are sig-
nificant of the fact, that the convention in-
tends to abide by its own decisions : that is
to say, that whatever method of ascertain-
ing the best opinion may be adopted, it
will be adhered to.

They will now adopt a form of proce-
dure. Let us suppose that the major part
of the assembly are in favor of a two-thirds
rule, i. e., that no law shall be established
unless supported by a majority of two-
thirds. The reason for agreeing upon such
a rule, is the same which brought the con-
vention together, and appointed a chair-
man over them, namely, necessity ; the
necessity and circumstances of the time,
which command the establishment of a
constitutional government. By the same
necessity the children and dependants of
each member of the convention submit to
be represented by him : they cannot help
it : their necessity is a law to them and to
their representatives : their will, or opinion,
has nothing to do with the matter. Thus
we see, at its very birth, the validity of
the right to govern rests in necessity.

Two-thirds of the assembly declare that
the laws shall be established by the agree-
ment of two-thirds. Now, as it is idle for
the remaining third to fight against two-

thirds, (one man being as strong as another
in a free assembly,) and it is an abso-
lute necessity for them to have some kind
of a constitution, they are forced to comply :
and the two-thirds rule becomes a law,
notwithstanding the dissent of a large num-
ber. And thus it appears, that though the
establishment of a constitution is a work
of all the representatives, its existence
being necessary to all alike, its form is
stamped upon it by majorities, and not by
the common acclaim.

The constitution being established, there
will be an appointment of offices and func-
tions. The constitution will give some of
these to be elected by popular majorities,
others it will confer upon the courts or the
executive, or upon the legislature. The
people, however, are as much bound by one
species of appointment as by another ; they
must obey the sheriff elected by the ward,
in Ms functions, and the judge appointed
by the senate in Ms : and thus it appears,
that not the " will of the people," but the
grand necessity of a form of government is
the true basis of the right to govern,
as well as of the duty of obedience.

The constable does not derive his right
to seize the thief, from the opinion of the
people in his ward, but from the constitu-
tion or the statute book. The representa-
tive does not derive his right to vote upon
the passage of laws from the existing
majority in his district, but from the con-
stitution which creates his function ; and
we have seen that the foundations of the
constitution are laid in necessity, and by
no means, or in any sense, in the
opinion of majorities.

The judge, during a session of the court,
is master of the court room ; not because
he was elected to be so, but because ne-
cessity defines the function. Justice can-
not otherwise be administered.

If a man is attacked in the street, he
does not wait to take the opinions of the
standers by, to know whether he may de-
fend himself ; necessity dictates law to him,
and he executes it to the best of his ability.

The current paradox, *' the will of tlie
majority is law^'^'' has its origin in a con-
fusion of mind. It is agreed, peihaps,
that a law shall not be valid until the ma-
jority, or until a certain proportion of opin-
ion is found to be favorable to it. Whether
two-thu'ds, or only a majority of one, agree

Political Paradoxes.

July,

to it, proviclecl that be tlie test, tlie law is
still good. The necessity of obeying it,
and the right of enforcing it, rest primari-
ly upon the original idea of the necessity
of government, whatever be its form,
method or derivation. The will of the
majority is law, therefore, only when it is

agreed it shall be, and things cannot be
otherwise arranged. A government which
is not established on necessity, and which
cannot defend itself to death, and against
all opposition, is neither a respectable, nor
a well founded government, and must soon
faU.

PARADOX VI.

" Doctrine of Instructions .'^^

A law-making representative has a
double duty to perform, namely, his duty
to his country, and his duty to his con-
stituents.

The division of a people into districts,
each electing their representative, is doubt-
less with a view to the complete represen-
tation of the various and opposing interests
of different sections.

It is certainly proper that the legisla-
tor should serve his constituents fairly
and fully, in the laws which he aids in es-
tablishing. If it were not proper and ne-
cessary for the law-maker or delegate to
serve his constituents, the contest at his
election would be very idle ; for of two
men of equal abilities, one may be chosen
by a large majority, merely because he fa-
vors a larger interest. Either, then, he must
serve that interest, or his constituents are
duped, and he is a cheat.

We have instances of representatives,
soon after an election, announcing to their
constituents that they intend to vote just as
they please ; that they gave no pledges,
and will not be bound by any. This,
however, is a danger to which constitu-
ents will always be subject, namely, the
danger of being duped. Opinion is free,
and cannot be regulated by law. The ma-
jority of to-day is often the minority of to-
morrow. The law, therefore, meddles not
in the matter ; for, as the election of a
candidate turns social preference, it is for
the electors to incur the risk.

There is a code of political honor
tacitly recognized and acted upon, and of
which the founders of the constitution
must have presupposed the existence ; but
they could not endow constituencies with
discrimination, and they are, therefore,
liable to be duped and betrayed by dishon-
orable delegates and false representatives.
Whether a representative, elected in

good faith, is bound to continue to
serve his constituency after it lias ftillen
into a minority, is a delicate ques-
tion, to be decided by the circumstan-
ces of the case. To continue to vote ob-
stinately our way, after a change in one's
own opinion, and a change in one's con-
stituents, would perhaps be esteemed a
proof of more spirit than wisdom. To de-
cide in such cases, requires a combination
of prudence and honor, so that neither
shall be violated.

The position of a representative consult-
ing his constituents on some minor point
of little importance, is a truly ridiculous
one. Their correspondence is, of course,
limited to some three or four leading per-
sons, who are presumed to be the political
'aristocracy.' These persons have it all
their own way, and are, practically speak-
ing, the constituency. Let us now enquire
how far such a conduct agrees with the re-
presentative theory.

Previous to the election of this represen-
tative, it was an event of great uncertainty
who would be chosen. The representative
office or agency existed, with limits pre-
scribed by the constitution, and the people
of the district were called upon to nominate
a man, who, upon being so nominated,
should occupy the office. The person
named, represents, in the eye of the law,
not the majority, or constituency, but the
whole district. To affirm otherwise would
be to disfranchise and outlaw the minority.
The minority, though they do not elect
him, yet acknowledge the legality and ca-
pacity of his election, by voting on the oc-
casion. The effect of a vote is only as if
one should say, ' A is the best man,' or
'B is the best man.' The majority of
opinion, being known, is presumed to be
right, and to stand for the good sense and
prevailing interest of the district.

1850.

Political Paradoxes.

Tlie name being given in, the function
of the vote7- expires. His franchise ex-
tends only to his " having an opinion" of as
much weight as another's, in choosing a fit
person to fill a certain office. His vote is
given on the fitness only. If there were
no constitution, nor any general represen-
tative government, all this voting would be
to no purpose. The representatives, on
assembling, would have no powers to act un-
der unless their constituencies had specially
conferred upon them those of revolution,
or of convention.

And now the constitution takes effect.
The man named by the majority as Jit^ is
by the constitution made ca/pahle^ and
becomes an incumbent of an office from
which his constituents have no power to
oust him. Once elected, he represents his
entire district, minority and majority, and
nothing short of a legally ascertained ma-
jority at the proper time, can throw him
out of his place. If there is any regular
and lawful method of ascertaining how he
ought to vote on a particular point, it must
be by assembling the entire district, ma-
jority and minority, and putting the ques-
tion. The minority may possibly have
become a majority, and then our modest
consultor will be obliged to vote ao-ainst his
original constituents.

But the law provides no such remedy.
The representative is not bound by law to
vote in any particular direction, or even to
vote at all. In the greater number of in-
stances, he is guided by the opinions of
three or four, or perhaps a dozen men, in
his district, who are supposed to be influ-
ential and popular, and who stand for the
strongest interest. He will and may con-
sult them, and by a private or open com-
pact he may be in lionor hound to do so ;
but he does not legally represent them,
more than he represents the minority in his
district, or any one citizen in it who has,
or has not, voted for him.

If it were true that the law-making
power is conferred upon the representative
by those who create the majority in his dis-
trict, then it is also true that the entire
system is an ingenious deception. But the
supposition is idle. I am represented whe-
ther I vote or not. Sickness does not de-
prive me of my liberties ; a broken limb
d ics not disfranchise me, I am at liber-
ty to vote or not as I please, and I may

bind myself by an honorable compact wilb
any person to vote for him, provided he
will engage to sustain a certain policy.
The voter at the polls, like the voter in the
Senate or the House, is free, and cannot be
restrained from voting as he will, except
by considerations of a private and social
character. The national interest of every
man, woman, and child in his district is in
charge of the representative. Of course,
the liberty and rights of the alien and the
minor, of the child and the woman, are as
much a part of Republican freedom as
those of the voter. A voter is said to be
" made a freeman " by being legally admit-
ted to the'polls, — a ridiculous phrase ! He
is no more than permitted to exercise a
function of clioosing^ a function fixed, nay,
invented by law, — and who ever heard of
any persons having an increase of liberty,
by being permitted to do this or that ? In
a word, we hold that the liberty of the re-
presentative and the liberty of the voter
rest upon the same fiundation, and that one
is restricted like the other only by compacts
of honor. These compacts may. indeed,
be binding and imperative, but they are
none the less free of the law.

The above arguments may be arranged
in a logical order, as follows : —

1. The representative is bound by a
principle of duty.^ to take care of every in-
terest of his district, whether of aliens,
women, minors, or citizens. To deny this
were to disfranchise the minority, and to
deprive the non-voting population of the be-
nefits of representative (or free) govern-
ment.

2. He is also bound by a principle of
lionor.^ to keep his pledges to the majority
by whose opinion he was elected.

3. This principle of honor, or of the
observance of a compact, cannot be made
to infringe upon the duty of the represen-
tative, and in giving his pledges to those
who aided in electing him, (or in creating his
majority,) he is not supposed to bind him-
self to commit an act of treachery to his
country or to his district. No such com-
pact can be made, and, if made, is not
valid.

4. If any elector or voter exacts a pledge
from the candidate, he is himself a party
to that pledge, and if he clianges his own
opinion^ he of necessity releases his repre-
sentative. We see no reason, thereforOj

Political Paradoxes.

July,

why a representative should adhere to his
original pledges, when the greater number
of those who exacted it have themselves
fallen away from their opini )ns ; — this,
however, would be only in case the pledge
was publicly given, and with the under-
standing that the giver recognized not a
few men, but a majority of citizens as elect-

ms: him

As to the voters themselves, we con-
clude : —

1 . That as the liberty of voting is con-
ferred by law only upon certain individuals,
it is not an intrinsic part of right or liberty.

2. That franchise is an office or func-
tion, which may or may not be exercised
at the option of the citizen, and that he
does not lose his individual liberty by not
exerci ing it, though he may fail of his pri-
vate duty to the commonweal.

3. That the individual voter who is a
householder, is also a representative ; and
that he who is not a householder, does also,
in voting, represent the interest and safety
of the entire community ; that he is, how-
ever free in that function, as regards opin-
ion, and whatever seems to him to be for
the common or for his own good, he may
express it. The women, children and de-
pendants of the voter's household are as
fully represented, and their liberties as well
taken care of as those of the citizen, by Jiis
represe -tative in the national Congress.

4. That the voter, having voted, has,
from that time forth, not a particle of legal
control over his represent tive.

5. And lastly, that, if he has any such
control, it is not conferred upon him by his
having voted in favor of the representa-
tive. The ballot is secret, or is supposed
to be so, and all control lawfully exercised
over a representative, should, of course, be
shared as well by individuals who voted
against, as by those who voted for him.
The law never knows who are, or who are
not, the constituents.

6. If any legal method is established of
instructing representatives, it must be by
the assembling of all the voters of the dis-
trict, of all opinions and parties, and sub-
mitting the particular question to them, the
majority deciding. By such an arrange-
ment Legislatures would be reduced to
committees for the initiation of laws, and
every measure would have to be decided on
by the entire nation.

From the above reasoning, we are forced
to conclude that the " doctrine of instruc-
tion " is merely paradoxical, and arises
from two different delusions, to wit ; —

The confounding of honor and duty^
and,

The opinion that the poiver of the re-
presentative is conferred upon Lim directly
by the votes of his political constituents.

PARADOX VII.

" Men are born free and equal. "^"^

A man is free, only when he is able to
provide for his own wants, and has his mo-
ral faculties perfect. He must be able to
will and to execute his will, to reason in
some measure, and to defend himself
against common casualties, else to call him
free is mere mockery.

To say that a man "is born free" is
merely to assert a falsehood, if we take the
paradox as it stands and without explana-
tion. We have to enquire then what is
meant by that universal freedom which is
claimed even for the newly born, as a right
attaching to humanity.

There are three kinds of rights, namely,
those of the social and of the political and

religious state.

Rinfhts of the Social state

are defined and regulated by manners :
Rights of the Political state by laws : Rights
of the Religious state by creeds.

There is a superiority of manners
which is natural and acquired belong-
inof to station and to domestic and social
influence. From all these together, flows
a social " right" of superiority founded
upon decency; which gives to the heads of
families, and to personal superiority of
every kind, its legitimate and natural ad-
vantage, independently of every adventi-
tious aid, and which is recognised alike by
savage and by saint.

The manners of a people form an un-
written code ; they are the defence of mo-
desty^ the protection of innocence; they

1850.

Political Paradoxes,

make life tolerable and even sweet and
agreeable. In the practice of good man-
ners and in the enjoyment of them, in so-
cial, domestic, and even playful and hilari-
ous intercourse, lies perhaps two-thirds of
the pleasure of existence. Society could
not exist an instant without the manners ;
the streets of the city would become in-
stantaneously a scene of terror and of vio-
lence ; no man would turn aside for his
neighbor; life would become a battle scene,
or rather a mele of wild beasts.

Manners have their rights ; which rights
are accompanied, each, by a duty to be
fulfilled. Right and duty are the two
poles of human relationship ; the one
generates the other, and like action and
reaction, they are exactly equal in the
obligation they generate. Thus if there be
a duty of hospitality there is the right to ex-
pect good treatment. If there is the right of
conferring favors, there is the duty of gra-
titude. If there is the obligation of cour-
tesy in accidental intercourse with stran-
gers, there is the duty of acknowledging it.
But in using the words, right and duty, in
relation to the social state, we continual-
ly mislead and misunderstand ourselves,
since nothing here is expected, as if it
were a payment, or that is of the nature of
a legal obligation. The code of honor alone
prevails in social intercourse, and honor,
though it be the analagon of justice, is not
justice itself, since it recognizes no proper-
ty nor individuality, and presides exclusive-
ly over the domain of love and courage. Its
code is unwritten, for the same reason that
the movements of the heart are unwritten,
and cannot be scientifically defined.

There are probably few who will deny
that every human being is born into this
world under a full obligation to perform all
the duties of courtesy and decency. These
duties, as we have already seen, are the cor-
relatives of rights : even the slave is a mem-
ber of the social state ; the social state in-
to which he is born, lays him under all the
obligations of courtesy and decency; and,
by a law equally imperative, the master is
bound to the good treatment of his slave. It
is unnecessary to argue such a position ; na-
ture has planted its defence in the mind and
heart of every gentleman : the violation of
this unwritten code of the manners esta-
blished for the security, as we have said,

of weakness, modesty and innocence, indi-
cates the presence of the beast in man, or,
in other words, the absence of those hio-h
qualities and heroic traits which complete
and crown humanity.

We are in no danger of deceiving by a
paradox, when we say all men are horn to
the obligations of courtesy and civility. But
now let us illustrate the paradoxical ex-
pression, apparently so false, by the other
extreme of the moral world, viz : that of
belief or religious society. Religion is a
ground upon which masses of people are
brought together without distinction of sex,
age, affinity or social position, to indulge in
a spiiitualprivelege — the great and wonder-
ful privelege of worship, by music, and
prayer, and ceremony, and exhortation.
The religious society has a written code,
whose fiist quality is that it is established
and unchangeable, even to its minutest ex-
pessions and literations.

As the code of Society, infinitely excellent
tho' it be, and showing an open divinity in its
operation — since none but God could have
so contrived and balanced the social state ; —
while this code is unwritten and is per-
petually changing and fluctuating in its de-
tail, its principle remaining ever the same : —
the outside varying and fluctuating like the
waves of the sea, or rather like the seasonal
changes of vegetation, its central principles
of filiality and honor remaining, meanwhile,
eternally the same ; with Religious society
the reverse is true, since nothing is more
fixed and unchangeable than the form, and
literate tradition of worship and belief; on
the other hand, nothing is more varied and
fluctuating, more subject to differences, and
grades of higher and lower, and more and
less, than the central religious piinciple, or
soul of worship, which exteriorates tlie cere-
mony of religion.

No man will deny, at least no thinking
man, that the human creature is bom into
the world under an obligation to revere
the great Cause of his existence and of Lis
felicity, when he sees the presence in him-
self or in others. The divinity in man
moves him to works of beneficence, of
charity, and of philanthropy, which have
their oiigin in no individual preference but
in that same Prir^ciple, by which the idea of
Divinity is conceived as a creative power,
and which imitates its source. All men

Political Taradoi^es.

are, tlierefore, necessarily born into tlie
duties of reverence ; and by the same rule
they are born to the possession of certain
religions ricrhts ; no man's life can be taken
from him, for opinion's sake, or because the
exterioration of his relicfious sentiment, the
form of his pious impulses, is not the same
with our own. For the demonstration of
this truth, we can appeal only, as before, to
the spiiit of wisdom in the human breast.
If the spirit be not there, the appeal is lost.

There are, then, two other paradoxes,
beside the political one, that " all men are
born free and equal ;" to wit, the paradox
that all men are born to be treated with
decency and courtesy, and that they are
born also with the ri^jhts and the duties of
reverence and religious privilege. To pollute
the soul of an infant with blasphemy or
with dishonor, is treason against God. It
is unnecessary to arsue such a position :
the child is horn with social and religious
ria'hts, even thou^-h it be a slave, and these
rights are incidental to its humanity, and
belong to it because it is something better
than a brute.

If we understand these two first para-
doxes which contain hidden in them the
the fundamental truths of the religious
and the social, we are prepared the better
to seize the meaning of the third, which
is that of the political state. The so-
cial, religious, and political, do, indeed,
form one great human society, but to
comprehend their unity, it is necessary
first to become master of them in their
diversity. All men are born to certain
rio'hts and certain duties; the duty, first, to
obev that which is above them, and upon
which they depend for existence and pro-
tection, and the right to govern and com-
mand that which is beneath them, and which
depends upon them for the same. Political
duty and political ri^ht develope each other,
and one cannot exist without the other.
Every man has something to govern, he
has the inferior, or brutish nature in his
own person to govern, or he has it to con-
trol in others around him, near him, and
dependent on him : whether that brutish
nature be lodged in a child or a beast, it
has still to be governed, and it is that alone
which needs governing. Ignorance, dull-
ness, avarice, fury and cruelty, and all
the train of passions and desires, have to
be governed, and it is over them that God,

July,

through Reason, has erected the Political
state. The Right to Govern must be ac-
knowledged first, and is founded on neces-
sity ; in it we discover the germ of the
political state, and the reason of its exist-
ence. The state is no theory, but a fact,
composed indeed of many lesser facts, but
in itself a great and obvious fact, open to
the sight of every man. The ri^xht to gov-
ern is of course proportioned to the ability
of governing, practically speaking, since
the absence of ability disqualifies for per-
formance ; nor by any state contrivances
or constitutional arrano-ements can the^ov-
ernance of a fool or a knave, or any inca-
pable creature, be made acceptable to God
or man. It may be constitutionally neces-
sary to endure it for a time, but it is none
the less an evil and a mischief, and by our
constitution the terms of office are made
short, in order the more quickly to terminate
the rule of folly. All men are then bom
into this world with a right to govern, in
proportion to their ability, the kingdom
given to them by nature and circumstance,
if it be only the little world of their own
passions. It is impossible to speak the
whole truth on any occasion, but we seem
ourselves to have uttered at least a part
of it. All men are born, also, (and this will
be much more readilj^admitted,) to the duty
of obedience. The inferior — that is, the
less reasonable, the less humane, the less
virtuous, the less spiritual, the more brutish,
furious, selfish, slavish, weak and impulsive
nature, in which there is less and evidence
of the presence of divinity, or law — must
give way to, and be governed by the supe-
rior nature. Either this, or what we name
the anarchical state, must happen : there is
no alternative. For those who cannot
govern themselves, if they be human, and
just so far, and in just such particulars as
they cannot act from the impulses of
their own nature without detriment to
themselves or others, — there is appointed
one of two things, either a government or
spiritual death ; either to be subjects in
the kingdom of reason, or to become
borderers and outlaws from that king-
dom : receivino; no lifjht but the li^ht of
nature, a light which visits only instinct,
and teaches man to crawl stealthily, to
ravin, and snatch their desires, but shows
them nothing of Divinity, and gives them
nothing of the privileges of reason or

1850

Political Paradoxes.

of ought that makes life desirable to a
reasoning creature.

A state founded on the broad necessities
of a social system, with the duty of obedi-
ence and the right to govern, acknowledg-
ed for every member of it, from the infant
to the commander-in-chief, or the leader of
the Senate, what could it be but a wise
and well-governed state ?

In such a state there is no aristocracy :
for why ? the right to govern is no privi-
lege, but is the inheritance of reason, and
belongs to every soul visited by the light of
Heaven, or even by a glimmer of that
light. In such a state there are no inferior
castes, inferior by inheritance ; for in all
there is the duty of obedience, in all who
can lay claim to the name of human, or
who can see or acknowledge superiority,
from the infant to the mature and perfect
man.

As far as all men are alike bound to obey
and born to obey the supreme laws of
God and of the universe, more or less per-
fectly represented in the political state, so
far and no farther all men are born equal :
all men are equally bound to obey the laws,
and that is their equality ; other equality
they have none, for Nature has made men
unequal — unequal to each other in every
particular and trait of nature, brutish and
humane : unequal in stature, strength, te-
nacity of life ; unequal in understanding,
wit, comprehension of mind ; unequal in
ingenuity, in the skill of accumulation, in
the skill of preserving and defending life ;
unequal in valor and in cunning ; unequal
in affection and in tenacity and steadiness
of soul ; unequal in their opinion of them-
selves and their dependence on others, in
their perception of right, and in strength
of will ; unequal, finally, in their intuition
of all ti'uth ; for there are those who deny
to themselves and others all but brutish at-
tributes, and who are thereby disqualified
from taking any part in the controversy of
truth,,

jMen are born equal before the law ; they
are also born free ; they are born into a
state of equality and freedom. This we
hold to be a self-evident truth, that of hu-
man equality ; but there is a paradox in
the expression of every universal truth.

The brute is born into slavery ; the man
is born into freedom, because he is a man,
— but there are grades of freedom, and the

politically free man — free by the constitu-
tion and the laws, maybe, through his own
weakness and defect, aided by the in-
justice of others, a hopeless and a bru-
tish slave. Given a human creature, un-
visited of reason, with a, dark, cruel and
cowardly soul, and you 'have a slave — so
made and so appointed, beyond all hope or
remedy ; a creature which no man will
trust, but over whom it is absolutely ne-
cessary to exercite a supreme authority ;
lest, having the privileges of freedom, those
privileges be trampled on by the brutish
nature, as if a hog had been admitted to a
banquet.

The man was born into a state of free-
dom and found incapable of enjoying it. It
was a creature who recognized neither the
Duties of obedience nor the Right of govern-
ance. There is no more cruel master than
the born slave ; the slave who is a driver of
slaves drives like a wolf or like a devil ; he is
armed, not with authority, but with a whip ;
and yet it is safe to say that even in the
most abject creature there is a glimmer, a
trace, of obedience ; a sense of duty, and a
power and authority, small indeed when
compared with the educated and complete
man, but compared with that of the brute,
great and wonderful, and giving evident
proofs of Divinity.

The Guinea negro, born in a free land,
no longer resembles his barbarous parent ;
he acquires from the contact with a civi-
lized master and the discipline of reason,
traces of humanity which move respect and
compassion ; his children in their turn ad-
vance beyond him, and one generation fol-
lowing another, the slave outgrows his ma-
nacles and rises to the dignity of a servant
or freedman, exercising the beautiful vir-
tues of courtesy and obedience, the virtues
of service, and touchingly recognizing in
his master, who is also his friend and his
guardian, diviner and higher qualities which
he reveres. This is truth, this is fact :
none can deny it.

All men are then born into the state of
freedom, and with the right to govern, to
perform duties of control over their own
savage natures and the brute instincts and
impulses of others around them ; and the
state of freedom is the human state, and is
identified with the possession of reason or
of the governing power ; and as all are
equal through obedience to the law, all

Political Paradoxes.

are free throngli the fulfillment of the law ;
and the political state will represent by its
constitution the quantity, if we may use
such a form of expression — the quantity and
condition of the free or governing power in
the individuals which compose it. The
degrees of the freedom of all are unequal :
from the lowest to the highest the distance
is great indeed, but from the brute to the
poorest savage the distance is properly in-
finite, and the poorest savage with reason,
or with the governing and obeying faculty
is infinitely beyond, and is 7naster of the
brute who has neither.

July,

It would be impossible, however, to con-
struct a state which should represent by its
constitution the freedom or governing power
of each individual that composed it. Poli-
tical classifications have been attempted,
and ended in the establishment of the evils
they were intended to cure ; and therefore,
the declaration of human right says, " men
are born free and equal," because freedom
and equality are the traits of man in every
station of life, and the practical state exists
by the performance of the duties of obedi-
ence and governance.

1850.

Lectures on Art and Poems.

LECTURES ON ART AND POEMS.*

This volume comprises all tlie writings
of Allston except the tale of Monaldi, His
poems were originally published in 1813,
and have long b^en out of print ; they are
here included, with nearly as many more
which now appear for the first time. The
Lectures on Art are also now for the first
time published. A brief account of them
and of his later poems is given in the pre-
face :

"In 1830, he removed to Cambridge, and
soon afterwards began the preparation of a
course of lectures on Art, which he intended
to deliver to a select audience of artists and
men of letters in Boston. Four of these he
completed. Rough drafts of two others were
found among his papers, but not in a state fit
for publication. In 1841, he published his
tale of 'Monaldi,' a production of his early
life. The poems in the present volume of
1813, are, with two exceptions, the work of
his later days. In them, as in his paintings
of the same period, may be seen the extreme
attention to finish, always his characteristic,
which, added to increasing bodily pain and in-
firmity, was the cause of his leaving so much
that is unfinished behind him."

The lectures occupy nearly half the vo-
lume. They are profound and elaborate
essavs, rich in new and true thoudits and
m apt expressions and beautiful illustra-
tions. Speaking after the fresh impres-
sion of a careful reading, (and they are
written with a closeness andsugro-sstiveness
that admit not of any but a " careful" read-
ing) we are disposed to think they contain
the highest, indeed the only truly philoso-
phical views of art we have ever read. There
is nothing in the literature of Art with
which they can be compared — nothing that
so demonstrates the great principles of
Art, and makes us feel certain that they
have their orio-in in nature and truth.

If it were as easy to give by analysis any
just idea of their merit, as it is to praise it
in there general phrases, our task would
now be a light one. But no proper ana-
lysis can be framed of writings in which
there is hardly a sentence that can be
spared, where the most minute particulars
are so interwoven with important ones that
the latter are seen to be but the sum of
them, and where every page contains ex-
amples of striking thoughts, images, and
expressions. The analysis should give
the whole ; anything short of that misre-
present the author. The hundred and
fifty book pages in which these Lectures
find ample room, might, it is true, be drawn
out or complanated by a skilful thought-
beater into as many volumes, but it is not
possible to reduce them and retain what
they contain.

Yet their very closeness will stand in the
way of their immediate usefulness. Many
minds into which the truths they convey
would sink as the seeds of beautiful flower-
ing plants into genial soils, will be deterred
from undertaking to study what seems at
the outset so obscure and metaphysical ;
many will recoil from a writer who requires
or seems to require (for if they persevere but
a little they will perceive all as clear and
warm as a summer's day) so much appli-
cation. Hence we may be pardoned for
attempting to present something like such
a general view of these lectures as may ex-
cite curiosity and allay apprehension. We
shall not essay a regular analysis, but will
merely follow them through, keeping in
view, as nearly as possible, the general out-
line of the thought, and pointing out here
and there some of the stiiking passages.
It may be true of some kinds of writing,
as of works of art, that they are best stu-

*Lecture3 on Art and Poems.
York : Baker & Scribner.

By Washington Allston.
1850.

VOL. VI. NO. I.

NEW SERIES.

Edited by Richard Henry Danes, Jr. New

Lectures on Art and Poems.

July,

died at first generally, and with indistinct
ideas, the mind not being prepared to en-
ter upon the examination of subordinate
excellencies till it has comprehended the
grand intention ; just as we can under-
stand a symphony of Mozart better from
having studied a meagre pianoforte arrange-
ment, or Correggio, from having pored over
the French volume of outlines of his
works.

The Lectures are prefaced by a prelim-
inary note, wi'itten in the close manner of
the metaphysicians, that is, logically, and
with little use of comparison to clarify and
narrow the thought. The object of this is
to define the word idea^ as the author uses
it. A less careful definition it will at first
be thought might have sufficed for the pur-
pose ; the lectures, however, very soon
show a reason for the carefulness.

PRELIMINARY NOTE.

An Idea, the author defines to be the
" highest and most perfectybrwz in which
anything, whether of the physical, the in-
tellectual, or the spiritual, may exist to
the mind." By this he does not mean
" figure or image (though these may be
included in relation to the physical,) but
that condition or state in which such ob-
jects become cognizable to the mind, or in
other words become objects of conscious-
ness." In this use of the word form^
though the meaning is clear, we may trace
already the idiosyncracy of the painter. In
another place we find him saying : " were
it possible to embody the present compli-
cated scheme of society, so as to bring it
before us as a visible object^ &c. i. e. to
have a clear idea of it. Were it our pur-
pose to controvert this application of the
word, it is plain that an argument might
be maintained against it ; it might be ques-
tioned whether we should call the highest
and most perfect concepticn of a thing the
idea of it ; nevertheless, the use of the
word here proposed has the advantage in
brevity.

Ideas, he says, are of two kinds, -primary
or the manifestations of objective realities ;
and secondary.^ that of the refiex product
of the mental constitution. In both cases
they are self-affirmed forms, the ground of
Truth, independent of the reflective facul-
ties, without living energy in themselves —
the mereybr;7is " through or in which a

higher power manifests to the conscious-
ness the supreme truth of all things real
in respect to the first class ; and in respect
to the second the imaginative truth of the
mental products or mental combinations."
Of this power we know nothing ; " it is
one of the secrets of our being which He
who made us has kept to himself."

He then confines himself to the consider-
ations of the first class of Ideas, the pri-
mary, or those which are the manifestations
of real objects. These, he says, are limit-
ed only by kinds without relation to de-
grees ; every object having a distinctive
essential has its idea ; while any number of
the same kind, differing in degree, refer to
the same idea. Thus, a hundred animals
differing in everything but specific quali-
ties, refer to one idea. So with objects in
the intellectual, moral, and spiritual. All
ideas, however, have but a potential exis-
tence till called into the consciousness by
real objects ; these objects are termed as-
similants. The senses, though they sup-
ply these assimilants operate only passive-
ly, as is evident from the difference be-
tween idea and the objects. They trans-
mit the external forms which the intuitive
power rejects or assimilates indefinitely un-
til they are resolved into the proper forms.

This shows that there is a fixed relation
between the actual and the ideal — " a pre-
determined correspondence between the
prescribed form of an idea and its assimil-
ant ; for how otherwise could the former
become the recipient of that which was re-
pugnant or indifferent, when the presence
of the latter constitutes the very condition
by which it is manifested, or can be known
to exist .' ' '

" It would appear then that what we
call ourself must have a dual reality, that
is, in the mind and in the senses, since
neither alone could possibly explain the
phenomena of the other ; consequently, in
the existence of either we have clearly im-
plied the reality of both. And hence,
must follow the still more important truth,
that, in the conscicus j^rescnce of any spir-
itual idea, we have the surest proof of a
spiritual object ; nor is this the less certain
though we perceive not the assimilant.
Nay, a spiiitual assimilant cannot be per-
ceived, but, to use the words of St. Paul,
is " spiritually discerned," that is, by a
sense, so to speak, of our own spirit. But

1850.

Lectures on Art and, Poems.

to illustrate by example : we could not, for
instance, have the ideas of good and evil
without their objective realities, nor of
right and wrong, in any intelligible form,
without the moral law to which they refer
— which law we call the Conscience ; nor
could we have the idea of a moral law,
without a moral lawgiver, and if moral,
then intelligent, and, if intelligent, then
personal ; in a word, we could not now
have, as we know we have, the idea of
conscience, without an objective, personal
God. Such ideas may well be called re-
velations, since, without any perceived as-
similant, we find them equally affirmed
with those ideas which relate to the pure-
ly physical."

An Idea is distinguished from a mere
notion by its self-affirmation. It is its
own evidence, and is truth to the mind un-
til it can be shown to be false

There is another dijfference between
primary and secondary ideas. The former
can never be fully realized by a finite mind
— at least in the present state." Take
for instance the idea of beauty ; " what
true artist was ever satisfied with any idea
of beauty of which he was conscious ?"
He can realize an approximation and derive
pleasure from it — '' yet still is the pleasure
modified, if we may so express it, by an
undefined yearning for what he feels can
never be realized. And wherefore this
craving, but for the archetype of that
which called it forth } — When we say not
satisfied, we do not mean discontented,
but simply not in full fruition. And it is
better that it should be so, since one of the
happiest elements of our nature is that
which continually impels it towards the in-
definite and unattainable. So far as we
know, the like limits may be set to every
other primary idea — as if the Creator had
reserved to himself alone the possible con-
templation of the archetypes of his uni-
verse."

Secondary Ideas, on the contrary, those
which are the product of the mind may be
fully realized and communicated. All
works of imagination present examples of
this. The same power affirms their truth
which affirm the truth of primary ideas ;
yet they are forms of what, as a whole, has
no actual existence, and the truth they

affirm is to be distinguished as poetic truth.*
In these definitions and distinctions, the
principal thing to be remembered is the
doctrine growing out of them, of the dual
forces — the necessity of ideas potentially
existing in the mind and of assimilants to
call them into consciousness — in other
words, the doctrine of a predetermined co-
relation between mind and matter. Bear-
ing this in mind, we proceed to the

INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE.

" Next to the development of our moral
nature," Allston commences, " to have
subordinated the senses to the mind is the
highest triumph of the civilized state."
But by this he does not mean an austere
subjection of sense, but only that subordi-
nation which is implied in ' ' the legitimate
growth of our mental constitution, which
we suppose to be grounded in permanent
universal principles." This he shows to
be not artificial as has been sometimes said,
but natural. The artificial is the growth
of diseased appetites, whose eficcts are
seen " in the distorted forms of the conven-
tional^"^ these perish in the lie they make,
and it were well did not other falsehoods
take their places, to prolong a life whose
only tenure is in consequential succession
— in other words Fashion."

As the life of the body in health, is at-
tended with pleasures beyond the mere
consciousness of existence, so is the moral
and intellectual nart of us. The hio-hest
pleasures of which we are capable are men-
tal 'pleasures. The considerations of these
form the subject of the discourse.

After demonstrating the propriety of the
term, mental, as thus applied, the dis-
course announces the proposition that
the '' pleasures in question have theirtrue
source in one intuitive universal principle
or living power, and that the three Ideas

'Note. — It may be doubted if even ideas of this
class admit of a perfect realization in a communi-
cable form. The artist may have a clear idea of
certaincharacteristic forms, but it is very difficult to
retain this image through the disturbing influences
of mechanical difficulties until it breathes on can-
vas or lives in marble. It is related of Thorwals-
den, that when found one day by a friend in a state
of despondency, he pointed to his statue of Christ,
and exclaimed " that his genius v^^as decaying, as
it was the first work he had felt satisfied with and
should never again have a great idea."

Lectures on Art and Poems.

July,

of Beauty, Truth, and Holiness, whicli we
assume to represent the perfect in the phy-
sical, intellectual, and moral worlds, are
but the several realized phases of this
sovereign principle which we shall call
Harmony."

The first inquiry is, what is the distinct-
ive or essential characterif^tic of these men-
tal pleasures. The one insisted on is that
56//' has no part in them ; they are wholly
unmixed with any jersonal considerations
or any conscious advantage to the iiidivi-
dual.^'' All the world feels them and all
feel them in the same manner :

"The most abject wretch, however animal-
ized by vice, may slill be able to recall the
time when a morning or evening sky, a bird,
a flower; or the sight of some other object in
nature, has given him a pleasure, which he
feJt to be distinct from that of his animal ap-
petites, and to which he could attach not a
thought of self-interest. And, though crime
and misery may close the heart for years^ and
seal it up forever to every redeeming thought,
they cannot so shut out from the memory ihese
gleams of innocence : even the brutified spirit,
the castaway of his kind, has been made to
blush at this enduring light ; for it tells him a
truth, which might elt^^e have never been re-
membered,— that he has once been a man.

"And here may occur a question. — which
miffht well be left to the ultra advocates of the
cui bono, — whether a simple flower may not
sometimes be of higher use than a labor-saving
machine."

As regards Beauty, ^r5^, it is objected
against making this disinterestedness a
characteristic of the pleasures derived from
a contemplation of it, that it is one of the
strongest incentives to passion, and opera-
tes directly through sejy.

'' Now, if the Beauty here referred to is of
the human being, we do not gainsay it; but
this is beauty in its mixed mode, — not in iis
high, passionless form, its singleness and pu-
rity. It is not Beauty as it descended from
heaven, in the cloud, thn rainbow, the flower,
the bird, or in ihe concord of sweet sounds,
that seem to carry back the soul to whence it
came.

^^ »' Could we look, indeed, at the human form
m its simple, unallieil physical structure, — on
that, for in-tance, of a beautiful woman, — and
. jForget, or rather not feel, that it is other than a
form, there could be but one feeling; that
nothing visible was ever so iramed to banish
from the soul every ijjnoble thought, and im-
bue it, as it were, wiih primeval innocence."

He then asks if it be the beauty alone
that moves us selfishly, why do we not feel
the same in beholding a beautiful infant ?
But there is such a thing as natural beauty
apart from the human form. Thus, all call
a bird of paradise beautiful ; there is no
dispute about a rose. And the absence of
beauty is felt in spite of other endearing
qualities, as in the case of the elephant,
the orang outang, or the mastiff.

That human beauty is a kind of eniofma
or thing to dispute about, is caused, ^r^e^,
by the perpetual interference of the conven-
tional in dress and manner ; and, secondly^
by the presence of individual bias, leading
to peculiar tastes in ourselves as observers.
Yet, the reality and power of human
beauty, as such, are fully conceded : —

" Has human beauty, then, no power 1 —
When united with virtue and intellect, we
might always answer, — All power. It is the
embodied harmony of the true poet ; his vis-
ible Muse; the guardian angel of his better
nature; the inspiring sibyl of his best affec-
tions, drawing him to her with a purifying
charm, from the selfishness of the world, from
poverty and neglect, from the low and base,
nay, from his own frailty or vices : — for
he cannot approach her with unhallowed
thoughts, whom the unlettered and ignorant
look up to with awe, as to one of a race
above them ; before whom the wisest and best
bow down with abasement, and would bow^ in
idolatry but for a higher reverence. No!
there is no power like this of mortal birth.
But against the antagonist moral, the human
beauty of itself has no power, no self-sustain-
ing life. While it panders to evil de.-<ires,
then, indeed, there are few^ things may par-
allel its fearful might. But the unholy alli-
ance must at last have an end. Look at it
then, when the beautiful serpent has cast her
slough.

''Let us turn to it for a moment, and behold
it in league with elegant accomplishments
and a subtile intellect : how complete its tri-
umph ! If ever the soul may be said to be
intoxicated, it is then, when it feels the full
power of a beautiful, bad woman. The fa-
bled enchantments of the East are less stransre
and wonder-working than the marvellous
changes which her spell has wrought. For a
time every thought seems bound to her will;
the eternal eye of the conscience closes be-
f )re her; the everlasting truths of right and
wrong sleep at her bidding; nay, things most
gross and abhorred become suddenly invested
with a seeming purity: till the whole mind is
hers, and the bewildered victim, drunk with

1850.

Lectures on Art and Poems.

charms, calls evil good. Then, what may fol-
low T Read the annals of crime ] it will tell
us what follows the broken spell — broken by
the first degrading theft, the first stroke of the
da2;ger, or the first drop of poison. The fel-
on's eye turns upon the beautiful sorceress
with loathing and abhorrence : an asp. a toad,
is not more hateful ! The story of Milwood
has many counterparts."

Another objection to the intuitive idea of
beauty is, that artists who may be supposed
to have the power of analzying their mod-
els, vary so much in their conceptions of
what is beautiful. But the answer is, sup-
posing they have this power, their intuition
of beauty may still be the same, though
their apprehension of it may change, "as
their more extended acquaintance with the
higher outward assimilants of beauty brings
them nearer to a perfect realization of the
preexisting idea." And then, both they
and their critics are subject to modifying
biases ; and, besides, they do not always
propose to themselves the realization of
their highest ideals of beauty. " Were
Raflfaelle, who seldom sought the purely
beautiful to be judged by the want of it,
he would fall below Guido. But his object
was much higher, — in the intellect and the
affections ; it was the human beino: in his
endless inflections of thought and passion,
in which there is little probability he will
ever be approached. Yet, false criticism
has been a prodigal to him in the ascrip-
tion of beauty, as parsimonious and unjust
to many others."

In concluding this part of the subject,
after examining the reciprocal influences of
soul upon soul operating through the intui-
tive perception of beauty, our author con-
nects it with the two grand ideas which
spring from the universal harmony : —

" If man were a mere animal, though the
highest animal, could these inscrutable influ-
ences affect us as they do % Would not the
animal appetites be our true and sole end '\
What even would Beauty be to the sated ap-
petite % If it did not, as in the last instance,
of the brutal husband, become an object of
scorn, — which it could not be, from the neces-
sary absence of moral obliquity, — would it
be better than a picked bone to a gorged dog ?
Least of all could it resemble the visible sign
of that pure idea, in which so many lofty
minds have recognized the type of a far higher
love than that of earth, which the soul shall
know, when, in a better world; she shall real-

ize the ultimate re-union of Beauty with the
co-eternal forms of Truth and Holiness."

Secondly. The characteristic of disinter-
estedness, as applied to Truth. The author
proceeds to demonstrate the proposition,
that all men have an intuitive pleasure in
the perception of truth. No one, ever for
its own sake^ chooses the false. '' Even
for her own exceeding loveliness has Truth
been canonized." There was nothing of
self in the Eureka of Pythagoras, and
certainly not in the acclamations of his
countrymen who rejoiced with him ; nor is
there in any of the revelations of truth to
genius.

" Indeed, so imperishable is this property
of Truth, that it seems to lose nothing of its
power, even when causing itself to be reflected
from things that in themselves have, properly
speaking, no truth. Of this we have abundant
examples in some of the Dutch pictures,
where the principal object is simply a dish of
oysters or a pickled herring. We remember
a picture of this kind, consisting solely of
these very objects, from which we experienced
a pleasure almost exquisite. And we would
here remark, that the appetite then was in no
way concerned. The pleasure, therefore,
must have been from the imitated truth. It is
certainly a curious question why this should
be, while the things themselves, that is, the
actual objects, should produce no such effect.
And it seems to be because, in the latter case,
there was no truth involved. The real oysters,
&c., were indeed so far true as they were ac-
tual objects, but they did not contain a truth
in relation to anything. Whereas, in the pic-
tured oysters, their relation to the actual was
shown and verified in the mutual resemblance."

The pleasure we experience from tragic
scenes on the stage or in art, arises likewise
from the truth in relation^ and the proper
word to express it is, not sympathy, but
interest. How subtlely Allston here
places a distinction, all have felt, in the
following paragraph : —

"Let the imitation, or rather copy, be so
close as to trench on deception, the effect will
be far different ) for, the condition of relation
being thus virtually lost, the copy becomes as
the original, — circumscribed by its own quali-
ties, repulsive or attractive, as the case may
be. I remember a striking instance of this in
a celebrated actress, whose copies of actual
suffering were so painfully accurate, that I
was forced to turn away from the scene, una-
ble to endure it ; her scream of agony in Bel-

Lectures on Art and Poems.

July,

videra seemed to ring in my ears for hours af-
ter. Not so was it with the great Mrs. Sid-
dons, who moved not a step but in a poetic
atmosphere, through which the fiercest pas-
sions seemed rather to loom like distant moun-
tains when first descried at sea, — massive and
solid, yet resting on air."

A single objection to the view of Truth
given in this section, is disposed of with
sino-ular acuteness. It is the remarkable
propensity children have to lying. (We
venture to doubt, by the way, if children
are half so much given to lying as old
men) : —

^' This is readily admitted ; hut it does not
meet us, unless it can be shown that they have
not in the act of lying an eye to its reward^ —
setting aside any outward advantage — in the
shape of self-complacent thought at their su-
perior wit or ingenuity. Now it is equally
notorious, that such secret triumph will often
betray itself by a smile, or wink, or ?ome
other sign from the chuckling urchin, which
proves anything but that the lie was gratui-
tous. No, not even a child can love a lie
purely for its own sake : he would else love it
in another, which is against fact. Indeed, so
far from it, that, long before he can have had
any notion of what is meant by honor, the
word lio.r becomes one of his first and most
opprobrious terms of reproach. Look at any
child^s face when he tells his companion he
lies. We ask no more than that most logical
expression ; and, if it speak not of a natural
abhorrence only to be overcome by self-inter-
est, there is no trust in anything. No. We
cannot believe that man or child, however de-
praved, could tell an unproductive^ gratuitous
lie/'

Thirdly. No one will question the
highest source of mental pleasure. Holiness
that, if sought at all, must be disinterest-
edly, and for its own sake. The finite
degree of holiness, (or perfect unison with
the Divine will,) is Goodness. This is
known and realized among; men.

The very nature of goodness implies
that a good act should have no reference to
self. Our author proceeds to show that
the recognition of goodness ^* must result
in such an emotion as shall partake of its
own character, that is, be enth-ely devoid
of self interest."

Goodness may not always be recognized,
nor may the contemplation of it give plea-
sure to those who are conscious that they
possess but little of it. But it cannot be
hated for its own sake, except by a devil :

" It is objected, that bad men have some-
times a pleasure in Evil from which they
neither derive nor hope for any perso.ial ad-
vantage, that is, simply because it is evil. But
we deny the fact. We deny that an unmixed
pleasure, which is purely abstracted from all
reference to self, is in the power of Evil.
Should any man assert this even of himself,
he is not to be believed : he lies to his own
heart. — and this he may do without being
conscious of it. But how can this be 1 Noth-
ing more easy : by a simple dislocation of
words ; by the aid of that false nomenclature
which began with the first Fratricide, and has
continued to accumulate through successive
ages, till it reached its consummation, for
every possible sin, in the French Eevolution."

And again :

"The wicked often hate the good. True :
but not goodness, not the good man's virtues )
these they envy, and hate him for possessing
them. But more commonly the object of dis-
like is first stripped of its virtues by detrac-
tion ; the detractor then supplies their place
by the needful vices, — perhaps with his own ;
then, indeed, he is ripe for hatred. When a
sinful act is made personal, it is another af-
fair : it then becomes a 'part of the man ; and
he may then worship it with the idolatry of a
devil. But there is a vast gulf between his
own idol and that of another."'

Fourthly, We arrive at the question,
on what ground all the emotions arising
from the contemplation of Beauty, Truth,
and holiness or Goodness are assumed as re-
ferable to one intuitive universal Principle
of Harmony } The answer is, on the
ground of their common agreement.

This common agreement is not to be re-
conciled on the ground of likeness in sen-
sation.^ since that only shows the differen-
ces in the emotions ; neither can it be found
in the reflective faculties.^ since the emo-
tion precedes the understanding.

^' Where, then, shall we search for this mys-
terious ground but in the mind, since only
there, as before observed, is this common ef-
fect known as a fact ? and where in the mind
but in some inherent Principle, which is both
intuitive and universal, since, in a greater or
less de2;ree, all men feel it without knowing
why r ^ ^ * *

"And since it would appear that we cannot
avoid the admission of some such Principle,
having a reciprocal relation to certain out-
ward objects, to account for these kindred
emotions from so many distinct and heteroge-
neous sources, it remains only that we give it

1850.

Lectures on Art and Poems.

a name; which has already been anticipated
in the term Harmony.

" The next question here is. in what con-
sists this peculiar relation ? We have seen
that it cannot be in anything that is essential
to any condition of mere being or existence ;
it must therefore consist in some indiscovera-
ble condition indifferently applicable to the
Physical, Intellectual, and Moral, yet only
applicable in each to certain kinds.

" And this is all that we do or can know of
it. But of this we may be as certain as that
we live and breathe."

It is true we may analyze tlie properties
of sounds and colors, and frame convenient
rules for the use of them, but there is a
living principle which they cannot reach —
a preexisting idea to which they assimilate
— far above the understanding : —

" Suppose we analyze a certam combination
of sounds and colors, so as to ascertain the
exact relative quantities of the one and the
collocation of the other, and then compare
them. What possible resemblance can the
understanding perceive between these sounds
and colors % And yet a something within us
responds to both in a similar emotion. And
so with a thousand things, nay, with myriads
of objects that have no other affinity but with
that mysterious harmony which began with
our being, which slept with our infancy, and
which their presence only seems to have
aivakened. If we cannot go back to our own
childhood, we may see its illustration in those
about us who are now emerging into that un-
sophistocated state. Look at them in the
fields, among the birds and flowers ; their hap-
py faces speak the harmony within them :
the divine instrument, which these have touch-
ed, gives them a joy which, perhaps, only
childhood in its first fresh consciousness can
know. Yet what do they understand of mu-
sical quantities, or of the theory of colors ?

" And so with respect to Truth and Good-
ness: whose pre-existing Ideas, being in the
living constituents of an immortal spirit, need
but the slightest breath of some outward con-
dition of the true and good, — a simple prob-
lem, or a kind act, — to awake them, as it
were, from their unconscious sleep, and start
them for eternity."

Had the child not something beyond the
power of discovering and apprehending
consequences, who could teach him the idea

of right ?

But now —

" The simplest exposition, whether of right
or wrong, even by an ignorant nurse, is in-
stantly responded to by something within
him, which, thus awakened, becomes to him a

living voice ever after; and the good and the
true must thenceforth answer its call, even
though succeeding years would fain overlay
them with the suffocating crowds of evil and
falsehood.

" We do not say that these eternal Ideas of
Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, will, strictly
speaking, always act. Though indestructible,
they may be banished for a time by the per-
verted Will, and mockeries of the brain, like
the fume-born phantoms from the witches'
cauldron in Macbeth, take their places, and as-
sume their functions. We have examples
of this in every age, and perhaps in none
more startling than in the present. But we
mean only that they cannot be forgotten:
nay, they are but too often recalled with un-
welcome distinctness. Could we read the an-
nals which must needs be scored on every
heart, — could we but look upon those of the
aged reprobate, — who will doubt that their
darkest passages are those made visible by
the distant gleams from these angelic Forms,
that, like the Three which stood before the
tent of Abraham, once looked upon his youth ?

"And we doubt not that the truest witness
to the common source of these inborn Ideas
would readily be acknowledged by all, could
they return to it now with their matured pow-
er of introspection, which is, at least, one of
the few advantages of advancing years. But,
though we cannot bring back youth, we may
still recover much of its purer revelations of
our nature from what has been left in the
memory. From the dim present, then, we
would appeal to that fresher time, ere the
young spirit had shrunk from the overbearing
pride of the understanding, and confidently
ask, if the emotions we then felt from the
Beautiful, the True, and the Good, did not
seem in some way to refer to a common origin.
And we would also ask, if it was then fre-
quent that the influence from one was singly
felt, — if it did not rather bring with it, how-
ever remotely, a sense of something, though
widely differing, yet still akin to it. When
we basked in the beauty of a summer sunset,
was there nothing in the sky that spoke to the
soul of Truth and Goodness ? And when the
opening intellect first received the truth of the
great law of gravitation, or felt itself mount-
ing through the profound of space, to travel
with the planets in their unerring rounds, did
never then the kindred Ideas of Goodness and
Beauty chime in, as it were, with the fabled
music, — not fabled to the soul, — which led
you on like one entranced 1

"And again, when, in the passive quiet of
your moral nature, so predisposed in youth to
all things genial, you have looked abroad on
this marvellous, ever teeming Earth, — ever
teeming alike for mind and body, — and have
felt upon you flow, as from ten thousand

"Lectures on Art and Foems.

July,

springs of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, ten
thousand streams of innocent enjoyment ; did
you not then almost hear them shout in con-
fluence, and almost see them gusliing upwards,
as if they would prove their unity, in one har-
monious fountain ?"'

Hither! 0 the discussion has considered
the three ideas of beauty, truth and good-
ness as separate ; but we derive a large
portion of our mental qualification from
their mixed modes ^ in which they are com-
bined with each other and with their oppo-
sites, as in plays and works of fiction.
Sometimes in these we experience a partial
harmony verging on a powerful discord, as
in the example of King Richard. Perhaps
we are permitted this interest for a deeper
purpose than we are wont to suppose,
'' because sin is best seen in the light of
vii'tue."

To these mixed modes must be added
another class — that of imputed attributes.
In the inanimate world there are multitudes
of ojects which we cannot contemplate
without imputing to them characteristics
which we ascribe to human beings. This
we do, not from association, but through an
unknown afiinity or general law of the viiiid.
We distinguish such objects by such epi-
thets as stately^ majestic, grand, and so
on : —

'' It is so with us, when we call some tall
forest stately, or qualify as majestic some
broad and slowly-winding river, or some vast,
yet unbroken waterfall, or some solitary, gi-
gantic pine, seeming to disdain the earth, and
to hold of right its eternal communion with
air ; or when to the smooth and far-reaching
expanse of our inland waters, with their bor-
dering and receding mountains, as they seem
to march from the shores, in the pomp of their
dark draperies of wood and mist, we apply
the terms grand and magnificent : and so on-
ward to an endless succesi^^ion of objects, im-
puting, as it were, our own nature, and lend-
ing our sympathies, till the headlong rush of
some mighty cataract suddenly thunders upon
us. But how is it then % In the twinkling of
an eye, the outflowing sympathies ebb back
upon the heart ; the whole mind seems severed
from earth, and the awful feeling to suspend
the breath ; — there is nothing human to which
we can liken it. And here begins another
kind of emotion, which we call Sublime."

In all that has preceded, the outward
world has been considered only in relation
to man, and " the human being as the pre-
determuied centre to which it was designed

to converge. But, as regards the sublime,
the centre is not in man ; he cannot con-
tain the idea, yet is forever attracted to it.
Why may we not consider that as there is
a living piinciple of harmony within us,
unifying all our mental pleasures, so there
is also without us, an infinite harmony, to
which our own is attracted, and whence it
emanated when " man became a living
soul t " JS'othing finite can account for the
emotion ; but clothe any single passion or
mere naked thouo;ht with the idea of the
infinite, and it becomes sublime. As for
instance, in the Mosaic words, " Let there
be light, and there was light."

The source of the sublime is always ah
extra — never in ourselves. There is no
sublimity to a man in his own despair ;
though there may be in contemplating that
of another, removed fiom sympathy by
time or after- description.

Neither is there any sublimity in per-
sonal terror, though sublimity may be felt,
as in a storm at sea, while the individual is
conscious of his danger. The sense of se-
cuiity or the presence of danger, are mere
accidents ; the sublime emotion is a pure-
ly mental one and is felt through contem-
plation. There is a fascination in danger
which is one of its most exciting accompa-
niments :

" Let us turn to Mont Blanc, that mighty
pyramid of ice, in whose shadow might re-
pose all the tombs of the Pharaohs. It rises
before the traveller like the accumulating
mausoleum of Europe: perhaps he looks up-
on it as his own before his natural time ; yet
he cannot away from it. A terrible charm
hurries him over frightful chasms, whose blue
depths seem like those of the ocean ; he cuts
his way up a polished precipice, shining like
steel, — as elusive to the touch; he creeps
slowly and warily around and beneath huge
cliffs of snow ; now he looks up, and sees
their brows fretted by the percolating waters
like a Gothic ceiling, and he fears even to
whisper, lest an audible breath should awaken
the avalanciie ; and thus he climbs and climbs^
till the dizzy summit fills up his measure of
fearful ecstacy."

A work of Art may be as truly sublime
as a natural object ; but in oider to be so
it must lead us to an idea which is without
and above us — which gives us a sense of
the infinite :

^' For instance ; the roar of the ocean, and
the intricate unity of a Gothic cathedral, whose

1850.

Lectures on Art and Poems.

beginning and end are alike intangible, while
its climbing tower seems visibly even to rise
to the Idea which it strives to embody, — these
have nothing in common, — hardly two things
could be named that are more unlike ; yet in
relation to man they have but one end : for
who can hear the ocean when breathing in
wrath, and limit it in his mind, though he
think not of Him who gives it voice ? or as-
cend that spire without feeling his faculties
vanish, as it were, with its vanishing point,
into the abyss of space ? If there be a differ-
ence in the effect from these and other objects,
it is only in the intensity, the degree of impe-
tus given ; as between that from the sudden
explosion of a volcano and from the slow and
heavy movement of a rising thunder-cloud ;
its character and its office are the same, — in
its awful harmony to connect the created with
its Infinite Cause.

"Bat let us compare this effect with that
from Beauty. Would the Parthenon, for in-
stance, with its beautiful forms. — made still
more beautiful under its native sky, — seeming
almost endued with the breath of life, as if its
conscious purple were a living suflfusion
brought forth in sympathy by the enamoured
blushes of a Grecian sunset; — would this
beautiful object even then elevate the soul
above its own roof? No : we should be fill-
ed with a pure delight, — but with no longing
to rise still higher. It would satisfy us ;
which the sublime does not ; for the feeling is
too vast to be circumscribed by human con-
tent."

The supernatural, and the beings which
belong to it, being immediately connected
with the infinite are always sublime. The
highest example of this is in the angelie
nature. This leads to a discussion of the
question how far is beauty compatible
with sublimity, and the answer is, that
where the former is not essential but a
mere contingent, its admission or rejection
is a matter of indifference. (It seems to
us that in the case of an2;els, as in the ca-
taract, Allston has given an instance
where the beautiful approaches and mer-
ges in the sublime ; and in proof of this we
could cite no better examples than the
figures of angels in his own recently publish-
ed outlines and sketches.*)

Among the sources of ihQ false sublime
are, sympathy with excruciating bodily
suffering. Bodily suffering may be admit-
ted as auxiliary to a sublime end, as the

* The reader is referred to a notice of these by
the pre-eut writer in the May number of the " Art
Union Bulletin."

expositor of moral deformity ; but it is, of
itself, insufficient as a cause of sublimity.
In like manner also the horrible, the loath-
some, the hideous, and the monstrous, are
impassible boundaries to the true sublime.
It would seem that beauty is the " ex-
treme point or last summit of the natural
world, since in it we recognize the highest
emotion of which we are susceptible from
the purely physical. Ascending from it
into the moral we find its influence dimini-
shing in the ratio of our progress upward.
We first come to elegance ; then to majesty,
then to grandeur, then beauty seems al-
most to vanish, and

'^ A new form rises before us, so mysterious,
so undefined and elusive to the senses, that
we turn, as if for its more distinct image,
within ourselves, and there, with wonder,
amazement, awe, we see it filling, distending,
stretching every faculty, till, like the Giant of
Otranto, it seems almost to burst the imagina-
tion : under this strange confluence of oppo-
site emotions, this terrible pleasure, we call
the awful form Sublimity. This was the still,
small voice that shook the Prophet on Ho-
reb ; — though small to his ear, it was more
than his imagination could contain : he could
not hear it again and live."

So if we descend from beauty (our
author does not pretend to give all the gra-
dations upward or downward) we come to
the handsome, the pretty, the comely, the
plain, &c. till we fall to the ugly. These
end the chain of pleasurable excitement
but not that of forms ; " which taking now
as if a literal curve, again bends upward,
till meetino; the descending; extreme of the
moral, it seems to complete the n)ighty
circle. And in this dark segment will be
found the startling union of deepening dis-
cords, still deepening, as it rises from the
ugly to the loathsome, the horrible, the
frightful and the appaling.

"As we follow the chain through this last
region of disease, misery, and sin. of embodied
Discord, and feel, as we must, in the mutil-
ated affinities of its revolting forms, their fear-
ful relation to this fair, harmonious creation, —
how does the awful fact, in these its breath-
ing fragments, speak to us of a fallen world !

" As the living centre of this stupendous
circle stands the Soul of Man; the conscious
Reality, to which the vast iiiclosnre is but the
symbol. How vast, then, his being ! If space
could measure it, the remotest star would fall
within its limits. Well, then, may he trem-
, ble to essay it even in thought; for where

Lectures on Art and Poems.

July,

must it carry him, — that winged messenger,
fleeter than light ] "Where but to the coniine?
of the Infinite ; even to the presence of the
unutterable Life^ on which nothing finite can
look and live ?"

Finally^ the principle of Harmony is
" the universal and eternal witness of God's
goodness and love, to draw man to him-
self." Another evidence of its spiritual
origin is that it can never be realized by
any human being as such. We all deserve
it and tend towards it, from the cradle to
the grave ; but the absolute Harmony, or
perfect assimilation of all the elements of
beauty, truth, and goodness never comes.
We are hence impelled to ceaseless action.
And the motive is the Jiope to realize or at
least approximate more nearly to a satis-
fying state. And yet such a state was
never gained in this life by the attainment
of any object ; the secret ruler of the soul,
the inscrutable, ever present spirit of Har-
mony points to another world :

"We have said that man cannot to him-
self become the object of Harmony, — that is,
find its proper correlative in himself; and we
have seen that, in his present state, the posi-
tion is true. How is it, then in the world of
spirit ? Who can answer T And yet, perhaps,
— if without irreverence we might hazard the
conjecture. — as a finite creature, having no
centre but himself on which to revolve, mayit
not be that his true correlative will there be
revealed (if, indeed, it be not before) to the dis-
embodied man, in the Being that made him 1
And may it not also follow, that the Principle
we speak of will cease to be potential, and
flow out, as it were, and harmonize with the
eternal form of Hope, — even that Hope
whose living end is in the unapproachable In-
finite ?

"Let us suppose this form of hope to be
taken away fiom an immortal beina; who has
no self-saiisfj-ing power within him, what
would be his condition? A conscious inter-
minable vacuum, were such a thing possible,
w^ould but faintly image it. Hope, then,
though in its nature unrealizable, is not a mere
notion; for so long as it continues hope, it is
to the mind an object and an object to he real-
ized ; so, where its form is eternal, it cannot
but be to it an ever-during object. Hence we
may conceive of a never-ending approxima-
tion to what can never be realized.

" From this it would appear, ihat, while we
cannot to ourselves become the object of Har-
mony, it is nevertheless certain, from the uni-
versal desire so to realize it, that we cannot

uppress the continual impulse of this para-
mount Principle ; which, therefore, as it seems
to us, must have a double purpose ; first, by
its outward manifestation, which we all re-
cognize, to confirm its reality, and secondly,
to convince the mind that its true object is not
merely out of, but above, itself, — and only to
be found in the Infinite Creator."

Thus concludes the introductory dis-
course. Our imperfect sketch can give
of course but a dim notion of the conclu-
siveness of its reasoning or its beauty as a
piece of elegant literature. The hypothe-
sis upon which all is based will be seen to
be the same which was insisted on in the
the preliminary note — the doctrine of in-
nate ideas. It would not be very difficult
to cite authority against or to frame an
argument to controvert this old theory ; but
whether we go with Locke or Plato, the
beauty and symmetry of the system are a
sufficient evidence of its truth, to the ex-
tent and for the purposes here set forth.
Yes, we exclaim, as we rise from a perusal
of this discourse, there are " inborn ideas,"
which have only a " potential existence,"
untill called into consciousness by their pro-
per assimilants ; there is a " predetermined
co-relation" between the objects of sense
and the mind — a '' dual reality," in which
alone we exist. And there is also a li-
ving principle of harmony within us corres-
ponding to an infinite harmony without ;
and the mental elevation we experience in
the recognition of beauty, truth and good-
ness, is but the triform upward impulse of
this inward harmony, without which we
should become like beasts, havino- none
other but sensual pleasures. Moreover,
we have found at last the true source of
the sublime, and are no longer left to
Wcinder in flowery declamation respecting
the "sublime and beautiful." We have
something which takes deeper root than the
rules of Blair and Beattie — a theory whose
simplicity, clearness and universality of
application at once evidence its truth, and
make it adhere and combine with the mind
as by virtue of an irrisistible afiSnity, Did
we profess any prophetic reputation, we
would willingly venture all the hazard which
could be incurred in piedijting that this
discourse will hereafter be known as the
basis and corner-stone to a new philosophy
of art.

1850.

Lectures on Art and Poems.

LECTURE FIRST.

The first lecture treats of art, and pro-
poses for discussion, " what are the charac-
teristics which distincruish it from nature,
which it proposes to imitate ? "

First. It is characterized by originality.
By this is meant " anything (admitted by
the mind as tj-ue) , which is peculiar to the
author, and which distinguishes his produc-
tion from all others." There is a some-
thing in every individual mind which is not
in any other ; we do not look upon nature
with exactly the same eyes. There is also
great ditference in the power of re-pro-
ducing individual impressions. Where this
power exists in so higrh a degree as to
make others see and feel as the individual
possessing it saw and felt — this, in relation
to art, is, in the strictest sense, originality.
An example of originality may be had in
the case of two portraits of the same per-
son by different artists, supposing the ac-
cessories and the technical process the same
in both. They may be equally good as
likenesses ; yet, there will be a sometJiing
in each which will distinguish it from the
other. Each will be qualified by the ori-
nality of its artist. They may both be
true in a double sense — as to the living
original and to the individuality of the two
painters.

There is no such thing as absolute iden-
tity between a natural object and its repre-
sented image. What we receive as an
equivalent for the difference, is this indivi-
dualized or poetic truth. The poetry of
nature consists in the sentiment and react-
ing life it receives from the human fancy
and affections. Not that art implies any
contradiction to nature, but only a modifi-
cation of it by the personal — a difference
with resemblance.

Second. Art is characterized by human
or poetic truth, " that which may be said
to exist exclusively in and for the mind,
and as contra-distinguished from the truth
of things in the natural or external world."
Certain objects affect us all in nearly the
same manner. Why they do so, we cannot
tell ; except that it is by the action of the
power within us, reflecting itself in the out-
ward— as life answering to life. Whatever
harmonizes with the instinctive decisions of
this power, we call Poetic Truth.

Third. Art is characterized by inven-

tion ; viz., " any unpracticed mode of pre-
senting a subject, whether by the combina-
tion of forms already known, or by the
union and modification of known but frag-
mentary parts into a new and consistent
whole ; in both cases tested by the two
preceding characteristics."

Of tlie^r5^ kind of invention, which is
called the JXatural, every school and galle-
ry produce examples, " from the histories
of Raffaelle, the landscapes of Claude and
Poussin, and others, to the familiar scenes
of Jan Steen, Ostade, and Brower." The
objects are all natural, and in respect of
invention they occupy commoD ground^
however widely they differ in subject and
treatment.

" In order, howeyer, more distinctly to ex-
hibit their common ground of Invention we
will briefly examine a picture by Ostade,
and then compare it with one by Raffa
elle, than whom no two artists could well be
imagined having less in common.

"The interior of a Dutch cottage forms the
scene of Ostade's work, presenting something
between a kitclien and a stable. Its principle
object is the carcass of a hog, newly washed
and hung up to dry ; subordinate to which is
a woman nursing an infant ; the accessories,
various garments, pots, kettles, and other cu-
linary utensils.

"The bare enumeration of these coarse ma-
terials would naturally predispose the mind of
one, unacquainted with the Dutch school, to
expect any thing but pleasure : indifference,
not to say disgust, would seem to be the only
possible impression from a picture composed
of such ingredients. And such, indeed, would
be their effect under the hand of any but a
real Artist. Let us look into the picture and
Ostade's wind., as it leaves its impress on the
several objects. Observe how he spreads his
principal lignt, from the suspended carcass to
the surrounding objects, moulding it, so to
speak, into agreeable shapes, here by extend-
ing it to a bit of drapery, there to an earthern
pot ; then connecting it, by the flash from a
brass kettle, w-ith his second light, the woman
and child ; and again turning the eye into the
dark recesses through a labyrinth of broken
chairs, old baskets, roosting fowls, and bits of
straw, till a glimpse of sunshine, from a half
open window, gleams on the eye, as it were,
like an echo, and sending it back to the prin-
cipal object, which now seems to act on the
mind as a luminous source of all those diverg-
ing lights. But the magical whole is not yet
completed ; the mystery of color has been call-
ed in to the aid of light, and so subtly blends
that we can hardly separate them ; at leastj

Lectures on Art and Poems.

July,

until their united effect has first been felt, and
after we have begun the process of cold analy-
sis. Yet even then we cannot long proceed
before we find the charm returning; as we
pass from the blaze of light on the carcass,
where all the tints of the prism seem to be
faintly subdued, we are met on its borders by
the dark harslet, glowing like rubies; then we
repose awhile on the white cap and kerchief of
the nursing: mother; then we are roused again
bv the fiickerins: strife of the antagonist colors
on a blue jacket and red petticoat ; then the
strife is softened by the low yellow of a straw
bottomed chair: and thus with alternating ex-
citement and repose do we travel through the
picture, till the scientific explorer loses the
analyst in the unresisting passivenessof a po-
etic dream. Now all this will no doubt ap-
pear to many, if not absurd, at least exaggera-
ted : but not so to those who have ever felt
the sorcery of color. They, we are sure, will
be the last to question the character of the feel-
ina: because of the in2:redients which worked
the spell, anJ, if true to themselves, they must
call it poetry. Nor will they consider it any
disparagement to the all-accomplished RaiFa-
elle to say of Ostade that he also was an Art-
ist.

" We turn now to a work of the great Ital-
ian,— the Death of Ananias. The scene is
laid in a plain apartment, which is wholly de-
void of ornament, as became the hall of audi-
ence of the primitive Christians. The Apos-
tles (then eleven in number) have assembled
to transact the temporal business of the
Church, and are standing together on a slight-
ly elevated platform, about which, in various
attitudes, some standing, others kneeling, is
gathered a promiscuous assemblage of their
new converts, male and female. This quiet
assembly (for we still feel its quietness in the
midst of the awful judgment) is suddenly
roused by the sudden fall of one of their
brethren : some of them turn and see him
struggling in the agonies of death. A mo-
ment before he was in the vigor of life, —
as his muscular limbs still bear evidence ;
but he had uttered a falsehood, and an instant
after his frame is convulsed from head to foot.
Nor do we doubt for a moment as to the aw-
ful cause : it is almost expressed in voice by
those nearest to him, and, though varied by
their different temperaments, by terror, aston-
ishment, and submissive faith, this voice has
yet but one meaning, — ' Ananias has lied to
the Holy Ghost.' The terrible words, as if
audible to the mind, now direct us to him who
pronounced his doom, and the singly-raised
finger of the Apostle marks him the judge ;
yet not of himself, — for neither his attitude,
air, nor expression has anything in unison
with the impetuous Peter, — he is now the

Almighty : while another on the right, with
equal calmness, though with more severity,
by his elevated arm, as beckoning to judg-
ment, anticipates the fate of the entering Sap-
phira. Yet all is not done ; lest a question re-
main, the Apostle on the left confirms the judg-
ment. No one can mistake what passes with-
in him ; like one transfixed in adoration, his
uplifted eyes seem to ray out his soul, as if in
recognition of the divine tribunal. But the
overpowering thought of Omnipotence is now
tempered by the human sympathy of his com-
panion, whose open hands, connecting the
past with the present, seem almost to articu-
late, • Alas, my brother I' By this exquisite
turn, we are next brought to John, the 2;entle
almoner of the Church, who is dealing out
their portions to the needy brethren. And
here, as most remote from the judged Ananias,
whose suffering seems not yet to have reached
it, we find a spot of repose, — not to pass by,
but to linger upon, till we feel its quiet influ-
ence diffusing itself over the whole mind ; nay,
till, connecting it with the beloved Desciple,
we find it leading us back through the excit-
ing scene, modifying even our deepest emo-
tions with a kindred tranquility.

"This is Invention ; we have not moved a
step through the picture but at the will of the
Artist. He invented the chain which we have
followed, link by link, through every emotion,
assimilating many into one ; and this is the
secret by which he prepared us, without ex-
citing horror, to contemplate the struggle of
mortal agony.

^'' This too is Art ; and the highest art, when
thus the awful power, without losing its cha-
racter, is tempered, as it were, to our mysteri-
ous desires. In the work of Ostade, we see
the same inventive power, no less effective,
though acting through the medium of the
humblest materials.''

The second kind of inverition rises from
i\\Q, pi'obahle to the 'possible; this we term
ideal. To this kind belong the beings of
Homer, Shakspeare and Milton — gods and
heroes, fairies, calibans, angels and devils.
These all are imbued
eternal truth : —

with poetic, with

" Of the immutable nature of this peculiar
Truth, we have a like instance intheFarnese
Hercules; the work of the Grecian sculptor
Glycon, — we had almost said his immortal
offspring. Since the time of its birth, cities
and empires, even whole nations, have disap-
peared, giving place to others, more or less
barbarous or civilized; yet these are as
nothing to the countless revolutions which
have marked the interval in the manners,

eimple, passive, yet awful instrument of the | habits^ and opinions of men. Is it reasona-

1850.

Lectures on Art and Poems.

ble, then, to suppose that any thing not im-
mutabJe in its nature could possibly have
withstood such continued fluctuation ?"

" Perhaps the attempt to give form and sub-
stance to a pure Idea was never so perfectly
accomplished as in this wonderful figure.
Who has ever seen the ocean in rejiose, in its
awful sleep, that smooths it like glass, yet
cannot level its unfathomed swell 1 So seems
to us the re{)ose of this tremendous personiii-
cation of strength ; the laboi ing eye heaves on
its slumbering sea of muscles, and trembles
like a skifi" as it passes over them : but the
silent intimations of the spirit beneath at
length become audible: the startled imagina-
tion hears it in its rage, sees it in motion, and
sees its resistless might in the massive wrecks
that follow the uproar. And this from a })iece
of marble, cold, immoveable, lifeless ! Surely
there is that in man, which the senses cannot
reach, nor the plumb of the understanding
sound.

" TiCt us now turn to the Apollo called Bel-
vedere. In this supernatural being, the human
form seems to have been assumed as if to
make visible the harmonious confluence of the
pure ideas of grace, fleetness, and majesty ;
nor do we think it too fanciful to add celestial
splendor; for such, in effect, are the thoughts
which crowd; or rather lush, into the mind on
first beholding it. Who that saw it in what
may be called the place of its glory, the Gal-
lery of Nai)oleon, ever thought of it as a man,
much less as a statue ; but did not feel rather
as if the vision befoie him were of another
world, — of one who had just lighted on the
earth, and with a step so ethereal, that the
next instant he would vault into the air ? If
I may be permitted to recall the impression
which it made on myself, I know not that I
could better describe it than as a sudden in-
tellectual flash, filling the whole mind with
light, — and light in motion. It seemed to the
mind what the first sight of the sun is to the
senses, as it emerges from the ocean ; when
from a point of light the v^'hole orb at once
appears to be bound from the waters, and to
dart its rays, as by a visible explosion, through
the profound of space. But, as the deified
Sun, how completely is the concej)tion veiified
in the thoughts that follow the eflulgent origi-
nal and its marble counterpart! Perennial
youth, perennial brightness, follow ihem both.
Who can imagine the old age of the sun ? As
soon may we think of an old Apollo. Now
all th.is may be ascribed to the imagination of
the beholder. Granted, — yet will it not thus
be explained away. For that is the very
faculty addressed by every work of Genius, —
whose nature is suggestive ; and only when
it excites to or awakens congenial thoughts
and emotions, filling the imagination with
corresponding images, does it attain its proper

end. The false and the commonplace can
never do this.

"It were easy to multiply similar exam-
ples ; the bare mention of a single name in
modern art might conjure up a host, — the
name of Michael Angelo, the mighty sove-
reign of the Ideal, than whom no one ever
trod so near, yet so securely, the dizzy brink
of the Impossible."

Fourth. The last characteristic of art ig
unity, or " such an inteidependence of all
the parts as shall constitute a whole." All
we know respecting this is, that the mind
requires it. No rule can be laid down by
which to measure the too much or too
little; every woik must contain its law
within itself. No unmodi^td mere copy
of natural objects satisfies the imagination;
it always affects us as fragmentary. In the
actual world, all things relate to and de-
pend upon each other in the infinite har-
mony of nature. So it is in the world of
art, which is a hmnan world ; the mysteri-
ous law of harmony is ever impelling us to
the establishing such a mutual coherence
as results in a symmetrical whole.

That great artists make sometimes great
mistakes in realizing their conceptions does
not conflict with the piinciples here laid
down. The artist does not see his own
woik, but looks through it, upon the image
in his mind. When time has erased that
he can thus see his own work as others see
it, whether true or false.

The lecture concludes with a paragraph
upon the education of an artist, which must
not be omitted.

"These last rem' rks very naturally lead us
to another subject, and one of no minor im-
portance ; we mean, the education of an Ar-
tist; on this, however, we shall at juesent add
but a few words. We use the v^ord education,
in its widest sense, as involving not only the
growth and expansion of the iniellect, but a
corresponding developement of the moral
being; for the wisdom of the intellect is of
tiitle worth, it it be not in harmony w-ith the
higher spiiilual truth. Nor will a moderate,
incidental cultivation suffice to him who would
become a great Artist. He must sound no
less than the full depths of his being ere he is
fitted for his calling; a calling in its very con-
dition lofty, demanding an agent by whom,
from the actual living world, is to be wrought
an imagined consistent world of Arf, — not
fantastic, or objectless, but having a puipose,
and that purpose, in all its figments, a distinct
relation to man's nature, and all that pertains

Lectures on Art and Poems.

July,

to it, from the humblest emotion to the high-
est aspiration ; the circle that bounds it being
that only which bounds his spirit, — even the
confines of that higher world, where ideal
glimpses of angelic forms are sometimes per-
mitted to his sublimated vision. Art may, in
truth, be called the human world ; for it is so
far the work of man, that his beneficent Crea-
tor has esj)ecially endowed him with the
powers to construct it; and, if so, surely not
for his mere amusement, but as a part (small
though it be) of that mighty plan which the
Infinite Wisdom has ordained for the evolution
of the human spirit; whereby is intended, not
alone the enlargement of his sphere of pleas-
ure, but of his higher capacities of adoration ;
— as if, in the gift, he had said unto man,
Thou shalt know me by the powers I have
given thee. The calling of an Artist, then, is
one of no common responsibility; and it well
becomes him to consider at the threshold,
whether he shall assume it for high and noble
purposes, or for the low and licentious."

LECTURE THIRD.

The two remaining lectures, although of
greater practical importance to artists, in
that they extend and elaborate the princi-
ples already laid down, are, for that very
reason, less likely to interest general read-
ers. The third, on the Haman Form^ is
an example of a most obscure and vague
subject, made clear by the subtlety with
which it is treated, and especially by the
unconscious boldness with which the writer
appeals for the truth of his arguments di-
rectly to the poetic nature.

He shows, ^r^^, that " the notion of one
or more standard forms, which shall, in all
cases, serve as exemplars, is essentially
false ; and of impracticable application for
any true purpose of art." There is assum-
ed by the artist a correspondence between
the physical and moral. Each man re-
gards other men as living souls, and he
intuitively associates certain traits of char-
acter with certain forms. We read in the
human eye an influence not of the body ;
its expression is very different from the eye
of the brute. This soul which we see is
as real to us as a tangible object. It is
impossible to regard a living human form
as a mere thing ; and it is equally impossi-
ble to conceive of a soul without a correcla-
tive form. Wherever, in a poetic creation,
there is a hint of the moral, we assign to
it a shape ; as with Ariel, whose shape is
never described but by traits of character.

No study can be made from the infinite

multitude and diversities of man in the
concrete which can be applied to the ah-
struct ideal — a being who should combine
in expression the entire attributes of hu-
manity cannot be conceived ; and for the
same reason can we never have one or more
standard forms.

Neither can we realize the idea of a per-
fect form ; for the reason that there are so
many kinds of perfection. It w^ould be
impossible to represent the merely physi-
cal for example, or to say which is the
most perfect, the Apollo or Hercules.

Neither can we conceive of generic
forms — with ten thousand physical differ-
ences, the passions and virtues are the same
the world over. The moral part has no
genera. In this respect man is a whole,
an individual.

That the correspondence between the
physical and moral, assumed by the artist,
cannot be sustained as universally obvious
must be admitted — yet we may hold it as
a matter oi faith; from the universal de-
sire amono; men to realize such a corres-
pondence. We naturally desire to associ-
ate the good with the beautiful, the ener-
getic with the strong, the refined with the
delicate, the modest with the comely, and
the like with a thousand shades of charac-
ter.

We may see this especially in the young,
who are of a poetic temperament. There
are some who have a faith in their youth-
ful day-dreams, that will not die — that
comes from a spring of life^ that neither
custom nor the dry understanding can des-
troy. " There are some hearts that never
suffer the mind to grow old."

To show how universal is this desire to
realize a correspondence, the author asks
who that has looked upon a "sleeping child,
in its first bloom of beauty, and seen its
pure, fresh hues, its ever varying, yet ac-
cording lines, moulding and suffusing in
their playful harmony its delicate features"
— has not " felt himself carried, as it were,
out of this present world, in quest of its
moral counterpart } It seems to us per-
fect ; we desire no change — not a line or a
hue but as it is ; and yet we have a para-
doxical feeling of a want — for it is all
physical; and we supply that want by en-
dowing the child with some angelic attrib-
ute. Why do we this } To make it a
whole — not to the eye, but to the mind."

1850.

Lectures on Art and Poems,

This correspondence between the moral
and physical is the ground of the plastic
arts — " since i\\YO\\^form alone they have
to convey, not only thought and emotion,
but distinct and permanent character."
Their success settles the question.

The artist is not confined to one ideal,
and that a baseless conventional one, but
he may have as many as there are predom-
inant phases of character in individuals —
not by portraiture or copying — but by
working out fragments of correspondence
in actual forms to their full development.
How this is to be effected, must be left to
the artist himself — to his imagination. He
must feel an iriforming ///e, which he must
impart to the marble or the canvas.

Secondly^ the lecture proceeds to show,
how it follows from this, that the few gen-
eral rules respecting stature are but expe-
dient fictions. The artist lays out his work
in height and breadth, &c., according to
rule, merely for convenience. Here ends
the science, and begins his labor to make
his figures live and express what he con-
ceives. If he is now asked by what he is
guided in his innumerable changes, in-
creasing or diminishing limbs and altering
lines, he can only answer, by the feeling
within me. Nor can he tell better how
he know when he has hit the mark. The
same feeling responds to its truth ; and he
repeats his attempts until that is satisfied.

Thirdly ., in conclusion, " it would ap-
pear, then, that in the mind alone is to be
found the true and ultimate rule — if that
can be called a rule which changes as its
measure with every change of character.
" Hence the importance of mental cultiva-
tion to the artist, lire knowledo-e of the
human being in all his complicated springs
of action is no less essential to a painter or
sculptor than to a poet.

Hence he should study the works of his
predecessors — " the exquisite remains of
antiquity" and especially " the works of
Raffaelle and Michael Angelo." These
are referred to as the two great sovereio;ns
of the two distmct empires of truth — " the
actual and the imaginative." The artist
is not to use any works as models.^ literally
— for that leads to mannerism ; the only
model that will not lead him astray is Na-
ture.

The lecture closes with a carefal, yet
perfectly simple analysis of the two great

masters just named, based upon the dis-
tinction made in the clause we have quoted.

LECTURE FOURTH.

This lecture treats of the characteristics
of composition.^ and is almost wholly made
up of descriptions of paintings used for the
purpose of illustrating the principles which
are thus briefly announced :

"In a true composition of art will be
found the following characteristics : First,
Unity of Purpose, as expressing the ge-
neral sentiment or intention of the artist.
Secondly, Variety of Parts, as expressed
in the diversity of shape, quantity, and
line. Thirdly, Continuity, as expressed
by the connection of parts with each other
and their relation to the whole. Fourthly,
Harmony of Parts."

The necessity of Unity is obvious. With
respect to variety, it is laid down, that sub-
jects of a gay or light character may be
treated with more variety than the sub-
lime, which admits least of all.

After a fine description of the marriage
at Canaby Paul Veronese, which he speaks
of delighting from its great variety, and as
an example of a composition " where the
simple technic exhibition or illustration of
principles .^ without story or thought, or a
single definite expression, has still the
power to possess and to fill us with a thous-
and delightful emotions" — he proceeds ;

'^ And here we cannot refrain from a pass-
ing remark on certain criticisms, which have
obtained, as we think, an undeserved curren-
cy. To assert that such a work is solely ad-
dressed to the senses (meaning thereby that
its only end is in mere pleasurable sensation)
is to give the lie to our convictions ; inasmuch
as we find it appealing to one of the mightiest
ministers of the Imagination, — the great Law
of Harmony, — which cannot be touched with-
out awakening by its vibrations, so to speak,
the untold myriads of sleeping forms that lie
within its circle, that start up in tribes, and
each in accordance with the congenial instru-
ment that summons them to action. He who
can thus, as it were, embody an abstraction is
no mere pander to the senses. And who that
has a modicum of the imaginative would as-
sert of one of Haydn's Sonatas, that its effect
on him was no other than sensuous 1 Or who
would ask for the story in one of our gorgeous
autumnal sunsets ?

Admirable as this is for its truth, the in-
stance of Haydn is a less happy one than
might have been selected. For his chief

Lectures on Art and Tocms.

July,

characteristic is clearness of story ; which,
though generally playful or tender, grace-
ful, and beautiful, is wrought out with a
consecutiveness of idea and a constantly
accumulative energy that bears the hearer
irresLstably along with it. A dry elaborate
fugue would be a good example of a com-
position pleasing simply by '* the technic
exhibition of principles;" but if we look
in music for that which has the least of the
imacrinative quality in it, and which yet is

in having honestly endeavored to render
these essays attractive to a wider circle
of readers than they might immediately find
of themselves, and to open the way to such
a study of them as they require.

The Poems in this volume have not been
included in this notice, as they demand a
separate, and we have preferred to confine
ourselves to the lectures. A review of the
earlier ones has lately appeared in the col-
lected edition of Dana's Poems and Prose

pleasing for exhibiting a gay variety of vi- | Writings, which leaves little scope for ge-
vacious invention, we must go to Rossini, ! neral criticism. Of the latter, there are
Donizetti, or especially to Auber, (who j several which would be pleasant to quote,
seems a perfect master of the pretty in the { particularly the splendid lyric, " America

flow of melody) and his imitators among
the French ballet writers. Even here we
find quite enough to answer those who
would contend that music is a merely sen-
sual art.

In concluding this sketch of these lec-
tures we need not, we hope, after what has
been quoted and abstracted, commend
them to artists and lovers of art. The task
of selection where one feels that all should
be read or none, is the most irksome that
can be imagined, and we leave it with an
impression that little indeed has been ac-

complished. Yet we confess, to some pride, ] view in April, 1S4S.

to Great Britain," which Coleridge pub-
lished originally in the " Sibylline Leaves"
with the remark : '• This poem, written by
an American gentleman, a valued and dear
friend, I communicate to the reader for its
moral, no less than its poetic sphit."

For an attempt to do some justice to the
rare elegance and refinement of Allstox's
prose writing, and to his merit us a profound
thinker and critic of art, it may not be
thought presumptuous in the writer to re-
fer to the concluding portion of an article
on " Monaldi," which appeared in this Re-

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.*

This is quite an old book, but, under
tbe circumstances of the day, not too old
to be examined, or rather re-examined,
and brought, along with its distinguished
subject, to the test of a critical review.
For reasons which may appear during this
examination, we begin by expressing our
sincere regret that such a work, in view of
all its contents, was ever given to the world ;
and we are as little able to appreciate the
motive as we are to admire the taste which
prompted the editor to compile and publish
such a series : — A series of private papers
containing indeed many things extremely
interesting and valuable as political history,
but suggesting much that is painful in the
same connection, and subjecting his vener-
able relative to a criticism that might have
slumbered but for this unwary challenge.
We have long been of the opinion that sons
or immediate relatives of deceased statesmen,
whose lives have been commingled with the
fierce political storms of the republic, should
be the very last persons who undertake the
task of giving to the world, the life, char-
acter, and correspondence of their fathers.
It is, under any circumstances, and by
whomsoever it may be undertaken, a task
of great delicacy, requiring the clearest
faculties of discrimination, the nicest sense
of prudence, and the most guarded vigi-
lance. It is rare, that sons or relatives can
lay themselves under such restraint when
their subject is viewed only in the light
which affection dictates ; one to whose
faults filial tenderness and respect have
kindly blinded them, and whose virtues
shine to their vision with a lustre which the
golden eye of the world receives undazzled.
Deformities appear where least expected,
and are evolved from passages and scenes
which seemed to a partial judgment only

as so much that was bright and honorable ;
and while charity may lift its soft mantle
to shield the motive from harsh impeach-
ment, it cannot disarm criticism of its legi-
timate province, nor be suffered to detract
from the truth of history. When the angler
casts his hook into the stream it is not for
him to select what he brings up. He must be
content to abide the issue. And while we are
fully willing to allow to the poet or the
painter, all the indulgences which the
" Ars Poetica" claims for them on the score
of craft, we cannot consent to apply a like
rule to biographers and historians, nor even
to those who make their appearance before
the world under the less pretending, but
not less responsible character of editors of
private papers and correspondence. These
last may, indeed, be shielded from much
that the two first do not hope to escape,
but they are fairly and fully liable in the
way of taste, judgment, and that method
of argument which looks to attain by infer-
ences from ingenious collation and compila-
tion, the same end that might be less easily
accomplished by a different and more direct
course.

We shall not deviate from the immediate
objects of this review to find fault with our
editor's preface. It does not encroach on
modesty, and infringes naught of that pro-
priety which should govern the form of a
publication emanating from a source so in-
timately allied with its distinguished subject.
Indeed he could not have said less, or said
better, if he said anything at all ; and if
Mr. Randolph could have squared his se-
lection and compilation by as perfect a rule
of taste, our pen might never have been
employed in its present task.

The life, character, and public career of
Thomas Jefferson are identified with much

* Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the papers of Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson Randolph. Boston and New York. 1849.

VOL. VI. NO. I. NEW SERIES. 3

JEdited by Thomas

Thomas Jefferson.

July,

that is glorious and interesting in the early
history of these United States, and the
struggle for independence that resulted in
their severance from the parent country.
The first germs of that mighty intellect
which afterwards impressed itself on every
department of the government, and dijffused
its influences so widely through every class
of our people, were called into life in the
dawn of that troubled era. Its blossoms
expanded and opened with the progress of
the revolution, and ere yet the old Conti-
nental Congress met beneath the sycamores
of Independence Square, its fruits had ri-
pened in the fullest and most luxurious
maturity. The events amidst which he
had been forced into manhood were too
hurried and interesting, the opening scenes
of the drama too exciting and startling, and
their promise too enticing not to draw out
in full strength and majesty the richest
treasures of one of the master minds of the
period, and develope in the inception those
peculiar and vast powers which, but for their
occurrence, might have lurked under ground
for long years subsequently, and in all
probability, might never have reached the
same enviable climax. Nor did he enter
on the scene grudgingly, or by insensible
degrees. His heart was fired from the
beginning, and his first advance into the
very body of the melee. He staked all,
and became at once, and among the earli-
est, one of the responsible personages of the
struggle . The memoir or autobiography with
which the volumes before us open, affords
a very sufiicient clew to explain this preco-
cious ardor. When the great debate in
the Virginia House of Burgesses against the
Stamp Act took place, Jefferson, as he tells
us himself, was yet a student of law at
Williamsburgh. Among the members who
participated was Patrick Henry. His
genius had then just burst from obscurity,
and an eloquence scarcely akin to earth had
dazzled all Virginia — an eloquence which
lives, as it must ever live, in tradition
alone. The circumstances were most
thrilling — the occasion one of intense anxi-
ety. The annunciation of the Stamp Act
had thrown a feeling of despondency and
gloom over the entire republic. Hearts
which had never faltered, spirits which had
never quailed, minds which had never
shrunk before, seemed now on the point of
giving way. Even the presses, which

heretofore had sounded nothing short of
direct rebellion, were manifestly con-
founded, and their tone changed suddenly
from resistance to consolatory appeals and
submission. It was evident that the dreaded
crisis was at hand. " It was just at this
moment of despondency in some quarters,
of suspense in others, and surly and
reluctant submission wherever submission
appeared, that Patrick Henry stood forth
to rouse the drooping spirit of the people,
and to unite all hearts and hands in the
cause of his country," He projected and
moved the celebrated resolutions in opposi-
tion to the Stamp Act, and resolved to
support their adoption with the full and
concentrated force of that supreme oratory,
which swept, tempest-like, from one quar-
ter of the confederacy to the other, —
thrilling, trumpet-toned, and resistless —
and nerved even weakness to lift an oppos-
ing voice. Jefferson was a listener from
the lobby. His young and ardent mind
drank in eagerly the inspiring draughts, and
his bosom throbbed with emotions of un-
known, inexplicable ecstacy. The display,
so splendid, so unnaturally original, and
so overpowering in its effects and influences,
took his imagination captive, and enchain-
ed his senses with dream-like delight.
The elements of sympathy were too strong
to resist the effort, and his judgment fol-
lowed his imagination. "He appeared to
me, "says the memoir, " to speak as Homer
wrote.'''' This thought gave birth to the
after man. All the entrancing pictures,
and vivid scenes, and splendid imagery of
the Iliad were here brought, by a magic
stroke, into full embodiment and bewilder-
ing reality. America oppressed — struggling
— imploring — was a theme more alluring
than " the weightier matter of the law ;"
and fancy, returned from the flaming walls
and crimsoned rivers of Troy, found in the
sufferings of Boston the living semblance of
imagined woes, and fastened there with a
tenacity that soon enlisted the strongest
sympathies of his towering mind. The
impression thus made was never forgotten,
but strengthened with daily reflection ; and
we are at no loss to account for that rest-
less ardor and untiring energy which cha-
racterized Jefferson through every and all
phases of the great strife that followed.

Four years subsequent to this period
Jefferson bad become a member of the

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

General Assembly. The insulting and ar-
rogant address of the British Lords and
Commons on the proceedings in Massachu-
setts was the first matter which engaged
attention at the opening of the session.
Jefferson took a prominent and undisguised
part in getting up counter resolutions, and
an address to the King from the House of
Burgesses. A dissolution by the Governor
followed, but the patriots met by concert in
a hall of the Raleigh tavern, called the
Apollo, and there drew up articles of asso-
ciation against any further commercial in-
tercourse with Great Britain. Copies were
signed and distributed among the people,
and the people sanctioned the proceedings,
failing to re-elect those only who had given
reluctant assent to the course of the major-
ity. Lord Botecourt was excitable, a
thorough Briton in feeling and preposses-
sion, and, as might naturally have been
supposed, violently opposed to the preten-
sions of the American colonies. Angry
contests followed. In the interval he was
succeeded by Lord Dunmore. Dunmore,
already incensed, was still more impractica-
ble and unapproachable, and vastly more
obstinate and imperious than even Bote-
court. As it happened, an interregnum of
comparative quiet followed. The Gover-
nor, flippant and vain-glorious, grew inor-
dinately sanguine. But, in the mean-
while, a new storm was darkening the hor-
izon. In the spring of 1773 a grievance
of a character far more aggravating than
any which had yet been considered, became
a topic of discussion in the Assembly.
This was the institution by Great Britain
of a Court of Inquiry with power to trans-
fer to England persons committed for of-
fences in the American coloni3S. Oppo-
sition to this at once became universal and
alarming. It was even regarded with more
abhorrence than the stamp act or the duty
on tea. It caused the most conservative
and moderate to despair of reconciliation
with the mother country. Voices which
hitherto had been silent, now raised the
cry of resistance — resistance to the extrem-
ity. Fuel was added to the flame of rev-
olution. Rebellion seemed inevitable.
Men were convinced that it was the only
remedy. Then, for the first time, the
star of Independence, like the first light of
hope, appeared on the verge of the hori-
zon. Its genial ray, though ephemeral

and meteoric for the time, was welcomed
as the beacon of safety. Lukewarm mem-
bers of the Assembly, whose courage and
whose zeal diminished as difiiculties in-
creased, were promptly thrust aside, and
such spirits as Henry, the two Lees, Carr,
and Thomas Jefferson, were placed in the
van. The crisis was soon reached. It
was proposed and carried at a private
meeting in the Apollo, that committees of
correspondence and safety be established
between the colonies. The resolutions to
this effect were drawn up and prepared by
Jefferson. They were proposed, at his
suggestion, by Dabney Carr, his brother-
in-law. Of this committee, Peyton Ran-
dolph was appointed chairman. Measures
were forthwith taken to communicate their
action to the different colonies. Messen-
gers were despatched, and it is said that
those from Massachusetts and Virginia,
each bearing similar propositions and ti-
dings, crossed on the way. This presents
a fair question for historical research. We
shall pause long enough only to give one
or two facts, and our own inference from
those facts.

There cannot, we think, be any fair or
rational doubt as to the real source from
which such proposition originally emanated.
Universal suffrage will assign its proper
authorship to the distinguished subject of
the volumes now before us. But that a
plan similar to it in purpose, had been pre-
viously proposed by Samuel Adams in
Massachusetts is a settled fact. As we in-
cline to think, after a careful and minute
examination of the leading authorities, the
Virginia plan of committee correspondence
was intended to embrace all the colonies,
the Massachusetts plan only the cities and
towns of that particular province. A
strong proof of this is found in the simple
fact that no such plan as that suggested by
Jefferson was ever submitted to the Vir-
ginia Assembly as coming from Massachu-
setts. On the contrary such plan did
reach, and was laid before, the Legislature
of the latter colony as a suggestion from
the Virginia Assembly. The plan of in-
terior or local correspondence belongs to
Massachusetts. The plan of colonial in-
ter-communication originated in Virginia.
The first of these, we incline to think, was
the most prudent and practical method,
but the latter looked more to the grand

Thomas Jefferson.

July,

ulterior result, viz : united resistance to the
agscressions of Britain.

These proceedings happened early in the
spring of 1773. In the meanwhile, events
and their consequences were rapidly com-
bining to stir the waking spirit of rebel-
lion, and clearly foreshadowed the grand
issue. The interdict of Boston harbor, or
as it is commonly called, the Port Bill,
passed the British Parliament early in the
year succeeding. The news reached the
colonies in the spring, and thrilled with
electric violence from Cape Cod to the
Savannah. So far from increasing the
confusion and dismay which had followed
on the passage of the Stamp Act, or allay-
ing the patriotic tumult, this intelligence
served only to nerve the bolder spirits and
to re-assure the weak. It roused the peojjle
from their temporary lethargy, and incited
them to prepare for extreme measures.
The Virginia Assembly moved promptly
and unshrinkingly up to the mark, and
passed a resolution setting apart and recom-
mending the first day of June, on which
day the Port Bill was to be carried into
effect, for a day of fasting and prayer, im-
ploring Heaven to avert the horrors of ci-
vil war. The design was obvious, and the
language employed terribly significant.
The Governor promptly dissolved them ;
but the spirit which animated a majority of
those who had passed the resolution, was
not so to be subdued. Jefferson, althoudi
no orator and never essaying to speak, had
now become the master workman in that
distinguished assembly. The work of the
House was entrusted mainly to his discre-
tion and guidance, although the junior of
many whose names had already become
distinguished. But his whole heart and
mind, the entire energies of his own nature,
were given to the task he had undertaken.
Nothing was allowed to distract or seduce
him from the pursuit of the grand object
which possessed him. The attractions of
a polished society, the temptations of joy-
ous social intercourse, the allurements of a
home made cheerful and happy by a lovely
young wife, were all insufficient and pow-
erless to divert him for an instant. It is
hardly, then, to be wondered at that a man
thus sleeplessly and entirely absorbed by
the startling events now daily transpiring,
especially when we consider that, even at his
then early age, the evidences of that strong

6 I

and towering intellect, which afterwards
lifted its possessor to the side of the great-
est in the world, were already stamped on
many an enduring monument, should have
been entrusted with the work of a body
whose proceedings were giving tone to the
sentiments of the entire country.

On this occasion he was ready for the
emergency. The dissolution had scarcely
been announced, before measures were ta-
ken to hold a private meeting at the Apollo.
The members promptly assembled, and on
that night was projected and passed the
most important resolution ever adopted on
the American continent. It was the initi-
ative step of the revolution, the one from
which all that followed was traced, the be-
ginning which led to the glorious end. This
was the proposition to the various colonial
committees, that delegates should assemble
in a Congress.^ to be holden at such place
as might be agreed on, annually, and to
consider the measures proper to be adopt-
ed for the general interest ; declaring fur-
ther, that an attack on one colony should
be considered an attack on the whole. This
was in May. The proposition was acceded
to ; delegates were elected in the August
next ensuing, and on the 4th of September,
Philadelphia having been agreed on as the
place, the first Continental Congress as-
sembled in Independence Hall. Its impor-
tant and splendid proceedings are known to
every reader of American history. Jefferson
was not then a member; but in March of
1775 he was, by general consent^ added to
the delegation from Virginia. A second
career of action now opened before him.
He had passed through the first honorably
and successfully. Another was now to be
ventured, and an enlarged field of labor and
usefulness invited to the trial.

About this time the conciliatory proposi-
tions of old Lord North, commonly known
as the Olive branch, were submitted by
Gov. Dunmore to a special session of the
Virginia Assembly. It was found, on close
examination, to contain nothino; which en-
titled it to so honorable a designation ; —
artful, indefinite, ambiguous and full of
that ministerial trickery for which the old
Premier was so famous. Jefferson, at the
solicitation of many who dreaded its being
replied to from a less resolute source,
framed the answer of the delegates, and,
after some discussion and "a dash of cold

1850.

Thomas Jefferson,

water here and there," the Assembly de-
cided almost unanimously to reject the pro-
position. They were, of course, immedi-
ately dissolved, and Jefferson took his
departure for Philadelphia. He was in his
seat on the 21st of June. As an evidence
of the hio-h esteem in which his talents were
already held by the members of that august
and venerable Congress, he was appointed
two days afterward on one of the most im-
portant committees of the session, and,
indeed, of the whole revolution. This was
to prepare a declaration of the causes of
taking up arms in opposition to the exac-
tions of the British Parliament. It was a
task of the greatest delicacy, and, as the
premonitory step to an open and general
rebellion, loaded with many difficulties,
especially considering the complexion of a
portion of the Congress. There were,
even yet, many who clung to the hope of a
speedy and satisfactory adjustment. Jeffer-
son knew this well, and, being a new mem-
ber and comparatively a young one, he
proposed to Gov. Livingston to draw up
the paper, trusting alike to the influence
of his name and character, and to the ad-
mirable beauty and readiness of his pen.
Livingston haughtily and somewhat imper-
tinently refused, insinuating to Jefferson
that he was quite too familiar for "a new
acquaintance." The latter receded with
a complimentary apology, and on the as-
sembly of the committee, the duty devolved
on Jefferson himself. Not used to shrink
from responsibility, Jefferson at once con-
sented to undertake its preparation. Of
course it was similar in its tone to those
which had previously been prepared by his
pen in Virginia. Many objected, and Mr.
Dickinson balked outrio-ht. Dickinson was
among the most fervent of those who yet
hoped for a reconciliation with Great Bri-
tain, and in deference to the scruples of
one so eminently honest, the paper was
handed over to him to be put in such shape
as would more approximate his peculiar
views. He presented one entirely different,
and as a mark of personal favor and indul-
gence, it was accepted and passed by Con-
gress. Another paper from the same source
was also received and passed by Congress,
in the midst, however, of general dissatis-
faction and disgust. This was an address
to King George. Its humility was inex-
pressibly contemptible ; but the conscript

fathers of America were men of compromise
and moderation, — an example which might
be patterned with some profit by their de-
scendants and successors. But the author
was delighted with its passage, and " al-
though," says the Memoir, "out of order,
he could not refrain from rising and ex-
pressing his satisfaction, and concluded by
saying, ' There is but one word, Mr. Pre-
sident, in the paper which I disapprove,
and that is the word Congress -^"^ on which
Ben Harrison arose and said, ' There is but
one word in the paper, Mr. President,
which I approve of, and that is the word
Congress."^ "

On the seventh of June, 1776, the dele-
gates from Virginia, in accordance with
instructions, moved " that the Congress
should declare that these United Colonies
are, and of right ought to be, free and in-
dependent states, that they are absolved
from all allegiance to the British crov^^n,
and that all political connexion between
them and Great Britain, is, and ought to
be, totally dissolved ; and that measures
should be immediately taken for procuring
the assistance of foreign powers, and a con-
federation be formed to bind the colonies
more closely together." The reading of
such a resolution startled the whole House.
It was, in one sense, the utterance of down-
right treason. But there was no avoiding
the issue. The majority were resolved,
and the whole people called for action.
Nor did any body doubt for a moment the
source from which the resolution sprang.
All that was culpable and all that was mer-
itorious, its odium and its popularity alike
belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Its tone,
its wording, its emphasis and expression,
all bore the unmistakeable impress of his
mind. He watched its fate with intense
anxiety, and the moment of its reception
was to him a moment of relief and of self-
congratulation. He felt then as if the die
had been irretrievably cast, the Rubicon
passed ; that the day had at length arrived
" big with the fate of Cato and of Rome."
But it encountered powerful and serious
opposition, and from persons and quarters
where persevering opposition might have
defeated its passage. Livingston, Rut-
ledge, Dickinson, and some others, expres-
sed doubts as to its necessity. They argu-
ed that action then would be premature,
that the middle colonies were not ripe for

Thomas Jefferson.

July

revolt ; ttat unanimity was the first thing
to be desired ; that some delegates were
expressly forbidden to yield assent to any
such measure ; that France and Spain could
not yet be counted on ; that England might
find the means of satisfying both of these
powers ; and that, above all, there was pru-
dence in delay.

It thus became apparent that New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ma-
ryland, and South Carolina, " were not ma-
tured for falling from the parent stem."
The consideration of the resolution was,
therefore, wisely postponed until the first
of July. But a great point had, neverthe-
less, been gained. Congress agreed that a
committee should be raised for the purpose
of drawing up the form of a Declaration of
Independence. This committee consisted
of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger
Sherman, Livingston, and Jefferson. The
latter was again selected for the duty of
preparing the draught. We approach this
period of Mr. Jefferson's public career
with sincere and unalloyed pleasure. En-
vy does not interpose, malice itself has
invented naught to discourage that heart-
felt admiration which fills all America
when contemplating this grand achievement.
We feel the more gratification from the
fact that in the course of these pages,
we shall be compelled to ofier a contrast
between this and a subsequent period of
his public life, which may not be at all fa-
vorable to the latter.

On the first of July, the resolution of the
Virginia delegates was taken up and con-
sidered. After some discusssion it was
passed. The vote, however, was not unan-
imous. Pennsylvania and South Carolina
went against it directly. The New York
delegation stood off, approving the meas-
ure, but pleading the want of necessary in-
structions. Delaware was divided. When,
however, the committee rose and reported
to the House, Mr. Rutledge requested that
final action might be suspended until the
next day. The suggestion was caught at
eagerly, and the request granted. No door
was closed that might preclude unanimity.
Accordingly, when the ultimate question
came up, the delegates from that colony
gave an affirmative vote, though they dis-
approved of the terms of the resolution.
The timely arrival of a third member from
Delaware, also changed the vote of that

colony ; and, in the meantime, the Penn-
sylvania delegation mustering its entire
strength, cast her final vote in favor of the
resolution. Thus, out of thirteen colonies,
twelve gave their voices for Independence,
while New York had no authority to vote
at all. The result of this vote closed all
avenues to a reconciliation with the mother
country, and men's minds were, from that
auspicious day, turned wholly to contem-
plating the means and the method of vig-
orous resistance. But another, and the most
important, step remained yet to be taken.
That was to publish to the world the Dec-
laration of Independence. The vote on
the resolution had scarcely been announced,
before a report was called for from the
committee which had been previously
raised and charged with the execution of
that duty. The task of preparing the
draught every body knew had been assign-
ed to Jefierson, and all eyes were turned
instantly towards his seat. The members
sat in stern and silent expectation. The
galleries and lobby, the aisles and passages
of the Hall were filled to overflowing,
and trembled beneath the weight of anxious
and curious spectators. All who were
privileged, and many who were not, had
crowded within the bar, and occupied the
floor of the house. While this excitement
was at its height, Jefferson rose, holding in
his hand the consecrated scroll which spoke
the voice of freedom for a New World.
All was calmed and hushed in a moment.
We may easily imagine the varied feelings
of that august body, and of the immense
audience, as the clear, full-toned voice of
the young Virginian sent forth the melodi-
ous sentences and glowing diction of that
memorable body and revered document.
The annunciative tone of the first para-
graph, excited at once the most eager at-
tention. The declaration of rights follow-
ed, and the grave countenances of the del-
egates assumed an aspect of less severe
meditation, and opened with the inspira-
tion of kindling hope. The enumeration
of wrongs done, and of insults perpetrated,
falls in succinct cadences from the reader's
lips, and the effect is told on frowning
brows and crimsomed cheeks, and in eyes
flashing with aroused anger, and the throe
of bosoms burning with intense sympathy.
And when, at the close of this significant
and withering summary of wrongs and op-

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

pressions, tlie reader came to the eloquent
sentence, " A prince whose character is
thus marked by every act which may de-
fine a tyrant, is unfit to he the ruler of a
free people^''^ a picture presents itself to
the mind's vision filled with thousands of
glowing faces, marked with emotions of
heartfelt and ominous approval. The con-
clusion was anticipated. The inward pledge
of " life and fortune, and sacred honor,"
had been registered long ere it was reach-
ed in due course, and the form of subscrip-
tion gave only the outward sign of sanc-
tion. When JeiFerson sat down, he took
his seat crowned with a fame that will
perish only with the earth itself, and which
has linked his name forever with American
Independence. An ecstacy of patriotism
pervaded the entire audience. Statesmen
and warriors, divines and philosophers,
old and young, high and humble, were all
alike filled with sensations of delight, of
fervor, and of buoyant hope. Nor was night
suffered to put an end to the joyous mani-
festations. Th.Q people were aroused ; the
spirit of revolution had diffused its heat
among the masses of the city. Bonfires
were lighted in the principal streets, and
illuminated windows sent forththeir merry
light ; sparkling libations were quaffed,
and the " voluptuous swell" of music
mingled with the cry of " Freedom and
the American colonies !''

With all its faults, with all its suscepti-
bility to criticism, we have ever regarded
the Declaration of Independence as one of
the most remarkable and eloquent produc-
tions that ever came from a human pen. As-
sociation, doubtless, has contributed much
to induce this prepossession. It is right that
it should do so. It is interwoven with the
dearest recollections of every true Ameri-
can. It is whispered to him in the cra-
dle ; it is learned by heart in the nursery —
the boom of every cannon on the Fourth
of July, imprints it deeper in his memory —
it gathers accumulated force in his youth —
it is sacredly treasured in his old age —
and yet, candor and the facts of history com-
pel us to the belief, that all the glory of
its composition should not be associated
with the name of Jefferson alone, although
he himself has laid exclusive claim to its
authorship in the epitaph prescribed to be
engraven on his tombstone. Throwino- aside
tha alleged discoveries and researches of

Mr. Bancroft, we are willing to go to the
record as left by Jefferson himself, to sup-
port the assertion stated above. The ori-
ginal draught was, doubtless, prepared by
Jefferson, unassisted and without much
consultation. But the original was vastly
mutilated and cut down by the severer pens
of Adams and Franklin, and parts of para-
graphs supplied anew, particularly by the
latter. It was changed both as to phraseolo-
gy and sentiment, and materially improved
in point of taste. These facts will be ap-
parent to any who will examine closely the
fac simile of the original copy appended to
the memoir of the book now under review.
As it was first prepared, there was an un-
seasonable preponderance of the high
sounding Johnsonian verbosity without the
palliation of its elegance. It abounded
with repetition and unmeaning senten-
tiousness in some parts, while para-
graphs and sentences, were prolonged to
an extent which might have startled Lord
Bolingbroke himself, who, however, would
have missed the grace and polish of his own
didactic periods. In fact, the entire doc-
ument underwent a shearing process in the
revisory hands of the author's coadjutors,
and was reproduced in a shape that has left
it without a parallel of its kind in the his-
tory of any other nation. Some parts of it
were really objectionable, and would most
certainly have created bad blood both in
the North and in the South. We allude
to the lono" denunciation in the original
draught, of commerce in slaves, and charg-
ing that commerce as one of the grievances
on the part of the British Monarch. Two
of the Southern colonies, Georgia and
South Carolina, were clamorous for the
continuance of this traffic. Citizens of the
North were the carriers and merchantmen,
and it was, therefore, in both cases, a ques-
tion of dollars and cents. Where great
movements are contemplated, dependent on
unanimity for their success, it is hazardous
and impolitic to begin operations by a war
on sectional interests. Both Adams and
Franklin knew this, and, although they
must have agreed with Jefferson in the sen-
timent, they advised its total expunction.
A few years later, such a clause might have
met with the heartiest reception, and in
this day would have been sanctioned by
all Christendom. At that time it was an
evil too general to be rebuked in such

Thomas Jefferson.

July,

a document, written, as averred, mainly
with the view to " a decent respect for the
opinions of 772(27?Z.-m6?." In 1776 it would
have been a difficult matter, if history is to
be believed, to have laid a finger on any por-
tion of enlio-htened Christianized mankind
who were not equally obnoxious to the
charge of slave-stealing or slave-workmg
as his Britannic Majesty. We speak of
Governments or organized Societies, else
we would pause to make an exception here
in favor of the Quakers. This body of un-
pretending, consistent devotees, are the on-
ly portion of the Christian world, so far as
we can now call to mind, whose hands are
clear of this most abominable and nefari-
ous traffic.

That Jefferson was thoroughly anti-sla-
very in his notions, the whole of his politi-
cal history in connection with the subject
most conclusively establishes. He was so,
conscientiously and uncompromisingly. He
never degenerated into rabid or radical
abolitionism, but his moderation and toler-
ance evidently cost him many struggles.
He made known this opposition to slavery
on every proper occasion, and before every
legislative body of which he became a
member. We find him meeting it at every
assailable point, heartily endeavoring to
promote speedy emancipation, and to im-
pede its extension. In the first of these
objects he failed entirely. In the last, he
met with gratifying success, through means
of the celebrated Ordinance of 1787.
Among the latest records of his pen, after
he had lived nearly fourscore years, is the
emphatic prophecy, " that emancipation
must be adopted, or worse would follow.
That nothing was more certainly written in
the book oi fate, than that these people
(the negroes) were to be free.''"' The
manner of this expression is less that of a
philosopher than of an enthusiast. When-
ever he speaks of slavery at all, he speaks
of it in terms never less moderate than
those quoted ; and its opponents can fortify
themselves, as we think, with no more reli-
able authority than the name of him who
forms the subject of these volumes.

On the fifth of September following the
declaration of Independence, Jefferson
resio;ned his seat in the colonial Cono-ress,
and became once again a delegate to the
House of Burgesses of the Virginia Assem-
bly. He entered at once upon a difficult

line of duties. He introduced bills estab-
lishing Courts of Justice, to regulate
titles to property, to prohibit the further
importation of slaves within the colony, to
institute freedom of opinion in religion ;
and aided in reconstructing: the entire
Statutory Code of Virginia. Soon after,
he was made Governor. He then declined,
successively, three foreign appointments
from Congress. He served the Common-
wealth with distinguished ability during
the darkest period of the war, narrowly
escaping, several times, the dragoons of
Tarleton and Simcoe. In the spring of
1783 he was again appointed a delegate to
Congress, then in session at Annapolis.
He served about a year, when he was again
appointed to a foreign missiou, and this
time he accepted. On the sixth day of
July, 1784, he arrived at Paris, where he
was to act in concert with Dr. Franklin
and John Adams in neo-otiatino; and con-
eluding a general treaty of commerce with
foreio-n nations. We desio;n not to dwell
on this portion of his public services, as it
does not come properlj^ within the range of
the object we have in view. He remained
abroad until September of 1789. Return-
ing home, he was appointed during the
following winter to the new Department of
State, under the Presidency of George
Washington.

This ends the second and brightest, if not
the most important epoch of Jefferson's
public career. The fourth and last may,
indeed, have been philosophically and
tranquilly passed ; but the third, on which
we are now entering, is chequered alter-
nately with light and gloom ; with much
that is worthy of admiration, with more,
we fear, that is obnoxious to censure. We
proceed to the task of criticism under stern
convictions of duty, but not without reluct-
ance.

At this date of his political history,
Jefferson concludes his memoir. Hence-
forth we must look to the Correspondence,
and to what other authorities may be found
appropriate, to complete the object of our
inquiries.

Up to the year 1792, no distinct party
organization had existed. The adminis-
tration, fortified in the love and respect of
the entire people, went on swimmingly.
Washington himself could not be assailed.
The other members of government were

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

sheltered by tlie protecting Mg\s of his
popularity. But the gigantic iSnancial
policy of Alexander Hamilton began now
to beget serious uneasiness in the minds of
all who dreaded the centralization of power
in the hands of the general government,
and the consequent depreciation of the
State sovereignties. The State debts had
been assumed, and a large and powerful
body of creditors turned their attention to
the TJnion^ and not to the separate inde-
pendencies. Duties were laid on imported
goods, and the merchant transacted his
business under the authority and patronage
of the United States. The Bank, which
now formed the great connecting link of
commerce between the States, was of fede-
ral origin. The manufacturer looked to
the Union for the protection he needed ;
and the ship-owners and seamen looked
also to the same quarter for the same favor.
A fierce opposition sprang up. It found
an adroit and a willino- leader in Thomas
Jefi"erson. He felt his way cautiously,
secretly, and by slow degrees. But there
was one material obstruction in the way of
an active and effective opposition. All the
respectable presses in the country were
strongly federal ; stout advocates of Wash-
ington's administration. Nothing could be
done, so long as this impediment remained
in the way. Jefferson soon fell upon a
plan to surmount it. His residence in
France during the revolution, and his inti-
mate acquaintance with the revolutionary
chiefs, had schooled him in those arts
and intrigues which ripen party schemes.
He had his eye now upon a man, the
only man perhaps in all America admirably
adapted to the purposes of the opposition.
A restless, narrow-minded, distempered
little Frenchman, named Philip Freneau,
was then conducting a low and scurrilous
print in the city of New York. His bold-
ness and carelessness of character, together
with some fluency in the language of the
fish-market, attracted the attention of those
who were beginning to form a plan of op-
position to Washington's administration.
Jefferson, now Secretary of State, tempted
him, by the offer of a clerkship in his own
Department, to remove to Philadelphia.
I| The starving Frenchman, whose most
r sumptuous diet had been only stale crack-
ers and cheese, of course jumped at the
offer, and pledged himself to pursue with

indiscriminate rancor, the wisest as well as
the worst of Washington's measures. The
National Gazette was established, and a
repository of more than Augean unclean-
ness became the head quarters of those
who had raised their parricidal hands
against the Father of his Country. " Dur-
ing its short-lived existence," says a modern
author, '' it was notorious for its scanda-
lous falsehood and misrepresentations, its
fulsome adoration of Mr. Jefferson, and its
gross abuse of leading federal men.'- The
example thus conspicuously set, has been
ever since assiduously followed by the
party which dates its origin at this period,
and which claims the powerful paternity of
Jefferson's name and principles. We shall
not contravene this claim, nor question
the authenticity of such origin. We be-
lieve that the claim is well founded, and
the origin fairly attested. But their efforts
against Washington and his administration
signally and ingloriously failed. They did
not venture even to name the real object
of assault. The demonstration was made
against Adams, the Vice-President, and
Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the
Treasury. Against the administration of
the first they subsequently succeeded ;
while, in connection with the latter, they
carried their design of opposition by
coupling his name with an undue bias in
favor of England ; thus making use of the
ferocious prejudice which still existed
against that country. Even so late as
1848, a distinguished statesman and Pre-
sidential nominee of this same radical
party, has condescended to avail himself
of this odium, supposed to be attached to
Hamilton's name, and, in the same letter,
(unwittingly, but, doubtless) tacitly admits
his lineal party descent from the Jacobin-
ical faction of 1 793, by claiming this period
as " the starting point of difference" be-
twixt the two great " parties" of the pre-
sent day.

In the summer of 1794 occurred the
famous, or rather infamous, Whiskey
Rebellion in the State of Pennsylvania.
The law of '91 had imposed a duty on
spirits distilled within the United States.
It was violently menaced and resisted by
the parties interested. Inspectors were
insulted, officers of the Excise tarred and
feathered, marshals attacked and fired
upon. At length the patience of the

Thomas Jefferson,

July,

President was exhausted ; lie marched an
army into the disaffected country, and the
insurrection was speedily quelled. The
opposition had not discountenanced the
course or the cause of the rioters. Some
of their presses had openly fomented and
excited the revolt. " It was shrewdly
suspected," says the same author before
quoted, " that Jefferson did not look with
very great reprobation on the Pennsyl-
vania insurrection." This suspicion has
not been controverted, but rather confirm-
ed, by the tenor of his published corres-
pondence, and opens a dark and unpleasing
chapter of his public history. Just previ-
ously to this nefarious outbreak, he had
given utterance to opinions in this connex-
ion which would have disgraced Fouche or
Robespierre, and which cannot now be
characterized by a less mild term than
atrocious. Speaking of Shay's rebellion
in Massachusetts, he had said, " God for-
bid we should even he twenty years with-
out such a rebellion. What country can
preserve its liberties if its rulers are not
warned from time to time that the people
preserve the spirit of resistance ? Let
them take arms. The remedy is, to set
them right as to facts, pardon and pacify
them. The tree of liberty must he refresh-
ed from time to time with the hlood of
patriots and of tyrants. "^"^ We venture the
assertion that no sentiments more anarchi-
cal and dangerous can be found in any
document of history from the period of
Machiavelli's " Prince" to Dorr's Mani-
festo. They are precisely the sentiments
which animated such men as Jack Cade
and Watt Tyler, and Philip Freneau, and
Callender, and Citizen Genet. The Rus-
sian Strelitzes or the Turkish Janizaries
cannot be charged with motives more cri-
minal, or with deeds more abhorrent than
such sentiments would have brought about.
The only palliation for their utterance is
to be found in that charity which covers
the zeal of a sincere though misguided
opposition. The French associations and
prejudices of Jefferson had seduced him
into a lamentable departure from the safe,
moderate and consistent revolutionary
principles which marked the period of 1 776.
He had heard the fierce debates of the
Jacobin Clubs, and thrilled under the reek-
ing eloquence of Danton and his tiger-
tempered colleague. All the murders

committed by the Revolutionary Tribunal
— all the blood which flowed from the
scaffold of the death-dealing guillotine —
the horrors of the Reign of Terror — the
sighs and tears which had made Paris the
terrestrial counterpart of a hell, were
insufficient to disgust the author of the
Declaration of American Independence.
His philosophic eye beheld, tearless, the
walking images of broken hearts and crush-
ed affections which crossed his daily path,
and surveyed, unmoved, the mournful em-
blems which shrouded an entire city with
funeral drapery. Nor do we assume any
too much in saying this. The memoir be-
fore us contains nothing which can rescue
its distinguished author from the severity
of the inference. We find nothing in the
Correspondence to explain the omission.
It may, therefore, be fairly supposed, that
Jefferson was not so greatly horrified at
these manifold and ceaseless atrocities as
ever to think that the cause of Liberty,
thus conducted, was the cause of anarchy
and of murder. We might extend these
inferences further. During the reign of
the bloody Triumvirate, private conversa-
tions and careless expressions, uttered even
in the recesses of the family circle, were
made the plea for butchering the speakers
on the following day. It is not unlikely to
suppose that Jefferson here learned his art
of noting down what occurred at dining ta-
bles, and private parties, and social gather-
ings, that the compiler of the volumes be-
fore us might afterwards give to the world,
in the shape of the " Ana," a method of
espionage which would have shamed even
Lavellette or Savary, and challenged atten-
tion from Bourienne himself. We would
willingly have drawn a veil over this por-
tion of the published political works of
Thomas Jefferson. But we consider that
the worst was done when the editor of these
volumes passed the " Ana" into the hands
of the printer. It is not for us to find fault
with the taste which prompted the publica-
tion of a private journal. Our duty and
intention are, as the undisputed right of a
reviewer, to express our opinions of the
production. But we must not digress fur-
ther.

Thus imbued with the effects, if not with
the spirit, of Jacobinism, Jefferson had re-
turned to America ; and we may thus ac-
count for his opinions on Shay's Rebellion,

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

his supposed sympathy with the Whiskey
insurrectionists, his intimacy with such men
as Callender, and Freneau, and Tom
Paine, and his early and insidious opposi-
tion to the administration of George Wash-
ington. The first object of attack had been
the financial policy of Hamilton, and thus
far we sanction, in part at least, this course
of policy. The views and the aims of that
eminent minister have never had entirely
our political sympathies. There was, in all
his measures, a too consolidating tendency,
which might have resulted alarmingly in
after days. But the thunders of the oppo-
sition were soon turned more directly against
Washington himself by a merciless assault
on the treaty of John Jay, which, it was
known, had received the President's cordial
approval. It was fought in every way
known to Parliamentary warfare, and Wash-
ington was goaded by every means to which
an adroit and inventive opposition could re-
sort. It was wranglingly and factiously
debated in the Senate, and it was threaten-
ed with the vengeance of the House. To
crown all, a resolution was brought forward
by Livingston, requesting the President
'' to lay before the House a copy of the in-
structions to the Minister of the United
States, who negotiated a treaty with the
King of Great Britain, communicated by
his message, together with the correspond-
ence and other documents relative to the
said treaty." This was subsequently qual-
ified by a clause to the effect, ^' excepting
such papers as any existing negotiation may
render improper to be disclosed." To this
resolution the President first responded,
*' that he would take the subject into con-
sideration." He finally refused to lay any
such papers before the House. This refusal
stimulated the opposition to increased bit-
terness, and "appeared," in the language
of Marshall, " to break the last chord of
that attachment which had heretofore bound
some of the active leaders of the opposition
to the person of the President." Long an-
terior to this, however, Jefferson, although
still recognized as the head of the opposi-
tion, had resigned his post of State Secre-
tary, and from his retirement at Monticello
fulminated the signs, tokens, and passwords
of determined and ceaseless hostility to the
policy of the administration. He had openly
ridiculed the course of Washington in the
Whiskey Rebellion, and had encouraged,

while engaged in combatting, the preten-
sions of citizen Genet. He now resorted
to the more candid warfare of denunciation,
and directed the whole influence of his name
and the whole power of his pen against the
Jay treaty. But all would not do. The
magic of Washington's popularity continued
to prevail, and it became evident that the
nation favored the prompt ratification of the
treaty. It was ratified, and the hopes of
Jefferson and his now numerous friends had
to be postponed for a season.

On the 4th of March, 1797, John Adams
was inaugurated President of the United
States, and, at the same time, Thomas Jef-
ferson was sworn in as Vice President.
The character of Adams, according to the
testimony of his best friends and warmest
admirers, was an anomaly. " Of a restless
and irritable temperament," says a strong
federal biographer; "jealous of other's
praise, and suspicious of their influence;
obstinate and yet fickle ; actuated by an
ambition which could bear neither opposi-
tion nor lukewarmness, and vain to a de-
gree approaching insanity, he was himself
incapable alike of conceiving or of acting
upon a settled system of policy, and was to
others as easy a subject for indirect man-
agement, as he was impracticable to more
legitimate approach. With the noblest im-
pulses and the meanest passions, he presents
a portrait which, in its contradictory fea-
tures, resembles more the shifting image of
a dream than the countenance of an actual
being."

It does not come within the design of
this article either to endorse or to combat
this opinion. We will barely add what the
writer might properly have added, that the
patriotism and native honesty of John Ad-
ams were sadly blurred by a bad temper
and an excitable vindictiveness. "As was
his character, so proved the administration
of such a man ; flickering, unstable, with-
out fixed rule or definite object." The
hitherto obstructed road of the opposition
was now fairly cleared. The awe of Wash-
ington's great name stood no longer in their
way. The far reaching sagacity of Jeffer-
son was at work, and his policy and plan of
operations were soon developed. During
the stormy period of the Revolution he and
Adams had been attached and intimate
friends. Their associations had been of a
character more than usually cordial and

Tliomas Jefferson.

July

confidantial. Soon after Jefferson ''s return
from France they fell out, and became par-
tially estrang?d. But tha difference did
not quite amount to a personal quarrel, and
thev still remained on civil terms of inter-
course. No one knew better than Jefferson
the weak points in the character and con-
stitution of John Adams. He believed
firmly in the honesty of his heart, but he
was well acquainted with the instability of
his political opinions ; with his leaning,
one day, to rank federalism, and the next,
to downright radicalism. " He (Adams)
by turns defended the mob, and advocated
hereditary power. " This was an open prey
to an ingenious and a watchful opposition,
and Jefferson did not scruple to turn his
private knowledge and past associations to
legitimate political account. We do not
mean to sav that he ever betraved confi-
dence. Jefferson had both too much cau-
tion and too much pride of character to act
dishonorably. It may be explained easily
on the score of ambition and selfishness,
neither of which can be denied to him in
their fullest latitude. But the object was
now to estrange Adams from the party
which had elected him, by this move, to
weaken the federalists, to destroy the influ-
ence of Hamilton, and clear the wav for
the accession of Jefferson and the Demo-
crats. The accomplishment of such a plan
required the most consummate address.
It was not hard to perceive that such requi-
sition was more than fulfilled in the person
of the acknowledged leader of the opposi-
tion. Jefferson was just the man to play
the game which was now in hand. His
affectation was in being plain, and his
plainness of appearance and intercourse,
did amount almost to unvarnished dema-
goguism. He desired to be known in
America by the same popular cognomen by
which William Pitt had been long haile'd
and worshipped in England, that of the
" Great Commoner." Pitt, however, not
only was ambitious to lead, but to he tlwugJit
to lead. Jefferson, on the contrary, was
neither bold enough nor haughty enough to
court the latter distkietion. He desired to
lead, but to make others believe that he
was led. This, however, was the choice
rather of policy than of timidity. He may
have lacked candor — he may have been
time-serving, accommodating, and subser-
vient— ^but he was not deficient in courage.

; We are told, indeed, that he had acquired,

I about this time, a less enviable surname
than the one which distinguished Pitt. He
was called " The Trimmer." But all this,
as Terry CRourke would say, was " a part
of his system." He was engaged in run-
ning a mine which, when completed, was
to demolish the federal party, and he did
not pause in his work or stop to defend
himself from mere personal attacks. He,
therefore, set assiduously about renewing
his former intimacy with Adams. It was
very well known that a portion of the Fed-
eralists, with Alexander Hamilton at their
head, had manoeuvred to place Mr. Pinck-
ney ahead of ^Ir. Adams on the party
ticket ; and, if possible, to give the Presi-
dency to the former. Adams's hot temper
rose to the boiling point when this was
made known to him, and he set the brand
of his never-ending hatred on the brow of
Hamilton. To foment this difference be-
came the chief end of the opposition. Ad-
ams was adroitly cajoled, while Hamilton
was still more virulently assailed. Jefferson
addressed to him the most seductive and
weaningr letters, and wrote flatterinoflv about
him to others. Prominent ultra -democrats,
his former personal friends, crowded his re-
ception rooms, and baited him with a thou-
sand tempting morsels, all artfully directed
against the known vulnerable points of his
character. The vain old man proved an
easy victim, and fell unwarily into the
snare. He met cordially the advances of
Jefferson, took Gerry, one of the most deter-
mined democrats, into the closest confidence,
and, in a tempest of exacerbation and rage,
drove many of the warmest federalists from
his councils and his presence. This was
precisely what had been played for by the
opposition. Their point was gained, the
fatal breach irrevocably effected. In the
meanwhile the difiSculties with France as-

' sumed an alarming aspect. The conduct

1 of the Directory had become intolerable.
They had first insulted the American En-

i voy, and then driven him from the French
territories. A special session of Congress

' was called by the President. The Fed-
eralists had a clear majority in both Houses,

' and the speech breathed war and vengeance
against France, and breathed them most
justly. The opposition then showed the
di'ift of their policy. Denunciations the

. most ireful and menacing were hurled

1S50.

Thomas Jefferson.

ag.ainst the recommendations of the Exe-
cutive, and against a war with republican
France. The President was roused to des-
peration by these sudden and withering
assaults, and followed up his recommenda-
tions with all the influence of his name
and his office. Measures were taken to
prepare for hostilities; Washington was
drawn from his coveted retirement to be
invested once more with the chief general-
ship of his country's armies, and the spirit
of the nation seemed to favor the course of
the government. The result might have
been auspicious for the administration, if
matters had been suifered to remain in this
situation. But the temper of the President
was despotic, and the least draught of pop-
ular favor intoxicated him with vanity.
At the next session of Congress, at the
especial instance of the Executive, were
passed the celebrated Alien and Sedition
Laws, and from that day the administra-
tion and political prospects of John Adams
were doomed. They were the worst laws
that ever emanated from American legisla-
tors, and their passage was a death blow to
the federal party. The opposition charged
upon them with concentrated, irresistible
force, and the thunders of the press were
turned to the work of their demolition.
The legislatures of the different States en-
tered energetically into the strife. The
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of '98
followed, destined to a notoriety co-exist-
ent with the most treasured archives of the
republic. The first were prepared by James
Madison, and the last by Thomas Jeffer-
son. It is foreign to the purposes we have
in view to discuss elaborately the merits of
these well-known documents. We shall
content ourselves with a single remark.
They contain, in our humble judgment,
much that is conservative and worthy of
remembrance ; but they also contain much
more that we deem dangerous, Jacobinical,
and wildly revolutionary in tendency.
The remedies they inculcate for consti-
tutional infractions are extreme, repugnant
to genuine patriotism, and wholly unnec-
essary in a government where the people
hold the power of the ballot box. This
view gathers additional weight when it is
considered that an intermediate umpirage
exists in the Supreme Court. In fact, the
American Constitution neither countenan-
ces nor warrants extreme measures in any

case. If we correctly understand its lan-
guage and spirit, we should say that all
chances of aggression, from any quarter,
are amply provided for and guai-ded against.
Balances and checks, and legitimate reme-
dial processes pervade its every feature.
We regard it as the mere silly cant of sus-
picious, overzealous enthusiasts and desio-n-
ing demagogues, to advocate nullification,
revolution, or dissolution as ulterior or un-
avoidable remedies in cases of en'^roach-
ment. The ship may spring a leak, but
the mariner does not desert and take to the
open and unfriendly seas until the pumps
have been thoroughly tried and exhausted.
It will then be soon enough to take refuo-e
m extreme measures, when the safeguards
of the constitution are found unavailino;.

But the Virginia and Kentucky resolu-
tions answered and fully attained the ob-
jects for which they w^ere designed. They
served to beat down the Alien and Sedition
laws, and formed the enterino: wedo;e to the
subversion and eradication of the old fed-
eral party. So far it was good. Happy
would it have been for the country, if this
good could have been effected without the
entailment of an evil scarcely less deplora-
ble than that which had been crushed !
But from that day to this, the objectiona-
ble doctrines taught in these papers (espe-
cially those of Jefferson) have been made
the theme and the authority of coagitators, of
asphants, offactionists, and of demagogues.
They have been leaned upon for apology,
and for shelter from obloquy and odium.
The tendency of their principles reaches
and covers anarchy itself, and justifies the
overthrow of established governments, as
a primary, extra-constitutional remedy
against supposed infractions. Their ab-
stractions and, indeed, their proposed rem-
edies, would have applied to the old colonial
government under Great Britain. But the
mischief was complete, when they were offer-
ed as suggesting a method of resistance to the
authority and laws of the government of the
United States, Their teachings were hail-
ed by all the discontented and revolution-
ary classes of that day. The Shay rebel-
lionists, the Whiskey insurrectionists, the
Jacobin clubs of Philadelphia and other
cities, the followers of the Genet faction,
and the satellites of Freneau and Callen-
der, received them as text books, and be-
1 came associated in one solid Democratic

To a Bust of Homer.

July,

phalanx. The federalists shrank into dis-
repute, and gradually dwindled until they
were extinguished by the proceedings of the
Hartford Convention. Until then, or at
least, up to 1807, the radical Democratic
party, founded and fostered by Jefferson,
held undivided, undisputed sway. But at
the latter period a new party emerged from
the political chaos. It was composed of the
moderate democrats and the more liberal
portion of the defeated federalists. It
numbered in its ranks such men as Mon-
roe, and Crawford, and Gerry, the younger
Adams, and Henry Clay — the dawn of
•whose genius was just then irradiating the
horizon. It was the Conservative party of
the Country — the medium spot of patriot-

ism, beat upon alike by rank federal-
ism and impracticable democracy. It gath-
ered strength with years, and soon num-
bered among its converts James Madison,
who, however, had favored it from the
first.

We must here pause for the present.
In some future number, the grounds here
assumed will be further elucidated. We
have now brought Jefferson to the end of
the third era of his political life, and leave
him on the eve of success and of elevation
to the highest and proudest honors of his
country. We shall soon resume the nar-
rative, if permitted by health and life.

J. B. C.

LoNGWOOD, Miss., April, 1850.

TO A BUST OF HOMEE,

{Standing on my Desk.)

BY E. ANNA LEWIS.

Homer, thou art not dead ! — Thou can'st not die
While beats one heart on this terrestrial sphere
That ever felt the spell of Poesy,
Or Fancy's smile illume its chambers drear.
Three thousand years have watched thy steady light
Guiding the minstrel Band to Fame's high goal ,
As Cynosura through the treacherous night,
Directs the Mariner o'er the dangerous shoal.
Those filmy orbs emmove with Genius' fire.
Those pale lips speak from out the mighty past
Of Helea's beauty, and Achilles' Ire ;
And Ilium's tears, and sighs, and struggles vast.
Until I hear the Grecian shouts resound,
And Troy's proud walls come tumbling to the ground.

1850.

Everstone.

EVERSTONE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF " ANDERPORT RECORDS."

(Continued from page 621.^

CHAPTER XIV.

The term of forbearance set by Ripley
Dair had elapsed. Nothing of moment
occurred on the Sabbath ; Monday opened
with as bright a dawn as a June sun ever
gave, and all seemed quiet that morning be-
tween the forks of the Hardwater. Ralph
Dubosk looking out upon his field of rye
where the long, heavy heads, dripping with
dew, hung glistening white, took up his cra-
dle, and thought to cut the first sworth in
that harvest which Dair had sworn should
never be reaped. A more minute inspection,
however, convinced the farmer that the
grain would sufi*er no injury from a day or
two's delay. He then turned himself to
some other employment, but not heartily.
Though his sturdy spirit was unwilling to
confess it, a vague presentiment weighed
down his arms and deprived his step of its
elasticity.

Caleb Schowder, the same forenoon, was
seated on the deck of a steamboat, gazing
at the receding shore of the land which he
now left with full as much alacrity as he
had entered it fifteen months previous. He
had around him his wife and children, and
carried in his pocket-book the fragile equi-
valents into which his household stuff, his
cows, his horses, and the rest of the mova-
ble apparatus of the farming estabhshment
had been converted. He went away safe
in person and in property. His late dwell-
ing, now tenantless, had to welcome, mean-
while, quite a numerous throng of visitors.
Though the door was locked and the key in

the possession of Mr. Newlove, they found
little dijQBculty in effecting an entrance.
Riotous guests, too, they must have been,
for, when they withdrew, the dwelling was
a ruin, the stable had lost its roof, the barn
was no longer in a condition to give pro-
tection to grain, and, every surrounding
fence being levelled with the earth, the
whole premises, dilapidated and cheerless,
stood in the midst of a common.

" Not very thorough this work of ours,"
observed one of the party, looking back up-
on the scene, "but we'll go through the
next job better !"

Monday evening, Alonzo Safety coming
in to supper a little later than usual, was
greeted by his wife in a way which signi-
fied that she had something important and
novel to communicate.

" Have you heard it, Alonzo .?" she said
eagerly; " the people have been tearing
down Schowder's house, now he's quit it."

The husband's mood was different from
common.

''Certainly, I know it," he answered;
" who in the county doesn't know it } —
Wasn't it all over full ten hours ao;o .?"

He flung down his hat upon the table,
and seated himself with a quick and wor-
ried manner, in the darkest corner of the
apartment; but a corner selected not perhaps
on account of its gloom, but because it con-
tained a high-backed, easy chair, which,
with its plump cushions, offered a grateful
receptacle for his small and shriveled frame.

Everstone,

July,

" I suppose the people will hardly be
contented to stop with what they've done !"
suggested the lady.
Alonzo made no reply.
" The Newloves had better have gone
out peaceably : well, I must say if no lives
are lost, I shall not be sorry for them. —
Thev've brouo-ht their fate on themselves."
"Confound you, woman — howyou talk!"
" Sir ! Mr. Safety ! what on earth's got
into you .^"

" It provokes me, Betsey, to hear you
chatter so unconcernedly in a time like this
Is it nothing to see houses torn down over
people's heads t to behold robbery going
on before one's eyes, and to have reason to
expect that arson and murder may follow .-*"
" La me ! Alonzo, pity's wasted on a de-
graded young woman like Miss Newlove.
It's right enough sin should suflfer."
" What sin are you talking about.?"
"That forgery, of course."
" And how came you so wise as to be
certain she has committed any forgery?"

" You have a very strange way of speak-
ing this evening, Mr. Safety. But wheth-
er innocent or guilty, what's it to us } We
read accounts in the newspapers of a hun-
dred such doings as tearing down houses,
and so forth, and never think of crying
over them."

^* We Jiave^ though, something more than
common to do with this business. Have
you forgot how you've been plaguing me to
let you know what conversation I had with
old Astiville.?"

Mrs. Safety was now all quietness and
attention.

" You have heard, too, that Emma New-
love has said, all along, that the paper was
not written by her, but was brought by
somebody whose name she had promised not
to make known.''

"And has she told who it was .?" in-
quired Mrs. Safety, with animated curi-
osity.

"No ! Do you think she's one to break
her word ? But who do you suppose that
man was } Why, no other person than your
husband. Astiville gave me the paper and
told me what to do with it : who wrote it,
whether himself or somebody else, I don't
know. Betsey, what is now your opin-
ion.?"

Mrs. Safety mused, and then answered:
" I can't say you did exactly right. Yet,

after all, the Astivilles oughtn't to be out-
done by these mushroom people. Persons
like us, who belong to the old families,
should take the part of the old families. —
But for heaven's sake don't tell anybody
about this, Alonzo ; it would be a dreadful
thing to have it known that the Astivilles
had stooped to a trick of this kind !"

" So you don't spend a thought upon my
disgrace in becoming their tool !"

" Oh certainly — certainly ! I think of
that, too ; but you know, Alonzo, the As-
tivilles "

" Hang the Astivilles ! But for your head
being filled with these notions, I should
never have been led to do what I have
done."

" Well, it cannot be helped now," re-
turned the wife, in a semi- soothing, semi-
matter-of-fact tone ; "on all accounts there
is nothing to be done but to keep silence.
Don't whisper it to a single soul ; but
there's Arabella coming in now. Go, my
dear (addressing the daughter), and weigh
out the flour and sugar for Bridget to make
that cake. Here's the pantry key."

" No ! let the girl come in. It is no use
to be wincing matters now. Richard So-
mers has been to see me."

" You haven't told him, surely .?"

" But 1 have / It seems he had suspect-
ed it already : at any rate, he put me the
sudden, down-right question, and 1 an-
swered it. I don't know now whether to be
glad or sorry that I did so. I should have
felt rascally mean all my life to think that
I had wrought trouble and ruin on a high-
minded, innocent woman. As it is, I feel
mean enough. However, I told Dick So-
mers the truth, and not only that, but made
affidavit to it before a magistrate."
V. Mrs. Safety had, by this time, regained
her mental supremacy, and there burst
upon the head of her wretched husband a
pitiless storm of reproaches. Vainly did
he wince and writhe beneath the chastise-
ment. Her wrath at his treason to the Old
Blood left no room in Mrs. Safetp's ample
bosom for compassion. The poor man's
unresisting silence was, perhaps, the best
defence he could have offered. The flood,
unopposed, finally spent itself — even Mrs.
Safety could not scold forever. She had
been standing in the middle of the floor, so
that her imposing form and mighty sweep
of gesture should have their full effect.

1850.

JEverstone.

Now slie sat down, panting and wiping off
tlie perspiration that oozed from her brow.

The interval of quiet, necessary for
physical refreshment, enabled her to lay in
a new stock of objurgation.

'' But do you imagine, Mr. Safety, peo-
ple are going to believe this story of yours ?
John Astiville will say it is slanderous and
false, and whose word will have most
weight, his or yours } Besides, how are
you going to do about the money you owe
him } I reckon he'll be apt to call for
payment pretty soon ! "

" As to this, Betsey, Miss Newlove will
give me support. I doubt a little whether
she is not as well off for money as stingy
old Jack himself."

" Consider a little, then, and see how
that will help you. Everybody will say
you've been bought by the Yankees. That
Newlove girl who is so rich, will be sup-
posed to have motive enough to spend half
her fortune, if need be, in procuring wit-
nesses to swear her clear of forgery. The
Yankees are hated bitterly enough, but
what will be thought of the Southerner
who has deserted to their side } You may
well be uneasy about pulling down houses !
I wonder if this house wont come next in
turn } Your tale will be of little service
to the Newloves — indeed it is more likely to
injure them by exciting greater exaspera-
tion— while it will involve us in their ruin.
A pretty piece of work you have made,
Mr. Safety ; and it all comes from keeping
secrets from me."

" I thought you were in favor of these
Northern settlers, Betsey. I am sure you
encouraged Handsucker's visits."

" That's another most unfortunate busi-
ness," retorted Mrs. Safety. The man 's
suddenly stopped coming, and I am sure
he has taken offence at something you have
said to him. Why can't you have some
little discretion } You must meddle, med-
dle, meddle — with everything ! "

''J disposed to meddle \ " murmured the
husband.

She did not hear the remark, or disdain-
ed to regard the insinuation it conveyed.
" Yes — ruin stares at us from all sides. I
hoped that a remedy had been provided in
a good match for Arabella — but even that
stay is broken. You have disgraced your-
self, you have attempted to bring dishonor
upon the Astivilles, you have become a

VOL. VI. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

renegade, and you have driven away the
only person who had at once the disposition
and the ability to save us ! Whilst you
have broken with the Southerners, you
have not made favor with the Northerners.
Both parties are >sure to despise and hate
the deserter."
Alonzo retired to bed completely miserable.

A large concourse of men was assembled
at an early hour Tuesday morning, a few
hundred yards from the house of Sylvester
Newlove. There was an appearance among
them of hesitancy, if not indecision. That
the pause was the consequence of no abate-
ment of angry feeling, was plain from the
frown that lowered on every countenance.
Nor yet was this momentary calm symp-
tomatic of that faltering of purpose which
fortunately so often intervenes to disarm a
mob at the instant when every external
check is powerless. These men were only
deliberating where they should first lay
their hands. The fact of Alonzo Safety's
affidavit, and the purport of the narrative
contained in it, had become generally
known, and the news as it spread had ex-
cited incredulity and intense scorn. Every
one pronounced it a new device of the
Yankees to prop their previous villany.
And the Southerners, in the midst of their
rage, laughed among themselves at the
thought of an attempt to impose upon them
with such an improbable, barefaced false-
hood. The question now mooted in that
parliament of fierce spirits was, which
should be first punished, the master or the
perjured tool ; the artful Northerner or
the needy Southern traitor, who had let out
his tongue and his conscience to hire.

The mass appeared to incline towards the
claim of Safety to be earliest dealt with ;
but the voice of Ripley Dan- decided the
matter : —

" The dried-up old knave," he said,
'' deserves a reward, and we must give it
to him ; but he is not of such consequence
that he ought to be allowed to interrupt our
first purpose. After we've struck a good
hearty blow at the Northerners, they'll not
have an opportunity, I reckon, to procure
many other hirelings in Redland. So, if
this one for a little while escapes his bless-
ing, the example is not likely to do much
harm, — ^oys — leVs to work ! "

To work they went, and hastily. Leav-
4

Everstone.

July,

ins: the dwellins-lioiise, like a citadel,
for the last assault, they commenced with
the outworks. Fences were levelled, and
the rails piled up for burning ; the wheat-
field, which occasioned poor Sylvester so
much solicitude the previous autumn, was
thi'own open to the depredations of a score
of swine.

" Turn in the coics^ too ! " shouted a
man; "it will make small odds whether
the wheat hurts them, or they hurt the
wheat."

But the cattle refused, however tempted,
to remain in the vicinity of operations so
noisy and tumultuous, scampered from the
field with uplifted tails and tossing horns.

" They are orderly critters, aint they.'"
observed a fellow in tattered raiment, grin-
ning upon his nearest neighbor. " They
are not up to the fun — but the hogs go it
— there's no scare in them."

While the crowd were thus busily em-
ployed, there was a single individual who
took no active part with them, clad in a
coat of grey home-spun, a fm- cap, which
had seen much service, and leggings in-
crusted with mud of half a dozen mingled
hues, he stood leaning against a tree, and
attentively watched the scene. He felt,
indeed, no personal interest in the business,
but it was an entertaining panorama to
gaze upon. In his bosom were passions
very like those which were goading on the
fierce laborers whose acts he contemplated ;
a slight provocation, one certainly not
greater than many of them had received,
would have aroused him to deeds as violent
and lawless ; but he had no disposition to
join in avenging the wi'ongs, real or imagi-
nary, of others. If the question of the
justice of so wanton a destruction of prop-
erty ever entered his mind, it was quickly
and lightly dismissed. He was not the law,
nor an officer of the law ; nor yet had he
any share in what was done. His consci-
ence was by no means one of those which
is ready to charge itself with other people's
responsibilities.

Whilst the man in an apathetic mood, sin-
gularly contrasted with the active and an-
gry elements in the midst of which he had
placed himself, was taking cognizance of
the work of havoc, a figure which he had
not before observed suddenly passed with-
in a few feet of him. The first thought
of the spectator in home-spun was that Rip-

ley Dair had gone along, but the next mo-
ments recollection brought up points of dif-
ference ; though Dair was a taU man, the
person who had just stalked by was of yet
more lofty stature. Shaking off his quiet
demeanor, he sprang from under the shade
of the tree, and hmTied in the duection
which he thought the other had taken.

Cain, for he it was that had passed, cast
one glance, and no more, at the crowd col-
lected in so unwonted a place ; then, as if
feeling neither wonder nor curiosity, plun-
ged into the depth of the wood. 2s ot ob-
serving that he was followed, he proceeded
at his ordinary rapid pace to his cabin.
The pursuer, though of tough and hardy
frame, found it necessary to make consid-
erable exertion in order to keep iu sight.
Cain happening to turn around before en-
tering the hut, recognized the presence of
the stranger. Whilst the man in home-
spun was scanning his features intently and
with a dubious air, Cain, in the tone of one
speaking aside, uttered the words —

" Joshua Evans I"

" It 25 you then, Henry AstiviUe !" said
Evans, advancing, " I thought I could not
be mistaken — yet that white hair bothered
me. It has always been said that an As-
tivilles hair never turns grey. I caught a
glimpse of you once before, but the account
of vouj beinor deadtocrether with the chancje
in looks kept me back — but what's the
matter } You don't seem glad to see
me. Come, give me your hand in mem-
ory of those old times when you and I and
Bryan used to have many a long tramp
through these woods — "

" Man, don't speak of those days !" ex-
claimed the person we have known as Cain.

Evans looked at him in sm-prise ; then
muttered '• can he be crazy .^"

"!Xo I am not crazy," rephed the other,
catching the word, '" nor have I forgotten
you Joshua ; yet it would be little wonder
if I were mad. You have remarked the
altered hue of my hair — it is not tijyie
which has obliterated that characteristic
mark of my family — my head has been grey
these thirty years. That same calamity
which thus shattered the physical part of
my being should ako have made a wreck
of my mind: Yes, would that I were mad !
Oh Bryan — Bryan — Bryan ! You haunt
me !"

" Don't take the thought of your brother

1850.

Everstone.

so hard" — said Evans, " What if you and
he did have a little quarrel once in a
while ?— "

" A little quarrel !"

'^ Yes, that's a small matter and not to
be grieved over."

" Oh God !" cried Henry Astiville clasp-
ino* his hands, wringing them, and looking
towards Heaven, "when was ever a strife be-
tween brothers a small and trifling matter ?"

"But Bryan had such an outrageous
temper, it was almost impossible for any-
body to keep on good terms with him. I
knocked him down myself once, and your
father liked to have turned me adrift for it
too. Don't let these things trouble you.
After all, I reckon there's no great odds
between quarreling with a brother and
quarreling with any other man. The
preachers say it's a duty to live peaceable
with all ; and I have ^no doubt it is — but
where's the man ever could stick to that
duty. You are no worse than others."

" Do you really think this, Joshua }
Are you in such utter ignorance of what
was done by the Hardwater yonder, it will
be thirty years ago this coming tenth of
August .'^"

Evans was silent.

"John then has been able to keep it
even from yoa ; how much I owe him for
his thousfhtful and stedfast affection ! — and
brother indeed has he been to me ! How
I misunderstood his character in those heed-
less days of boyhood, when I used to think
him cold and selfish, and deserted his com-
pany for that of the inconstant and passion-
ate Byran ; John has done more than a
brother's part ; for my neglect he has re-
turned love and fidelity : — he has labored
hard to throw a veil over my sin — even
since I have been supposed dead, he has
protected my memory from reproach. Yet I
will tell you all Joshua. Did you not know
that I had struck Bryan .?"

Evans, with his square compact figure
remained standing precisely in the position
he had occupied for some five or ten min-
utes past, at the right of the door. His
lips did not open, nor did he give the
slightest response by look or gesture.

" Bryan and I were hunting by the Run,
the dog had started a pheasant ; both of
us fired. As it happened, the bird fell in-
to that hollow which was said to mark the
grave of the negro Giles. I was about to

pick it up, but Bryan jumped before me,
exclaiming that it was his shot which had
brought down the bird, and that I should
not have it. Just as he was stooping I
gave him an angry thrust with my hand —
my c>/?e/ihand, Joshua, so help me heaven.
— He fell backward. — I see it all before
me this moment with the horrible distinct-
ness of reality : there is Bryan's up-turn-
ed face ; the gun is dropping from his left
hand, while his right is stretched out in-
stinctively to break the violence of the de-
scent. Joshua it is a happy thing for you,
that your eye-balls have not such a picture
painted on them. But Bryan fell, and, in
falling, his head struck the edge of that
cursed corner-stone. I saw them lift up
his senseless corpse. I dared not follow
them home. I sailed in the evening: for
Havanna. The first news that reached
me there was that Bryan was dead."

"It was unlucky, certainly," replied
Evans, " that it happened so. Nobody can
wonder that you should wish that your last
meeting with your brother had not been in
passion. But what put it into your head to
start home the story of your own death.?"

" John, in a letter, gave me the hint,
which, as you may be sure, I was glad to
act upon. It was a wise device of his, and
not more wise than kind. To this I owe
the privilege I now enjoy : a fearful and
agonizing privilege — yet it is a privilege —
of spending my last days here, and of me-
ditating on my crime at the very spot
which was its scene. For I never could
endure that men should be able, as I stalk
by them like a spectre, to point the finger
and say to each other, ' There goes Henry
Astiville — a wretch yet living and breath-
ing— the man who slew his brother.' "

" Pshaw ! pshaw !" said Joshua Evans,
quite unmoved ; "this is down-right folly.
Who would think of grieving out his life
for such a thing .?"

"What are you made of.?" exclaimed
Astiville. "There was always something
hard, and stiff, and iron -like about you —
but is it possible that you could see blood
on your hands — the blood of your mother's
son — and not shudder at the spectacle .?"

" Of course, I could — that metaphorical
kind of blood."

" But Joshua, Joshua, what difference if
I hilled him .?"

" KiUed him } That's the metaphorical

Everstone»

July,

language I am speaking of. It may be true
enough that anger's murder, as to the spirit
of the thing ; hut to my mind it's a plain
contradiction to nature to say there is no
difference between a thought, and a thing
that's actually done. I have been, I reck-
on, in some hundred fights — which would
be a hundred murders, at your way of
counting ; but, as I never had the misfor-
tune to kill a man, I am not exactly pre-
pared to believe that my neck ought to be
itching for a halter and a slip-knot."

" And do you mean this talk for comfort^
Joshua Evans }""

" Well, I don't see why it shouldn't pass
for comfort."

Henry Astiville turned away impatiently,
and went to the back part of the hut.

Evans followed, and laid a hand on his
shoulder : "What in the world have you
taken offence at, Henry?"

" I am not offended," was the reply ; "I
deserve that you should taunt me. You
might indeed have spared me a little while,
since my own confession has given you
your power ; yet the punishment is just —
you do well to contrast your own cleanness
of any deep stain of guilt, though subjected
to all the trials of a rugged and boisterous
and unscrupulous life, with the foul blot
which I — so delicately and religiously nur-
tured— bear, and crouch under."

" Henry ! I never had such a meaning.
Taunt you with a contrast ! Be advised :
rouse yourself from the depression that
breeds such sickly and fantastic notions.
You had had angry tussels with Bryan be-
fore that one you speak of; but you don't
think of them with such distress. Why
should you feel worse on account of this,
merely because it happened to take place a
short while before his death .?"

Astiville gazed upon him as if he did not
comprehend his words.

" The case now would be very different,"
continued Evans, *' if Bryan had died of the
fall you gave him."

" How .^" exclaimed the other, his va-
cant look transformed at once into a glance
so concentrated and earnest that it seemed
almost to glow with literal fire. "What
do you say } Bryan not die of the fall ?"

"Assuredly he did not. And can it be
that you had any doubt of that? What
carried him off was a bilious fever."

Astiville advanced towards him two strides

nearer, his countenance still wearing that
intense and excited expression. " Tell me
the truth^ Joshua Evans."

" I have. That Bryan Astiville died of a
fever, is just as certain as that you and I
are alive this moment."

" Oh no ! it cannot be. John has been
able to conceal the real and horrible fact
from you as well as from the rest of the
world."

I tell you I'm not mistaken," said

Evans warmly. After you had gone off,
Heaven knows where, Bryan got as well as
ever he was. I saw him — talked with him
— rode on horseback in his company, from
Grey wood to Reveltown. The way he was
taken afterwards was just this: He and
Rip Dair, and half a dozen others, got into
a drinking frolic. Brian, the next day, was
desperate sick. He couldn't stay in the
house, however, but said he'd work off his
bad feelings out of doors. He got dripping
wet in a shower, went home, took to his
bed — and the doctor, when he came, said
it was all over with him ; and so, after a
few days, it turned out. But how came
you to be possessed with such an incorrect
notion ? Didn't you say that your brother
John had some communication with you?"

" Yes, John wrote me a full account,
and it is very different from yours."

" You must have misread it — that's all.
John knew the whole state of the case as
well as any of us."

" No ; I have not misinterpreted it —
the words are too plain. I have his letter
still — and many times I've read them over
since. The ignorance is only yours — I am
my brother's murderer ! "

" Let me see those letters," said Evans,
quickly.

Henry Astiville unlocked a chest, and
lifted out a thin bundle of papers. He
delivered it to Evans, and then, trembling
like an aspen, sat down, and supported his
head on his left hand.

Evans was not very expert at decijDher-
ing hand- writing, and the ink on the letters
was much faded, so that it took him a con-
siderable time to get through. He read
carefully and minutely, comparing the ex-
pressions of one letter with those of another.
When he had done, he slowly and mecha-
nically folded them in the same form in
which they were committed to him, and
then twisted the piece of old and rotten

1850.

Everstone.

tape around them so forcibly that it broke,
and the papers fell to the floor. i

Astiville hearing the sound, looked up ;
his long, tangled, white hair, Avhich he had
thrown back, moved tremulously on his
shoulders ; and it was evident that he still
quivered in every limb and muscle. With
an expression only to be compared to that
of a prisoner at the bar watching the fore-
man from whose lips he expected to hear
the verdict of " Guilty,'^ he faltered forth :
" And what think you now i "
Evans had picked up the papers. " I
think," he said — " I think this, that John
has fooled you damnably ! I thank God
/never had a brother ! "

When Evans departed from the vicinity
of Mr. Newlove's dwellinof that morninoj

O 0 7

he left one other spectator of the scene — a
spectator less apathetic than himself, and,
constitutionally, of less decided intrepidity.
This was Naomi. In consequence of her
husband's being in Newlove's employ, she
had come to have quite a domestic interest
in the family, Emma, especially, had won
the old black woman's unreserved affection.
She could not, therefore, witness the de-
vastation that was going on without real
pain. Besides, the reckless demeanor of
the mob excited her apprehensions of acts
still more violent than any they had yet
committed. As she looked forth over the
worm-fence corner, behind which she had
ensconsed herself, her heart was moved to
attempt something for the relief of the un-
happy Northerners. She recollected how
Somers had spoken of the extreme import-
ance of the Fourth Corner-stone. Now,
Naomi, who had frequently seen the person
who had passed as '' Cain," was strongly
impressed with the conviction, that Henry
Astiville, instead of being dead, had re-
turned from his wandering, and, under the
influence of some motive or other, now
chose to live apart from his kindred and
from the world, in the hut near the Hard-
water. She had never spoken to him, nor,
if she had dared to do so, had she any in-
clination for it ; — he was an Astiville, and,
like all the members of that stock, hateful to
her. That he must be cognizant of the site
of the missing landmark, she could not doubt.
What if she were to go to him now, and
implore him to come forward and save the
Newloves from ruin, by proclaiming the

just foundation of their title .? Naomi dis-
missed the self-suggested scheme at once.
How could she venture on such a step ; —
how could she, old, feeble, and a negro, dare
to raise herself up against one so powerful
as John Astiville } It would be moon-
struck, distracted folly. Yet the generous
impulse would not be banished. Feeble
as was the glimmering ray of reason that
struggled amidst the thick darkness of the
poor creature's mind, she was still suscep-
tible of something of that exhiliration which
attends the performance, at personal haz-
ard, of a charitable and unselfish act. Yes,
come what might, she would go, and do all
that lay in her power to impede the con-
summation of such injustice.

With a brisk and emphatic pace did she
proceed to the Upper Branch. The stream,
owing to the dryness of the season, was
very low, and she had no need to peer
about curiously for stones and sand-banks,
to keep her feet from contact with the
water. After crossing, she would, perhaps,
have been tempted to shorten her strides,
as she approached her destination, but the
thought that she was probably very near
the haunted grave of her ancestor, Giles,
was an efi"ectual stimulus to supply any di-
minution of the original motive force. Up
the hill, accorningly, she went, but when
her hand rested on the top-rail of the fence
— then she hesitated. She distinguished
voices within the cabin ; — what if the
owner were holding converse with the ghost
of Giles, or with one whom Naoimi would
more have dreaded to encounter than even
a visiter from the spiritual world — with
John Astiville } The gable-end of the
cabin was opposite her, and in its wall was
a window — suppose she should be noticed
from it } Though the consequence of her
departure were the immediate destruction
to all the Northerners in Redland, she
would not remain. But, before she was
able to turn away her face, she had been
observed and recognized.

"If there isn't Naomi!" exclaimed
Evans. " She was at Grey wood ; she
knows all about it ! "

As he spoke, he sprang through the door-
way, and in three leaps more was over the
fence. Seizing Naomi, who was trotting
away as fast as she could go, by the arm,
he cried, " Come, old woman ! — this way
now ! — I want you."

54 Everstone.

"Oh, bless je, marster ! — bless ye ! —
don't, for gracious sake ! "

" You must — you must ! " said Evans,
sbarply and peremptorily. " Hush — shut
up ! and come along now ! "

Keeping his strong grasp upon her arm,
he drao'sed her back with him, across the
fence — several rails of which were knocked
down in the operation — and deposited her
in a trice in the midst of the cabin.

The old woman, half dead from fright as
well as loss of breath, dropped down the
instant his sustaining hand was withdrawn,
in a shapeless heap, resembling, for all the
"world, a pile of rag-carpet. Lifting her
eyes, as soon as she dared, she perceived
that John Astiville, at all events, was not
present. Recovering then a degree of
composure, she managed to rise to her feet.

" Have you got your breath, old woman .'"
said Evans; "you know me, do you not .^"

" Yes, certain," replied Naomi; " you
must be INIarster Josh Evans."

" And who am I .' " said Henry Astiville,
placing himself before her.

Naomi hesitated. " You are — that is,
if I thought you woiddn't be put out — I'd
say you were Marster Henry."

" When did you see me last Naomi .'"

" I can't be sure, but I think it was a
week ago, Monday."

"No — no; I mean, when did you see
me last as Henry Astiville .' — that is, be-
fore I came to live in this cabin .-"

" Why it was about a fortninght before
your brother Bryan died."

" What was the matter with Bryan.?"
said the inquirer in a more hasty tone.

" The doctor said it was a bilious fever
— after he was taken, he went out and got
wet in a shower, which made it wuss."

Astiville continued his examination, and
found the woman's statement to conform in
every particular with Evan's. The ques-
tions he put were direct, concise and calm-
ly uttered. When he had satisfied himself
that he had got at the truth, he turned to
Evans, saying :

"I can hardly realize it — Am I indeed
guiltless of my brother's death? — Joshua
do you wonder that I can not easily shake
off that crushing belief — that unvarying in-
cubus of despair under which I have so long
groaned. Think that I have been exist-
ing in an atmosphere of horror which,
while thu-ty years have been dragging out

July,

their length, has been settling around me
more and more dense — a cloud of black-
ness more and more appalling. Oh, how
have I strength to breathe the fresh air of
this newly risen morn ! Can it be that I
who was dead am alive asain t Joshua I"

And at this Astiville seized Evans' hand
and wi'ung it — " Joshua, I hless you for this
coming!"

Evans returned the grasp heartily. " It
is most a mu-acle," he said, " you did not
go stark mad out here. To be living
twenty odd years in a lonesome place like
this—"

"That," said AstiviUe, "is nothing.
Consider how I have gone each day to con-
template the spot which I believed the scene
of Bryan's death-blow! Well, indeed,
may you be astonished that I did not go
mad under the torture ! Oh John, John,
may not a God of mercy recompense you
with a single day's suffering such as I have
borne through a lifetime !"

" Yes, Jack must have had old Bob's
devil in him that the niggers sing about.
What could have been his reason for im-
posing on you so unnaturally and so abom-
inably .'"

" 1 cannot tell — I'm sure I cannot teU.
I never, that I know of, did him the least
wrong — none, at all events, that could have
been worthy of a tithe of the punishment
he has made me endm-e."

"Hanged if I don't feel like choking
him," ejaculated Evans, earnestly.

" And then," continued Henry Astiville,
*'he has always seemed so kind and affec-
tionate— so brotherly in look, in word, in
tone ! How can I believe that all that
sympathy was a deceitful show ^ That he
could see me in this wilderness, year after
year, eating out my heart in remorse for a
crime which I did not commit ! And all
this period, I have been humbling myself
at his feet, — kissing the dust as it were, in
utter abasement — amazed at the conde-
scension, and self-denial, and faithful
brotherly love, which could lead his un-
spotted innocence into the presence of my
blood-guiltiness ! But John shaU rue
the hour that tempted him to practise
such a deceit upon me ! — I call Heaven and
earth to witness that he shall !"

Astiville strode about the narrow cham-
ber, beating the air with his clenched
hands, and muttering through his tightly

1850.

Everstone.

joined teeth incoherent fragments of sen-
tences. Suddenly he started to pass out
of the door.

^' Where are you going .?" said Evans.

"To find John."

" And were you not rejoicing just now
that you haA^en't one brother's life to an-
swer for ? Take care that you do not get
the blood of another on your hands."

" True — true — I ought to think of the
present deliverance, and forget all the past
— both the long agony, and the instrumen-
tality that caused it."

Thus speaking he returned, and his de-
meanor became thoughtful and composed.
Then it was that Naomi conceived she dis-
cerned a favorable moment to introduce
her appeal.

" Marster Henry, don't you know that
the Compton land came to the Upper
Fork.?"

" Yes: — the corner — and I shouldknow
where it stands — is less than three hundred
yards from here — "

^' Marster, that's been disputed, and
some people who bought of the Comptons
land are put in a bad way about it. The
folks around have been mightily stirred
a^in 'em and are tearino; down houses and
likely to do wuss. Won't you now come
for'ard and tell how the truth of the case
is, and stop this wickedness .'^"

Astiville glanced inquiringly towards
Evans.

" The fact is, I believe," answered that
individual with great sang-froid, " that the
Yankees and our native people have had
a general falling out, and it is probable
enough, that the Yankees will not get the
best of the battle. It is their own fault
though, for it seems they've taken all sorts
of pains to make their company disagree-
able."

" Oh now don't talk that fashion Mars-
ter Josh, — are you got to learn what all the
trouble comes from .? Marster Jack Asti-
ville wants to get the land — that's it — and
he's the one and nobody else, that has
started the fuss. He's told Rip Dair and
the rest of the men that the Northerners
were laying hold of property what wern't
theirn — when it was no sich a thing, for
an honester set of people, and more good
humoreder, there isn't to be found no
whar !"

" If any encroachment," returned Henry

Astiville, ** has been made on the Compton
title, I shall see that it is remedied — "

'^ Ah Marster — there's no time to be
wasted : the mob is busy now. Don't you
see that smoke yonder } It may be that
comes from Mr. Newlove's very dwelling-
house. Will you wait here while humans
is getting roasted inside their own four-
walls.?"

Astiville was silent. Evans observed, " I
am not sure but the woman's in the riofht
after all. Your brother John has been
stirring around very brisk I know When
I was in the country a little while back, he
got me to leave and to promise to stay
away for good, for fear lawyer Somers
should have me on the witness stand."

"" Yes," added Naomi, " and Marster
Jack has been doing all manner of things
in order to get the people 'xasperated
'gainst Mr. Newlove and Miss Emma.
Heaps of lies has been told, and though
some of 'em has been exposed by Mr.
Dick Somers, the people still wont be per-
suaded that the side the Astivilles are on
isn't the right one. Marster Henry ! if
you could but know what a sweet temper-
ed innocent, nice young lady, Miss Emma
is, you would be willing to do anything to
save her from this destruction. Oh she's
the beautifuUest, and most lamb-like young
creetur that ever walked the earth ! So mild
spoken she is too and pleasant in all her
ways : She wouldn't tread on a grass-
hopper, or hurt the feelings of the poorest
servant. Nothing ever raised her temper,
unless some wickedness was done, and then
if it was 'gainst her, she would be ready
right oflF hand to pardon and forget it.
Marster Henry, is it one like her that's
fitting to be scar't and scandalized with a
mob, and, maybe, hilled?'''^

" Am I to understand that these people
are actuated, in their violence, by the be-
lief that the Astiville patent extends south
of this Run.?"

" Yes sir — that is it. Marster Jack pre-
tends it goes to the South Branch, and has
worked up the country into a fire and a
fume, to support what he says is his rights,
and to put down and stamp to pieces what
he calls Yankee impudence and rob-
bery."

" I will go then, and put a stop to it if
I can."

" Do — do, Marster Harry, a::d let's be

Everstone.

July,

brisk — Heaven send we mayn't get there too
late r"

When many hands are moved by an ear-
nest will the work is both light and speedy.
So actively had the crowd besthred them-
selves, that, of all those evidences of hu-
man industry and thrift which had made up
Sylvester Newlove's comfortable farm-
steading, not one now remains. The dwell-
ing-house standing untouched in the centre
of that circle of devastation, only needed to
be removed to complete the uniformity of
the scene. And Dair and his fellows had
no mind to leave any part of their task un-
performed. The doors of the house were
closed, and the curtains were dropped in-
side of the lower story window. That the
building was not empty, but contained at
least three anxious hearts, the mob well
knew. How to expel them from thence
with as small a degree as possible of per-
sonal violence, was the problem. After a
few moments of reflection a gleam of light
shot across Ripley Dair's swarthy counte-
nance. Thanks to the previous labors of
the morning there was a long pile of inflam-
mable rubbish extendino- from the rear of
the house to the edge of a recent ' clearing,'
where the ground was covered thick with
the intermingled branches of fallen pines,
and oaks, and other trees.

" Here, boys," Said Dan*, with a sardo-
nic smile, " Mr. TSewlove wants that clear-
ing burned over, and as we are in the hu-
mor to lend our neighbors a helping hand,
let us throw the first coal into it for him."

The suggestion being promptly obeyed,
a fierce flame was soon crackling at the
edge of the vast brush -pile. Ts' or was it
long before the fire spread to the mass of
timbers, rails, and weather-boarding, which
was to serve as a train to lead the destruc-
tive element to its more noble prey.

" I think they'll be for sthring in that,
now," remarked one.

*' Perhaps they don't see what's coming,"
said another.

"Well," rejoined the first, "they shan't
have the excuse of ignorance."

So saying, the fellow walked up to the
front door of the house, with consummate
impudence, and gave a loud d )uble rap.

The door was opened by Miss Newbve.

The man had not expected that his sum-
mons would be answered by a lady, and ,

was a little disconcerted ; but presently re-
covering the us: of his tongue, he said, "I
noticed, ma'am, that the brush-heap, back
yonder, has somehow taken fire, and, as the
wind seems fair to drive the blaze towards
the house, I thought to step in and let you
know, for fear you mightn't otherwise get
out before some accident happened."

" I thank you," said Emma, quietly.

Absalom Handsucker, meanwhile, im-
pelled by resistless curiosity, had come in-
to the entry and stuck his head over Miss
Newlove's shoulder.

" And how did the clearing get a fire,
Mister.^"

" How should I know .?" returned the
man, with cool u-ony. " It is owing, most
likely, to some awkwardness of that fat-
faced fellow, Handsucker ; he looks as if
he couldn't tell green peas from hominy."

After uttering this remark, he touched
his hat to Miss Newlcve and retired.

While the crowd were now standing aloof,
engaged in sullenly watching the progress
of the flames, a man on horseback rode
sbwly towards them. "It is Mr. Asti-
ville's white horse," observed a man to his
neighbor.

"Yes, and it's John himself on him,"
was the reply. " You can tell that blue
coat and brass buttons of his half a mile off. "

The horseman approaching nearer, stop-
ped, and uttering a "good-day to you, gen-
tlemen," directed his small, keen eyes, for
a single second, towards the fire.

Then he cleared his throat — " A-hem:
as I was passing along, I observed a gath-
ering cf people over here, and fearing lest
you might be provoked by the numerous
exasperating influences which exist, into
some rash and violent act, I thought it my
duty to put in a word of advice. But I am
happy to find that there is no occasion for
any interposition. I am rejoiced, I say, to
see you standing here in such a peaceable
and inoffensive manner. Let me suggest,
however, that in order to avoid any mis-
construction, it would be well for us all now
to withdraw quietly."

Ripley Dair could hardly prevent a sneer
from curling his lip. In his heart, he abo-
minated the hypocritical blindness which
could recognize there no signs of disorder
and violence. He determined, too, that
the man who was so ready to avail himself
of their labors, should not altogether escape

1850.

Everstone.

the responsibility. Smiling, maliciously,
upon Mr. Astiville, he said :

"Don't you see that Jire which is ap-
proaching so rapidly to Newlove's house ?
We were thinkino; whether we ouo;ht not to

o o

turn in and try to stop it. That would be
doing good to the enemy, you know, sir."

Mr. Astiville 's self-possession was not
ruffled. " It strikes me," he said, " that
the house is in no great danger — at least it
seems so at this distance. Perhaps too the
occupants are not likely to take your inter-
position, if you should offer it, in very good
part. Still I leave the matter to your own
judgment — I advise nothing."

He turned his horse's head and was
about to ride away, when he was startled
by the tone of a voice that jarred his whole
frame. The sound came from behind a
little belt of trees which intercepted his
view of the speaker.

This latter person, on arriving, had, like
Mr. Astiville, darted a glance at the house
and the line of fire that pointed towards it.
But he read the spectacle differently Ad-
vancing eagerly to the crowd, but still out
of sight of the horseman, he exclaimed in
an authoritative manner —

" Come with me and save that house !"

Then observing that no one moved, he
added, " I tell you men, you are guilty of
an outrageous wrong ! This is the Comp-
ton land"

" Pshaw ! pshaw ! — You must be crack-
ed. Don't everybody know that this here's
part of the Astiville patent } " said a young
man from the midst of the throng.

" I tell you it is not ."' replied the other.
" The North fork of the Hard water is the
line. Before you were born I have follow-
ed it from corner to corner."

" And who are you that speak so confi-
dently .?" asked Ripley Dair.

" I am Henry Astiville — do you believe
me now .?"

Various expressions of astonishment
broke from the crowd. While the colloquy
was going on a slight change of position
had taken place, and the brothers were
brought in sight of each other. John As-
tiville felt as if he was reeling in the saddle.
Eager to gallop from the spot, he was yet
held there as under the spell of fascination,
without strength to draw the bridle-rein or
so much as to remove his eyes from the
scene before him.

" John /"

There was profound silence for many
moments, while the two confronted each
other and conversed in glances.

" I really believe it ij old Jack's broth-
er," observed one of the b3^standcrs. '* See
how he shakes on his horse."

"John ! How could you lie to me so .'*
How had you the heart to mingle a curse
with my existence } Oh, how villainously
you have betrayed a brother's trusi !"

Mr. Astiville compressed his lips tight-
ly— then nerved himself to speak.

" Brother ? What crazy man is this .?"

" Hah ! dare you deny kindred to your
father's son .?''

"Who is this fellow.^" said Mr Asti-
ville looking around.

" Turn not your eyes away," replied
Henry Astiville. " Look on me — look on
the being whom your inhuman cruelty con-
siojned to unvarying, unending torment.
Have I altered ? Remember that such
agony as I have been enduring at your
hands — yes, yours my brother! — these
thirty long dreary years, may well blanch
the head and bow the form. Did not your
heart once relent when you beheld me torn
asunder by despairing remorse ? After im-
planting the sting could you take pleasure
in watching how the wound rankled and fes-
tered and spread corroding poison through
my flesh ? And now, you pretend you know
me not : my features have become so hag-
gard, my complexion so ghastly, my eyes
so blood-shot, that you are ashamed to own
your brother ! You are loath to acknowl-
edge before these worthy people that it is
Henry Astiville who re-appears in so sad a
plight. Yet you shall own me ! Before
them, and before high Heaven — you shall
confess that in this withered arm flows
blood derived from the same source as
yours !"

Mr. Astiville shaking his head and
pressing his lips together so that they
swelled out in the unpleasant manner nat-
ural to him on occasions when he was de-
termined not to be bent from some pur-
pose, was about to speak ; but his brother
suddenly added.

"John! hold one instant before you
give vent to the lie that is swelling your
throat. Greviously have you sinned
against me John, wanton and malignant
and fiend-like has been your treatment of

Everstone.

July,

a sorely broken spirit wHch it was your
duty to bind up and heal ; but at this mo-
ment, all those past immeasurable wrongs
seem less unnatural, less intolerable than
your present cold-blooded effrontery. —
Hear me ! I will overlook what has alrea-
dy been done — I will forget the false re-
port you gave me of Bryan's death — your
subsequent treacherous advice — your hy-
pocritical visits to my hut, and the croco-
dile tears you shed over the severity of my
penitential stripes — I will forget all — yes,
I promise to forget all — provided only that
now you cease from this devils' game.
But if once more you reiterate your denial
of me — take warning ! I never forget, I
never forgive!"

Mr. Astiville thus adjured, did hesitate.
The countenance before him glared with
an expression which might have daunted the
most resolute. Yet obstinacy was too
strong for fear and for any latent fraternal
affection. It was his instinct to hang te-
naciously to every thing which he could
once call his own, whether that thino; were a
political creed, a mass of lucre, or a wicked
purpose. He could not look upon his
brother, however, whilst he answered ; but,
as he cast his eyes around vaguely and un-
easily, he caught sight of an object that at
once fixed them. It was a man standing;
a-part from the crowd, one, who it hap-
pened was that very instant eyeing him in
turn, steadily and significantly. Joshua
Evans ! The whole matter was plain.
The person whose appeal he had to meet,
was no longer a poor unfriended, ranting
lunatic ; nor was it possible to repel his
claims as contemptible extravagance — a
voucher stood at hand, sober, sturdy, un-
impeachable.

'' I will not be troubled with this non-
sense!'' and without a word more Mr.
Astiville rode off.

By this time the fire had begun to climb
up the weather boarding of the wash-room,
which was immediately connected with the
kitchen, and with the main part of the
building. Henry Astiville hurried thither,
earnestly invoking the assistance of the
multitude. Some hung back, unwilling
or doubtmg. But many — especially of
those who stood nearest — accompanied
him. An adequate supply of water being
lacking, the only resource was to set about
ripping off the burning boards, and, the

flames still advancing, to tear down the
whole wash-room. The scene was one of
confusion, as well as activity.

" Look out ! look out .'"

But the warning came too late. A fall-
ing timber struck Henry Astiville on the
shoulder, and so forcibly that he was pros-
trated. A second beam fell cross-wise upon
him Evans, with the prompt co-opera-
tion of the rest, extricated him from the
timbers and raised him to his feet.

'' Are you hurt, sir .?"

Astiville pressed his hands for an instant
to each side of his chest, then said —

" Tis nothing — don't stop, I am as well
as ever."

The progress of the fire was arrested,
and in an hom-'s space all danger to Mr.
Newlove's dwelling terminated.

'' Do you hear that roaring .?" exclaim-
ed Henry Astiville.

" The fire must have got Luto the
woods."

'' It has," he replied, and in a minute
afterward added, " Will you stand here
with folded arms } Take your axes ; run,
fly — do what you can to stop the mischief
you've set going !"

The crowd did snatch up axes, and run.
All of them, Ripley Dair included ; all but
Evans, who remained, and, in company
with Astiville, withdrawing to a little dis-
tance, sat down on a log.

That multitude had labored busily in the
morning, but in the afternoon they toiled
thrice as hard. No rain had fallen for
two months, and the parched leaves burned
like tinder. As the heat increased, there
was the natural consequence of a rising
wind, which drove on the flames still
more furiously.

Any one who has seen a forest on fire
knows how grand a scene it is, and how
indescribable. Where they sat, Evans
and his companion could distinguish,
amidst the noise of the flames, a sound,
which only one other in nature equals for
sublimity and terror, the sound of the
rushing of many waters. Amidst this
heavy, continued roar, they heard the
sharp and quickly repeated strokes of a
hundred axes, with, ever and anon, the
crash of a falling tree.

" The fire is gaining!" said Astiville.

" Yes ; it reaches all across the ridge.
They may as well give up the battle. An

1850,

Everstone.

army of men could do nothing but
stand to one side and pray for rain."

The sun had set, leaving behind him a
field of fire, which shone more vivid and
bright than the ruddy clouds to which he
had lent his once parting rays. Dair and
his co-workers returned dispirited and ex-
hausted. Dripping with sweat, and drag-
ging themselves along languidly and slow-
ly, they passed by the two observers. Dair
recognized them, and halted for an instant.
^' How goes the fire, Mr. Dair .?"
" It is rushing like a hurricane, due east.

Where it will stop, and what is to stop it,
is more than man can tell. It is bound, at
any rate, to sweep straight over Everlyn's
plantation — and that before midnight."

" But isn't his house in the midst of
trees ?" observed Evans.

" There's no denying it," was the re-
ply. " Shade is a fine thing, but I reckon
Everlyn will have cause to curse the day
that he left a live stick standing within a
mile of him. Yet, after all, it's little odds
— mus'nt everything come to ashes .^"

CHAPTER XV.

Such a signal fire as that which blazed
on the summit of the Hardwater ridge,
could not but be recognized all over the
county. Somers saw it, and apprehending
at once that it denoted an outbreak of the
populace, started without delay to take his
part, however fruitless and dangerous it
might prove, in the scene that was trans-
acting. But it was a long ride from An-
derport, where he then happened to be,
and before he had got ten miles west of
Daylsborough, the heavens became sudden-
ly overcast, and the rain poured down with
such vehemence, that he was compelled to
take shelter in a farm house for the re-
mainder of the night.

Five hours the torrent poured without
intermission ; then the morning broke se-
rene and inspiring. Somers resumed his
ride. A little while after he had got
within the limits of the contested territory,
whom should he meet but Absalom } The
honest overseer informed him of the princi-
pal events of the preceding evening, and
of the escape of Newlove and his house-
hold. Afterwards he confessed that the
object of his present walk was to inquire
into the fate of the Safetyes. " I can't
help it," he said, "notwithstanding those
awful doings of Arabella." At this in-
stant the thought occurred to the lawyer
that Everstone must have lain full in the
track of the destroyer.

" I don't know," said Absalom, in reply
to an earnest interrogatory. * ' The storm

may have come in time to save them — but
yet I'm very jealous of it."

Without further parley Somers took a
bridle-path to the right, which would soon
put it in his power to remove all doubt by
personal observation.

The fine old house was in view, but not
unchanged. The gable walls reared their
blackened peaks, telling, but too signifi-
cantly, of the disappearance of roof and
rafter ; and the hall door, which had never
denied admission to the stranger, was now
wide open indeed. Somers, oppressed
with many conflicting feelings, paused a
while. He was aroused from his momen-
tary revery by the sound of a galloping
horse. He recognized in the rider, How-
ard Astiville, and was recognized in turn.
The young man making a slight inclination
of the head, dashed on, but presently
wheeled his horse around.

" You were going to see the Everlyns,
Mr. Somers .?"

" I cannot say what I was going to do."

" There is no need of equivocation, sir.
Don't let me balk you, come on, and we'll
go together." Seeing that the other did
not stir, Howard added, " You have been
paying addresses to Miss Everlyn, have
you not, sir .^"

"I cannot perceive," answered Somers,
" what right you have to — ."

" Well, if you are ashamed of it, I have
no more to say — I was only about to pro-
pose— ."

Everstone.

July,

" What, Mr. Astiville ?"

*' That we both take this opportunity to
go openly and fairly, like men and gentle-
men, to urge in each other's presence our
rival suits. I feel no shame at acknow-
ledging my devotion to Miss Everlyn, nor
am I of a spirit to shrink from her presence
at the moment when she is visited with ca-
lamity."

'^ Say no more," rejoined Somers, has-
tily, " I will bear you company."

Everlyn and Sidney received the young
men in the kitchen, for the flames had left
no other part of the edifice inhabitable.
The lawyer, who had been hurried along,
almost unconsciously, by the impetuosity
of his companion, resolved to suffer his
conduct to be regulated by events. Hence
Howard was the first to speak.

" Mr. Everlyn — Sidney — Somers and I
have come that you may choose between
us. I come without fear, though this is
the time darkest for me, and brightest for
him."

'' Nor am I reluctant to submit to the
decision," said Somers, " yet so strange
are the things which I have heard and seen
within the past hour, that my mind has
scarce been able to preserve its balance.
Let me, however, express what, as I stand
here, is my first feeling — my sincere grief
for the havoc which last night's fire has
made in all that I see about me."

" I beg you not to be distressed on our
account," observed Everlyn, with more
haughtiness than he ever displayed in
prosperity.

This was unpromising, but Somers was
not inclined to be daunted. With re-
doubled earnestness of manner, he replied,
" What have I done, Mr. Everlyn, that
my heartfelt sympathy must be cast back
with contempt } Did I not protest at the
first, and throughout, that the Astiville
title was bad } and has not the result
proved that I spoke truth } I assured you
of Miss Newlove's innocence. I warned
you against Mr. Astiville. It is now re-
vealed that he was the wily and unscrupu-
lous plotter, and she, the blameless victim."

Here Howard broke in — " That tale of
Safety's is false — false — utterly false ! He
is a bought and perjured knave ! Can
such a scandalous lie teceive a moment's
regard ? Do you believe it, Sidney } do
you, Mr. Everlyn.?"

*^ But has not another witness turned
up.?" rejoined Somers. "Who was it
that rushed in to save Newlove's house
from destruction .?"

" Oh, of what importance is that .? I
have indeed heard that that man Cain be-
haved last evening, as he not unfrequently
does, in a very frantic and unaccountable
manner ; but surely men who have their
wits ought not to spend thought upon a
madman's vagaries."

" But whether he be mad or not, are
you sure that he is not your uncle .?"

'* Uncle } what are you talking about,
sir .?"

" You must be aware, at least, that he
avowed himself your uncle."

" Never, till this moment, sir, have I
heard anything of the sort."

'' I have been informed that he declared,
in presence of the whole concourse, that he
is Henry Astiville, your father's brother."

*' Henry ! — my father's brother Henry ! "
While Howard's lips repeated the words
slowly, his mind recurred with dizzy speed
to the ambiguous phrases which Cain had
uttered, on the memorable day when he
wrenched from his hand the vial of lauda-
num.

" Have you warrant of this, Somers .?"

" It has been told me by a person whom
I have no reason to suspect of an attempt
to deceive."

" I will not believe it ! It must be
false. This I will do : I will go at once to
my father. From him I shall learn the
real truth. Yes, he will give me the ex-
planation of the whole. Be assured, Sid-
ney, that when I come back, every mys-
tery will be cleared up. Safety is a liar !
my father never can have descended to an
act so infamously base. I stake every-
thing on his spotless honor. Sidney, you
are not ignorant of my love — you know its
height and depth, and fullness ; yet if my
father be guilty of one mean and wicked
act, I resign you, Sidney. Would that
you would declare this moment that my
cause should stand and fall with my fa-
ther's integrity ! Then I should go, not
merely confident^ as now, but joyful, tri-
umphant ! I leave Somers with you, but
let not your faith be shaken by his wily
words. If the matter be as I believe, a
brief space only will intervene before I see
you. If it be otherwise, but I will not

1850.

Everstone.

think of that !
and knave ?

John Astiville a trickster

It cannot be — never —

never !"

He rushed out leaving the lawyer stand-
ino- at the entrance of the narrow apart-
ment. The latter then urged his own
cause eagerly and warmly, addressing Sid-
ney and her father by turns. At length,
Everlyn observed —

" I must inform you, sir, that this is no
livrht and transient misfortune which has
fallen upon me. I am poor — nay, if New-
love gains the land, destitute."

Somers rejoined with ardor, that a con-
sideration of that kind could have no in-
fluence on his mind — or, if any, it only
made him the more desirous of the success
of his suit. He added that the emolu-
ments of his profession, although not large,
were increasing, that Miss Newlove would
not be an exacting creditor ; further, that
if it were true that Henry Astiville had
really appeared it must be in his power to
compel his brother to share the hereditary
estate with him, and to restore the purchase
money which had been fraudulently taken
for the three thousand acres."

" I cannot listen," said Everlyn, " to
any such suggestions. I still retain, and
as firmly as ever, my belief in Mr. Asti-
ville's truth and honest dealing. My opin-
ion does not shift with every idle gale of
rumor ; I trust my friend to the last."

" Then, sir, do but postpone your final
determination till a few days have elapsed.
It cannot now be long that a doubt can
rest upon the matter. If in the issue it
shall appear that Astiville has both de-
frauded you and been guilty of a dastardly
attempt to fasten reproach on an innocent
and unprotected woman ; if he shall be
proved to have committed acts of still dark-
er dye — "

*' Whatever should turn up," said Ever-
lyn interrupting him impatiently, " I will
not stoop to have anything to do with those
Northerners. No aid nor favor will I ac-
cept at their hands — I will go to the alms
house sooner. You have my answer now,
I shall not consent to any compromise or
friendly adjustment. I claim to hold my
land by the title which I have already pur-
chased and paid for. If that fails me, I
will accept no other. Excuse me from fur-
ther conversation at present, sir ; I have
some necessary engagements to attend to."

Mr. Everlyn having withdrawn, Somers
directed his artillery against Sidney alone .
He expostulated, pleaded, said everythintr
that a judicious adviser, and a devoted lo-
ver, could ; but all with little apparent
effect. Never a purple-robed Lemiramis
or Elizabeth was so proud as that republi-
can girl enveloped in the smoky atmos-
phere of her kitchen home. Somers at last
thought he detected signs of softening in
the ice of her brow. Taking her hand he
exclaimed with the frank enthusiasm of
his nature, " We will restore the old man-
sion Sidney ! Nature will renew the foli-
age on the scorched and blackened trunks
which yet stand around it like grim but
faithful warders. Everything shall smile
again — you too shall smile Sidney !"

The rigor of her countenance was not yet
broken up, but she listened patiently and
did not withdraw her palm.

" Confess," he continued gaily, " that
there is some poetic justice even in the
way ward course of the flames. Astiville's
emissaries kindled a fire to burn out an
unoffending stranger ; you and your father
with the pertinacity of friendship closed
your eyes to that man's wrong-doing, and
frowned upon all who would not, like your-
selves, stand up in his support ; the frao-ile
cottage of the hard-driven Northern settler
survives the blazing ordeal, while the state-
ly Southern mansion does not pass unscath-
ed."

Sidney drew back her hand — '^ I love
my home all the better since affliction has
come upon it. I recognize the stroke of
misfortune, but I recognize -no penalty ^ 2iS
I am not conscious of the faults which are
alleged to have deserved it. You sympa-
thize with our adversaries — go to them, they
will appreciate the attention—upon us, it
is misplaced — Miss Newlove will be grate-
ful I doubt not."

" What an incomprehensible compound
is a woman's mind !" thought Somers.
Oh do not be so irrational, Sidney !" he
cried. " What is Emma Newlove to me }
And what else can lead me here this mo-
ment but a consuming irresistible devotion
to you. Look at my conduct from all sides —
weigh it in a just and equal balance. What
mercenary or selfish object can I have ?
What earthly profit could I gain from im-
poverishing one towards whom I hoped —
may I not still hope } — to sustain the re-

lation of a son to a father ? Is this the or-
dinary procedure of a suitor whose thoughts
dwell upon the bridal portion ? Sidney,
you treat me unjustly, and not less absurd-
ly than unjustly.

Sidney had never thought to be wooed
in that strain. Her answer was short and
peremptory. Somers, on his part, far too
sturdy to humble himself to supplication,
turned his back upon Everstone, with no
disposition ever again to come beneath its
shade.

A little while, and he was in Sylvester
Newlove's parlor. Never had Emma ap-
peared as lovely and attractive as at that
moment, when he contrasted her meek se-
renity with the picture of the proud and
flashing beauty he had just left. His eyes,
too, were now open, and he perceived, in the
course of that interview, what he had
never before suspected, the real nature of
the sentiment with which Emma regarded
him. And what was to forbid him from
taking the hand here ready for his accep-
tance : Who could make a better whe
than that gentle, yet resolute and firm-
principled girl ? Iler happiness, at least,
would be secured, for she loved him : and
why should 7ie repine at such an union ?
She had great wealth, and Somers, though
contemning lucre as lucre, was botli proud
and ambitious. In his present up -toiling
way, his spirit encountered many a rude
and chafing obstacle. Money would lift
him to a high vantage-ground. These re-
flections made his brain swim and reel.

That very Wednesday morning, Mr.
Astiville was favored, at Greywood, with a
call from Joshua Evans. The calmness
with which he received him, was, consid-
erino- the circumstances, really marvellous.

" Your brother has sent me to you, sir .?"

jNIr. Astiville did not deny that he had a
brother.

" He got hurt somewhat in putting out
the fire at the Yankee's, over yonder."

" Badly .^" inquired the gentleman, sud-
denly raising his eyes.

" Yes ; how bad, I don't know. The
damage, what there is, is in the internals.
He wants you to come and see him. He's
at the cabin."

" Does he suffer much .?" It was impos-
sible to tell, from the tone, whether the

Everstone. J^ly>

question proceeded from fraternal affection,
or from a curiosity, such as a physician ex-
periences with regard to the symptoms of
any individual patient among the hundred
whom he is visiting at a quarantine hos-
pital.

" Yes, he suffers a good deal — especial-
ly when a twitch takes him. You had
better come quick^ sir, for there's no
knowing what may happen. He says he
won't have a doctor till he has seen you."

" Well, I hope he will not need a doc-
tor. I shall certainly come and see him,
Joshua."

As Evans was about to leave the room,
Astiville called him back. " Stay a min-
ute. You find him quite flighty and
light-headed, don't you .^"

" No ; he seems to have pretty good
discernment."

"Ah, well; his insanity has always
been peculiar. Sometimes he will be stark
mad — almost raving, indeed ; and then
again, he'll talk as rationally as most any
one. I have been in great doubt vv^hether
it was not my duty to place him in an asy-
lum ; but I knew that he would be less
happy in confinement than when suffered to
live in the way of his own choice. Indeed,
had he been shut up within a cell, there's
little question he'd have pined away and
died long ago."

Evans retm-ned a queer look, but said
nothing,

" Joshua, by the way, you have'nt acted
altogether right towards me ; but never
mind, I understand how it is, you got
fidgetty and impatient. Joshua, I am
ready still to do anything I can to give you
a lift in the world. Only be discreet, and
you can serve your own interests as weU
as mine."

" There's no use in playing hide and
seek," answered the other, in a down right
tone. " I tell you at once, I choose to
stick by Henry. I wouldn't give up a
button that belonged to him, for the best
thousand acres jou could deed to mc"

" Regard me this much, Joshua ; do not
drag strangers into our family difficulties. I
am willing (if Henry is actually in his right
mind,) to make a fair and even settlement
with him. You cannot ask any more.
I'll do this of my own accord, provided no
officious intermeddlers are led to take part
in the business. But so sure as he makes

1850.

Ever stone.

league with Richard Somers, or those
Yankees, I'll battle to the last inch ; and
in that case, I think you'll find it no easy
matter to overcome me. You must per-
ceive, yourself, that I cannot be willing to
humble myself before those people. But
I am ready to go to my brother as a bro-
ther."

" I can't say but you talk properly
enough in that. Strangers are better out
of the way, sure enough, if you'll only do
the thing that's right,"

"I will, Joshua— I will."

" You'll come immediately, I suppose."

" Yes, very soon, indeed. My riding
horse has to have a shoe put on, that's all.
Good morning, Joshua."

It is a sing-ular fact, but the first thing
Mr. Astiville did, after the departure of
the messenger, was to rub his hands to-
gether in the manner which is conceived to
be expressive of satisfaction, at the course
which matters in general are taking.

^' I think I can get through it yet. Even
if he should leave a will^ it cannot be very
difficult to upset it. Who can swear that
he was of sound mind } A cool and steady

player stands a good chance to win, and I
will play so. Hanged if I give up one
acre, or one dollar, till it is dragged out
like a tooth ! He may, indeed, prove the
corner before he dies — or show that villain
Evans how to prove it ; there's great
danger of this. Well, if the suit must go,
it must ; but one thousand acres are not
as bad a loss as four. The money that
Everlyn has paid is safe, whatever comes,
unless Henry get into a situation to force
a repayment?''

Astiville walked about for a time in deep
meditation. " On the whole, I believe it
will go right. He refuses to have a doctor
till I come to him, and that I shall not be
in a great hurry to do. Then the will.
Oh, it is not likely they'll think of it in
time ; and if they do — "

The door openedjust then, greatly start-
ling the soliloquizer. Had he been talking
aloud, or not } The query was one that
concerned him, for the thoughts which had
been stirring on the surface of his mind,
were not precisely those which he would
choose to exhibit to the world as samples
of the whole stock.

( To he concluded in our next.)

The Village Notary.

Julv.

' THE VILLAGE NOTARY.*

MEMOIRS OF A HUNGARIAN LADY.

Recently several works have appeared
in relation to Hungary, and we have now
before us two ; the one a national romance,
the other a narrative of the leading events
of the last two years, proffering to rectify
many erroneous notions in regard to them.
The former is accompanied by a preface,
and the latter by a historical introduction,
from the pen of Francis Pulszky.

Until within a few years Hungary and
its affairs have excited but little interest or
attention : In its struggle for freedom, the
key note was struck to awaken a respond-
ing song of encouragement and sympathy
wherever the light of liberty had spread.
At the present time, well written works,
illustrative of Hungarian life, can scarcely
fail to be acceptable.

The Baron Eotvos, a poet and politician,
ranks as one of the most popular authors of
his own country. His sympathies are as
much with the poetry as with the princi-
ples of her great struggle. His own histo-
ry, as given by his friend, is almost as full
of adventure as that of the hero of his tale.

His grandfather was of high rank. His
grandmother, a passionate woman, and a
Magyar, was incensed at her son (the au-
thor's father,) marrymg a German lady,
the Baroness Lilien, and consequently re-
fused to acknowledge, or even to see her
grandson, from the time of his birth. The
part taken by the author's father, and by
his grandfather, the Baron Ignor Eotvos,
in the political movements of their day,
caused both to be held in disrepute among

the Reublican party, and so offended the
Magyar grandmother that she left her hus-
band's house. It had also its effects upon
the earlier years of our author, who found
himself shunned by the boys at the public
school, and heard his family name, of
which he supposed he might justly be
proud, openly denounced by his feUow
students. The German lanofuagre was at
that time spoken in fashionable circles, and
they reproached him with not knowing the
Hungarian, saying that he, no doubt, like
his father and grandfather, would prove a
traitor. His private tutor, Iransinsky, a
staunch republican, obtained a strong in-
fluence over the mind of his pupil, which
was soon manifest in a Hungarian oration,
addressed by Eotvos to his school fellows,
informing them that although his ancestors
had served the House of Austria, and be-
trayed the interests of his country, 7^(?,
(the Baron Joseph Eotvos,) would be
" liberty's servant and his country's
slave !" This apparently boyish outbreak
of enthusiasm was founded on a settled
principle and purpose. In 1829, when the
great reformer. Count Szechenyi published
his plans, the party of national progress
grew in streno;th and numbers, and the
Baron, as did many of the educated young
men of the day, joined the liberal opposi-
tion party, and afterwards made the tour
of Europe. The financial crisis of 1841
reduced the Eotvos family from wealth to
poverty, and our author was compelled to
live by his pen. This reverse had been

* The Village Notary ; A Romance of Hungarian Life. Translated from the Hungarian of Baron
Eotvos, by Otto Wenckstem. With introductory Remarks by Francis Pulszky. New York: D.
Appleton & Co. 1850.

Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady. By Theresa Pulszky. With a Historical Introduction, by Francis
Pulszky, Philadelphia : Lea &, Blanchard. 1850.

1850.

The Village Notary.

predicted some years previous, by Made-
moiselle le Norm and, the notorious Parisian
Soothsayer. She also foretold his mar-
riage, and that he would become a minister
of state — both which predictions, though
laughed at then, were in time fulfilled.
Her final prophecy, that he would die upon
the scaffold, alone remains without much
probability of completion. When the
duplicity of the Vienna cabinet became ap-
parent, and when Jellachich was preparing
to invade Hungary, Eotvos fled to the
Austrian capitol, and from thence, when
the revolution of October broke out, to
Munich, where he has remained in volun-
tary exile. " May my friend," says Fran-
cis Pulszky, " succeed in pouring balm into
the fresh wounds of the country ; and may
his works alleviate, though it be but for a
moment, the anguish which in this season
of sorrows, eats into the heart of every
Hungarian . " We warmly second the wish,
and the work before us gives good promise
of its fulfilment.

Eotvos evidently completed his romance
in a spirit different from that in which he
commenced it. Desiring that it should
••'act as a lever upon the vis inertia of the
political condition of his country," he com-
mences as a satirist, but ends as a poet.
Intending to draw a caricature of political
errors, he seems to have been led on by
the serious romance of his own nature to
complete a work of fiction. The sudden
downfall of the institutions, and the great
changes in the political and social life he
has attempted to portray, would rather
tend, we imagine, to deepen, than to de-
crease the interest of the story.

We are not satisfied, for any length of
time, with mere amusement. The ro-
mance or novel writer, confers but a small
boon, if he pleases only the fancy, and ex-
cites, without elevating the imagination.
Romantic fiction soothes and delights, but
unless it appeal to the higher qualities, un-
less it stimulate and call into action a sense
of the sublime, unless some great truth
be impressed, some serious purpose exhib-
ited, a profound interest can never be sus-
tained. The romance writer, like the au-
thors of a higher literature, must either
sympathize, and help to carry out the high-
est progressive principle of the age in which
he writes, or he will hold, even in the re-
gions of fiction, but a short and limited

VOL. VI. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

reign. The Baron Eotvos may hope to
secure, in this view, a lasting reputation:
Having suffered in his own person many of
the evils he describes, he is consequently a
true and feeling painter. His hearty love
of the honest, homely, Hungarian character,
and his habit of close observation, give him
a power of singling out peculiarities ; his
own varied experience affords insight into
the heart of things, that to common obser-
vation, have only an exterior, and he is
enabled to startle us with lessons of reality,
when we are looking only for the amuse-
ment of fiction. One never forgets, in the
narrative of " The Village Notary," that
the condition of society, as it existed then,
was ripe for change, nor that out of the
heavy experience of those times, arose af-
terwards, as must ever arise under oppres-
sion, a reaction of equal force : Having
continually before us the thought of what
has since occurred, the story wears a
more convincing aspect of truth.

There is no intricacy in the plot. The
political condition of the country is shown ;
the Hungarian character and mode of life
illustrated ; the abuses of the law and the
fallacy of mere circumstantial evidence ex-
emplified ; and finally, the author has sketch-
ed his own hcau ideal of a true " nature's
nobleman," — a man good and great under
trial and misfortune, showino;how the most
adverse circumstances may be controlled by
integrity and force of character. Though,
from apparent change in the leading design
it lacks unity, the style is unaffected and
free. Nothing ostentatious appears from
first to last, to inform one iofnorant of the
fact, that the author has himself experienc-
ed any of the vicissitudes he recounts, and
though the moral reflections are sometimes
cynical, they usually end in a courageous
cheerfulness that atones for the fault.

The story proceeds in a natural manner,
and may be agreeably traced in outline.
The leading characters are, Mr. Jonas
Tengelyi, the village notary ; Viola, a rob-
ber, possessing many of the characteristics
of Rob Roy, but " worn with a difference,"
which excludes the charge of plagiarism ;
Mr. Paul Skinner, a very disagreable
Hungarian district justice ; and Mr. Cats-
paw, the attorney, respecting whom, by the
way, our author makes a grand mistake,
assuring us on the first page that " Mr.
Catspaw, the solicitor of the Rety family,
5

The Village 'Notary.

July,

is prepared at all times and in any place,"
to prove certain facts relative to them ; and,
finally, neglectful of this assertion, killing
him off at the end of the story. Through
this discrepancy we discern another proof
of the probable interrefrnum and change
of purpose before alluded to.

In his hero, our author has sought to
personify the sturdy, phlegmatic, yet poetic
nature of the national character ; the pride,
generosity, and sound common sense ; that
veneration for family ties, out of which arises
patriotism ; that keen sense of injury, which,
however long suppressed, dies not away,
but sooner or later finds expression ; and
that grave solemnity, so deeply rooted in
the Hungarian nature, and so opposite to
the turn for ridicule in the Austrian taat
the latter often makes the Hungarian the
butt of his wit ; while the Hungarian, it is
said, distrusts the Austrian, and feels that
to him his best nature must ever remain
unknown.

The residence of the Notary, and the
scene of the principal events, is the village
of Tissart, in the flat country bordering on
the Theiss — " the yellow Theiss, which,"
says our author, " is not only the best cit-
izen of our country, — for it spends its sub-
stance at home, — but is also the luckiest
river in the world, since nobody interferes
with it." On a hill, the only one for
many miles around, we are thus introduced
at the opening of the story to its hero : —

" Every aristocracy has its marks of dis-
tinciion. Long nails, a tattooed face, a green
or black dress, a button on the hat, a ribbon
in the buUon-hole, a sword or a stick with an
apple, — these are a few of the marks which
in various times and places have served and
still serve, to separate them from the common
herd; which, wherever that strange animal
— man — has left the savage state and become
domesticated, part them asunder from their
birth to their dying hour; and which, in the
most civilized couniries, show you by the very
galiows that the culpiit is not only a thief,
but also a plebeian. Nature, too, has her no-
bility; she, too, puts marks of distinction on
her aristocrat, by which you may know her
elect, in spite of all the preachers of a general
equality. Nature does not, indeed, compete
with civilization in ennobling a man's fathers
that lived before him, or the babe unborn that
is to call him father; but there are cases in
which Nature's nobility is unmistakeabjy ex-
pressed in individuals. Any man that has
once seen the notary Jonas Tengelyi, will

confess that my statement is correct ; and to
make this fact still more comprehensible, I
will add that Tengelyi's nobility dates more
than a hundred years back, and that, in the
present instance, Nature had all the advan-
tages which the ' use.^' could give her.

Tengelyi is about fifty years of age, though
his thm locks, sprinkled M'ith flakes of gray,
and the deep wrinkles with which Time has
marked his forehead, would cause you to
think him older ; but then he is like a sturdy
oak, with gnarled roots and branches bearing
witness to its age, while its leaves are still
fresh and green, and show that there is a
strong and hearty life in it. Tengelyi's manly
form and erect bearing under his silvery locks,
and his shining eyes beneath his wrinkled
forehead, bespeak him at once as a man whom
Time has not broken, but steeled ; and who,
like colors that have seen many a battle-tield,
in the course of years, had lost nothing but
his ornaments."

The son of a poor clergyman, ambitious,
courageous, full of enthusiasm for all things
noble and generous, with an ardent love of his
kind, and hatred of tyranny and meanness,
always ready by word and deed to oppose
injustice, Jonas Tengelyi passed the usual
number of years at the German Universi-
ties in the study of the law, preparatory
to that political career which was his choice
in life. In the town where he commenced
practice he soon attracted notice, but after
daring to take up a civil process against
one of the assessors, whom he all but forc-
ed to refund a certain sum of money which
that gentleman had condescended to accept
as a loan from a poor peasant, he fell into
disrepute, was shunned by his colleagues,
and warned out of his house by his land-
lord ; and the self- constituted advocate of
the poor barely escaped being ignominious-
ly suspended from his functions. By force
of talent and energy, our lawyer again rose,
but through the skilful duplicity and un-
suspected malice of his pretended friend,
Hajto and others, he found himself duped
and betrayed. His regained populaiity
passed away, and even his early friendship
formed at Heidelberg with Rety, when
they were fellow-students, fell into coldness.
He married a portionless girl, and was ob-
liged to resign his dreams of glory, and ex-
ert all his energies to obtain a mere liveli-
hood. After years of struggle with poverty,
he at last obtained the vacancy of Notary in
the village of Tissart.

The interest of the story turns upon the

1850.

The Villo.ge Notary.

abduction of private papers, important to
the Notary, and also of others in his keep-
ing, belonging to the curate Vandory, and
of great consequence to the Rety family.
These papers are stolen from Tengelyi's
house by hired agents of the Lady Rety
and of the Justice Skinner, actuated by
different but equally urgent motives. The
documents are saved, at the risk of his life,
through the interference of the outlaw
Viola, who thus testifies his grateful sense
of the protection afforded to his wife and
children by Tengelyi's daughter, the tender
and delicate Vilma. " The characters of
young ladies," an eminent critic has said,
" are, to the novelist, of all others the most
difficult to render interesting ; " nor is this
a libel on the sex. The artist, with less
skill produces the bold outline and strong
coloring of his foreground, than he elabor-
ates the softer lights and shades of the dis-
tance. The poet and the novelist find it
easier to draw the strong, rough lines and
obvious peculiarities of the male, than the
finer and more evasive distinctions of the
female character. With " young ladies,"
in particular, the proprieties and etiquettes
of society restrain the outward expression,
and the even tenor of their life calls out but
few peculiarities. Thus Vilma, probably
intended as the heroine, excites less inter-
est than Susi, the outlaw's wife. Proud of
her husband, and full of confidence in him,
as soon as she perceives that he is doubted
by Tengelyi^s family, Susi refuses to receive
their hospitality, and goes at once to seek
out his retreat and prove his good faith to
them. Her relation of her own and Viola's
story exemplifies much that is noble and
beautiful in the character of each.

"'Yes, I was a merry girl!' said Susi^ 'I
didn't think I could be happier, and I thank
God for my happiness. But this was not all.
It is since I knew Viola that I know what it
is to have a heaven on earth. At first I did
not think that a man such as he could love
me. Viola was wealthy. He inherited a fine
farm from his father. Next to the notary's,
his house was the finest in the village; he
had splendid cattle, — how then could 1, poor
orphan, ex})ecthim to love me ? When I w^as
reaping the harvest in the field, and he stopped
by my side with his four beasts, and helped
me to tie up the corn, — or at the Theiss, when
he filled my pails, — or at weddings, when he
brought me bunches of rosemary, I said to
myself, ' Viola is good, aye, very good and

kind ;' but I never thought that he would
marry me, and I prayed that such proud
thoughts might be kept out of my mind. But
when he called at Christmas, and asked me
whether I loved him, and when I did not reply
to that, but looked down, and he took me in
his arms and said that he would marry me in
the spring, oh ! it was then I felt giddy with
happiness, and I fancied the angels of heaven
must envy my joy !'

' Poor, poor woman !' said Mrs. Ershebet,
drying her tears.

' A proud woman I was then !' cried Susi,
' ay ! a proud woman indeed, and a happy
one ! The whole world seemed to me one
large marriage-feast ; my happiness took
away my breath, and I could fiave wept at
any moment. But that was nothing to my
happiness in my husband's house^ and when
our first child was born, and we had to take
care of our little Pishta. Oh ! and God
blessed our house and our fields; and our cattle
were healthy, and our wheat was the finest
in the countty. There's many a bride enters
her husband's house with a happy heart ; but
I, proud woman, thought each day more
blessed than the last, nor did I ever think of
my wedding-day, I was so happy !'

Her heart was oppressed with the reminis-
cences of the past. For some moments she
did not speak ; and when she continued, it
was with a hoarse and low voice, as though
that breast of hers had not breath enough to
tell the tale of her woe.

^ And then you see.' said she, 'it breaks my
heart to think that all is lost now. We were
not overbearing in our happiness. We never
offended any body. My husband paid his
taxes and rates, and served his fifty-two robot-
days; he was kind to the poor — aye, very
good and kind, for God had blessed us. He
was wealthy ; but then he was but a peasant,
and among the gentry there were those that
hated him. The attorney — may the Lord find
him!' said Susi, shaking her fist, -Ae hated
my husband, for he was the speaker of the
other peasants when they had a complaint to
make. And the justice too sw'ore he'd have
his revenge, for he wanted to go after me ;
but I, as an honest woman, told him to leave
my house, as it was my duty to do. I was
always anxious lest something might come of
it, though my husband told me we had no
reason to fear either the attorney or the jus-
tice, so long as he did his duty. But the gen-
try plot together, and a poor man's innocence
cannot protect him from their revenge. \fs
now two years since I was brought to bed
with a little daughter. Early that morning I
was in a bad way : — my husband was with
me, and so were you, Liptaka, when the at-
torney sent to us — I think the midwife had
told him about the way I was in — to arder Viola

The ViUage Notary.

JuIt,

to take four horses to the Castle, and drive
my laJy to Dustbury. ]My husband spoke to
the haiduk ; he said' he could not go that day,
and that his horses had done more service that
year than those of any of the other peasants ;
but that he would be glad to go any other day.
And we thought all was well ; but the haiduk
came back, saving that my husband must do
his duty, and that he must come, for that he
had the best horses in the village. Yioia was
angry, but I entreated him to send the ser-
vants with the horses, which he did, though
reluctantly, because he did not like to trust
them with a stranger. But my travail had
just begun, when the haiduk came back with
the servant, sayin? that Viola must come, for
mv ladv was afraid of any body else driving.
And Viola saw my sufferings, and knew that
I wanted him to be near me: he said they
might do as they pleased, it was enough that
he had sent the horses, and he wouldn't stir
from the spot — no I not for the king's own
son. But the haiduk said, he'd do the same if
it was his own case : yet, for all that, he
would advise my husband to go. considering
that the justice was at the Castle, who had
Bworn an oath that he'd have him brought up
per force ; so he'd better look to the end of it.
Now my husband is violent, and at times ob-
stinate : he sent word to the justice that he
had done his robot for that year, and he
wouldn't go to save his soul from perdition.
The haiduk went away, and after that I know
not what happened, for I got so faint I could
neither hear nor see : but the neighbors and
the Liptaka tell me that the justice came with
his men, cursing and abusing Viola, whom
they bound, while I lay bereft of my senses,
and dragsred him to the Castle !"

' It's quite true I' cried the Liptaka ; • yes I
it's quite true. I followed them as they led
Viola away. It was a fearful sisht, 1 tell
you; he refused to walk, and cast himself on
the ground : he was so angry I and 3Ir. Skin-
ner dragged him away as you would a pig.
Ever}- body was horritied, and all the people
from the village wept and followed them,
though none dared to help him. But we wept
in our minds, and murmured when they beat
him, poor innocent fellow ! because he would
not walk — for beat him they did with sticks
and fokosh, while the judge walked along
with many fearful oaths and threats. And
when we came to the house, the justice exam-
ined the haiduk before us, asking him wheth-
er he had been at Viola's, and told him that
he was summoned to service, and what Viola
had said, and Lord knows what besides I and
at last he said, -I'll tie you up for it. my fine
fellow 1' ami sent for the deresh : for he said,
*ril serve you out for contempt of the county.'
And he said, ' Lash him to the deresh.' Now
Viola stood among the Pandurs : and though

1 were to live a hundred years, I'd never for-
get what a sight it was when he stood in the
yard, with his head and face covered with
blood, and his lips blue with biting them !
They had untied his hands to lash him down ;
and when he was in the yard he tore away
from the haiduks and made a leap like a lion,
shouting, • Stand back, every man of you !'
And they stood: but that incarnate devil,
Skinner, cursed them, and swore he"d kill
them if they did not tie him down. They
made a rush to seize him. But Viola caught
up an axe which had been used for wood-
cutting, and which the devil put in his way.
He seized the axe and spun it round, and two
of the fellows fell welterins: in their blood.
Oh I and he raised the bloody axe, and rush-
ing through them he ran home, got a horse,
and rode off to the St. Vilmosh forest. One of
the men he had struck died of his wounds,
and Viola has been an outlaw ever since,"

' And a robber ever since that day I' cried
Susi. wrinsring her hands. ' May God bless
you, Mrs. Tengelyi, for what you did for me
and my poor children! I'll go now and try
to find my husband. If he knows aught of
the stolen things, or if he can trace them, you
need not fear : Mr. Tengelyi shall not lose
his property.'

' What are you about V said Mrs. Ershe-
bet : ' do you think I will let you go in this
wav V

' Don't he afraid I' cried Susi, with a bitter
smile. ' I'm sure to come back I I leave you
my children : and though I om a robber's
wife, trust me, I'll never leave my children.'

'I did not mean that^ Susi,' replied Mrs.
Ershebet, holding; out her hand : 'but you are
still in bad health, and to walk about in thia
cold weather cannot be good for you.'

' Thank you. but I'm pretty well now. The
air of the heath will do me good. But stay
here I cannot. You suspect Viola: I know
you do. The Jew accuses him, and so do
others. He was in the village — there's no
denying that ! His bunda has been found in
this room. Everything is against him, and
people cannot know that it was quite impos-
sible for him to do that of which they accuse
him. It's a dark matter, but I will have it
cleared up. I'd die if I were to remain here
and listen to all the horrid things they are
sure to speak of my husband,' And Susi
turned to leave the room.

'Poor woman I' sighed ^Irs. Ershebet.
' She. at least, deserves a better fate !'

Susi had reached the door, but when she
heard these words, she turned round and cried,
' A better fate ? Trust me, if I were to be
born again, and if I were to know all that has
happened to Viola, still I would not have
another husband. If they hang him. I'll sit
down under the gallows, thanking God that I

1850.

The Village Notary.

was his wife. There is not such another
heart on the earth as his. But^ adieu ! and
may God bless you !'

The enemies of Tengelyi, knowing that
the missing papers contained his only evi-
dence, undertook to dispute his long estab-
lished claim to nobility. A series of high-
ly exciting incidents delay their restora-
tion, and Tengelyi is treated as a peasant
or villam. Viola, who has rescued the pa-
pers and is anxious to restore them, throws
a letter in at the Notary's window, ap-
pointing a rendezvous for that purpose.
Here our author betrays an incompetency
of arrangement. The papers might as well
have been thrown in as the letter, and thus
the distressing circumstances which arise
out of the meeting avoided.

By a close chain of circumstantial evi-
dence Tengelyi is nearly convicted of the
murder of Catspaw. The outlaw, who,
though not deliberately, was the real per-
petrator of the crime, and had escaped,
saves his benefactor by yielding himself up
to justice.

The affair of the electioneerinsr strife be-
tween the conservative and anti-bribery
men is humorously described. The Lord
Lieutenant, Count Maroshrolgyi visits the
county, and is greeted with an address
prepared for the occasion. The land-hold-
ers and voters are assembled at the house
of the candidate Bantorrgyi. Of quite an
opposite character to the foregoing extract
is the followinsr :

" Of a sudden the doors of the apartment
were flung open, and a servant rushed in
shouting, ' His excellency is at the door !'

' Is he ] Goodness be — where's my sabre V
cried Shoskuty, running to the antechamber,
which served as a temporary arsenal, while
the rest of the company ran into the next
room, where they fought for their pelisses.

' I do pray dornine spectabilis ! but this is
mine. It's green with ermine !' cried the re-
corder, stopping one of the assessors who had
donned his pelisse, and who turned to look for
his sword. The assessor protested with great
indignation, and the recorder was at length
compelled to admit his mistake. Disgusted as
he was, he dropped his kalpac, which was
immediately trodden down by the crowd.

' Where is my sword T Terrem tette V
shouted Janoshy, making vain endeavors to
push forward into the sword-room, while
Shoskuty, who had secured his weapon, was
equally unsuccessful in his struggles to ob-
tain his pelisse.

' But I pray — I do pray ! I am the speaker
of the deputation — blue and gold — 1 must
have it — do but consider !' groaned the worthy
baron. His endeavors were at length crowned
with success, and he possessed himself of a
pelisse which certainly bore some similarity
to his own. Throwing it over his shoulders,
Baron Shoskuty did his best to add to the
general confusion, by entreating the gentle-
men to be quick, ^for,' added he, -his excel-
lency has just arrived !'

The lord-lieutenant's carriage had by this
time advanced to the park-palings, where the
schoolboys and the peasantry greeted its arri-
val with maddening ' Eljens !' The coachman
was in the act of turning the corner of the
gate, when the quick flash and the awful roar
of artillery burst forth from the ditch at the
roadside. His excellency was surprised; so
were the horses. They shied and overturned
the carriage. The torch-bearing horsemen
galloped about, frightening the village out of
its propriety, as the foxes did when Samson
made them torch-bearers to the Philistmes.
Mr. James, following the impulse of the mo-
ment, came down over his horses head ; the
deputation, who were waiting in Bantorny's
hall, wrung their hands with horror. At
leagth the horses ceased rearing and plunging;
and as the danger of being kicked by them
was now fairly over, the company, to a man,
rushed to welcome their beloved lord-lieu-
tenant.

The deputation was splendid, at least, in
the Hungarian acceptation of the word, for all
the dresses of its members were richly em-
broidered. Shoskuty in a short blue jacket,
frogged and corded, and fringed with gold,
and with his red face glowing under the
weight of a white and metal-covered kalpac,
felt that the dignity of a M'hole county was
represented by his resplendent person. Thrice
did he bow to his excellency, and thrice did
the deputation rattle their spurs and imitate
the movement of their leader, who, taking his
speech froii the pocket of his cloak, addressed
the high functionary with a voice tremulous
with emotion.

' At length, glorious man, hast thou entered
the circle of thy admirers, and the hearts
which hitherto sighed for thee, beat joyfully
in thy presence !'

His excellency unfolded a handkerchief
ready for use; the members of the deputation
cried ' Helyesh !' and the curate of a neigh-
boring village, who had joined the deputation,
became excited and nervous. The speaker
went on.

' Respect and gratitude follow thy shadow ;
and within the borders of thy country there is
no man but glories in the consciousness that
thou art his superior.'

The Village Notary.

July,

'He talks in print ! he does, indeed,' whis-
pered an assessor.

' I beg your pardon,' said the curate, very
nervously, ' it was J who made that speech.'

' Tantcene ani'mis ccelestibus ires ? These
persons are dreadfully jealous,' said the asses-
sor. Shoskuty, turning a leaf of his manu-
script, proceeded :

' The flock which now stand before thee' —
(here the members of the deputation looked
surprised, and shook their heads) — 'is but a
small part of that numerous herd which feeds
on thy pastures ; and he who introduces them to
thy notice' — (Shoskuty himself was vastly as-
tonished)— ' is not better than the rest : though
he wears thy coat, he were lost but for thy
guidance and correction.'

The audience whispered among themselves,
and the lord-lieutenant could not help smiling.

'For God's sake, what are you about 1'
whispered Mr. Kriver. ' Turn a leaf !' Baron
Shoskuty, turning a leaf, and looking the pic-
ture of blank despair, continued :

'Here thou seekest vainly for science —
vainly for patriotic merits — vainly dost thou
seek for all that mankind have a right to be
proud of "

The members of the deputation became un-
ruly.

'They are peasants thou beholdest, '

Here a storm of indignation burst forth.

'In their Sunday dresses '

*Are you mad, Baron Shoskuty'?'

' But good Christians, all of them,' sighed
the wretched baron, with angelic meekness :
' there is not a single heretic among my flock.'

'He is mad ! let us cheer 1 — Eljen ! Eljen !'

' Somebody has given me the wrong pe-
lisse !' said Shoskuty, making his retreat ;
while the lord-lieutenant replied to the ad-
dress to the best of his abilities, that is to say,
very badly, for he was half choked with sup-
pressed laughter.

But the curate, who had displayed so unu-
sual a degree of nervousness at the commence-
ment of the address, followed Shoskuty to the
next room, whither that w^orldly man fled to
bemoan his defeat.

' Sir, how dare you steal my speech V cried
the curate.

' Leave me alone ! I am a ruined man, and
all through you !'

'Well, sir, this is well. You steal my
speech and read it. Now what am I to do ?
I made that speech, and a deal of trouble it
gave me. Now what am I to tell the bishop
at his visitation on Monday next V

'But, in the name of Heaven, w^hy did you
take my cloak V

' Your cloak V

' Yes, my cloak. I am sure my speech is in
your pocket.'

The curate searched the pockets of the pe-

lisse, and produced a manuscript. 'Dear
me !' said he, wringing his hands; 'it is your
cloak.' And the discomfited orators were
very sad, and would not be comforted."

Zengelyi's early friend Rety is truly de-
scribed by young Kalman. " He is weak,
and his weakness neutralizes the best feel-
ings of his heart. The wickedness and
folly of this world are not at the doors of
the wicked and foolish alone, but also at
the doors of those honest and good men
whose weakness and laziness — let me say
whose gentility, — cause them to suffer what
they have power to prevent. WhenZengelyi
is accused of murder, Rety, to whom a sus-
picion against him is impossible, over-
whelmed at the thought of his own past
neglect would fain show, too late, the kind-
ness, that exerted in season, might have
saved his friend from ruin. The high
bearing of Zengelyi is perfectly in charac-
ter :

" Rety, the sheriff", though deeply moved,
was a silent spectator of the scene ; for the cold
politeness with which Tengelyi deprecated
his interference whenever he attempted to ad-
vocate his cause, prevented him from express-
ing his sympathy. He now came up to the
notary and assured him, with a trembling
voice, that, come what might, he would use
the whole of his influence to extricate his for-
mer friend from his present painful position.

' I thank you, sir,' said Tengelyi, coldly, as
he turned to the speaker, ' I must confe.'ss I
was not aware that we were still honored by
your presence under my roof. I thought you
had accompanied Mr. Skinner; for, as I take
it, the transaction which excited your interest
is now over. Everything is in the best order,
and the crime, it appears, is fully brought
home to me.'

'Tengelyi,' said the sheriff, with deep emo-
tion, ' do not treat me unjustly. What brought
me to this house, was my wish to assist you
by my presence, and to induce Skinner to
treat you with kindness and moderation.'

' If that was your intention,' retorted Ten-
gelyi, ^ it would have been wise not to have
used your influence for the election to that
post of a man whom the presence of his chief
does not prevent from abusing the powers of
his office.'

The sheriff was confused.

'I will not argue that point with you,' said
he; 'but what I wish to assure you of is,
that, however circumstances may speak
against you, I still am convinced of your in-
nocence. I assure you, you can rely upon
me !'

1850.

The Village Notary.

'Sir!' said the notary, 'there was a time
when I did place my trust in my friends ; but
they have since been kind enough to convince
me that friendship is far too pure and lofty to
descend to this poor world of ours. I shall
shortly be called upon to appear before my
judges; and if you, sir, think you have
strength enough to forget the friendship which
you have hitherto shown me, it will give me
pleasure to see you on the bench. Pardon
me, if I leave you. I have but two hours to
myself, and I wish to spend them with my
wife and daughter.'

And, bowing low to the sheriff, Tengelyi
seized Vandory's hand and led him from the
room. Rety sighed and left the house."

Should these specimens induce any to
look fai^ther into the romance of Hunsiiar-
ian life, they will not be disappointed, for
they are not selected ai the best, but only
as best suited to illustrate our own obser-
vations. We close the volume with a
sigh, sympathizing in the author's mourn-
ful yet beautiful and not unhopeful con-
cluding address to his country :

" Plain of Hungary ! Thy luxuriant vege-
tation withers where it stands; thy rivers flow
in silence among thy reed-covered banks :
Nature has denied thee the grandeur of moun-
tain scenery, the soft beauty of the valley, and
the majestic shade of the forest, and the way-
faring man who traverses thee will not. in
later years, think of one single beauty which
reminds him of thee ; but he will never forget
the awe he felt when he stood admiring thy
vastness ; when the rising sun poured his
golden light on thee; or when, in the sultry
hours of noon, the Fata Morgana covered thy
shadeless expanse with the flowery lakes of
fresh swelling waters, like the scorched-up
land's dream of the sea which covered it, be- [
fore the waters of the Danube had forced their
way through the rocks of the Lon Gate; or
at night, when darkness was spread over the
silent heath, when the stars w^ere bright in the
sky, and the herdsmen's fires shone over the
plain, and when all was so still that the
breeze of the evening came to the wanderer's
ears, sighing amidst the high grass. And
what was the feeling which filled his breast
in such moments '? It was perhaps less dis-
tinct than the sensations which the wonders
of Alpine scenery caused in him : but it was
grander still, for thou, too, boundless Plain of
my country, thou, too, art more grand than
the mountains of this earth. A peer art
thou of the unmeasured ocean, deep-colored
and boundless like the sea, imparting a freer
pulsation to the heart, extending onward, and
far as the eye can reach.

Vast Plain, thou art the image of my peo-

ple. Hopeful, but solitary ; thou art made to
bless generations by the profuseness of thy
wealth. The energies which God gave thee
are still slumbering ; and the centuries which
have passed over thee have departed without
seeing the day of thy gladness ! But thy ge-
nius, though hidden, is mighty within thee!
Thy very weeds^ in their profusion, proclaim
thy fertility ; and there is a boding voice in
my heart which tells me that the great time is
at hand. Plain of my country, mayst thou
flourish ! and may the people flourish which
inhabit thee ! Happy he who sees the day of
thy glory ; and happy those whose present
affliction is lightened by the consciousness that
they are devoting their energies to prepare the
way for that better time which is sure to come !"

Theresa Pulszky, the ^' Hungarian
Lady," to whose " memoirs" we now turn,
was by education a Viennese and had no
knowledge of Hungary until her marriage
and consequent residence in that country
a few years previous to the tragical events
she describes.

The political standing of her husband,
occasioning her acquaintance with most of
the leadino; men and all the leadino; events
of that period, enable her to present a
series of credible and interesting state-
ments. Madame Pulszky is neither a vig-
orous nor an eloquent writer, and her style
lacks the ease which it may possess in her
native language ; it is, nevertheless, plain
and unaffected, and bears a stamp of truth.

Her residence has been mostly at and
near Pesth. Like most Hungarians, she
is warm in her admiration of the great ri-
vers, the Danube and the Theiss, and
eulogizes their beautiful banks and the pe-
culiar charm of the sea-like plain which
embeds them. The Danube especially,
she considers to have been unjustly treated
by poets and travellers who have lauded
the Rhine to the neglect of her sister
stream. She complains that poets have
not attempted " to stir the treasures of his-
torical recollections reposing in the waves
that wind their course from Donau-Eschin-
Sfen to the Black Sea." That the wino;s
of genius have been disabled from flight
and the free movements of the poet and
historian, prevented by " the straitening
cords of Austrian censorship ;" so that
while the Rhine re-echoes to innumerable
lays, the Danube hears no such melodies.

" More than once I had followed the course
of this river, from Ratisbonne to Vienna, and

The Village Notary.

July,

had been highly pleased with the surrounding
garlands of dark pines, varied by the cheerful
beech and graceful vine. The sumptuous
and venerable Dome of Ratisbonne, the Wal-
halla, a monument of modern eccentricity; the
shattered Castle of Durenstein, where the im-
prisoned Richard Cceur de Lion recognized the
voice of his minstrel, Blondell, — the princely
monasteries of Molk and Gottewei. — the bois-
terous boiling of the waves of the Danube
breaking there, through and over invisible
rocks, called the Strudeland Wirbl, the attrac-
tive town of Linz ; all these formed in my mind
a wonderful picture, illustrative of the Nibe-
ungen, the latter part of which refers to
this very scenery.

But on the other side of Vienna I thought
every interest was exhausted, and every
beauty effaced. When the vision of Hungary
rose, it always was the fertile, treeless, un-
tracked, uncivilized plain, through which the
Danube streamed, like the Volga through the
Asiatic wastes. What was, therefore, my as-
tonishment, when, swiftly carried by the
steamboat from Vienna to Pest, we hardly had
time to mark all the traces of events connected
with the borders, which so transiently passed
our eyes."

In describing a voyage down the Dan-
ube to Pesth, the village of Kaiser-
bersdorf is noticed, once the head quarters
of the Hungarian King, Mathias Corvinus,
and in 1S03 of the Emperor Napoleon pre-
viously to the battle of Aspern and Wag-
ram, in which the honor of the day are due
to the Hungarian regiments and near which
Austrians were, shortly after, sent to fight
against Hungarians,

At a small distance from Petronell a high
tumulus reminds the traveller of the
mighty dominion of the 'Huns and their
king Attila, " unjustl)^ regarded by mo-
dern writers as merely a destructive Asia-
tic chief." " Tradition" says our authoress,
" from the remotest north, throughout all
the German nations, invests him with the
noblest generosity and the most praise-
worthy forbearance, as well as with thatin-
yincible bravery which the French and Ita-
lians ascribe to Charlemagne, and the
Welsh to King Arthur. This tumulus
near Petronell is one of the observatories
mentioned by annalists, where, as in all
directions, as far as his sway extended, At-
tila placed watchful guards who communi-
cated with each other by signs, conveying
tidings with the utmost celerity to his re-
sidence, whether in his moveable tent on
the Theiss, or the imposing Etzelburg, now

Bude on the Danube, " Doubtless," says
our authoress, " Attila is the father of
telegraphic communication in Europe."

Other objects of equal interest are point-
ed out by our lady traveller ; but we have
not time to proceed, however pleasant the
journey with so intelligent a companion.
Neither would we recapitulate in detail,
however varied the version with new and
interestincr statements, the often discussed
subiect of the Hungarian revolution. Abun-
dance of other matter, both informing
and suggestive may be gathered from the
'* memoirs."

Our authoress has a good word for the
Jews, whose position in Hungary she con-
siders much preferable to that which is
grudgingly allowed them in Germany and
elsewhere, owing partly to good humor and
partly to a love of quiet in the Hungarian
peasant, who prefers some one to deal for
him while he basks in the comforts of ori-
ental ease. She has found those of the
" despised race" with whom she has come
in contact, charitable and ready to join
with Christians in the furtherance of
acts of benevolence. Apart as they have
kept from all other nations, they are ne-
vertheless European in such interests and
pursuits as they have in common with those
about them.

The Gipsies on the contrary, as they are
met with in Hungary, are outcasts ; not so
much on account of their race as of their
uncleanly habits, laziness, and bodily weak-
ness, and more than all their taste for gar-
bage^ which they justify by the argument,
" If the animals are good when the butcher
has slaughtered them, must they not be
much better when killed by God himself .'"
They retain their Indian dialect, but not
thek Hindoo worship. Unlike their breth-
ren of the middle ages, they are notorious
cowards, but often excel in music, and form
themselves into complete orchestras ; like
the negro bands of our Southern cities, ex-
ecuting complicated performances without
the knowledge of a single note in music.
" Their plaintive songs, and strains of wild
enthusiasm, are well adapted to the genius
of Hungarian nationality ; and no Hunga-
rian festival" says our authoress " pleases
the fancy without the Gipsies' bands :
They are as much in request at a peasants'
wedding as at an elegant entertainment in
the county haU."

1850.

The Village Notary.

The Gipsies aware of tlieir popularity,
fail not, it appears, to make the most of it ;
and those who have no musical taste what-
ever, take advantage of every wedding,
birth-day, baptism or other festivity, to
torture the ear with their discordant instru-
ments and voices.

Some interestinflf anjricultural facts are
found in Madame Pulszky's book. On the
Pulszky estate^ a manor of 24 thousand
acres, large quantities of sheep were raised,
descendants of the Spanish Merinos (trans-
ferred to Hungary under Maria Therese)
celebrated on account of their excellent
wool, and kept with the nicest care, which
was amply repaid, one hundred being sold
in the English market, under the name of
*'fine German" wool, for from £,20 to
£24 sterling. "No branch of economy"
she says "has been so lucrative to the
Hungarian proprietors as this."

Among other matters of agricultural
interest is the manner in which corn is
raised and harvested. Fields of wheat
covering two hundred acres are not un-
usual. Large numbers of laborers are ne-
cessarily employed at harvest on account of
the intense heat, which rapidly ripening
the grain, it falls out within a few days.
The flail is preferred to the thrashing ma-
chine ; and in the low countries, the scrip-
tural custom of " treading out," is still re-
tained. The corn is heaped in a large open
circle, and in its midst stands the peas-
ant, holding the bridle or cords of his
horses, which are kept running round over
the grain till it is quickly and completely
trodden out.

Several remarkable superstitions of the
country are agreeably related, and some
delightful examples of that predominant
characteristic of the Hungarians, amount-
ing to a religious feeling — a fundamental
principle of their social state — hospitality.
One instance is highly amusing from its ex-
travagance. The Baron Palocsay, a rem-
nant of the old characteristic barons of feu-
dalism, bein^ sometimes in his lofty and
bleak castle in the 'winter season, without
visitors, failed never on such occasions to
send his servants to the high road to look
for travelling carriages, and force their oc-
cupants to turn to the castle, where the
Baron insisted upon entertaining them for
three days, saying, " The Hungarian has a
right to keep his guests three days j if they

are willing to remain longer, it is a great
honor to the host."

In another example, the enforcement
appears to be on the side of the opposite

party : "A Mr. S came to visit a

Hungarian country gentleman and remain-
ed in the house of his host seven years.
This might to us have appeared improbable
had we not an instance ourselves of an En-
glish lady who being as a stranger invited
to breakfast at the house of a benevolent
gentleman in Boston, extended her visit
to eighteen months. The same lady, has,
for the last ten years, been " looking for
a room^'''' and exercising the hospitality
of a wide circle of acquaintances in the
meanwhile.

The wealthy and satirical Count George
Festetics, of whom it was said it could never
be made out whether he spoke in jest or
earnest, so completely was his meaning dis-
guised under the mask of politeness and the
semblance of an awkward humility, afford-
ed another type of the old Hungarian peers,
of whom none now survive. His generosity
and superior taste, his support of agricul-
ture and science, together with the manifest
hospitality of Palocsay, are quite sufficient
to counterbalance the eccentricities of those
two originals.

Among the eminent characters of her
own time, our authoress had the acquaint-
ance of the talented statesman and firm
patriot, the unfoitunate Count Louis Bath-
yanyi. She is deeply afiected by the news
of his imprisonment, brought to her by her
maid servant, just escaped, who had seen
and been spoken to by him in the corridor
adjacent to her cell. " So changed was he
in his appearance," she says, "that the
girl had with difficulty recognized him."

" How could this be otherwise ! Louis
Batthyanyi's haughty brow and eagle eye to
grow furrowed and dim within the walls of a
dungeon. His lofty mind and aristocratic re
serve to be exposed to the searching inquiries
of inferiors, accustomed to deal with vulvar
minds ! Count Batthyanyi, the noble descend-
ant of the Palatines, the stern leader of his
nation, the proud champion of royalty, — to
be imprisoned in his very act of public medi-
ation,— and dragged from court martial to
court martial. What must he have felt!
What must he have suffered !"

This noble martyr of freedom, and for
his convictions, was shot at Pesth, on the

The Village Notary.

same memorable 6th of October, stained
by the execution of so many other Hunga-
rian generals. The terrible scenes of Arad
and Pesth, equalled only by that day of
blood when the Girondists were sacrificed,
and France delivered to the Reign of Ter-
ror, will long be remembered in Europe
and in our own country; and even by the
Russian generals the utmost horror was ex«
pressed.

After the flight of her husband, (it is
amusing to observe, that " my husband" is
the only appellation by which the Hunga-
rian statesman is mentioned,) Madame
Pulszky, at great risk, and after long pro-
tracted delay, escapes with her children and
joins him in England. In the pursuit of a
passport, she meets with a variety of inci-
dents, and with many eminent persons, of
whom she o-ives short sketches of exceedins;
interest. On applying for the interference
of Kossuth, " 1 found the Governor of
Hungary," she says, " not more splendidly
lodged than his ministers."

" I was struck by the care-worn coimte-
nance of the once brilliantly beautiful man.
Bat his manners were gentle and kind as ever,
his accents pure and transparent, so as to give
a particular charm to the most common ex-
pression. It is impossible to converse with
Kossuth, and not to be convinced that nature
framed him to influence his nation. But it is
not the dazzling brilliancy of his personal at-
tractions which mainly constitute his power
over the people. It is his faith in his people,
— a faith firm and irresistible, as the g-lowino-
conviction of the ancient prophets, who were
the impersonation of the religious and politi-
cal feeling of their nation, and appeared be-
fore the throne of the Kings of Israel; as often
as these despised the law."

This is the tone in which all Hungarians
speak of Kossuth. In his eloquent appeals
to the oriental genius of his nation, he al-
ways prophecied success. The faith he
preached, that whosoever is true to himself,
God will not forsake, — that injustice and
perjury prepare their own shame, — and that
even by the invasion would be worked out
the salvation of Hungary, was his own
faith. "His whole soul," says another
Hungarian writer, " was early striving after
freedom, and after all those means by which
that holy treasure could be obtained."

Kossuth was descended from a noble house ;
— his future greatness was predicted from
the characteristics of his youth. Kossuth,

July,

by the circulation of his " Reports of the
Diet," (circulated in manuscript when pre-
vented from printing by the arbitrary con-
fiscation of the press,) was the first to tear
the most powerful means of oppression from
the hands of the Austrian government. For
this he was condemned to three years' im-
prisonment, and, on his release, became the
almost uncontrolled leader of the opposi-
tion. In 1849, when Independence was
declared, he was chosen Governor, and, in
that office, sufficiently attested his great-
ness.

'* In a country," sajs Pragay, the author
before quoted, " hedged in on every side
by hostile nations, and with nothing in hand,
he raised money, arms, and military force
which drove the self-stvled invincible Aus-

trian army out of the land, with a loss of
74,000 men dead or disabled."

By the author of " Revelations of Rus-
sia," we have appended an account of the
condition of Kossuth in Turkey, where he
took refuge, and now remains '' under sur-
veillance j'^'' in the fortress of Schumla.

" I returned with Kossuth into his dwelling,
a,nd will at once proceed to narrate to you
how he was lodged and treated. A mud wall
with heavy oaken gates separated from the
street Cor rather from the triangle I have men-
tioned) this habitation, which consisted of a
single apartment — the reception room of its
owner — whose real abode vi^as in the cham-
bers of his harem, a separate building in an
inner court. On account of this custom, the
best houses in provincial Turkish towns af-
ford but little accommodation to male visitors,
the reception room, which is accessible to the
public, being little more cared for, even by
officials of rank, than with us the chambers,
or the office in the Inns-of-Court, or bye-lanes
of the city, by the luxurious lawyer, cr the
opulent merchant. Kossuth's char-a-banc was
in a narrow yard. Two Hussars w^ere groom-
ing his horses under an open shed, and the
owner of the house, a portly Turk, was sitting
on a small platform smoking his chiboque
complacently. Colonel Asboth, the young
Count Dembinski, and his interpreter, consti-
tuted all the attendance for which his single
chamber afforded possible accommodation.
This one room was of tolerable size, surround-
ed on three sides by a divan, and covered for
about three-fourths of its extent by a carpet,
on the edge of which inferiors in rank and the
Albanian servitors of the host deposited their
yellow boots or red slippers before trespassing
on its precincts. Cloaks, papers, bridles, and
the contents of Kossuth's slender baggage,
were exposed in great disorder about the di-

1850.

The Village Notary.

van, which constituted at night the bed of the
ex-president-governor, his secretary, and inter-
preter. Three wooden chairs and a small deal
table were the only articles of furniture intro-
duced in honour of the guest.

Kossuth's host was chief of the police ; — a
Turkish officer was in attendance to accompa-
ny him whenevf'r he walked out on foot, a
horse soldier in case he chose to ride, and two
or three Albanian attendants brought in, as he
called for it, ice-water, or the chibouque.
Under the pretence of solicitude for his safety
and marks of honour, it was clear that M.
Kossuth was closely watched, and all his ap-
plications for a more convenient lodging were,
at this lime, neglected or evaded.

Kossuth's dinner was brought in. It con-
sisted of a Hungarian dish cooked by the wife
of a Hungarian soldier. It was served in a
brown earthenwaie dish, and partaken of with
an iron spoon. After dinner. Count Dembin-
ski came back with his Countess, and the con-
versation took a lighter turn.

Within the precincts of the fort, or citadel,
I found Meszaros, the Perczels, Bem, old
Dembinski, Guyon, Count Zamoyski, Mr.
Longworth, and a number of officers lodged.
Outside the fortress, but within the city walls.
Count Casimir Batthyanyi, his lady, his
cousin, and many more Hungarians, were
quartered. The soldiers, the Polish and
Italian legions, were encamped on the shore
of the Danube."

In regard to his eloquenc(
"Writer says : —

the

same

" If the test of eloquence be to move and to
persuade, he is assuredly the most eloquent of
all men living. The masses admiringly term
his style, in addressing them. Biblical, and
perhaps do not inaptly characterize it. His
enemies reproach him justly with being a poet,
and assuredly his writings and his speeches are
filled with poetry of the highest order, — but
they fall into the most grievous error when
thereby intending to imply that he is nothing
but^ a poet. The distinctive peculiarity in
which he differs from all other popular leaders
I can remember, who have been gifted with
that poetical genius which is so important a
constituent of eloquence, is the rare combina-
tion, with this talent of an equal aptitude for
figures, facts and administrative detail. There
are two men in him. The Kossuth eloquence
with tongue and pen in half the languages of
Europe, who can raise the whirlwind of pas-
sion in the masses, and lead the people as
Moses did the Israelites; and the logically
argumentative Kossuth of deliberative assem-
blies, the administrator and financier, who
writes a secretary's clear round hand, and
enters willingly into the most laborious detail.

Add to this, the most fervent patriotism, "and
an integrity and disinterestedness which has
never been assailed except by notorious hire-
lings of Austria, or on the authority of writers
whom I could show to be either Austrian em-
ployes — men owing their bread to Austrian
patronage, or ignorant of every language spo-
ken in the country they pretended to describe.
You will say from all this, that I, who repu-
diate so energetically the idolatry of hero-
worship, have fallen into it. It is not so. I
am perfectly awake to Kossuth's faults, which
are serious and many. He is too soft-hearted.
He could never sign a death-warrant ; he was
hardly ever known to punish. I believe, that
if Kossuth had a servant who could not clean
his boots, he would never think of superseding
him, but clean the boots himself. On this
principle he wastes his time and energies, in
details in which he should have no concern, and
wears out. if not his untiring mind, a body
which would be otherwise robust. These
weaknesses, which might be amiable in an in-
dividual, are fatal in one who is literall)' a
nation's representative. But I believe that he
has judgment enough to see, and will have
sufficient determination to correct these faults.
In conclusion, I can only say, that after the
calamitous issue of the struggle which he di-
rected, the people called him /a?//er Kossuth —
wear shreds of his portrait on their bosoms —
invest the hoarded savings in his notes, which
I have seen purchased at 20 per cent., though
their possession is felony, and that if he could
present himself upon the frontier with four
hundred thousand muskets, a few presses and
some bales of paper, four hundred thousand
soldiers would rise up, and he would find his
paper money received as eagerly as before.
The lands on which that. paper is secured, the
Magyars say that the Austrians cannot carry
away, and cannot sell for want of purchasers.
They will not believe in the permanent sup-
pression of a constitution and a Diet which
dates eight centuries and a half, and Kossuth
is, in their eyes, the impersonation of that
Diet. The peasantry affectionately remember
Kossuth as her emancipator, and the proprie-
tors gratefully recal that to the measures into
which his eloquence persuaded them is due
that hearty reconciliation between all classes,
which has made the Magyar nation the only
one on the continent of Europe, in wdiich,
amid its misfortunes, all heart-burnings be-
tween caste and class are set at rest."

With the failure of her efforts for free-
dom, the interest in regard to Hungary has
in some measure ceased, yet, as a people
who have suffered and been strong, as the
victims first of oppression, and lastly of
treachery, we must feel the awful sublimity
of the deep silence that has fallen upon

The Village Notary.

July,

them, and, with a trembling voice, we ven-
ture to ask, with our authoress, " Is it the
etillnsss which is spread over the grave
yard, or the oppressive heaviness which
precedes the storm?"

Philosophy regards them with a doubtful
contemplation. We know not whether to
rest upon the past, the present, or the fu-
ture. Yet, is not life a totality ; and can
the past, the present, and the future be
separated .'' Memory the guide, and hope
the support, unite to inform the present.
Below the waters that inandate the great
plain of Hungary, its verdure remains ; and
as it is the trick of our human nature amid
the severest storms, when rocks and quick-

sands surround us, still to "cast the anchor
of hope amid the shoals of lesser evils,"
we are prone to feel that Hungary may not
yet be blotted out from among the nations.
She sleeps as in death, but the cloud that
overshadows her may break away, and the
light of Heaven warm her again to life.
Her sons may not despair.

Hidden and deep, and never dry.

Or flowing, or at rest,
A living spring of Hope doth lie

In every human breast.
All else may fail that cheers the heart,

All, save that fount alone ;
With that and life at once we part.

For Life and Hope are one.

1850.

The Poets and Foetry of the Irisli.

THE POETS AND POETEY OP THE IRISH.

ST. SEDULINS— ST. BINEN— ST. COLUMBCILLE— MALMURA OF OTFTAIN— THE STORY OF THE SONS

OF USNA— M'LIAG POET TO O'BRIAN.

In the preface to his noble collection of
European Poetry, Mr. Longfellow express-
es his regret that he had not some speci-
mens of the Celtic Muse to include in it.
To all men of enlarged culture the regret
will seem most natural, since all such know
that among no ancient people was the poetic
profession more zealously cultivated, or the
character held in greater reverence, than
with the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Celts.
In the Pagan times, the Celtic Bards re-
sembled much the sacred order of Hindoos,
or the Mandarins of letters in China, being
not only poets, but also priests, legislators,
and annalists. After Christianity was es-
tablished in the western isles, the priestly
office was separated from the rest, but the
remaining duties continued to devolve on
the Fear-dana, or man of poetry.* The
estimation of his art carried him up to the
level of all these honors ; his seat was at
the right hand of the king, and liis harp
was emblazoned on all banners as the pecu-
liar insignia of his race.

The conversion of the Celts to Christ,
and the modification of Bardism consequent
thereon, was a work of the fifth and sixth
centuries. Augustin of the Angles, Aidan
of Northhumberland, Patrick of Armagh,
and Columbcille of lona, stand all within
that era. From the same age we can con-
secutively trace the Celtic school of poetry.
Its great founder, Ossian, son of Fingal,
lived two centuries before, but we cannot
here enter into the intricate and interesting
antiquarian questions concerning his writ-
ings, locality, and precise period. We

* "Dan" was the art of Poetry, — Duan, a small
poem; Bolg-an-Dana, a collection of poems;
Fear-Dana, a man of poems ; Ran, a stanza ; Av-
ran, a concluding stanza.

commit Ossian, for the while, to the Gods
who look after neglected reputations, and
pass on to the firm ground of Christian
times and contemporary chronicles.

And, first, of the Bardic office : In peace,
they recited the oral, or common law to
the Brehaine^ or assembly of Judges ; kept
the coronicles of the clan ; mediated be-
tween hostile kinsmen or tribes; gave tes-
ti^nony as to the marches and wearings ; in
war, they marched with the fighting men,
and dwelt in the camp ; before battle, they
recited the exploits of past heroes, the
praises of the chiefs, or prophecies of victory.
Often, the faithful minstrel was found dead
upon his harp in the thickest sward of the
slain .

The education of the bard was long and
rigorous. He had to study twelve years,
giving three to each of four divisions of the
art, then existing — hymns, the praises of
the good, or didactics, battle songs and gen-
ealogies. When the student was admitted,
he received an honorary cap {lairaid)^ of
conical form, not unlike the Tyrolese hat.
An Irish Feardana, or Ollamh, (Doctor,)
was obliged to know three hundred and fifty
poems, as a Gallic Druid — if we believe
modern research — was obliged to know
30,000 verses.* Courts of Poetry were
held, like the Cours d'' Amour and Cham-
bres de Rhetorique of the French, in which
provincial bards emulate each other, and
kings and princes were both competitors
and patrons. The rewards were gold,
jewels, ornamented harps, steeds, garments,
and precious books. So late as the year
1774, a bardic assembly continued to meet

* Transactions of the Celtic Society of Paris,
quoted in Mc Arthur's work on Ocsian,

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

July,

at Burrin, County Clare, and Bunting's
revival of th m at Belfast, in 1793, was
one of the modes by which he obtained
those rare old airs, preserved to us moderns
in Moore's Melodies. At these courts of
poetry, the Professor of the Art were re-
ceived with great ceremony by the local
Chief. We have an account of the cere-
monies in the fifteenth century at Rath-
Imayn, in Offally, where tw^o such sessions
were held during the year. The chief,
" Calvach O'Connor," received the poets
without the lawn of the castle, " mounted
and on horseback," while the oldest poet,
or arch-poet, led them up the hall and in-
troduced them to the lady of the land,
*' dressed in cloth of gold," seated on the
dais at the upper end of the hall.* A scribe
stood by, taking down the names and local-
ities of all who attended.

Public lands were set apart for their
maintenance, and their persons were consi-
dered sacred, even by enemies. One of
the early Irish kings obtain an odious noto-
riety for offering violence to a bard, and the
nameCeann-sallagh(" evil-headed"), stuck
to all his posterity. The malediction of a
bard was supposed to be fatal to reason and
to life, of which we have a cuiious instance
in the Irish Annals, at the year 1414, where
the Lord Deputy Stanley, having plunder-
en the O'Higgins, a poetic family, it is
gravely recorded, " the O'Higgins then
satirized John Stanley, who only lived five
weeks after, having died of the venom of
the satire." "This," adds the same authori-
ty, " was the second instance of the poetic
influence of Nial O'Higgins' satires, the
first having been all the Clan Conway
turning grey the night they plundered Nial
at Cladain."! For the sak of concordance
it is worth noting that a like superstition
prevailed in early Greece, as indicated in
the Odyssey.

" 0 King to mercy be thy soul inclined,
And spare the Poets ever gentle kind :
A deed like this thy future fame would wrong,
For dear to God and man is sacred song."

Even still, Apollo does sometimes vin-
dicate his own !

After the Celtic christian era, there befel

* Annals of the Four Masters, A. D. 1427.
t " Annals of the Four Masters," (English and
Irish,) Dublin University Press. 1846-7.

a deadly feud between the Poets and the
Priests. It was, at first, a struggle for pre-
cedence, but grew into a struorgle for sub-
stantial power. By the influence of some,
who were both Saints and Singers, a truce
was made, but there always remained a
moiety of the old leaven under the surface
of amity. Even till our own days, the two
intellectual classes were distinctly separate.

Of those who were both Priests and
Poets, there are left us four notable names :
Sedulins, Benignus, Columbcille, and Aen-
gus, the Culdee.

Sedulins {^Hibernicc ^edihmi) flourished
about A. D. 450, accordinoi; to Mabillon,
Dupin and Usher. He was an Irish Mis-
sionary Priest in France. He wrote " Ca-
ruine Paschale," a poem, in heroic metre,
chiefly desciiptive of the miracles of the
old and new Testament,'' but this, like Pe-
trarch's epic, is forgotten, while his beauti-
ful hymns remain, as ftdl of vitality as the
religion they embody. Says Edmund
Burke — " I read one of his hymns, which
glowed with all the poet ; the spirit of it
might be said to ascend, like the spiiit of a
martyr flying from the flames." * * *
" Wherever they (his works) are, they
will shine like stars."* This is a translation
of one of them :

THE HYMN : " A SOLUS ORTUS CARDINE."t
I.

" From where the glorious sun doth spring,
To where he sinks — his bright work done —

Let all to Christ in praises sing.
The blessed Virgin's Son.

II.
Oh ! w^hat a sweet and mystic plan,

Jehovah leaves his golden throne,
As man to free his fellow man —

As god to save tiis own.

III.
How proud that humble maiden's doom.

In whom God's grace divinely glows —
Who bears a secret in her womb.

Of which she nothing knows.

IV.

The humble dwelling of her breast

Becomes God's temple, undefiled ;
And she, His purest, brightest, be^t.

Brings forth her wondrous child.

* Prior's Life of Burke, p. 293.

tMy friend D. F. McCarthy, in the Introduc-
tion to his " Poets and Dramatists of Ireland,"
(Dublin, ]846) has given the above admirable
translation of this Hyma.

1850.

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

She travails with that royal boy,

Of whom the angel Gabriel spoke —

For whom the Baptist leaped with joy,
Ere yet on earth he woke.

VT.
Within a wretched crib He lies —

A shivering, weak, unwelcome guest —
And milk alone His wants supplies

Who fills the young bird's nest.

VII.
But angels guard that humble throne,

And joyful hymn the Man-God's birth —
And firtt to shepherd men is shown

The Shepherd of the Earth !

viir.
Let Earth's weak race and Heaven's great host,

In fondest tones of rapture pray —
To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

Forever, and for aye !"

The influence of this Sedulius on the
Latin Church, was far spread and long en-
during That royal pedagogue, King Chil-
peric, wrote two books of latin verses " in
imitation of Sadulins," A. D. 562 ; and
and Bede says that Andelhem, the first
Saxon Hymnologist of England, wrote
"his book, de Virginitate^ which is in both
prose and verse, in imitation of Sedulins."*
Two General Councils adopted his poems
into the Roman Ritual, and so lately as
1583, an English Archbishop commended
his latin specially to the study of the Eng-
lish schools.! Some say he died a simple
priest in France ; some, that he was Bishop
of Oretto, in Spain. We say nothing as
to this.

Saint Binen, or Benignus, a disciple
of St. Patrick, and his successor in the see
of Armagh, has also left a very cuiious col-
lection of ancient poem and prose tracts,
called Leahher na-n-Gcart — " the Book
of Rights." This book was compiled at
Tara, from various Pagan authorities,
which thereafter were duly committed to
the flames, as heathenish and dan2;erous.
Saint Benignus died in 465 or 467.

One of his metrical chronicles or records,
has been thus rendered into English by
James Clarence Mangan.

* Quoted in Wharton's Dissertation, No. 2,
English Poetry.

t Strype's Life of Archbishop Trindall, p. 313.

THE WILL OF CATHAREIR MOR.

Here is the will of Cathnreir Mor,
God rest him .'
Among his heirs he divided his store.

His treasures and lands.

And, first, laying hands
On his son Ross Faly, he blessed him.

" 31y Sovereign Power, my noblene??,

My wealth, my strength to curse and bless.

My royal privilege of protection

I leave to the son of my best affection,

Ross Faly, Ross of the Rings,

Worthy descendant of L eland's Kings !

To serve as memorials of succession

For all who yet shall claim their possession

In after-ages.
Clement and noble and bold

In Ross, my son.
Then let him not hoard up silver and gold.
But give unto all fair measure of wages.
Victorious in battle he ever hath been ;

He therefore shall yield the green
And glorious plains of Taia to none.

No, not to his brothers !

Yet these shall he aid

When attacked or betrayed.
This blessing of mine shall outlast the tomb.
And live till the Day of Doom,

Telling and telling daily.
And a prosperous man beyond all others

Shall prove Ross Faly !

Then he gave him ten shields, and ten rings, and

ten swords,
And ten drinking-horns ; and he spake him those
words:
" Brightly shall shine the glory,

O, Ross, of thy sons and heirs.
Never shall flourish in story

Such heroes as they and theirs I"

Then, laying his royal hand on the head
Of his good son, Dariy, he blessed him and said :—
" 3Iy Valor, my daring, my martial courage.
My skill in the field I leave to Darry,
That he be a guiding Torch and starry
Light and Lamp to the hosts of our age,
A hero to sway, to lead and command,
Shall be every son of his tribes in the land !
O, Darry, with boldness and power

Sit thou on the frontier of Tuath Lann,*
And ravage the lands of Deas Ghower.t
Accept no giftj for thy protection

From woman or man.
So shall Heaven assuredly bless
Thy many daughters with IVuitfulness,
And none shall stand above thee,
For I, thy sire, who love thee
With deep and warm affection,
I prophesy unto thee all success

* Tuath Laighean, viz. Noith Leinster.
iDeas Ghabhair, viz. South Leinster.

The Poets and Foetry ofiJie Irish.

July,

Over the green battalions

Of" the redoubtable Gallons."*

And he gave him, thereon, as memorials and meeds,
Eight bondsmen, eight handmaids, eight cups, and
eight steeds.

III.
The noble Monarch of Erin's men
Spake thus to the young Prince Brassal, then, —

" My Sea, with all its wealth of streams,
I leave to my sweetly-speaking Brassal,
To serve and to succor him as a vassal —

And the lands whereon the bright sun beams
Around the waves of Amergin's Bayt
As parcelled out in the ancient day,
By free men through a long long time

Shall this thy heritage be enjoyed —

But the chieftancy shall at last be destroyed
Because of a Prince's crime..
And though others again shall regain it

Yet Heaven shall not bless it,

For Power shall oppress it.
And Weakness and Baseness shall stain it !"

And he gave him six ships, and six steeds, and six
shields.

Six mantles and six coats of steel —
And the six royal oxen that wrought in his fields.

These gave he to Brassal the Prince for his weal.

IV.

Then to Catach he spake,

" My border lands
Thou, Catach, shalt take,

But ere long they shall pass from thy hands,
And by thee shall none
Be ever begotten, daughter or son !"

V.
To Fearghus Luascan spake he thus —
" Thou Fearghus, also, art one of us,

But over-simple in all thy ways

And babblest much of thy childish days.
For thee have I nought, but if lands may be bought

Or won hereafter by sword or lance
Of those, perchance,

I may leave thee a part.

All simple babbler and boy as thou art !"

VI.

Young Fearghus, therefore, was left bereaven.
And thus the Monarch spake to Creeven.

" To my boyish hero, my gentle Creeven,

Who loveth in Summer, at morn and even.
To snare the songful birds of the field.
But shunneth to look on spear and shield,

I have little to give of all that I share.

His fame shall fail, his battles be rare.

And of all the Kings that shall wear his crown
But one alone shall win renown."

*Gailians, an ancient designation, according to
"O'Donovan, of the Leinstermen.

finbhear Ainergin, originally the estuary of the
Biackwater.

And he gave him six cloak'', and six cups, and seven

steeds.
And six harnessed oxen, all fresh from the meads.

VII.

But on Aenghus Nic, a younger child.

Begotten in crime and born in wo,
The father frowned as on one defiled,

And with louring brow he spake to him so : —

To Nic, my son, that base-born youth.
Shall nought be given of land or gold ;
He may be great and good and bold.
But his birth is an agony all untold,
Which gnaweth him like a serpent's tooth.
I am no donor

To him or his race —
His birth was dishonor ;
His life is disgrace !

VIII.

And thus he spoke to Eochy Timin,
Deeming him fit but to herd with women.

" Weak son of mine, thou shalt not gain
Waste or water, valley or plain.
From thee shall none descend save cravens.
Sons of sluggish sires and mothers.
Who shall live and die,
But give no corpses to the ravens !

Mine ill thought and mine evil eye
On thee beyond thy brothers
Shall ever, ever lie !"

IX.

And to Oilioll Cadach his words were those : —

" O, Oilioll, great in coming years
Shall be thy fame among friends and foes
As the first of Brughaidhs* and Hospitallers !
But neither noble nor warlike

Shall show thy renownless dwelling ;
Nevertheless

Thou shalt dazzle at chess.
Therein supremely excelling
And shining like somewhat starlike !"

And his chess-board, therefore, and chessmen eke.
He gave to Oilioll Cadach the Meek.

Now Fiacha, — youngest son was he, —

Stood up by the bed ... of his father, who said,
The while, Caressing
Him tenderly —
" My son ! I have only for thee my blessing.
And nought beside —
Hadst best abide
With thy brothers a time, as thine years are green."

Then Fiacha wept, with a sorrowful mein ;
So, Cathaeir spake, to encourage him, gaily.

With cheerful speech —
" Abide one month with thy brethren each.
And seven years long with thy son, Ross Faly.
Do this, and thy sire, in sincerity,
Prophesies unto thee fame and prosperity."

And further he spake, as one inspired : —
" A chieftain flourishing, feared and admired.
Shall Fiacha prove 1

1850.

The Foets and Poetry ofiJie Irish.

The gifted Man from the boiling Berve*
Him shall his brothers' clansmen serve.
His forts shall be Aillin and proud Almain,

He shall reign in Carman and Allen ;t
The highest renown shall his palaces gain
When others have crumbled and fallen.
His power shall broaden and lengthen.

And never know damage or loss ;
The impregnable Naas he shall strengthen,
And govern in Ailbhe and Arriged Ross.
Yes! O, Fiacha, Foe of strangers,
This shall be M?/ lot!
And thou shall pilot
Ladhrann and Leevenf with steady and even
Heart and arm through storm and "dangers !
Overthrown by thy mighty hand

Shall the Lords of Tara lie ;
And Taillte's fair, the first in the land.
Thou, son, shalt magnify.
And many a country thou yet shalt bring
To own thy rule as Ceann and King,
The blessing I give thee shall rest
On thee and thy seed
While time shall endure,
Thou grandson of Fiacha the Blest!
It is barely thy meed,

For thy soul is childlike and pure !"

*' Here ends the Will of Cathaeir Mor,"
says the translator, "who was king of Ire-
land. Fiacha abode with his brothers, as
Cathaeir had ordered. And he stayed for
seven years with Ross Faly ; and it was
from Ross Faly that he learned the use of
arms ; and it has since been obligatory upon
every man of his descendants who aspires
at excellences in martial exercises to receive
his first arms from some descendant of Ross
Faly.

"As for Cathaeir himself, be it known to
all that he lived in good health for a season
after making his will, but that when some
years had elapsed, he went to Taillte, and
there fought a battle, and was killed there
by the Fian of Luaighne. To commem-
orate his death the quatrain was written by
that complete poet, Lughair !

" A world-famed, illustrious, honorable man,

The pride of his tribe in his day,
King Cathaeir,the glory and prop of each clan,

Was killed by the Fian, in Magh Breagh !"

Saint CoLUMB-ciLLE, who, in the As-
sembly of Dumceat, A. D. 580, saved the
Bardic order from extinction, has also left
some fine religious hymns, in Gallic and

* Bearhha, viz., the river Barrow.

t The localities mentioned here were chiefly re-
sidences of the ancient kings of Leinster.

X Forts upon the eastern coasts of Ireland.

§ Taillte, now Teltown, a village between Kells
and Navan, in Meath.

VOL. VI. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

Latin. In his youth he had known pro-
scription— having been banished, in conse-
quence of a quarrel about a book, copied
at school. The owner of the original
claimed it on the ground that " as to the
cow belonged the calf, so did the copy to
the original." A contest having ensued
between the friends of each party, Columb-
cille left Ireland for Scotland, where the
King of the Picts granted him lona, one of
the Hebrides, as the home of his order.
He established here a famous school,
which, in the words of a great authority,
became "the luminary of the west.*"
The sanctity of the island made it a favor-
ite place of sepulcure for the Kings of Ire-
land, Norway and Scotland. Among
others, Macbeth is buried in lona.

One of the shortest and earliest of the
hymns of Columb-cille, is addressed to the
Creator, for protection amid storms, and
has been thus translated by the Rev. Wil-
liam Todd, in his history of "the Irish
Church."

HYMN TO THE CREATOR.

" Hear us, O God ! whom we adore.
And bid thy thunders cease to roar ;
Nor let the lightning's ghastly glare
Affright thy servants to despair.

Thee, mighty God, we humbly fear;
With Thee no rival durst compare :
In loftier strains than earth can raise
Thee, angels' choirs unceasing praise :
Thy name fills heaven's high courts above.
And echoes tell Thy wondrous love.

Jesu ! Thy love creation sings.
Most upright, holy. King of kings ;
For ever blest shalt Thou remain,
Ruling with truth thy wide domain.

The Baptist who prepared thy way.
Ere he beheld the light of day,
Strengthened with grace from God on high,
Rejoiced to know Thy day drew nigh.

Though strength was gone, and nature fail'd,
God's aged priest by prayer prevail'd;
A son was given — a Prophet came.
The great Messiah to proclaim.

The gems that shine with dazzling light
Upon a cup of silver bright,
Resemble, faintly though it be.
The love, my God, I bear to Thee."

This zealous missionary of the early time
was mortally taken, while engaged in his
favorite task, copying the Gospels on vel-

* See Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides, for a
beautiful apostrophe to Columb-cilles memory.
Also Pemant's " Western Islands/' for the local
1 legends.

Tlie Foets and Poetry of tlie Irish.

July,

lum. He had just got midway in a cliap-
ter, when he laid down his stilus^ saying to
one of his disciples, "finish the rest;"
soon after he departed. He was the Saint
John of the Celts, a being full of love, pu-
rity and devotion. Obit. A. D. 593.

Of Aengus Culdee's biographical poetry,
I have no specimen. Of the Culdees them-
selves, whose chief duty was the cultiva-
tion of psalmody, we know but little.
Their first Abbott Moelruan, died in 787.
Their order consisted of clerks and lay bro-
thers. " Two of the monks always re-
mained in the oratory until the time of
Matins, while the remainder were taking
their rest ; and by these the whole hundred
and fifty psalms were repeated. They
were succeeded by two others, who per-
formed the same service, from the hour of
Matins till morning." Aengus, a disciple
of the Founder, Moelruan, composed the
Irish psalm known as the Felire Aenguis,
or Festology of Aengus, towards the end of
the same century. He was educated at
Clonenagh, in Leinster, and lived in a
hermitage called after him, Desert- Aengus.
This is all we know of him, except his
works, which yet remain in ancient ec-
clesiastical collections, an evidence of the
simplicity and piety of his age.*

The order of Culdees (spouse of God,)
has raised much modern controversy.
With one class they have been great fa-
vorites, on account of their supposed Pro-
testantism. Campbell sings —

" Peace to their shades ! the pure Culdees

Were Albyn's earliest priests of God,
Ere yet an island of the seas

By foot of Saxon monk was trod.
Long ere her churchman by bigotry
Were weaned from wedlock's holy tie."

Eeaullura.

Whether the Culdees belonged to the
holiest of the three orders of the Celtic
Saints, (those who excluded women from
their retreats,) I know not. Saint Kevin
and Saint Sananus did not sympathize with
Campbell's hero — •

" And I have sworn this sacred sod
Shall ne'er by woman's feet be trod !"

While the Celtic Church thus enlisted
poetry into its service, the local Bards con-
tinued to sing of beauty, battle, the chase,

* In Messingham's " Floriligum/' &c. i

and the carouse, in a manner not altogeth-
er so saintly. Their favorite themes were
the voyage of Milesius from Spain to Ire-
land ; the arrival of the Picts in Ireland,
and their passage over to Scotland (or Al-
byn, as the Celts always termed it;) the
contests of Nial, Dathy, and other chiefs,
with the Roman legions at the wall of Se-
verns and in Cisalpine Gaul, the exploits
of Fingal, or Fin, "a mighty hunter" and
warrior, and the praises of Scotia, Bamba,
and Eirigand Mali, early Queens of the
Colonists. With these they still blended
many Driudical legends of Bide, the queen
of song, of Ogma, the father of letters, of
Tuatha De, the dark magicians, and of
Manaman McLir, the Neptune of their
mythology, who —

" Ploughed the fields of ocean round old Erin" —

and turned the white storm full furrows up
against the rocks, while the folds of his
garments, when shaken, sent out huge
squalls, angry and irresistible.

In this class of poems, there is a goo(J
deal of sameness. Three of them, pub-
lished in Irish, with literal translations by
members of the Dublin Archeological So-
ciety, are before me, — one relates to the
Criuthnians, or Picts, — the others are the
"Duan Albanach,"and "DuanEirenach."
An analysis of the latter may serve to con-
vey an idea of all.

The author, Malmena of Othain, (Obit.
A. D. 884,) begins by querying in very
musical Irish : —

" Let us sing the origin of the Gael,

Of high renown in stiff battles,
Whence did the mighty stream of ocean

Walt them to En 1

What was the land in which they first lived

Lordly men, Fenians?
What brought them for want of land

To the setting of the sun 1

What was the cause that sent them forth

Upon their wanderings 1
Was it in flight, or in commerce.

Or from valor 1

Proceeding with other questions, the
imaginary interlocutor compliments the
poet :

" For thou art learned in the stream of history
Of the sons of Miledh "

1850.

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

Who answers by telling how, in a far
back age —

"A valiant prince took dominion over the world

— The wide spread noisy world ;
Nemhroth his name, a man by whom was built

The very great tower.

Fenus came unto him out of Scythia,

Upon an expedition,
A man, illui:trious, wise, learned.

Ardent and warlike.

There was but one language in the world

When they met ;
Twelve languages and three score

When they parted !*

After recording the wanderings of the
posterity of this Fenus from " the very
great tower" — their abode in Egypt — their
various expeditions by land, as to the shores
of the Caspian, where Agnoman, one of
their chiefs dies — until their settlement in
Spain, from whence sailing afar, Ith, one of
their leaders discovered Eri.

" North-east from the tower was seen Eri
As far as the land of Luimnech ; (Limerick.)

On a winter's evening was it discovered by Ith,
Son of Breagan, ruler of troops."

There is then a tedious recital of all the
names of those who came to settle in Ire-
land on hearing Ith's report, which we will
dispense with. Finally, the Island abori-
gines being conquered, the country was di-
vided between Heber and Heremon, broth-
ers. There was a third brother, " Amer-
gin, the white-knee'd," who, being a poet,
was considered thereby sufficiently provided
for. He was to live alternately with his
brethren the kings, and probably found a
better welcome than Lear did from his
daughters. In one of his transitions from
the North to the South, our Lackland lyrist
was drowned in the river Avoca, which
river has ever since remained the very Cas-
talia of the island. Does not Moore sino; :

" There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet."

These new coming Milesius took the
women of the aborigines for wives, and of
these wives descended the famous race who
lorded it uninterruptedly in Erin for above
a thousand years.

* Upon this the translator (the Hon. Algernon
Herbert) remarks, that 72 is also the Jewish num-
ber of the family of Noah, and of the angels seen
by Jacob in his dream. How much love have not
all nations in common 1

" Heremon took the north,

As the inheritance of his race,
With their antiquity, with their prosperity,

With their rights."

And,

" Heber took the south.

With its victories, with its grandeur.
With its hospitality.

With its vivacity, combined with hardiness.
With its loneliness, with its purity."

And so the clan Milesius became lords
over Erin. Their geneologies and bounda-
ries, the gentle reader may well be spared.

A favorite theme of the bards in the
Milesian times, is the story of the Three
Sons of Usna. They had fled into Scot-
land, or Albyn, from the wrath of Conner,
King of Ulster, and, in lapse of time,
thinking they might safely return, Deidre,
the wife of one of them is said to have
composed this farewell :

deidre's farev^ell to alba.

Translated by Samuel Ferguson, M. B. I. D.

Farewell to fair Alba, high house of the sun,
Farewell to the mountain, the cliff, and the dun ;
Dun Sweeny adieu ! for my love cannot stay.
And tarry I may not when love calls away.

Glen Nashan ! Glen Nashan ! whose roe bucks run

free.
Where my love used to feast on the red deer with

me.
Where rocked on thy waters while stormy winds

blew
My love used to slumber ; Glen Nashan, adieu !

Glendaro ! Glendaro ! where birchen boughs weep
Honey dew at high noon o'er the nightingale's sleep.
Where my love used to lead me to hear the cuckoo
'Mong the high hazel bushes, Glendaro, adieu !

Glenurchy ! Glenurchy ! where loudly and long
My love used to wake up the woods with his song,
While the son of the rock, from the depths of the

dell
Laughed sweetly in answer, Glenurchy farewell !

Glenetine ! Glenetine ! where dappled does roam.
Where I leave the green sheeling I first called mjr

home ;
Where with me and my true love, delighted to

dwell.
The sun made his mansion, Glenetine, farewell!

Farewell to Loch Draynach, adieu to the roar
Of the blue billows bursting in light on the sHore
Dun Fiagh farewell ! for my love cannot stay.
And tarry I must not when love calls away !

On returning to Ireland, the fated sons
of Usna were seized and brought before
King Conner, who condemned them all to

The Poets and Poetry of tlie Irish.

J^y?

death. In Lis liousehold, however, he
could find no executioner, till Maini, sur-
named Rough-hand, whose father one of
the sons had slain, undertook the office and
done the deed. " Then Deidre fell down
beside their bodies, wailing and weeping,
and she tore her hair and garments, and
bestowed kisses on their lifeless lips, and
bitterly bemoaned them. And a grave was
opened for them, and Deidre, standing by
it, with her hair dishevelled and shedding
tears abundantly, chaunted their funeral
song

5)*

deidre's lament for the sons of usna.

The lions of the hill are gone
And I am left alone — alone —
Dig the grave both wide and deep
For I am sick, and fain would sleep !

The falcons of the woOd are flown,
And I am left alone — alone —
Dig the grave both deep and wide.
And let us slumber side by side.

The dragons of the rock are sleeping,
Sleep that wakes not for our weeping ;
Dig the grave, oh, make it ready.
Lay me on my true love's body.

Lay upon the low grave floor
'Neath each head the blue claymore —
Many a time the noble three
Reddened their blue blades for me.

Lay their spears and bucklers bright
By the warriors' sides aright —
Many a day the three before me
On their linked bucklers bore me.

Lay their collars as is meet
Of their greyhounds at their feet.
Many a time for me have they
Brought the tall red deer to bay.

In the falcon's jesses throw.
Hook and arrow, line and bow ;
Ne'er again, by stream or plain
Shall the gentle woodmen go.

Sweet companions ye were ever — ■■
Harsh to me, your sister, never ;
Woods and wilds and misty vallies,
'Were with you as good's a palace.

;0h, to hear my true love singing
. Sweet as sound of trumpets ringing ;
'Like the sway of ocean swelling
.Rolled his deep voice round our dwelling.

■Oh, to hear the echoes pealing
3lound our green and fairy sheeling, t
When the three, with roaring chorus.
Hailed the soaring skylark o'er us.

* Translator's Introductory.
t A jcoittage.

Echo now, sleep, morn and even.
Lark alone enchant the heaven !
Ardans' lips are scant of breath,
Naisdis' tongue is cold in death.

Stag, exult on glen and mountain —
Salmon, leap from loch to fountain —
Heron, in the free air warm ye,
Usna's sons no more will harm ye !

Erin's stay, no more ye are
Rulers of the ridge of war !
Never more 'twill be your fate
To keep the beam of battle straight !

Woe is me by fraud and wrong.
Traitors false and tyrants strong,
Fell Clan Usna bought and sold
For Barach's feast and Connor's gold!
Woe to Eman,* roof and wall ;

Woe to Redbranch, hearth and hall!
Ten-fold wo and black dishonor
To the foul and false Clan Connor I
Dig the grave both wide and deep.
Sick 1 am and fain would sleep ;
Dig the grave and make it ready.
Lay me on my true-love's body !

"This story," says O'Flanagan, "has
been from time immemorial held in high
repute, as one of the three tragic stories of
the Irish. These are, the Death of the
Children of Touran, the Death of the
Children of Lir, and the Death of the
Children of Usna." Of the children of
Touran, the present writer professes igno-
rance, and of the other children, he has
heard only of the daughter of Lir, probably
on account of her undying beauty. Who
that has ever read Moore, can forget the
song of Fionuala| —

" Silent, oh Moyle, be the roar of thy water.
Break not, thou breezes, your chain of repose.

While murmuring mournfully Lir's lonely daugh-
ter.
Tell to the night star her tale of woes,"

This tale of woes was, that she had been
metamorphosized into a Swan, and was
compelled to swim the lakes, of Eri, a Soul,
unsaved and unsatisfied, till the sound of
the first christian bell should break her
sleep, and

" Call'd her spirit to the fields above."

This belief in metamorphoses, so eastern
in it associations, was yet quite general and
popular in Ireland. When Saint Brandan,
after sailing in the western seas, reached

* Eman, the palace of Connor,
t Fionuala — fair shoulder.

1850.

The Poets and "Poetry of the Irish.

tlie promised land, it was just sundown.
He sat beneath a tree, which had a great
many branches, on every branch of which
gat a bird. Just as the sun set, the birds
raised a solemn and glorious anthem, and
on the seafaring saint asking them the ra-
tionale of the music, they told him they
were souls, as yet in a state of probation,
not confined to hell, nor yet quite un-
worthy of paradise !

The swan was a favorite substitute for
departed beauty, as is given in this and
many other instances.

" The poet Mac Coisi, was once on the
bank of the Boyne, when he saw the swans
on the Boyne ; he shot one of them, but
when he took it up, he found it was a wo-
man. The Poet asked her wherefore she
was there. I was in grievous sickness,
said she, and it was supposed by my peo-
ple that I died, but demons put me into
this shape. The Poet took her with him,
and restored her to her own people after-
wards."

This Poet was famous for his adventures.
On another occasion, at Lough Leane, in
Westmeath, " he saw a beautiful woman,
of great size, beyond that of the women of
the time, dressed in green, sitting alone,
and weeping bitterly. He approached her,
and she told him that her husband had
been that day killed at Sidh Codail, and
buried at Clonmacnoise. Mac Coisi men-
tioned this to King Cona;alloch, who set
out to Clonmacnoise, to test the truth of
the story. The clergy then could give no
account of it ; but a monk died that night,
and on digging his grave, they found fresh
blood and bones, and at length, buried
very deep, with the face down, the corpse
of a giant, twenty-five feet high. They
put the body down again, and the next
day, on opening the grave, which to all
appearance was as they left it, the corpse
was not to be found."*

" This legend," says the Translator,
" bears a curious resemblance to some cir-
cumstances in Sir Walter Scott's beautiful
fiction of the White Lady of Averell." He
adds, " the Poet Mac Coisi died A. D.
990."

Birds were favorite allegorical vehicles of

*Irish Version of Nenius' Notes — p. 210. Dub-
lin, 1847.

the Bards. Saint Patrick could not say
his prayers on the mountain of Croagh Pat-
rick, for sundry devils, in the shape of
birds, that came clamorously round him.
On ringing his bell, however, they disap-
peared. In the ninth century, "a belfry
of fire" appeared at Rorsdela, with innu-
merable black birds going in and out of it,
and one great bird in the middle of them,
*' and the little birds went under his wings
when he went into the belfry." This
belfry was very convenient for soothsayers,
as it was made to protect a great variety of
disasters.

Beasts also were resorted to : ** the de-
scendants of the wolf," says the Irish.
Nennius, " are in Ossony. They have a
wonderful property. They transform them-
selves into wolves and go forth in the form
of wolves, and if they happen to be killed
with flesh in their mouths, it is in the same
condition that the bodies out of which they
have come will be found ; and they com-
mand their families not to remove their bo-
dies, because if they were moved they nev-
er could come into them again."*

In good truth, though the country be-
came christian, the Poets remained Pagans
to the heart's core. Their mythology was
not a whit disturbed, except as to the ideas
of the Saviour and the Virgin. In all
other respects they retained their wild, iso-
lated primitive beliefs of their sun worship
and well worship, their faith in fairies, and
incantations, their fear of evil, and esteem
for good spirits, and a most lively credulity
for ghosts, elfs, and "appearances." The
Bealtrime fires were still lit, nominally in
honor of St. John ; the mistletoe and ner-
vaine were still plucked in midnight woods
by light of the quartering moon, or of the
star Sirius ; amulets were still worn against
fairy bolts, shot by invisible archers ; the
favorite oath remained, " by the heavens
and earth, and the four winds," and solemn
incantations were uttered over the child at
its birth, the ship at its sailmg, and even
the milk at its churning !

Thus the imaginative qualities of the
people were kept in perpetual hourly ex-
ercise. They were a people of impresssi-
bility, rather than of denomination. The
winds, the spring wells, the sun and stars
were their destinies, and these they could

* Ibid. p. 205.

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

July,

neither propitiate nor control. Even in
Paganism they were predestinarians.
While the Greeks brought their gods down
from Olympus to the streets of Athens,
and portioned out heaven between them,
the Celts shrunk horrified from any en-
counter with the eternal influences. They
neither arrogated to themselves any spe-
cial divine protection, nor did they slavish-
ly expect the Powers to do that for them
which they could do for themselves. They
were a hearty, self-relying race then, in all
essential points staunch christians, but in
mental characteristics deeply tinged with
the poetic legacies of Paganism.

Their ideas of one, supreme eternal
Deity, was less the clear conception of faith
than the awe-struck conceit of superstition.
The name is to them unutterable, the initi-
als I. 0. W. being the symbol of Godhead.
The Jewish use of the term, Adonia, is a
precise parallel to this. " Each of the let-

ters," says Giraldus, " in the Bardic name
is also a name of itself: the first is the
word when uttered, that the world burst
into existence ; the second is the word the
sound of which continues by which all
things remain in existence ; and the third
is that by which the consummation of all
things will be, in happiness, or the state of
renovated intellect, forever approaching to
the immediate presence of the deity."*

Such were the Celtic doctrines.

After the Christian era, Ireland became
a heptarchy of elective kings, with an arch-
king at Tara, in Meath, which was set
apart as '' the Floor of the King's Table."
Each minor king had his hereditary bards,
and Tara had troops of them, albeit their
harps —

" Now hang as mute on Tara's walls.
As if their souls were fled."

* Hoard's Giraldus Camberensis.

( To be concluded in our next.)

1850,

Education.

EDUCATION.

The Literary world publishes a letter
from Professor Lewis, of Union College, in
which is discussed the question, now be-
ginning to be mooted, whether colleges
meet the demands for education in this
country . Professor Lewis takes the ground
that they do not.

Our colleges have been induced, by the
urgings of the press, to leave the old
scholastic course and its rigid training: in
all that knowledge embraced in the term
humanities^ and to admit into their depart-
ments branches of science of a more prac-
tical kind. They thus gain comprehen-
siveness at the expense of accuracy. This,
Professor Lewis thinks, is not meeting the
real needs of the age, which are too often
in the inverse ratio of their mere wishes.
The country, he says, is flooded with spu-
rious philosophy. Utopian theories of all
kinds, agrarian systems, social reform, are
preached to the people by their self-elected
teachers of this new-light school. Science
is degraded into phrenology, electrical
psychology, mesmerism, etc., and our lite-
rature has become frivolous and inflated.
All this, he thinks, is a consequence of the
colleges yielding to the popular clamor.
They should have braced up the old scho-
lastic course, " embracing that most har-
monious mixture of the pure mathematics,
with classical knowledge, logic, rhetoric,
mental and moral philosophy, together with
the fundamental elements of physical
science, which makes the strong man, the
practical man, the man prepared to make
himself master of any kind of useful or use-
less knowledge he may afterwards choose
to acquire. Instead of this, they have
been drawn away into a more relaxed, di-
luted and superficial course, which has
taken the name of the practical; whilst
experience, as far as the experiment has
been tried, is daily showing that it turns
out weaker men, less truly practical men,

less prepared to meet the flood of quacke-
ry that is pouring from the press, from the
public lecture, and even from the pulpit.''

Professor Lewis rejects the prevalent
opinion, that a man understands his trade
or profession better for being versed in the
principles of science connected with that
trade or profession. The science actually
required for practical pursuits, is smaller,
he says, than is generally imagined, and
the knowledge gained of it by real experi-
ence is better than any found in a more
extensive, but superficial theoretic ac-
quaintance with it. Why should the prac-
tical man study out for himself what the
thorough scientific man can study out to so
much greater advantage } The practical
applications of science must be always the
empirical use of principles brought out in
closet and laboratory. Why, then, he
asks, found mechanical or agricultural col-
leges, in which young men are expected to
be made scientific in three or six months, in
branches that really require the close
study of years }

" It may be said that this would be
making distinctions and classes. It would
make some the generators of knowledge,
others mere passive receivers, and
others again mere nominal applies. But
we cannot help it ; it is nature that makes
distinctions and classes. In the civil cor-
poration there must not only be head and
eyes, but hands and legs, aye, and feet
too, however much the comparison may be
disliked, and these, under the guidance of
that well-trained head, which has been de-
veloped in a system of the highest and
most thorough education ; an education,
even in its highest stages, free to all, yet
so conducted, as finally to work out the
best results from the materials offered ; or,
in other words, from among those whom
nature, talents, circumstances, disposition,
together with the command of the means

Education.

July

and time, may point out as the proper
subjects of such a process. One thing is
settled in nature. There must, and ever
will be, a public head of some kind ; a
wise head or a foolish one ; and the mass
of mankind ever will, and must, think
through it ; at no time, perhaps, more
truly, than when there is the most boast of
each man's thinking for himself. Such a
head there must be. It is one of nature's
laws. If it is not the church, or a well-
educated class, or the best or most rational
part of society, in some legitimate form, it
wiU be the political caucus, or radical asso-
ciations, or a frivolous and usurping litera-
ry class, so styled, or the self-elected priest-
hood of the newspaper press. Through
some organ or other the great mass of man-
kind must ever think. Through such or-
gans as have been last mentioned, the
community are thinking now, with all our
claims to a light, and an independence un-
known in the world before."

Professor Lewis thinks that in moral, as
well as physical science, the real sphere of
our colleges is to rear a class of scientific
men, thoroughly grounded in their particu-
lar departments ; trained gladiators, who
have the weapons and the skill to resist the
attacks of the false morality, the false poli-
tics, and the false science that is flooding
the land.

^' Our colleges, it is said, should aim at
turning out more practical men. But
taking the term in the popular sense, may
we not ask — Is this, indeed, the great want
of the age ? Is it of our own country ?
Have we not practical men, as they are
called, in plenty ? Are we not every day
experiencing the results of their practical
labors, as they are exhibited in Congress,
in Baltimore Conventions, and Philadel-
phia Conventions, and Buffalo Conventions,
and in all the great conventions and little
conventions throughout the land ? Are
they not seen in that demagoguism and
utter degradation of all rationality into
which politicians and the political press of
all parties are rapidly descending, to a de-
gree which is becoming offensive even to
the more right-minded among themselves ;
all this time, too, the people fallino- pari
passu with their leaders, through whom
they think ^ until almost anything is re-
ceived as sound and conclusive reasonino-,
with which their self-appointed guides of

the press may choose to insult their under-
standings ? Have, we, not, indeed, an
abundant supply of such men ? and would
it not be worth while for our colleges to try
and produce a small quantity of scholars, a
little sprinkling of bookworms and pedants
even, — at least, as some light set-off to the
other, and far more numerous class ? It is
the mission of the college," concludes Mr.
Lewis, '' as it is of the pulpit, not to folloiv^
but to guide public opinion — to elevate it
where it is low, to oppose it where it is
wrong, to correct it where it is erroneous."

In these views, there are, we consider,
two radical errors. The first is, that par-
tial instruction is necessarily superficial ;
the second, that the opinions and tenden-
cies of this, or any other age, are given to
it by any men or set of men.

A knowledge of the main principles and
leading facts of a science is surely the very
reverse of what is supei-ficial. It is the
rough outline, the unfilled sketch ; but so
far as it goes, it is true and substantial, not
false and superficial. In the new field of
knowledge that the present day sees
opened to the eye of man, huge systems of
thought and research opening daily on his
mind, while nebulae lie dim in the distance,
offering fresh field for exploration, no life-
time is long enough, no intellect capacious
enough, to examine thoroughly the whole
horizon. The scholar and the man of
science m.ay be profound in the direction
of their favorite pursuits, but from the time
and retirement necessary to reach this per-
fection, they are the more incapable of
broad generalization. They look out on
the world through a single medium, and
from only one point of view. They be-
come mole-eyed, and the little hillock they
have thrown up, hides from them the vast
intellectual universe.

Comprekensixeness is what the times
both demand and need — a width of thouo-ht
that can appreciate and balance extremes,
wedded to no theory, working in the har-
ness of no hypothesis, but with a harmoni-
ous sense of the spirit and general relations
of the vast field of knowledge that Provi-
dence displays for man's use and develop-
ment. This the college seeks to accom-
plish by its less rigid drilling in those studies
that are only the tools of learning, and in
place thereof a bolder dash into the regions
of practical science. And whether this

1850.

Education.

practical science is only a little chemistry,
a little physiology, a dabbling in phrenolo-
gy and mental philosophy, a weak infusion
of political economy and a smattering of
ideas of history, or a strong and manly
training in the foundations and leadins; facts
of each science, whether it is a farrago of
meagre details, or a generous diet of prin-
ciples, rests entirely on the genius of the
teacher.

Another source of error to the advocates
of the old system of education, is the amusing
blunder, that society needs a distinct class
of men to do its thinking. This delusion,
men of the cloister naturally fall into.
Shut out from active life by custom and
position, they hug the belief that the pen,
whose ministers they are, moulds the age —
that solitary thought is the great lever that
moves the world. But behind the vano-uard
of writers, talkers, lecturers, pulpit orators
and rostrum thunderers, lies the great army
of struggling, toiling, writhing, thinking
humanity. The pen finds power alone in
obeying the vis a tergo. The great minds
of every age have only been the expositors
of the spirit of that age. Shakspeare was
not one man, but a hundred thousand men.
The enthusiasm of civil war and relio-ious
commotion were incarnate in Milton. In
Bacon, the shrewdness and hard sense of a
rising commercial activity, rejected the
dreams of scholastics. What in one man
is absurd, in a dozen can be tolerated, in a
hundred is respectable, and in a thousand
is overwhelmino;. There is a moral, as
well as physical power in numbers, and it is
this power that shapes the destiny and
opinions of the day. If, then, we find
politics running intodemagoguism, philoso-
phy into quackery, and ethics into patent
systems of immorality, let us apply the
healing influence to the real source of these
monstrosities. Let us educate the people
who will think for themselves, and not a
class of intellectual Levites, to whom no
man listens.

The college system, from its expense,
could never be adapted to the popular
wants. It has other and greater objections.
In the free race for wealth and distinction,
every man must start into life, full armed
and full grown. At the outset every en-
ergy must be developed, for to be left be-
hind then is not only to be thrust into the
back ground, it is ruin — starvation. The

boy must be trained in the very school
where he will figure when a man ; and
this is the best of all schools — actual
life. What is the wisdom here gained, the
best and most effective wisdom } Who will
deny that it is knowledge of men } The
college-bred youth ever lacks that ready
perception of character, that unconscious
tact, which alone is power. He is a child
in the hands of his fellows, who have
been schooled betimes by real collision
with the world. The years in which he
receives the tone that marks his whole after
life, are spent among books. The time
when the thews and sinews of the soul
should gain their full manly vigor, is lost
in the enervation of intellectual discipline.
It is this that makes the cherished of Alma
Mater weaker, less truly practical than the
lad that has wrenched his diploma from the
unwilling hands of men. There is no time
to restore the balance of character lost by
this one-sided education ; for every man, in
these days, has his bread to earn, a busi-
ness or profession to found. If his lamp is
untrimmed, he must stumble forth in the
dark. If he cannot lead among men, he
must take his place among the rank and
file ; and the youth around whom collegi-
ate honors showered, the future Solon, the
high caste Brahmin, trained to preside over
mind, sinks down amid forms and figures,
and routines, disappointed and broken-
spiiited, " the commonest drudge of men
and things."

The man that has made his way into the
world from small beginnings, is sure to
over-estimate the importance of what is
called a liberal education. He was hardly
able to write his own name, and his sons
shall sit at the feet of Gamaliel. Why
should they not succeed } But where is
the dogged perseverance, patient of toil,
that he gained in the school of adversity }
Where is the keen knowledge of men and
things that he picked up while kicked
around the world, a ragged adventurer }
for his sons have been fortune's favorites,
and all men have smiled on them. There
is one class, we do no deny, to whom
the college is almost indispensable. The
sons of men of undoubted wealth, to whom
is secure a life of ease, who cannot be
made practical men from wanting the in-
ducement of necessity, and who, without an
early and healthy bias, would be forced to

Education.

July,

the companionship of the only class of men
of leisure that this country knows, the idle
and corrupt, find this bias and this resource
in the habits of abstract thought, that only
a youth of books can give. But this class
is small, for we do not include in it that
large division of what is termed our upper
classes, men of uncertain incomes and luxu-
rious households, but who to-morrow may
be beggars, and their children wanderers in
the land. Convulsions in trade render all
business as uncertain as the throw of a dicer,
and commercial men are dwellers on the
sides of a volcano. Here, above all, in the
youth of this class, is needed the strong and
practical knowledge that will fit them for
any lot — quick living tact, and not emas-
culating thought ; a healthy and masculine
nerve, and not the effeminacy of fastidious-
ness and refined tastes. And yet from
among these are our colleges mostly filled.

Study strengthens the strong and weak-
ens the weak. Genius and great natural
energy may repair the corrosion of retire-
ment, while it has gained for action the
deep foundation of knowledge and intellec-
tual acumen. But surely a system that
thus nurtures a few at the expense of the
many, that rears two or three gigantic
minds, but leaves thousands crippled and
blighted, is unjust to the individual, and
adverse to the great principles of national
improvement.

But the college has its sphere, which
nothing else can fill, and which it is too
much the fashion to undervalue. The
wisdom that mankind has already hived up,
is the true starting point for opinion. The
fallacies that have been rejected, the false
philosophy that time has exposed, the
truth that has been well proven, are the
landmarks for this century. Without
these, men's minds are led off by attractive
novelties, bewildered by every ignis fatnus
that sinks away to appear in new and spe-
cious forms. Science viust have its devo-
tees, to combine and systematise the laws,
the principles and the limits of human
knowledge. To check the waste of end-
less and ever renewed experiment, to give
a sound basis for demonstration, and pre-
vent its hurrying into vague and ill-sup-
ported speculation, to fix, in fine, the con-
ditions and real channels of thouo-ht, we
need the full lights of classified experience,
and the testing of rigid analysis. This is

the true work for the men of the closet.
But above the stand-points thus gained,
floats the common mind. From this van-
tage ground arises the true national de-
velopement ; for in such sense only is de-
velopement a reality — a great feature of
our nature, and not an empty name. The
student lays the unction to his shy conceit,
that in silence and by the midnight oil, in
lonely and intense thought, ideas of pro-
gress are evolved. But by broad day the
work goes on. In all intercourse, in all
labor, in all pleasure, by the plough and
on the pave, in saloons and by the camp
fire, wherever men congregate, thought is
busy. From the understanding and will
of the individual^ proceeds the onward
movement of the race. Collision forces
out brighter flashes of genius than all the
concentration of attention. In hurried,
dimly remembered generalization, shooting
gleams of analogies, inperfect, though
acute analysis, we find the sources of this
unwritten wisdom. Whosoever first catch-
es its murmured syllables, whosoever is the
first to hear and obey, writes his name on
history.

In the early days of our Republic, the
youth of the old colonial families were held
up in society and politics by hereditary
wealth and influence. To the extended
views and brooding thought of early study,
thus they added the shrewdness, insight
and wariness gained only in the battle
of life. This made strons; men. There
were giants in those days. But had these
men attempted to stem the current of
public opinion, had they, in fool-hardiness,
wished to turn from its course the true
spirit of the hour, they would have been
swept from their high places, trampled
down by the rushing multitudes.

We do not fall into the Utopian fallacy,
that universal and indiscriminate education
is a panacea for all the woes of humanity.
We do not even think it harmless under all
circumstances. In over-peopled countries,
under unequal laws and unjust distinctions,
where ceaseless, hopeless toil is the lot of
the working man, it is the rashness of the
quack that would strip off the callous skin
that grows under the heavy yoke. To give
the Helot the early mind-awakening which
will only make plain his misery, to show
him the splendors of a higher life, and to
cast him back repining and unstrung, is to

1850.

Education.

plant a discontent that may ripen into
crime. To expand thought is not neces-
sarily to strengthen the will, while it may
increase temptation. What wonder is it
that the spirit should sicken at a life-time
before it of objectless drudgery — that the
quickened mind should reject, at any cost,
incessant, ill-repaid labor? Before you
educate men, set food before them.

But here, in this new world, labor brings
its reward in leisure and abundance. Di-
vision of labor being less extreme, there is
a need of increased knowledge and general
judgment. The operative, no longer
acting with the precision and mechanical
skill of an automaton, but shifting his hand
with readiness fiom one vocation to ano-
ther, novelty of situation and crudeness of
practice demand observation and active
thought. He grasps, with confidence, the
plough handle or sledge hammer, the
wielded axe or the yardstick — the morning
finds him driving his oxen afield, the even-
ing in the rostrum, haranguing his fellow
citizens. We have no doubt that the
American working man has, from the ne-
cessities of his position, a development of
some of the highest powers of the under-
standing. Look into any village library,
and note the nature of the books souo-ht
after by this class — listen in any work shop
throughout the country to the topics dis-
cussed, and you may well believe that
these men are abundantly able and quite
willing to think for themselves. They are
intensely reflective, and if habituated, by
early education, to the terms and phrase-
ology of moral and mental science, would
be at home in the most abstruse and meta-
physical topics. What then shall give the
true direction to this morbid thought }

From the facility with which masses of
men unite in this country to effect a com-
mon object, we are too apt to leave to pub-
lic effort what belongs f^olely to the indivi-
dual conscience and will. " The means of
the only educational system that can be
sufficiently universal to meet the wants of
the age, are at our own door. In the Com-
mon School, open to all, and freed as far
as possible from the stigma of caste, in
cheap books, in evening lectures and schools
for the young apprentice and clerk, and,
above all, in fireside encouragement and
direction, do we find the real solution of
this question. Let the whole education,

moral and intellectual, go on at the same
time. Whatever takes the youth from the
softening influences of home, hardens and
narrows the character; whatever shuts him
out entirely from the severe lessons of life,
weakens ; and whatever defers too long his
drilling in the actual vocation of his after
days, injures him incalculably, by render-
ing him inferior in the practical knowledge
that is to gain him his bread. We doubt,
too, the right of any parent to shift from
his own shoulders the charge of his sons'
moral training. Thrown beyond the res-
traints of affection and respect at the most
impressible period of his life, new passions
springing into life, novelty and the glowing
imagination of boyhood heightening temp-
tation, pleasure most fascinating and drudg-
ery most hateful, what wonder is it that the
very choice of our college-bred youth are
lost to themselves and to the world. In the
simple machinery of family rule are found
the true laws of human improvement ; their
place no artificial system, however ingeni-
ous, can ever fill.

This is the era of public institutions.
Graceful philanthropy covers the land with
charities. The halt and the blind, the
mute, the madman, the pariah, are taken
gently and tenderly by the hand, and their
rugged path smoothed for them. This is
well. Never has the world seen benevo-
lence like that of this day. We compare
it with the past, where the hospital was un-
known, where the lunatic howled in his
chains, and cowered and shrank before the
lash, where captives of war were led ma-
nacled into slavery, and where unfortunates
of all description found death their only
friend, and men seem almost divine in their
searching, omnipresent pity. But too
much of this is only the lame attempt to
fill the place of the kindly domestic feelings
dulled by the disintegrating influences of
the day. Within the small circle of per-
sonal ties and attachment are embraced all
the charities and every duty. Within a
certain extent it includes every object aim-
ed at by public benevolence. Though not as
universal as pure philanthropy, it will make
a thousand times greater sacrifices, clearer
than duty, it can never be hoodwinked by
our self-deceit, and the perception and the
wish go hand-in-hand. There is no safe-
guard like it against the evils of life — the
strong steadies the tottering steps of his

weak brotlier. It is tlie germ of society
and government, and should be preserved
through all development of human intellect
and character.

There is already too much at work to sap
this natural institution of family. The fa-
cility with which the wave of population
surges over the country, or swells the cur-
rent that makes to the West, though a main
cause of the general prosperity and indivi-
dual comfort, is most destructive to the de-
licate cords of relationship. The eagerness
with which, in the flood of intelligence, all
push forward in the social strife, the ex-
citements and risks, in which the universal
competition involves all business, the ne-
cessity which every man feels for his whole
soul's being wrapped in his calling to ensure
even moderate success, have gradually in-
spired a national indifference to social en-

Education. July,

joyments, and to the quiet amusements of
home life almost a disrelish. And yet the
means of creating home faelings were never
more abundant. Of these, the chief is
home education. Cheap books and good
books no man need be without. Concen-
trated knowledge, partial, it is true, but not
superficial, is at hand to give, with its wide-
spread date, the means of the most com-
prehensive generalization, to form not the
pedant, narrow-minded and bigoted, but the
well-read man, — the thinker, with wide
sympathies and wide views, — who alone
makes his mark on the times.

Leave colleges, then, to the tender mer-
cies of supply and demand, and if you
would find a system of education for the
whole American people, seek it in Ameri-
can homes.

1850.

Samuel S. Phelj}s.

SAMUEL S. PHELPS.

The dssire universally felt to learn
something of the personal history of those
men who have acted, and are acting, a more
or less prominent part in the conduct of our
national affairs, is certainly natural, and
can hardly be esteemed improper. An ex-
tended or eulogistic biography of the living,
however, — except in rare cases, — seems to
be premature and out of place. It may be
set down as a general truth, under such
circumstances, that either a strong personal
regard will tempt the writer to exaggerate
the picture he is to draw, and to add here
and there some flattering touches ; or else,
the want of that intimate and actual know-
ledge which can penetrate to the hidden
springs of the whole character — at the same
time that testimony no longer biassed by
personal feelings is not yet within his reach
— will leave only imperfect and distorted
lineaments, where a full and true likeness
is demanded.

To deal with personal topics relating
either to the living or to the dead — but
more especially the former — requires a great
degree of delicate discretion ; for the false
and too partial estimates of a friend are
scarcely less to be shunned than the open
attacks and studied depreciation of an ene-
my. In the present instance, accordingly,
we waive the formal office of biographer
and shall aim simply at a brief record of
what we believe will most interest the read-
er respecting our subject.

Samuel S. Phelps was born at Litch-
field, Connecticut, May 13, 1793. His
father, John Phelps, was a wealthy and res-
pectable farmer of Litchfield, and a soldier
of the Revolution. Soon after the war
broke out, he enlisted in a company of ca-
valry, commanded by Capt. Seymour, of
the same town, which was present at the
Battle of Saratoga, and rendered other
valuable service in the struggle for Ameri-

can Independence. He was the only son
of Edward Phelps, who died at an advan-
ced age, on the same farm where a great
part of his life had been spent, and to the
possession of which his son succeeded.
John Phelps married a lady whose maiden
name was Shcather — also a native of Litch-
field. He had several children, most of
whom still reside in their native town. The
subject of this sketch was one of the older
sons, we believe, and named after his ma-
ternal uncle, Samuel Sheather.

At an early age Samuel was placed un-
der the care of the Rev. Mr. Robbins, of
Norfolk, — who kept a family school for the
instruction of boys, — where he pursued the
preparatory studies required for entering
college. Judge Phelps occasionally refers,
with great apparent pleasure, to the days
he spent with the good Connecticut parson
who laid the foundation of his mental disci-
pline— always speaking of him in affection-
ate terms, and as one of whom he has ever
retained a reverent and kindly remem-
brance.

In September, 1 807, at the age of four-
teen, he entered Yale College, where he
was duly graduated, and with credit to him-
self, though considerably younger than
most of his classmates — among the number
of whom were Hon. John M. Clayton, the
present Secretary of State, and Hon. Ro-
ger S. Baldwin, formerly Governor of
Connecticut, and now one of the United
States Senators from that State.

The winter ensuing was spent at the
Litchfield Law School, where he attended
the lectures of Hon. Tapping Reeve, and
Judge Gould. In the following Spring he
removed to Vermont, and took up his resi-
dence at Middlebury — a town which had
been settled, chiefly, by emigrants from
Connecticut, and, in a great proportion,
from Litchfield County. He there contin-

Samuel S. Phelps.

July,

ued Lis Law studies, in tlie office of Hon.
Horatio Saymour, since a United States
Senator from Vermont. At that time,
(1812,) party spirit ran high: in New Eng-
land, and in the particular region where he
lived, the Federal, Anti-War party was
strongly in the ascendant. Notwithstand-
ing this, however, he was a decided Demo-
crat and a warm supporter of the Adminis-
tration. Soon after hostilities commenced,
he was drafted as one of the 100,000 men
who were to hold themselves in readiness,
and during the Summer was ordered to the
Canadian frontier. He served in the ranks
at Burlington and Plattsburgh, until late
in the Autumn, when he received from
President Madison the appointment of
Paymaster in the United States' Service.
In that capacity he remained, until the
object of his appointment was accomplish-
ed.

Returning to Middleburry, he resumed
his law studies, and was admitted, at that
place, at the December term, 1814, to
practice in the Superior Courts, and in Jan-
uary, 1818, in the Supreme Court. Here
he continued in an extensive and successful
practice, during the next seventeen years,
and until called upon to give up these du-
ties, to fill high and responsible public sta-
tions. Previous to this latter period he
was elected (in 1827) one of the Council
of Censors — a body now unknown to any
other Constitution than that of Vermont,
(though once existing in Pennsylvania,)
which meets every seven years, to examine
whether the Constitution has been faith-
fully observed during the preceding Sep-
tennary, and to propose whatever amend-
ments thereto they may think proper — to
be adopted or rejected by the people. The
address to the people, put forth by this
Council, was written by Mr. Phelps.

One peculiar feature in the Constitution
of Vermont, at that period, was the vest-
ing of the principal legislative power in one
body of men, called the House of Repre-
sentatives— subject, however, to the ap-
proval and consent of the Governor and
Council. The latter was a body of men
consisting of one member from each county
in the state, elected by general ticket. In
1831, Mr. Phelps was chosen a member of
the Legislative Council, and du.ing the
session of the liCgislature of that year, he
was made a judge of the Supreme Court.

This office he held by successive elections
until 1838.

In the autumn of 1838, Judge Phelps
was elected to the Senate of the United
States, and at the close of his term of six
years, was re-elected to the same office in
1844. His second term expires with the
close of the present Congress.

The military appointments held by Sena-
tor Phelps — we may here add — have been,
Paymaster in the United States'" Service ;
Aid to Gov. Galusha ; adjutant of a regi-
ment ; captain of a volunteer company of
Riflemen ; and colonel of a regiment. The
office of brigadier-general he declined in
favor of a friend who stood next in the line
of promotion.

The high reputation which Judge Phelps
enjoyed, as a member of the Supreme
Bench, would, undoubtedly — notwithstand-
ing the too frequent change of judicial offi-
cers in his State — have retained him in that
capacity for many years beyond the time
of his resignation, to enter the Senate, but
for that event. No decisions of the Ver-
mont Bench, we believe, are more highly
valued than his, as contained in the Re-
ports from 1831 to 1838. None, we think
it is generally conceded by the profession,
are more marked by clearness and force of
language, as well as by a deep and thorough
scrutiny of the whole case, in its several
bearings, that exhausts the subject, and
leaves scarcely room for a cavil. The con-
fidence of the people at large in the integ-
rity and abiliiy of Judge Phelps in this ca-
pacity has been rarely equalled, and their
admiration of his judicial character and ta-
lents cannot well be expressed in exagge-
rated terms. As an advocate, his reputa-
tion is not confined to his own State, or to
New England. His arguments before the
United States Supreme Court, at Wash-
ington, have made him very generally
known as one who has few supeiiors as a
cogent and powerful reasoner — one who, at
a glance, can look through the merits and
bearings of a case, and leave no strong
point for his client unoccupied, and no as-
sailable point in the positions of his adver-
sary unattacked. We deem it no impro-
priety to mention here the remark of one
highly distinguished, both as an advocate,
orator and statesman, after arguing a com-
plicated and important case before the Su-
preme Court, in which Judge Phelps was

1850.

Samuel S. PJielps.

bis opponent: "I would rather," said he,
''have met any other lawyer from New
England. Judge Phelps has no superior
there or in the country."

In the Senate, he has been known as a
useful and influential, rather than as a noisy
member ; a man of sound, practical judg-
ment, taking in all the great outlines and
relations of the several questions as they
arise ; acting fearlessly up to his convic-
tions of the rio;ht ; cautious and conserva-
tive, yet not to such an extreme but that
he can recognize and cheerfully adopt eve-
ry real and positive improvement ; true to
the Constitution he has sworn to support,
and to the Union ; and commending him-
self, by his courtesy and candor, as well as
by the acknowledged talents which give
him no slight influence in the Senate, to
the respect and esteem of all parties. He
seldom speaks, unless some important ques-
tion is pending, and unless, on that ques-
tion, he has some well-considered opinions,
or pertinent and original illustrations, which
it is worth the while of the Senate and the
country to hear. His quiet and industri-
ous' labors in the Committee room — and
especially as a member of the Committee
on Claims, and of the Committee on Indian
affairs, in one or both of which capacities he
has rendered valuable and efficient service
for several years — have been highly appre-
ciated by his associates at Washington, and
though less known to the people at large,
have not been valueless to the country.

We are fully warranted by his fellow
Senators in saying, that the power he wields
in the Senate, the consideration in which
his judgment and practical acumen are held,
and the secret, indefinable, yet (on this
account) all the more real and 'egitimate
sway which he unconsciously exercises in
that body, cannot easily be overrated.

During his Senatorial career, thus far, no
occasion, perhaps, has presented itself, fit-
ted to draw out, to the full extent, the
powers of Judge Phelps as a public speak-
er. Able speeches from him, however,
have not been wanting, and there are two,
especially, which have attracted no little at-
tention throughout the country, as well as
much admiration, at home. We now al-
lude to his speech on the bill (known as
Clayton's Compromise) reported by a Se-
lect Committee of the Senate, of which he
was a member, in the Summer of 1848;

and to that on the Vermont Anti- Slavery
resolutions, during the present session. —
From the well-known Anti-Slavery senti-
ment of the people of Vermont, and the
course of Northern Senators generally, he
was placed in a difficult position by his sup-
port of what was, for the moment, almost
universally denounced at the North. Yet,
he never wavered for a moment from his
convictions in obedience to popular clamor,
and he has now the satisfaction of seeing
almost the entire North giving in their con-
sent to his position ; — though he certainly
cannot but regret that the plan of pacifica-
tion and settlement then proposed had been
treated more dispassionately — as, if adopt-
ed, all the present agitations which afflict
the country might have been avoided. No
extract can do justice to this speech, yet
we are impelled to quote two or three para-
graphs, as specimens of his manner of treat-
ing this delicate subject, and of the general
style of his oratory. The Territorial bill,
reported by the Committee, had been stig-
matized by a Senator as "cowardly,"
"skulking," "evasive," and the like.
Our first extract relates to these charo'es :

" Sir, if 1 were to give a definition of a cow-
ard in relation to this matter, 1 should define
it to be one who abandons his principles for
fear of popular clamor ; 1 should define it to
be one who departs from his own convictions
lest somebody who does not understand the
subject, or who does not choose to understand
it, might raise a cry of disapprobation in some
quarter; I should define it to be one who
avails himself of the excitement upon this sub-
ject, and through its aid secures election to
office. The man who acts the part of a po-
litical weather-cock, by indicating the slight-
est whiflle in the political wind, trembles at
the least indication of popular excitement, and
is paralyzed by an opinion which floats to him
upon the atmosphere of some bar-room dis-
cussion.

" I know not what other men may think on
the subject, but in the discharge of my duty
here, if I thought I could depart one ioia from
the doctrines which I have advanced, with a
view to aflfect a decision at the ballot box, my
own constituents would, in their deliberate
judgment, administer a rebuke never to be for-
gotten. 1 know them too well to in-iagine that
they will ever find fault with a strict adhe-
rence to duty, on this or any other subject,
upon the part of their representatives. I have
no hesitation in trusting my reputation, my
standing, and my political existence, to the
deliberate judgment of that people. But I

Samuel S. Phelps.

July,

never will jeopardise their integrity or my own
by yielding to <a momentary impulse, which
may mislead them as it has misled others."

All this is characteristic of the man. No
man is freer from every art of the dema-
gogue, and from all attempts to curry popu-
lar favor by time-serving concessions,
against positive convictions of duty, than
himself.

We make one more extract from this
speech, much farther on, which concerns
the merit of the bill itself.

*' Sir, we have had a great deal of declama-
tion upon the subject. Gentlemen do not seem
able, although the bill is open to their inspec-
tion, to point out its defects, or to show us
how it tolerates slavery. An important argu-
ment as to the effect of the bill, an argument
which goes to explain its legal import and ef-
fect, is denominated sophistry. The very
gentlemen who bestowed the epithet upon it,
have repeated my argument word for word,
and if there be sophistry, then the paternity
lies with them. They have agreed with me
almost entirely, and yet there is something in
the bill which their astuteness has not enabled
them to discover, but which requires sophistry
to conceal. Now, sir, I put the question,
where have we dodged, or endeavored to shuf-
fle oft* the question. Suppose we had recom-
mended to ttie Senate not to act u])on it either
w^ay, but to defer it to a more favorable op-
portunity, it might have been said, that there
was a shuffling off of the question. But I ask
w^here is the shuffling, where is the skulking,
iu relation to it 1 I believe I am about the
last man to be charged with skulking, for,
judging from present appearances, I am stand-
ing alone among the Whigs of the North, in
my vindication of this measure, and am per-
haps rendering myself obnoxious to all the
Whig party of the North. Sir, 1 know the
agitation of the question that is going on ; I
know how a man may become obnoxious to
public feeling, under the excited sensibility of
that feeling. Sir, I know the opprobious epi-
thets that may be applied ; I may be hung or
burnt in effigy; but, sir, having formed my
opinion of the propriety of the measure, and
of the expediency of adopting it, it is my duty
to stand here and vindicate those opinions,
let the opinions or feelings of my friends at
the North be what they may. I do not
'skulk,' and I tell gentlemen that, although
the arts of the demagogue are to be put in op-
eration, I shall never shrink from the vindica-
tion of my own honest convictions here or
elsewhere.

"But what could the committee do ? Here
is a very important question, the most trouble-
some; dangerous^ alarming question that has

arisen since the Government was established
— a question more difficult of adjustment,
pregnant with greater danger to our instilu-
tions, with greater danger to the harmony and
prosperity of this country, than any question
which has heretofore arisen, oris likely here-
after to arise. Sir, the committee have pro-
posed the only measure which their ingenuity
could devise ; and if their proposition is not
satisfactory, let me ask gentlemen who object
to it, wiiat it is they would propose ? It is an
easy matter to find fault. Nothing was ever
done right in the estimation of all. The
world itself, and man its inhabitant, were
made wrong, in the opinion of some modern
philanthropists ; but it is well for us they
have not the power of making it over again.
But let me conjure gentlemen who find
fault to inform us what proposition they would
present. Let them tell us what is to be done.
If this measure is not palatable to them, what
do they propose ? Sir, we have the Missouri
compromise, will these gentlemen go for it ^
Will the Senators, either of them, go for it 1
Will the Senator from New Jersey go for it %
They answer, no. If they will not sustain it,
will they censure the committee for not recom-
mending W'hat they condemn "? Will they
censure me for not proposing a compromise
against which both they and I are committed ?

"Well, wdrat else is there ? The Wilmot
proviso. These gentlemen will go for that.
So will I. I am not behind them on that
subject. Butwnll a majority of the Senate do
so T I knew, and every member of the com-
mittee knew, that if we met this question up-
on the ground of the Wilmot proviso, we
would be voted down, and it w^as not my dis-
position to present the question to the Senate
in such a form that it could not fail to be de-
cided against me. It is not my purpose, in
carrying out the principles and views of my
constituents, to make up an issue in my case,
which 1 know must be decided against me. I
may be permitted, I hope, to borrow something
from my personal experience. If I were
about to present a case before a judge whose
capacity I distrusted, or a jury in whom I had
no confidence, I should feel at liberty to save
my case if I could by moving, for a continu-
ance, or by changing the mere form of the is-
sue. Knowing that the Senate could not be
brought to carry out my purpose in that
form, I feel at liberty to attain my object in
another way, and at the same time to obtain
an arrangement altogether more satisfactory
to the advocates of freedom than unfavorable
decision upon the Wilmot proviso. The pro-
position oi the committee is the only one which
has been presented which aflfords the slightest
chance of an adjustment of tnis matter, even
for the present. I should be gratified if any
gentleman of the Senate could propose any-

1850,

Stephen S. Phelps.

thing more satisfactory. The purpose of the
committee was, to extricate Congress from the
difficulty in which we are placed in regard to
this subject. I am well aware of the effect its
agitation is likely to have throughout the
country. It is a very convenient electioneer-
ing topic. My own sentiments are known ;
I am hostile to the institution of slavery, but
I trust that my hostility is to be regulated by
national and constitutional views ; but my
sentiments shall not be degraded by being ap-
plied to this wretched business of demago-
guism or popular excitement. I caution gen-
tlemen on this subject. Gun-powder is a very
good thing to fight with, but it is dangerous to
explode too much of it at once. Popular ex-
citement is not a matter to be trifled with in
this country, or in any other. All experience
shows us the danger of tampering with pop-
ular feeling. There is not a page in history,
from the creation to the present day, more
pregnant with warning than the page that is
now being enacted. There is inquietude,
restlessness, ilesire for change prevading every
portion of the world. We have seen the
wheels of revolution revolving in Europe, and
can only tell when those wheels will stop, or
who is the last victim that shall be crushed
beneath them 1 It is but a few days ago that
we were congratulating a people upon their
success thus far in the course of revolution.
An individual who had spent his life over his
books, unknown to the political world, sprung
into political existence in a moment as the
presiding officer of the Provisional Government
of one of the most powerful and restless peo-
ple in the world ; and, sir, our congratulations
had hardly reached him before the revolution-
ary wheel, which bore him triumphantly to
the top, threw him from his high position into
comparative insignificance and obscurity.

"Where will this movement, now proceeding
with such tremendous power, terminate 1
There is but one Intelligence which can pre-
dict its termination, and but one Power that
can control its results, and that Power is not
a human power. We are following in the
footsteps of our fellow men in the old world ;
popular excitement and popular violence are
not unknown in our own country. The man
who endeavors to carry this excitement to ex-
tremes, and to alienate the feelings of this peo-
ple from each other, to the danger and perhaps
destruction of our institutions, should be care-
ful to ascertain whether he can control the
tempest upon which he attempts to ride. The
history of the old world shows that the dema-
gogue who puts in motion the passions of men,
and drives them to anarchy and bloodshed, de-
posits his bones at last in one undistinguisha-
ble mass with those of his victims And in
this more peaceful hemisphere, which revolu-
tion and anarchy have not yet reached, the po-

VOL. VI. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

litical agitator who rises upon a whirlwind of
excitement finds, to say the least of him, an
early political grave."

The disinterested and patriotic motives of
Senator Phelps — if there is not, indeed, a
universal conviction among his constituents
of the correctness of his views and conduct
in this matter — are fully conceded at home ;
and we believe it to be the general impres-
sion that as a learned and discriminating
lawyer, knowing what the effect of the pro-
vision of that bill must be, so far as Slavery
is concerned. Judge Phelps — for to him ia
the proposition of leaving the Mexican laws
in force in the territories, prohibiting any
alteration therein in respect to Slavery, due
— a proposition which gave the distinctive
haracter to the whole bill — circumvented
Mr. Calhoun, the politician, who, probably
in vain, expected of the Supreme Court a
decision in accordance with his own views
of the Constitution, as an instrument for ex-
tending Slavery.

The speech of Senator Phelps on the
Anti- Slavery resolutions of Vermont, pre-
sented in the Senate last Winter, secured
for its author at once a high position as an
orator and a statesman, and was received
with admiration by the Senate and by the
country. The topic was extremely deli-
cate and difficult, for the character of his
State had been assailed, the language of the
resolutions was pointed and direct on the
subject of Slavery — yet the whole subject
was treated calmly, dispassionately, and
in a manner that, while it was firm and
decided, was marked by no disorganizing
spirit, and gave no just ground of offence
to any portion of the country.

Our limits will not allow -us to quote from
this speech — which, in fact, needs to be
read entire, to give an adequate idea of its
depth and power. Among other topics,
the right and duty of Congress to legislate
for the Territories — in reply to the doc-
trines recently laid down by Mr. Cass —
are maintained in a masterly, if not unan-
swerable argument, original in character,
and unsurpassed in force. From the date
of this speech — in which the constitutional
remedies were pointed out as the only na-
tional resource — or at least, as remedies
that should be thoroughly exhausted before
looking elsewhere — on the part of the cla-
morous for disunion — may be dated a more
sober and temperate spirit in debate, in
7

Stephen S. FJielps.

July,

both Houses, and a more sincere desire to
see all difficulties amicably settled, without
a sacrifice of the Union, and an end of wild
vagaries and threats looking towards such
a result.

Senator Phelps was appointed on the
Select Committee of Thirteen, to which
were referred various matters pertaining to
Slavery, with instructions to report some
suitable plan of adjustment for the existing
difficulties. Reluctantly, he consented to
act on that Committee, and from their re-
port, subsequently drawn up and presented
by Mr. Clay, he dissented. For the last
few years, very manifestly, he has risen ra-
pidly in public estimation, as a man of
sound, far-seeing views, candor, discretion
and eminent ability ; and while he has, to
the full extent, maintained the opinions so
generally prevalent in his own State, as to
a Protective Tarifi', hostility to the Mexi-
can War, and other subjects of agitation
and excitement, he has done so in a man-
ner to secure the respect of men of all sec-
tions and views, and their confidence in his
integrity and true nationality of feeling.
This good fortune — so rare and so de-
sirable— has given him an influence in the
councils of his country, which, without it,
no statesman can prosper. We believe
there are few whose absence from the Se-
nate would be more seriously felt at this
time. He is now in the prime of life, and
in the midst of services which his experi-

ence, as well as his distinguished ability,
render him pre-eminently qualified to dis-
charge for years to come. For the honor
of his own State, and as a measure of jus-
tice to himself, we trust he will not yet be
permitted to retire from the national coun-
cils.

We close with the remarks of one who
was present in the Senate during the de-
livery of the speech last alluded to, in Ja-
nuary last. They are from the pen of a
judicious and able writer, whose commen-
dation, we may add, is fully justified by a
variety of similar testimonials from other
sources, now in our possession :

"Judge Phelps' speech was keen, lucid,
searching, convincing. It went unanswered,
for it was unanswerable. It sped like a
chain, shot through the ranks of his adver-
saries, mowing down every thing in its way.
Senator Seward remarked that, if Mr.
Webster had made it, it would have gone
through the country like wild fire. An-
other still more distinguished Senator ob-
served that there were very few men who
could make such a speech. He made point
after point, hit after hit, in a quiet but most
efiective manner. It furnishes a stable bot-
tom for thinking men to stand upon. Its
delivery swept away, with a single brush,
a whole sky full of clouds, which Southern
declaimers, aided by Mr. Cass, had been
raising and accumulating for a fortnight."

1850.

Congressional Summary,

CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY.

Speech of Mr. Clay, in Senate, May 21st,

on the pending measures of Compromise.

Mr. Clay commenced his remarks by re-
gretting the disposition that had been mani-
fested to discover and enlarge upon microsco-
pic defects in the scheme of compromise pre-
sented by the Comimittee. Such cavilling was
by no means a difficult task, but produced no
profitable result. It is the duty of those who
make objections of this kind, to give their own
and a better project ; to state how they would
reconcile the interests of this country and har-
monize its distracted parts.

Among the features of this report, the Sena-
tor proceeded, the one relating to the recovery
of fugitive slaves is referred to with dissatis-
faction. It should be noticed that the greatest
objections on this subject come from States
which are not suffering under the evil of hav-
ing to recover these fugitives. His own State
was perhaps the one suffering the most from
this cause, while the State of Louisiana is
among those States which sufler from it the
least. And, yet, the honorable Senator from
Louisiana, when we are satisfied with these
provisions, sees in them objections w^hich are
insurmountable. And what are the embarrass-
ments of which he complains 1 Why, that
the slave-owner in pursuit of his property has
to carry with him a record ! That in place of
the trouble and expense of witnesess and loose
affidavits, he is fortified by an authentic re-
cord ! This provision Mr. Clay considered
an advantage and protection to the slave-hold-
er. This record would command a respect in
the free States which oral testimony or mere
affidavits could never confer. Moreover, it
was a cumulative, not an exclusive, remedy,
leaving him free to employ the provisions of
the act of 1793.

With respect to that portion of the report
on this subject, recommending trial by jury in
the State whence the fugitive has fled, there
will be in this no practical disadvantage to the
slave-holder, since, the fugitive on his return,
will, beyond doubt, abandon a right which he
only claimed as a pretext. It should be re-
membered too, that this is proposed as a sub-
stitute and satisfaction to the North, for the
trial by jury in the free State, and which

would amount to a virtual surrender of the
constitutional provision. Besides, it is only
granting to the slave the right which he now
indisputably possesses, in all the slave-holding
States, of resorting to their tribunals of justice
to establish his claim to freedom, if he has
one.

"Mr. President," said Mr. Clay, '^ find
myself in a peculiar and painful position, in
respect to the defence of this report. I find
myself assailed by extremists every where ;
by under currents ; by those in high as well
as those in low authority 5 but believing as I
do, that this measure, and this measure only,
will pass, if any does pass during the present
session of Congress, I shall stand up to it, and
to this report, against all objections, springing
from whatever quarter they may.

Sir, it was but the other day that I found
myself reproached at the North for conveying
an alleged calumny of their institutions by
saying that the trial by jury in this particular
description of case, could not be relied upon
as a remedy to the master who had lost his
slave ; as if I had made any such charge on
Northern judges and juries, in ordinary cases,
in the way of reproach, or had not applauded
the administration of justice both in our
State and our Federal courts generally. But,
I urged that, if, in Massachussetts, you re-
quire a Kentuckian, going in pursuit of his
slave there, to resort to a trial by jury on the
question of freedom or slavery of a fugitive,
it would be requisite, in consequence of such
an assertion of privilege on the part of the
fugitive, that the parties should produce tes-
timony from^the State of Kentucky, that you
will have to delay the trial from time to time ;
that there must be a power to grant a new
trial, and that a supervisory power would be
necessary when you come to a final trial ;
that distant and foreign courts w^ould be called
on to administer the unknown laws of a re-
mote commonwealth ; and that, when you sum
up the expenses and charges at the end of the
case, although the owner may eventually re-
cover his property, the contest to regain it
would have cost him more than it is worth;
that, in short, he might be largely out of poc-
ket, and that he would find he had better

100

Congressional Summrry.

July

never have moved at all in the matter. That
was the argument which I used ; and yet, at
the North, I am accused of casting unmerited
opprobrium upon the right of trial by jury and
the administration of justice ] while at the
South, in another and the last extreme, from
which I should have expected anything of the
kind, I find that this amendment is objected to
as creating embarrassments to the owners of
fugitive slaves."

Another objection raised by the Senator
from Louisiana, was to the clause prohibiting
the territorial legislatures from passing any
law in respect to African slavery within the
territories. In the Committee of thirteen, that
very clause was moved by the honorable Sen-
ator's own colleague. Every Southern man
on that Committee, except myself, said Mr.
Clay, voted for it, and every Northern mem-
ber, with one exception against it.

Again the honorable Senator from Louisiana
objects to the clause, prohibiting the slave-
trade in the district of Columbia, on the ground,
that the Committee do not affirm in their re-
port that Congress has not the constitutional
power to pass upon the subject of slavery in
this District. But a majority of the Senate
believe that Congress has the power to abolish
slavery in the District* and the Committee
cannot ask Senators to repudiate their fixed
and deliberate sentiments. They can present
a compromise of measures, but not of opinions •
and in neither affirming nor denying the power,
but simply asserting that the power should not
be exercised, they consider it a compromise
with which all should be perfectly satisfied.

The traffic in slaves in this District, said
Mr. Clay, arose, as he understood, from two
laws passed by Congress, one in the year
1802, the other a few years subsequently.
The mere repeal of its own laws by Congress
could hardly be called unconstitutional. If
such a measure had been proposed by the Com-
mittee instead of their actual proposition of
adopting the laws of Maryland on the subject,
would the Senator from Louisiana think it
wrong, would he think it unconstitutional '?

Mr. Clay then spoke of the consequences
that might ensue if these agitating questions
were not settled by the action of this Congress.
Should Congress separate without fulfilling its
high duty of settling the present controversy,
he feared that the Union for all the great and
noble purposes for which our fathers form-
ed it could not be preserved. The greatest
of all calamities', a dissolution of the Union,
might not inform take place, but next to
that is a dissolution of those fraternal and
kindred ties that bind us together as one free.
Christian and commercial people. And
unless this measure of compromise or a
similar measure be passed, he predicted
that nothing could be done for California,

nothing could be done for the territories, no"
thing upon the fugitive slave bill, nothing
upon the bill interdicting slavery in the Dis-
trict. And if they should return to their
homes, leaving these questions open to foment
the dissatisfaction and discontent already felt,
could the public continue long in such a state
of feeling ? If this California bill should be
rejected, will not the South reproach the North
with having obtained all they wanted for the
present and refused them everything ? Will
they not say to the free States that they have
the reality if not the form of the Wilmot pro-
viso ? that they have a clause far more potent,
more efficacious — the interdiction of slavery
in the Constitution of California 1

On the other hand, has nothing been done
for the South '? nothing in this mea&ure of
compromise ? ^'What, sir! Is there nothing
done for the South when there is a total ab-
sence of all Congressional action on the deli-
cate subject of slavery; when Congress re-
mains passive, neither adopting the Wilmot
proviso, on the one hand, nor authorizing the
introduction of slavery on the other ; when
every thing is left in statu quo 1 What were
the South complaining of all along % The
Wilmot proviso — a proviso, which if it be fas-
tened upon this measure, as I trust it may not
be, will be the result, 1 apprehend, of the diffi-
culty of pleasing Southern gentlemen. Their
great effort, their sole aim has been for several
years to escape from that odious proviso. The
proviso is not in the bill. The bill is silent :
it is non-active upon the subject of slavery.
The bill admits that if slavery is there, there
it remains. The bill admits that if slavery is
not there, there it is not. The bill is neither
Southern nor Northern. It is equal ; it is fair ;
it is a compromise, which any man, whether
at the North or the South, who is desirous of
healing the wounds of his country, may ac-
cept without dishonor or disgrace, and go home
with the smiles which the learned Senator re-
gretted he could not carry with him to Louisia-
na. They may go home and say that these
vast Territories are left open. If slavery ex-
ists there, there it is. If it does not exist
there, it is not there. Neither the North nor
the South has triumphed ; there is perfect re-
ciprocity. The Union only has triumphed.
The South has not triumphed by attempting to
introduce slavery, which she would not do if
she could, because she maintains (although it
is not my own individual opinion) that Con-
gress has no rig^ht to legislate on the one hand
for its introduction, or on the other for its ex-
clusion. Nor has the North been victorious.
She may, indeed, and probably will, find her
\vishes ultimately consummated by the exclu-
sion of slavery from our territorial acquisi-
tions; but if she does, that ought not to be an
' occasion of complaint with the South, because

1S50.

Congressional Summary.

101

it will be the result of inevitable causes. The
bill has left the field open for both, to be oc-
cupied by slavery, if the people, when they
are forming States, shall so decide ; or be ex-
clusively devoted to freedom, if, as is proba-
ble, they shall so determine." Mr. Clay then
compared the plan of the Committee of Thir
teen with the measures proposed by the Ex-
ecutive. The President, he said, instead of
offering a scheme comprehending all the dis-
eases of the country, looks only at one. Here
were five wounds, bleeding and threatening
the well being, if not the existence of the body
politic — California, the Territories, the boun-
dary of Texas, the fugitive slave bill, and the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia. Of
these, the Executive recommends the admis-
sion of California, in which recommendation
the Committee concur, but it leaves the other
questions to cure themselves by some law of
nature or self-remedy in the success of which
he could not see the least ground of confidence.

Let us look, said Mr. Clay, at the condition
of these Territories, and endeavor to do what
has not been done with sufficient precision, to
disciiminate between non-action or non-inter-
vention with regard to slavery, and non-action
as it respects the government of the people
who, by the dispensations of Providence and
the course of events, have come into our hands
to be taken care of To refrain from extend-
ing them the benefit of government, law, order,
and protection, is widely different from silence
or non-intervention in regard to African slave-
ry. In what condition does the President's
message leave the Territory of Utah % With-
out any government at all. Without even the
blessing or the curse, as you may choose to
call it, of a military government. There is
absolutely no government, except what the
necessities of the Mormons have required them
to erect for themselves.

What is the condition of New Mexico ? She
has a military government, which adminis-
tered as it is, is in reality no government — a
military government in a time of profound
peace. Sir, said Mr. Clay, for establishing
such a government in time of war, the late
President was censured and his authority
doubted, and now it is proposed to continue it
until New Mexico has the requisite population
to entitle her to a State Government And
when will this be % She has now a popula-
tion of 10,000 whites and 80,000 or 90,000 In-
dians. With a people formed of such materials,
and with the constitution such a people might
make, if to-morrow she should come here for
admission as a State, I for one, said Mr. Clay,
would not vote for it. It would be preposte-
rous— it would bring into contempt the grave
matter of forming commonwealths as sove-
reign members of this glorious Union. New
Mexico has not now, nor will she have for

years to come, a population in sufficient num-
bers morally capable of self-government.

And what is the actual operation of this
plan that thus meets with the approbation of
the President'? The first and greatest duty of
government, it will hardly be denied, is to pro-
tect the governed and to repel invasion from
the limits of the country. But on the first ap-
proach of invasion, on the arrival of commis-
sioners from Texas for the purpose of bring-
ing under the authority of that country the
portion of New Mexico on this side of the Rio
del Norte, the present military commandant ,
acting, it is alleged, under the authority of the
Secretary of War, declares his intention of re-
maining neutral. He leaves this people weak
and unorganized, to defend themselves against
the encroachments of Texas, whose authority
they denounce, whose laws they contravene,
and for whose inhabitants they have most set-
tled antipathy. What has become of the sa-
cred obligations of the treaty of Hidalgo %
Where is the solemn stipulation to provide for
these provinces the protection they once re-
ceived from Mexico '? The fulfilment of obli-
gations, the observance of contracts in private
life and of treaties in public, is one of those high
distinctions marking men in their social and
their individual character, and yet we are told,
in effect if not in terms, to withdraw from this
high duty, and leave this people to work out
their happiness and salvation in such way as
they can.

Mr. Clay then compared in their particulars
the plan of the Executive and the propositions
of the Committee of Thirteen.

" The President's plan
proposes an adjustment
of only one of the five
subjects which agitate
and divide the country.

" The President's plan
proposes the admission
of California as a State.

" He proposes non-in-
tervention as to slavery.

" But he proposes fur-
ther non-intervention in
the establishment of Ter-
ritorial Governments ;
that is to say, that we
shall neglect to execute
the obligation of the Uni-
ted States in the treaty
of Hidalgo — fail to go-
vern those whom we are
bound to govern — leave
them without the protec-
tion of the civil authori-
ty of any General Go-
vernment— leave Utah
without any governmeat

" The Committee's plan
recommends an amica-
ble settlement of all five
of them.

"That of the Commit-
tee also proposes the ad-
mission of California as
a State.

" They also propose
non-intervention as to
slavery.

" They propose action
and intervention by the
establishment ot civil go-
vernment for the Territo-
ries, in conformity with
treaty and constitutional
obligations.To give them
the superintending and
controlling power of our
General Government, in
place of that of Mexico,
which they have lost ;
and to substitute a civil
instead of that military
government, which de-
clares it will assume an

102

at all, but that which
the Mormons may insti-
tute— and leave New
Mexico under the milita-
ry Government of a lieu-
tenant colonel.

*' His plan fails to es-
tablish the limits of New
Mexico east of the Rio
Grande, and would ex-
pose the people w^ho in-
habit it to civil war, al-
ready threatened, with
Texas.

" He proposes no ad-
justment of the fugitive
slave subject.

" He proposes no ar-
rangement oi the subject
of slavery or the slave
trade in the District of
Columbia.

" Thus, of the five sub-
jects of disturbance and
agitation — to wit, Cali-
fornia, Territorial Go-
vernments, the boundary
question with Texas, the
fugitive bill, and the sub-
ject of slavery in the Dis-
trict—

" His plan settles but
one, leaving the other
four unadjusted, to in-
flame and exasperate the
public mind, I fear, more
than ever.

" Under his plan, one
party, flushed with suc-
cess in the admission of
California alone, will
contend, with new hopes
and fresh vigor, for the
application of the Wil-
mot proviso to all the re-
maining territory ; whilst
the other party, provok-
ed and chagrined by ob-
taining no concession
whatever, may be urged
and animated to ex-
treme and greater lengths
than have yet been ma-
nifested."

Mr. Clay then alluded to the idea, floating
in the Southern mind, of an equlibrium of
power between the two sections of the coun-
try. This he considered utterly impracticable,
The rapid growth and unparalleled progress
of the Northern States is such that it is im-
possible for the South to keep pace with it.
But because a political balance of power is

Congressional Summary.

July,

attitude of neutrality in
the boundary contest
between New Mexico
and Texas.

" Their's proposes a
settlement of the boun-
dary question, and, being
settled, a civil war with
Texas would be averted.

" They offer amend-
ments which will make
the recovery of fugitives
more effectual, and at
the same time, it is be-
lieved, will be generally
satisfactory to the North.

" They propose to in-
terdict the slave trade
in the District, and leave
slavery there undisturb-
ed.

" They propose to ad-
just all five of them on
a basis which, it is con-
fidently believed, is just,
fair and honorable, and
will be satisfactory to the
people of the United
States.

" They offer the olive
branch of peace, harmo-
ny and tranquillity.

^ Under their plan, all
questions being settled
in a spirit of mutual con-
cession and compromise,
there will be general ac-
quiesence, if not satisfac-
tion ; and the whole
country will enjoy once
more the blessing of do-
mestic peace, concord,
and reconciliation."

out of the question, it does not therefore follow
that the great and cherished institution of the
South is in danger. Southern rights have for
their securities the sense of justice appertain-
ing to enlightened and Christian man; the
Constitution of the United States, with the oath
which all take to abide by it ; the necessity of
concurrence of both branches of Congress be-
fore any act of legislation^ inflicting wrong on
the South, could take place ; the veto of the
President; the Supreme Court of the United
States, ready to pronounce the annulment of
any unconstitutional law ; and lastly, said Mr.
Clay, there is that right of resort to arms and
forcible resistance when oppression and tyran-
ny become unsupportable, though he trusted
the occasion for its exercise would never arise.
But the slaveholding interest was not peculiar
in its standing in a minority, w^ith respect to
the rest of the country. Every interest, the
commercial, the manufacturing, the fishing,
the navigating, all but the great agricultural
interest were in a minority towards the rest of
the country. It is a condition which is inevi-
table. This equilibrium is unnecessary, and
by the operation of laws beyond all human
control, the laws of population and of nature,
is unattainable.

In conclusion, Mr. Clay spoke of the heal-
ing effect on the distractions of the country of
the memorable Missouri Compromise. The
whole country then as now was in an uproar.
Every legislative body, throughout the United
States, had denounced or approved the mea-
sure of the admission of Missouri. The mea-
sure was finally carried by a small majority,
and instantly the country was tranquilized,
and the act received with universal joy and
exultation. And he predicted that if this mea-
sure goes to the nation with all the high sanc-
tions which it may carry — sanctions of both
Houses of Congress, and of the Executive, and
of the great body of the American people — to
a country imploring them to settle these diffi-
culties and to give them once more peace and
happiness, he predicted that this agitation
would be at an end.

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SENATOR WEBSTER
AND THE CITIZENS OF NEWBURYPORT, MASS.

A letter was recently addressed to Mr.
Webster, signed by three hundred and seventy
of the citizens of Newburyport, in commenda-
tion of the views expressed in his speech, de-
livered in the Senate on the 7th of March last.

Mr. Webster, in reply, wrote to the follow-
ing effect :

" Twenty years since, the subject of slavery
was regarded at the North as a political ques-
tion solely ; it has now come to be looked
upon as a question of religion and humanity.
With slavery, as it exists in the States, it is
obvious that the Government of the United

1850.

Congressional Summary.

103

States has no concern ; its jurisdiction is con-
fined to its own territories, except so far as to
see that the Constitution is carried out in the
matter of the surrender of fug;itive slaves.

The Constitution of the United States, in
the 2d section of the 4th article, declares :

" A person charged in any State with treason,
felony, 6r other crime, who shall flee from justice,
and be found in another state, shall, on demand of
the executive authority of the State from which he
fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State
having jurisdiction of the crime.

" No person, held to service or labor in one
State, under the laws thereof, escaping into anoth-
er, in consequence of any law or regulation there-
in, be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such service or labor may be due."

No members of the Convention for adopting
the Constitution were more jealous of every
article and section entrenching in the slightest
degree on personal liberty than the delegates
from Massachusetts. But the above provision
was highly necessary and proper. The latter
clause, in fact, was borrowed from the celebrated
ordinance of 1787, drawn up by Nathan Dane^
himself a citizen of Massachusetts.

In the year 1643, there was formed a confe-
deration between the four New Eng-land colo-
nies, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connec-
ticut, and New Haven j and in the 8th article
of that confederation, it is stipulated as fol-
lows, viz. : —

"■ It is also agreed, that if any servant run
away from his master into any other of these
confederated jurisdictions, that, in such cases,
upon the certificate of one magistrate in the
jurisdiction out of which the said servant fled,
or upon other due proof, the said servant shall
be delivered, either to his master, or any other
that pursues, and bring such certificate as
proof." And in the "Articles of Agreement,"
entered into in 1650, between the New Eng-
land colonies and " the delegates of Peter
Stuyvesant, Governor of New Netherland," it
was stipulated that "the same way and
course" concerning fugitives should be observ-
ed between the English colonies and New
Netherland, as had been established in the
" Articles of Confederation," between the
English colonies themselves.

On the 12th of February, 1793, under the
administration of Gen. Washington, Congress
passed an act for carrying into effect both these
clauses of the constitution. It is entitled, '■'•An
act respecting fugitive slaves from justice^ and
persons escaping fron the service of their mas-
ters.''''

The first two sections of this law provide
for the case of fugitives from justice ; and
they declare, that whenever the executive au-
thority of any State or Territory shall demand
any person as a fugitive from justice, of the

executive authority of any State or Territory
to which such person shall have fled, and shall
produce the copy of an indictment, or an affi-
davit made before a magistrate, charging the
person so demanded with having committed
treason, felony, or other crime, certified as
authentic by the Governor or chief magistrate
of the State or Territory from whence the per-
son so charged shall have fled, to cause him
or her to be arrested and secured, and notice
of the arrest to be given to the executive au-
thority making such demand, or to the agent
of such authority appointed to receive the fu-
gitive, and to cause the fugitive to be delivered
to such agent when he shall appear; but if no
such agent shall appear within six months,
the prisoner may be discharged ; and all the
costs and expenses, incurred by arresting, se-
curing, or transmitting the fugitive, shall be
paid by the State or Territory making the
demand. And that any agent who shall re-
ceive such fugitive into his custody, shall be
authorized to transport him to the State or
Territory from which he fled. Any person,
rescuing or setting such person at liberty,
shall, on conviction, be fined not exceeding
five hundred dollars, and be imprisoned not
exceeding one year.

The two last sections of the act respect
persons held to labor in any of the United
States or Territories, escaping into any other
State or Territory ; and in these words :

Sec. 3. And he it further enacted, That when
a person held to labor in any of the United States,
or in either of the Territories on the northwest or
south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof,
shall escape into any other of the said States or
Territories, the person to whom such labor or ser-
vice may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby
empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from
labor, and to take him or her before any judge of
the circuit or district courts of the United States,
residing or being within the State, or before any
magistrate of a county, city, or town corporate,
wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made ; and
upon proof, to the satisfaction of such judge or
magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit
taken before and certified by a magistrate of any
such State or Territory, that the person so seized
or arrested doth, under the laws of the State or
Territory from which he or she fled, owe service
or labor to the person claiming him or her, it shall
be the duty of such judge or magistrate to give a
certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or
attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for re-
moving the said fugitive from labor to the State or
Territory from which he or she fled.

Sec. 4. And he it further enacted. That any
person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct
or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney, in
so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or
shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his
agent or attorney, when so arrested, pursuant to
the authority herein given or declared ; or shall
harbor or conceal such person, after notice that he

104

Congressional Summary.

July,

or she was a fugitive from labor, as aforesaid, shall,
for either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the
sum of five hundred dollars. Which penalty may
be recovered by and for the benefit of such claim-
ant, by action of debt, in any court proper to try
the same ; saving, moreover, to the person claim-
ing such labor or service, his right of action for, or
on account of, the said injuries, or either of them.
[Approved February 12, 1793.]

It will be observed, that in neither of the
two cases, does the law provide for the trial of
any question whatever by jury, in the State
in w^hich the arrest is made. The fugitive
from justice is to be delivered, on the production
of an indictment, or a regular affidavit, charg-
ing the party with having committed the crime;
and the fugitive from service is to be removed
to the State from which he fled, upon proof,
before any authorized magistrate, in the State
where he may be found, either by witnesses or
affidavit, that the person claimed doth owe
service to the party claiming him, under the
laws of the State from which he fled. In both
cases the proceeding is to be preliminary and
summary ; in both cases the party is to be re-
moved to the State from which he fled, that
his liabilities and his rights may all be there
regularly tried and adjudged, by the tribunals
of that State, according to its laws. In the
case of an alleged fugitive from justice, charged
with crime, it is not to be taken for granted, in
the State to which he has fled, that he is guil-
ty. Nor in that State is he to be tried or pun-
ished. He is only to be remitted for trial to
the place from which he came. In the case
of the alleged fugitive from service^ the courts
of the State in which he is arrested are not to
decide that, in fact, or in law, he does owe
service to any body. He, too, is only to be
remitted, for an inquiry into his rights, and
their proper adjudication, to the State from
which he fled ; the tribunals of which under-
stand its laws, and are in the constant habit
of trying the question of slavery or no slave-
ry, on the application of individuals, as an or-
dinary exercise of judicial authority. There
is not a slave State in the Union, in which in-
dependent judicial tribunals are not always
open to receive and decide upon petitions or
applications for freedom ; nor do I know^, nor
have I heard it alleged, that the decisions of
these tribunals are not fair and upright. Such
of them as I have seen, evince, certainly, these
qualities in the judges.

This act of Congress seems to have passed
with little opposition. None of its provisions
were considered at the time as repugnant to
religion, liberty, the constitution or humanity.
Two eminent citizens of Massachusetts. George
Cabot and Caleb Strong, represented that State
in the Senate of the United States. The for-
mer, indeed, was one of the Committee for
preparing the bill. It passed the Senate with-

out a division. In the House of Representa-
tives it was passed by a majority of forty-
eight to seven ; of these seven^ one being from
Virginia, one from Maryland, cne from New
York, and four from the New England States;
and of these four one only from Massachu-
setts.

In the passage of this act, there were se-
veral propositions for modifications and amend-
ments, but none suggesting the propriety of
any jury trial in the State where the party
should be arrested.

To me, continued Mr. Webster, the pro-
visions of this law appear absolutely neces-
sary, if we mean to fulfil the duties positively
and peremptorily enjoined on us by the con-
stitution of the country. But abolition socie-
ties and abolition presses have excited the
public mind, and these provisions have at
length been rendered obnoxious and odious.
The passions of the people have been aroused
against them, and under the cry of universal
freedom, and the sentiment that there is a rule
for the government of public men and private
men of superior obligation to the Constitution,
several of the States have enacted laws to ob-
struct and defeat to the utmost of their power
the requisitions of this act of Congress. This
has rendered it imperative on Congress to make
further provisions for carrying into effect ihe
substantial intentions of the act. With this
view a bill on the subject has been recently
introduced into the Senate by the Committee
on the Judiciary.

The Act of Congress of 1793 made no pro-
vision for any trial by jury in the State where
the arrest of the fugitive is made, and at this
day there are great difficulties in the way of
any such provision. The main one, and, per-
haps, the only insuperable one has been
created by the States themselves in their ill-
considered laws refusing those aids and faci-
lities without which a jury trial is impossible.

But at the same time nothing is more false
than that such jury trial is demanded in cases of
this kind by the Constitution, either in its let-
ter or its spirit. The Constitution declares,
that in all criminal prosecutions there shall
be a trial by jury ; the reclaiming of a fugi-
tive slave is not a criminal prosecution.

The Constitution also declares, that in suits
at common law the trial by jury shall be pre-
served ', the reclaiming of a fugitive slave is
not a suit at the common law ; and there is
no other clause or sentence in the Constitution
having the least bearing on the subject.

In the " agitations" on these questions, there
is one feature that strongly marks both ex-
tremes.

A member of Congress from Illinois, of
talent and rapidly increasing distinction, fMr.
Bissell,) in a speech delivered in the House of

1850.

Congreseional Summary.

105

Representatives on the 21st day of February,
made these very true and pertinent remarks :_^

" I am not so unmindful of truth as to deny that
in respect to the subject now under consideration,
some of our Southern friends have good cause to
complain. But it must have been remarked by all
of us that the representatives from those States
which have really been agrieved in this respect
are not those who have threatened us with disun-
ion. These threats have come from the represen-
tatives of States from which, I venture to say, on
an average not one slave escapes in five years. —
Who ever heard of a slave escaping from Missis-
sipi or Alabama ? Where does he go to ? Who
helps him away 1 Certainly not the people of the
North. Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and Mis-
souri, the only States that are really sufferers by
the escape of slaves, do not seem to have
dreamed of dissolution as a remedy f while repre-
sentatives from a few of the extreme Southern
States, whence slaves could no more escape than
from the island of Cuba, see ample cause and im-
perious necessity for dissolving the Union and es-
tablishing a ' Southern confederacy,' in the alleg-
ed fact that their slaves are enticed away by the
citizens of the North."

Now the counterpart of this " agitation" pre-
sents an equally singular and striking aspect
in the fact that the greatest clamor and out-
cry have been raised against the cruelty and
enormity of the reclamation of slaves in quar-
ters where no such reclamation has ever been
made, or if ever made, the instances are so ex-
ceedingly few and far between as to have es-
caped general knowledge. New England, it
is well known, is the chosen seat of the aboli-
tion presses and the abolition societies. Here
it is, principally, that the former cheer the
morning by full columns of lamentations over
the fate of human beings free by nature, and
by a law above the Constitution; but sent
back, nevertheless, chained and manacled to
slavery and to stripes. And the latter re-
fresh themselves from daily toil by orgies of
the night devoted to the same outpourings of
philanthropy ; mingling all the while their ana-
themas at what they call " man catching" with
the most horrid and profane objurgations of
the Christian Sabbath, and, indeed of the whole
Divine Revelation. They sanctify their phil-
anthrophy by irreligion and profanity; they
manifest their charity by contempt of God and
his commandments.

It is well to inquire what foundation there
is for all this rhapsody of opinion, and all this
violence in conduct. What and how many
are the instances of the seizure of fuo-itive
slaves which these persons have seen, or
which have happened in New England in their
time % And what have been the circumstan-
ces of injustice, cruelty, and atrocity attend-
ing them '? To ascertain the truth in this re-
spect I have made diligent inquiry of members

of Congress from the six New England States*
On a subject so general I cannot be sure, of
course, that the information received is en-
tirely accurate, and, therefore, I do not say
that the statement which I am about to
present may be relied on as altogether correct,
but I suppose it cannot be materially errone-
ous. The result, then, of all I can learn is
this : No seizure of an alleged slave has ever
been made in Maine. No seizure of an al-
leged fugitive slave has ever- been made in
New Hampshire. No seizure of an alleged
fugitive slave has ever been made in Vermont.
No seizure of an alleged fugitive slave has
ever been made in Rhode Island within the
last thirty years. No seizure of an alleged
fugitive slave is known to have been made in
Connecticut, except one about twenty-five
years ago, and in that case the negro was im-
mediately discharged for want of proof of iden-
tity. Some instances of the seizure of alleged
fugitive slaves are known to have occurred in
this generation in Massachusetts : but, except
one, their number and their history is uncer-
tain ; that one took place in Boston twelve or
fifteen years ago ; and in that case some chari-
tably disposed persons oflered the owner a
sum of money which he regarded as less than
half the value of the slave, but which he ag-
reed to accept and the negro was discharged.
A few cases, I suppose, may have occurred in
New Bedford, but they attracted little notice,
nor, so far as I can learn, caused any com-
plaint. Indeed, I do not know that there ever
was more than a single case or two arising in
that place. Be it remembered that 1 am speak-
ing of reclamations of slaves made by their
masters under the law of Congress. I am not
speaking of instances of violent abduction and
kidknapping made by persons not professing
to be reclaiming their own slaves.

In those States where those reclamations
really take place ; there is little complaint or
excitement. Maryland and Pennsylvania, for
example, lie, the one on the slave side of the
line, the other on the free side. Slaves not
unfrequently escape from the latter into the
former State, and are there arrested. On such
occasions, there is generally no disturbance and
no exasperated feeling. But Massachusetts
grows fervid on Pennsylvania wrongs ; while
Pennsylvania herself is not excited by any
sense o± such wrongs, and complains of no
injustice. The abolitionists of Massachusetts,
both the out-and-out and the quasi^ rend the
welkin with sympathies for Pennsylvania,
while Pennsylvania would quite as willingly
be left to her own care of herself. Massachu-
setts tears fall abundantly for Pennsylvania
sufferings ; but which sufferings, Pennsylva-
nia herself knows little or nothing of. No
people are more opposed to slavery than the
people of Pennsylvania. We know, especially^

106

Congressional Summary.

July,

that that great and respectable part of her po-
pulation, the Friends, have borne their testi-
mony against it from the first. Yet they cre-
ate no excitement; they seek not to overthrow
or undermine the constitution of their country.
They know that firmness, steadiness of prin-
ciple, a just moderation, and unconquerable
perseverance are the virtues the practice of
which is most likely to correct whatever is
wrong in the constitution of the social system.
Between Kentucky and Ohio complaints
have arisen occasionally on the subject of fu-
gitive slaves ; but by no means to the extent
which has been represented by the Abolition
societies. Slaveholders in Kentucky complain
of the difficulties w4iich they encounter in re-
claiming fugitives ; and the people of Ohio
complain, not of the execution of the act of Con-
gress and reclamations under it, but of the con-
duct of slaveholders, in coming into the State,
taking and carrying back their slaves by
force, and without legal process. The State
of Ohio has had the discretion not to prohibit

her officers and magistrates from performing
the duties enjoined on them by the act of Con-
gress.

The act of 1793 gives a right of action to
the owner of a fugitive slave against any per-
son who shall harbor or conceal him. Such
actions have been brought in Ohio, and I have
heard an eminent judicial authority say that
he has found no moreobstruction to the course
of judicial proceedings in these cases than in
others. Ohio juries try them with as much
impartiality and calmness as they try other
causes.

From what I know of the subject, Mr.
Webster concluded, and of the public men,
and of the people of those two States, I fully
believe that, if left entirely to them, a law
might be passed perfectly satisfactory to every
body, except those whose business is agita-
tion, and whose objects are anything but the
promotion of peace, harmony, patriotic good
will and the love of union among the people
of the United States.

1850.

Miscellany,

107

MISCELLANY.

Cuba. — On the night of the 15th of May,
1850, Gen. Lopez, at the head of 500 men,
landed at Cardenas, on the island of Cuba.
His design was to seize that place, secure the
cars, march on Matanzas, surprise it, and then
ascend the river to the mountains, and there
fortify himself. The name and popularity of
Gen. Lopez, it was thought, would bring the
soldiers and citizens to his standard. His force
being thus swelled by the increasing confidence
of the Cubans in his resources, he would soon
be in a condition to meet the army of the gov-
ernment. His first attack, on the morning
succeeding the landing, was on the jail. The
invaders met with a warm reception by the
few troops here on duty. In their progress
through the town, they were fired upon from
the walls, housetops and windows. A body
of Spanish troops, moving towards the gov-
ernor's house, returned an answer by firing.
The governor's house was then attacked and
set fire to, and himself, some officers, and
about forty soldiers forced to take refuge in
the adjoining building. They were thus driven
from house to house, until, being hemmed be-
tween the enemy and the fire, they were com-
pelled to surrender. Gen. Lopez then address-
ed the citizens, and ex])lained that the Expe-
dition came to the island to offer liberty to the
inhabitants, not with purpose of plunder. He
issued, at the same time, strict orders that no
property should be taken without being paid
for, and gave other necessary orders. The
effect of these measures was, that the Spanish
soldiers put on red shirts and cockades like the
invaders, and scattered through the town with
the ostensible object of conciliating the people
in favor of the new visitors. Little impression
was made, however, for the Spanish officers,
throughout the whole affair, remained faithful
to their flag.

The loss on the side of the invaders was
about 4 killed and 10 wounded ', and on the
part of the Islanders, upwards of 20. Gen.
Lopez states that there were not more than 100
regular soldiers in Cardenas at the time of the
attack, but news had, in the beginning, been
sent to Coliseo, a post about ten miles distant,
and to Matanzas, and before night, reinforce-
ments arrived. During the day, too, some of
the invading force had become somewhat dis-

couraged, and a portion had been detailed to
place the wounded and a quantity of coal on
board the Creole steamer, to enable her to re-
turn for fresh troops. Influenced by these and
other strong considerations. Gen. Lopez deter-
mined to re-embark his men, which was done
soon after nightfall. As the Americans aban-
doned the city, a body of one hundred and
fifty lancers marched into it; a part took up a
position to cut of retreat ; the others, fifty in
number, charged the retreating troops, and
were all, with one exception, shot down. In
this attack, no assistance was rendered to the
invaders by the citizens. Being disappointed
in their expectations of arousing the inhabi-
tants, and knowing that a large force, station-
ed in the vicinity of Cardenas, was moving
down upon them, the soldiers, against the
wishes of Gen. Lopez and the officers who
were desirous of attempting another landing
near the town of Mantua, immediately put to
sea for Key West. The next morning, the
Spanish steamer Pizarro was discovered astern
in chase. They kept ahead, however, and
were landed in safety at Key West. It was
the intention of the Americans, had the Pi-
zarro overtaken them, to have boarded her.
She had about two hundred troops on board,
and a bloody struggle would have been the re-
sult. The Creole has been seized by the Col-
lector for various breaches of the revenue laws,
and will, doubtless, be forfeited.

Eighty-four doubloons were found in the
treasury at Cardenas, and by order of General
Lopez, distributed for the relief of the sick
and wounded among the soldiers.

On the 24th of May, Gen. Lopez, with se-
veral of the oflicers connected with the Expe-
dition, were arrested at Savannah, but, in the
absence of direct testimony, were immediately
discharged from custody.

In the correspondence on this subject be-
tween the Spanish Minister and the Secretary
of State, Mr. Clayton assures Calderon de
LA Barca of the good faith of the Govern-
ment, and of its anxiety to repress all attempts
of agitators and adventurers upon any part of
the Spanish possessions. The President, he
says, as in duty bound, will exercise all the
power with which he is invested to prevent
aggressions by our own people upon the ter-

108

Miscellany.

July,

ritories of friendly nations, and will use every
effort to detect and to arrest for trial and pun-
ishment all offenders in any armed expedition
prohibited hy our laws. Three ships of the
Gulf squadron have been ordered to Cuba to
prevent the landing of any invading forces
under the American flag, and two additional
war ships of great force and speed, one of
which was the steam-frigate Saranac, have
since been added ; the Saranac, within a few
hours after credible evidence had been sub-
mitted to the President in reference to the in-
tended invasion.

Thirty-nine persons belonging to the invad-
ing force on board two small vessels have
been taken off Woman's island by the Spanish
steamer, Pizarro, and brought to Havana.
Subsequently, one hundred and five were
taken from the Mexican Island of Contoy on
the coast of Yucatan. Respecting these last,
the Secretary of State instructs Mr. Campbell,
the American Consul at Havana, to impress
upon the Spanish authorities, the distinction
between those who have committed a crime,
and those captured under appearances of an
intention to commit a crime, and says, that the
President claims for the American occupants
of the Mexican island, that they are not guilty
of any crime for which, by the laws of civi-
lized nations, they should suffer death. They
may have been and probably were guilty of
crimes for which Government ought in good
faith to punish them ; but the President is re-
solved that they shall be protected against any
punishment but that wiiich the tribunal of
their own country may award.

Some Facts about Cuba. — No census of
the population of the island of Cuba has been
taken by the Government since 1841. From
other sources we find that its population in
1846 was 898,752; of whom 425,767 were
white; 149,226 free colored, and 323,759
slaves. In 1841, according to the official cen-
sus, the population was 1,007,624, of w^hom
418,291 were white; 152,838 free colored, and
426,495 slaves. Of the colored free popula-
tion at that time 64,784 were black, and 88,054
mulattoes. The number of mulattoes among
the slaves was 10,974. There was a transient
population of some 38.000 not included in the
total given above. There w^ere at the time
222 schools, at which 9,082 free children re-
ceived instruction ; of these 640 were colored.
Out of the total number 5,325 paid for their
instruction; the others were taught gratuit-
ously. We are unable to say whether the
present condition of the island is in these res-
pects in any degree meliorated.

In 1847 statistics were published by the
Government, in which the island was descri-
bed as having a surface of 45,530 square
English mi.es, the contiguous Isle of Pines,

and some smaller ones, making a total extent
of nearly 48,000 square miles. The length of
the island, in a direct line from east to west,
is 680 miles; the widest breadth 335, the nar-
rowest 26 miles. From the southern point
of Florida to the northern point of Cuba
is 113 miles; from Cuba to the nearest point
in Yutacan is 132 miles, of Hayti 49 miles.
From Jamaica Cuba is distant 89 miles. In
1849 its exports from Havana and Matanzes
were, of sugar, 949,748 boxes; of coffee 371,
894 arrohas; of molasses, 97,373 hogsheads;
of cigars and tobacco (from Havana alone)
1,273, 837 pounds. Of Matanzas, the white
population was in 1846 estimated at 10,039;
the free colored at 2,788, and the slaves, 4,159.

Prussia. — There has been an attempt to as-
sassinate the King of Prussia. The assassin
fired from a stooping or half kneeling position
within a few feet of the King's person, and
the ball striking the lower part of his arm,
which was slightly raised, passed out at the
elbow. The man was instantly seized by the
bystanders and proved to be a discharged ser-
geant of Artillery and a native of Potsdam.
He had been confined in the hospital at Span-
dan as a lunatic, and had subsequently exhi-
bited signs of insanity. He is closely guard-
ed and deprived of all means of committing
self-destruction. The King has suffered but
little ill effect from his wound.

France. — The measures of the Government
daily become more vigorous. The socialist
success in the late Paris elections has alarmed
the friends of order, and for the present has
strengthened the hand of the Executive. The
old political divisions are nearly lost sight of
in the struggle th;it has at last commenced be-
tween the socialists and the whole body of the
middle classes. Like the Girondists of the first
revolution, these classes have started the revo-
lutionary spirit which is now directed against
themselves. Their perpetual attempts at a
healthy republicanism are thwarted by the
levity and anarchical risings of the mobs of
the large cities, and the reaction is despotism.
The impression seems universal that France is
on the verge of a second reign of terror, more
bloodthirsty and devouring than the first ; for
the rage of the Jacobins against law and or-
der was blind and unguided, and was exhaus-
ted by its own spasmodic efforts, while the
Red Republicans are sustained and united by
the complacency of theory. The real demo-
cracy of the country consequently look with
less disfavor on the ambitious designs of Louis
Napoleon, for an iron-handed military govern-
ment is a better alternative than the ferocious
tyranny of the Calibans of Communism.

The Legislative assembly though resembling
the Girondists in their present position seem
determined to avoid the error of that faction,

1850.

Miscellany.

109

and will hardly fall from want of decision.
They have adopted the maxim of Bonaparte,
that, with mobs, grape shot is the only nego-
tiator. There are now, within the limits of
Paris, 150,000 soldiers. Consultations are
held at General Chargarnier's, as to the best
mode of effectually putting down an outbreak
should it occur. Two systems have been
proposed ; to march instantly upon the insur-
gents, and carry their barricades at the point
of the bayonet ; or to let the insurrection gain
head at hrst, and establish itself in the eastern
arrondissements, to envelope the insurgents
within these, and bombard the quarters they
have taken possession of. A vast quantity
of material has been accumulated at Vincen-
nes, for the purpose of controlling the eastern
districts of Paris, and along with these prepara-
tions, the radical press has been almost silenced
by the severity of the government. These vigor-
ous measures together with the knowledge
that there was but little disatisfaction among
the troops, rendering a successful outbreak
hio-hly improbable, have induced the socialist
leaders to discourage the wishes of their fol-
lowers for another emeute. They have been
compelled again to trust to the ballot-box, al-
though here their chances are greatly dimin-
ished by the new electoral bill that is now on
its passage through the assembly. This law
will permit those only to vote who pay the
personal tax of three days' labor or its value
and have resided for three years in the same
canton. There are not more than one million
indigent adults in France, and the first provi-
sion consequently will not diminish materially
the number of voters. But the residence qual-
ification will curtail immensely universal suf-
frage, for throughout the whole of France
there is a large floating population, moving in-
to the cities at certain seasons of the year, and
drawn back at others, by the annual demand,
into the vine-growing and agricultural dis-
tricts.

But it is not the amount of the votes thus
cut off that excites the indignation of the
Socialists at this measure. Men of unsettled
and roaming habits, must, from the very state
of mind that these habits induce, be restless
, and fond of novelty. The stability that comes
from attachment to places and persons they
must ever want. Conservation is the offspring
not of the intellect alone, nor always of the
interest, but of the whole moral man. The
souls sends out roots into society and exists
with it and by it. But time and rest are re-
quired for this. Intense selfishness and reck-
lessness follow on incessant change. Men
become social Arabs — there hand is against
every man and every man's hand is against
them.

In this clasSj whether indigent or opulent,
are always found the germs of revolution.

Every vote, conspquently,' cut of by the Elec-
toral bill, strengthens the hands of the advo-
cates of law and order. It is a most stringent
measure, and may check completely for a
time the rising power of the Red Republicans.
Its most objectionable feature is, that it ofiers
a precedent for further curtailments of the
suflrage. By successive invasions of this
right, it may be reduced to the same narrow
limits to which the system of Louis Philippe
had restrained it.

Germany. The Congress at Berlin has closed.
Prussia has established the Bund, which com-
prises herself and all the sovereign princes who
do not wear a crown. Hesse has remained firm,
and has abandoned Austria and the four Kings,
and denounced their scheme. AH the States
in Union with Prussia will attend, by tbeir re-
presentatives, the Austrian Congress at Frank-
fort, but with a full reservation of the rights
of the Union, and a denial to Austria to sum-
mon any such Congress as head of the old
and defunct confederation ] accepting her sum-
mons, however, as an invitation to a deliber-
ation on the affairs of universal and collective
Germany. The States, when they come to
Frankfort, will vote singly, and each on its
own behalf, but in unison with the principle
of concord agreed upon at Berlin, and as mem-
bers of the Prussian Bund. Austria cannot ob-
ject to this and all conflict on the question of
right will be avoided.

The members of the Prussian Union regard
the Congress at Frankfort as nothing more
than a voluntary assembly of Plenepotentia-
ries of the thirty-five German Governments for
a specific purpose ; and deny that their delib-
erations can bind any State who does not at-
tend there. The despatch from the Prussian
Government on behalf of the German powers
assembled at Berlin, to the Prussian Envoy at
Vienna, is a very masterly state paper, and is
the first document issued by the new German
Powder. We are willing to hope that a Ger-
man Government has at length been formed ;
since a common and unanimous resolve has
thus been taken by the Parliament of the as-
sembled Princes. They act as one — they re-
present one country. Thus Prussia has calm-
ly persevered ; she held her position at Erfurt ;
she has strengthened it at Berlin; she will
maintain it at Farnkfort. She has raised a
loan of £2.700,000, (18,000,000 thalers), in
her own territory, promptly and without any
aid from foreign money markets, so that she is
in a position to place her army on a war foot-
ing, should it be necessary.

The new Bund comprises within its limits
all the countries bordering on France and Bel-
gium ; therefore the defence of the w^estern
frontier depends upon it. There will now be
for the first time since 1815, an efficient and

110

Miscellany.

July,

united German army. Let the states of Ger-
many be represented as they will at Frankfort,
the members of the Bund will form a great
majority. For the present however, Austria
may attempt to form a counter-union, which
she will tind difficult, if not impossible to ef-
fect, she now makes it a sine qua non that, if
she enters any such union, she must enter it
with her entire monarchy. But would Saxo-
ny, or Bavaria, or Wurtember^ agree to such
an arrangement, and be totally lost and absorb-
ed in such a mass \ As for Hanover it is al-

together cut off from any Austrian union by
the intervening states of the Bund. Austria
must either come into the German union, so
far as she is German and no further, or she
must un-Germanize herself, and form an Aus-
trian Empire external to and independent of
Germany: and this latter, we think, she will
do, with her predilections, her habits, and her
tendencies, its the best thing she can do. both
for herself and for the peace and repose of Eu-
rope.— National Intelligencer.

Ill

Critical Notices.

July,

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution : or Il-
lustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of History,
Scenery, Biography, Relics and Traditions of
the War for Independence : By Benson J. Los-
sing. With six hundred Engravings on wood :
By Lossing and Barritt. Chiefly from original
sketches by the author. New York -, Harper &
Brothers. 1850.

We have received the three first numbers of this
extremely elegant work which is illustrated in a
manner worthy of the subject. It is the pictorial
and descriptive record of a journey recently per-
formed to all the most important localities of the
American Revolution. The plan is very attrac-
tive, embracing the characteristics of a book of
travels and a history. The work is to be issued
semi-monthly, and will be completed in about
twenty numbers, of forty-eight large octavo pages
each, at twenty-five cents a number. The wood
engravings, illustrating persons, places and events,
are exquisitely designed, and engraved on steel with
admirable taste and skill. It seems to us to be the
best illustrated work of the season ; nor is the style
of the writer deficient in fluency or elegance. It
is a mixture of the narrative and descriptive, such
as is suitable to the design of the work. If the
public do justice to this work its copy-right will
become extremely valuable to the author.

The Shoulder Knot : a story of the seventeenth
century : By B. F. Tefft. New York : Harp-
er & Brothers. 1850.

A story of the days of Richelieu, told in a seri-
ous and dignified style, which, we art relieved, and
happy, to be able to say, is not an imitation of Scott
or James. The writer is a man of thought, and
though we have no leisure, just at this moment, to
read his book from cover to cover, and thereby be
enabled to pronounce upon the story, we can say
with a safe conscience, that the book is a work of
a man of sense and of a cultivated writer. It is
intended to illustrate the advent of the age of un-
derstanding ; the modern age. The idea of the
work is new and striking.

Life of John Calvin : By Thomas H. Dyek New
York : Harper & Brothers.

This work has been unfavorably mentioned in
the North British Review ; but that is no reason
why it may not be the best of its kind, since,
strange as it may sound to some of our readers,
the abuse of a book by an English periodical critic

has as little eflfect upon our own opinion of it as it
would upon its author. Criticism in England is
done by rule. Books are disposed of in squads
and phalanxes, by your mechanical English critic,
according to the party he serves, and not accord-
ing to the talent with which they are executed.
This volume, which we have not read, has a very
fine portrait of John Calvin, one of the most re-
markable faces in the world. The British Re-
viewer affirms that the most prominent idea in this
life of Calvin, which he admits is skilfully execu-
ted, is antagonism to the great Reformer, as a pre-
destinarian ; a criticism which we take to be a spe-
cial recommendation of the work to American
Theologians ; with whom the doctrine of Free Will
very extensively prevails.

Life and Correspondence of Andrew Combe, 31.
D.: By Geokge Combe. Philadelphia : A. Hart.
Late Carey and Hart. 1850.

This is a life of Dr. Combe, the brother of the
famous Phrenologist, to whom that science owes
its respectability and celebrity more than to any
other man, except Spurzhiem, and by whom this
life is written. It is a work which we can com-
mend as every way worthy of the subject and the
author.

ThacJceray^s Pendennis.
Brothere.

New York : Harper &

The publishers have not sent us the last num-
bers of this work. The beginning of it was de-
lightful, but we can say nothing of the conclusion
from not having seen it. The character of Pen-
dennis as it was carried through the first three
or four numbers, was perfectly fascinating and
origmal, the follies and the generosities of a high
spirited young gentleman in middle life, subject to
all the temptations of the world in London.

History of the Polk Administration. By Lucian
B. Chase, Member of the 29th and 30th Con-
gress. New York: George Putnam.

Our amanuensis, as we repeated the title of this
work, understood us to read History of the Pole-
Cat Ministration, supposing it to be, of course, a his-
tory of the Umon newspaper, for the last two years.
The work is a serious defense of the administra-
tion of Mr. Polk. On page 463 the author
•* pauses to consider the advances which have
been made during the administration of Mr. Polk/*

112

Critical Notices.

July, 1850.

not, as one might imagine, upon the territories of
Mexico, but in " the arts and sciences." Of course
it would be necessary to " pause" from all consi-
deration of the Polk administration, before one
could say any thing of the arts and sciences.
•' There are many circumstances in the history of a
people" says our author, " which are regarded of
secondary importance, that seem nevertheless to
illustrate their career, and indicate their destiny.
Such events signalized each year of Mr. Polk's
administration," an opinion in which we heartily
concur.

The United States Lawyer's Directory and Offi-
cial Bulletin — Comprising the name and place
of every practising Lawyer in the Union. To-
gether with the manual of the American Legal
Association. Compiled by John Livingston,
member of the New York Bar, and Editor of
the Monthly Law Magazine. New York: of-
fice of the Law Magazine. 1850.

The title of this catalogue is its own sufficient
recommendation and notice. It is an elegantly
printed, thin octavo.

Shaksp care's Dramatic Works, Boston : Philips,
Samson & Co., 1850.

The edition of Shakspeare by these enterprising
publishers, is not surpassed by any that have been
published in America. The work is got up in
such a style as to allow of its being bound in the
most sumptuous fashion.

The imaginary portraits are magnificently exe-
cuted. The number containing the play of King
John has a portrait of Constance, Mrs. Kean's best
character perhaps, and the artist has made it also
a portrait of Mrs. Kean in her youth, full of pas-
sionate expression.

Hints towards Reforms: By Horace Greeley.
New York : Harper & Brothers.

This work is a series of lectures, addresses and
other writings by the the well known editor of the
Tribune newspaper. It contains a formal and
studied presentation of the opinions of Mr. Greely,

in regard to the organization, of labor and practi-
cal reform in all its branches, including the
moral. The readers of the Tribune, need not
be told what these views are. Mr. Greely though
a rough and somewhat careless writer, writes an
excellently clear and manly style : it is sometimes
even eloquent. In his theoretic views of reform
we need not say to our readers we are obliged to
differ from him in many points, even in fundament-
als, while we regard many of his practical efforts
as highly servicable and important, not only to the
poorer classes of whom he assumes to be the spe-
cial advocate, but to all men alike.

The Morning Watch, A NaiTative, (Poem.)
New York : George P. Putnam.

D. Appleton & Co., continue to issue uninter-
ruptedly the numbers of their splendid work. The
Dictionary of Mechanics Engine Work and En-
gineering. No. 11, is a part of an elaborate trea-
tise on steam engines, fully illustrated.

Supplement to Frank Forrestefs Fish and Fish-
ing of the United States, and British Provin-
ces of North America. By William Henry
Herbert, author of " Frank Forrester and his
Friends." &c. New York: Stringer & Town-
send. 1850.

Mr. Herbert's reputation as a writer of field
sports and every kind of out-door amusement is
established among the first. Fly fishing is esteem-
ed a mystery and an art of great difficulty by those
who practice it. To be a successful fly-fisher re-
quires years of practice and the exercise of a great
deal of skill, patience and judgment. Of the fas-
cination and pleasure that follows it we can judge
only from the enthusiasm of its votaries. Of the
merits of this volume we confess ourselves wholly
incapable of pronouncing ; as far as it is a treatise on
fly-fishing. The book itself is extremely elegant, and
illustrated by a colored plate of the various kinds
of artificial flies. The letter-press is a description
of the game fish taken in American waters, with
anecdotes and practical directions.

p.\ifu!\\n,:r\ u'i

, \ /I I. I J I r' \ \r rj t,'\n ir-u'

j^,_ivi . vvjieigpiey , a.ie'z.^

itoxn-a-Da'S,^'^

SENATOll i'ROM MASSACMUSETTS

J^iTit&d }jyl'EJim&s .

".r.y ■ v ' tJvK/ j^.Truiruxut,RcALm

THE

AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW,

No. XXXII.

FOR AUGUST, 1850.

EEPLY TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Our publication of portraits of distingu-
islied Whig legislators and editors, while it
has added a strong feature of interest, and
increased the value of our work as an au-
thentic chronicle and picture of the age,
has subjected us to some annoj^'ance, by
making us the mark for partisan abuse and
sectional hatred. The publication of a
Southern face, especially if it be of a states-
man ardent and eminent in the protection
of State rights, embitters the minds of ultra
Northren partisans, who immediately sur-
mise that " the Whig Review has gone
over to the slave interest." Equal discon-
tent is manifested in other quarters on the
appearance of the portrait of any eminent
Northren man.

Our friends, and judicious readers gene-

VOL. VI. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

rally, will perceive that if sectional halreds
and prejudices were to be in the least re-
garded, it would be necessary, during the
present contest, to suspend the publication
of Memoirs and portraits altogether, and
to suppress those abstracts of public
speeches, which are at present so important
a feature in the Review.

The Review, in the fulfilment of its duty
as a National Whig journal, will not hesi-
tate to publish, as heretofore, with entire
impartiality, portraits, sometimes accompa-
nied by Memoirs, of Whig Statesmen rep-
resenting both extremes of opinion ; nor
will it decline to commemorate, without
regard to party, the lives of men, who,
like John Caldwell Calhoun, have set a
great example of public virtue.
8

114

Hints Toivard Conciliation.

August,

HINTS TOWAED CONCILIATION

No greater calamity can befal a nation
tlian the death of those men who represent
in their persons the dignity and virtue of
the people. In Republics especially, the
decease of great and worthy citizens, able
to sustain the responsibilities of high office,
is to be esteemed among the greatest of
calamities. The death of President Tay-
lor has cast a gloom over the nation : It has
abated confidence : It has cast down the
hopes of many ; It has dimished security.
The favorite of the people, to whom all eyes
were turned, in whom all hopes were con-
centrated for the guidance of public affairs,
for the preservation of the Union, and the
maintenance of the constitution, is taken
suddenly away ; and for a moment, fol-
lowing upon the shock, there is a feel-
ing of uncertainty and confusion. No
man can estimate the consequences of so
sudden a blow. The venerable character
of the President, his popularity, the res-
pect and affection with which he was re-
garded by the masses of the people,
had placed the destiny of the nation,
had he lived, in his sole control. The
known firmness of his character, and the
hio-h constitutional cast of his intellect,
strengthened by a life-long allegiance to the
Union, and obedience to its laws, left no
doubt, in the minds of those who knew him
best, as to what course he would have pur-
sued. He came into office pledged to sus-
tain and to execute the laws, as a law-ex-
ecutor and not as a law-maker. He repre-
sented the executive principle, and as far
as he was suffered, in the mysterious order
of Providence, to work out the pled-
ges under which he came into power, he
fulfilled them. We are not called upon to
pronounce his eulogy : that will be read in
the history of the time.

Meanwhile the solemnity of the occasion
is not unfavorable to a serious examination
of ourselves, and the position which we, as

a party, entrusted with the defense of cer-
tain principles for which our votes are regis-
tered, and toward the establishment of which
our speech and actions are required to be
exerted, — occupy at this moment. The
safety of the Union is in the hands of the
Whig party ; disunion lies not at their door,
if it comes. We are entering upon the
second stage of that factious war which is
endangering, or which seems to endanger,
our existence as a nation. It is unwise to
shut our eyes to the facts, or to endeavor to
conceal from ourselves and others the real
posture of our affairs.

Two powerful factions are laboring to
destroy the republic. A faction in the
North, small in numbers, but loud and
active, and influential by their activity and
by their position as a third party, whose al-
ternative is either a dissolution of the Union
or the wresting of the powers of the gene-
ral government to tJieir peculiar purposes.
A faction in the South, also small in
numbers, and still louder and more danger-
ous, (through the influence they exert upon
the Southern popuktion,) whose alternative
is disunion, or the wresting of the powers
of the general government to ^/iezV peculiar
purposes.

As to where the agitation began, we need
not now enquire. It is thepre^e^zz^phasis of
the contest which immediately interests us.
For the Southern faction there is this ex-
cuse, or at least, this appearance of an ex-
cuse, — that they are contending for what
they conceive to be their rights. For the
Northern faction there is no excuse. They
have neither right nor interest to offer, but
only a theory of what is best for the fu-
ture ; and for this imaginary best they hes-
itate not to destroy all that is good and de-
sirable in the present.

These two factions have their represen-
tatives, who go beyond the wishes of their
constituents, and react upon and exas-

1850,

Hints Toward Conciliation.

115

perate them ; the same ulthnate purpose
inspires both ; — we confidently affirm it on
the authority of no. mean witnesses, — and
that is, the destruction of the present
system of the Union. They are weary
of the Union ; it is too great a weight for
them to carry ; they wish to see it dissolved,
they inspire their constituencies with their
own wishes, and if things go on as they are
now proceeding, the constituencies, too,
will become weary of the Union, and will
see nothing but evil in it.

There is but one party in the nation that
remains sound at heart and unmoved amid
the tumult, and that is the original Whig
party of the Union. Theirs is the sole
doctrine able to unite the extreme divisions
of that party, and that is the doctrine of
union and nationality. In the full strength
and capacity of this doctrine lies the strength
of the Whig Republican party.

Inheriting from the old Republican par-
ty that profound respect and consideration
for the rights and equalities of the local
sovereignties, which was the guiding light
and the actuating spirit of the early foun-
ders of the Republic, the Whig party adds
to that a genuine republicanism ; a feeling of
the integrity of the entire people, apart from
all opinions and above all local interests.

Dismissino; from our thouo-hts all consi-
derations of the abstract right or wrong of
negro servitude, as a question which, in the
critical aspect of our affairs, it is, at present,
almost criminal to agitate before the people,
let us pause in our career of violence
and inquire whether there are not other
things, some other things of at least equal
moment, to be discussed : let us ask our-
selves whether white men were created
solely to legislate for the happiness and the
multiplication of negroes, or whether a sud-
den or a gradual change in the political
position of a portion of our population,
and that portion the most abject and the
least valuable of all — whether the accom-
plishment of such a change is so extremely
desirable, so indispensible and divine a
thing, we are determined to go to our
deaths in order to accomplish it. Whether
the hopes of the world and the glory of
the universe are to be forever extinguish-
ed, and the happiness and prosperity of
seventeen millions, an entire people, is to be
annihilated, in order that a body of slaves
may receive a liberty which it is by

no means certain they would not use for
their own destruction. Let men reflect
before they act and agitate. Have the
people of New England weighed care-
fully the moral, social and physical cal-
amities which must attend the success of
those schemes which are on foot among
them. Do they believe that the South
will yield without a struggle } Have they
counted the cost } Have they estimated
the ruin and the devastation of civil war }
Have they considered what must follow
upon the suspension of commercial inter-
course incident to a border war, enlarging
to a general civil war, between the two
sections of the continent } The materials
of their industry are drawn from those
fields which they are ready to over-run
and devastate. Those materials are
wrought from the bosom of the earth by
the industry of the negro, from whose
hands these agitations must snatch the im-
plements of agriculture and substitute for
them knives and fire-brands.

Let us yield quietly to the progress of
events, and Providence will work out for
us our just desires. The tide of popu-
lation is moving Southward and West-
ward over all the continent. The gradual
influx and intermingling of white popula-
tions must inevitably change and ameliorate
the condition of the black, if it does not
wholly emancipate him. Under any cir-
cumstances, however, the interference of a
foreign power will only crush and ruin
what it seeks to ameliorate. Interference
on the part of the North is at least as in-
humane as it is unlawful.

On the other side, what is it that the
South desires } — or rather what is it that
the nation can concede to that portion of
the South who are agitating what they
conceive to be their rights. To such of
them as demand the dissolution of the
Union there is one reply to be made and
they know well what that reply is. Every
step which they make in that direction
draws war after it. Let them estimate
their forces ; let them count the numbers
they can bring into the field ; let them
calculate the cost ; let them imagine them-
selves finally successful and the division
made, and the two nations established
where there is now but one ; have they se-
cured to themselves anything beyond what
they already possess }

116

Hints Toward Conciliation.

August,

The northern populations, driven into a
war by their instrumentality, and upon
such grounds as these, would have planted
in their souls an hatred inextinguisha-
ble of the institution whose existence gave
rise to all these calamities. Were a North-
ern Republic to be established, the first
clause in its constitution would be the
first of the Declaration of Independence,
and that clause would become a doctrine of
action ; and the millions of population who
adopted it would be converted into a pro-
paganda for its establishment. The second
clause in that constitution would be Free-
dom and Protection to the last extremi-
ty, for every man who sets foot upon
Northern soil; and who can tell how much
farther the fury of an enthusiastic and a
martial people might urge them } To what
fearful extremities } The people of New
England, peaceful and industrious, and hum-
ble in their industry, inherit the rancor and
the courage and the invincible steadiness of
the puritan blood. Strong friends though
they be, and the best supporters, of that con-
stitution which is now the protector of the
Southern as well as of the Northern sove-
reignties, the continuance for any length of
time of civil war upon the question of uni-
versal human right, would rouse again in
their minds the smothered fires of fanati-
cism, inextino-uishable, savins in death.
And what shall we say for those Western
millions, of Saxon and Celtic origin .? Red
Republicans and Democrats in their own
country, exiles from slavery themselves,
what side would they take in such a con-
flict } We repeat it : the South may cal-
culate her strength ; she may project alli-
ance with the free-traders and aristocrats
of England ; she may annihilate the North-
ern commerce ; she may destroy the navi-
gation of the Mississippi ; she may arm her
slave populations, and with that native va-
lor of which her sons are justly proud, and
for which the world admires and extols
them, — a valor which is now the pride and
the glory and the defence of the Union, —
all this would not avail to save her from
inevitable ruin should she first move^ and
be the confessed and clear mover, in such a
war. It would be such a war as has never
yet been seen ; and it would end in the
ruin and the extinguishment of those glo-
rious local sovereignties which are the bar-
riers— we had almost said the creators, of

popular liberty. Local sovereignties would
fall into disrepute. Nothing so completely
breaks down municipal distinction, and so
rapidly fuses and nationalizes a people as
civil war. In the common cause the sepa-
rate interests are forgotten.

It is our firm and sincere belief that the
Northern people have had no hand in those
events which have given a free population
to California. Gentlemen in the Nash-
ville convention said that it was the mas-
terly inactivity of Congress which gave a
free constitution to California, and that this
is their grievance, — that this is the insult
which they feel so sorely, and which to re-
venge they call for a dissolution of the
Union and alliance with England. It were
better for the American people that the
Oregon treaty had never been signed, and
war with England precipitated then — than
that such a word as this accursed one, than
that such a thought as this accursed, most
infamous thought — alliance with England
for the ruin of the North, should have ever
darkened their understandings. What is
meant by alliance with England } Subordi-
nation is meant ; political dependence is
meant; the conversion of the Southern
States into the tributaries, — planting and
cotton growing tributaries of England is
meant, with Tory influence infecting the
counsels of the South, — with English politi-
cal economy depressing, and suppressing,
and plucking out the heart and extinguish-
ing the life of Southern liberty. Remand
California back to a territorial condition, or
we will remand the Southern States back
to a Colonial condition : — that is your pro-
ject, gentlemen of the Nashville conven-
tion ; that is your alternative !

You are mistaken in your estimate of
the North. That the North dislike your
institutions is as true as that you dislike
theirs. Maintain your institutions, and
the Union will protect you. Without it,
you have no guaranty.

You err in attributing to the influence
of the North an efi'ect over which the
North had no control. It was free emi-
gration that made California. She was a
free State under the laws of Mexico, and
the population that flowed into her was
from countries intolerant of negro slavery.
It will be a pathetic passage in human his-
tory if you ask to revenge yourselves upon
your brothers and fellow- itizens for a con-

1850.

Hints Toward Conciliation.

117

summation over wliich they had no control.
It was not by the machinations of aboliti-
onists, but by the love of gold and the
spirit of adventure, a free population was
poured into California. You were not
rapid enough : while you sat quietly upon
your plantations, planning new States to be
added to your Southern Republic, the
freemen of the West had shouldered their
rifles, and were on their way across the
wilderness. By the time you had risen to
your feet, they had stepped across the rid-
ges of the Rocky Mountains.

Your institutions encumbered you ; they
will always encumber you ; you need pro-
tection in them ; you require the protection
of a powerful nation ; — powerful in war,
and sworn servants of laws and constitu-
tions— to protect you in that fearful business
which Providence has imposed upon you,
of governing — one man for ten — your mil-
lions of enslaved barbarians. Have you, in
estimating the chances of the future, weigh-
ed the facts of the past } Have you forgotten
that, under the Union, you have flourished
long, protected and fostered by it } Have
you, amongst all your calculations, calculat-
ed the force and value of that protection, and
measured how much you owe to it ; or, if
it were removed, what immense influences
hostile to yourselves, now fended from you
by the barriers of nationality, striking res-
pect and terror ,? — were those barriers
removed, might fall with them, and respect
and terror no longer be in your defense.

It is a time, if ever there was such a
time, for dispassionate enquiry. We must
stop and consider : we must ask what is
demanded ; and, above all things, we must
cease from abuse and recrimination.

The most important inquiry that can oc-
cupy us is, therefore, to discover the ex-
tent of injary, if any, that has been inflict-
ed upon the slaveholding States. But be-
fore entering upon that inquiry it is neces-
sary to distinguish between injuries inflicted
by Providence and injuries inflicted by men.
The South may rebel against Providence
while it supposes that it is rebelling against
the Union ; but that were a barbarous and
an odious war which punished friends for
one's own misfortunes, and the consequen-
ces of one's own folly.

The first cause of grievance, and which
was especially dwelt upon by Calhoun,
whose great name and greater virtues have

given force to the complaint, is the exist-
ence in the North of associations for the
propagation of anti-slavery doctrines. That
the existence of such associations should
be a cause of vexation and grievance in the
Southern States, more especially among
the owners of slaves, is natural : such as-
sociations exist also in England ; indeed,
they originated there ! the English govern-
ment is an organized abolition agency with
fleets, armies, and the taxes of an empire
at its disposal. The imperial government
of the British empire has taxed its people
to raise a sum of money sufficient for the
emancipation of its negro colonies in the
West Indies. The people of England have
but begun their system of revolutions, in
which they are somewhat behind their
neighbors of the continent. A revolutiona-
ry Great Britain, such as all thinking men
expect soon to see, — will not that also be
an emancipating and an abolitionary Great
Britain .? Your projected Southern Re-
public then, will be under the protection of
a revolutionary British empire, rushing on
the wild sea of universal sufi"rage, forward
toward indefinite reform. And will it not
be an emancipatory and an abolitionary
power, directed first toward the more ef-
fectual suppression of the slave traffic,
— the pet project of England these thirty
years, and which it might easily accom-
plish, and would long since have accom-
plished, but for the ingenuity of its rulers,
who amuse the people with inefi"ectual
squadrons on the coast of Africa, but
who, when they intend in earnest to stop
the traffic in Africans will direct their
steamships to watch the harbors of South
America, and so forever put an end to the
trade which they detest : — and will not the
second step be against the projected South-
ern Republic } Toward the accomplish-
ment of this pet project of abolition, and that
equally desirable one for England, the de-
struction of American manufactures, what
step can be taken more propitious than the
separation of the South, to be followed by
a Southern alliance .^ Was not South Caro-
lina first governed and colonized by the
servants of the crown } a circumstance not
to be forgotten ! What a piece of states-
manship for an English Premier to draw
back these truant colonies to a dependence
upon British clemency ! what a scene would
that be in the drama of English history for

118

Hints Toward Conciliation,

August,

some future Sliakspeare to impersonate : —
the ambassador of Charleston tenderino^ al-
legiance to a baby king of England ? And
with what a beautiful and humane spirit
the breast of England would swell, reflecting
back upon the suppliant South, the sym-
pathetic strain of abolition ? — abolitionary
England advising the suppliant South to
emancipate its slaves : gently and kindly
urging and advising that great movement
— the pet movement of English philan-
thropy.

This unheard of grievance and calamity
to the South, the existence of noisy aboli-
tion societies and newspapers in the North-
ern States, — societies writhing and scream-
ins: under the crushing; heel of the Puritan
common sense, and, in their strife and rage,
rendino; the heavens with their troublous
cries, this noise and uproar is, indeed, a
dreadful, and intolerable evil ; but cannot
some remedy be found less violent and heroic
than the one proposed, of ruin and an-
nihilation ? Is the voice of the anti-
syren so powerful that men must rush into
their graves to escape it ?

That men should differ in opinion, and
esteem their own institutions best, is no
grievance, but a good. The South ap-
proves her institutions and applauds them
to the skies. Do the North esteem tliat a
grievance }

The distribution of incendiary pamphlets
by a few misguided missionaries, or design-
ing slave-stealers, once a grievance, is no
longer so, and ought never to have been so.
It lies within the scope of Southern law,
and has been, and is effectually prevented.

The escape of negroes from their mas-
ters is an evil to which all slave countries
are equally subject; it is an evil incident
to the institution, and exists while the in-
stitution exists ; it is an evil incident to
every form of apprenticeship and bondage.
Were the Northern apprentice the proper-
ty of his master, what a hue and cry and
an advertising would there be after appren-
tices escaped to the West, or fled to the
Canadas. While slavery existed in the Brit-
ish West Indies, who does not know
that gangs of slaves occasionally made
their escape into the wilderness. Every
Southern man who has read the History of
" Three-fingered Jack," and the servile
wars of the West Indies, knows that the
escape of slaves was at least as frequent

and as serious an evil in those days as it is
at present.

That the impoverishment of plantations
by a bad system of agriculture, exhausting
soils by repeated crops of cotton and to-
bacco, and thereby impoverishing the slaves
and rendering them discontented and un-
happy,— that the escape of negroes from this
cause into the free States should go on in-
creasing as the poverty of the masters in-
creases, is an evil to be remedied, not by
converting the Northern tier of slave States
into a battle-field and border-land, to be
overrun by rangers and slave-stealers
beyond the power of the law, but by an
improved system of agriculture, and hy
putting a stop to the additon of fresh dave
territory, hy luliicli the life-hlood and the
cajntal of the South is draicn aivay from
the older States^ leaving them open and
desolate.

But, of all the grievances complained
of, the most intolerable is the failure at-
tributed to Northern management, to es-
tablish new slave States on the south-
western territories. This is the spectre of
misrule and revolution, which so horrifies
the souls of Nashville Conventionists.

The majority of opposition on the part
of the North was not a fanatical opposi-
tion. It was political in its spiiit. The
party in the South, who advocated exten-
sion, were originally small in numbers, but
they made up in activity what they lacked
in weight. Their success exasperated the
Northern anti-slavery faction. Southern
legislators, of all parties, had warned the
country against the policy of extension.
They foresaw the difiiculties which would
ensue upon all attempts to make an equitable
division ; they foresaw, also, that the older
slave States would suffer in their interests ;
that slave labor would become less valuable
in them, through the competition of new
regions in the South-West ; they anticipa-
ted the discontents that would arise upon
the efforts to substitute free labor, and to
bring about emancipation in the Northern
slave holdino- States : that there would be
a movement southward, of the slave-power,
and that that movement would leave open
large fields of poverty and discontent. It
was their policy not to expand and weaken,
but to concentrate, to limit, and to strength-
en the power of the South ; to foster, to
enliven, and to erect, the slave power, and

1850.

Hints Toward Conciliation

119

not to suffer it to ba thinned out and wasted
over the wilderness. They wished to in-
troduce new forms of industry, and new
and more profitable methods of agiiculture,
in order that the labor of the slave mij^ht
become more valuable, and that with his
prosperity might be increased, in still great-
er ratio, the wealth and the power of his
master. Such was the wise and far-sighted
policy of Calhoun, though we believe, in
his latter days, he fell away from it. Up
to the period of the Mexican war, he sus-
sained it.

It was the evil destiny of the South, how-
ever, to give birth to a class of political ad-
venturers whose ideas were solely of con-
quests in new lands, of military glory and of
territorial aojo-randizement. Ideas with which
it is easy to infect an entire people. South-
ern conservatism gave way before demo-
cratic ambition ; and this ambition gave
birth to a new political necessity, that of
the balance of power. Democratic ambition
had its empire in the South. It had two ob-
jects— to extend its empire to the isthmus
on the one hand, and over the northern peo-
ple on the other : The one idea was subordi-
nate to the other. Democratic ambition with
a leaning; toward Eno-land, hated the in-
dustrial prosperity of the North. With a
majority in the Senate, it might control
that industry and keep it under foot : but
such a majority could be created only by
the addition of new States : thus the
scheme of conquest worked harmoniously
together with the desire of political aggran-
disement : The one supported the other ;
they are the right and left h'cnd of South-
ern ' democratic policy,' — a policy copying
Great Britain and leanins; toward her as
the great example and patron, and which,
while it affects to denounce her aristocra-
cy copies them in all respects and will ne-
ver rest until to mitation it has added al-
liance and subordination.

There was one element which the war
faction of the South, the bitter-endists as
they are aptly styled, — doubtless in prophe-
tic allusion to that bitter and calamitous
end which awaits their present career, —
omitted in their calculations one element
of prodigious weight in political affairs and
that was the element of Chance — the poli-
tical name for Providence. Providence
had in view quite other objects than theirs.
A bitter end was in store — exile and de-

stitution for the unfortunate who sought
fortune in the new territories — exile and
deprivation for the sake of gold: The for-
tunate negro was in this instance spared,
and the white man was put to labor and
delve in his place, — to toil and sweat in
the gold pits of California under the
lash of necessity and the pitiless spur of
avarice.

It was not then the machinations of Llyod
Garrison, mysterious dictator of the na-
tion's fate, nor the voice of the anti-syren
that made unfortunate California a free
State, and substituted there white unfortu-
natas for black ones ; it was a power over
which neither South nor North could exer-
cise the least control. They who make war
upon the North because the North was in-
active in providing a territorial govern-
ment for California, whose veins are swoll-
en with the spirit of revenge, because the
horrible toil of the gold-hunter were spared
to the African and inflicted on his master ;
let them spend their imprecations where
they belong ; upon the blindness, the folly
and the cupidity of man ; and not up-
on the ^' masterly inactivity," absurdly
styled, of Northern legislators. Col. Fre-
mont, it is charged, procured the anti-sla-
very clause to be inserted in the Constitu-
tion of California, in order to secure the
Northern vote for her admission. If Col.
Fremont did this, and with that intention,
he showed but little foresi^iht. California
without the clause might have come in, at
her first application for admission ; let the
Nashville Conventionists revenge them-
selves on Col. Fremont then — he is a dem-
ocrat of their own school.

And now comes the last and the worst,
the grievance of grievances — the failure in
regard to New Mexico ; they wished to
colonize New Mexico with blacks ; they
wished to have a territorial , government
established over New Mexico, which
should give sufficient protection to them in
their efforts to establish slavery upon that
territory. Of Texas they were sure. They
had the guarantee of the nation for the
admission of six more votes in the Senate,
as soon as Texas could send them ; that
State has the privilege guaranteed her by
the nation, of sending; eio;ht senators to the
national counsel, as soon as she is able
to send them : that is to say, as soon as
she is able to divide her population into

120

Hints Toward Conciliation.

August,

four States. The people of tlie United
States are bound to admit this procedure,
for, as they are a constitutional and a law-
loving people, they must abide by the terms
of annexation.

Previous to the declaration of war with
Mexico, the people of Texas, then an in-
dependent State at war with Mexico,
passed a law by which they declared that
the territory of New Mexico, a part of the
country with which they were at war,
should be included within their own bound-
aries : It was a declaration founded on a
supposed right and preparatory to a con-
quest. Before the Texans had succeeded
in making their pretensions good, they
were annexed to the United States. The
first subsequent effort on the part of the
United States was to find an equitable
boundary ; this effort failed through the
refusal of Mexico to negotiate. The
grounds of her refusal have been else-
where discussed. The event of the war
as was expected, was unfavorable to her ;
it was thought desirable to have our terri-
tories extended to the shores of the Pacific.
By cession and purchase, the territories of
Northern California and of New Mexico
were added to the possessions of the Uni-
ted States. Texas then said to us, '• Since
you made war for us, what we claimed
before the war, and which you h^ive con-
quered from our enemy, belongs to us ; we
laid claim to New Mexico, and we reas-
sert our claim ; if our claim was just be-
fore the war, it is good after it.

We are told by Southern bitter-endists
that the beginning of all our trouble, the
beginning of the end, is in this quarrel be-
tween the people of New Mexico, who wish
to organize a separate State, and the Tex-
ans who claim to have a right to extend
their laws over them. Because a few thou-
sand adventurers in Texas claim to be the
governors of a few thousand in New Mexi-
co, are the affairs of a nation of twenty
millions to be thrown into hopeless confu-
sion, and a civil war to be begun between
the North and South, to end, as it is claimed,
in mutual destruction? Is this the wis-
dom of our Nashville Convention } Are
we to have our throats cut because we wish
to make New Mexico a State ? Why, Tex-
as herself is proposing to divide her own ter-
ritory into States .'' If this policy is the le-
gitimate fruit of the institution of slavery, ^

no wonder then that Republicans hate sla"
very and pronounce it the direfulest curse
that ever visited mankind. Why, in such a
war as must follow, by the will of our
Nashville Conventionists, upon this mise-
rable border skirmish, more men would be
destroyed in the space of a year, more ca-
pital be wasted in the South, more negroes
set free for want of masters, and more
courage and fury, idly expended, than would
suffice to conquer all Mexico, and colo-
nize half a dozen puny States like Santa
Fe. Men enous-h fell in Mexico to build
a new State in the wilderness ; money
enough was expended to put such a State
under cultivation, and stock it with negroes
or with cattle.

Men threaten war because they think it a
brave thing, and patriotic ; but courage is
not so very rare a trait in America that
those who possess it should be so eager to
display it : nor is there necessarily any con-
nection between ferocity and patriotism, nor
any credit in despair ; and when the des-
peration is either feigned or foolish, it is
even discreditable and contemptible. All
men know that Southern men make
good soldiers — perhaps as good as any in
the world — and it is surely not necessary
that entire populations should be destroyed
and rooted out in order to prove what all
men believe, that the South is full of testy
and valiant fis;htino; men.

The South wishes to have a territori-
al government established over New Mex-
ico for the protection of slave immigra-
tion into that territory, or, as they express
it, to give them an equal chance with the
North to occupy their share of the newly
acquired territory.

They demand also the establishment of a
territorial government over the lower half
of California, and for the same reason.

We can discover no objections to the
granting of these demands, beyond those
which arise out of the Southern doctrine it-
self, that the territory should be left open
to every species of immigration ; leaving it
to the people of the territories, organized
as States, to determine for themselves,
whether slavery shall be allowed or sup-
pressed. The South cannot fail to per-
ceive that the establishment of a territorial
government for the avowed and express
purpose of protecting a particular species of
emigration, contrary to the wish of the

1850.

Hints Toward Conciliation.

121

people wlio are already occupants of the
territory ; — as are the people of New Mexi-
co and California, — would be in violation of
the Democratic principle, that the general
government ought not to interfere either for
the establishment or for the abolition of
slavery.

It is very possible that by acceding to
the wishes of of the people of New Mexico
and of Southern California, the South may
sacrifice her chance of converting those
territories into slave states ; but we hold
that she is a gainer thereby, notwithstand-
ing this apparent loss, by the whole extent
and value of the rule thereby established.

If the South, under pretence of estab-
lishing a territorial government, for the
better regulating and disciplining the peo-
ple of the territories, shall introduce there-
by, into the policy of the general govern-
ment, a 'precedent of interference^ she gains,
perhaps, the introduction of slaves for a
brief period in Southern California and
' New Mexico, without any evident profit to
herself, but she loses all the ground for
which she has been contending since the
beginning of this controvercy ; she estab-
lishes the right of the general government
to use means for the introduction as well as
for the suppression of slavery ; she also
precipitates the creation and annexation of
New States on the Northern side, created
and annexed merely to maintain the bal-
ance of power ; an operation by which
nothing is gained, and a great deal is lost ;
as it is better not to begin the battle rath-
er than to conquer first merely to be con-
quered again.

If on the other hand, the people of the
South concede freely to the people of
Southern California the riojht of iudo-inQj
tor themselves in this matter, and to the
people of New Mexico the same right, they
have established for themselves a precedent
of infinite value. The right of government
interference will then have been effectu-
ally and forever abolished, and the freedom
of local sovereignties established beyond the
possibility of disturbance.

If the power of a local sovereignty is con-
ferred upon it by the general government,
there is some shadow of an argmnent that the
general government might, upon occasion,
resume the power it had conceded. If on
the other hand, the democratic principle
is allowed, that the local sovereignty is in-

digenous, and inheres in the citizen, poten-
tially at least, from the moment of his be-
coming an occupant of the soil, not only
are the rights of the people of New Mexico
to defend their territory established, and
those of the people of Southern California,
but those also of the inhabitants of every
state of the Union, and of every territory.
Local government begins, and local sover-
eignty is conferred, as soon as the people
have assembled in such numbers and force
as to organize a state. From that moment
their rights in regard to domestic institu-
tions are not to be disputed. Of what in-
calculable value would the adoption and
establishment of such a principle become,
when the admission of new states on the
Southern side of the Union begins to be
agitated. The present generation will pro-
bably behold the disintegration of the Mex-
ican Republic ; the independence of the
West Indian Islands, or at least of Cuba
and Porto Rico. New states will be
formed out of these territories, then be-
come independent, which will apply for
admission to the Union ; the application
will be voluntary ; these new states will
seek protection at our hands ; — protec-
tion against their own internal disor-
ders. Let the principle be once establish-
ed that the right of local legislation shall
be acknowledged from the beginning, in-
dependently of all preparatory and territo-
rial government, the dangers of civil war
and of a second crisis like the present, will
be forever averted.

But that is not all. By making this
concession, or rather by establishing for
themselves this immovable precedent, the
Southern states will have built for them-
selves a wall of protection and a founda-
tion of security for all time. They
will have established the right of local so-
vereignty beyond the reach of argument or
accident. Thereafter, nothins; but revolu-
tion could disturb them.

On mature consideration we cannot but
admit with Calhoun, that the establishment
of a line of compromise is equivalent to the
establishment of a fundamental law for
the suppression of slavery. A certain de-
gree of latitude is talked of as a line
which shall be extended to the Pacific.
By its establishment there is a seeming
gain on the part of the South, and yet
in conceding^ it, the So'ith will con-

122

Hints Toivard Conciliation.

August,

cede also the principle wliich it involves,
namely, that the general government has
power to prepare the territories for the re-
ception of a free or slave population. We
have hitherto argued that government
docs possess this power, and we believe it
to be congenial to the nature and charac-
ter of all governments. Under the cir-
cumstances however, and with an eye to
the future, we feel ready to adopt the po-
licy, though not the argument of Calhoun ;
as an argument, v^e hold it incapable of de-
fense, as a policy we desire, under the cir-
cumstances, to see it established.

Let us consider for a moment the tre
effects of the establishment of such a line.
A portion of California will be cut off upon
the north, and a portion of New Mexico,
including, of course, Santa Fe ; and by the
establishment of this line, as effectually as
by any Wilmot proviso, the severed parts
will be protected against the introduction
of slaves.

Southern California and Southern New
Mexico, on the other hand, are given over
to slave immigration ;that is to say, a pro-
slavery proviso has been imposed south of
the line, and a Wilmot proviso north of it.
Such must be the effects of this linear le-
gislation, if it is to have an?/ effects, — if it is
not a mere tub to the whale.

If it has effects, it interferes with the
cherished principle of the South, and ex-
hibits a regulative power over the domestic
affairs of the people. It is a species of pre-
paratory legislation, creating Northern and
Southern interests. As we have before
said, we are willing to concede the adoption
of the line : but always with the reservation,
that the effoct wliich it is intended to pro-
duce shall be nullified by the speedy admis-
sion of the territories into the system of the
Union. We are by no means of opinion
that it is judicious or expedient for North
or South to adopt any extended system of
preparatory legislation. We believe that
nature and circumstance will sufficiently
legislate for the territories, and that the
people had better be left to themselves, to
adopt such form of government, and such
institutions, as they please, that coming
generations may thereby escape the horrors
of civil war.

The Wilmot proviso, instead of adopting
a parallel of latitude, adopts an existing
boundary. A line of compromise is but a

modification of the proviso ; as a measure of
peace, we would concede it ; but only on
condition that no unfair advantage be here-
after taken of it ; that it shall not impede
the admission of the "new States ; that it
shall not he a shield for aggression; that
it shall not iinpair existing rights; that
it shall not affect the rights of new States
after their admission ; that in case the
people of Northern California^ or the peo-
ple of Sante Fe^ shall in future see Jit to
tolerate slavery within their limits^ or the
people south of the line see Jit to exclude
it^ no proviso whatsoever, nor any adopt-
ed parallel of latitude^ shall he hrought
forivard as a reason of interference with
them in the free exercise of their sovereign
rights as States.

Temporizing and partial legislation such
as this of a line of division, will not avert
evil from the future. Not many years
will have elapsed before new difficulties,
more formidable than the present, will
have arisen to distract us if we temporize
with the evils of the present crisis.

It is the misfortune of all young govern-
ments, that they have no precedents nor
principles ; and that is our misfortune. We
have a theory, but we have no precedents ;
we have a constitution, but we have no
governmental policy. Our fault is, that we
do not sufficiently respect ourselves and our
destiny. We are vexed with the turmoil and
the necessities of to-day ; we talk of gov-
ernment as though it were an experiment ;
but men cannot make experiments with
nations ; we might as well put our hand to
the wheels of the universe. It is God
alone who can experiment with nations.
Look at the other side, if you wish to
see signs of dissolution ; it is there, if
any v^here, that experiments are tried,
and not amongst ourselves. Ours is, at this
moment, the most solid government on the
face of the earth ; it is an integral member
of the commonwealth of nations, and its
place in history is already taken and estab-
lished. The American Republic is not
an experiment, it is a divine necessity.

While, in a spirit of conciliation, we en-
deavor to compose the differences which at
present agitate us, it is surely wise, — it is
i3ecoming — to regard also the remote future.
The act of union and naturalization has yet
to be completed. The theory of the con-
stitution has yet to be carried out in its

1850.

Hints Toward Conciliation.

123

spirit. Every man to whom the helm of
state is entrusted, or any part in the man-
agement of public affairs, if ho be a true
Republican, and worthy of the country to
which he owes his existence and his liber-
ty, will look upon himself as in some mea-
sure a defender of the Republic. He has
its principles and its laws at heart ; its
glory and its emoluments are his ; its wealth
and its prosperity are his. The manly en-
joyments of his life, those which flow out
of self-respect and conscious freedom ; —
these happinesses he derives from it, and
for these he returns his love for his coun-
try,— his patriotism.

It is a day of conciliation. The power
of the Republic has passed into new hands,
worthy and able to receive it ; the most
venerable names of the age are placed by
circumstance and by choice of the people
over the responsibilities of affairs. For the
party now in power it is an epoch of glory
and of hope. It is a day, indeed, of con-
ciliation, but it is a day of principle, also.
The men to whom the nation looks at this
moment for pacification and defence against
the fury of faction, have earned for them-
selves already the highest honors of states-
manship. To their reputation nothing can
be added, save the honor of presiding suc-
cessfully over the present crisis.

Premising so much of the spirit and prin-
ciples which actuate us in this controversy,
we propose, for the serious consideration of
our readers, the following hints toward a
plan of conciliation :

Since, as far as we are acquainted with
it, the feeling of the North is less than ever
ready to concede anything of the ground it
has taken, and the adjustment of the affair
by the withdrawal of opposition on that side
or on the other, is quite hopeless, let us agree
upon an armistice, and for a time declare a
truce to all hostilities. If the truce be only
for a day, it will give us time for reflection ; in
that brief interval there will be leisure
given to count our numbers, to measure our
conquests, and weigh our losses. Perhaps
it will be found, when the roar of the
conflict is stilled, and the smoke of bat-
tle has somewhat cleared away, that we
have been wasting our powers to no pur-
pose ; that the controversy is being decided
by no effort of ours, but by the silent and
irresistible movement of events and farces
over which we have no control.

The first trace in the outlines of a plan
for conciliation, which we submit to our
readers of the adverse factions, will be sim-
ply the acceptance of that fundamental and
well considered rule,
I,

That the poiver of protecting^ amelio-
rating^ or aholishing, institutions of caste
in a State^ lies with the 2>eople of that
State, and not with the people of any oth-
er State^ — much less loith the nation.

The people of Massachusetts cannot le-
gislate for the people of Carolina, nor these
two together for any other State. The re-
presentatives of all the States assembled
may legislate for interests common to the
whole, but not for a part.

The power of local emancipation belongs
to local sovereignty, and cannot be exer-
cised by the imperial or general sovereign-
ty. The States of California, the Mormon
State of Deseret, with that of New Mexi-
co, although not admitted to the Union,
are, nevertheless, organized in some degree,
and have a body of laws. The public do-
main in these States, excepting such parts
as may be conceded to the State of Texas,
belongs, of course, to the United States,
and they are under the protection of the
general government. The claim of Texas
being either satisfied, or set aside, as it
may happen, it will become necessary to
extend the protection of the General Gov-
ernment over New Mexico. That State
has population, wealth, to a certain degree ;
an old constitution, and one but just now
formed to supersede it ; she has, in short,
every thing that belongs to a State. She
is subordinate to the Union indeed, and had
not her people shown themselves organically
able to become, and to be, a State, the sove-
reignty over per>.ons in her territory would
have lodged in the United Stages. But
as circumstances now are, the imposi-
tion of laws by the general government
beyond what is necessary for protection,
and the accomplishment of the ends of
national government over all the States,
would be, indeed, a virtual usurpation — an
usurpation not within the letter of the law,
but certainly within its spirit.

We now come to our second hint toward
a plan of conciliation ; which is embraced in
the following proposition :
II.

That the presence or absence of castes

124

Hints Toward Conciliation,

August,

% a State^ ashing admission to tlie Union,
sliall not in future he raised as a bar to its
admission.

The new States of New Mexico and Ca-
lifornia are seeking admission to the Union;
other States, formed out of the territory of
Texas, will in future be seeking admission.
In accordance with the principle that the
power of local emancipation, or of the abo-
lition or protection of castes, belongs to the
local sovereignties, let it be understood, that
the establishment of a territorial govern-
ment is not for the purpose of making
such government an instrument of forcing
the inclinations of the people and impos-
ing upon them an uncongenial constitu-
tion. Laying aside, on our part, all
pretentions to a general authority or con-
trol over the wishes of the risina: sove-
reignties of the South and West, and be-
lieving that in future the establishment of
territorial governments will rarely or never
be called for, we have offered the above
hint toward conciliation.

Casting an eye over the probabilities of the
future, let us see what we have in prospect :
and first, there is no probability, should the
Canadas seek admission to the Union, of their
asking for a territorial government ; — they
will come in as States. On the South, should
any portion of Mexico or of the West India
Islands seek admission to the Union, they
will come in as organized States, as in the
case of Texas. The extension of a pro-
slavery or of an anti -slavery proviso over
the people of these new States, and more
especially over those which are to be formed
out of the territory of Texas will be a thing
not to be thought of : it will be utterly im-
possible to extend any such proviso. Sla-
very will have been already either esta-
blished or abolished, previous to admission,
in every State that will hereafter seek ad-
mission to the Union — which brinofs us to
our third hint towards conciliation :
III.

That our knowledge of the mode in
which the people of any new State apply-
ing for admission to the Union, intend to
use the power guaranteed to the7n hy their
admission, shall not he admitted in Con-
gress as an argument for or against their
admission.

The admission of a State into the Union
is an effectual and perfect guaranty to
it of protection in the exercise of its

local sovereignty. Ought it then, in the
process of admission, in the process of
establishing its unquestionable powers, to
be forestalled in the exercise of those
powers } If a certain authority is lodged
with the people of a State applying for
admission, and of right belongs to that
people, ought they to be forestalled in the
exercise of that authority at the moment
when they are seeking to have the ability to
use it guaranteed to them by the nation }

The establishment of a territorial gov-
ernment is in order to assist the people of a
territory in the free organization of them-
selves as a State, and not directly or indi-
rectly to impress them with the sentiments
and desires of other States, or to bias them
in the adoption of any particular code or
fundamental law : therefore, as a hint to-
ward conciliation, we propose,

IV.

That it shall he understood in future
as the established policy of the general
government, that lohile the people of any
and of all the States shall be permitted to
exert all laiofid means of persuasion, to
induce the people of new States to esta-
blish this or that form of local sovereign-
ty, it shall not be icithin the power of the
general government to establish a territo-
rial sway j or the direct purpose of influ-
encing the local institutions of the rising
sovereignty.

We conceive that the extension of slave-
ry over new territories is an evil to be de-
pricated, but, under the circumstances, and
in view of all that has happened and is
likely to happen in future, we offer the above
hint toward conciliation. If the principle
is adopted by the body of the Whig party
that no particular system shall, by any poli-
tical machinations or contrivances, be forced
upon any people who may in future seek ad-
mission to the Union ; but if that people do
voluntarily and of their own accord, exer-
cising therein the sovereignty which be-
lono;s to them in common with all other
States, tolerate or suppress institutions al-
lowed in other States, they shall not, be-
cause of such conduct, be outlawed and
excluded from the empire. There will
then be a possibility of peace and unanim-
ity in the party of union, and on no other
ground that we can at present discover.

The imposition of a territoral govern-
ment, for the avowed purpose of establish-

1850.

Hints Toward Conciliation.

125

ing or of suppressing slavery, would be an
assumption on the part of Congress of a
power strictly within the letter of the Con-
stitution, but which is not in accordance
with the general principles of popular and
local liberty.

In California, the people have been al-
lowed to shape their own Constitution ; no
proviso, either for the establishment or
suppression of negro slavery, was extended
over them. The people of New Mexico
are in the same position, and have exer-
cised the same liberty. Earnestly as we
dread and depricate the extension of slave-
ry, even over countries fitted by nature to
receive it, we are, nevertheless, satisfied
that all legislative action to prevent it, as
well as to establish it, either by territorial
proviso or by other measures akin to that,
will in future be of no avail. Let us sup-
pose that a general proviso for the estab-
lishment of slavery south of a certain line,
or within the territoty of Texas, had been
adopted, and that afterward the people of
a new State formed within that territory
should apply for admission, with a general
law prohibiting slavery incorporated into
their constitution ; — would it be possible
for us to refuse them admission } Or if, on
the other hand, a new State, with slavery
established by its constitution, were to ap-
ply, in the face of a proviso against slavery;
and on its rejection it were to apply again,
with the obnoxious law erased from its sta-
tutes, and it were then admitted, an equal,
sovereio;n State amons: the rest, — would
anything be gained by such a procedure }
Would not this new State, with full pow-
ers of sovereignty guaranteed to it by its
admission, be on a perfect equality with
other States, notwithstanding all provisos ?
and would not its people have the power,
under that equality and guaranty, to revise
their constitution and re-establish slave-
holders in their rights — if not over slaves
recently emancipated, yet over others af-
terward introduced ?

New Mexico and California present them-
selves as free States ; — they will perhaps be
admitted as free States ; and yet, they have
in reserve the power of revising their own
constitutions, and in future of toleratins
slavery within their proper limits. This
power they will exercise on an equality
with their sister States. Can anything be
more obvious than the fruitlessness and the

mischief of all attempts on the part of the
general government, under the present as-
pect of affairs, to exercise its power for the
establishment or prevention of slavery, where
the people themselves are already organized
and able to regulate their own affairs. Agi-
tation in or out of Congress, in this direc-
tion, ought therefore to be indefinitely sus-
pended, since, however desirable or how-
ever honest the ends proposed by the agita-
tors, their action cannot affect the final
issue.

As a fifth hint towards conciliation, we
propose ;

That the people of the Southern States
in a spirit oj conciliation and in sincere
amity ^ do take into consideration and es-
timate for themselves the probable good
which may accrue to the nation hy the
suppression of the slave traffic in the
District of Columlia.

While the people of the South insist
upon the continuance of this traffic, they
insist upon the continuance of agitation,
and the constant deepening of sentiments
of hostility on the side of the North.
Whatever course they may pursue among
themselves, in regard to the traffic in slaves,
they cannot fail to see, that its continuance
in a territory which is common to the free
and slave States, is a deadly and intolera-
ble insult to the Northern, Western, and
Eastern populations ; and that its continu-
ance there, of trifling benefit to themselves,
exasperates the entire nation, and keeps up
a feeling which no concession on their part
can ever cure. To the stability of their
institutions it adds nothing, but rather en-
feebles them, by arraying against them the
sentiments of the civilized world. Slavehold-
ers know that the traffic in slaves is the
worst feature in their institutions, and is
injurious in a high degree, even to them-
selves. Sentiments of decency, considera-
tions of interest, and, above all, of patri-
otism, should inspire them with the resolu-
tion to suppress, as speedily as possible,
this great original cause of dissention and
agitation.

Our sixth hint • towards conciliation,
touches the quarrel between Texas and
New Mexico, a quarrel which is fast ripen-
ing into a war between two distinct popu-
lations, one recently admitted, the other
not yet admitted under the guarantees of
the constitution.

126

Hints Toward Conciliation.

August,

The territory contended for by Texas
belonged originally to Mexico, but was ob-
tained from that Republic by a treaty, and
cession to the United States. Texas
had, indeed, passed a law that the territory
should be hers ; negotiations were set on
foot by the United States for the settle-
ment of the claims of Texas ; these nego-
tiations were rejected by the government of
Mexico, and a Mexican army advanced to
the line of the disputed territory. That
army was met and defeated by the army of
observation sent thither by the United
States. A general war ensued. Mexico
was invaded and overcome. She then, for
the first time, entered upon negotiations. It
was considered desirable for the United
States to possess a larger territory. As a
measure of peace and conciliation, Mexico
ceded to the United States her territory of
New Mexico, an integral part of her Re-
public. By the same act she ceded Cali-
fornia, and the boundary between the Uni-
ted States and Mexico was fixed on the
Rio Grande, and other lines convenient
for the separation of the two Republics.
The treaty of session was not with Texas,
but with the United States. The compen-
sation of $15,000,000 was paid, not by
Texas, but by the United States. If a
conquest was made, it was not made by
Texas, and if New Mexico is a conquest,
she belongs in right of conquest to the con-

quering power ; and if Texas is to be her
possessor, Texas must either conquer her
from the United States, or must obtain her
by treaty or cession from that power. The
United States has power to cede territory
to a State, and States may cede territory
to the nation ; but the claim of Texas
made before the war was not established by
conquest, nor was there any bargain be-
tween the people of Texas and the nation
at large that the conquered territory should
belong to Texas.

Let New Mexico, with suitable boun-
daries, ascertained by the lawful and usual
enquiries, be in good time established in her
rights, as a Territory ; and if it can
be proved that, through any irregular-
ity or misunderstanding, the people of
Texas have suffered injury in the pro-
cedure of the war and of the treaty,
let them receive compensation, double
and even three-fold compensation, if that
be necessary for a pacification of the
Union ; and if a balance of injuries and a
compromise of rights must of necessity en-
ter into the settlement of this controversy,
let the concession of more thanher ascer-
tained rights to the State of Texas be set off
against concessions on the part of the
South. With the measure and the extent
of those mutual concessions we mean not
to meddle. Concession should be met by
concession, or it is no concession.

SONNET.

Thy servant, Truth, and soldier, I would be ;
Life is a conflict, and true deeds, I find,
Spring out of manly courage. The strong mind
Rages ever in fierce battle. Victor)'',
Loss and defeat, the sharp recovery.
The late won triumph and its crown entwined
With empire, and the power to loose or bind, —
These, outward, do but name and typify
The battle and the triumph of the Soul.
At her command the passions belch their fires,
And all the creatures of her wide control.
Arts, loves, thoughts, impulses, and fierce desires,
She with one purpose and one aim inspires.
And from her calm enthronement guides the whole.

1850

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 1

127

WHAT CONSTITUTES REAL FREEDOM OF TRADE?

Such is the question to which we mean to ask the attention of our readers, believing it one of the highest
importance, and knowing that there exist in relation to it impressions that are most erroneous, and
that may, as we think, be removed by a careful examination of the phenomena by which real freedom
of trade is characterised.

Throughout the world, and at all ages,
men have been disputing about words to
which thej attach no distinct ideas ; and
such is still the case. The writers of Eu-
rope, oppossd to Democracy^ quote, in il-
lustration of its evils, the example of Ath-
ens, whose citizens lived in the streets and
in the courts, occupied in the government
of the people of a thousand subject towns
and cities, or in theatres erected and main-
tained by aid of taxes imposed on those
subjects, who, when in Athens, were deni-
ed participation in the amusements, for the
support of which they were taxed. In a
democracy, or government of the people,
there can be no subjects ; whereas in a
government hy a people, masters are nu-
merous, and the condition of the subject
approaches near to that of a slave. Athens
had numerous subjects, and therefore could
be no democracy, though it is ever referred
to as such. M. de Tocqueville wrote of
democracy in America, while proving in
every page of his work his entire inability
to furnish such an explanation of the phe-
nomena of society which constitute demo-
cracy as would enable us to recognize it
when we mio:ht chance to meet it. The
owner of a thousand slaves calls himself a
democrat^ and stigmatizes the employer of
a hundred workmen as an aristocrat. We
are daily called upon to support certain
measures because they are democratic ^^Qi^
when examined, they not unfrequently prove
to be precisely such as would be advocated
by men who desired to diminish the power
of self-government, and destroy democra-
cy. At one time, certain measures are ad-
vocated as democratic in their tendency ;
and, at another time, precisely similar ones

are denounced as anti- democratic^ and the
people who vote not unfrequently lend their
aid to measures the direct effect of which is
to transfer power from themselves to others
who should be their servants — but thus
become their masters.

So is it with many other terms in con-
stant use. Civilization is in the mouth of
every one, and yet where shall we find such
a definition of its phenomena as will enable
us accurately to distinguish it from barbar-
ism } M. Guizot undertook the task and
failed, the consequence of which is, that
the reader of his History of Civilization
rises from its perusal with no distinct ideas
on the subject of the work. Unable to
describe the thing of which he wrote, he
invites attention to a period of Roman his-
tory described as one of rapidly advancing
civilization, whereas a little further knowl-
edge would have enabled him to see that it
was one, all the phenomena of which were
evidences of rapidly advancing barbarism.
We are daily told that certain occurrences,
indicating deterioration of physical or moral
condition, are the necessary consequences
of increasing civilization, whereas were we
in possession of any generally recognized
test of civilization, we should find those
occurrences to be the result of measures
tending in the opposite direction. France
claims to be at the head of civilization ;
yet France is ever at war, either abroad or
at home, and war and barbarism are syno-
nymous.

Another of these terms is Slavery. Of
all our readers, there is scarcely one that
does not suppose himself capable of furnish-
ing a definition of the word, and yet how
few in number of the definitions thus sup-

128

"What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

August,

plied would stand ! The English journal-
ist looks with horror upon the idea of sell-
ing a negro slave, yet he prints without re-
mark a paragraph like the following, in re-
lation to the people of the sister kingdom,
of whom he is accustomed to write as being
free :

" Out of three hundred creatures who were
seen and spoken to by the proprietor of this
journal, during a recent visit to the Kilrush
Workhouse, forty-six have siiice died of
starvation. On the morning of the 6th of
April, a poor man died of destitution on the
road-side near Knockeven. It is further stated
that at the last accounts from the Kilrush
Union, six hundred patients were under medi-
cal treatment from diseases arising principally
from the want of sufficient food. An inquest
was held on the morning of the 5th ult., at
Ballinalacken, on the body of Michael Fitz-
gerald, and the verdict of the jury was, —
" Death for the want of food." The same day
an inquest was held on the body of a young
lad named James Grady, and the verdict was,
— " Death from disease of the lunge, acceler-
ated by destitution." The papers abound with
similar accounts. The details of some of the
cases are truly touching and_heart-rending." —
Limerick Examiner.

The man who is given over to the tender
mercies of the parish overseer is far less
free than he who is sold to a master who
needs his services, and is willing to feed,
and clothe, and lodge him well in return
therefor. The Irishman, expelled from his
wretched holding, would rejoice to find that
he was deemed worthy of being bought
by any one who would treat him as are
treated the slaves of Georgia.

The abolitionist rejects the cotton of the
well-fed, well-clothed, and well-lodged la-
borer of Tennessee, preferring that of the
free Hindoo, who perishes of pestilence,
consequent upon a famine, itself the result
of tyranny and oppression so universal and
complete that the poor ryot, or little occu-
pant of the soil, is enabled, and with truth,
to declare that " his skin alone is left him.''
The British government, at enormous cost,
maintains fleets on the coast of Africa for
the purpose of stopping the negro slave
trade, and employs other fleets on the coast
of China for the purpose of compelling the
people of that country to grant a market
for opium produced in India by the free
people, whose condition is worse than that
of slaves. It emancipates the black man in
the Westj and enslaves the brown one in the

East ; and the advocate of the one messure
is equally the advocate of the other. It
would seem obvious from this, there are no
clear and distinct ideas attached to any of
these terms, and equally so, that, until we
can agree upon some definition, expressing
clearly the idea that is meant to be conveyed
by them we shall continue to occupy our-
selves in disputing about words instead of
things. In other sciences, this difl&culty
does not exist. The word gravitation^
whenever and however used, conveys al-
ways the same idea. So is it with all the
terms of physical science, and hence it is
that men who are engaged in the study of
the phenomena of the physical world find
so little difiiculty in understanding each
other, while it is rare to find two men en-
gaged in the discussion of any question
touching the condition of man that do not
greatly difier as to the signification of the
terms they use.

Of all those in use among men,
there is, perhaps, not one that is now more
frequently used than thsit oi free trade —
nor one in relation to which there exists so
much difference of opinion. By one por-
tion of the community it is believed that
the immediate adoption of a certain system
which passes by that name would be pro-
ductive of unmixed good ; while, by another,
it is regarded as a sort of Pandora's box,
abounding in evil, and yet both parties
would be found agreeing that they them-
selves preferred, in the performance of their
exchanges with each other, the most perfect
freedom of trade.

What is it that constitutes free trade ?
As in the case of democracy, civilization,
and slavery, every one of our readers will
find himself prepared with a definition, yet
it will, as we think, be dif&cult to find ,
among them all a single clear and definite ^
idea — such an one as will embrace and ex-
plain accurately the phenomena which con-
stitute real freedom of trade. liike the
other terms to which we have referred, it jj
seems very simple, yet few would be found ^
to be agreed in determining precisely what
it meant. The Englishman boasts that his
country is the land of free trade, yet the
farmer cannot apply his own labor to the
conversion of his own malt and hops into
beer, nor can his wife apply her own labor
for the conversion of her tallow into can-
dles, while the brewer is required to brew,

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

129

aDcl the tallow-chandler to make his candles,
according to law. The owner of disen-
gaged capital cannot determine for himself
the mode of its employment. If he would
purchase land, he finds himself surrounded
by men who can neither sell the property
nor give it to their children, and if he
study the works of the most eminent advo-
cates of free trade, he finds that the com-
munity is benefitted by restraints upon
trade in law, the source of all production.*
If he would bank, he is met by the mono-
poly of the Bank of England ; and if he
study the speeches of another eminent ad-
vocate of free trade, | he will find that it is
to the interest of the community that the
monopoly should be maintained. The owner
of a machine cannot send it to distant
countries without a license. The inventor
of an improvement cannot make it public
without the payment of a tax. The little
owners of a saving fund must make their
investments in consols which yield but
three per cent. Throughout England, there
is no real freedom of trade. The system
tends to build up great landholders, great
farmers, great manufacturers, great news-
papers, great lawyers, great conveyancers,
great railroad speculators, and great men of
many other classes, while preventing the
existence of a free market for either labor
or capital ; the consequence of which is,
that these great men are surrounded by an
infinite number of small men, whose utmost
exertions are insufficient to enable them to
obtain adequate supplies of food and clothes,
because of the vast number of persons who
stand between the producer and the con-
sumer, and who must be supported, even if
both producer and consumer be forced to
seek refuge in the workhouse — and yet
England now claims to be em.phatically the
land of free trade, because, quite recently,
she has abolished some restrictions on the
smallest and least important portion of her
trade, that with distant nations.

The example of that country is held up
to us, and we are told that any departure
from the system there known by the name
of " free trade" would have " an unfavor-
able effect on public opinion in Eno-land,"
and English writers lecture us on the ad-

* See McCuUoch on the Succession to Property
vacant by death,
t Sir Robert Peel.

VOL. VI. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

vantages of perfect freedom of trade, without
perceiving that here it is that trade is freest,
and that it is for them to pattern after us, in-
stead of urging that we should pattern after
them. The owner of land here disposes of
it as he pleases. The farmer may make his
own candles, brew his own beer, burn
his own bricks. The author communicates
his ideas to the world without being sub-
jected to the payment of a tax, and the
mechanic exports his machine without a
license. Everywhere there exists s free-
dom of trade in land, labor, and the pro-
ducts of land and labor, elsewhere unknown,
and yet because, in some certain matters,
we do not follow the example of England,
we are reproached as being slaves to anci-
ent prejudices, and behind the age — the
result of ignorance of the great principles
of English political economy.

Anxious to meet the good opinion of our
trans-Atlantic relatives, we occasionally
make a step in their direction, the result of
which has thus far been, and that invaria-
bly, to close the mills, furnaces, and work-
shops of the Union ; the places at which
men, women and children were accustomed
to trade off labor in exchange for the ne-
cessaries, convenience, and comforts of life.
The spinner was thus denied the power to
trade her labor for cloth, for the reason that
trade has become free. The mechanic was
deprived of the power to trade his labor for
food for his children, because trade had
become free. The miner, desirous to trade
his labor for coal, was compelled to remain
idle, or to raise food, because trade had be-
come free. The furnace-man, unable to
exchange his exertions for food and cloths,
found that it was freedom of trade that had
produced the inability to trade — and thus a
general paralysis of trade was called per-
fect freedom of trade.

If we look to England we see precisely
the same results with each and every step
in the direction known as free trade. Eve-
ry packet brings advice of diminished
power to exchange labor for commodities,
the consequence of which is, diminished
home consumption, diminished prices of
commodities, for the diminution is the price
of labor, and increased necessity for ex-
porting to foreign countries the men who
had lost the power to trade off their labor
for commodities, and the commodities no
longer needed to be given in exchange for
9

130

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 1

August,

labor. Each successive arrival informs us
of the increasing number of persons com-
pelled to live in alms-houses, and compelled
to make their exchanges through the me-
dium of poor-law guardians, because of
inability to make their accustomed exchan-
ges of labor for food — and month after
month, we have to remark the increasing
anxiety for expelling from England the
men, women and children who, under this
nominally free trade system, are deprived
of the power to trade off their exertions in
exchange for food and clothing — and yet
England claims to be the land of free trade.

If we turn to Ireland, also the land of
free trade, we see an almost total inability
to trade off labor in exchange for either food
or clothing. Canada has free trade, yet
she is unable to trade off labor for food, and
Canadians are forced to get employment
within the Union. Next, we see the far-
mer of Canada seeking to send his food to
be exchanged in the markets of the Union
for that labor which could not be employed
at home. The system that is called free
trade appears there, as here, to produce
general inability to maintain trade.

It is scarcely possible to study these facts
without being convinced that, in the mean-
ing that is attached to "free trade,"- there
existssome error that needs detection . Real
and perfect freedom of trade would have un-
mixed good, as is proved to be the case
among the different portions of the Union.
The thing now known as " free trade," ap-
pears,on the contrary, examine it where we
may, to be productive of unmixed evil, di-
minishing the power to trade wherever the
system obtains ; the diminution is seen to
be always greatest where it most obtains.
In 1841-2 the power to trade labor for
food in this country was almost at an end,
and the Union presented the same state of
things that now exists in Canada. In 1846,
the power to trade was immense. In 1850,
it has greatly declined, and it declines dai-
ly. Seeing these things, it would seem to
be time to examine in what it really is that
freedom of trade — the unmixed good — con-
sists, that vv^e may know it when we meet
it, and perhaps also be enabled to deter-
mine in what direction it may be sought.

To do this satisfactorily to ourselves and
our readers, we must begin at the begin-
ning of trade, in the family, which long
precedes the nation. Doing so, we find the

husband trading off his services in the rais-
ing of food and the materials of clothing,
for those of his wife, employed in the pre-
paration of food for the table, and the con-
version of raw materials into clothing, and
here it is we find the greatest of all trades.
Of all the labor employed on the farms and
in the farm-houses of the Union, we should,
if ever we have an accurate statement, find
that the proportion cf its products ex-
changed beyond their own limits, scarcely
exceeded one-third, and was certainly far
less than one-half, the remainder being gi-
ven to the raising of food and raw materials
for their own consumption, and the conver-
sion of that food and those materials into
the forms fitting for their own uses.

At the next step we find ourselves in the
little community, of which the owner of this
farm constitutes a portion ; and here we find
the farmer exchano-ino; his wheat with one
neighbor for a day's labor — ^he use of his
wagon and his horse for other days of labor
— his potatoes with a third for the shoeing
of his horse, and in the fourth for the shoe-
ing of himself and his children, or the ma-
king of his coat. On one day he or his fa-
mily have labor to spare, and they pass it
off to a neighbor to be repaid by him in la-
bor on another day. One requires aid in
the spring, the other in the autumn ; one
gives a day's labor in hauling lumber, in ex-
change for that of another employed in mi-
ning coal or iron ore. Another trades the
labor that has been employed in the pur-
chase of a plough for that of his neighbor
which had been applied to the purchase of
a cradle. Exchanges being thus made on
the spot, from hour to hour and from day
to day, with little or no intervention of per-
sons whose business is trade, the amount
of exchanges is large, and combined with
those of the family, equals probably four-
fifths of the total product of the labor of
the community, leaving not more than one-
fifth to be traded off with distant men ; and
this proportion is often greatly diminished
as with increasing population and wealth a
market is made on the land for the pro-
ducts of the land.

This little community forms part of a
larger one, styled a nation, the members of
which are distant hundreds, or thousands of
miles from each other, and here we find
difficulties tending greatly to limit the pow-
er to trade. The man in latitude 40 '^ may

^rv

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 7

131

have labor to sell for which he can find no
purchaser, while he who lives in latitude
50 is at the moment grieving to see his crop
perish on the ground for want of aid in
harvest. The first may have potatoes rot-
tino", and his wag-on and horses idle, while
the second may need potatoes, and have his
lumber on his hands for want of means of
transportation, yet distance forbids ex-
chano-e beween them.

Again, this nation forms part of a
world, the inhabitants of which are distant
tens of thousands of miles from each other,
and totally unable to ejQPect exchanges of la-
bor, or even of commodities, except of cer-
tain kinds that will bear transportation to
distant markets. Trade tends, therefore,
to diminish in its amount with every cir-
cumstance tending to increase the necessity
for going to a distance, and to increase in
amount with every one tending to diminish
the distance within which it must be main-
tained. As it now stands with the great
farming interest of the Union, the propor-
tions are probably as follows :

Exchanges in the family, 55 per cent.

" in the neighborhood, 25 "

" in the nation, 15 "

*' v^ith other nations, 5 "

Total,

100

It will now be obvious that any law, do-
mestic or foreign, tending to interfere with
the exchanges of the family or the neigh-
borhood, would be of more serious impor-
tance than one that should, to the same
extent, aifect those with the rest of the na-
tion, and that one which should affect the
trade of one part of the nation with another,
would be more injurious than one which
should tend to limit the trade with distant
nations. Japan refuses to have intercourse
with either Europe or America, yet this to-
tal interdiction of trade with a great empire
is less important to the farmers of the Union
than would be the imposition of a duty of
one farthing a bushel upon the vegetable
food raised on their farms to be consumed
in their families.

The acreat trade is the home trade, and the
greater the tendency to the performance of
trade at home the more rapid will be the
increase of prosperity, and the greater the
power to effect exchanges abroad. The
reason of this is to be found in the fact that
the power of protection increases with the

power of combined exertion, and all com-
bination is an exchange of labor for labor,
the exchange being affected at home. The
more exchanges are effected at home the
smaller is the number of the men, hands,
wages, ships, or sailors, employed in ma-
king exchanges, and the greater the num-
ber employed in the work of production
with increase in the quantity of commodi-
ties produced, and iho, power to trade grows
with the power to produce, while the power
to produce diminishes with every increase in
the necessity for trade. Again, when the
work of exchange is performed at home, the
power of combination facilitates the trading
off of a vast amount of labor that would
otherwise be wasted, and an infinite num-
ber of thino-s that would otherwise have no
value whatever, but which, combined with
the labor that is saved, are quite sufficient
to make one community rich by compari-
son with another in which such savings can-
not be efi'ected. Virginia wastes more la-
bor and more commodities that would have
value in New England |han would pay five
times over for all the cloth and iron she
consumes.

Again, the quantity of capital required
for effectino; exchanges tends to diminish as
exchanges come nearer home. The ship
which goes to China performs no more ex-
changes in a year than the canal-boat which
trades from city to city performs in a month ;
and the little and inexpensive railroad car
passing from village to village may perform
twice as many exchanges as the fine packet
ship which has cost ninety or a hundred
thousand dollars. With the extension of
the home trade, labor and capital become,
therefore, more productive of commodities
required for the support and comfort of
man, and the wages of the laborer and the
profits of the capitalist tend to increase,
and trade tends still further to increase.
On the other hand, with the diminution of
the power to effect exchanges at home, la-
bor and capital become less productive of
commodities ; the wages of the laborer
and the profits of the capitalist tend to de-
crease, and trade tends still further to di-
minish. All this is fully exemplified on a
comparison of the years 1835-36 with
1841-42, while the contrary upward tend-
ency is exemplified by the years 1845-6
and 7, as compared with 1841-2.

Singularly enough, however, the fashiona-

132

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

August

ble doctrine of our day is, that tlie prosperity
of a nation is to be measured by the amount
of its trade with people who are distant, as
manifested by custom-house returns, and
not by the quantity of exchanges among
persons who live near each other, and who
trade without the intervention of ships, and
little need of steam-boats or waggons. If
the trade of a neighborhood be closed by
the failure of a furnace or a mill, and the
workman thus deprived of the power to
trade off the labor of himself or his chil-
dren, or the farmer deprived of the power
to trade off his food, consolation is found in
the increased quantity of exports, «V5f//*,^?er-
liaps^ tJie direct consequence of a dimmislied
ahility to consume at home. If canal-boats
cease to be built, the nation is deemed to be
enriched by the substitution of ocean steam-
ers renuiring one hundred times the capital
f jr the performance of the same quantity of
exchange. If the failure of mills and fur-
naces cause men to be thrown out of em-
ployment, the remedy is to be found, not in
the revisal of the measures that have pro-
duced these effects, but in the exportation
of the men themselves to distant climes,
thus producing a necessity for the perma-
nent use of ships instead of canal-boats,
with diminished power to maintain trade,
and every increase of this necessity is re-
garded as an evidence of growing wealth
and power.

The whole tendency of modern commer-
cial policy is to the substitution of the dis-
tant market for the near one. England ex-
ports her people to Australia that they may
there grow the wool that might be grown at
home more cheaply, and we export to Cali-
fornia, by hundreds of thousands, men who
employ themselves in hunting gold, leaving
behind them untouched the real gold
mines — those of coal and iron — in which
their labor would be thrice more produc-
tive. The reports of the late Secretary of
the Treasury abound in suggestions as to
the value of the distant trade. Steam
ships were, he thought, needed to enable us
to obtain the control of the commerce of
China and Japan. " With our front on
both oceans and the gulf," it was thought,
" we might secure this commerce, and with
it, in time, command the trade of the
world." England, not to be outdone in
this race for '^ the commerce of the world,"
adds steadily to her fleet of ocean steamers,

and the government contributes its aid for
their maintenance, by the payment oi enor-
mous sums withdrawn from the people at
home, and diminishing the home market to
thrice the extent that it increases the foreign
one. The latest accounts inform us of new
arrangements about to be made with a view
to competition with this country for the
passage traffic to and within the tropics,
while the greatest of all trades now left to
British ships is represented to be the trans-
port of British men, women, and children,
who are so heavily taxed at home for the
maintenance of this very system that they
are compelled to seek an asylum abroad.
In all this there is nothing like freedom of
trade, or freedom of man, and the only
real difference between the freeman and the
slave is, that the former trades for himself,
his labor and his products, and in the latter
another does it for him.

The late Secretary regards himself as a
disciple of Adam Smith ; so does Lord John
Russell. We, too, are his disciples, but in
the Wealth of Nations we can find no war-
rant for the system advocated by either.
The system of Dr. Smith tended to the
production of that natural freedom of
trade, each step towards which would have
been attended with improvement in the
condition of the people, and increase in
the power to trade^ thus affording proof
conclusive of the soundness of the doctrine ;
whereas every step in the direction now
known as free trade is attended with deter-
ioration of condition, and increased neces-
sity for trade, with diminished poiver to
trade. Those who profess to be his follow-
ers and suppose that they are carrying out
his principles, find results directly the re-
verse of their anticipations ; and the reason
for this may readily be found in the fact that
the English school of political economists
long since repudiated the whole of the sys-
tem of Dr. Smith, retaining of it little more
than the mere tvords "free trade." That
this is the case we purpose now to show our
readers by a few extracts, that will enable
them to understand what really was his
system, and to compare it with the coun-
terfeit that has been substituted in its
place.

The basis of all trade is to be found in
production, and, therefore, it was that Dr.
Smith looked upon agriculture, the science
of production, as the first pursuit of man,

1850.

W7iat Constitutes Real F?'eedom of Trade ?

133

manufacture and commerce being useful to
the extent that they aided production, and
no further. " No equal quantity of pro-
ductive labor or capital employed in manu-
facture" says he, " can even occasion so
great a reproduction as if it were employ-
ed in agriculture. In these, nature does
nothing, man, does all, and the reproduc-
tion must always be proportioned to the
strenoih of the ao;ents that occasion it.
The capital employed in agriculture, there-
fore, not only puts into motion a greater
quantity of productive labor than any
equal capital employed in manufacture ;
but, in proportion, too, to the quantity of
productive labor which it employs, it adds
a much greater value to the annual value
of the land and labor of the country, to the
real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants.
Of all the ways which a capital can be em-
ployed, it is by far the most advantageous
to society."

This is the starting point of the whole
system, and is directly the opposite of
that from which starts the modern English
politic economical school, which professes
to follow in his footsteps, as we shall have
occasion to show, together with the causes
of the change. For the present, it is suffici-
ent to say that Mr. M'Culloch deems this
passage, which really constitutes the base
upon which rests the whole structure of
Dr. Smith's work is regarded by Mr.
M'Culloch as " the most objectionable pas-
sage" in it, and he expresses great surprise
that " so acute and sagacious a reasoner
should have maintained a doctrine so
manifestly erroneous." To accomplish
the object we have in view, that of exhi-
biting the system of Dr. Smith, and com-
paring it with that which has now to so
great an extent usurped its place, we shall
be compelled to give our readers many ex-
tracts from his work ; which is the more ne-
cessary that although his name is often
used there are very few even of those who
profess to be his disciples who even possess
his work, and even of these but few who
read it.

The natural order of things — the priority
of production to trade, and the entire de-
pendence of the latter upon the former —
is so well shown in the following passage
that we desire to call to it the careful at-
tention of our readers :

"The great commerce of every civilized

society is that carried on between the inhabi
tants of the town and those of the country'
It consists in the exchange of rude for manu-
factured produce, either immediatel}^, or by
the intervention of money, or of some sort of
paper which represents money. The country
supplies the town with the means of subsist-
ence and the materials of manufacture. The
town repays tbis supply, by sending back a
part of the manufactured produce to the in-
habitants of the country, The town, in which
there neither is nor can be any reproduction
of substances, may very properly be said to
gain its whole wealth and subsistence from
the country. We must not, however, upon
this account, imagine that the gain of the town
is the loss of the country. The gains of both
are mutual and reciprocal, and the division of
labor is in this, as in all other cases, advanta-
geous to all the different persons employed in

the various occupations into which it is sub-
divided. The inhabitants of the country pur-
chase of the town a greater quantity of manu-
factured goods with the produce of a much
smaller quantity of their ow^n labor, than they
must have employed had they attempted to
prepare them themselves. The townaiibrdsa
market for the surplus produce of the country,
or what is over and above the maintenance of
the cultivators; and it is there that the in-
habitants of the country exchange it for some-
thing else which is in demand among them.
The greater the number and revenue of the
inhabitants of the town, the more extensive is
the market which it affords to those of the
country; and the more extensive that market,
it is always the more advantageous to a great
number. The corn which grows within a
mile of the town, sells there for the same price
with that w^hich conies from twenty miles dis-
tance. But the price of the latter must, gene-
rally, not only pay the expense of raising it
and bringing it to market, but afford, too, the
ordinary prolits of agriculture to the farmer.
The proprietors and cultivators of the country,
therefore, which lies in the neighborhood of
the town, over and above the ordinary profits
of agriculture, gain in the price of what they
sell, the whole value of the carriage of the
like produce that is brought from more distant
parts ; and they save, besides, the whole value
of this carriage in the price of what they
buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in
the neighborhood of any considerable town,
with that of those which lie at some distance
from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself
how much the country is benefited by the
commerce of the town. Among all the absurd
speculations that have been propagated con-
cerning the balance of trade, it has never been
pretended that either the country loses by its
commerce with the town, or the town by that
with the country w^hich maintains it.

134

WJiat Constitutes Real Freedom of Traded

August,

'•As subsistence is in the nature of things,
prior to conveniency and luxury^ so the in-
dustry which procures the former, must neces-
sarily be prior to that which ministers to the
latter. The cultivation and improvement of
the country, therefore, which affords subsist-
ence, must, necessarily, be prior to the increase
of the town, which furnishes only the means
of convenience and luxury. It is the surplus
produce of the country only, or what is over
and above the maintenance of the cultivators,
that constitutes the subsistence of the town,
which can therefore increase only with the in-
crease of the surplus produce. The town, in-
deed, may not always derive its whole sub-
sistence from the country in its neighborhood,
or even from the territory to w^hich it belongs,
but from very distant countries; and this,
though it forms no exception from the general
rule, has occasioned considerable vaiiations
in the progress of opulence in different ages
and nations.

"That order of things which necessity im-
poses, in general, though not in every particu-
lar country, is in every particular country pro-
moted by the natural inclinations of man. If
human institutions had never thwarted those
natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere
have increased beyond what the improvement
and cultivation of the territory in which they
were situated could support ; till such time, at
least, as the whole of that territory was com-
pletely cultivated and improved. Upon equal,
or nearly equal profits, most men will choose
to employ their capitals, rather in the improve-
ment and cultivation of land, than either in
manufactures or in foreign trade. The man
who employs his capital in land, has it more
under his view and command ; and his fortune
is much less liable to accidents than that of the
trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it,
not only to the winds and the waves, but to the
more uncertain elements of human folly and
injustice, by giving great credits, in distant
countries, to men with whose character and situ-
ation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted.
The capital of the landlord, on the contrary,
which is fixed in the improvement of his land,
seems to be as well secured as the nature of
human affairs can admit of. The beauty of
the country, besides, the pleasures of a coun-
try life, the tranquility of mind which it pro-
mises, and wherever the injustice of human
laws does not disturb it, the independency
which it really affords, have charms that, more
or less, attract everybody ; and as to cultivate
the ground was the original destination of man,
so, in every stage of his existence, he seems to
retain a predilection for this primitive employ-
ment.

" Without the assistance of some artificers,
indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be car-
ried on, but with great inconveniency and

continual interruption. Smiths, carpenters^
wheelwrights and ploughwrights^ masons and
bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors,
are people whose service the farmer has fre-
quent occasion for. Such artificers, too, stand
occasionally in need of the assistance of one
another ; and as their residence is not, like
that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a
precise spot, the)^ naturally settle in the neigh-
borhood of one another^ and thus form a
small town or village. The butcher, the
brewer, and the baker, soon join them, to-
gether with many other artificers and retail-
ers, necessary or useful for supplying their oc-
casional wants, and who contribute still fur-
ther to augment the town. The inhabitants
of the town, and those of the country, are mu-
tually the servants of one another. The town
is a continual fair or market, to which the in-
habitants of the country resort, in order to ex-
change their rude for manufactured produce.
It is this commerce which supplies the inhab-
itants of the town, both with the materials of
their work, and the means of their subsistence,
The quantity of the finished work which they
sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessa-
rily regulates the quantity of the materials and
provisions which they buy. Neither their
employment nor subsistence, therefore, ca,n
augment, but in proportion to the augmenta-
tion of the demand from the country for finish-
ed work; and this demand can augment only
in proportion to the extention of improvement
and cultivation. Had human institutions,
therefore, never disturbed the natural course
of things, the progressive wealth and increase
of the towns would, in every political society,
be consequential, and in proportion to, the im-
provement and cultivation of the territory or
country."

" Had human institutions" not " thwart-
ed man's natural inclinations" there would
have been little necessity for the science
of political economy. Towns and cities
would then have grown with the improve-
ment and cultivation of the territory in
which they were situated," and the loom
would have followed the plough instead of
being enabled to compel the plough, to
send its bulky product in search of the
loom, the abuse of which the world now
complains, and against which it was that
Dr. Smith entered, as we shall show, his
earnest protest.

Production thus established, we find in
the natural course of things, conversion
next in order, as the grist-mill follows the
plough and prepares his way for the rail-
road and the ship.

1850.

IVhat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

135

" In seeking for employment to a capi-
tal," says Dr. Smith,

" Manufactures are upon equal or nearly
equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign
commerce^ for the same reason that agricul-
ture is naturally preferred to manufactures.
As the capital of the landlord or farmer is
more secure than that of the manufacturer^ so
the capital of the manufacturer, being at all
times more within his view and command, is
more secure than the foreign merchant. In
every period, indeed, of every societv, the sur-
plus part both of the rude and manufactured
produce, or that for which there is no demand
at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be
exchanged for something for which there is
some demand at liome. But whether the cap-
ital which carries this surplus produce abroad
be a foreign or domestic one, is of little im-
portance.''

It is thus, in his estimation, of small im-
portance whether the capital engaged in
the work of transportation be foreign or do-
mestic, the operation most essential to the
comfort and improvement of man being
first the production and next the conver-
sion, of the products of men occupying
towns and cities placed among the produ-
cers. If their number or their capital be
insufficient for the conversion of all the
rude produce of the earth, there is then
''considerable advantage" to be derived
from the export of the surplus by the aid
of foreign capital, thus leaving " the whole
stock of the society" to be employed at
home " to more useful purpose." These
views are certainly widely different from
those of modern economists who see in
tables of imports and exports the only cri-
terion of the condition of society. Com-
merce— distant commerce — is new " King"
and, yet, according to Dr. Smith,

"According to the natural course of things,
therefore, the greater part of the capital of
every growing society is, first, directed to ag-
riculture, afterwards to manufactures, and,
last>of all; to foreign commerce."

The natural tendency of the loom to go
to the plough is thus exhibited.

" An inland country, naturally fertile and
easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of
provisions beyond what is necessary for main-
taining the cultivators ; and on account of the
expense of land carriage, and inconveniency
of river navigation, it may frequently be diffi-
cult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance,
therefore, renders provisions cheap, and encour- j

ages a great number of workmen to settle in
the neighborhood, who find that their industry
can there procure them more of the necessa-
ries and conveniences of life than in other
places. They work up the materials of ma-
nufacture which the land produces, and ex-
change their finished work, or, what is the
same thing, the price of it, for more materials
and provisions. They give a new value to the
surplus part of the rude produce, by saving
the expense of carrying it to the water-side, or
to some distant market ; and they furnish the
cultivators with something in exchange for it,
that is either useful or agreeable to them, up-
on easier terms than they could have obtained
it before. The cultivators get a better price
for their surplus produce, and can purchase
cheaper other conveniences which they have
occasion for. They are thus both encouraged
and enabled to increase this surplus produce
by a further improvement and better cultiva-
tion of the land ; and as the fertility of the
land has given birth to the manufacture, so
the progress of the manufacture re-acts upon
the land, and increases still further its fertili-
ty. The manufacturers first supply the neigh-
borhood, and afterwards, as their work im-
proves and refines, more distant markets. For
though neither the rude produce, nor even the
coarse manufacture, could, without the great-
est difficulty, support the expense of a consi-
derable land carriage, the refined and improv-
ed manufacture easily may. In a small bulk
it frequently contains the price of a great quan-
tity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth,
for example which w^eighs only eighty pounds,
contains in it the price, not only of eighty
pounds of wool, but sometimes of several
thousand weight of corn, the maintanance of
the different working people, and of their im-
mediate employers. The corn which could
with difficulty have been carried abroad in its
own shape, is in this manner virtually export-
ed in that of the complete manufacture, and
may easily be sent to the remotest corners of
the world. In this manner have grown up
naturally, and, as it were, of their own accord,
the manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield,
Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Such man-
ufactures are the offspring of agriculture."

These views are in perfect accordance
with the facts. The laborer rejoices when
the market of his labor is brought to his
door by the erection of a mill or a furnace,
or the construction of a road. The far-
mer rejoices in the opening of a market
for labor at his door giving him a market
for his food. His land rejoices in the home
consumption of the products it yielded,
for its owner is thereby enabled to return
to it the refuse of its product in the form

136

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 1

August,

of manure. The planter rejoices in the
erection of a mill in his neighborhood,
giving him a market for his cotton and his
food. The parent rejoices when a market
for his labor enables his sons and his
daughters to supply themselves with food
and clothing. Every one rejoices in the
growth of a home market for labor and its
products, for trade is then increasing daily
and rapidly, and every one mourns the di-
minution of the home market, for it is one
the deficiency of which cannot be supplied.
Labor and commodities are wasted, and
the power of consumption diminishes in
the diminution of the power of production,
trade becomes languid, labor and land di-
minish in value, and labor and capital
becomes daily poorer.

With each step in this course man be-
comes more and more free as land becomes
more valuable and labor becomes more pro-
ductive, and the number of small proper-
ties tends to increase, when not prevented
by restrictions resulting from the law of
primogeniture. The effect of this upon
both the man and the law is thus exhibited :

"A small proprietor, however, -who knows
every part of his little territory, views.it with
all the affection which property^ especially
small property, naturally inspires, and who
upon that account takes pleasure not only in
cultivaiing, but in adorning it, is generally of
all improvers the most industrious, the most
intelligent, and the most successful."

Regarding manufactures and commerce,
as Dr. Smith invariably does, as chiefly
advantageous because of their great influ-
ence on the progress of production, he
shows himself almost disposed to apologize
for some of the interferences with perfect
freedom of trade, by preventing the im-
port of cattle from Ireland, and from other
similar measures, because tending to show
'' the good intention of the legislature to
favor agriculture." "That however, to
which he attributes the greatest influence
in this respect is that ''the yeomanry of
England are rendered as secure as inde-
pendent, and as respectable as law can
make them. "* The necessary consequence
of which was the rapid increase of the power
of association, with corresponding increase
in the power of production and consumption,
making a large home trade.

*Book III, chap, iv.

These views were opposed to those then
universally prevalent. " England's trea-
sure in foreign trade" had become

" A fundamental maxim in the political
economy, not of England only, but of all
other commercial countries. The inland or
home trade, the most important of all, the
trades in which an equal capital affords the
greatest revenue, and creates the greatest em-
ployment to the people of the country, was
considered as subsidary only to foreign trade.
It neither brought money into the country, it
was said, nor carried any out of it. The coun-
try, therefore, could never become richer or
poorer by means of it, except as far as its
prosperity or decay might indirectly influence
the state of foreign trade."

It was against this error chiefly that Dr.
Smith raises his warnins; voice. He showed
that it had led, and was leading, to mea-
sures tending to disturb the natural course
of things in all the countries connected with
England, and to produce among them a ne-
cessity for trade while diminishing the pow-
er to maintain trade. " Whatever tends,"
says he, "to diminish in any country the
number of artificers and manufacturers,
tends to diminish the home market, the most
important of all markets, for the rude pro-
duce of the land, and thereby still further
to discourage agriculture," and consequent-
ly to diminish the power of producing things
with which to trade. The tendency of the
then existing English policy was, as he
showed, to produce in various countries this
effect. The legislature had been, he said,
" prevailed upon" to prevent the establish-
ment of manufactures in the colonies " some-
times by high duties, and sometimes by abso-
lute prohibitions. " In Grenada, while a co-
lony of France, every plantati on had its own
refinery of sugar, but on its cession to Eng-
land they were all abandoned and thus was
the number of artizans diminished, to "the
discouragement of agriculture. " Her course
of proceeding, relative to these colonies, is
thus described :

'' While Great Britain encourages in Ame-
rica the manufacturing of pig and bar iron,
by exempting them from duties to which the
like commodities are subject when imported
from any other country, she imposes an abso-
lute prohibition upon the erection of steel fur-
naces and slit- mills in any of her American
plantations. She will not suffer her colonies
to work in those more refined manufactures,
even for their own consumption • but insists

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 2

137

upon their purchasing of her merchants and
manufacturers all goods of this kind which
they have occasion for.

She prohibits the exportation from one pro-
vince to another by water, and even the car-
riage by land upon horseback, or in a cart, of
hats, of wools, and woolen goods, of the pro-
duce of America ; a regulation which eifect-
ually prevents the establishment of any man-
ufacture of such commodities for distant sale,
and confines the industry of her colonists in
this way to such coarse and household manu-
factures as a private family commonly makes
for its own use, or for that of some of its
neighbors, in the same province.

His views, in regard to such measures,
are thus given :

" To prohibit a great people, however, from
making all they can of every part of their
own produce, or from employing their stock
and industry in a way that they judge most
advantageous to themselves, is a manifest vi-
olation of the most sacred rights of man-
kind."

Further to carry out this view of com-
pelling the people of the colonies to ab-
stain from manufacturing for themselves,
bounties were paid on the importation
into England of various articles of raw
produce, while the export of various raw
materials, of artizans, and of machinery was
prohibited, the whole object of the system
being to " raise up a people of customers,
a project,'' he adds, " fit only for a nation
of shopkeepers." Indeed he thought it even
" unfit for a nation of shopkeepers," altho'
" extremely fit for a nation whose govern-
ment was influenced by shopkeepers." For
the former reason he was opposed to all
such arrangements as the Metliuen treaty,
by which, in consideration of obtaining the
control of the market of Portugal for the
sale of her manufactures. Great Britain
agreed to give to the rulers of that country
great advantage over those of France.

The impolicy of the system, as regarded
the interests of Britain herself, was shown
to be as great as the injustice to her colo-
nists, because tending to drive British ca-
pital from the profitable home trade to the
comparatively unprofitable foreign one.

" The most advantageous employment of
any capital to the country to which it belongs,
is that which maintains there the greatest
quantity of productive labor, and increases
the most the annual produce of the land and
labor of that country. But the quantity of

productive labor which any capital employed
in the foreign trade of consumption can main-
tain, is exactly in proportion, it has been
shown in the second book, to the frequency
of its returns. A capital of a thousand pounds
for example, employed in a foreign trade of
consumption, of which the returns are made
regularly once in the year, can keep in con-
stant employment, in the country to which it
belongs, a quantity of productive labor, equal
to what a thousand pounds can maintain there
for a year. If the returns are made twice or
thrice in the year, it can keep in constant em-
ployment a quantity of productive labor, equal
to what two or three thousand pounds can
maintain there for a year. A foreign trade of
consumption carried on with a neighboring,
is, upon that account, in general, more ad-
vantageous than one carried on with a distant
country ; and, for the same reason, a direct
foreign trade of consumption, as it has like-
wise been shown in the second book, is in
general more advantageous than a round-about
one."

These views, as will be seen, are in di-
rect accordance with those we have submit-
ted, that the value of every trade diminish-
es with every increase of distance, by wbich
the time and labor required for the per-
formance of exchanges are increased. Dr.
Smith saw that the tendency of the wbole
British system was in this direction — that
the monopoly of the colonial market tended
to drive into trade and manufactures a large
amount of capital that could be more pro-
fitably employed in the work of producing
commodities with which to trade, thus pro-
ducing an unnatural and improper distribu-
tion of the population, and a dependence
upon the movements of the rest of the
world, that was entirely inconsistent with
the happiness and prosperity of the people,
or the security of property. His views on
these subjects are so clear, and tend to ex-
plain so fully the phenomena now passing
before our eyes in Great Britain, that we
give them in full, persuaded that our read-
ers will thank us for so doing :

" The monopoly of the colony trade, too,
has forced some part of the capital of Great
Britain from all foreign trade of consumption
to a carrying trade ; and, consequently from
supporting more or less the industry of Great
Britain, to be employed altogether m support-
ing partly that of the colonies, and partly that
of some other countries.

" The goods, for example, which are an-
nually purchased with the great surplus of
eighty-two thousand hogsheads of tobacco an-

138

W/iat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

August,

nually re-exported from Great Britain, are not
all consumed in Great Britain. Part of them,
linen from Germany and Holland, for exam-
ple, is returned to the colonies for their par
ticular consumption. But that part of the
capital of Great Britain which buys the tobac-
co with which this linen is afterwards bought,
is necessarily withdrawn from supporting the
industry of Great Britain, to be employed al-
together in supporting, partly that of the colo-
nies, and partly that of the particular countries
who pay for this tobacco with the produce of
their own industry."

Against all the errors of the system,
Smith, however, raised his warning voice in
vain. "England's Treasure," was to be
found " in Foreign Trade," and every mea-
sure adopted by the government had in view
the extension of that trade . With each new
improvement of machinery there was a new
law prohibiting its export. The laws against
the export of artizans were enforced, and a
further law prohibited the emigration of
colliers. England was to be made "the
workshop of the world," although the peo-
ple had been warned that her system was
not only unnatural, but in the highest de-
gree unjust, and even more impolitic than
unjust, because while tending to expel ca-
pital and labor from the great and 'profita-
ble home market, it tended greatly to the
" discouragement of agriculture" in the co-
lonies and nations subjected to the system,
and to prevent the natural increase of the
smaller and less profitable distant market
upon which she was becoming more and
more dependent.

By degrees the tendency of the system
became obvious. Bounties on the import
of wood, and wool, and flax, and other raw
materials, tended to "the discouracrement
of agriculture" at home, and bounties on
the export of manufactures tended to drive
into the work of converting and exchanfrino-
the products of other lands the labor and ca-
pital that would otherwise have been ap-
plied to the work of production at home.
The necessary consequence of this was, that
the difficulty of obtainmg these raw mate-
rials, instead of diminishing with the pro-
gress of population, tended rather to in-
crease, and then it was, at the distance of a
quarter of a century from the date of the pub-
lication of " the Wealth of Nations'''' that
the foundation of the new school was laid by
jNIr. oMalthus, who taught that all distress
existin;^; in the world was the inevitable

consequence of a great law of nations which
provided that food should increase only in
arithmetical progression, while population
might increase in geometrical progression.
Next comes Mr. Ricardo, who furnished
the law of the occupation of the earth,
showing, and conclusively, as he supposed,
that the work of cultivation was always
commenced on the rich soils, yielding a
large retm-n to labor, and that as popula-
tion increased, men were compelled to
resort to other ones, each in succession less
fertile than its predecessor, the consequence
of which was that labor became daily less
productive, the power to obtain food dimi-
nished, and the power to demand rent in-
creased, the poor becoming daily poorer
and weaker as the rich became richer and
more powerful. Ts^ext came Mr. Mills,
who showed that, in obedience to the
law thus propounded by I\[r. Ricardo, the
return to capital and labor applied to the
work of cultivation, is " continuall}^ decreas-
ing," and the annual fund from which sa-
vings are made, continually diminishing.
" The difiiculty of making savings is thus,"
he adds, "continually augmented, and at
last they must totally cease." He regards
it therefore as certain that "wages will be
reduced so low that a portion of the popu-
lation will regularly die from the conse-
quences of want."*

In this manner, step by step, did the po-
litical economists pass from the school of
Adam Smith in which was taught that aa;-
riculture preceded manufacture and com-
merce, the latter of which were useful to
the extent that they aided the former, — to
that new one in which was, and is, taught,
that manufactures and commerce were the
great and profitable pursuits of man, and
that agriculture because of the " constantly
increasing sterility of the soil," is the least
profitable of all. Hence it is that we find
Mr. M'CuUoch characterising the essen-
tial doctrine which constitutes the basis of
Dr. Smith's system as " the most objec-
tionable passage" in his work, and express-
ing his surprise that " so acute and saga-
cious a reasoner should have maintained a
doctrine so manifestly erroneous." It is
indeed true, says he

" That Nature powerfully assists the labor
of man in agriculture. The husbandman pre-

* Mills' Elements of Political Economy, p. 40.

1S50.

What Constitutes the Real Freedom oj Trade ?

139

* Principles of Political Economy, Chap. VI.

pares the ground for the seed, and deposits it
there ; but it is Nature that unfolds the germ,
feeds and ripens the growing plant, and brings
it to a state of maturity. But does not Nature
do as much for us in every department of in-
dustry ? The power of water and of wind
which move our machinery, support our ships,
and impel them over the deep— the pressure of
the atmosphere, and the elasticity of steam,
which enables us to work the most powerful
engines, are they not the spontaneous gifts of
Nature ? Machinery is advantageous only
because it gives us the means of pressing some
of the powers of nature into our service^ and
of making them perform the principal part of
what we must otherwise have wholly perform-
ed ourselves. In navigation, is it possible to
doubt that the powers of Nature — the buoy-
ancy of the water, the impulse of the w^ind,
and the polarity of the magnet, contribute
fully as much as the labors of the sailor to
waft our ships from one hemisphere to anoth-
er ? In bleaching and fermentation the whole
processes are carried on by natural agents.
And it is to the effects of heat in softening and
melting metals, in preparing our food, and in
warming our houses, that we owe many of our
most powerful and convenient instruments, and
that these northern climates have been made
to afford a comfortable habitation. So far, in-
deed, is it from being true that Nature does
much for man in agriculture, and nothing for
manufacturers, that the fact is more nearly the
reverse. There are no limits to the bounty of
Nature in manufactures ; but there are limits,
and those not very remote, to her bounty in
agriculture. The greatest possible amount of
capital might be expended in the construction
of steam engines, or of any other sort of ma-
chinery, and after they had been multiplied
indefinitely, the last would be as prompt and
efficient in producing commodities and saving
labor as the first. Such, however, is not the
case with the soil. Lands of the first quality
are speedily exhausted; and it is impossible to
apply capital indefinitely even to the best soils,
without obtaining from it a constantly dimin-
ishing rate of profit. The rent of the land-
lord is not, as Dr. Smith conceived it to be,
the recompense of the work of nature remain-
ing, after all that part of the product is de-
ducted which can be regarded as the recom-
pense of the work of man. But it is, as will
be shown, the excess of produce obtained from
the best soils in cultivation, over that which is
obtained from the worst — in is a consequence
not of the increase, but of the diminution of
the productive power of the laborer employed
in agriculture."'^

He next proceeds to sli:)w : —

"That the capital and labor employed in

carrying commodities from where they are pro-
duced to where they are consumed, and in di-
viding them into minute portions, so as to fit
the wants of the consumer, are really as pro-
ductive as if they were employed in agricul-
ture and manufactures. The miner gives
utility to matter — to coal, for example, — by
bringing it from the bowels of the earth to
its surface ; but the merchant or carrier who
transports the coal from the mine whence it
has been dug to the city, or place where it is
to be burned, gives it a further and perhaps
more considerable value.''*

We have thus two distinct schools, that
of Adam Smith and that of his successor.
The one taught that labor directly applied
to production was most advantageous, and
that by bringing the consumer to take his
place by the side of the producer, produc-
tion and the consequent power to trade
would be increased. The other teaches,
that every increase of capital or labor ap-
plied to production must be attended with
diminished return, whereas ships and
steam-engines may be increased ad infini-
tum without such diminution, the neces-
sary inference from which is, that the more
widely the consumer and the producer are
separated, with increased necessity for the
use of ships and engines, the more advan-
tageously labor will be applied, and the
greater will be the power to trade. The
two systems start from a different base,
and lead in an opposite direction, and, yet,
the modern school claims Dr. Smith as
founder. While teaching a theory of pro-
duction totally different, Mr. M'Culloch
informs us that " the fundamental princi-
ples on which the production of wealth de-
pends" were established by Dr. Smith
'^ beyond the reach of cavil or dispute."

The error in all this results from the ge-
neral error of Mr. Ricardo's system which
had for its object to account for difficulties
resulting from the existence of a commer-
cial policy which looked to obtaining for
Great Britain a monopoly of the machinery
for converting the raw products of the
earth, and was maintained in defiance of
the prophetic warning of Dr. Smith as to
the effects which must result from its con-
tinuance. Had he not been misled by the
idea of " the constantly increasing steril-
ity of the soil," Mr. M'Culloch could
not have failed to see that the only advan-
tage resulting from the use of the steam-

* Ibid.

140

JVkat Constitutes tlie Real Freedom of Trade ?

August,

engine, or the loom, or any other macliine
in use for the conversion of the products
of the earth was, that it diminished the
quantity of labor required to be so applied
and increased the quantity that might be
given to increasing the amount of products
that might be consumed or converted.

We see thus, that while Dr. Smith
taught that the man and the loom natural-
ly followed the food, consuming on the
land the products of the land, and giving
value to the land itself, and that every at-
tempt at interference with this great natu-
ral law is both unjust and impolitic, Mr.
M'Culloch teaches that the wagon and the
ship are as productive as the earth, and
that while there are limits and those not
very remote to the bounty of nature, in
agriculture, there are no limits to it in ma-
nufactures, although if there were any

truth in the doctrine of " the increasing
sterility of the soil," the necessity for ma-
nufactures would be daily diminishing as
the increasing difficulty of obtaining food
rendered necessary the application to that
primary object a larger portion of human
labor, leaving a smaller one to be applied to
the purchase of clothes.

In our next we shall continue this sub-
ject, believing that we shall be able to sa-
tisfy our readers that the modern English
school, starting for a point directly oppo-
site of that of Dr. Smith has continued to
move in a direction that he would have
denounced as unjust and injurious, has
brouo'ht the nation into the difficulties
which he would have predicted from it,
and that while using the word " free
trade" its doctrines are directly opposed to
those of the apostle of freedom of trade.

1850,

The Poets mid Poetry of the Irish.

141

THE POETS AND POETRY OF THE IRISH.

ST SEDULINS— ST. BINEN— ST. COLUMBCILLE— MALMURA OF OTHAIN— THE STORY OF THE SONS

OF USNA— M'LIAG POET TO O'BKIAN.

(Continued from page 86.^

In the Soutli, the chief Bardic families
were the McCurtains, O'Bruadins, and
McEgans ; in the West, the O'Dalys, Mc-
Feirhiss, and O'Conrys ; in the East, the
McKeoghs, O'Higgins, and other O'Dalys ;
in iliQ North, the O'Clerys, O'Gnives,
O'Sbiels, O'Hagans, and Mac Wards. All
these dynasties extend unbroken from the
seventh to the seventeenth century, and it
is strange, but true, that, within our own
memory, the poetic spirit has revealed itself
among several of their much-altered pos-
terity.

One of the most liberal patrons of the
bards in the middle ages, was the monarch
Brian, surnamed Boroimhe, (" Tribute
taker.") He was the bulwark of Ireland
against Danish invasion, and after fifty
years of intermittent warfare with them,
he finally broke their progress and prestige
in the battle of Clontarf, fought on Good
Friday, A. D. 1014. On that field he
fell, with several of his sons and grandsons,
at the age of four score and upwards. His
last words were, " Lambh Laidar an didar,"
the strong hand is from above, or, Victory
is from God.*

The death of this heroic kins; at such an
age and under such circustances, was a fa-
vorite theme for the bards of Erin,* and,

* In the Northern Sagas frequent mention is
made of Brian, and of Clontarf as " Brian's battle."
Gray in his " Ode to the Fatal Sisters," refers to
his death :

" Long his loss shall Erin weep —
Ne'er again his likeness see ;

Long her strains in sorrow steep-
Strains of immortality !"

accordingly from the eleventh to the present
century, nearly every poet has paid some
tribute to his memory. Four of Moore's
noblest songs are in relation to him, and
Sheridan Knowles's first tragedy, (more
rhetorical than historical,) bears his name.
Of the poets attached to his person dur-
ing life, the most favored was Murkertach,
(or Mortimer,) McLiag. He was a native
of Brian's patrimony, upon the Shannon,
and a frequent guest at his hall of Kincora.
When Brian became Ard-righ, at Tara,
McLiag became " Chief Antiquary of the
Kingdom of Ireland." In this character
he wrote a life of his patron, some frag-
ments of which have been recently discov-
ered among the MS of the Dublin Univer-
sity. He survived his master eleven years,
(obit. 1025,) and has left several poems,
one of v/hich, addressed to the desolate
palace of Kincora, has been thus translated :

LAMENTATION OF MAC LIAG FOR KINCORA.

By James Clarence Mangan.

Oh, where Kincora ! is Brian the Great ?

And where is the beauty that once was thine *?
Oh, where are the Princes and Nobles that sate

At the feast in thy halls and drank the red wine 1
Where, oh, Kincora %

Oh, where, Kincora, are thy valorous Lords 1
Oh whither, thou Hospitable ! are they gone 1

Where are the Dalcassians of the golden swords,*
Where are the warriors Brian led on 1

Where, oh, Kincora ?

And where is Murogh the descendant of Kings?
The defeater of a hundred, the daringly brave,

*Golden swords— (Co/g^-n-or)—f, e. gold hilted.

142

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

August,

Who set but slight store by jewels and rings,
Who swam down the torrent, and laughed at
its wave.

Where, oh, Kincora ?

And where is Donogh, King Brian's son?

And where is Conaing the beautiful chief?
And Kian and Core \ Alas ! they are gone,

They have left me this night alone with my grief.

Left me, Kincora !

And where are the chiefs with whom Brian went
forth.
The never vanquished sons of Erin the brave ;
The great King of Onaght, renowned for his worth.
And the hosts of Baskinn irom the western wave 1
Where, oh, Kincoia ?

Oh ! where is Durlann of the swift footed steeds?
And where is Kian, who was son of Mallory ?
And where is King Lonergan, the fame of whose
deeds
In the red battle-field no time can destroy ?
Where, oh, Kincora ?

And where is that youth of majestic hight,

The faith keeping Prince of the Scots ? Even he,

As wide as his fame was, as great as his might.
Was tributary, oh, Kincora, to thee !

Thee, oh, Kincora !

They are gone, those heroes of royal birth

W ho plundered no churches, and broke no trust;*
'Tis weary for me to be living on earth,

When they, oh Kincora, lie lov/ in the dust.

Low, oh Kincora.

Oh, never again will princes appear

To rival the Dancassian of the cleaving sword ;
I never can dream to meet, afar or anear.

In the least or the most, such hero and lord !

Never, Kincora !

Oh, dear are the images my memory calls up
Of Bria Boru : how he never would miss

To give me at the banquet the first bright cup !
Ah ! why did he heap on me honors like this ?

Why oh Kincora ?

I am McLiag, and my home is on the lake

Thither often, to that palace whose peace is fled,

Came Brian, to ask me, and I went for his sake
Oh my grief that I should live, and Brian be dead !

Dead, oh, Kincora !

These Danish wars, in which Brian met
his death, and which lasted from the first
quarter of the ninth till the middle of the
twelfth century, afforded many themes for
the Irish poets. The story of Olaf Try-
gresson, the first Christian king of Norway,
who, after his baptism in Ireland, returned
and won his kingdom from his rebel Jarls,
and ended the religion of Odin, is frequently

* This is a side-wipe for the Danes, who done
both. I

alluded to. Also, the story of Magnus
Barefoot, king of Norway, wlio, a century
later, (A. J). 1102,) met his death in Ire-
land, near Strangford I.ough. In Miss
Brooks's " Reliques of Irish Poetry," there
is a long poem, by ''' one of the Bards of
the O'Nials," on the death of this Mag-
nus. He was buried in lona.

The Sagas of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries abound in allusions to Ireland.
The Saga of Olaf Tryg, of Magnus, of
Earl Sigmd of Orkney, of the sons of Earl
Sigmd, of Harold Gille, of Fion Eager,
&c., all include Ireland as part of their
historical ground. It would be a curious
and pleasant work to collate the Sagas of
the North, with the metrical chronicles of
Erin, to make clear that epoch wherein the
one portion was the most enterprizing, and
the other the most intellectual in the world.
The great Danish dramatist must have had
some glimpses of such a concordance, for
his plays have plentiful allusions gathered
from both lands. Thus, in his '' Hakou
Jarl:"—

"liakon. — My friend, I now grow old ; but there-
fore still

The twilight of my evening would enjoy.

Clearly my sun shall set. Woe to the cloud

That strives to darken its last purple radiance !
Thorer. — Where is that cloud ?
Hakon. — Even in the west.
Thorer. — Thou meanest

Olaf in Dublin?"

And again, when Hakon wants to send
Jarl Thorer on an expedition to destroy
Olaf treacherously, he says : —

" I could not choose but smile, when thou to-day.
Long stories told us of thy pious friend
Olaf in Dublin — even as if mine eyes
Had not long since been watching him ! — I heard
Your words in silence then, — but now 'tis time
Freely to speak. This morning news arrived.
That Olaf with a fleet had sailed from Dublin
To visit Russia, &c., &c."*

Dublin, in fact, is partly a Danish city.
The streets on the left bank were , even in late
days, called Ostman's,or East-man's-town,
after the Danes. Twenty-five Vi-kings
ruled the Danes of Dublin, from Aulafl'e,
(qu. Olane ?) elected A. D. 871, to As-
culph, son of Torcall, slain by the Anglo-

* Ochlenschlager's Dramas translated by Gillies
— in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. These
are called by Longfellow ' admirable translations.'

1840,

The Foets and Poetry of the Irish.

143

Normans in 1171. We are unable to give
such specimens of this part of our era as
would satisfy the reader or ourselves. Some
future collector, we hope, may supply the
void.

The music which accompanied the reci-
tations of the Bards and filled up the pau-
ses in the narrative, becomes clearly discer-
nable at the period of the Anglo-Norman
invasion of Ireland (A. D. 1170). This
music was the perfectest thing, of its kind,
in Western Europe, until the German
school was founded. It is therefore worthy
of being accurately described.

" An Irish M. S. of the fifteenth centu-
ry contains the native musical tones. Car
was a line of poetry, marked, and the cha-
racters ; annal was a breathing ; ceol was
the sound which also signified the middle
tone, or pitch of the voice. Adceol was a
third higher, and has-ceol was a depression
one-third lower than the pitch. Ceirceal
denoted the turning, or modulation, and
semi-tones were left to the musician's ear.
There were three names for half notes, sig-
nifying the single, the great, and the little
harmony." Moore in his letter to the Mar-
chioness of Donegal, prefixed to his melo-
dies, says of this scale : — " The irregular
scale of the early Irish (in which, as in the
music of Scotland, the interval of the fourth
was wanting,) must have furnished but
wild and refractory subjects to the harmo-
nists. It was only when the invention
of Guide began to be known, and the
powers of the harp were enlarged by addi-
tional strings, that our melodies took the
sweet character which interests us at pre-
sent ; and while the Scotch persevered in
the old mutilation of the scale, our music
became gradually more amenable to the
laws of counterpoint."

The double strings attributed by some to
the invention of Guide, are certainly as old
as the 15th century. The harps of the
12th and 1 1th century had but twenty-eight
strings. That of King Brian, is preserved
in the Museum of Trinity College, and is
but thirty-two inches in height. None was
of much greater heighth, being often rested
on the foot and sometimes on the knee of
the performer ; it was always held on the
left side, and the harper allowed his nails to
grow long and crooked in order to elicit
clearer tones from the wires.

Ireland was the school of the harp. —

'' Gryffith, of Cyran, or Conan, brought
from Ireland (A. D. 1078) cunning musi-
cians, that devised, in a manner, all the in-
strumental music now used," says Powel,
the Welch historian. James the First, of
Scotland, (about 1437), famed for his skill
as an harpist, studied under " Irish mas-
ters," says Pinkerton. The Irish flag is
the only one in Europe which bears, as its
blazon, an object of high art — the harp.

Some harps were richly adorned with
gems. The Lord of the Isles presented the
harper, O'Kane, in the 17th century, with
a harp key set with pearls, valued at one
hundred guineas.

By Edward Third, Henry Eighth, and
Elizabeth, the harp was proscribed in Wales
and Ireland as seditious and treasonable.
Many a malediction, like that of Gray's
Bard, was in return poured upon these royal
heads, whose laws did not succeed in sup-
pressing the favorite instrument.

The customary accompaniament of mu-
sic, evidently exercised its influence on the
versification, metres, and inspiration of the
poets, just as one can hear the tones of
Milton's organ pealing through " Paradise
Lost," so can you hear the rapid changes,
the quick haste, and tearful tenderness of
the harp, in our best poetry. Moore thinks
"the tone of defiance succeeded by the lan-
gor of despondency — a burst of turbulence
dying away in sadness — the sorrows of one
moment lost in the levity of the next," was
derived by Irish music from Irish political
causes. The fashion and limits of the Na-
tional instrument — everything of which was
a separate chord to the heart, a different
passion and a new utterance — and all these
things within two spans of space, it seems
to us may have affected the spirit of the
performer and his music, more even than
the other causes. Doubtless ih^y^ too, had
their effects on the sensitive poetic natures
coming within their influence.

One of the earliest forms of Celtic versifi-
cation, is the Fiad — each line containing a
sentiment, and each Fiad complete in itself.
Some Fiads, above 1000 years old, are still
preserved among the Scotch, Welch and
Irish.

The alternate rhyme, in four line stan-
zas, was the favorite measure tor nan ative
poetry. In long pieces, written in this and
other measures, the couplet is frequently
introduced.

144

The Poets and Poetry oftlie IrisJi.

August,

The great bulk of Celtic poetry is lyric-
al, and of this the major part is cast in the
shape of odes, addressed to chiefs, princes,
spirits, bishops, and from one bard to an-
other. In one form of ode, "the stanzas
consist of two lines and a repetition of the
last ;" in another, of " three lines, with the
stanza twice repeated, the antepenults of
the first and second lines rhyming with a
syllable at the middle of the third;" in
another of " six lines of four syllables, and
a seventh of six syllables." In this form
the first six lines rhyme at the end, and the
antepenult of the seventh accords to the
previous rhyme. Above an hundred vari-
eties of lyrical metre have been enumer-
ated by musical antiquaries.

The Celts had no drama. Their only
substitute for it was the Ecologue, in which
the different parts were recited by different
persons. This was a favorite amusement
with the Magnates. Their total ignorance
of the drama is a very curious fact in lite-
rary history, and one it would be exceed-
ingly hard to account for.

Of the odes, the chief divisions were two
— the Ros-catha, (''eye of battle,") or
military ode, and the Caoine^ (or lament,)
elegiac ode. There are several specimens
of both, dating from "middle ages." Of
the battle songs, the following, apparently
not older than the sixteenth century, may
serve as an example : —

o'bykne's bard to his clan, before battle.

Translated by Samuel Furguson.

God be with the Irish host !
Never be the battle lost !
For in battle never yet
Have they basely earned defeat.

Host of armor, red and bright,
May ye fight a valiant fight.
For the green spot of the earth,
For the land that gave you birth.

Who in Erin's cause would stand
Brothers of the avenging hand.
He must wed immortal quarrel,
Pain and sweat, and bloody peril.

On the mountain bare and steep,
Snatching short but pleasant sleep,
Then at sunrise, from his eyrie.
Sweeping on the Saxon quarry.

What, although you've failed to keep
Liffey's plains, or Tara's steep,

Cashel's pleasant streams to save.
Or the meads of Cruachan Maer.

Want of conduct lost the town,
Broke the white walled castle down,
Moira lost and old Taltin,
And let the conquering stranger in.

Twas the want of right command.
Not the lack of heart or hand,
Left your hills and plains, to-day,
'Neath the strong clan Saxon's sway.

Ah, had heaven never sent
Discord for our punishment,
Triumphs few o'er Erin's host.
Had Clan London now to boast.

Woe is me, 'tis God's decree
Strangers have the victory :
Irishmen may now be found
Outlaws upon Irish ground.

Like a wild beast in his den.
Lies the chief by hill and glen,
While the strangers, proud and savage,
Creevans' richest vallies ravish.

Woe is me, the foul offence.
Treachery and violence,
Done against my peoples' rights —
Well may mine be sleepless nights !

When Old Leinster's sons of fame,
Heads of many a warlike name.
Redden their victorious hilts
On the Gall* my soul exults.

When the grim Gall, who have come
Hither o'er the ocean's foam.
From the fight victorious go
Then my heart sinks deadly low.

Bless the blades our warriors draw,
God be with Clan Ralelagh !
But my soul is weak for fear
Thinking of our danger near.

Have them in Thy holy keeping,
God be with them lying, sleeping,
God be with them standing, fighting,
Erin's foes in battle smitmg!

Of the Irish eulogy, perhaps the best
specimen as yet translated, is Mc Ward's
Lament for the Earls, O'Neil and O'Don-
nell, exiled on a charge of conspiracy, by
James the First, and buried at Rome.
The Bard accompanied them in their ban-
ishment, and this eulogy is addressed to
Nuala, sister of O'Donnell, who also sur-
vived them, to mourn their death in a
strange land.

* Gall — foreigner.

1850.

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

145

A LAMENT

For the Tironean and Tirconellian Frinces Bu-
ried at Rome.

O, woman of the piercing wail,

Who mournest o'er yon mound of clay,
With sigh and moan.
Would God thou wert among the Gael ;
Thou wouldst not then from day to day
Weep thus alone.
'Twere long before, around a grave.
In green Tyrconnell, one could find
This loneliness ;
Near where Beann-Boirche's banners wave,
Such grief as thine could ne'er have pined
Companionless.
Beside the wave, in Donegall,

In Antrim's glens, or fair Dromore,
Or Killilee,
Or where the sunny waters fall,
At Assaroe, near Ema's shore,
This could not be.
On Derry's plains — in rich DrumclifF —
Throughout Armagh the Great, renowned
In olden years,
No day could pass but woman's grief
Would rain upon their burial-ground
Fresh floods of tears !

II.

O, no ! from Shannon, Boyne and Suir,
From high Dunluce's castle walls.
From Lissadill
Would flock alike both rich and poor.

One wail would rise from Cruachan's halls
To Tara's hill ;
And some would come from Barron-side,
And many a maid would leave her home.
On Leitrim's plains.
And by melodious Banna's tide.

And by the Mourne and Erne, to come
And swell thy strains !
O, horses hoofs would trample down
The Mount whereon the martyr-saint*
Was crucified,
From glen and hill, from plain and town.
One loud lament, one thrilling plaint.
Would echo wide.
There would not soon be found, I wean,
One foot of ground among those bands,
For museful thought.
So many shriekers of the Keen

Would cry aloud, and clapp their hands.
All woe-distraught !

III.

Two princes of the line of Conn
Sleep in their cells of clay beside
O'Donnell Roe ;
Three royal youths, alas! are gone
Who lived for Erin's weal, but died
For Erin's woe !
Ah ! could the men of Ireland read

* San Pietro in Montorio.

VOL. VI. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

The names these noteless burial-stones
Display to view.
Their wounded hearts afresh would bleed.
Their tears gush forth again, their groans
Resound anew !

IV.

The youths whose relics moulder here

Were sprung from Hugh, high Prince and Lord
Of Aileach's lands ;
Thy noble brothers, justly dear.
Thy nephew, long to be deplored
By Ulster's bands.
Their's were not souls v/herein dull Time
Could domicile Decay or house
Decrepitude !
They passed from earth ere manhood's prime,
Ere years had power to dim their brows
Or chill their blood.

V.
And who can marvel o'er thy grief,
Or who can blame thy flowing tears.
That knows their source %
O'Donnell, Dunnasava's chief
Cut off" amid his vernal years
Lies here a corse !
Beside his brother Cathbar, whom
Tyrconnell of the Helmets mourns
In deep despair —
For valor, truth, and comely bloom.
For all that greatens and adorns,
A peerless pair.

VI.
0, had these twain, and he, the tliird
The Lord of Mourne, O'Neall's son
Their mate in death —
A prince in look, in deed and word —
Had these three princes yielded on
The field their breath ;
0, had they fallen on Crifl^an's plain.
There would not be a town or clan
From shore to sea
But would with shrieks bewail the slain.
Or chant aloud the exulting rann
Of Jubilee !
When high the shout of battle rose.

On fields where Freedom's torch still burned
Through Erin's gloom,
If one, if barely one of those

Were slain, all Ulster would have mourned
The Hero's doom !
If at Athboy, where hosts of brave
Ulidian horsemen sank beneath
The shock of spears
Young Hugh O'Neall had found a grave
Long must the North have wept his death
With heart-wrung tears !

VII.
If on the day of Ballach-myre

The Lord of Mourne had met, thus young,
A warrior's fate.
In vain would such as thou desire

To mourn alone, the champion sprung
From Niall the Great !
No marvel this — for all the Dead
Heaped on the field, pile over pile.
At Mullach-brack,

146

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

August^

Were scarce an eric for his head,

If death has stayed his footsteps while
V On victory's track !

VIII.
If, on the day of Hostages,

The fruit had from the parent bough
Been rudely torn
In sight of Munster's bands — McNee's — •
Such blow the blood of Conn, I trow,
Could ill have borne.
If on the day of Ballach-boy

Some arm had laid, by foul surprise.
The chieftain low.
Even our victorious shout of joy

Would soon give place to rueful cries
And groans of woe !

IX.

If on the day the Saxon host

Were forced to fly — a day so great
For Ashanee —
The chief had been untimely lost.

Our conquering troops should moderate
Their mirthful glee.
There would not lack on LifFord's day
From Galway, from the glens of Boyle,
From Limerick's towers
A marshalled file, a long array
Of mourners to bedew the soil

With tears in showers !

If on the day a sterner fate

Compelled his flight from Athenree
His blood had flowed.
What numbers, all disconsolate.

Would come unasked, and share with thee
Affliction's load !
If Derry's crimson field had seen

His life blood offered up, though 'twere
On victory shrine,
A thousand cries would swell the Keen,
A thousand voices of despair
Would echo thine.

XI.
O, had the fierce Dalcassian swarm.
That bloody night on Fergus' banks.
But slain our chief,
When rose his camp in wild alarm —
How would the triumph of our ranks
Be dashed with grief !
How would the troops of Murbach mourn.
If on the Curlew mountains' day
Which England rued.
Some Saxon hand had left them lorn.
By shedding there, amid the fray,
Their Prince's blood !

XII.
Red would have been our warrior's eyes.
Had Roderick found on Sligo's field
A gory grave,
No Northern chief would soon arise
So sage to guide, so strong to shield.
So swift to save.
Long would Leith-Cuine have wept if Hugh

Had met the death he oft had dealt
Among the foe ;
But had our Roderick fallen too.
All Erin must, alas ! have felt
The deadly blow !
What do I say ] ah ! woe is me !
Already we bewail in vain
Their fatal fall !
And Erin, once the Great and Free,

Now vainly mourns her breakless chain
And iron thrall !

XIII.
Then, daughter of O'Donnell ! dry
Thine overflowing eyes, and turn
Thy heart aside.
For Adam's race is born to die.
And sternly the sepulchral urn
Mocks human pride.

XIV.
Look not, nor sigh, for earthly throne.
Nor place thy trust in arm of clay —
But on thy knees
L^plift thy soul to God alone.

For all things go their destined way.
As He decrees.
Embrace the faithful Crucifix,

And seek the path of pain and prayer
Thy Saviour trod ;
Nor let thy spirit intermix

With earthly hope and worldly care
Its groans to God.

XV,

And Thou, 0 mighty Lord ! whose ways
Are far above our feeble minds
To understand,
Sustain us in these doleful days,

And render light the chain that binds
Our fallen land !
Look down upon our dreary state.
And through the ages that may still
Roll sadly on.
Watch Thou o'er hapless Erin's fate,
And shield at least from darker ill
The blood of Corm !

The only other translation from the Irish
Poems of the seventeenth century, we shall
give, is by one of the Bards of the O'Don-
nells; and it is remarkable as the first
born of a rather long family of patriotic
allegories, as fierce as battle music, and as
fond as love ditties.

DARK ROSALEEN.

Oh my Dark Rosaleen,

Do not sigh, do not weep !
The priests are on the ocean green,

They march along the deep.
There's wine . . . from the royal Pope,

Upon the ocean green ;
And Spanish ale shall give you hope,

My Dark Rosaleen !

My own Rosaleen !

1850.

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

147

Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope,
Shall give you health, and help, and hope,
My Dark Ro&aleen !

Over hills, and through dales.

Have I roamed for your sake ;
All yesterday I sailed with sails,

On river and on lake.
The Erne . . . . at its highest flood,

I dashed across unseen.
For there was lightning in my blood.

My Dark Rosaleen !

My own Rosaleen !
Oh ! there was lightning in my blood,
Red lightning lightened through my blood

My Dark Rosaleen !

All day long, in unrest

To and fro, do I move,
The very soul within my breast

Is wasted for you, love !
The heart .... in my bosom faints

To think of you, my queen,
My life of life, my saint of saints.

My Dark Rosaleen !

My own Rosaleen !
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints,

My Dark Rosaleen !

Wo and pain, pain and wo.

Are my lot, night and noon,
To see your bright face clouded so.

Like to the mournful moon.
But yet .... will I rear your throne

Again in golden sheen ;
'Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone.

My Dark Rosaleen !

My own Rosaleen !
'Tis you shall have the golden throne
'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone.

My Dark Rosaleen !

Over dews, over sands,

Will I fly for your weal :
Your holy delicate white hands

Shall girdle me with steel.
At home .... in your emerald bowers,

From morning's dawn till e'en.
You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers.

My Dark Rosaleen !

My fond Rosaleen !
You'll think of me through daylight's hours,
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers.

My Dark Rosaleen !

I could scale the blue air,

I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer.

To heal your many ills !
And one .... beamy smile from you

Would float like light between
My toils and me, my own, my true.

My Dark Rosaleen !

My fond Rosaleen !
Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew,

My Dark Rosaleen !

0 ! the Erne shall run red

With redundance of blood.
The earth shall rock beneath our tread.

And flames wrap hill and wood.
And gun-peal, and slogan cry.

Wake many a glen serene.
Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die.

My Dark Rosaleen !

My own Rosaleen !
The Judgment Hour must first be nigh,
Ere you can fade, ere you can die,

My Dark Rosaleen !

The last era of the Irish Celtic muse,
may be called the Jacobite period, and is
co-extensive with the eighteenth century.

TuRLOw O'Carolan, born about the
year 1670, at Nobber, Meath Co., is the
most distinguished name in this era. At
the age of manhood he became quite blind,
and the harp, that had been his pleasure in
earlier and better days, became now his
main resource of life. The lady of " the
Mac Dermot" furnished him with a horse
and harp, and every house and castle
within a circuit of an hundred miles, be-
came by turns, his home. The Anglo
Irish gentry vied with " the old stock" in
their personal kindness to the Bard, and
with impartial strains he celebrated the
praises of Squire Jones and the Mac Der-
mott, the beauty of Bridget Cruise and
Mabel Kelly. One secret of his great
popularity was, that he was no partizan.
His highest exercise of patriotism was an
eulogy over the departed better days of his
art and its ancient patrons. In the year
1737, feeling his death at hand, he returned
to his patroness, the lady Mac Dermott,
and under her roof died " her poor old
gentleman, the head of all Irish music," as
she pathetically styled him.

The multitudes who came to attend his
interment, had to erect tents in the open
fields for their accommodation. "The
Wake," says the biographer, "lasted four
days, and the harp was heard in every di-
rection."

A slip of a lad, ten years old, was then
sitting in the Rectory of Elphin, listening
to the anecdotes and the music of the
Bard. This was Oliver Goldsmith, who,
in his Essays, has left us a slight, but
graceful tribute to the memory of his an-
cient neighbor, " Carolan the Blind.''

Of Carolan's excellence as a composer,
there remain evidences enough. Gemi-
niani declared there was " no such music

The Poets and Poetry oftlie Irish.

August,

west of tlie Alps ;" and Dr. Burney, Sir
Jolm Hawkins, Sir John Stevenson and
Thomas Moore, have concurred in that
verdict. Most of Moore's melodies are
written to Carolan's airs. His words seem
to have been hardly equal to his airs. The
following trifle is almost a literal transla-
tion :

THE CUP OF O'HAKA.

Oh, were I at rest

Amid Arran's green isles^,
Or in climes where the Summer

Unchangingly smiles ;
Though treasures and dainties

Might come at a call^
Still! O'Hara's full cup

I would prize more than all.

But why should I say

That my choice it would be^
When the chiefs of our fathers

Have loved it like me.
Then come, jolly Thurlow,

Where friends may be found.
And O'Hara we'll pledge,

As that cup goes round.

Carolan's wit was as quick as his ear,
and many of his impromptu epigrams have
passed into proverbs with his people.
Some churl had offended him, by refusing
him hospitality in his rambles ; upon him
he instantly ejaculated r

'•' What a pity Keli's gates were not kept by 0'-

Flynn,
For so surly a dog would let nobody in !"

John McDonnell, of Cla.ragh, in Cork,
l3om in 1691, seems to have been a Poet
. of the classical school, and a man of con-
sidei-able study. He was an enthusiastic
Jacobite, as the following '' relic" will
showi

THE DREAM OF JOHN MAGDONKELL,

Translated by Mangan.

I lay in unrest — old thoughts of pain,

That;! struggled in vaiu to smother,
Like miduight spectres haunted my brain

Dark fantasies chased each other ;
When, lo! a iFigure — who m'ght it be?

A tall fair figure stood near me!
Who might it -be ? An unreal Banshee ?

Or an angel sent to cheer me 1

Though years-have rolled since then, yet now

My memcry thrillingly lingers
On her awful char-ms, her waxen brow,

Her p'lle translucent fingers ;
Her eyes that mirrored a wonder-world,

Her mein of unearthly mildness
Ard her waving raven tresses that curled

To tke ground in beautiful wiidness.

" Whence coraest theu, spirit ?" I asked, methoughtj

" Thou art not one of the Banished?"
Alas, for me, she answered nought,

But rose aloft and vanished ;
And a radiance like to a glory, beamed

In the light she left behind her,
Long time I wept, and at la«t, me dreamed

I left my sheeling to find her.

At first I turned to the tbund'rous Korth;

To Cruagach's mansion kingly .
Untouching the earth, I then sped forth

To Inver-lough, and the shingly
And shining strand of the fishfull Erne

And thence Cruchan the golden,
Of whose resplendent palace ye learn

So many a marvel olden I

I saw the Mourna's billows flow

I passed the walls of Shenadv,
I stood in the heroe thronged Ardroe,

Embossed amid greenwoods shady j
And visited that proud hill that stands

Above the Boync's broad waters,
Where iEngus dwells with his warrior hands

And the tairest of Ulster's daughters.

To the halls of SlacLir, to Creevoe's height;

To Tara, the glory of Erin,
To the fairy palace that glances bright

On the peak of the blue Cnocfeerin,
I vainly tried. I went west and east —

I travelled seaward and shoreward —
But thus was I greeted in field or at feast—

" Thy way lies onward and forward 1"

At last I reached, I wist not how,

The Royal towers of Ival,
Which under the cliff's gigantic broW;

Still stand without a rival;
And here were Thomonds chieftains all;

With armour and swords, and lances.
And here sweet music charmed the hall,

And damsels charmed with dances.

And here at length, on a silvery throne,

Half seated, half reclining,
With forehead white as the marble stone,

And garments so starrily shining.
And features beyond the poet's pen —

The sweetest, sadest features —
Appeared before me once agen.

That fairest of living creatures .'

"Draw near, 0 Mortal ! she said with a sigh,

And hear a mournful story !
The Guardian-spirit of Eein am I,

But dimmed is mine ancient glory,
My priests are banished, my warriors wear

No longer victory's garland;
And my child, my son, my beloved Heir

Is an exile in a far land !"

I heard no more — I saw no more —

The bands of slumber were broken ;
And palace and heath, and river and shore,

Had vanished, and left no token.
Dissolved was the spell that had bound my will.

And my fancy thus for a season ;
But a sorrow therefore hangs over me still,

Despite of the teachings of Reason.

Owen O'Sullivan, of Kerry, who died
in 1784, was another Jacobite Poet of note.
His " Captivity of the Gael" is, apparent-
ly, an imitation of Mac Donnell's dream.

1850.

The Poets and Poetry of tlie Irisli.

149

THE CAPTIVITY OF THE GAEL.

Translated from 0' Sullivan.

I.
'Twasby sunset I walked and wandered
^ Over hill sides and over moors,
With a many sighs and tears.
Sunk iu sadness, I darkly pondered

All the wrongs our lost land endures

In the-e latter night black years.
"How !" I mused has her worth departed!

What a ruin, her fame is now !
We once freest of the free,

We are trampled and broken hoarted;
Tea even our Princes them.-elves must bow
g Low before the vile IShane Bwee*

II.

Nijjb a stream in a grassy hollow

Tired, at length, I luy down to rest —
There the winds and balmy air

Bade new reveries and cheerier follow,
Wafting newly within my breast

Thoughts that cheated my despair.
Was I waking, or was I dreaming ?
I glanced up and behold! there shone

Such a vision over me !
A young girl, bright as Erin's beaming
Guardian spirit, now sad and lone

Through the spoiling of Shane Bwee !

III.
0 for pencil to paint the golden

Locks that waved in luxuriant sheen
To her feet of stilly light !
(Not the fleece that in ages olden

Jason bore o'er the Ocean green

Into Hellas, gleamed so bright)
And the eyebrows thin arched over

Her mild eyes and more ever more
Beautiful, methonght to see

Than those rainbows that wont to hover
O'er our blue Island lakes of youe

Ere the spoiling of Shane I3wee.

IV.

" Bard !" she spake, " deem not this unreal,

I was niece of a pair whose peers

None shall see on earth airain —
Angus Con and the dark O'Neil,

Rulers over Erin iu years '

When her sons as yet were men.
Times have darkened and now our holy

Altars crumble and castles tall ;
Our groans ring throuphont Christendee.

Still, despond not! He comes tho' slowly,
He, the man. who sball disenthrall

The Proud Captive of Shane Bwee.

Then she vanished, and I in sorrow,

Blent with joy, rose and s^eut my way

Homeward over moor and hill.
0 G-reat Gud ! Thou from whom we borrow

Life and strength unto thee I pray

Thou! who swayest at thy will
Hearts and councils, thralls, tyrant^, freemen,

Wake through Europe, the ancient soul,

And on every shore and sea,
From the Black-water to the Deintm

Freedoms bell will ere long time toll

The deep death knell of Shane Bwee.

* Shane Bwee, "Yellow John," or John Bull.

/ While the "bards thus bewailed the Stuart
line, and looked for their restoration as an
era of all good, the poor peasantry suffered
terribly both in mind and body. Several
severe statutes forbade them loarnino; in
Irish ; forbade Irish schools ; forbade the
exercise of the Catholic religion ; disabled
Catholics from leasing land, taking appren-
tices, or going into any learned profession.
That Penal Code, which Burke has called
the most perfect invention of perverted in-
genuity for the degradation of a people, was
in full, detailed force. Nay, it is only
within our own memory that the last of
these barbarous enactments have been
wiped off the institutes of the English.

Two generations ago, various secret soci-
eties were in existence in Ireland, founded
to oppose or punish the petty local execu-
tors of these laws. For being; concerned
in some such enterprize, a man named Felix
McCarthy had to retire to the wild moun-
tains of Cork, like Mark in the " O'Dono-
hue," in order to avoid arrest. *' He was
accompanied," says the translator of Mc-
Carthy's Lament, " in his flight by a wife
and four children, and found an asylum in
a lone and secluded glen, where he con-
structed a rude kind of habitation, as a
temporary residence. One night, during
the absence of himself and his wife, this
ill-combined structure suddenly gave way,
and buried the four chilcren, who were at
the time asleep, in its ruins. '^ The lament
is too long to give entire, but some verses
of it will show the strong feelino;s of the
peasant class.

It opens : —

" I'll sing my children's deatb song, tho'

My voice is faint and low ;
Mine is the heart that's desolate —

'lis I will mourn their fate."

The thought here is a fine one — the grief
is all his own, and he refuses to share it
with any. After detailing with faithful
minuteness their death, —

" At midnight's hour of silence deep
Sealed in their balmy sleep" —

And thinking himself —

" Like the shrill bird that flutters nigh
The nest, where its crushed offspring lie."

He proceeds to lament, with the insepa-
rable selfishness of grief, the effects of the
calamity on his old age, and on the mother
of the lost children.

150

TJie Poets and Foetry oftJie Irish.

August,

" Beauty and strength liave Itft my brow
!N or care nor wi.-dom have I now.
Little death's blow I dread
Since all my hopes are fled.

ISTo more — no more shall music's voice
My heart rejoice —
Like a brain- stricken fool whose ear
Is closed gainst earthly cheer.

"When wailing at the dead of night
They cross my aching sight —
They come, and beck'ning me away
They chide my long delay.

At midnight hour— at morn — at eve —
My sight they do not leave ;
Within — abroad — their looks of love —
Around me move.

0 ! in their visits no affection's lost!

1 love the pathway by their shadows crossed.
Soon by the will of heaven's king

To their embrace I'll spring.

I pity htr who never more will know
Contentment here below;
"Who fed them at the fountain of her breast
And hushed their infant rest.

Such is a literal extract of an Irish
peasant's lament. There are some others
of this class, of equal merit, and a very
numerous tribe of elegies devoted to high-
waymen and murderers, who, having died
by the English law, the enemy of Irishmen,
have had full " poetic justice" done to
them, after execution.

The latest Celtic poet of merit produced
in Ireland, was O'CuUen, who died in Cork
in 1S16. He is the author of a beautiful
elegy on the xibbey of Timoleague, which
has been often translated. Ferguson's
version is our favorite, with its —

" Refectory, cold and empty, dormitory bleak and bare,

"Where are now your pious uses, simple bed and frugal
fare ?

Gone your Abbot, rule and order, broken down your
altar stones

Nought, I see beneath your shelter, save a heap of clay-
ey bones "

Several living antiquaries and scholars
have attempted compositions in the ancient
language of Ireland, but with only moder-
ate success.

The living language of Ireland is now,
and seems hereafter likely to be, that of
America and England. In this language,
our Swift, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Moore,
Griffin, Banim, Davis, and Knowles have
written ; in this language Malone, Burke,
Grattan, Curran, 0 'Council, and Meagher
have spoken ! The Irish nature has under-
gone translations, and, like other translated
things, has gained in art, though it may
have lost in a national intensity. The re-
cent poets of Ireland are hardly open to

this criticism ; Mangan, Davis, Duffy,
]\IcCarthy, and Ferguson are as Celtic as
Carolan, or the Clan Bards of the middle
ages. They use English as a weapon that
is conquered, with care and watchfulness,
but with great force and effect also.

In closing this hurried sketch of the
Celtic Poetry and Poets of the Irish, the
writer may, perhaps, be permitted to ap-
pend a resume in rhyme, of some of the
original characteristics of the race of men
whose poetical genius he has endeavored to
describe.

THE CELTS.

By T. D. McGee.

Long, long ago, beyond the misty space

Of twice a thousand years.
In Erin uld, there dwelt a mighty race,

Taller than Roman Spears ;
Like oaks and towers they had a giant grace,

Were fleet as deers,
"With winds and waves they made their biding placCj

These western shepherd seers.

II.

Their Ocean -God was Manaman M'Lir,

Whose angry lips,
In their white foam, full often would inter

Whole fleets of ships ;
Crom was their day God, and their Thunderer

Made morning and eclipse ;
Bride was their Queen of Song, and unto her

They prayed with fire-touched lips.

III.

Great were their acts, their symbols and their sports j

With clay and stone
They piled on strath and shore those mystic forts,

Not yet undone ;
On cairn-crown'd hills they held their council-courts.

While youths alone,
"With giant dogs, explored the elk resorts,

And brought them down.

IV.

Of these was Fin, the father of the Bard,

Whose ancient song.
Over the clamor of all change, is heard,

Sweet-voiced and strong.
Fin, once o'ertook Graru, the Golden-hair'd,

The fleet and young,
From her the lovely, and from him the fear'd,

The primal poet sprung.

Ossian ! two thousand years of mist and change

Surround thy name —
Thy Finian heroes now no longer range

The hills of fame.
The very names of Fin and Gaul sound strange —

Yet thine the same —
By miscalled lake and desecrated grange —

Remains, and shall remain !

VL
The Druid's altar and the Druid's creed,
"We scarce can trace.

1850.

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish.

151

There is not left an undisputed deed

Of all your race,
Save your majestic song, which hath their speed,

And strength, and grace :
In that sole song, they live, and love, and bleed —

It bears them on thro' space.

VII.
Ob, Inspir'd giant, shall we e'er behold.

In our own time,
One fit to speak your spirit on the wold,

Or seize your rhyme 1
One pupil of the past, as mighty-soul'd

As in the prime,
Were the fond, fair, and beautiful, and bold-

They of your song sublime ?

152

Everstone.

August?

EVERSTOJ^'E

BY THE AUTHOR OF " ANDERPORT RECORDS

( Continued from fa ge 63 J

CHAPTER XVI.

Mr. AsTiTiLLE, wlieii liis son entered,
sat clown on a sofa.

" Father, I have just come from Ever-
stone — Somers is there."

" Is he ? — I am sorry for it ; I wish the
fellow had stayed away. I suppose he has
made Everlyn hot against me. Well, I
don't care, if he does me no more harm
than that. Let Everlyn curse me as much
as he pleases, I shall not feel incommoded
by the infliction — and why should I } Peo-
ple who are rash and inconsiderate, must
bear the responsibility themselves and not
attempt to throw it on others."

" Father, what is this story about Cain ?
Do you know of the report that is abroad }
They say — but it cannot be, surely !"

Mr. Astiville with much composure re-
plied, " If you mean, Howard, that he is
your uncle, nothing can be more true."

" ]\Iy uncle .' — and been living so many
years in that wretched hut uncared for and
unknown ! How was he able so lono; to
escape recognition. That others might be
deceived I can understand — but that you
should be — "

" Of com'se, Howard, I knew him from
the first — but as he choose to live in this
way, I would not balk his wish, and per-
haps that retired life was, on the whole, best
for him as well as for us."

^' Does he know, sir, of the situation of
the corner .'"

" It is not impossible. Yet, when I have
asked him, he never would tell me where
it was."

" Somers says he has come out now and

declared that the land between the Forks
belongs to the Compton patent."

jNIr. Astiville answered resignedly,
" \yeU, if it be so, all we can do is to make
the best of it. Henry has probably got
into a furious passion, and is not unwilling
to do me as much despite as he can. He
blames me for allowing him to believe he
had done what in reality he had not : yet
he owes me gratitude instead of reproach,
for I am convinced that no check less strin-
gent than this remorse could have restrain-
ed him , with the violent temper he has by na-
ture from running into continual excesses."

Howard appeared bewildered by this
strain of observation —

" You have not heard the particulars of
the matter then .- — I thought from seeing
you in his cabin the day he attempted to
commit suicide that he had made a confi-
dant of you."

" And did you see me there, sir .'" in-
quired the son in great surprise. " The day
when I took away the laudanum from him .'"

" Yes — yes ;" said Mr. Astiville impa-
tiently, and then began to consider how
much more it was expedient to communi-
cate. Pretty soon he had made up his
mind.

" You will be likely to get a distorted
version from some other Cjuarter if I do not
give you the unexaggerated and true one.
Howard, did you ever reflect upon the
cause of the decline of so many of the
old families around us } What has be-
come of the fine, large, compact estates
of the Compton's, the Seymours, the Ches-

1S50.

Everstone.

153

leys, and many otliers ? Have tliey not
been dissipated by means of the repeated
divisions and subdivisions wbich tliey have
undergone ? What has saved the Astiville
property from the fate of the rest ? Does
it not owe this immunity to the good for-
tune which has transmitted it for several
generations through the hands of single
owners ? Happily we have never been a
prolific race ; and although several children
have more than once been growing towards
manhood in this house, the life of the father
has always been protracted sufficiently long
for the inconvenient lists of heirs to be re-
duced to unity. In your grandfather's
time there seemed a probability of a diffe-
rent disposition. There were three sons of
us — all grown men, robust, hearty, and
my father was old and infirm. Before he
died, however, a fever took off Bryan — who
was the most improvident of the whole set,
and who certainly would have squandered
any share of the estate that had fallen into
his hands. Henry, who in age was next
below me, was almost as bad as Bryan. If
less inclined to flagrantly vicious courses,
he was exceedingly thoughtless and waste-
ful. He, however, (having had a quarrel
and an exchange of blows with Bryan, not
a great w^hile before our brother's death,)
became possessed of the notion that he had
killed him, and has remained under the de-
lusion till very recently. Self-reproach
and sorrow took away from him every de-
sire to claim and occupy his part of the
inheritance ; so that the fortune, instead of
being split up, as at one time seemed inevi-
table, into two parts, or into three, de-
scended entire into the hands of the only one
of my father's children who, so far from be-
ing a spendthrift, was disposed, on the con-
trary, to transmit it to his own heirs aug-
mented and improved."

What Howard felt in listening to this
statement may be imagined. His mind,
however, was slow to receive conviction of
the fuUness of his father's iniquity. The
conversation being continued, he bore, with
almost preternatural stoicism, the puno-ent
frankness of Mr. Astiville 's answers to the
interrogatories, which cleaved to his own
tongue like impiety. Mr. Astiville, indeed,
was very frank. Among other things he
acknowledged that the suppositious survey
which had brought such obloquy and dan-
ger upon Emma JN^ewIove, had been sent

to her by himself. Howard's fortitude now
gave way. He uttered a sharp, almost
agonized exclamation.

" Take notice," said Mr. Astiville in
rejoinder, " I do not say I wrote that pa-
per— nobody can accuse me of that.''

Howard groaned — " How little does it
matter," he said, "what hand drew the
characters } The purpose — the purpose —
the deceit — the mean, dastardly trickery of
the act — there lies the infamy !"

Mr. Astiville attempted to expostulate
with his son on the indecorum of his ex-
pressions.

The young man, without regarding him,
added — " And how great a liar have you
made of me ! for 1 have sworn that my fa-
ther's lips could only utter truth. I have
avouched his Iwnor^ and heaped reproaches
and abuse and violence on all who pre-
sumed to question it ! I have struck at the
innocent because they dared to call them-
selves innocent ! and how can I now look
the world in the face } Oh, your sin, sir,
has begotten my shame !"

Mr. Astiville did not choose to make
any reply to this outburst, and his son sank
into moody silence.

After a few moments, Howard spoke,
and in a more subdued tone. " Theii you
have known all this while, sir, that Cain —
my uncle Henry, I mean, — was laboring
under a mistake P-

Mr. Astiville nodded.

" You did nothing to rescue him from
that delusion — when your little finger might
have lifted off the weight of misery under
which he was groaning, you did not move
that finger."

" Henry was never strong-minded — if I
had induced him to re-enter the world, the
only consequence would have been fresh
displays of folly."

" Father, do you mean to say he is
7nad .?"

" Not mad in the common understanding
of the wordj I admit. But he is rash, light-
headed, reckless. Suppose I had shared
the property with him — he must, ere this,
have squandered it. Thus half the patri-
mony our father left would have been lost,
annihilated. I could not do it in justice to
the estate itself — in justice to my family —
injustice, Howard, to you."

" And what is now to be done, sir .^"

*' This is a subject," answered Mr. As-

154

Everstone.

August,

tiville, "for tlioughtful consideration. As
to the law suit, I am not disposed to con-
test it any further. My disposition is not
litigious nor obstinate. The moment I am
convinced that the North Fork is the line,
I am ready to withdraw inside of it. 'Tis
a pity to lose that thousand acres, yet I see
not but we may as well resign ourselves to
it."

" And the step next after that," said
Howard, "is to restore Everlyn what he
paid you. I hope the Northerners will not
be so hard as to take advantage of his im-
provements. If they do not, but shall be
content with receiving what he gave you in
the first place, then the grievous injustice
which has been done will in some measure
be repaired — so far as ^eis concerned."

" You are little acquainted with business
affairs, Howard. I do not conceive that I
am under any obligation to refund that mo-
ney. Everlyn will scarcely think of suing
for it, and if he does, I imagine he will be-
come sick of the attempt."

" You cannot think, sir," exclaimed the
son — " surely, you cannot think of holding
pay for what was never your own ! What
is it but plain robbery when a man receive.^
compensation for which nothing is given ?"

" But I did sell something. Do you im-
agine Everlyn bought the land — not at all,
— he only bought my title. Both of us
understood exactly the nature of the trans-
action. If the title which I sold, and he
purchased, had proved perfect, he would
have made a capital bargain, and I a pro-
portionately bad one. However, it has
turned out differently, and the loss in the
speculation is his. This is all fair."

"Oh, father ! father ! — be ashamed of
this knavish sophistry ! That money must
be repaid."

" Howard, you forget yourself strangely.
I do not regulate my conduct by the crude
notions of inexperience, — nor shall I sub-
mit to the censorship of my children,"

" I am unwilling, sir, to be betrayed in-
to disrespect, — but this would be really too
gross a wrong. Sir, Everlyn would be re-
duced to poverty I "

" I cannot help that."

Howard argued and entreated, but Mr.
Astiville was unshaken. The contest wax-
ed warmer and fiercer. As the moments
hurried past unnoticed, Howard's eye began
to glare with almost maniacal intensity,

while the other party in that unnatural
wrestling nerved himself to a more dogged
stubbornness. The son, trampling under
foot all filial restraints, launched against
the father every topic of invective which
passion could suggest. Much there had
been in Mr. Astiville's conduct which could
not well bear observation — but no imagi-
nation can conceive how hideous those evil
deeds appeared as the unsparing tormentor
tore them out one by one and exhibited
them, raw and palpitating, in the open
blaze of day. Mr. Astiville, strong as he
was in obstinacy and avarice, could not but
grow red with shame at the spectacle of his
own baseness.

Such a scene is too painful for contem-
plation, and no one — had he the power —
would attempt to describe it. At length it
was over.

Howard, having exhausted argument and
passion, and strained every fibre in spas-
modic effort, was compelled to abandon the
field. Just before leaving the room, he
said, in a voice which was now husky and
low : —

" That money shall be restored. — Sir,"
he added, in a higher tone, " it shall — it
shall!"

Mr. Astiville smiled.

" Sir — sir ! do not grin like an ape ! —
But what words ! — Have I lived to speak
thus to myjatlier ? — Have I lived to know
that he deserves contempt } — Oh, who can
bear this !"

" He is gone," murmured Mr. Astiville,
with a sensation of relief. He felt more
than relief. The recent struggle had ex-
cited him : and the harder the fight the
greater the comfort of victory. Now that
the pressure was removed, his hopes bound-
ed very high.

" I believe I shall save all — even the
thousand acres. It is scarce probable
Henry will be able to make the corner
known — at any rate, so known as to be in-
capable of dispute. — I shall strive for
everything, and to the last extremity.
Not a jot shall be wrested from me but by
sheer, irresistible force !"

In the afternoon of the day following,
Mr. Astiville bethought himself that it was
time he went to redeem his promise of visit-
ing his brother.

We have seen that he is a man of nerve

1850.

Everstone.

155

and resolution, but it is a trying thing
to have to bend over that sick man's
couch, and tenderly clasp his hand,
while the assurance of sympathy and fra-
ternal affection is whispered in the dull,
cold ear. Henry's countenance was very
pale, too, and his half-parted lips were so
rigid that the breath, as it passed and re-
passed, scarce left a sign.

Not many words were spoken. Mr.
Astiville experienced a certain embarrass-
ment which prevented voluble utterance,
and his brother had no disposition to reply,
except in monysyllables — perhaps had not
the physical strength.

After some lapse of time there was a
noise without, as of several voices sedulous-
ly subdued.

" Have they come ?" said Henry Asti-
ville, turning his face towards Joshua Ev-
ans, who was watching at the other side of
the bed. " Then prepare the litter."

Mr. Astiville heard the remark without
knowing what to make of it. Presently
some half a dozen men, or more — respec-
table farmers of the neighborhood — entered
the cabin, bringing with them a couple of
slender poles, connected by a rude net-
work of green withs. Acting under the
direction of Evans, they raised the bed on
which the invalid lay — it was a very nar-
row, straw bed — and placed it carefully on
the litter. The extremities of the poles
were then lifted upon the shoulders of two
stout men.

"You will be taken to Greywood — will
you not, dear brother ?"

This was said by Mr. Astiville.

" No, John, but to a spot which it is
more fit you and I both should visit."

They carried him out of the enclosure
and down the steep hill-side, then they
proceeded along the Run, till the sick man
stretching forth his arm and pointing to a
bed of gravel, said : —

" There ! just half way between those
sycamores."

A spade and shovel were immediately
produced, and the gravel, which was the
deposite of some former freshet, removed
from a surface about three yards square.
Mr. Astiville, who had followed in the rear
of the party, watched the course of opera-
tions very intently.

The corner-stone appeared upright and

perfect, and the deep-cut inscription was
plainly visible :

R. C. 4.

There were marks of a grave also, and
no man present entertained a doubt that a
few feet beneath them the bones of the ne-
gro Giles were mouldering.

Henry, looking towards his brother, said,
"You recognize and own the corner .''"

"I do."

This duty performed, the party moved
back to the cabin, notwithstanding Mr. As-
tiville's request to his brother, to suffer
himself to be taken to more comfortable
lodgings at the family seat.

The Northerners had won — but Mr. As-
tiville still trusted to receive partial solace
for being discomfited by his enemies in get-
ting the better of his friend. Nice man-
agement, however, was requisite. The
physician who had JDeen called in pronoun-
ced it scarce possible that his brother could
get well. This loss might be borne, but
would Henry make a will before his death ?
Mr. Astiville recollected the mood in which
Howard had gone off the day previous, and
trembled lest the young man should think
to have recourse to his uncle and to entreat
of him a provision for Everlyn.

Under these circumstances the elder bro-
ther kept faithful watch at the bedside of
the younger all that evening. Howard did
not burst into the apartment, but the mat-
ter seemed to occur of itself to the invalid.

" This Mr. Everlyn, John, that I hear
of, ought not to be ejected by the Comp-
ton purchasers. At any rate, pay back to
him what you have received."

" Depend upon me, Henry — of course I
will do what is right."

Mr. Astiville really did mean what he
said, although he was very far from mean-
ing what his brother understood him to say.
' Right* is one of the most convenient of
that long list of ambiguous terms which lan-
guage affords.

Another incident occurred later in the
evening to task Mr. Astiville's fortitude.
A messenger came to the door, and calling
him out in a whisper, informed him that he
had something to say respecting his son
Howard. The facts, as well as could be
gathered from the man's account, were
these : An hour or two before, that is about

156

Everstone.

August,

the time of twilight, Mr. Newlove and his
daughter, while taking a walk along the
road in front of their dwelling, were met by
Howard on horseback. The youDg man
appeared very haggard and his horse showed
sims of having; been ridden long and hard.
Instead of passing, he reined up suddenly,
and commenced addressino; Miss Newlove.
His manner was very strange. At times
he shed tears, and uttered broken sentences
in a tone of maudlin sentimentality, as if
intoxicated. Then, he would burst into a
strain of high, wild, passionate declamation.
He turned from them iSnally, and Miss
Newlove believing, contrary to the opinion
of her father, that his demeanor marked
rather insanity than the effects of strong
drink, sent Handsucker and Priam to fol-
low after him, and, if possible, to prevent
his falling into harm. The overseer and
the negro, though on foot, had no difficulty
in keeping within sight, until he commen-
ced beating his horse furiously and urged
him to leap a fence at the left of the road.
The tired and tottering 'beast, having pro-
bably been ridden without intermission full
thirty hours, was unable to clear the fence
and fell in the effort. Howard, entangled
by the stirrups, would probably have been
unable to extricate himself, but for the as-
sistance of the two men. In the fall he
had received some injury of the ancle, as it
seemed, and could not walk alone. Absa-
lom and Priam carried him to the house,
where he was with difficulty induced to re-

cline on a couch till the arrival of the phy-
sician.

Astiville, on this report, proceeded at
once to the house of Mr. Newlove. As he
entered the room where his son lay, the
latter rising up broke into the wildest ra-
ving. Every attempt the father made to
pacify him only aggravated his malady . He
upbraided Mr. Astiville for having com-
mitted the most heinous crimes — charged
him with being destitute of natural affec-
tion, of common honesty — expressed in-
tense loathing at his very sight and pre-
sence. Afterwards, ih^ agony of his sprain-
ed limb compelling him to fall back upon
the sofa, when his father approached softly
and offered to lean over the arm of the seat,
he screamed aloud and shook his clenched
hands franticly.

This was not so pleasant a scene that
Mr. Astiville was inclined to protract it.
The medical gentlemen, who were subse-
quently consulted, agreeing in the opinion
that it would be highly inexpedient to re-
move the young man for some time, Asti-
ville was obliged, much against the grain,
to accept Newlove's offer to continue in
charge of him. Mrs. Astiville came over
the next morning, and the patient, bearing
her attentions and Emma's more quietly
than those of any one else, the two ladies
who had never before met were for some
weeks associated together under circum-
stances which neither could have antici-
pated.

CHAPTER XVII.

Henry Astiville died, and was buried.

Several weeks had passed away. No-
body now pretended to doubt that the meet-
ing of the Court would be followed by the
recognition of the Northerner's title to the
land which had been the subject of such
contention. Everlyn as well persuaded of
this as any one, yet refused all the liberal
propositions which were tendered by Miss
Newlove. He could not bear to accept as
a favor the least portion of that which he
had, with mistaken confidence, claimed as
his right. And cilthough greatly wound-

ed by the partial discovery of John Asti-
ville's bad faith, he resolutely adhered to
his determination to bring no action against
his grantor, but to abide without a murmur
all the consecjuences of the disastrous bar-

ram.

Somers, to whom it fell as a matter of
business to convey these amicable proposi-
tions, had an opportunity of once more
speaking to Sidney. The remembrance,
however, of past treatment still dwelt upon
his mind, and perhaps prevented his paying
the consideration which was prudent and

1850.

Evcrstone.

157

just to the soreness of spirit so naturally
the result of misfortune and disappointment.
Feeling sensitively the wrong which had
been done him, and believing that Sidney
ought herself to he conscious of it, he fail-
ed to see the impossibility of one so proud
humbling herself to proffer an unsought
acknowledgment. Sidney, on the other
hand, misinterpreted his unsettled demea-
nor, and was firmly convinced that he only
waited a decent pretext to abandon her.
That pretext, she was determined, he
should not long have to seek, if coldness
and disdain would suffice him.

It was not strange, therefore, that our
lawyer became persuaded that all hope of
happiness from this quarter was blasted.
That he should then turn his mind in a
different direction was certainly consist-
ent enough with human nature, as it is
manifested around us, however unpardona-
ble such a course may appear to theorizing
sentimentalists. A man of thirty is not
easily satisfied that it is his bounden duty
to make misery the companion of all the
rest of his days.

Emma perceived — what woman could
fail to perceive it ? — the change which had
come over his mind. The perception could
not but be attended with a beam of exhila-
ration and joy. Every day that Somers
made a visit, some fresh token fell from
him — now a glance, now a word, now a
moment of more expressive silence — to in-
vigorate and expand that passion which had
grown up unnoticed and unfostered. When
he had left the house, she would withdraw
into the darkened room, where she per-
formed the offices of a faithful nurse to the
disordered mind of Howard Astiville.
There, after administering an opiate to the
feverish patient, she could ponder upon the
new aspect which the kaleidoscope of her
life presented. In these quiet musings her
spirit which had been quickened into un-
wonted excitement recovered its sedateness ;
and, true to her nature, she began to refer
things to the standard of other persons'
happiness rather than of her own. She con-
sidered how sad must be the lot of Sidney
Everlyn, forced to carry a heart not only
smitten by reverses of fortune, but subject-
ed to the more bitter grief of torn and
crushed affections. And the fact that this
weight of sorrow was probably attributable
in great measure to the fault of the South-

ern Beauty herself, only increased the sym-
pathy of her generous rival. No object,
indeed, more easily awakens interest and
pity than a haughty spirit bowed down.

Yet Emma was fixr too sober-judging to be
one of those enthusiasts who, in carina* for
others, forget to be just to themselves. If
Somers really loved her, and had entirely
severed that attachment which had bound
him to Miss Everlyn, she felt that she
might blamelessly encourage his advances.
A close, impartial scrutiny enabled her to
recognize that the lawyer was deceivin.o*
himself, and that his first love continued.
The painful discovery made, what was now
to be done ? Should she at once cast off
Somers } This course seemed to promise
no benefit to any party. And if it were
impossible that Somers should marry Sid-
ney, what reason had she to believe that
his misfortune would be aggravated by a
marriage to herself } A woman, young,
good-tempered, rich, well-educated, and of
a person not uncomely, may be pardoned
for finding it difficult to persuade herself
that the man whose wife she should become
would thereby be made to receive into his
existence a new element of wretchedness.
She considered, too, that, in the occurrence
of the event the propriety of which she was
now weighing, she should regard her hus-
band somewhat in the light of a martyr to
her welfare, and felt that gratitude, if other
motives were inadequate, would enable her
(o make his domestic hours at least tranquil
if not rapturously happy. But -^as it out
of the question that Somers might be re-
ceived again into Miss Everlyn 's favor }
This depended on that young lady's char-
acter. What this was, Emma was at a loss
to understand. Her conduct, and especi-
ally her treatment of Somers, was such as
she herself could not have been led into by
any motives, or by any conceivable combi-
nation of circumstances. After thinking
the matter over, Emma could fix upon no
other solution of the problem than that
Sidney was unaware of the sincerity and
strength of Somers' attachment to her.
But Emma knew this fact — why, then,
should she not bear testimony to it .? She
would.

Putting on her straw bonnet, one day,
with its simple but tasteful trinnnings, she
got into her carriage, and directed the alert
and grey-whiskered Priam to drive to Mr.

158

Everstone.

August^

Everlyn's. It was an unusual and delicate
errand of hers, and when she was fairly on
the way and began to cull out expressions
to be used in the approaching interview, a
trembling and hesitation came over her.
Still the straight-forward simplicity of her
character sustained her ; and toe measure
she was about to go through, however em-
barrassing and painful it might be, would
relieve conscience.

Sidney Everlyn was surprised when the
name of the visitor was announced — nor
was it strange she should be — yet the native
courtesy of the Southern lady did not de-
sert her, and entering the room she receiv-
ed Emma with ease and frankness. That
parlor, by the way, was not the kitchen,
where Somers and Howard had found her,
but one of the lower apartments of the
house, which, having been less injured by
the fire than others, had since been con-
verted into a tolerable reception-room for a
summer guest.

Emma was even more embarrassed than
she had anticipated, and but for Sidney's
ready conversational tact would have found
it difficult to recover any degree of self-
possession. She began by alluding to the
offers which had been made on her part to
Mr. Everlyn, and declared her earnest
hope that he would yet accept them.

*'l know that you must be attached to
this place," said she to Sidney.

" Ah, I am indeed !" replied the latter,
" but my father feels that the struggle is
too great for him. It would be a long while
before he could pay you, since all the
means at his disposal would be consumed
in repairing the destruction which the fire
has made."

" I have said, however," rejoined Emma,
"that there would be no limitation of time,
and the debt being burdened with no inte-
rest ^ though in ten years he should not dis-
charge a dollar, he would be no worse off
than now."

" We thank you for your generosity,''
said Sidney, " but it is impossible that we
can avail ourselves of it. Once more we
shall remove to the West — or rather we
shall go to the far South West, for my fa-
ther has an opportunity to obtain a grant
of land in Texas."

" And will you go to Texas .?"

" Certainly, my father's presence there
will be indispensable, and of course where

he goes I go. The Texas wilderness is not
indeed a pleasant land as my imagination
paints it."

" Oh why think of going there .^" inter-
rupted Emma. "Here you have every-
thing to make your life pass agreeably !
Here is the house moved, at great labor and
cost, to this site so well worthy of it. Ma-
ny old associations must endear it to you,
and in its present position what is wanting
to make it a delightful home ?"

" I beseech you," replied Sidney, "to
say no more on this point. It is one of my
weaknesses to feel an excessive affection for
this rough pile of stone and brick — some-
times I think I approach the sin of idola-
try. By recounting what we must lose in
departing from this place, you easily awa-
ken in me sorrowful regret, but this regret
can only give pain without accomplishing
any other end, for my father's purpose is
incapable of change — nor in truth, if the
choice were mine, would I have him swerve
from it in the least. I shall not leave Ev-
erstone without sadness — but I am con-
scious it is far better to go than to stay."

Emma now proceeded as well as she
could to the main object of her visit. Whilst
with great directness and plainness of speech
she disclosed the knowledge she possessed
respecting the state of Richard Somers'
heart, it was Sidney's turn to be abashed
and agitated. The concluding words — a
sort of general summing up of the testimo-
ny— were,

" I am certain he loves you at this mo-
ment earnestly, devotedly." J

Sidney, with natural and very feminine "
disingenuousness, attempted to disclaim all
concern in Mr. Somers' sentiments of what-
ever nature they might be, striving to con-
vey the impression that if any affection ex-
isted between them it was every whit on
his side.

Emma held her peace for some moments
while her mild blue eyes rested on the
countenance of her hostess. Then shaking
her head remarked —

" Ah, you do love him."

Sidney blushed and stammered, but could
not deny that the penetrating examiner had
reached the truth. She mustered spirit
however to hint that it was hardly fair for
one woman, taking advantage of her sex,
thus to probe the heart of another.

" Think how I stand," said Emma, "and

1850,

Everstone.

159

see whether there is not a justification for
me. A high sense of duty caused Mr.
Somers to stand up in defence of a stran-
ger whose rights of property were in jeop-
ardy, whose very good name was threat-
ened with a dreadful stigma. In conse-
quence of that upright and generous course
he has become subject himself to miscon-
struction. Can you wonder that she whom
he rescued, is unwilling to see him suffer
for it .'' You remember the fable of the
lion and the mouse. I am feeble — I can
do very little — and the service which Mr.
Somers has rendered is great beyond com-
pensation— but Miss Everlyn, it is in your
power to give effect to my gratitude."

Emma went on, and in words whose
glowing earnestness cannot be copied,
pleaded for Somers with far more eloquence
than the lawyer himself ever displayed,
whether in his own cause or a clients.

Sidney, though not unmoved, still ad-
hered to her purpose. With unflagging
zealousness Emma made one more appeal.
'-'• You love Somers," she said, " and he
loves you. What then is your reason for
rejecting him .^"

" Because — because — " Sidney hesi-
tated. " You must understand what I
want to say. Could you bear to be hum-
bled in the presence of any man } Could
you be an Esther to kneel and tremblingly
touch the tip of King Ahasuerus' sceptre.''"
Emma looked as if she saw nothing so
terrible in the fortune of the renowned
Jewish maiden.

" I never could," said Sidney, with
proud emphasis. " As circumstances now
are I could not accept Richard Somers
without a sense of mortification, and I'll
die like a love-sick girl in a novel, rather
than endure that !"

'' But why should you be mortified.?"
" On every account. In the first place,
I used to think you were a very different
person from what I now recognize you to
be, and I supposed your claims to the land
were illegal and not capable of being sus-
tained. Somers obstinately held the con-
trary. It seems he was right on both
heads, and so — especially as regards the
first — I cheerfully confess before you: —
but I say frankly that great as is the re-
spect I am compelled to entertain for your
character — if Somers were to c jme here

and commence triumphing over my pre-
vious injustice, I verily believe I should
take to hating you again."

" Perhaps," added Sidney quickly,
" you think this very silly, if not wicked?"

Emma owned that she could not perceive
how such views could be justified by any
standard of Right.

Then Sidney rejoined, " We are dif-
ferently constituted. I dare say your na-
ture is greatly preferable, but such as mine
is I must act in accordance with it. If
now, instead of being the daughter of a
poor man, I were mistress of Everstone, I
could say to Richard — ' Come, sir, you
may take me — I am ready to be a good
girl — and obedient wife.' As it is, and
after what has passed between us, I never
could bring my lips to utter such words."

" Yet," replied Emma, "his persistance
in seeking your hand is surely proof of dis-
interestedness. Your loss of the estate
would be — provided he were accepted —
his loss also."

"So Mr Somers once had the assur-
ance to tell me himself; but what care I
for that } What prodigious merit is it that
he is not a mercenary wretch .'' I dare say
he likes me all the better for my poverty,
since such a condition is apt to prepare one
to be a more submissive slave."

" Would you have your husband your
slave.?''

'' No — equality is all I ask. Far be it
from me to be mated to any tame, abject,
lump of flesh! Let my husband be a man,
and a stout-hearted man — let him make
himself if he can, King, like the Persian,
over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces,
but he shall not be my King."

" It seems then," said Emma — "pro-
vided I understand you, of which I am not
sure — that if Mr. Astiville were to do as
he ought, and pay back to Mr. Everlyn
the money which he unjustly retains — in
that case, you would have no objection to
listen favorably to Mr. Somers."

Sidney assented.

" Now look at the matter seriously. Miss
Everlyn — ought you to allow Astiville's
injustice to destroy the happiness of Mr.
Somers — who, as you acknowledge has
committed no real offence — and to destroy
your own happiness equally .?"

More she added in the same strain, but

160

Sidney refused to bend eitlier to reason or
entreaty.

Emma returned home and with a lio-ht-
ed heart. She had discharged a duty and
now, — her eyes grew dim with tears (not
of sorrow) as she contemplated the pros-
pect— Sidney Everlyn had refused the of-
fered happiness, and now nought forbade
that her own hand should take it.

Look too, at the agency by which these
results had been brought about. There
was John Astiville's tenacious avarice
clinging to its paltry prey at the sacrifice
of brother, son, and conscience Against
him had labored a single-minded girl. He
had won in the struggle : — but (as who
will not add?) to his own loss: she had
suffered defeat ; — but to her own great
gain.

Emma left dizzy and faint by ebbing
excitement, retired to rest. The first
perception that dawned upon her when she
awoke at morning — and how radiant that
dawn ! — was the realization that it was
permitted her to lavish her affections with-
out reserve or stint on that object which
her heart would choose out of the whole
world.

Some business letters, which had arriv-
ed during the present day, lay upon the
table. She opened them and having gath-
ered their contents filed them away metho-
dically according to her custom. Some-
thing that she had read dwelt on her mind,
and seemed to disturb her joy. As the
morning hours passed, one after another,
she began to reflect whether she had not
that to say to Sidney which might induce
a change of the conclusions of the late in-
terview. Then the thought occured, sup-
pose every obstruction to the marriage of
Somers and Miss Everlyn removed, could
he live happily with a person of such a
character as had been exhibited yesterday ?
It seemed to Emma that he could not.
Furthermore, what did the letter she had
perused communicate ? — A possibility — a
glimmering chance, which one breath
might extinguish. And how little likeli-
hood that any consideration that it would
occur to a rational mind to offer would ef-
fect a change in sentiments so whimsical
and so preposterous as those by which Sid-
ney Everlyn appeared to be actuated ?
Then had she — Emma — done already

Everstone. August,

more than any woman could be expected
to do ? Was self-sacrifice the sole busi-
ness of her life }

All these thoughts and more of the same
kind had their turn of dominion, but the
end was that before the sun set, she made
her second visit to Everstone.

Meanwhile, Sidney also had been going
through a course of meditation. If itwere
true that Somers continued faithful and
stedfast, was it so wise a measure to re-
ject him ? Miss Everlyn enjoyed for some
hours what is called a hearty crying spell.

" Since I saw you yesterday," said
Emma at that second meeting, I have re-
ceived a communication from Mr. '*

" Not Mr. Astiville .?" said Sidney, ob-
servino- she was at a loss for the name.

" JNo : it is a person who writes on be-
half of a well-known mining company. It
seems that an agent of theirs, a geologist,
having been invited by a certain Mr.
Gibbs to make investigations on the lands
of Alonzo Safety found nothing to warrant
operations there but did see traces which
induced an exploration of the surrounding
country. They write me now that such
discoveries have been made on the tract
which has been in controversy between
Mr. Everlyn and myself that understand-
ing the title to be in me they are desirous
of purchasing a few hundred acres, or, if
it be deemed preferable, of working a mine
on shares."

" You are fortunate," answered Sidney,
rather coldly.

" Stay ; — you do not apprehend my ob-
ject. The only difficulty that appears to
have existed in the way of Mr. Everlyn's
keeping this estate, now exists no longer.
If he think proper, he can dispose of a
small portion for nearly, or quite as much,
as the whole will cost him — possibly, in-
deed, for more."

" But," said Sidney, " if the land is of
higher value than was supposed, you are
plainly entitled to the enhancement."

" Not so, my claim is limited to the sum
which I paid to the executors of Mr.
Compton. Your father has occupied and
improved the estate — expended taste, labor
and money upon it — and he has a clear
right to any value it may have over and
above the sum which I gave for the legal
title."

After permitting Sidney to muse a while

1S50.

Everstone.

161

over the statement wliicli had been made,
Emma added, with a heroic attempt at a
SJiile : —

" So now there is no reason why you
should not be reconciled to Mr. Somers."

Sidney's beaming countenance was a
sufficient answer, and the words that next
fell from her put the matter beyond doubt.
The truth was, she would gladly have hail-
ed any pretext for withdrawing from the
position in which a proud and rash jealousy
had placed her.

After the interchan2;e of a few observa-
tions, Emma rose to take leave. As she
did so, het utmost efforts could not keep
back the tears that rushed to her eyes.

Sidney perceiving her emotion, and look-
ing upon her intently, said : —

" Then, you also love Somers.''

Emma became very pale, and answered
EOt a word.

" I had no thought of this," continued
Sidney, '' Can you imagine the inference
I drew from your first coming here ? — I'll
tell you frankly, though I am half ashamed
to own it. Howard Astiville has been at
your father's house for two weeeks — nor
could I be certain that you had not seen
bim before — J supposed — in short, I thought
it natural that sympathy had grown into a
stronger feeling."

" And that the purpose of my call was,
to induce you to relieve me of Somers 1 "
added Emma, in a quicker tone than was
usual to her.

'' No, not that exactly, but — " Sidney
stopped, and blushed. In truth, she had
suspected that Emma had contrived a little
plot, the denouement of which should be
that Howard finding his first mistress in-
dissolubly bound to a rival, should, out of
gratitude, transfer his affections to his sed-
ulous and devoted nurse. This suspicion
it was impossible for her to confess ; yet,
something she must say.

** I did justice to your good nature,
though not to your self-denial. Knowing
that Somers was attached to me, and hav-
ing no partiality for him yourself, you
thought to promote our common welfare by
bringing us together. This, I say, was my
hypothesis — one very wide from the truth,
I am now convinced. Yet, I never did
you the wrong of supposing that in coming
to see me you were actuated by a desire to

VOL. VI. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

get rid of a troublesome lover ; for I believe
what you have said of Somers' fidelity. In-
deed, if I but imagined the possibility of
his offering addresses to another, no cir-
cumstances could prevail upon me ever
again to think of him, except as an object of
aversion. The man who could once falter,
is no lover for me.''

Emma's tongue burned to say — " But
Somers has swerved from his path — has
thought of paying addresses to another."
The words, struggling for utterance, almost
choked her ; but she did keep them down.
What, though the opportunity were given
at the very last moment to secure him
whom she had twice resigned } It was a
temptation, and it was her duty to resist.

" I pity you — I pity you," said Sidney,
taking her hand kindly.

Oh, to think that one whisper from her
lips would reverse that relation, make Sid-
ney herself the object to be pitied, and lift
her up, that humble girl, into triumphant
joy ! Hers was not an exacting and un-
compromising love — slie could be content
to take Somers, though but a tithe of his
heart came with him. One brief sentence !
But her lips should be sealed ere they ut-
tered that sentence.

Sidney was going on with her sympathy —

" From my heart I pity you — and you
deserve Richard Somers far more than I.
How could you have fortitude to renew the
sundered ties that bound him to a stran-
ger } What have I done to merit such
martyrdom } — and for Somers, while free,
was there not hope that he might become
yours V

Emma replied " What right had I to
think of my interests } Mr. Somers does
not love me; you he does love, and by
leading him to you I believed I best con-
sulted his welfare, and repaid, as far as in
me lay, that which I owed him. I have
done what I could — do you make his days
pass happily and I shall have nothing to
regret."

The lawyer and Miss Everlyn were
married, and, so far as we know lived
pleasantly together. The three thousand
acres were taken, substantially on Emma's
terms. Somers' out of his professional
earnings has paid off a large proportion of
the debt and doubtless will pay the resi-
11

162

due. Mining speculators have several
times made proposals for the hill, which is
thought to contain rich veins of a precious
metal ; but, somehow or other, Mr Ever-
lyn, with his daughter's hearty concur-
rence, has as often refused to listen to them,
under the persuasion, that the vicinity of
a mining village would not add to the at-
tractions of their residence. From this
fact, and others, we may infer that Sidney,
the matron, has given up certain notions,
which Sidney, the maiden, thought fit to
cherish.

Emma Newlove left the country where
she had met such unworthy treatment, and
although Redland has received, and re-
tained, within her borders many children
of a colder clime of whom she is proud,
those who know Miss Newlove will doubt
whether any visiter that had landed on a
Southern shore, deserved more than she, a
hospitable greeting. She has ever since
lived in her native State — and it may be
said of her, more confidently than we dare
to say of most human beings, that she
lived happily unmarried ; she has em-
ployed her time and fortune in doing good
— who can wonder that she should reap
the reward which Providence allots to a
stewardship thus discharged ?

Howard Astiville recovered from the
mental disorder which for a time threaten-
ed to be permanent. He refused to meet
his father or to receive from him any fur-
ther pecuniary supplies. He departed out
of the country determined to earn his liv-
ing till the day should come when on the
descent of the inheritance, or a share of it,
into his hands he should be able to do that
act of justice to Mr. Everlyn which his
father denied. The execution of the pur-
pose to make his own support involved a
patient application for which the young
man's previous habits of mind had little
fitted him. Though he would not receive
a dollar from the hands of Mr. Astiville,
he did not reject the sums which his mother
from time to time — possibly not without
the cognisance of her husband — transmit-
ted to him. He travelled over the new
world and the old. Subsequently being at
Saratoga, he met Emma, who had accom-
panied her father there more than once,
for the good gentleman fancied that the
water was beneficial to a rheumatic com-

Everstone. August,

plaint under which he labored Memory
brought up old scenes, and Howard, tired
of a wanderer's life, and associatino-
Emma's presence with tranquil comfort,
oifered himself to her. Havins: received
a gentle rejection, he went as a volunteer
to Mexico.

Of Mr. Astiville, the elder, it remains
to say a word. He still lives and his fa-
culties both of body and mind seem to have
suffered little decay. He was successful in
the accomplishment of his purpose and has
it to boast that so far as regards three -
fourths of the space contained within the
branches of the Hardwater, the result has
been the same to him as if his ancestor's
patent had extended over it. A less stub-
born resoluteness of will than he displayed,
might have given his name a place on the
roll of the Historically Great, had it
been applied to the acquisition or retention
of a kingdom, instead of being wasted in
the meaner wickedness of robbing a trust-
ing friend of a few thousand miserable dol-
lars.

Note. — An individual who felt some
curiosity to learn what it was Absalom
Handsucker saw, made inquiry of Somers.
The latter answered that Absalom called on
him once and explained that he had come
to a sort of understanding with Mrs. Safe-
ty. It seems, however, the honest dame
took his revelation in high dudgeon. His
eyes, she aflfirmed, must have been greatly
out of order when he imagined that he wit-
nessed the spectacle he described. No
such thing could really have occurred, and
she added that if he dared to promulgate
the tale he would be in danger of an action
for slander. She hinted too the possibility
of additional legal proceedings grounded on
a Breach of Promise. The overseer was
not a little frightened and had come to get
counsel. He said he had had a colloquy
with Arabella also, who, whilst denying that
she had ever been guilty of the practice at
which he expressed such horror, promised
that whether she had or not she never would
do the like hereafter. Absalom closed his
communication with the announcement that
he had determined, on the whole, to take
the young lady for better and for worse,

1S50.

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163

and merely desired to know wKstlier, in the
lawyer's opinion, he had acted prudently
or not.

" But what was it he saw ?"

Somers, smiling, replied — " I must not
tell secrets, lest Mr. Handsucker's ears

should suffer. All I can say, is, that if ths
action of slander had been brought, I am
aware of no case that would have been more
in point than the famous one of Cook vs.
Stokes and wife."

164

Memoir of Air, Calhomii

August,

JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN.

To the City of Charleston, which has recently exhibited a magnificent and impressive funeral pageant^
in honor of the illustrious dead, this Memoir is respectfully dedicated.

MEMOIR

The deatli of tins illustrious citizen,
lono- identified v/itli the public service, and
mourned with a depth of sorrow more gen-
eral, more solemn, and more impressive,
than has ever distinguished any statesman
since the decease of Washington, renders
the tribute of praise, at once an ap-
propriate and first duty. The deference,
which men of all classes pay to great abili-
ties and incorruptible integrity, is a tribute
due to a sense of the immortality of the
soul and to the eminent superiority of vir-
tue. When a life is found to be full of ex-
hibitions of an exalted mind, and of de-
votion to principles of honor and moral-
ity, men, irrespective of mere difi"erence of
opinion, award it, involuntarily, the high-
est homage of their good opinion. Envy
itself, which always accompanies the steps
of the good man, and detracts from his
fame and misconstrues his motives, worn
out in the contest, perishes on his grave :
and contemporaries, who are ever distrust-
ful of success, and invidious in concessions
to merit, are the first to hang willows over
the bier of one, no longer capable of ex-
citing jealousy, or of triumphing in the
race of life.

It has been remarked, not unfrequently,
with less of surprise than of disparagement,
that Mr. Calhoun had a hold on the affec-
tions of the people of South Carolina, uu-
equalled in the history of public men. This
veneration for his person and opinions, has
often been attributed to the predominence
of a popular leader over the dependent,
yielding mind of the public. This suppo-

sition is untrue. If asked to state the rea-
son, which more than any other, caused the
extraordinary popularity of this statesman,
we would say, it was his stainless honor
and incorruptible good faith. Out of
these virtues, incomparable as they were,
grew his self denial, amidst the promptings
of ambition ; his firmness in the cause of
right !

We will not say that, in every instance,
Mr. Calhoun saw the future with a per-
fectly true glance ; or that the objects at
which he looked, invariably sent back into
his orb of vision, a reflection entirely cor-
rect, not sometimes broken by the me-
dia intervening — not occasionally obscured
by rather hastily formed conjectures —
But this we believe — He ever looked
at things with honest intents— 'with an
anxious wish to ascertain the truth, and to
avoid evil ; and he both honestly and boldly
spoke out what he conceived of the mis-
chiefs or advantages presented to his mind.

Mr. Calhoun was not ambitious in the
sense in which that term has been used
with reference to his motives and acts.
He was desirous, ardently desirous, of being
known as the advocate of the solid truths
of politics. For the vanities of the posi-
tion of a statesman he never longed ;
and, therefore, to obtain them, never con-
ciliated or bargained. He fixed his mind
on justice, on principle, on the essence of
the mutual obligations arising between gov-
ernments and the people ; and to assert
these he poured forth from the copious
fountains of bis intellect and his heart, the

1850.

Memoir of Mr, Calhotm,

165

most brilliant offerings, and most profound
devotion. We are confident that for sta-
tion and dignity, independently of tlie right
and glory of the means by which attained,
he cared nothing. '^ Sir," said he to the
writer, while in Charleston, on the last
journey he made to Washington, " The
Presidency has not been in my thoughts
for ten years. I would not take public
office at the sacrifice of what is due to my
own independence, or to my own opinions,
still less by waving the most immaterial
right to which my fellow-countrymen are
entitled." Mr. Calhoun's whole life at-
tests the sincerity and truth of this declara-
tion. Like the great Halifax, so power-
fully described by Macaulay, his public
career shows the prominent fact, that, if
ever he did vary his opinions, the change
was never from the weaker to the stronger
side. Public sentiment may, as is often
said, be a fair indication of what is proper
to be done in a majority of instances ; but
it is not always right ; and certainly he
who withstands it, if he furnishes no evi-
dence of his superiority in judgment, gives
incontestable proof of his candor and firm-
ness. From the mass of politicians de-
lineated by history, posterity delights to
distinguish those, who amidst great imput-
ed defects of character, and many errors of
mind, have still preserved their sentiments
inviolate — who, thouo^h minted with all
the slanders of the times in which they
lived ; and, notwithstanding, the tempta-
tions of place ; the corruptions of party,
and the persecutions of opponents, have no-
bly maintained the truth, and resolutely spo-
ken for the right. On the contrary, however
successful they may have been for the period
of elevation, and during the exercise of the
power of patronage, mankind with one ac-
cord, the impious seductions of the age re-
moved, condemn the dishonorable acts of the
Machiavels and Woolseys of every time and
country. The world is constantly deplor-
ing, and yet, while the thing is passing be-
fore it, constantly sustaining, the weaknesses
and illusions of politics. Every revolution
is based on a necessity for checking the
corruptions of the dynasty preceding ; and
yet, the succession fails into the debauch-
eries of the power existing before. A mild
and virtuous leader, raised up for the oc-
casion, possessed of faculties to command
the public voice and concentrate its suffrage,

scarcely finds himself successful, before he
discovers that he must be unjust. All that
is violent in partizanship must succeed to
whatever is sacred in principle ; ability and
honesty must be sacrificed to expediency,
and the fortunate politician must practice
guilt as if it were public virtue, and con-
demn integrity as if it were depravity. The
country in which we live presents, it is
true, exceptions ; but such have never been
successful politicians. Public honors have
fled from the statesman most worthy to
wear them, and swelled the triumphs of
those who have been dissolute in their pub-
lic lives.

When we assert that Mr. Calhoun was
not one of this latter class, we intend to
raise no issue whatever with respect to the
correctness of his views, considered as
mere abstract political sentiment. Such a
course would not only be disrespectful to
those generous men who have entertained
opposite opinions, and who have opened
bosoms, Ions; mailed in the armour of vio;or-
ous conflicts, and poured out from them
magnanimous streams of eulogium and elo-
quence ; but would be unsuited to the
solemnity of the occasion of this memoir.
As the evil he has done, if any, must be
buried with him, so should all recollection
of the violent controversies of his day be
alike consio;ned to the tomb. The storms
and agitations of the various political ques-
tions in which he engaged, have, we hope,
passed away ; and friends and enemies alike
sorrowing — alike relieved of prejudices and
disarmed of resentments, amidst the de-
departing rays of the sun of his last day,
may stand in harmony around his grave,
and multiply the records of his memorable
devotion to the public service.

We do not intend to seek out for appro-
bation or condemnation, any of those lead-
ing topics which, during Mr. Calhoun's pub-
lic life, produced so much controversy, and
in respect to which the people of the United
States have been so divided. We seek to
give a history of, rather than a criticism on,
Mr. Calhoun's participation in public
events. We will not hold a scale by
which to determine his consistency or his
fluctuations, if guilty of any. The Tariff,
the Bank of the United States, State
Rights — on all of these, whatever his views,
they were invariably entertained in good
faith and frankly expressed. His most in-

166

Memoir of Mr. CalJioun.

August,

veterate enemy, and wlio bas not sucla,
however pure ! will admit this. In politi-
cal fame, it is not the character of the
man's opinions which is to be considered ;
it is the honesty, the truthfulness of his
conceptions and of his advocacy of them.
We may not dwell too minutely on the na-
ture of a measure proposed. The human
mind is forced to view things through such
various media, that we may well distrust
its judgment. We are compelled as often
to blush at following precedents, as at con-
demning sentiments. But, on questions
involving clear principles, we may general-
ly express ourselves without reserve. In
measures embracing interests and holding
in issue the highest obligations, moral and
political, we can decide without inflicting
pain or exciting animosities. Of this na-
ture shall be the incidents of Mr. Calhoun's
life, on which we shall hazard approbatory
reflections.

The circumstance which first brought
Mr. Calhoun's name before the country,
was an Address and Resolution, made to
the people of Abbeville District, South
Carolina, on the occasion of the attack on
the Chesapeake by the Leopard. That
brutal violation of the laws of nations and
of humanity kindled a flame in every part
of the Union. His speech in support of
war was a fearless exposition of the privi-
leges of American seamen, and an indig-
nant denunciation of the cowardly attack
which had violated them. It placed him at
once so high in public confidence that he was
soon after voted into the State Legislature.
There his brief service was distinguished by
a masterly defence and sagacious arrange-
ment of the affairs of the Republican party.
He reviewed the prospects of the country,
and predicted the difficulties in which Eu-
rope and the United States would soon be
involved. He denounced the restrictive
system proposed for the redress of our
grievances, and pointed to a war with Eng-
land as both expedient and inevitable. In
order to prevent distraction in the Repub-
lican party, he proposed the name of Mr.
John Langdon, of New Hampshire, for the
Vice-Presidency, under Mr. Madison.

In 1810, Mr. Calhoun took his seat in
the House of Representatives of the United
States. The period was pregnant with
portentous prospects. War raged over
Europe. The Berlin and Milan decrees of

France, and the British orders of council
had divided the commerce of the world be-
tween these nations. The policy, so ear-
nestly pressed on the consideration of the
people of the Union, of Peace and Non-
interference, it was not possible for the
government to pursue, without abandon-
ing every right dear to the citizen, and
forfeiting every claim to the respect of
foreign states. The navy of Great Brit-
ain swept the ocean. Flushed with vic-
tories, and arrogant under the acknowl-
edged title of mistress of the seas, she
boldly boarded our vessels, and manned her
ships from our crews. Apprehensions that
our trade and commerce would sink under
resistance, paralyzed for a time the resolu-
tion of our people. Embargoes and non-
importation acts were the favorite measures
of resistance. At this juncture, Mr. Cal-
houn entered the arena. He took a promi-
nent part in the efforts to enforce the ne-
cessity of immediate preparations for war.
The defence of a Report from the Commit-
tee on Foreign Relations devolved on him.
He met John Randolph, and Philip Bonlin
Key, in the discussion, and placed the
question of the propriety of war beyond
controversy. His speech wrung laudatory
approval from the cautious and capable Mr.
Ritchie. He was compared to Hercules
with his club ; he was likened in his moral
sentiments to Fox ; and when South Caro-
lina was congratulated, it was said that
Virginia, full as she was of glorious intel-
lect, was not so rich but that she might
wish him her son The following extract
from Mr. Calhoun's speech on the occasion
is valuable, as disclosing striking truths,
clothed in apt phrase : —

" We are next told of the expenses of the
war, and that the people wall not pay taxes.
Why not ? Is it a want of means ? What,
with 1,000,000 tons of shipping; a commerce
of $100,000^000 annually; manufactures
yielding a yearly profit of ^150,000,000, and
agriculture thrice that amount ; shall we, with
such great resources, be told that the country
wants ability to raise and support 10,000 or
15,000 additional regulars '? No: it has the
ability, that is admitted ; but will it not have
the disposition ? Is not our course_ just and
necessary 1 Shall we, then, utter this libel on
the people ? Where will proof be found of a
fact so disgraceful 1 It is said, in the history
of the country twelve or fifteen years ago.
The case is not parallel. The ability of the

1850.

Memior of Mr. Calhoun.

167

country is greatly increased since. The whis-
key tax was unpopular. But, as well as my
memory serves me, the objection was not so
much to the tax or its amount as the mode of
collecting it. The people were startled by the
host of officers, and their love of liberty
shocked with the multiplicity of regulations.
We, in the spirit of imitation, copied from the
most oppressive part of the European laws on
the subject of taxes, and imposed on a young
and virtuous people the severe provisions made
necessary by corruption and the long practice
of evasion. If taxes should become necessa-
ry, I do not hesitate to say the people will pay
cheerfully. It is for their government and
their cause, and it would be their interest and
duty to pay. But it may be, and I believe
was said, that the people will not pay taxes,
because the rights violated are not worth de-
fending, or that the defence will cost more
than the gain. Sir, I here enter my solemn
protest against this low and 'calculating av-
arice' entering this hall of legislation. It is
only fit for shops and counting-houses, and
ought not to disgrace the seat of power by its
squalid aspect. Whenever it touches sove-
reign power, the nation is ruined. It is too
short-sighted to defend itself. It is a com-
promising spirit, always ready to yield a part
to save the residue. It is too timid to have
in itself the laws of self-preservation. It is
never safe but under the shield of honor.
There is, sir, one principle necessary to make
us a great people — to produce, not the form,
but real spirit of union, and that is to protect
every citizen in the lawful pursuit of his busi-
ness. He will then feel that he is backed by
the government , that its arm is his arm. He
then will rejoice in its increased strength and
prosperity. Protection and patriotism are re-
ciprocal. This is the way which has led na-
tions to greatness. Sir, I am not versed in
this calculating policy, and v/ill not, there-
fore, pretend to estimate in dollars and cents
the value of national independence. I cannot
measure in shillings and pence the misery, the
stripes, and the slavery of our impressed sea-
men • nor even the value of our shipping,
commercial, and agricultural losses, under the
orders in council and the British system of
blockade. In thus expressing myself, I do not
intend to condemn any prudent estimate of the
means of a country before it enters on a war.
That is wisdom, the other folly. The gen-
tleman from Virginia has not failed to touch
on the calamity of war, that fruitful source of
declamation, by which humanity is made the
advocate of submission. If he desires to re-
press the gallant ardor of our countrymen by
such topics, let me inform him that true cour-
age regards only the cause ; that it is just and
necessary, and that it contemns the sufferings
and dangers of war. If he really wishes well

to the cause of humanity, let his eloquence be
addressed to the British ministry, and not the
American Congress. Tell them that, if they
persist in such daring insult and outrages to
a neutral nation, however inclined to peace, it
will be bound by honor and safety to resist;
that their patience and endurance, however
great, will be exhausted; that the calamity of
war will ensue, and that they, and not we, in
the opinion of the world, will be answerable
for all its devastation and misery. Let a re-
gard to the interest of humanity stay the hand
of injustice, and my life on it, the gentleman
will not find it difficult to dissuade his coun-
trymen from rushing into the bloody scenes of
war."

Though the first tones of Mr. Calhoun's
voice, in public life, were for war, yet they
were justified, we humbly believe, in the
eyes of the truest advocate of peace . They
were spoken to rouse the country to a de-
claration of hostilities, for frightful outra-
ges on humanity. The people of the
United States have no resentment to in-
dulge, no revenge to gratify. The judg-
ment of Providence has given them the
guardianship of that religion and those
laws which have so often been the boast
and admiration of England herself. Our
government is a trustee for those rights,
not for itself, not for our citizens aliDne ;
but for all nations, and for all objects dear
to civilization and to man. War is the
instrument of God, to punish nations.
Communities, as such, cannot be avenged
in their individuals, for crimes of their
rulers. The crimes which might condemn
the government, may exempt the citizen ;
and if war were not a means in the power
of Heaven, the flame of public liberty
might be extinguished, and the wrongs of
men, as nations, remain forever unredressed.
Inexorable tyrants might, with impunity,
overrun the peaceful territories of freedom,
and millions of suffering human beings be
subjected to the most severe political op-
pressions. When the United States made
war on England, these principles were at
stake. Had our Government failed to
vindicate the aggressions perpetrated, the
injuries inflicted on us would have become
perpetual exercises of power over the whole
civilized world. The United States, in
losing her sense of right, would have lost
the respect of the world. What we cease
to respect, we cease to fear. The nation,
now the asylum of the oppressed of all the

168

Memoir of Mr. Calhoun.

August,

earth, the centre of free commerce, and
the locality of the altars of unrestrained re-
ligion, would have been, if not a feeble
colony of Great Britain, at all events a
miserable and weak Republic. Mr. Cal-
houn saw the consequences, and did not
hesitate to give his powers to the justifica-
tion of the principles involved. He sent
forth, in trumpet tones, appeals which
animated the patriotism of the American
peeple, and stirred up the slumbering en-
ergies of a previous revolution. He dissi-
pated the selfish views and doubting policy
of the few who considered, or were alarmed
by the probable results of a war with that
powerful country ; and substituted, for
these thoughts, a patriotic regard for the
"honor, the rights, and glory of the Repub-
lic. In the crisis, he not only bore away
victory from all his opponents, but achieved
a triumph over himself, the greatest of all
conquests. Had Mr. Calhoun been a mere
time-serving politician, had his soul been
capable of a selfish thought, now was the
time for ascendancy. Full as he was of
honors, crowded at every step with eviden-
ces of the approbation of the public, he
might have secured any place in the gift of
the people. But he had no self love in-
consistent with the purity and integrity of
his motives ; and, having accomplished the
high end for which he had labored, he
looked about to see where his country
might be next attacked. He saw the weak
point in our internal arrangements. He
saw a proclivity in the general government
to concentrate power, at the expense of the
authority of the States : and, from that
time to the moment of his death, this dan-
ger absorbed his thoughts, and directed his
course. It was in vain that men looked,
and turned away contemptuously, because
they did not see what he did. With eyes
fixed on the future, he turned neither
to the right nor the left. He pointed to
the dim speck on the horizon, and foretold
the comino; storm. It was the sole image on
his mmd's eye. He anticipated terrible ca-
lamities ; and, to avert them, determined
on new, bold, and to many men, alarming
preventives. He left the ranks of a well
organized, prosperous and conquering par-
ty ; a party, on whose eagles victory
seemed to have perched with strength ail
powerful, to take an isolated position,
where all said he was fighting with a phan-

tom. He made all the sacrifices which are
thought dear to the human breast. He
forebore the pomp and advantage of a ma-
jority, to array himself, with little hope of
success, or promise of reward, in the ranks
of a small and unpopular minority. May
we not, without either approving or con-
demning the opinions of this great man,
yet give him the just award of possessing a
resolute, a conscientious soul } One
which justified right, and contested for
truth, in the midst of every disadvantage,
and upheld what seemed the right amid the
severest opposition }

At the same session in which he defended
the war, Mr. Calhoun, against the precon-
ceived opinions of the body of the Repub-
licans, gave his enthusiastic support to
measures for the increase of the Navy.
To him, to Mr. Lowndes, Mr. Chevesand
Mr. Clay, are due all praise for fostering,
in its infancy, a branch of the national de-
fence, which has won immortal glory for
the American name.

On the retirement of Mr. Perlor from
the position of Chairman on the Committee
on Foreign Relations, the duties of that
committee, all exceedingly arduous, fell on
Mr. Calhoun. He discharged them with
an ability and industry which elicited uni-
versal approval.

At the session of Congress ensuing, Mr.
Calhoun rendered a signal service to the
commercial interests of the country. A
forfeiture of millions of the capital of
the country, vested abroad, and under the
shape of merchandize, imported into the
country, to avoid loss under the non-im-
portation act, had been prayed to be re-
mitted. This the Secretary of the Treasu-
ry had recommended to be done, on the
condition that the amount were loaned to
the government. Mr. Calhoun, with
characteristic honesty, supported the prayer
of the petition, but denounced the condi-
tion. His efforts relieved our merchants of
this onerous penalty.

The advocacy of the Loan Bill as ren-
dered necessary by the exigencies of the
war, gave Mr. Calhoun an opportunity for
new displays of eloquence and reasoning.
His speech, on that occasion, is a brilliant
effort ; the power and effect of which, in
rousing the mind to a just conception of
the duty of sustaining the war, transcended
the immediate occasion of its delivery.

1850.

Memoir of Mr. Calhoun.

169

On the great question of a Bank of the
United States, in 1814, a measure of the
Administration, Mr. Calhoun differed from
his party. He opposed the bill which
sought to carry out this measure, and re-
jected various propositions of his friends to
adapt its provisions to his views.

It would be profitless, perhaps invidious,
to survey the particulars of the contest on
the Tariff of 1816. A denial of the
charge that it was the origin of the Pro-
tective system, or the assertion that Mr.
Calhoun's opinions, respecting it, have been
misrepresented, would awaken sleeping
feuds, in which party predilections would
be substituted for arguments. While, on
the one hand, Mr. Calhoun is said to be
the author of the system, it is, on the other,
asserted that circumstances connected with
our foreign relations, and not the idea of
home protection, justified the support he
gave the measure. Both positions have
able and honest advocates. Both are,
however, under the influence of long
favored attachments. These sensibly
affect the judgment ; and like prejudices,
growing up with infancy, and long cher-
ished in manhood, are not easily dissipated,
even by the rays of reason.

Of the like character is the dispute on
Mr. Calhoun's position with respect to set-
ting apart the bonus of the United States
Bank, for Internal Improvement. Mr.
Calhoun is no longer here to defend his
consistency, or to furnish the explanations
so necessary to enable men to arrive at
truth. Enemies and friends alike err — the
former in making too little, the latter too
much allowance. Let the contrast, so far
as his memory is concerned, be withdrawn.
The gallant Saladin, and the chivalrous
Richard of the lion's heart, did not think
it unworthy of their magnanimity or cour-
age to decline a combat long maintained
without success to either.

The conduct of the war department as
Secretary under Mr. Monroe, gave Mr.
Calhoun a very liigh character for close in-
vestigation and high administrative talent.
The confused and long unsettled accounts
of that office engaged his attention, with
unremitted industry, for seven years. From
an office difficult of management, it became
cine of ease for his successors. He reform-
ed it in many particulars, cleared its affairs

of all embarrassments, and literally brought
order out of chaos.

In the contest for the Presidency, in
which Mr. Adams, General Jackson, Mr.
Crawford, and Mr. Clay were the rival
candidates, Mr. Calhoun, with rare self-
denial having withdrawn from the field, had
the justice awarded him of being placed on
nearly all the tickets for the Vice -Presi-
dency. Having been elected to this office,
he took his seat as President of the Senate
in 1825, and, by the exercise of much dig-
nity and firmness, brought the position into
very great distinction. It was characteris-
tic of Mr. Calhoun, that in all his public
acts, he leaned against power. This was
never more prominently displayed than in
his decision of an important point arising
in the debate on the celebrated Panama mis-
sion. Mr. Randolph had made on this ques-
tion a most scathing attack on the admin-
istration. In reference to it, Mr. Calhoun,
as presiding officer of the Senate, decided
that he had no power to restrain a Senator
in respect to words spoken in debate. Out
of that decision arose a controversy engag-
ing all the powers and prejudices of friends
and opponents of the administration No
one ever doubted Mr. Calhoun's honesty of
purpose in this decision, or the superiority
of his defence, under the signature of
"Onslow."

Mingling in the conflicts arising on the
Tariff of 1828, and in connection with the
efforts to defeat Mr. Adams on a second
election, Mr. Calhoun was placed in a posi-
tion to display, in strong light, his extra-
ordinary resistance to party ties in the per-
formance of duty. The contest in respect
to the Tariff had nearly equally divided
the Senate. To avoid the consequences of
a tie vote, Mr. Calhoun, who was on the
ticket with General Jackson for the Vice-
Presidency, was advised to withdraw from
his seat. He indignantly refused — deter-
mined, as he declared, to risk all hope of
advancement for himself, rather than shrink
from his duty. In order to avoid, however,
the possibility of injuring the prospects of
General Jackson, he declared his willing-
ness to take his name from the ticket.

We pass over various particulars in the
history of Mr. Calhoun's distinguished ser-
vices in the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe, in the
Vice-Presidency and in the Senate, all ex-

170

Memoir of Mr, Calhoun,

August,

Mbiting tlie superiorityof Ms judgment and
the sincerity of his attachment to the Con-
stitution and the Union. We will pause to
consider that period, when, having done so
much to elevate General Jackson, he was
treacherously superseded in his confidence.
We will not examine into the causes of that
event — we will not gather up the nearly
extinguished sparks from the ashes of that
disgraceful and scandalous quarrel, in which
the only decency and moderation were dis-
played by its victim.

Two acts of Mr. Calhoun in the sessions
of 1814, 1815, and 1816, have been the
subject of frequent animadversion and de-
fence. It will be understood we refer to
the bill reported by him to set apart and
pledge the bonus of the United States
Bank, as a fund for Internal Improvement,
and his assent to the policy of the Bank,
recommended by Mr. Madison. It is
enough to say here, in regard to these
measures, that, with respect to the first,
Mr. Calhoun, as we understand, has never
denied that it was his early impression that
the constitutional power of Congress over
Internal Improvement was comprehended
under the money power. The error, as he
believed, of this view, was soon developed,
and the promptest confession of it made.
In reference to the Bank, Mr. Calhoun has
ever insisted that he yielded to the necessi-
ty for its establishment, in view of the
peculiar position of the country and its
finances at the time, and not of its general
policy or constitutionality.

We come to the exciting topic of State
Interposition. Out of the opposition of the
South to the Tariif of 1828, this doctrine
began to be developed. From the long
fallow ground of the Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions the seeds of this principle were
gathered, and scattered in a new soil.
They grew and flourished luxuriantly in
the South, and received the early and warm
encouragement of Mr. Calhoun. The
" South Carolina Exposition and Protest
on the Tariff," adopted by the Legislature
of that State, was understood to have been
proposed by Mr. Calhoun. The following
extract from a document by Mr. Calhoun,
embraces the leading features of this doc-
trine : —

*• The great and leading principle is, that
the General Government emanated from the
several states, forming distinct political com-

munities, and acting in their'separate and sove-
reign capacity, and not from all of the people
forming one aggregate political community )
that the Constitution of the United States is,
in fact, a compact, to which each state is a
party, in the character already described ] and
that the several states or parties have a right
to judge of its infractions, and, in case of a
deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of
power not delegated, they have the right, in
the last resort, to use the language of the Vir-
ginia resolutions, ^ to interpose for arresting
the progress of the evil, and for maintaining^
within their respective limits, the authorities,
rights, and liberties, appertaining to them?
This right of interposition, thus solemnly as-
serted by the State of Virginia, be it called
what it may, state-right, veto, nullification, or
by any other name, I conceive to be the fun-
damental principle of our system, resting on
facts historically as certain as our Revolution
itself, and deductions as simple and demon-
strative as that of any political or moral truth
whatever ; and I firmly believe, that on its
recognition depends the stability and safety of
our political institutions.

" I am not ignorant that those opposed to
the doctrine have always, now and formerly,
regarded it in a very different light, as anar-
chical and revolutionary. Could I believe
such, in fact, to be its tendency, to me it would
be no recommendation. I yield to none, I
trust, in a deep and sincere attachment to our
political institutions, and the union of these
states. I never breathed an opposite senti-
ment ; but, on the contrary, I have ever con-
sidered them the great instrument of preserv-
ing our liberty, and promoting the happiness
of ourselves and our posterity ; and, next to
these, I have ever held them most dear.
Nearly half my life has passed in the service
of the Union, and whatever public reputation
I have acquired is indissolubly identified with
it. To be too national, has, indeed, been con-
sidered by many, even of my friends, to be my
greatest political fault. With these strong
feelings of attachment. I have examined, with
the utmost care, the bearing of the doctrine in
question ; and so far from anarchical or revo-
lutionary, I solemnly believe it to be the only
solid foundation of our system, and of the
Union itself, and that the opposite doctrine,
which denies to the states the right of protect-
ing their several powers, and which would
vest in the General Government (it matters not
through what department) the right of deter-
mining, exclusively and finally, the powers
delegated to it, is incompatible with the sove-
reignty of the states and of the Constitution
itself, considered as the basis of a Federal
Union, As strong as this language is, it is
not stronger than that used by the illustrious
Jefferson, who said, to give the General Gov-
ernment the final and exclusive right to judge

1850.

Memoir of Mr. Calhoun.

171

of its powers, is to make ' its discretion, and
not the Constitution^ the measure of its powers ;^
and that ' in all cases of compact between par-
tics having no common judge for itself as well
of the infraction as of the mode and measure of
redress.'' Language cannot be more explicit,
nor can higher authority be adduced."

But how shall we treat this important
period in Mr. Calhoun's life ? How speak
of his views, without giving offence ? How
shall we mention the arguments, and re-
late the incidents of Nullification, without
awakening the prejudices and heart-burn-
ings of the times ? How shall we do jus-
tice to Mr. Calhoun's sentiments, without
wronging the sentiments of others ? The
cause that produced this fearful controver-
sy was removed. The quarrel which shook
the faith of men in the stability of our
government, was adjusted. Great God !
bless the noble spirits who substituted
peace for war ! Immortal be the mem-
ory of the statesmen who looked beyond
the animosities of a moment — who, in
the midst of the excesses of the times,
animated by holy emotions of patriotism,
resolved, by honorable concession and com-
promise, to preserve and perpetuate the
union of these States !

During the pendency of this question,
the most momentous that ever agitated the
country, Mr. Calhoun engaged into an in-
tellectual conflict with Daniel Webster.
Never had the world listened to finer ex-
hibitions of mind. The'' rolling words of
the great New Englander came like the
swelling bosom of the great father of waters,
exciting terrible apprehensions of danger
to the Union. The keen logic, the clear
conceptions of his opponent^ filled the
whole horizon with effulgence.

While the giants were contesting the
field, victory now inclining to the one, now
to the other, the issue uncertain — dreaded
by all men, the great chief tian of compro-
mises stepped into the arena, and threw up
the weapons of the combatants. He, whose
life was ever superior to the advantage of
the moment. He, who revives, in our
time, the most glorious conceptions of
Cicero. He, who, when others strove for
the triumphs of party, snatched from des-
tiny the victories of conciliation ; introdu-
ced his celebrated bill of Compromise, and
dispelled the storm. Mr. Calhoun was not
behind Henry Clay in magnanimity and

love of country. If not the first to pro-
pose the compromise, he was the first to
accept it. If, as most falsely charged, he
was ambitious of a Southern Presidency,
he would never have gone forth so readily
to accept, on the part of the South, the
proffered olive branch. He stood first in
the Northern States. Never had the
people of these States been so united in
opposition, never so warm in their confi-
dence in Mr. Calhoun Had their Union
been dissolved, he would have been the first
spirit in the South ; and this he knew.
But no one rejoiced more than he did, that
the day of tranquility had returned. That
the conflict was at an end, and the Union
saved. In the most inclement season, he
hurried to South Carolina, where resistance
had assumed a most decided aspect, and,
by his influence, induced the State to yield
to peaceful interference. No man in the
United States could have produced the
result but Mr. Calhoun : and the anxiety
with which he pressed this Compromise,
attests, beyond question, his love for the
Union. Dissimulation has never found a
place in Mr. Calhoun's heart. Had he
desired a dissolution of the confederacy, he
would have avowed the wish fearlessly, and
without equivocation. But he believed
that the dangers of a consolidation were
upon us ; and if, out of bis intense study
of a means to avert them, he came to con-
clusions, and pressed abstractions, the truth
of which did not strike other men, it does
not follow that he was not entirely honest
in his belief of their efficacy and veracity.

Shall we probe further the wounds of
this controversy ? Shall we draw aside the
pall covering the relics of a strife, at rest,
we trust, for all future time ? Shall we,
like opposing fanatics, as was done in the
case of William, the Norman, engage in
repeated exhumations, in order to indulge
in the ostentation of repeated funeral ser-
vices ? Who would be benefitted, who
convinced ? Let the storm rest ! The
winds are still ! The surface of the sea
is calm and undisturbed. The clouds
are receding from the overhanging canopy,
and men breathe freely. Out of the east,
a new sun, the successor of that which yes-
terday declined in clouds, is beginning to
rise, and pour its healthful rays over the
land. Brethren of the same household are
rejoicing in its splendor. May it warm and

172

Me?noir of Mr. Calhoun.

August,

light them forever ! INIay no dismal shad-
ows intervene, and obscure its beams — but,
full of luxuriance, may the land teem
with life, all busy in the ark of peace, all
faithful in devotion to the Union !

On the adjustment of the Tariff question,
Mr. Calhoun gave himself, with great en-
ergy, to his labors as a Senator, in the more
general measures in which the country was
interested. Attached as he had been from
principle to the party of General Jackson ;
desirable as it evidently was on the part of
his friends to brino; about a reconciliation,
and to aid the administration with his tal-
ents and influence, he did no act, he said
no word, indicating a desire to reconcile
past differences, or to avail himself of sup-
port. He felt he had nothing to atone for,
and, therefore, had none of the successes of
compliance.

He displayed his independence of party
ties prominently in the memorable debate
on the Removal of the Deposites ; — he
condemned the dismissal of Mr. Duane, as
an abuse of power ; and, though he ex-
posed such defects of a national banking
system, he did not hesitate to deny the right
of the Secretary to withhold the deposits,
while the Bank performed its obligations
faithfully. He predicted in a speech of
extraordinary ability, various errors in the
management of the currency. He de-
nounced, with temperate but decided ex-
pression, the reception of the celebrated
Protest of the President ; and placed the
powers of the several departments of the
Government under the Constitution in a
novel and satisfactory light. He raised by
motion a Committee of Inquiry into the
abuses of Executive patronage — the able
report of which committee, prepared and
submitted by himself, astounded the coun-
try as to the extent of that corrupt system ;
and produced a more powerful and just re-
action against the administration than any
effort of its avowed opponents. With a
mind settled in its convictions as to
the powers of a National Bank, and of
State Banking institutions, as vehicles for
the dispensing of the money patronage of
<he Government, he conceived and advo-
cated the adopting the principle of that
scheme, since carried into effect under the
name of the Sub-Treasury. The Specie
Circular next occupied his attention. He
denied the authority of the President to

issue the order on which it was based ; but
regarding the mischiefs of the step as be-
yond remedy, declined voting on^the ques-
tion of its revision.

It was at this juncture that the political
sky began to overcast with the approaching
Abolition storm. The immediate fears on
this subject was removed by the firmness of
Mr. Calhoun, who, forseeing the danger of
receiving petitions on this topic, which be-
gan to overload the tables of Congress, by
his arguments and influence, procured the
settlement of a precedent against their re-
ception. On the question of the admission
of Michigan, the danger spread again.
Mr. Calhoun, was opposed to admitting a
State on the authority of a mere informal
meeting of the people inhabiting a terri-
tory. His views are presented in the folio w-
ino* brief extract : —

" My opinion was, and still is, that the
movement of the people of Michigan, in form-
ing for themselves a State constitution, with-
out waiting for the assent of Congress, was
revolutionary, as it threw off the authority of
the United States over the territory ; and that
we were left at liberty to treat the proceedings
as revolutionary, and to remand her to her ter-
ritorial condition, or to waive the irregularity,
and to recognize what was done as rightfully
done, as our authority was alone concerned.

" A territory cannot be admitted till she be-
comes a State ; and in this I stand on the au-
thority of the Constitution itself, which ex-
pressly limits the power of Congress to ad-
mit new states into the Union. But, if the
Constitution had been silent, he would indeed
be ignorant of the character of our political
system, who did not see that states, sovereign
and independent communities, and not territo-
ries, can only be admitted. Ours is a union
of states^ a Federal Republic. Slates, and not
territories, form its component parts, bound to-
gether by a solemn league, in the form of a
constitutional compact. In coming into the
Union, the state pledges its faith to this sacred
compact : an act which none but a sovereign
and independent community is competent to
perform ; and, of course, a territory must first
be raised to that condition before she can take
her stand among the confederated states of
our Union. How can a territory pledge its
faith to the Constitution '? It has no will of
its own. You give it all its powers, and you
can at pleasure overrule all her actions. If
she enters as a territory, the act is yours^ not
hers. Her consent is nothing without your
authority and sanction. Can you, can Con-
gress become a party to the constitutional
compact % How absurd."

1850.

Memoii' of Mr. Calhoun.

173

This view of the subject was novel then
— it is novel now. The question has been
since raised on the admission of California,
but the grounds on which Mr. Calhoun
placed it, have been entirely overruled.

Our limits will not permit us to follow
Mr. Calhoun's brilliant career through the
minor phases of his public life. We pass
to two great and wonderful exhibitions of
his mind and integrity. We leave out of
view his able speeches on the McLoud
matter ; Mr. Crittenden's resolutions to
permit the interference of executive officers
in elections ; the Veto power ; the Bank-
rupt bill ; and look to his services on the
Oregon question. In this controversy Mr.
Calhoun saw but the great interests of the
nation, and the justice of her position. He
became the great, the leading advocate of
peace. He threw his influence into the
scale at the very moment when that influ-
ence was most needed, and could be most
powerfully felt. He performed an act
which both God and man approved. He
rose superior to the excitements of the oc-
casion. He repelled from his breast the
national feelings, which so frequently rule
the judgment. He rejected the prejudices
which grow up in the American heart
against English power ; and, in the act,
anticipated the happiness of millions. Few
can estimate the value of Mr. Calhoun's
services in the adjustment of this interna-
tional difficulty. Had Mr. Calhoun no
other claim to the favor of his countrymen,
that were enough to secure for his name
immortality. We are disgusted with the
idea of the crime and guilt which would
have followed a war with Great Britain on
the Oregon question ; and in proportion to
our detestation of an unjust war rises our
respect for Mr. Calhoun's noble effort to
avert it. We almost tremble when we sur-
vey the consequences which would have
ensued. We blush to view the pretexts
set up for a resort to arms. Is our nation
— one boasting its foundation on principles
of pacification and good order, to go to
war, only for success ^ Are human beings,
proud of their residence in a land of liberty
and laws, to contest as wild beasts, vaunt-
ing of their strength and struggling only
for spoils } Is the commerce of all civilized
countries to be wrecked, the peaceful fields
of agriculture to be rendered desolate; are
men to be butchered, and widows and or-

phans to be left mourning, merely to gratify
the ambition of party leaders, and to min-
ister to the vain externals of politics }
Who — what advocate of that war ever
promised himself, or his country, or the
cause of humanity, a single advantage
which it were not a crime to boast } Who,
in seeing that chivalrous spirit who inter-
posed his magnanimous efforts to remove
all cause of difficulty, did not feel honor,
truth, justice, were all vindicated in their
own temple, and the cause of universal
peace among men subserved }

It is scarcely necessary for us to say that
there are many things in the course of Great
Britain we do not approve. But, we also
declare, there are some things we venerate
and respect. Our memory dwells with
pleasure on the fact, that we have sprung
from her ; that we have been taught the
purity of our language, amidst the glorious
remains of her literature, and to appreciate
the beauties of art and philosophy in her
splendid monuments of genius. We take
delight in the recollection that we were in-
structed by her in our Religion and Laws,
and in our first rudiments of civil freedom.
That her Magna Charta extends its rays to
our institutions, and that the blood of Rus-
sell and Sydney sprinkled the door-posts of
our dwellings, and exempted us from poli-
tical death. To us, with these emotions,
the settlement of the cause of this last dis-
pute brought the noblest reflections. And
to the memory of him, who, more than any
patriot and statesman, was the instrument,
nay, the conqueror, of peace, we would
give the best and highest rewards which a
grateful country can bestow.

Scarcely had this affair been settled,
before another cloud rose on the horizon.
The long agitated question of interference
with slavery in the District of Columbia,
and the new territories, was opened to wide
and intemperate debate. Ever jealous of
the sliochtest invasion of the constitution —
ever believing the South, in respect to this
institution, in peril, Mr, Calhoun, in feeble
health, hurried to his post.

It were fruitless to open the book of this
controversy over Mr. Calhoun's bier. The
South knows the wrong done her in regard
to this topic ; she knows the moral and
political influences that crowd around the
question ; but the whole world knows her
arguments of right, and her means of re-

174

Memoir of Mr. Calhoun.

August,

peiling attack. She will make no boast of
her chivalry, and hesitate long to anticipate
the judgment of posterity as to her patriot-
ism. If these have not been attested in
many well fought fields in the Revolutionary
and late wars, she claims no privilege of
being further heard. On the facts of her
slave institutions she makes no explanation,
and requires no apology. She will arbitrate
mere differences of opinion with any power,
but will yield no right in which the integ-
rity of the Constitution and the principles
of political liberty are at issue. For the
protection of those, she places herself on the
moral force of natural laws, and will never
resort to physical means of defence, till all
peaceful agencies are exhausted.

•Will it be said — " This is Disunion ? "
Not so. Much as we revere the institutions
of our State — far as we would commit our-
selves for their preservation — we cannot
doubt, we never have doubted, we never
will doubt the virtue of loving the Union,
and guarding its inviolability. It is true,
as was said by Mr. Calhoun, declarations
will not preserve it. But it is equally true
that sentiments give direction to actions.
Though the greatest security of it will be
found in the most faithful observance of the
obligations of the Constitution ; this fact
does not forbid our contemplating with
alarm the consequences of a dissolution.
This great confederacy of States, consi-
dered irrespective of a centralizing power,
which might be used as a means of destruc-
tion to the authority of the States several-
ly, viewed in connection with the history of
its origin, with the characters of the im-
mortal men who originated and have sus-
tained the Union, — certainly is beyond all
value. No speculation can be indulged as
to its worth to posterity and to us, in these
respects ; no standard of appreciation can
be formed to designate its relative price. It
is a sacred heir-loom of a family, having
higher claims to respect than its age or its
parents ; its value consists in the memory
of the ancestry which first achieved it ; in
the honorable recollections of the triumphs
amidst which it was won and worn. Its
worth is at once moral and traditionary.
It is full of past glory, of present respect,
of future hope. It is the title, the dignity,
the birth-record of freedom ; the evidence
of all that is noble in the history of her
noblest contests. Adornino- and enriching

the story of our country, it comes to us
fragrant with proofs of struggles and suc-
cesses which were national at first, are na-
tional now, and should be national to the
last. How can this relic be divided } Who
shall take Bunkerhill, Eutaw, Saratoga, or
the Palmetto Fort in the partition of these
glories .'* How, when we come to make up
the list of the sacrifices and the victims of
the Revolution, shall we divide them.'*
Long be the period removed, when pos-
terity shall throng about the resting
places of the illustrious dead, and prepare
to divide the sacred inheritance !

We approach the close of Mr. Calhoun's
life. The human mind must necessarily
pass through a trial, when in great calam-
ity it is called to recognise the superior
wisdom of God's judgment, and to practice
resignation amidst its griefs. The vivid
intellect was declining at a time of great
danger to the principles he had so long de-
fended, and which had so long filled his
thoughts. On one occasion he said, he
desired to be heard as one asking noth-
ing for himself, but whose only wish
was to see his country free, prosperous and
happy. The same sentiment was on his
lips when he died. The man who conquers
the cruel terrors of death — who looks in
the trying moment of dissolution, not on his
own immortality on earth, but to the im-
mortality of his country — who, anxious for
her liberty, overcomes the shock of disease,
the spectacle of a mourning wife and chil-
dren— whose last words attest his devotion
to the perpetuity of the Constitution, — is
surely a Patriot. The confessions of one
whose whole life we have distrusted, force
themselves on the belief, when they come
forth in the instant of dissolution. How
much more solemn and impressive the ad-
monitions of one whose long life, exhibiting
the utmost purity of private eharacter, and
the firmest displays of patriotic self-denial,
dying with a prayer for his country on his
lips ! Such was the life, such the death of
Mr. Calhoun. On his cenotaph let that
be written, to which his life was a martyr —
Sincerity. Long in his native State — long
in the history of his nation — will his mem-
ory illustrate the character of the true
statesman, and furnish uncommon induce-
ments to a life of virtue. The implacable
hatred which pursued him — the secret envy
that misrepresented him — are dead ! A

1850.

Memoir of Mr. CalJioun.

lib

State, ever the rewarder of faithful servi-
ces in the cause of public virtue, mourning
her eldest son ; a nation, lamenting the ex-
tino-uishment of an intellect lono; enlicrht-
ening her progress, stand about his grave,
and record the uncontestable triumph of
The Honest Man.

Few men can withstand the influence of
that love of public approbation, which, for
wise purposes, is planted in the human
breast, Few have the firmness to reject
honors for the sake of virtue ; — few, in the
moment of popular y<z?;or, can put back the
rewards offered ; — few can display, amidst

^ temptation, the immutability of conscience.
Lord Camden, in English history ; Mr.
Calhoun in American, are conspicuous in
examples of these unusual gifts. Alike
they were intellectual, alike unchangeably
incorruptible. Always important to parties,
always unaffected by their corruptions, they
were alike victims to whatever was just.
For them office had no allurement, and
political power no terror. They declared
belief of right as frankly as they denounced
wrong ; and, as was said by St. Jerome of
religion, if in error, it was a glorious pri-
vilege to be deceived with such guides.

176

A Few Words about Tennyson.

August,

A FEW WORDS ABOUT TENNYSON.

The hiojliest and most noble of tlie
'' Senses," is the perception of the Beau-
tiful ; the highest mental enjoyment of
which we are capable, is, doubtless, in
the contemplation of the Beautiful. We
become less human, and approach nearer
to Divinity, when we abandon the pursuit
of that which is merely earthly and sensu-
ous, and give ourselves up to the influence
of Beauty, either of Nature or of Art.

It is, at least, one of the objects of poesy
to beget this sense where it does not exist,
and to refine and idealize it where it has
once found an abiding place ; and as there
are numerous objects both in nature and
art which have power to excite it. Poetry
must, therefore, reflect them in its verse,
and present them glowing in a more spirit-
ual loveliness. But this mere imitative
perception would not, by itself, constitute
Poetry. To be a Poet, requires a higher
qualification than the appreciation of mere
earthly beauty, or the ability to present it,
spiritualized in verse ; there must be a cer-
tain discontent with things below, — an ear-
nest efibrt to reach the unattained, the un-
attainable,— efforts which almost penetrate
the hidden sources, the ever-dropping
springs of Poesy. Whoever is possessed
with these desires and emotions has true
poetic fire, even though he or she may not
be, what the world calls, a poet, — yet, be-
cause we can but stammer, as it were, in
the glorious language of that beauty -world
in which we have been uncertain dwellers,
we must picture our divine ideals with the
gross colors of the Actual, — we must em-
body the spiritual in the material. And he
who best succeeds in this ; he who best
renders an idea of his profound commu-
nings with the spirit of Beauty, his own
Egeria of the woods and fields, — he who
can lift us —

" Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
Which men call earth — "

to a brighter world of loveliness and beau-
ty,— he has the best claim to be considered
a true poet.

From the time of Dryden, till Cowper
appeared upon the stage of Poesy, the Eng-
lish language could boast of but few true
poets ; it was a long and dreary age of
poetical dulness. Writers seemed to have
entirely neglected the noble well of pure
English undefiled, and to have been con-
tent with dipping up a few dull flippancies
and far-fetched conceits, from the shallow
pool of French literature. Poetry was then
judged, not by its essence, but by its exter-
nals ; it was measured by conventionalities,
instead of reasonable rules, and he was
more esteemed who manifested a mechani-
cal fidelity to the artificial, than he who,
although more pleasing, was less correct^ in
his devotion to the true and the natural.

If we assume as a verity, the old French
maxim, " Rien de beau, que de vrai,"
there was hardly a poet, from the time of
Dryden to Cowper's day. For, as we have
admitted that beauty is the real poetical
thesis J it is certain that the theme of any
poem, in order to be true must possess the
elements of beauty ; but no didactic essays
like Pope's ' Essay on Man,' no humorous
versifications like ' Hudibras' constitute
Poetry. They are not true to our Ideal
of the poetical, they have no sympathy with
our higher aspirations, — they do not satisfy
those undefined longings, those searchings
after " high Beauty," which it is the object
of Poetry to realize. Even those poems
which pictured mere sensuous Beauty and
mere sensual Love were not true. All
their nonsense about ' sparkling eyes,' and
' cherry lips' and ' luscious kisses,' and so
forth, — is no more the utterance of Love,
than is the froth which sparkles on the
edge of the glass, the powerful wine itself.
It is the mere external. To express the
soul, — one must go farther, and pierce deep-

1850.

A Few Words about Tennyson,

Yil

er. Compare sucli pretty stuff, (and no-
thin o* is more common among the writers
of that age) with these lines of Keats.'

My Madeline, sweet dreamer, lovely bride,
Say, may I be tor aye thy vassal blest ?
Thy beauty's shield, heart-shaped, and vermeil-
dyed. [St. Agnes' Eve.

Such imagery as that was not coined
from the brain, it gushed forth impromptu
from the fall soul. The boy-enthusiast,
wasting away even as he wrote, with a hope-
less and unrequited passion, sang, as only
those who have loved, and deeply loved,
can sing.

" Who can paint anothei-'s passion,
Shall himself be loved, for aye."

" Puisquil a peint Didon
Virgile avait aime."

But the poets of this era if they possess-
ed the passion did not write from it. Their
poetry moved from their finger-tips and
not from their souls, and instead of full
gushing streams of Love and Beauty, the
thirstino; soul finds nothino-' but a stale
Euphuism, dull, wearisome, antitheses and
heavy metaphors. We can most truly
say of them in the words of the French
satirist ;

** Leurs transports les plus doux ne sout que phra-
ses vaines,
lis ne savent jamais que se charger de chaines
Que venir luir martyre, adorer leur prison,
Et faire quereller fes sens, et la raison."

[Boiliau L' Art Poetique.

They thought more of turning and per-
fecting the filigree work of an epigram, or
of pointing a couplet, than of hewing out a
glorious image from the golden mine of
thought. They did not go out into the
woods, the fields, and the streets, and select
there the highest beauty of nature, art, and
man, as the themes for their poetical efforts
— they drew their ideals from the contem-
plation of those who had immediately pre-
ceded them, and aspired not beyond the
monotonous affectations of Pope, and the
quaint didacticisms of Couley. The poets
of the glorious Elizabethan age were almost
forgotten. It is true they still saw dimly
the noble edifice of Shakspeare's muse, and
the sublime structure of Milton's verse, far
away on the topmost heights of song ; but
there flowed a broad gulf between them,
and the music which floated sweetly from
the distance, seemed to them not of their

VOL. VI. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

world. Affection and monotony reached
their climax. Men began to tire of them,
and to sigh for nature, and strength, and
truth. They began to cast aside the fetters
and trammels of rhyme and measure, that
so long had bound them, and to recognize
the truth that poetry, or rather that which
is the audible, visible, expression of poetry,
was to be measured by the ear, and not by
the fingers. But they were but gropers in
the darkness, and they longed for light.
They were not fated to wait long. The
Persian proverb says, " The darkest hour in
the twenty-four is that just before day" —
that hour had past in the night of modern
literature, and the indications of a coming
dawn, were faintly seen in the east.

Cowper was the sweet morning-star of
the coming dawn ; and steadily advancing
up the broad horizon of literature, one by
one came the brilliant names of Coleridge
and Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, to
light up the full day. These were the ori-
ginators of a new school of poetry, a school
which immediately promulgated its novel
ideas, and declared itself directly opposed
to that which had preceded it. They de-
spised conventionalities of expression, the
formal monotony of rhyme and measure, the
tiresome inversions and ridiculous figures
of speech which had characterized the age
that had preceded them. They spoke out
according to the instinct of their nature,
and the promptings of the passionate affla-
tus. They must not however be supposed
to have wished to exclude from poetry one
of its most essential qualities — Melody ;
on the contrary they were eager to intro-
duce true melody into verse, in place of that
monotonous jingle which had usurped its
name. They also refused to be satisfied
with any realization of beauty, for they
could not endure that their ideals should
be restrained by any lim.it. They would not
admit that the Venus de Medici was the
perfection of feminine grace, or that the
Apollo Belvidere was the type of manly
beauty ; neither would they allow Pope's
flowing numbers to be the model of verse,
nor Johnson's criticisms the hand-book of
poetical composition. They preferred to
have an ideal of grace and beauty in their
own souls, and to write only according to
the dictates of Nature and of Truth. The
rugged mountain was an infinitely more po-
etical object to them than the well-ordertd
12

178

A Few JVo?-ds ahout Tennyson,

August,

garden, and they wished to study nature in
the woods and in the fields, and man in the
streets, rather than to examine the one from
a drawing-room window, and the other from
a box at the theatre.

Of this school of poetry, Alfi'ed Tenny-
son is the greatest living instance, if not
indeed the greatest that has lived. As a
late critic says of him, that while other
poets produce effects which are sometimes
produced otherwise than by what we call
poems, — Tennyson gives that which a poem
only can give. Even Wordsworth is often
tedious, and feeble, and Coleridge dull and
artificial — but we cannot take up a poem
of Tennyson^s without finding ourselves
interested ; and more than this — our sense
and knowledge of the beautiful, increased
and perfected. And it is not such rank
heresy and lize majeste^ as some would
have us believe, to compare him with Words-
worth ; for if he has not such a philosophi-
cal depth as that poet, he certainly sur-
passes him in choice of themes, in the
ideality of his conceptions, and in the re-
fined and rare melody of his versifications.

Tennyson has been compared both to
Shelley and Keats, although he cannot
be said to imitate either ; he seems, in-
stead of resembling either one of them, to
possess a certain combination of the quali-
ties of both. He has not the intense
idealism of Shelley, nor the "exquisite
sweet" sensuousness, the delicious intoxi-
cating fancy of Keats. He does not,
like Shelley, soar on too high a pinion al-
ways in the " pure empyrean," ''still qui-
ring to the young-eyed cherubim;" nor
does he, as Keats sometimes does, bend his
wing too near the earth, plucking, it is true,
the fairest and the sweetest flowers, but
singing his song " most musical, and me-
lancholy" without the inspiration of the
upper air.

The most prominent quality, we might
almost call it a characteristic, an idiosyn-
crasy, of Tennyson, is his melody. Music
hides itself in his thoughts, like a " night-
ingale in roses." He is master of all the
^'witcheries" of verse, that do

" in pleasing slumber lull the sen?e,
And in sweet madness rob it of itself."

With delicate skill he throws a veil of in-
definiteness, a dreamy indistinctness, around
his verse, which adds to its poetical efiect.

Indeed, it is well known to musical dilet-
tanti^ that music is most pleasing, when,
instead of giving distinct ideas, it breaks
gently upon the ear in liquid waves of
sound, floating the mind softly away into a
very heaven of delight, and dying insen-
sibly into silence.

When I read, " Where Claribel low
lieth," — a piece which surpasses in pure,
liquid, melody, every thing of the kind
which has been written since Shakspeare
and Milton — I experience precisely the
same sensations as if I were hearing a con-
certo of flutes ; the " Lady of Shalott" re-
minds me of all manner of beautiful sounds
in nature — the wind sighing softly in the
forest ; the distant rush of water- falls, and
the regular and sleepy plashings of a foun-
tain ; and when reading Aenone, I seem
to hear a solitary bugle-horn resounding,
mellow and soft, over the unruffled bosom
of a mountain lake, waking the plaintive
echoes from the cliffs, in strains " most
soveraine and daintie deare."

But, although Tennyson has at his com-
mand all the secret powers of music, and
can entice them from their fairy cells, he
is not ignorant of that deeper art, that
more lofty knowledge, which the true poet
must be familiar with. He has a broad
eye. He does not copy the tree, the brook,
the objects which compose a landscape,
coarsely into his book ; but looks farther,
and endeavors to gather from the scene new
secrets of that subtil propriety of combi-
nation, which awakens the sense of beauty.
He looks upon the world with a poet's
eye ; he idealizes with a poetic soul the
impressions he has received, and as a na-
tural consequence his pictures are deeply
toned. To read some of his descriptive
pieces, is like wandering through a sort of
fairy land of enchantment and mystery ;
we are now in the fair Orient, amono-.

" Embowered vaults of pillared palm,
Imprisoning sweets, which as they climb
Heavenward, are stayed within the dome
Of hollow boughs."

Far away, through the fragrant vista,
towers the great pavilion of the Caliphat,
with its graceful minarets and pinnacles,
imaged indistinctly against the faint blue.
Flower-vases, and urns filled with
" — eastern flowejs large.
Some dropping low their crimson bells
Half-closed, and others studded wide
With disks and tiaras/'

1850.

A Few Words about Tennyson.

179

are crowded around in all the profusion of
oriental magnificence, and load the languid
air, "with manya perfume, rich and rare."
Near us the delicate and sleepy melody of
diamond rillcts, musical, steals on the luxu-
rious silence,

" These little crystal arches low
Down from the central fountain's flow,
Fall'n silver-chiming."

Scarce has this spectacle faded from our
bewildered vision, when by some strange
and wizard glamoury, we are immediately
transported into the very heart of English
pastoral scenery. It is a lovely afternoon
in May,

*' All the land in flowry squares,
Beneath a broad and equal blowing wind,
Smells of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Draws downward, but all else of heaven is pure,
Up to the bun, and May from verge to verge."

We are in a fair cropped meadow, over
which a well-worn path-way entices us,

" To one green wicket in a private hedge ;
This, yielding, gives into a grassy walk.
Thro' crowded lilac-ambush, trimly pruned ;

And one warm gust, full-fed with perfume, blows

Beyond us, as we enter in the cool ;

The garden stretches southward.

*******

News from the humming- city comes to it.
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells ;
And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear.
The windy clanging of the minster clock,
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass, washed by a slow, broad, stream,
That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar,
"Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on.
Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crowned wtth the minster towers."

Tennyson has not succeeded as well in
bis descriptions of men, but he has appre-
ciated the beauty of female character, and
imaged it in verse, better than almost any
poet since Shakspeare. His women are
alike in nothing but tteir essence, and that
is — Beauty. They all possess that just ad-
mixture of spiritual and mateiial loveliness
which is most pleasing, because most femi-
nine. But the Adelines and Madelines,
and Isabels, and Lilians of the poet's early
love are not women ; they possess the spir-
itual, but they lack the material ingredients
of Beauty. They are beautiful phantasms,
lovely spirits ; but our earthly nature longs
for something more substantial, and we are
almost tempted to say with the lady of
Shalott, " We are half sick of shadows."
In the second volume, however, published

after the poet had gone out into the world,
and had had an opportunity of study-
ing woman^s heart more deeply, we find
a great improvement. He had in that
brief interval gained a high step on the
ladder of experience, and thus was able to
take a wider and more penetrating view.
He distinguished between appearance and
reality ; between the bright Dead-Sea-ap-
ples of outward form, and the golden fruit-
age of real beauty. Hence his Acnones
and Gardener's Daughters, partake more
of the true characteristics of Mother Eve ;
possess more genuine beauty, and come
nearer to the Ideal of woman, than the
more spiritual, and therefore less real, char-
acters who were the early offspring of his
imagination. His "airy-fairy" Lilian's
dance before us, and flit round us, in all
the immaterial grace of Puck or Ariel, and
if they speak, their utterance is like the
inarticulate melody of birds, beautiful, but
meaningless ; but as we hear the half-mur-
mured, half sobbed, acknowledgement of
love, which floats so sweetly from the
blushing lips of the Gardiner's daughter,
as we hear these three little words, " I am
thine."

" More musical than ever came in one,
The silver fragments of a broken voice."

We see before us a real woman, with a
true woman's confidence, giving up " that
greatest good," a woman's heart.

Although I have said that Tennyson's
power of melodious expression is the most
prominent characteristic of his poetry, per-
haps his imaginative faculty is his most
rich and precious gift. And by " imagina-
tive faculty" I mean that faculty which
brings us to a nearer communion with na-
ture and art, and enables us to discern and
appreciate their hidden beauties ; the fa-
culty, which, with its subtle teachings,
holds up to us all that is spiritual in hu-
manity for our recognition and imitation ;
which envelops the wilderness of the unat-
tained ideal, with the loveliest and most
brilliant conceptions, casts a halo of ro-
mance around the half-faded remembrances
of the grey old Past, and peoples the un-
seen Future " with the fair effects of future
hopes."

Tennyson beholds in nature — through
the vision of the imagination — something
of the divine. He detects, faintly imaged

180

A Few Words about Tennyson.

August^

there, an inkling of the sublime beauty and
lofty truths he is attempting to realize. To
him the fountain * sings a song of undying
love,' he sees an image of humanity in the
grass that waves odorously at his feet, and
even the giant tree * that lifts itself up, an
embodied praise, to heaven, has plagiarized
a heart and answered with a voice.'

His imagination refuses to dwell upon
the fair and cold proportions of the Gre-
cian Grace, as she appears expressed in
some Hellenic temple amid the woods of
Thessaly. It cares not to linger on the
chaste proportions of architrave or column,
nor does it even picture the quaint loveli-
ness of fantastic fairy palaces, or sing of
Ouphes and Elves dancing amid its gem-
med , recesses and its golden halls ; it
rather dwells with lowly truth, breath-
ing a reverential hymn in the leafy temple
of the forest.

But it is not only with the beauties of
the present world that Tennyson invites
us to commune. He not only gives us in-
sight into the actual existent nature, but
he goes farther, " he pierces through the
cope of the half-attained futurity," and
shadows forth the magic of the new "to-
come." He stands upon the sunlighted
present, with the graves of the past grow-
ino" dim behind him, and gazes lono- and
earnestly into the etherial future. Nor
does he not gaze in vain. Like Banquo,
he sees the coming years move before him
in long shadowy procession, and fired by
the inspiration of the moment, he grasps
his harp and prophetically sings —

" Of what the world will be
When the years have gone away."

But, perhaps, his imagination produces
the most effect when it weaves the past to-
gether with the present in one fair garland,
and by the force of early associations ex-
cites unwonted feelings even in the breast
of the sternest. The morose, and worldly,
and toil-worn man, lets fall the burden of
cares, and sighs when he remem.bers the
days of his youth, thus vividly suggested to
him. He thinks of the old fields and the
wood where ' the solemn oak sigheth,' the
trysting place, where, 'in happier days,' he
met one dearly loved and now long-lost.
He thinks of the little cot ' where once his
sleep was broken by the shepherd's matin

song'. The dear objects of childhood and
youth come thronging upon Kim,

" Pouring back into his empty soul and frame
The times when he remembers to have been
Joyful, and free from blame,"

and the strong man's soul is moved, even
to tears.

We have now considered Tennyson in
these three different aspects: 1. Astohia
power of melodious expression : 2. As to
his descriptive talent, which two are the
externals of his poetry ; and 3. As to im-
agination, the soul and vital cause of all
Poetry. If we add to these, a certain con-
centration and subjection of thought, a
depth of tragic power, and a deep philoso-
phy— which we should imagine to be
foreign to such poetry — we shall have at-
tained a tolerably correct idea of Tenny-
son's power as a poet. A power which
owes its effects to its being fitted for the
mind in its most imaginative state. Other
poets may do for other times. If we long
for the fascinations of sensuous beauty and
voluptuous grace, we shall find satisfaction
in the luxurious verse of Keats. When
our passions are moved, and our whole
frame stirred by strong passions ; when our
souls are quivering and shaking with that
wild turbulence of thought which demands
excitement, and even terror, for its stimu-
lus, we can read Byron, and enjoy him. If
we wish to have our sympathy with human-
ity increased, and those bonds which unite
us with our fellows, strengthened and made
firm, if we wish to look into the secrets of
nature with a holy awe, to find a solemn
beauty in the meanest fiower that grows,
Wordsworth will go with us. Milton ' hath
ever at hand a solemn phrase,' and Shaks-
peare ' an army of good words' to incite us
to high and noble deeds.

But when we are something more ideal,
than human, when we experience those sub-
lime longings which assimilate us to divinity ;
when we are earnestly searching for the
high Ideal we hope to find on earth, and

" That type of perfect in the mind
In nature can we no where find' ;"

When we fancy too, we have heard a
murmur of the exquisite music which floats
eternally around the throne of the Al-
mighty, and have caught a glimpse of the
seraphic beauty which ever turns thither

1850.

A Few Words about Tennyson.

181

ia reverential praise ; and we are panting
for a more complete appreciation of that
unearthly melody, and a more perfect view
of those celestial shapes ; in a word, when
we are satisfied the lovliness of the world is
nought, and long for higher beauty to sa-
tisfy us, then shall we appreciate the poet-
ry of Tennyson. Then will his inspired

songs to appease our longings, and satis-
fy our cravings. For he, better than any
other post, can penetrate the veil which
hides that invisible world of beauty we so
earnestly desire to look into, and disclose
the unutterable loveliness within.

THE NAMELESS.

Eternal Thought, Immortal One,
In Thee great Nature rests, secure ;

Union of Father, Spirit, Son,

Sole Being, thou, sole Essence, pure.

From thee, from thee, informing Source !

Self-moved ! — all creatures rise and flow«
Forth issuing ; — forms, existence, force, —

Out shaping Nature's pictured show.

In thee all live, in thee all die ;

Thou makest each, sustainest all ;
Unfathomed, and unnamed, for aye

Thou dost send forth, thou dost recall.

J. D. W-

182

Thomas Jeff tr son.

August

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

PART II.

Having, in our first number, conducted
the distinguished subject of these memoirs*
to the threshold of his greatest political
elevation, we now proceed to depicture and
carefully analyze so much of the policy of
his administration as may serve to develope
the object of this essay, and to illustrate
the representative features in the public
character of the first Democratic President.
We enter upon this important and delicate
task after a most as^reeable interval of mu-
tual relaxation, and with a greatly enlarg-
ed stock of material. We have long since
done, however, with all that can be justly
called disinterested and admirable in the
life and character of Jefferson. Over a
space of more than twenty years, dating
from 1790, we are forced to contemplate
him in the character of a fierce and impla-
cable partisan chief, whose efforts and in-
fluence were directed solely to the demoli-
tion of a hated sect, and the aggrandize-
ment of one of which he was the idol and
the head.

From the very moment that he detected
the superior and predominating influence
of Alexander Hamilton in the councils and
policy of Washington, his besetting sin of
jealousy prompted in him a spirit of oppo-
sition, whose rancor has been ecpalled only
by the " bitter-endism" of our day. To
the sedulous transmission of this spirit from
the parent fountain, is to be attributed, we
incline to think, that radical ^^xi^ism
which has since disfigured and marred the
administration of government, and entail-
ed upon the country a series of principles
(so called) which, if such be our fate, will
one day result in the disaster of secession
or despotism.

* Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by
Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

Jefferson did not enter the White House
in a way very complimentary to his public
character, or that indicated much personal
popularity. The Electoral Colleges gave
him a meagre majority of eight votes, only,
over his federal competitors ; whilst his re-
publican colleague obtained the same num-
ber with himself. This last was Aaron
Burr, who, at a subsequent period, was
made bitterly to expiate this equalization
with the despotic tempered sage of Monti-
cello, whose pride was sorely touched at
being thus unexpectedly levelled with one
who had hitherto attracted but little notice
beyond the limits of his own state. From
the hour when the vote was announced in
the Senate Chamber, to the gloomy day
when Burr returned from Europe, long
years afterward, friendless, poverty-stric-
ken, and broken-hearted, the envious eye
of Jefferson was fixed upon him, and mis-
fortune and persecution, thus powerfully
directed, hunted him to a premature and
unhonored obscurity. The unrelenting
hatred of Jefferson can be accounted for in
no other way, that history has so far de-
veloped. The good fortune of Burr was
his only offence, in this instance ; though,
as regarded others, he had an awful crime
to answer for. His murderous hand had
laid low the most intimate friend and
counsellor of Washington, the main author
and expounder of the Constitution, whose
profound mind and ready hand had aided
more than any other's to carry into success-
ful practice the project of our government.
Of this, more anon.

Through this equality of votes betwixt
the two democratic candidates the choice
of a President devolved upon the House
of Representatives The balloting began
on the morning of the 17th of February

1850.

TJiomas Jefferson.

183

1801, and continued, with few intervals,
tlirough a period of seven days, without a
clear result. All Washington was in a fer-
ment. The galleries and lobbies of the
House were daily crowded to overflowing
with anxious spectators, and Pennsylvania
avenue was thronged with messengers pass-
ing alternately from the Capitol to the
White House, bearing the news of each
successive ballot to its nervous occupant —
Jefferson was on the ground, presiding
daily in the Senate Chamber, andwatcbed
the progress of the struggle with all the in-
quietude incident to a dubious state of
mind, and with all the eager solicitude of
an aspiring and ambitious spirit. Burr
designedly absented himself, having first
placed his political fortunes in the hands
and at the discretion of a judicious person-
al friend. It had been resolved at the out-
set that the House should discard all other
business during the pendency of the elec-
tion, and that it should not adjourn until
an election was effected. This body was
composed of singular materials, in a politi-
cal sense, for the business which had now
devolved opon it. The vote of the colleges
had shown clearly that there was a demo-
cratic majority of States. But of the one
hundred and four members who then form-
ed the House of Representatives, a majority
were zealous federalists. The position in
which they were thus placed was one of
peculiar and painful delicacy. Both the
candidates for Presidential honors were
democrats, and one of them the founder and
leader of that opposition party which, be-
ginning stealthily during Washington's ad-
ministration, had pursued federal men and
federal principles with a rancor scarcely
paralleled in the history of faction. For
these reasons both were objectionable ; but,
as may be very well imagined, Jefferson
was viewed, particularly, with strong feel-
ings both of personal and political hostility
by the majority in whose hands lay the is-
sue of the election. During two or three
days, therefore. Burr seemed to be deci-
dedly the favorite of the federalists, and his
prospects of success brightened in a man-
ner that cast dismay and gloom over the
ranks of the Jeffersonians. They grew out-
rageous in their course, and uttered threats
wbich plainly indicated the anarchical and
revolutionary tendency of their political
principles. They insisted that the yeople

intended Jefferson should be President,
they even attempted to bully the refracto-
ry members, by declaring that, if the House
did not cbose him, an armed democratic
force from the neig-hborino; states would
march upon the District to compel his elec-
tion, or else, with Cromwellian intolerance,
dissolve and break up the Congress, that
"better men might occupy their places."
The record of this fact is furnished in the
third volume of the work before us, and its
authenticity confirmed by Jefferson himself,
in a letter to James Monroe, dated on the
fifth day of the protracted and exciting
contest. Nor is the annunciation of such
resolves at all irreconcilable with the pre-
vious political manifestos of our distin-
guished subjact, notwithstanding that the
lano;uao;e of the Constitution conferrino; the
power of choice, in such contigency, di-
rectly and solely on the House of Repre-
sentatives, is clear, pointed, and unmista-
kable.

His known sympathy with the Shayites,
the Whiskey Insurrectionists, and the Ja-
cobin clubs of Philadelphia, and his con-
nexion with the Nullification Pronuncia-
mientos of the Virginia Legislature, as well
as this threat of armed resistance, show
clearly enough his contempt for the Con-
stitution, and the disorganizing elements
which lay at the root of his political
opinions.

But this was only one among the exci-
ting rumors which distracted the city of
Washington during that stormy period.
Various stories were afloat of bribes and
accommodating offers, of Burr's open bids,
and of Jefferson's private overtures . Among
the rest it was currently whispered that the
federal majority of the House being unable,
after repeated trials, to make favorable
terms with either of the candidates, and
finding that the whole power was lodged
with them, had resolved to prevent any
choice, by prolonging the contest until after
the fourth of March, or to pass a law vest-
ing the Executive power in some other per-
son. In the same letter referred to above,
Jefferson declares his apprehensions of such
a course, and goes on to deprecate and de-
nounce it. " It is not improbable, says a
distinguished writer, " that, from the ab-
horrence which some members may have
felt at seeing Mr. Jefferson in the office of
President, means were spoken of to pre-

184

Thomas Jefferson.

Angust,

vent sucli a national disaster. Doubtless
the federalists would have done an3^tbing
•wbicli they believed to be constitutional
and dutiful to prevent it ; but no such
propositions are supposed to have been dis-
cussed." And, indeed, hard as the trial
was to political opponents, forced thus to
sign, as it were, the warrant for their own
political annihilation, the records show that
the federalists sought only the most favor-
able terms in their negotiations with the
friends of the two democratic rival candi-
dates. There was no avoiding the issue —
no shrinking from the responsibility, and
it is clear, on a review of the proceedings,
that an election was determined on from
the beginning.

The seventh day dawned on the contest,
and thirty-five ballotings had been taken
without an election. At length the strug-
gle was terminated in a manner the most
singular, and at the instance of a person-
age who might have been supposed to be
the last man in the United States to inter-
fere in a contest betwixt Aaron Burr and
Thomas Jefferson. This was Alexander
Hamilton. Hamilton regarded Burr with
a species of horror that seems to have pro-
ceeded less from malign feeling, than from
an innate consciousness of his utter want of
principle, or the least moral susceptibility.
Jefferson, too, had long been his political
adversary and strong personal enemy, but
when consulted by his friends as to the
choice of evils, we are told that Hamilton
unhesitatingly and most strenuously urged
that the preference should be given to the
latter. This, most probably, may have
been the first link in that fatal chain of
personal animosities which ended with the
tragedy of Hoboken.

It soon transpired that the majority had
been, by some means, sufficiently united to
bring the election to a close, and on the
seventh day, every member was in his seat.
The House presented a remarkable specta-
cle, strongly illustrative of the intense ex-
citement then prevading the whole circles
of Washington society. Many of the
members were aged and infirm, and many
worn down with fatigue, w^ere seriously in-
disposed, as the array of pale faces and
languid eyes plainly showed. Some were
accomodated, from pressing considerations
of prudence, with huge easy chairs. Oth-

ers, agam,

were reclining on beds or

couches, almost in a state of bodily exhaus-
tion, induced by mental anxiety and suffer-
ing. Indeed, we are told by a contempo-
raneous writer, that one member was so
prostrated as to require the attention of his
wife throughout the day's sitting. The
Departments, also, and bureaus, and va-
rious ofiices attached, were deserted, that
their incumbents might be present at the
expected final of the great political drama
which had created, during its enactment of
nigh seven daj's, an interest of unprecedent-
ed intensity. Ts umbers of grave Senators
left their seats in the Chamoer to occupy
the benches of the lobby, or to squeeze
their way among privileged spectators who
filled the body of the House : while the
gallery teemed with countless faces, and
groaned under the weight of a crowd, the
like of which had never before pressed on
the stately pillars that supported it. At
length the tellers took their seats. The
ballots were deposited slowly, one by one,
and then amidst a breathless silence that
seemed ominous in view of the vast num-
bers assembled, the counting began. The
representatives for sixteen states had voted.
The result showed that out of these sixteen
ballots, there were ten for Jefferson, four
for Burr, and two blank. Under these
circumstances, after a struggle of seven
days duration, and after thirty-six trials,
was Thomas Jefferson elected President of
the United States. It is more than pro-
bable that if Burr had exerted himself in
the least, had made the least concession,
or suffered his friends to pledge him to le-
niency as regarded the distribution of offi-
ces, he would have prevailed ; and although
it is unquestionable that Jefferson had been
intended by the people for the first office,
we cannot doubt that the choice of Burr by
the House would have been acquiesced in
and ratified as a strictly legitimate and con-
stitutional proceeding. In long after years
a similar contest occurred in the case of
John Quincy Adams, who having been
thrown before the House of Representa-
tives with a far inferior electoral vote to
Andrew Jackson, was, nevertheless, chosen
President by that body on the first ballot;
and the people unseduced by the danger-
ous theories which Jefferson had inculcated
previously in his own case, did not " march
an armed force from the neighboring states
to compeV a different choice. This quiet

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

185

submission to the constituted authority
would have been the same in 1801 as in
1825, the malevolent efforts of the JefFerso-
nians to the contrary notwithstanding.

The acme of political elevation did not,
in one sense, operate to destroy in Jefferson
that inclination to demajroguism which had
hitherto characterized him. The hard
struggle it had cost his friends to make
him President rather whetted than abated
his ambition, and his ardor for power in-
creased in proportion as it had been dith-
cult to secure it. His first acts after en-
terino; the White House showed that he
was casting his net for easy re-election at
the end of four years. He began by an
emphatic repudiation of all the convention-
al customs and etiquette established by
Washington and followed up by John
Adams. The levees and drawing-rooms
of Washington were given in a manner to
impose the highest notions of official digni-
ty, and were subjected to such rules of eti-
quette as seemed fit to govern receptions
at the mansion of the chief officer of the
government. Mr. Adams did not depart
from these ; but Jefferson, at once abolish-
ed all ceremony, and threw open his doors
to every swaggerer who chose to intrude.
He had no regular or stated hours for vis-
iting. He was accessible at any hour, to
£\,ny person. His personal deportment was
ever cringing, and amounted to an excess
of humility that inspired a feeling of dis-
gust, because, among other things, it was
seen that affectation was at the bottom of
such unseemly deference. He maintained
no equipage. He rode about the avenues
of Washington on an ugly shambling hack
of a horse, which, it is said, was hardly
fitted to drag a tumbril. His whole ad-
dress and manner, indicated this subser-
viency to the same species of affectation
that prompts a backwoods Methodist ex-
horter to elongate his face^ to solemnize
his looks, and to converse and read in a
sepulcoral tone. In fact. Lis receptions
soon became a source of mortification to
our own community, and furnished a
subject of ridicule to European travellers.
No President has copied his example
since ; though it is not hard to perceive
that the levees at the White House smack
yet of the leveling policy introduced by
Jefferson. Nor did he stop here with
what he doubtless deemed a system of

democratic reform. It had been the habit
of Washington and his successor to meet
personally the two houses of Congress on
the day of their assemblage and address
them a speech explanatory of affairs, and
recommending what course of policy
might have suggested itself in the inter-
val of their session. This was the mode
long sanctioned by precedent and by par-
liamentary usage. It is the mode evi-
dently suggested by respect as well as
convenience, and which clothes so august
an occasion with the awe and dignity
suitable to a re-assemblage of the State's
and people's representatives. But Jeffer-
son chose to annul the ancient custom,
and introduced the system of messages^
since practised, and which, of late years,
has been adopted by Presidents as a vehi-
cle to set forth their own policy, to decry
and calumniate their adversaries, and to
bore the Congress with tedious disquisi-
tions, better suited to penny lecturers or
hired journalists than to the Chief Magis-
trate of a powerful nation. We are inclin-
ed to think, therefore, that Jefferson placed
the seal of his displeasure on these customs
more with a view to annihilate all traces of
federalism^ as represented by Washington
and Adams, than from any conscientious
suggestions of reform. The Mazzei letter
had, moreover, fairly committed him to a
sans culotte species of democracy, and, al-
though he had labored to explain and pal-
liate the offensive passages of that extraor-
dinary document, he may yet have thought
that consistency required that he should
renounce those " British forms," which he
had so bitterly condemned in George Wash-
ington's official etiquette.

The Inaugural Address of Jeflfersou
breathed [sentiments of political toler-
ance, and abounded with expressions of
political harmony, totally unexpected, and
which excited high hopes of his adminis-
trative clemency. We cannot find that he
ever falsified these implied promises. The
latter years of Adams's Presidency had
been marked by a ferocious and virulent
proscription of all who differed politically
with the administration, and the last few
months, especially when it was found that
the federal party had been beaten in the
elections, were disgraced by acts of intole-
rance and selfishness that made the man
and his party odious to a majority of the

186

TJiomas Jefferson.

August^

nation. Laws were passed by tte Federal
Congress which had the air of beneficiary
decrees, and new offices created, it would
seem, only that the President might fill
them with his party and personal favorites,
in time to exclude such as might otherwise
be appointed by the incoming administra-
tion.

To have continued or acquiesced in this
course of conduct, would have been the
worst form of proscription. Jefferson,
therefore, very properly began his adminis-
trative career by displacing numbers of
office-holders who had been appointed main-
ly because of their federal principles, and
filled the vacancies created with democrats.
This course was called for by common
fairness ; and, although we must regard
Jefferson as the author of the fierce party
issue that yet darkens our political system,
and has converted our Presidential elections
into campaigns, and made the preparations
for them a deceitful and despicable game,
we cannot judge him hastily for conforming
his conduct to that equality in the distribu-
tion of offices which the justice of the case
required. He did not procrastinate or
trifle in the discharge of this duty, but
went to the work with promptness and de-
termination ; and this promptness shielded
him from the annoyances and the influen-
ces of federal " bitter-endism,'' The wail-
ings of the opposition prints were not over
mere smoke or imaginary cases, as at the
beginning of the present Whig adminis-
tration. The heads of the highest in office
fell first and fastest, and the axe of justice
cut its way from the Executive Depart-
ments and from the diplomatic offices, to
the humblest post-office at a county cross
road, and to the most obscure light-house
that lifted its beacon on our coasts. There
was no soft hesitation, no mistimed caution,
no misjudged forbearance. This is a poli-
cy, imder such circumstances, as weak as
it is ruinous to those who practise it. It
contributes to strengthen and to quicken
oppositioQ, while it discourages friends. So
far from conciliating political opponents, it
is more apt to induce contempt, and serves
eminently to fan the flame of a malignant
" bitter-endism." The bold proceedings of
Jefferson hushed while they defied rabid
partisan clamor, and those who had been
ostracised for opinion's sake were placed
on a footing of full equality with the pam-
pered favoiites of the late administration.

To this conduct may be traced the primary
sources of that wonderful popularity to
which the democratic administration soon
attained, and which it preserved through a
series of eight eventful years, marked by
acts and measures that blighted the pros-
perity of the country, and threw gloom
and distress over almost every household.
Its energy and decision inspired confidence
among friends, and drew the respect of
enemies. Whatever, therefore, may have
been the motive which induced these re-
movals, the act was just, deserved by those
who had indulged party asperities in their
day of power, and strictly due to those
who had labored to overthrow the reign of
political intolerance and prescription.

The war which, on his accession, Jeffer-
son waged against the Judiciary and Judi-
cial authority and dignity, was a step very
full of hazard as to the probable deleterious
effects it may have produced on the pub-
lic mind, and must be heartily condemned
by all unbiased historiographers. It was
a branch of the government which he had,
from the first, unscrupulously denounced
and opposed, and notwithstanding his pro-
fessed horror at the appointment of the
"midnight judges" by Adams' expiring
administration, we are inclined to think
that his hostility against the law establish-
in": federal courts throughout the various
states was superinduced mainly by his an-
cient prejudices and unconquerable jeal-
ousy. He evidently had little or no re-
spect for the proceedings of courts of law,
and never hesitated to oppose the power
of the Executive as of higher moment than
the Judiciary arm of the government. The
best evidence of this is furnished by several
letters contained in the fourth volume of
the work before us, as well as by one
among his first oflScial acts. George
Thompson Callcuder, the Scotch libeller
and defamer of W'ashington, had published
during the administration of John Adams,
a scurrilous book, entitled, " Thefprospect
before us," filled with the most inflamma-
tory appeals, and calculated from its most
atrocious inculcations to produce wide
spread and dangerous discontent among
the lower floating classes of people. He
was arrested under the Sedition act, speedi-
ly brought to trial, convicted, and sentenc-
ed to fine and imprisonment. The tribu-
nal before which he had been brought was
the appointed exponent of the Constitution

1850.

TJiomas Jefferson.

187

and law, and was clotlied witli supreme
jurisdiction in such cases. But Jefferson
paid no regard to the facts, the law or the
Court. He pardoned and released Callen-
der, and ordered the U. S. Marshall for
Virginia, to refund the amount of the fine
to which he had been subjected. A letter
to Mr, George Hay, the government at-
torney, who subsequently prosecuted Burr
with such distinguished ability, unfolds Jef-
ferson's opinion of the dignity of courts of
law, and evinces in the most emphatic
manner, the native despotic tendency of
his temper and disposition. He therein
says, " In the case of Callender, the
judges determined the Sedition Act was
valid, under the Constitution, and exercised
their regular powers of sentencing to fine
and imprisonment. But his Executive
(Thomas Jefferson), determined that the
Sedition Act was a nullity, under the Con-
stitution, and exercised his regular power
of prohibiting the execution of the sentence,
or rather of executing the real law." We
know of nothing in the civil administrations
of Charles the First, of Cromwell, of Na-
poleon, or of Andrew Jackson, the dicta-
tors of modern times, more high-handed,
in tone and sentiment, or more pernicious
in principle, than such declaration and
such conduct from this great model demo-
cratic Presid nt. The act of pardon was
allowable, and belonged to his office. But
a pardon under the circumstances, and
with this declaration, was an insult to the
Court, and an outrage on the supreme law
of the land ; while the order to refund the
amount of fine, was a fragrant usurpation
of undelegated power. By the same rule
of construction he might just as well have
directed that Callender should receive
every dollar in the Treasury. It so hap-
pened, too, that, in the end, Jefferson was
caught in his own trap. This low-minded
Scotchman, like all other minions and para-
sites, had his price, and repaid all this of-
ficial liberality by the basest ingratitude.
He had scarcely been released, or purged
of the dungeon's stench, before he applied
to be made postmaster at Richmond. This
Jefferson flatly refused to do, but, at the
same time, tendered the hardy and beggar-
ly applicant with a loan from his private
purse. Callender accepted the loan, but,
dead to all the decencies of life, and fret-

ting with disappointment, (though compli-
mented by his eminent patron as being " a
man of science,") he no sooner pocketed
the money, than in mean revenge, he pub-
lished to the world, that Jefferson had been
his adviser and patron in all his scurrilous
attacks on the two preceding administra-
tions, had furnished him the means of prin-
ting " The Prospect, "and had encouraged
him to all he had undertaken in his career
of political piracies. This act of treachery,
coming from a genuine nurseling of una-
dulterated democracy, startled even the
" great Apostle" himself, and seemed to
rouse and rufiie his boasted serenity of tem-
per under personal attacks and vitupera-
tion. Jefferson was forced into the defen-
sive, and wrote several letters in explana-
tion of these charges, and in extenuation
of his friendly conduct towards Callender.
" If there be anything," says a distin-
guished writer, " which is capable of sus-
taining popular government, and keeping
their action within legitimate constitutional
boundaries, it is a learned, self-inspecting,
independent judiciary. To make the ad-
ministration of justice, and all questions on
the excess of power dependent on popular
excitement, is to assume that mere human
passion is the best arbiter of right and
wrong." Widely different from this was
the opinion of Thomas Jefferson. His doc-
trines and his example as respects judicial
tribunals, are highly exceptionable, obnox-
ious to good government, and dangerous
in the extreme. We have seen, in the
case of Callender, that he assumed to de-
clare null and void a law constitutionally
enacted and approved, constitutionally ad-
judged, and constitutionally executed.
Other acts strictly in unison with this may
be easily cited. The case of Duane, an-
other democratic libeller, affords an exact
parallel. During the trial of Aaron Burr,
in which lie was the real, though not osten-
sible prosecutor, we find him proposing to
violate personal liberty, by suggesting to
his attorney that Luther Martin, who de-
fended the prisoner with quite too much
ability and boldness to suit the purposes of
Jefferson, should be arrested fis particeps
criminis^ and thus, as he says, ^* put down
this unprincipled and impudent federal
hulldogy No more disorganizing pro-
position than this was ever made. But a

188

Thomas Jefferson.

August,

little subsequently to this, we find that,
impelled by ungovernable vindictiveness in
prosecuting a man who had contested with
him the chair of the Presidency, he asked
a suspension of that great landmark of free-
dom' the actof Habeas Corpus. For arro-
gance similar to this, and for attempting,
among other offences, to violate this same
sacred shield of personal right, James the
the Second, mere than an hundred years
before, had been hurled from the throne of
England, and expatriated for the remain-
der of his life. It will be thus seen, that
the sufferance of democracies, when con-
ducted by ih.Q popular favorite^ who while
writing spaciously of liberty, outstrips the
most arrogant monarch in his stretches for
dominion, affords, sometimes, an exempli-
fication of passive obedience from which
even despotisms might learn a lesson. But
the climax of these inklings of anarchy,
may be found in a letter from the model
democratic President to the model demo-
cratic editor, who yet survives to perpetu-
ate his " early lesson," and to favor the
world with valuable reminiscences of the
epoch of " '98,'^ and the golden age of the
Jefferson dominion. In a letter from Jef-
ferson to Thomas Ritchie, found in the
fourth of these volumes, we find the follow-
ing : ^' The Judiciary of the United States,
is a subtle corys of sappers and miners^
constantly working underground to under-
mine the foundation of our confederated
Republic. We shall see if they are bold
enough to make the stride their five law-
yers have taken. If they do, then with
the editor of our book, I will say, that
against this every man should raise his
voice, and more than that, should lift his

")•)

arm." This completed the series of what
may be properly termed the Jeffersonian
threats. In 179S, he argued closely, in the
celebrated Kentucky Resolutions, to prove
that the people might resist the Executive
Department. He had done this once be-
fore, in the time of Washington, by favor-
ing the Whiskey insurrection. In 1801 , we
have seen that he menaced the Legislative
Department with " an armed force," to
" comptV a choice of himself as President.
And now, in his old age, he winds up by
instructing an apt disciple to " lift his
arm" against the Judiciary, the only re-
remaining branch of the government.

The figurative epethet here applied to
the Supreme Courtshows emphatically the
abhorrence with which Jefferson regarded
that august Tribunal. The political rea-
der may chance to be reminded, in this
connexion, of the high dudgeon, which a
certain distinguished Senator manifested
on a recent occasion, when, in his place, he
denounced another distinguished personage,
for havino; characterized modern Presiden-
tial candidates as ''''prize fighters.'''' It
is barely probable that, notwithstanding
their acknowledged erudition, neither of
these eminent individuals knew of this il-
lustrious precedent example in the vocabu-
lary of political billingsgate, else the first,
a model professor of genuine Jeffersonism,
mio;ht have refrained from the assault, and
the last, a mild and equable member of the
body thus reviled, would have been able
effectually to shelter himself with a law-
yer's most valued plea, though he flatly
disclaimed the construction applied to his
apt figure.

( To he concluded in our next.)

1850,

TJie Dead CJiild,

189

THE DEAD CHILD.

When autumn airs are chilly,

And clouds are dark with storm,

Comes forth the kindly sun-beam
And all is light and warm.

But lonelier lies the landscape,
And gloomier than before,

When, sliding back to Heaven,
The sun-beam smiles no more !

When, on my spirit weary,
The weight of sorrow lay,

A young bird came to cheer me
And sing my grief away.

But scarce my hand, so fondly.
Had bound her fluttering wing,

When back to Heaven upspringing,
She burst the silken string !

My heart, that seemed a desert.
And no fresh verdure bore — >

One little flower appearing,
A desert seemed no more.

My flower ! my half-blown daisy,

Soft opening to the day,
I thought not ere the blooming

To see it fade away !

The " early dew" has vanished.
That trembled on the thorn, —

The morning breeze — where is it 1
The fleeting breeze of morn !

My bird ! my beam of sunshine !

My flower, all flowers above !
Sweet passing breath of Heaven !

Sweet Life ! sweet loan of love !

As thus, all tearful, hopeless.
My heart bewailed its woes,

A rushing sound of soft wing3
And silvery warblings rose.

I heard my lost bird singing,

With a deepgr, richer tone,
And this was still the burthen :

" Mother, I am not gone."

" E'er since that hour of anguish.
When first my child-soul strove

To burst its earthly bondage,
Made stronger by thy love,

" More near to thee than ever

In spirit I have been.
And thou hast felt my presence

Consoling though unseen,

" Of love and gentle patience

A firm repose is born.
While these possess thy bosom.

Mother, I am not gone."

Thus all around me floating,

And o'er my troubled soul
The balm of comfort pouring.

The Heavenly music stole.

In hours of rest and silence,

My wandering thoughts called home.
When the world and I are parted,

'Tis then such visions come.

And then, no beam of sunshine,

But, in its light I see,
A glorious infani floating,

That ever smiles on me.

In every tone of music

Her silvery voice I hear ;
In overy form of beauty.

Her form is still more near.

The starry skies of evening,

The dewy smiles of morn.
All lovely objects tell me.

My Mary is not gone ! A. M. W.

190

MorelVs Argument against Plirenology.

August,

BIOEELL'S AEGUJIENT AGAINST PHRENOLOGY.

Twenty years ago, it was a bold man
tliat would crook his finger at this new-
born science. A howl of rage and con-
tumel}^ from its partizans would drown his
presumptuous voice, and his bumps would
be pronounced of the lowest order — " con-
science" and "judgment" both deficient.
But now, to threw down the gauntlet in
its defence needs much heroism and a little
effrontery. Persecuted and reviled of men,
waxing faint under popular applause and
its sure result of popular indifference, bur-
lesqued by a barbarous and uncouth no-
menclature, this unf »rtunate science has
passed through fiery ordeals ; but " still it
moves." Notwithstandins; that its defen-
ders are ranked among venders of patent
medicines, itinerant mesmerisers, and or-
gan-grinders, its principles have become
unconsciously adopted, and the vague,
confused terms ordinarily used to mark
mental and moral differences, have been
driven off by the more accurate, but still
imperfect, phrenological distinctions.

The stumbling-block in the path of this
science, has been the temptations it pre-
sented for quackery. Originating with a few
earnest and simple-minded men, on land-
ing on our shores, it was forced to yield to
the genius of the almighty dollar. It must
earn its bread if it would get on in the
world. Instead of dealing in nice but
general delineations of character, it was
forced to the humble office of portrayino"
the actual characters of individuals.

In thus serving the purposes of personal
curiosity and vanity, like all sycophants it
became contemptible in the eyes of those
it worshipped. Its personal sketches were
necessarily civil and rose-tinted, for un-
palatable truths would never charm coy
dimes out of jealous pockets. From the
necessity of making hits^ these historiettes
were graphic andpositive, where they should
have been always burdened by the contin-

gencies of moral and intellectual training.
]\Ien were amazed to find Bayards and ad-
mirable Crichtons, Pamelas and Lucretias,
where they had only known common men
and women with their full share of the
weaknesses of humanity. The quack fat-
tened on personal vanity, but the science
withered beneath incredulity and derision.
The disciple of Gall, who thus degrades
his beautiful science to a catch-penny, is
forced to borrow from the rival doctiines
of Lavater. Puttino- aside the influence

of circumstance in developing mental traits,
there are physical obstacles in the way of
anything like mathematical accuracy in
phrenological calculations. The varying
thickness of the skull in different individu-
als and of the integuments that cover the
surface of the skull, the frontal sinus, the
sutures, present cumulative impediments
to those who trust implicitely in mere
manipulation. For instance, the lamb-
doidal suture passes over tho organ of Con-
centrativeness. Where that organ is
large, it presents no difficulty, but where
its size is moderate or absolutely small, the
utmost mechanical skill cannot pronounce
with certainty upon its development. In
the phrenological division of the brain, the
absolute size of concentrativeness is com-
paratively small, but from its peculiar ac-
tion, it exercises in all its degrees a re-
markable influence on the whole character,
so much so, that of two individuals where
the size of the rest of the brain, tempera-
ment and outward circumstances are alike,
the difference between moderate fullness
and actual deficiency of concentrativeness
would make their mental and moral traits
widely dissimilar.

This is true in a measure, and obviously
so, of all the organs. A single quantity
wanting in this greatest of all problems,
must vitiate the whole calculation, where
that calculation aspkes to the certainty of

1850.

MoreIVs Argument against Vlirenology.

191

a positive science. The human soul may
be reduced to a few elements, but those
elements are spiritual, and in their shad-
ings must be infinitely more microscopic
than the steps by which material substan-
ces melt into each other. Myriads of
human beings have trodden this earth, and
no two alike. No man has yet encounter-
ed his double. The primary numbers then
that form these countless combinations
should be well ascertained and defined in
their immediate bearings. This can be
done psychologically but not physiologi-
cally, and hence the presumption of those
that would unfold in this way alone, the
manner of a man's mind.

Another hindrance in manipulation is the
temperament. This presents a field for
observation but slightly investigated by
phrenologists. Their distinctions in tem-
perament have hitherto been vague, un-
satisfactory, and by no means in accord-
ance with the ordinary views of medical
science on the same subject. It is not
settled whether it is not in some degree
the source of power, or whether power is
not due to size of brain alone, and length
of fibre. And if temperament influences
solely the activity, the modes and degrees
of activity are still but loDsely defined.
From want of space we cannot go fully in-
to this subject, but will mention two in-
stances in which the usual phrenological
views in regard to the efi'ect of size are
most fallacious.

To meet the constantly recurring cases
of men of small heads showing great abili-
ity and force of character, as in the case
of Byron, they are said to be wanting
in power, but to possess a fineness of per-
ception, arising from their peculiar fine-
ness of brain. Here the- coincidence of
terms has suggested the explanation. But
fineness in material objects indicates the ac-
curacy and beauty of minuteness, in im-
material thought it represents dim far-reach-
ing subtlety. This is an undoubted form
of power. In the instance of Byron it was
not logical acumen, for his ratiocination
was faulty even to puerility ; and the logi-
cal faculty was comparatively and palpa-
bly deficient. But in the radiance of
ideality, in the lurid glow of destructive-
ness, and in his brooding pride, there was
force verging on coarseness.

Another error is in regard to the in-

creased stimulus to the same organ, given
by education. The supposition of phreno-
logists is, that exercise of the fiiculties en-
ables them to manifest themselves with the
greatest degree of energy which the size of
the organs will permit, and that size fixes
a limit which education cannot surpass.
But if size alone gives power, then the
slightest movement of such a brain should
be marked by depth and intensity, and
education would be only increased activity.
We do not deny that there is activity with-
out power, and power without activity, but
the various phases of these phenomena are
not met by the distinctions of temperament
and size.

The exact position of phrenologists is
that size, ceteris paribus is the guao-e of
power. This equation is innocent enough,
for strictly it only assumes that size is one
of the elements of power, which no one
will deny ; the other elements equal, power
and size are necessarily commensurate.
But they consider it as establishing their
hypothesis that size is the only criterion of
power, a false conclusion, and at war with
all observation. We consider that the
fineness of brain to which they vaguely at-
tribute a peculiar fineness of manifestation
is a real source not merely of activity, but
of actual reach of thought and depth of
emotion. This vigor of function may
proceed from the bilious and acute nerv-
ous temperaments, while the vigor of ac-
tivity flows from the degree in which the
lymphatic is vivified by the sanguine.

Another consideration that should
cast a doubt on the statements of profes-
sional phrenologists, is the different forma
the organs assume accordins; to the devel-
opment of the rest of the brain. This dif-
ficulty no experience or manual skill can
altogether overcome, for from this irreuglar-
ity of shape, the ordinary superficial
measurements of the skull are not exact
tests of its internal capacity. A longitudi-
nal brain has less bulk than a square one,
and a square head less than one of a sphe-
rical form. A bullet-shaped head conse-
quently, which is usually considered as
manifesting force of character, has this vi-
gor not only from its peculiar combination
of qualities, but from its actually possessing
ceteris paribus^ the largest amount of
brain.

But the greatest obstacles arise from the

192

MorelVs Argument against TTirenology.

August,

influence that tlie moral training of cir-
cumstances has in giving a direction to the
elements of mind and emotion. Although
if these circumstances were accurately as-
certained, a tolerably close calculation
could be made of the probable results,
without this, the guess and the truth might
be wide as the poles asunder, j-he very
trait that makes the old man a miser makes
the son a spendthrift. The very absence
of this trait will sometimes conduce to a
reckless expenditure, and sometimes form
the most niggardly spirit of economy
The characteristics that will restrain men
from gross sensuality, may but serve to
plunge them into the more withering hell of
the voluptuary. The qualities that, un-
der the right conditions, will create a feel-
ing of charity and forbearance and justice
to all men, at other times will fester into
the severity of censoriousness. It is true,
there are characters in which, from their
want of balance, the tendencies in a parti-
cular direction are so strong, the leaning
towards particular manifestations so decid-
ed, the steady pull so invincible, that cir-
cumstances and social and moral influence,
and even motives, are all thrust aside, and
through all obstacles the man proceeds on
his course, whether for good or ill.

But these are few. There is a class, and it
comprises the great majority of mankind,
who, not meeting any great obstructions,
submit, in the sea of influences in which we
all float, to those most congenial to them,
and thus, under most conditions, follow
with equal certainty their natural bias. But
all those of evenly developed characters, all
those whose hearts thrill at every sound of
human feeling, all those who are vividly
alive to every human relation that God has
opened to man out of the emotional infinity
that lies behind time, men of broad, full
natures, to whom the truth is full of beau-
ty, and the evil not devoid of fascination, all
such, if we would read their souls, present
mysteries that require more than the phre-
nological imposition of hands to unfold.

But, it is asked, what assistance, then,
does phrenology bring to psychological sci-
ence, if it abandons the field of external
observation, and is forced to the old ground
of the metaphysicians, of reflection operat-
ing on consciousness ? Phrenology does
not abandon observation, but with due
caution would bring it into the assist-

ance of introspection. Between a large
and a small development of the organs of
the sentiments and propensities, there is
often the difference of an inch. The differ-
ences in the intellectual organs are less
striking, but in marked cases are sufficient-
ly plain to overcome the difficulties attend-
ing manipulation, and to establish land-
marks in mental science. Byway of eluci-
dating the subject more fully, we wiil con-
sider some of the objections raised on this
point by J. D. Morell, in his Treatise on
the History of Philosophy.

" As a basis for a new system of in-
tellectual philosophy," says this author,
" phrenology may be considered as a total
failure. A system of intellectual philoso-
phy must contain an analysis and classifica-
tion both of our faculties and feelings ; it
must give a complete enumeration of the
elements of human knowledo;e, and it must
trace them all to their real orio-in. The
idea that all this can be accomplished by
physiological observations, however valid
and indubitable, can only arise from a total
misunderstanding of the whole question. I
will suppose for a moment that we know
nothing whatever reflectively of our own
mental operations ; that the study of the
human mind had not yet been commenced;
that none of its phenomena had been clas-
sified ; and that we were to begin our in-
vestigation of them upon the phrenological
system, some of which had previously been
communicated to us ; we might in this case
proceed in our operations with the greatest
ardor, and examine skull after skull for a
century ; but this would not give us the
least notion of any peculiar mental faculty,
or aid us in the smallest degree in classi-
fying mental phenomena. We could nev-
er know that the organs of the reasoning
powers were in front, and those of the mo-
ral feelings upon the top of the head, un-
less we had first made those powers and
feelino's indej^endently the objects of our
examination. The whole march of phre-
nology goes upon the supposition that there
is a system of intellectual philosophy alrea-
dy in the mind, and its whole aim is to
show, where the seat, materially speaking,
of the faculties we have already observed,
really is to be found. Either our various
powers and susceptibiHties are known and
classified before we begin any outward ob -
servations, or they are not. If they are

1S50.

MoreWs Argument against Phrenology,

193

already known and classified, then phreno-
loo-y has nothing to do with the discovery ;
if they are not, then assuredly we can never
find them out by mere external observa-
tion upon the skull ; we can never turn
them up to view by the scalpel of the ana-
tomist, nor find them impressed upon the
outward form of the brain. If every organ
had its name and nature inscribed upon it
by the Cjeator, then we should have a
system of psychology at once ; but so
long as this is not the case, we must ob-
serve and classify our mental phenomena
by reflection, before we can begin to map
out the locality in which they are to be
found. Strictly speaking, phrenology can-
not reveal a single intellectual fact which
was not known before ; it cannot trace any
any points of human knowledge to their
primary elements ; it cannot perform in
any case a single analysis of our complex
notions ; in a word, it can do nothing, al-
lowing its facts to be all true, but point
out a certain connection between two paral-
lel series of mental and physical phenome-
na, the former of which have been already
investigated. If any one should be inclin-
ed to urge, that the very circumstance of
diff'erent feelings or faculties operating in
connection with certain portions of the
brain, is a clue to a correct classification,
it must be remembered that they are al-
ready classified as mental facts before any
connection with the brain can be predica-
ted of them."

" In the details of phrenology, we find
so much indefiniteness, that it is absolutely
impossible to rely upon its indications as
philosophically correct. When we attempt
to classify the facts of our consciousness by
reflection, we have no very great difiiculty
in forming a general outline of them. Sen-
sation, perception, memory, judgment, as
also the different passions, all possess cer-
tain indubitable marks by which they are
distinguished from each other ; but when
we come to consider the various organs
which phrenology assumes, we find such a
complete commingling of all our mental
phenomena as to render a close analysis of
them impossible. Take for example such
organs asconcentrativeness or adhesiveness,
and say what peculiarity they contain
which can have an independent existence
subjectively, or which may not be resolved
into other elements. Patriotism, attach-

VOL. YI. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

ment to friends, concentration of mind up-
on an object, power of sustained attention,
all are given as representing the functions
of these peculiar lobes. Assuredly there
does not appear to be much psychological
light aflbrded by sucJi an analysis. Take,
again, the organ of philo-progenitiveness,
and say why there should be a natural pro-
pensity and a particular lobe of brain,
which excites love to a child, and none by
which we are induced to love a parent, a
brother, a wife, a friend, a sovereign, or
anything else with which we stand in close
relation. Every one of these affections has
an element of similarity, and an element of
diversity in it. In all it is love ; but it is
love modified by varying circumstances ;
the analysis of which in each case, far
from being aided is greatly hindered by the
phrenological hypothesis. In psychology
the main question is as to the metliod^ by
which the multiplicity of complex pheno-
mena, passing through the consciousness,
is to be analyzed and arranged. Now, the
only proper method to do this is to separ-
ate the matter of our mental processes
from theybrm, to lay aside all considera-
tion respecting the intensity of the action,
or the diversity of object to which they
may be directed, and to seize simply upon
the fundamental character which they se-
verally present. Here it is we see that
phrenology has gone completely astray, that
it has followed a method of classification
altogether fallacious, and that it has given
results totally worthless in a philosophical
point of view. It has made its classifica-
tion turn mainly upon the objects of our
mental faculties, and almost entirely neg-
lected their mental characteristics. On
the one hand it assiorns diflerent org-ans for
the same faculty or feeling, because they
apply to different ohjects ; and then, on
the other hand, it will turn a complex op-
eration into a simple one, and appropriate
it to a single organ, just because the whole
process is to be directed to one particular
object. Thus memory is distributed be-
tween three diflerent organs, according as
it applies to persons or places or things ;
love, as a propensity, is divided into two
or three more ; judgment and imagination
are mutilated in the same way. In brief,
the form of our mental operations is utter-
ly lost in the contemplation of their objects ,
and a classification results, which has all
13

194

JMorelVs Argument against Tlirenology.

August^

the Lad qualities Trliicli can possibly attacli
to wliat is called in logic, a cross division.
But, reiterates the phrenologist, nobody
can deny that these seperate tendencies,
such as loye to wife, loye to children, loye
to humanity, really existj and that there-
fore they demand a separate allocation in
om' mental analysis We reply that love
to a hundred other things really exist, and
by parity of reasoning, ought to haye dis-
tinct organs."

We are fully disposed to admit the val-
idity of some of the above objections, and
•with the more readiness, from the belief
that a candid spirit of enquir}' into the real
limits of phrenology, will only seat it the
more firmly in its true position, and, by
clearing its skirts of the partisan warfare
so long maintained around it, eventually
open a new era in the study of the human
soul.

Phrenology claims to be essentially the
science of the human soul ; audit assumes
as its method, equally with the metaphysi-
cians, that of reflection operating on con-
sciousness. It does not, however, disdain
the light of outward observation ; but uses
it as a guide and support, as it gropes its
wa}* through the dim recesses of thought
and emotion. It extends the bounds of
experience, but does not reject the assist-
ance of speculation. So far as the objec-
tions of its opponents rest upon the too ex-
clusive observation of the contour and ex-
ternal appearances of the cranium, we are
willing to acquiesce in some degree in their
correctness, for it is in that direction that
the chief impediments to its progress lie.
But it is not necessarily the mere attempt
to run two parrallel lines of physiological
phenomena and ^rediscovered psychologi-
cal facts. Starting from the numberless
appearances and involved manifestations of
the soul and mind of man as displayed in
actual life, it runs up to meet the slow
advances of the metaphysician as he woiks
down from the springs of thought and feel-
ing. It begins where the others end. What
have previous systems done towards un-
folding the volitions and motives of men ?
What towards the comprehension of those
phases of the soul which immediately pre-
cede action r What help do they give us
to deal intelligently with our own hearts
and with those of our fellow-men ? Cen-
tury after century passes away, and system

' after system has risen and fallen, and still
j the very foundations of knowledge, as
I sought after by the psychologist, are un-
j built. Not a single principle has it given
j to us in the most needed of all wisdom, the
( most universal of all sciences. And yet no
I human being ever existed that has not
I toiled to gain some portion of this knowl-
edge ; not a child or a savage but has pon-
j dered on its mysteries. All men seek it,
I and ever}' man in reality gains some insight
j into it. What then, does phrenology pro-
I pose }

j It ofi'ers a system which will gather up
i this universal experience ; which brings
j about immediate and practical results
J where abstruse philosophy wastes C3^cles in
I preparation ; and establishes landmarks by
I which every advance is chronicled and fix-
j ed. This, among other means, it seeks to
I accomplish by the clearness and simplicity
' of its terms, that source of endless confu-
[ sion among the metaphysicians. These
terms are not the mere phrenological dis-
) tinctions, which are temporary and liable
1 to be changed, as closer analysis tears off
from the supposed functions of each organ
I whatever is extraneous and accidental, but
j the actual outward appearances of the
\ brain, stamping and locally establishing
I each fact gamed from experience. It uses
as a method too, and this indeed, is the
i chief objection that the above quoted wri-
■ ter brino-s a<xainst it, the classification of
! our mental phenomena by the objects to
! which they are applied. But this, as a
i stepping stone to truth, is one of the most
; practical and progressive features of the
science. It is the means of brino;inor clear-
j ly and fully before the attention, certain
' combinations of mental processes. It
arrests and gathers around a nucleus the
\ fleeting and shadowy moods of the soul.
It presents for renewed reflection, an exact,
though complex feeling, and gives certain
fixed facts for dissection, in a science where
the materials for thought are vague and un-
certain. For instance, if we speak of res -
jpect^ deference^ awe^ we indicate states of
feelino; which vary in our own breasts, and
the notion of which may be totally different
in those of others. But, if we speak of
veneration for Gcd^ we brirg up the per-
ception of an accurate and well-defined
combination of emotions, and thus acc;uire
definite materials for analysis.

1850.

Morell's Argument against Phrenology.

195

In this Wiiy, by means of tlie fixation of
phases of the mind in their objective as-
pects, we gain the knowledge of their sub-
jective elements. Properly speaking, the
whole process is a subjective one. As the
properties and qualities of matter are re-
ceived by sensation and handed thence to
the intellectual powers to arrange in their
various bearings, proper and relative, so
does emotional perception intuitively dis-
tinguish in these, those modifications that
emotion itself has impressed upon matter.
According to the clearness of this inward
vision, are represented on the mirror of our
own consciousness, the impulses accompa-
nying volition in the breasts of those around
us. By these means, instead of merely our
own moods, faulty, ill-balanced, rendered
of false proportions by strong habit, dwin-
dled in one direction by the tyranny of
circumstance, and of ill-growth in another
by false culture, we gain for observation,
the common nature of man.

Making this its field of action, in place
of the solitary thought of the psychologist,
phrenology sends its votaries into the high-
ways and by-ways of life, and lays bare
the throbbing heart of humanity It thus
secures a multitudinous array of facts, and
builds thereon a solid foundation of induc-
tion, before it ventures into the audacity of
hypothesis, by which alone the higher flights
in mental philosophy can be sustained.

With regard to the objection raised by
the writer we have quoted, that the phreno-
loorical distinctions are confused commino;-
lingrs or rash mutilations of the elements
of thought and feeling, such as memory,
perception, judgment, imagination, &c., we
answer that this is assumino; for the meta-
physician what he has ever 3^et failed to
prove. What are the elements of the mind }
is the grand question to be solved. How
many a weary battle has been fought over
these so-called elements '^ To how many
divisions, sub -divisions, and cross-divisions
have they been subjected by the metaphy-
sician himself.'' "Take," says the writer,
*' the organ of philo-progenitiveness, and
say why there should be a natural propen-
sity which excites love to a child, and none
by which we are induced to love a parent,
a brother, a wife, a friend, or a sovereign.
Every one of these affections has an element
of similarity and an element of dissimilar-
ity. In all it is love^ but it is love modified,

&c." Phrenology assumes to prove that
love to a child is totally distinct in its es-
sence from any other feeling to which the
term love is attached. The statement of
the writer is evidently a petitio principii^
and the cross-divisions to which he alludes
are the necessary consequences of warring
systems. The similarity of appearances
runnins: throusfh all the affections, and de-
noted by the word love^ may be explained
as their ohjective manifestation^ colored by
the frequent, though not necessarily con-
stant, presence of some one feeling, for
instance, adhesiveness.

In illustration of the philosophical na-
ture of the method used by the phrenolo-
gists as a means of progress, of classifying
mental phenomena b/ their objects, we will
consider the organ of Imitation.

This development was first observed in
the heads of actors, and of all who pos-
sessed more than ordinary power of mimicry.
In children who quickly and unconsciously
adopted the air and manner of those around
them ; in individuals fond of, and skilful
in, private theatricals ; in the professional
Thespian, and in all those who easily as-
sume a carriage, language, tones and ges-
tures not native to themselves, the superi-
or-anterior portion of the skull, on either
side of the organ of benevolence, was found
to assume a swelling and symmetrically
rounded appearance. Here, then, was a
large portion of that important section of
the brain, which joins emotion to thought,
and gives guidance to one and warmth to
the other, allotted to a function of limited
scope. Based on causalty and comparison,
the seat of judgment, this organ diverges
among the sentiments, holding pity in its
arms, the reflection in the breast of man
of divine love and kindness, and unit-
ing itself to faith, hope and veneration.
The locality and extent of the organ,
and its apparent function, were evidently
incongruous. The deeper in the abyss
of the soul that we find each element,
the greater will be the space that its angle
covers. A quality that is useful only to
the buffoon, could hardly perform more
than a small share in filling out those di-
versities of character which constitute man-
kind. Subsequent observation shows that
a similar developement of cranium occurs
in individuals much characterized by suavi-
ty ; in poets and artists ; in authors of su-

196

MorelVs Argument against Phrenology .

August,

perior dramatic ability ; and in all men
■who act a part on the stage of real life.
Where shall we find the subtle spirit that
runs through these by no means similar
manifestations ?

The act of imitation is obviously in its
origin, a reproduction upon our own con-
sciousness of certain external images, intel-
lectual or emotional. Tn this sense, it
would seem only reiterated perception, —
memory, which, in fact, it is, so far as mere
intellectuality is concerned. Images of this
sort need no essential faculty of imitation,
and the extension of its action in this di-
rection would seem unphilosophical. But
perception is of its own kind, and the in-
tellectual powers can no more distinguish
the impress of the soul in outward forms
than emotion can of itself cull from among
the mass of ideas whatever is sui generis.
There would then seem need of an inner
sense .^ a vehicle of communication, by which
the soul of man can escape from what
would otherwise be its prison, and hold
discourse with his fellow-creatures This
link in the chain that binds the inward with
the outward world is found in the semi-in-
tellectual faculty we are now considering.

Imitation is the true organ of language
— of that universal language which is com-
mon, not only to all races of men, but in
some degree, to every created being on the
face of the earth. The accents of this mys-
terious tongue are the varying apjpearan-
ces of form and countenance and modula-
tions of tone., which every feeling pictures
forth, however ephemeral and shadowy it
may be. This spirit printing, like all of
Nature's workmanship, is accurate in its
most microscopic detail. The material
receiving the impression may be dull,
phlegmatic, earthly, but the work is there
— dim it may be, but complete in its deli-
cate tracery. The lying soul may wish to
send forth a false voice ; but nature is true
to itself, and paints on the lineaments of the
face, in the eye, in the voice down to its
faintest whisper, in every a^ovement of eve-
ry muscle, the whole complex mood result-
ino; from the mixture of the actual feelino;
with the one called up to supplant it. It
is here that we find arises the intuitive
knowledge that all men possess, in a greater
or less degree, of human nature ; for what
knowledge of human nature can there be
that does not arise either from intuition, or

correct theory .^ No complete system has
ever yet been offered that gives the key to
the actions of men, and although phrenolo-
gy proposes to do this, phrenology itself is
avowedly founded on this very knowledge.

Apart from the blinding of self-deceit,
and the inducements presented by the im-
perfections and deformity of our own breasts
for insincerity and false representation of
feeling, for " where's that palace whereinto
foul things sometimes intrude not V — apart
from that distortion of nature which ren-
ders it an utter impossibility in some to
render a fair account of themselves, and
where the attempt to make a clean breast
results only in plausibilities and more in-
volved deception, if even the soul can be
found so pure as not to fear the light of day,
and the intention so fearless as to be ready
to read its secrets to the world, even then
we would be strangers to its operations
without the medium of an inner sense simi-
lar to what we are now endeavoring to de-
scribe. Ordinary speech is slow to supply
the necessary means of communication ;
and does it in an indirect manner. What
is intellectual in language can never reach
emotion. It may play around it, and indi-
cate it by defining its conditions, but it is
only by the skillful use of the sensuous ele-
ment in words that the frost and fire in the
mind and soul of man can commingle. In
this sense, the poet is the true ally of the
metaphysician. But this very element, so
far as it is founded on intonation.^ forms a
great portion of the natural language of
imitation.

Hence, we find that this organ, whose
throne in the brain seemed at first given to
it for sordid purposes, plays a most impor-
tant part in the necessities of our nature.
In reality there is not a single relation or
phase of life, on which it does not exert a
most powerful influence. To view man-
kind from any one stand-point, to take any
single element of mind, and divide men
into two great classes according to the in-
fluence of such an element, there is no
other trait that creates such striking simi-
larities and dissimilarities of character.

If we look around among men, we con-
stantly find individuals, without genius, with-
out talent, without even energy of impulse,
irresolute of will, weak to withstand the in-
fluences of those around them, despised,
sometimes loathed, but who having this

1850.

Moi'elVs Argument against Phrenology.

197

one gift in perfection, exert an otherwise
unaccountable influence on all that ap-
proach them. Such men have a readiness
of assi7niJ.ation^ a sudden appreciation of
the moods of others resulting from the
quickness with which they receive
the infection of those moods. Such are
their soft and plastic natures that men of
decision and energy of purpose love to
gather them around them, to break the
shocks which jar and fret their own harsh-
er tempers. They are the jackals of so-
cial life, and win their prey by urging on
nobler but obtuser natures who are at once
their tyrants and their tools. From
among them come the ancient and honor-
able family of toadies. They swarm at
every corner and are ever busy plotting,
undermining, sapping. In all rash deeds
where men seem to brave the world from
mad and ungovernable passions, in all
quarrels, from the pot-house brawl up to
the duello, in intrigues, in friendship, where
your friend strangely changes from warm
cordiality to sudden and unnaccountable
aversion, in every movement of individuals
where the clue is not easily found, look for
the crawling sycophant behind the curtain.
Their strongest passion is envy, for they
can appreciate but not rival, their kindest
feeling is a momentary and superficial
sympathy.

There is another class, men that have
all that the first lack, and want the one
power that the others possess — men per-
haps of broad searching intellect, of vigor-
ous natures, practical ability, having every
quality that would argue success, and who
show power and conscious authority in
every movement, but who still impress us
with an appearance of weakness, an indes-
cribable imperfection to which the ordin-
ary distinctions of character can never
give the key. They are deficient in this
single attribute. They want the uncon-
scious tact it gives to call up transient and
superficial moods to conceal the deeper
and more serious purposes of their lives.
Whether for good or ill they are men of
the most transparent simplicity. Not a
child but can read their thoughts, while they
in return see nothing but motiveless action.
Eyes have they but they see not, they have
ears and hear not But from this very
weakness often comes their strength, for
such men soon learn that their safety is

not in crooked paths, but in the open
grounds of truth and sincerity of purpose.
Here they are no longer weak ; for when
the eaves-dropper looks into the open win-
dows of the soul, he finds a frankness he
may smile at, but must always respect,
while their unimpressibility gives rise to a
self-dependence and originality which im-
presses and sometimes even fascinates.

But where the evil in their nature pre-
vails over the good, they present vice in its
most odious, because in its least disfii-uised,
forms. The veil is lifted from the hell that
ever accompanies evil thoughts and desires,
and as we look into their festering soul, we
shudder at its foul shapes and monstrous
creations. Their concealment is as palpa-
ble as their candor, forsecretiveness, which
is merely suppression^ may keep down a
state of the mind, but it can never call up
another in its stead, while its own manifes-
tations are as perspicuous as those of any
other phase of the soul. Men of this
stamp carry hypocrite written on their
fronts. They glide along like cats ; their
tones are soft and low ; they come sudden-
ly upon you ; their eyes have a villainous
gleam of low cunning ; they open doors
noiselessly ; and instead of the flexibility
of manner and voice, of Imitation^ they
have a peculiar rigidity of countenance and
motion. Where their object is less to lead
astray, than to conceal, you can see the
haze steal slowly over their face, the cloud
obscuring and deadening the soul, till hard-
ly enough of life is left to carry on the vi-
tal processes. It is then utter stupefac-
tion. Yet these men think, like the os-
trich that hides its head in the sand, that
because they stultify themselves, they are
invisible to the rest of the world.

These are two extremes of character, re-
sulting from the great preponderence or
deficiency of the organ of Imitation ; but
between these lie, in a thousand shades,
groups of qualities that make man the
image of his Maker, or lower him beneath
the level of the brute, but all receiving
their stamp for success or failure, and often
their bias for good or evil, in a great mea-
sure from this one trait.

This organ gives men a fondness for ac-
tive life, while the absence of it is condu-
cive to the seclusion of thous-ht. But this is
only in its general tendencies, for in all that
thought which relates to the intercourse of

198

MorclVs Argument against Tlirenology .

August,

luaDklnd, in the department of the poet
and dramatist, it is the main and indispen-
sable element. Imitation is, in fact, dra-
matic power — tlie power to throw our own
consciousness into the peculiar and chang-
ing moods we would represent. Hence
the knowledge which the philosopher would
get at analj-tically, the poet accomplishes
iustantaneousl}' by intuitive power alone.
He catches quickly, by force of this facul-
ty, the shifting moods of those around him,
and by the multiplicity of the data sees the
more readily each element in its various
manifestations. He does it unconsciously,
but, according to his genius with accuracy.
He names it too, not in the dim and indi-
rect phraseology of philosophy, but in the
action, tone and cadence, in which each
feeling expresses itself. "When this organ
is deficient, men of thought are forced into
the regions of metaphysical subtleties, or of
the positive sciences.

On the other hand, there is a peculiar
class of men of action, who with little of
this faculty, nevertheless achieve success
by dint of intellectual attributes. They
too operate on the motives of men, but
only from a distance, and not face to face,
mesmerically as Imitation does. From the
limited data of their own motives, they
work down hypothetically to the probable
motives of others in o-iyen situations. It is
an intellectual process, very different from
the direct and instinctive perception of
motive possessed by those in whom the or-
gan of Imitation is largely developed.

The first effect their purposes by acting
on the objects of men's wishes, the latter
by direct guidance of those wishes. The first
may be skilful in perception, but only the
latter can be perfect in execution. One
class become leaders among men by com-
pelling them through the force of circum-
stances to follow, the other by falling into
the humors of those around, and leadino;
them on their own ground. The first act
by cold and mechanical means, repelling
love through the iciness and self-absorption
of intellect, and when they fall, fall like
the tyrant, without friends, without sympa-
thy, overwhelmed by triumphant hatred ;
while the latter, uniting intellect and force
with the winning qualities that Imitaticn
gives, soothe by dissimulation and fascinate
into enthusiasm those on whose shoulders
they rise. The former class can be traced

through every step of their career by the
means they have adopted to bring about
results, and, consequently, are handed
down through histor}- to be wondered at,
commented on, and understood perhaps
better by futuie ages than the one in which
they live ; while the latter are only known
by what thev accomplish, and their reputa-
tion passes away with the generation that
knew them and witnessed their wonderful
power and the splendor of their personal
attributes. There is a vagueness about
their whole life ; no deeds or exploits to
fasten the attention ; their glory seems
wholly illusory, and we feel disposed 'to
consider it as onl}" the din of worship that
each age sets up about its idols.

There is the same indistinctness about
individuals of this class in private life, but
from a different cause ; they fill so many
parts, they fall in so completely with the
spirit of the occasion, never set out in re-
lief but always in keeping with the rest of
the scene, they revolve so quickly from one
phase of character to its antipodes, that we
can never establish their tiue proportions.
Rapid movement seems to confuse the
inner as well as the outer vision. By this
means, and by their well worked sympathy,
they mask the secret antagonism that ex-
ists whenever man meets man.

But where Imitation is wanting, char-
acter, in beauty or repulsiveness, stands
clear and definitely marked in every deli-
cate shade before the miud"'s eye. Such
men please those of their own sort, and the
regard is lasting ; they may even extort
the respect of their opposites, but it is com-
pulsory and will soon change into the re-
taliation of wounded self-esteem.

After all, there is no real power or dig-
nity or grandeur, but what arises from the
strong soul, skillfully directed by the tact
of Imitation. Intellect is cold — neither
men nor women care for it. It is sordid
and works by low means ; it grovels in the
earth, and if it brings about illustrious re-
sults, does it by the vilest tools. Its min-
isters are the vices of mankind. Every
man has his price, was Bonaparte's maxim,
and where his clumsy system failed he eked
it out with hard blows. But there is vir-
tue and weakness as well as vice, and
]\Iirabeau, who knew this, by appealing
directly to their hearts, walked without ef-
fort a king among men.

1850.

MorelVs Argument against Phrenology.

199

Bonaparte and MireTbeau are exemplars
of these two classes, in the studious ha-
bits of the youth of the former, in his drud-
gery in the cabinet, in his ceaseless ques-
tioning on his campaigns of guides and of
every one around him, we find the manifes-
tations of the mental processes by which he
sought and gained success. Nothing was
too humble or of too slight importance to
escape his attention, nothing forgotten. —
Nor was his observation a mere store-house
of useless lumber, for his capacious intel-
lect seized facts only for their spirit, and
instantly systematized them in all their
relations and bearings. Machiavellism he
showed no lack of, but it was the astute-
ness of the closet and the cabinet, and re-
quired the co-operation of humbler spirits
possessing the shrewdness of Imitation^ to
carry it out successfully. So well aware
was he of this want of personal power, that
after his Italian campaigns, and until his
authority was well established, he avoided
showing himself in public ; and in spite of
the popular ecstacies at the early victories
of the young hero, the new divinity of the
French nation was for a long time an un-
known God. The distance and reserve with
which he treated his officers in his first cam-
paigns, though most of them were older in
years and experience than himself, may
have been owing to his knowledge of this
one weakness, for arrogance never seemed
in any peculiar degree a fault in his dispo-
sition.

But Mirabeau sought men ; in h's ad-
versity he had been the slave of their hu-
mors, and the knowledge and adaptahility
he thus gained made him in prosperity
their master. Together with his vivacious
genius and vast energies, it gave him al-
most a supernatural influence over crowds
and individuals, and mesmerically men were
dazzled, weakened, prostrated. There was
safety only in Scythian warfare — his ene-
mies fought and fled.

In their vices as well as in public con-
duct, each of these men showed the ten-
dency given by this faculty. Amativeness
is regarded by phrenologists as primarily
not the brute instinct, but as a simple feel-
ing, akin in its nature^^to philo-progenitive-
ness. It is not ''lust through some plea-
sing strainers well refined," but it is a pure
element, distorted and discolored by the
arthy medium through which it passes. It

is originally love for the object, woman, or
man J as philo-progenitiveness is love for the
object, children. But men and women and
children are known to us only as moral and
intellectual beings. The outward form is
only the veil concealing the real existence.
Hence the faculty making known to us
these moral and intellectual attributes form-
ing the individual, is necessary for the true
action of amativeness. This faculty i^ Imi-
tation^ and according to its development,
is the love of the sexes pure or earth-born.
This explains the indifi"erence and even
contempt that Bonaparte always evinced
for women. They never gained the slight-
est control over him. His kindly and af-
fectionate feelings were enlisted for Jose-
phine, but even she had no personal influ-
ence with him, but what she could gain by
indirect means and by working, unknown
to himself, upon his motives. His love
was the coldest, most soulless sensuality.

But love, with Mirabeau, though wild
and undn^ected by principle or moderation,
often soared to the dignity of romantic pas-
sion. For Sophie he gladly sought toil
and seclusion — for Sophie he moaned away
the months at Vincennes. But this very
trait, giving him a nobility and a happiness
which the obtuser nature of Napoleon
never rose to, by the fascination it imparted
to vice when pressed into its service, be-
came, in the end, a material cause of his
ruin, and while Bonaparte always kept his
passions in check, Mirabeau was, at last,
lost in boundless sensuality.

Wherever Imitation is unaccompanied
by strong reflective powers, and what are
called the perceptive faculties are compa-
ratively larger, its presence is indicated by
a receding but expansive forehead. Should
benevolence and wonder be also well de-
veloped, the forehead assumes a beautifully
swelling and rounded appearance. In this
conformation, (reflection being deficient,)
we find an unconscious tact, a delicate
sense of propriety and grace of mood ; but
the thought being wanting that takes cog-
nisance intelligently of the relations, bear-
ings and conditions of emotional states, we
see none of the power of duplicity that
such a conjunction would manifest. Where
reflection and Imitation sn-e both developed,
the forehead does not run so far back, but
assumes above the organ of comparison, a
peculiar uprightness of appearance. From

200

MorelVs Argument against Phrenology.

August,

this combination jQows accurate perception
of the motives of others, skill in accommo-
dating ourselves to these motives, and power
to review them under standin gly . Here
then we have shrewdness, plausibility and
dissimulation. Duplicity, in the literal and
customary acceptation of the term, conveys
the spirit of this manifestation. It is true
that a well-balanced character, with vio'or-
ous moral attributes, may restrain this ten-
dency, but the power is there, and there
are few who will not both use and abuse
power.

Where this conformation of the brain is
accompanied by indolent impulses or a
feeble will, there is a great susceptibility to
the influence of others, amountinof in ex-
treme cases to weakness ; but this influ-
ence must be open and personal, and not the
result of diplomacy, for such persons, read-
ing motive quickly, break loose from their
chains the instant they find they are made
use of. It is very diff"erent from the infatu-
ation of the man with resolute energies and
will, who, from small Imitation^ is proof
against all direct influence, but whose ear
once gained, becomes the most perfect slave
to management. Truth and sincerity are
powerless before him, for in his obtuseness
he sees them not, and only hears the whis-
perings of the familiar fiend at his elbow.
The only recourse is by a like art to dis-
lodge the foe from the citadel.

It is diflicult to give the analysis and
modes of manifestation of any single organ
without taking into consideration the ope-
ration upon it of the rest of the brain. For
instance, stability of character proceeds
from concentrativeness and firmness, and
levity and caprice are a consequence of
their feeble action. But there is also a
peculiar levity arising from the presence of
Imitation^ and a difi"erent one acrain arisins:
from its absence. In the former case it
springs, as we have seen, from impressi-
bility, and such persons constantly feel an-
noyance and compunction for the ease with
which they take their hue from circum-
stances and people who, in reality, are odi-
ous to their habitual moods. On the other
hand, there is a caprice where Imitation
is small, which proceeds from this very
unimpressibility, the same circumstances
and people making at diflerent times the
most varying degree of impression. From
this arises a moodiness of disposition, which

is short or long-lived accordingly as con"
centrativeness is developed.

These views meet the objection often
raised against phrenology, as respects the
organ of secretiveness, that persons in whom
this organ is only moderately marked, are
nevertheless often characterized by the ut-
most secresy and insincerity. This we have
seen to arise from a combination of reflection
and Imitation with moderate conscientious-
ness. But there is another class of people
who along with the most conscientious inge-
nuousness about actions and conduct, show a
great backwardness in manifesting feeling
by language even to their nearest and
dearest friends. At the same time they
have the most intense desire to make it ap-
parent by conduct, or tones, or manner.
This results from the tact of Imitation
which perceives intuitively the only legiti-
mate means of communication of feelino-.
Sentimentalism arises from the absence of
this faculty, and is the endeavor to express
by intellectual distinctions what the intel-
lect can never reach in its essence.

This faculty is the source of good breed-
ing. The gentleman is born, not made.
Where this organ is large, the spirit of the
forms of social life is instantly seized, and
their general reasonableness consequently
admitted. But where it is deficient, there
is always at first an indifference and con-
tempt for the amenities of society, which
the individual calls independence or oddity,
but the world knows to be brutish stupidi-
ty. When sharp lessons teach him that
these graceful restraints are, in reality, in-
exorable laws, he becomes a trembling and
abject slave of these very forms ; for, not
comprehending the spirit of the law, he
must necessarily go by the letter. Vulga-
rity of manner then, (the vulgarity of feel-
ing lies deeper,) when seen in uncultured
men, is manifested as brutality and harsh-
ness ; when found in polished life, it as-
sumes the form of fastidiousness, punctilio
and a blind stickling for conventional dis-
tinctions.

Imitation along with Comparison and
Causality though producing attractive
qualities in social intercourse, is not mani-
fested by mere copiousness of conversation.
It is silent, though intensely observant.
The silent man, exclaims the man of con-
versational parts, hides by his brevity his
scantiness of ideas. Why, thou talking

1850.

MorelVs Argument against TTirenology ,

201

fellow, he is your master ! Whilst you are
expatiating, lost in the mazes of thought or
intellectual disquisition, he is quietly taking
the length and breadth of your very soul.
He is watching yourself, not the muddy
flow of your ideas. Your thoughts pass
unheeded by, while the feeling that prompts
them and your habitual moods are shadow-
ed forth on his counsciousness, as on a
mirror.

These views of the functions o^ Imitation
may suggest an explanation of some of the
phenomena of Wit. Mirthfulness has been
claimed as an intellectual faculty, and its
functions supposed to be the perception of
differences, as the function of comparison
is the perception of analogies. The shrewd-
ness generally observed in humorous peo-
ple has probably assisted in forming this
opinion. Such an hypothesis accounts for
the smiles and laughter of mirthfulness as
nothing more than the natural language by
which many other of the emotions manifest
themselves when pleasurably excited. But
the sense of analogy would seem to be
merely a result of the operation of a pecu-
liar element of the reasoning faculty, which
takes cognizance of certain states or condi-
tions of things upon different sets of objects.
Analogy then is not a primary power of
perception, and in this view would need no
corresponding perception of differences,
more than is afforded by the non-action of
the element from which analogy itself flows.
The laughter too of mirthfulness, we think
observation will show to differ as much from
the manifestations of the other emotions,
as the sardonic smile of mingled destiuc-
tiveness and self-esteem does from the Cu-
pid's bow set on the lips by the placidity of
approbativeness.

Sheer wit, we would consider as the
manifestation of the various intellectual
powers. It produces no mirth or merri-
ment, but only a sense of satisfaction,
such as is felt at any well demonstrated
proposition or lucid train of reasoning.
Of this nature were the conceits of the
early English poets and dramatists, which
were in bad taste, since they were merely
intellectual, and could give no assistance
in the dramatic representation of feeling.
But when Imitation brings up the mani-
festations of the emotions as objects or
facts, then from their congruity starts out
the flame of ideality, and from their in-

congruity proceeds galvanically the lam-
bent fire of mirth. This is humor ^ having
all the warmth and life of feeling. But
mirthfulness may be largely developed when
Imitation is not equally active to furnish
the conditions, or the conditions may be
there when mirthfulness is not in a cor-
responding degree excited. From this
arises two varieties of humorous manifesta-
tion. In one the humor is ever ready,
easily reproduced for the purposes of nar-
ration, and accompanied by great shrewd-
ness (the off-spring of Imitation) but the
mirth is less intense ; in the other there is a
comparative dullness in-receiving humorous
impressions, and an incapability of convey-
ing them to others, but the most acute enjoy-
ment when once the perception is aroused.
These distinctions are well illustra-
ted in the national English and Irish
characteristics. Irish drollery has in
it more of readiness and shrewdness than
of merriment. It is perennial — not kept
only for companionship, but as inseparable
from the Irishman as his shillelah. It is
his fashion of thought, and is as constant
to him in depression and sorrow and sick-
ness, as in festivity and the joyousness of
health. Imitation is a striking trait in
the Irish character ; it shows itself in the
national blarney, in their quick and hearty
sympathy., in their quick assimilation with
all circumstances and people, and in their
tendency to dissimulation. The English-
man on the other hand, is slow to compre-
hend the conditions of humor, but when
once perceived, his mirth and enjoyment
are obstreperous. He consequently de-
lights in broad farce, and in all humorous
literature in which these conditions are
most palpable. "His wit's an oyster
knife that hacks and hews,'' and he can
never attain the quizzing drollery (although
he affects it) of the sister isle, nor the
well-hidden sarcasm of the Frenchman.
Mirthfulness is largely developed in the
English, and Imitation correspondingly
deficient. Its want is manifested in the
brutality of the manners of the lower classes
in spite of the sterling national qualities, in
their solitary habits, in the insolation of
character observed in individuals, in their
coldness of address where there is really no
coldness of heart, and by a shrinking from
the display of anything like feeling to a
degree that would simulate the absence of

202

Moreirs Argument against Tlirenology.

August,

cordiality ; unlike tlie Iiishinan, who feels
iustiuc lively the degree to which friendli-
ness and good-feeling may be made ap-
parent, and is gracefully and naturally
hearty.

This organ is deficient in all the Anglo-
Saxon race ; their habits of patient drudg-
ery and secluded thought are checks to its
developement But wherever climate or
the easy means of subsistence create aver-
sion to mental or bodii}- occupation, men
congregate, not for conversation but for in-
tercourse. As the dreamy hours float by,
each mood of the soul as it is aroused in
the breast of one is communicated to the
others, and thus cloud after cloud rises and
passes away, covering with the same lights
and shadows the whole moral horizon.
Hence the nations of the South 'of Europe
have this power in a marked degree. The
negro has it ; he gained it beneath his na-
tive palms, as he idled through the sultry
day or danced and sang away the night.
On our shores it gives him his pliant sup-
ple nature — his docility, bending to the
harsher vi^ror of his white master. It is
manifested in his mimicry, his fondness for
caricatm'e, and in the constant allusions in
the songs and melodies of his race to the
natural lano-uao-e and habits of the brute
creation.

The North American Indian has it ; the
long periods of idleness between the labors
of the chase, and the absence of intellec-
tual pre-occupation afford room for its
growth. He, too, like the African, finds
acute enjoyment in the caricature that the
natural language of animals present to
the same feelings in men. From this fa-
culty together with his native dignity
arises the good breeding of the red man.

In the white inhabitants of the Southern
States it is strongly marked, and produces
in conjunction with their other sectional
characteristics, their suave and winning cor-
diality. North of Mason and Dixon's
line, though there is less leisure, there is
more collision, and we accordingly find the
marks of this trait in the universal good
humor and consideration of the American
character.

In young children this faculty assumes
the appearance of roguishness. In the
brute creation it becomes the gregarious
instinct. By its mysterious power, my-
riads of wild animals on prairies and pam-

I pas and South African plains are moved at
I once, electrically and by a common im-
pulse. It swells in the notes of songsters
and beams in the serene eyes of grazmg
kine.

As we write this, a group of children
, beneath the window are romping with a
dog. He has a stick in his mouth which
the children try to take from him. He
waits till the little crowd come close to him
and almost seize the stick, then twists out of
their clutches, and amid shouts and laugh-
ter, tears over the grass. Now he awaits
their onset, his eyes starting out of his head
I with delight. There is Imitation and
Mirthfulness for you ! What mute merri-
ment ! There is nothing cynical in his
laugh at any rate. He understands the
fun, and the children understand him, and
together they converse in the heartiest and
freshest and oldest of tongues.
'' If you would witness these colloquies of
the humbler creation, seek the fields and
j crawl through thicket and hazel to the foot
of some tree where a fl )ck of crows are
, holding ther noon-day caucus ! How they
peck and flout and claw each other !
What gratulations ! What chatterino; and
clattering on everyside ! What nods and
I becks and wreathed smiles ! Here sits a
; grave circle of seniors in debate on the
prospects of the commonwealth, and every
man talking at once. Here is a group of
: youngsters, gibing, tumbling, sparring ;
on that branch is an incipient flirtation —
, 3'onder another plainly progressing to its
i fruition; above us is an orator addressing
; the meeting — a sly looking feUow pulls him
i by the tail, he loses his balance and turns
j a somerset among the twigs. Then what
a hoarse cackle bursts forth ! what shouts
and cawings ! even the elders join in the
joke and croak grimly.

While imitation is in this way necessary
for the action of mh'thfulness, it is in the
same manner conducive to a frame of mind
of a very different cast. Punishment in a
future world has been thought to consist
in a complete unfolding to the memory, of
the thoughts, scenes, transactions, secret
wishes and open transgressions of a life-
time. This chaos of contending passions,
the good torn with remorse for the evil it
has permitted, and sighing over the truth
j it has neglected, the evil regretting the
' good it unwillingly allowed and still gnaw-

1850.

MorelVs Argument against Phrenology.

203

ing over each malign purpose left iinac-
complished, would be a Pandemonium in
the breast of every man to which physical
tortures could add no sting. A similar
state of mind is produced, not with regard
to time past but time present, by the facul-
ty we are discussing. This very pliability
brings up at the same moment the most
opposite and distracting moods. The same
incongruity that creates mirth, produces
along with it, a jar and clash of pain, re-
sulting not from mirthfulness itself, but
from the contrariety of feeling which is its
condition. We believe that, universally,
humor cannot exist without the sense of
repulsiveness — the skeleton at the feast.
To be able to soar into the region of truth
and honor and ideal beauty, and with equal
facility, and almost at the same moment to
wallow in the sty of the sensualist, to rise
with Plato in worship of the good and beau-
tiful, and in the very instant to sneer with
the ribald and the debauched, now with
heroes looking boldly at death and laugh-
ing, now viewing with pale lips the narrow
grave and its skeleton, such heart music as
this is the moaning of threatening ruin, con-
fusion, madness.

Such was Swift. Each impulse of good
was met by a taunt from the fiend within
him, each malign and unholy thought was
sighed over by the lingering good, each
jest that set the table in a roar was a wail
of agony from his diseased heart. The
tree could never live with such hurricanes
howling through its branches, but withered
at the top.

Humorous men are always subject to
terrible fits of depression, which is not re-
action, for the gayety of mirthfulness is
very different from the gayety of health
and animal spirits. It is the workings of
this faculty. To this also may be ascribed

the gloom and waywardness of the irritahile
genus — the miserable desponding lives of
men of genius.

Reader, knowest thou the hum that the
labor of men sends echoino; through nature }
the dim unsyllablcd sounds traversing the
fields of air, rising frem busy handcrafts
aiound us } Even on western plains,
where each man"'s home is an island in the
grassy wilderness, where the nearest plough-
man seems a crawling speck, even there
the fine vibrations quiver, although our
careless apprehension may notice nothing
but the most absolute quiet ; for when the
Sabbath lifts the curse of toil from weary
shoulders, the murmur ceases. The still-
ness becomes brooding and solemn — it is
the thanks of resting millions.

This silence, the hush of the Sabbath
morn, resembles the lives of one of the two
great classes we have been describing.
Few sounds reach them in their seclusion,
but, shut out from the living and breathing
world, they are hermits in the midst of
crowds. They see action, wrong-doing,
suffering, the strivings and wrestlings of
men, but the clue of all this movement,
the spirit that moves the whole is never re-
vealed to their clouded apprehension. In
loneliness they live, in equal solitude they
die.

But often circumstances have hidden the
native talent, and opportunity alone is
wanting for development. Habits of ab-
straction, forced seclusion, a youth of books
will not wholly extinguish the fire — it still
smoulders on. After years may remove
the incubus, and then what a young and
infinite world becomes visible ! What new
regions — what inviting explorations ! How
the eager lips drink of the sparkling life !
But there are dregs in the cup. T. C. C.

204

Congressional Summary.

August,

CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY.

It is our melancholy duty to record the
death of General Zachary Taylor, President
of the United States. At thirty-five minutes
past ten of the evening of July 9, in the sixty-
sixth year of his age, President Taylor ex-
pired after a brief illness^ occasioned by ex-
posure on the fourth of July.

This event, so totally unexpected from the
well known vigor of health always enjoyed
by the President, has been met by the most
unequivocal and sincere regret from all parts
of the country, and from men of all parties.
None M'-ere prepared to see the veteran who
had passed through severe military duties in
the swamps of Florida, and on the plains of
Mexico, unharmed by bullet or pestilence,
struck down in the midst of his friends, and
in the high station to which his country had
raised him.

The sincerity of purpose, and unbending
rectitude of President Taylor, had drawn out
not only the attachment of those of his own
political principles, but the respect and confi-
dence of his warmest opponents. The unaf-
fected symplicity of his character, and his re-
publican plainness of manners, contrasted with
the greatness of his military achievements,
had inspired in all hearts a pride in him as
being the man of the times. We fully believe
that the grandeur of his public career, and
the unpretending integrity of his private life,
though acknowledged now, will only meet
with due appreciation from posterity. His
virtues are now partially concealed by
the rush of events into which the latter por-
tion of his life was thrown. But when the
present becomes history, what is now^ love for
an eminent fellow-ciiizen, will become en-
thusiasm for the republican chief.

His last words were : — " I am prepared ;
I have endeavored to do my duty."

In the elevation of General Zachary Taylor
to the Presidency; we see not only the virtues
of the man, but the presence of similar char-
acteristics in the people whose votes raised
him into power. We see not only the admira-
tion for military deeds, which proceeds from
the element of ardor and enterprise, that the
votes of the youth of our country give to our
national institutions, but the straight-forward
views, and the home-lovins: habits of the

great body of our fellow-citizens. The quiet
parlor at the White House was the home, not
only of President Taylor, but of the genius of
ihe American people. Few men rise into
power except by embodying in their own per-
sons, the thoughts, opinion, or wishes of those
with whom the power rests. Here lies the
source of the universal sorrow that chilled the
whole country on the death of our late Presi-
dent. Zachary Taylor, with all his military
renown, would have been out of place at the
head of the French republic; with all his plain-
ness and freedom from ostentation, he would
never have suited the earlier revolutionists of
the same nation. As much as the sober, law-
abiding, conservative liberty of our people
differs from the revelry and license of that
period, does President Taylor differ from their
sans cullottes chiefs ; and for like reasons, the
republican simplicity at Washington could
never degenerate into the splendor of the Court
of Versailles.

The same stern virtues and simple dignity
that early Rome demanded in her generals
and civic leaders, mitigated in this age by a
higher civilization, have raised to the presi-
dency the mild and kind-hearted^ but resolute
man that a nation now mourns.

The following judicious observations, taken
from the Literary World of July 20, show the
singular degree in which the feelings of the
country had become enlisted in the welfare of
its first citizen :

'■One of the most aflTecting incidents we
have heard connected with the death of Gene-
ral Taylor, that great event w^hich has, more
than any similar incident of many years,
touched the heart of the American community,
is the circumstance of crowds of the country
people flocking to the railway stations to as-
certain if this sudden report could be true.
This individualizes to our minds the interest
in the late President felt by the masses, which
seems vague and indefinite, abstract and re-
mote, when spoken of simply as felt by the
country. The nation collectively does feel
this calamity, but in this incident we have a
glimpse of the people who compose the coni-
munity. We see the men coming from their
houses and from their labors, seeking news of
a personal friend, and we may imagine some

1850.

Congressional Summary.

among them grieving as if a part of their own
life had been taken from them. To each, Pre-
sident Taylor had appeared a revival of the
great first incumbent of the office. They saw
in him, and the thought at least did honor to
their hopes and wishes, the inheritor of the
virtues of George Washington. They had
laved to couple the names together and trace
the parallel in their lives and fortunes. There
were grounds for the suggestion of resem-
blance. Both were remarkable, not merely
for their military and civic worth, but for the
same modesty and sincerity in its manifesta-
tion. Talking with neither at Washington
would you have been likely to to be reminded
of the soldier. They did not carry the mili-
tary man out of the camp or battle field.
Members of a profession, the military, the
most prone to public display and the exercise
of personal vanity, — a profession living on
the breath of popular admiration in proportion
as it is essentially unsupported by the healthy
natural instincts of society — neither bore about
him that atmosphere of egotism apt to invest
great popular commanders. People heard no
trumpetings from Washington of Trenton, or
from Taylor of Buena Vista. The latter can
afford to throw discredit on the horrors of war
— as he did. A consequence of this modera-
tion regarding his military calling is seen in
the notices written of him since his death.
His friends seem to have forgotten his brilliant
Mexican victories in their consideration of him
as a ma.n, a lover of justice, of moderation, of
simple habits, the firm patriot and Protector of
the Union, — the President of the whole Ame-
rican People. His memory, it is felt, does not
need the tinsel glorification of ordinary mili-
tary fame.

'' The public view of President Taylor of
late was blended with the consideration of the
peculiar state questions in which his office
was connected. It will now return to the man
as he first became known to the people in the
half-forgotten epithet, "OldZack." His dough-
ty resolution, his courage, his honesty, his
plain sincerity, his simple " rough and ready"
manners, come back to us as we recall the
time when the whole nation hung in suspense
upon his movements in a foreign land, with
his isolated band of our countrymen in Mex-
ico ; when he was in danger and in peril, and
the perplexities of statesmanship at home
would have been aggravated by his defeat, —
but that defeat was never heard of. Still he
fought on and fought it out, repaired all the
errors of the campaign by victory, and still
remained the placid, calm Zachary Taylor,
with not a trace of egotism or vanity about
him. It was felt that enough of the man lay
under the soldier to support the civilian, and
that such virtues were useful to any station.
They were fast proving so in the capital,

205

amidst the most important trials of the State.
When familiarity with public business had ri-
pened his self-confidence, he would, we may
be assured, have stood more prominently for-
ward in the State, and have held no indistinct
position, whatever the cost, in the mainte-
nance of every sound principle of morals and
right, before the public eye."

At a meeting of the Historical Society, in
New York, President Charles King, of Colum-
bia College, made the following eloquent re-
marks :

The fact that such a man presided over the
country — when Disunion raised its hideous
head, was of itself a guarantee — slaveholder as
he was, that he would not permit the Republic
to receive any detriment, and although men, the
most eminent among the statesmen of our
country, took other views — not to say conflict-
ing views — the confidence, that having tho-
roughly deliberated upon the policy adopted
by him, the President would adhere to it, re-
lieved the question of much embarrassment,
and the public mind of much anxiety. Repo-
sing with entire faith in this conviction, I was
startled, as by the voice of an earthquake, and
almost with the earthquakes' ominous por-
tent, at the annunciation of General Taylor's
death.

It would be unseasonable wholly on this
occasion, and to such an audience quite super-
fluous, to dwell upon the military career of
Gen. Taylor. It is too brilliant, as well as
too recent, to require anything more than this
partial allusion to it, as developing the virtues,
the moderation, and the humanity of high
Christian civilization and morality, not less
signally than the martial qualities of valor and
enterprise in battle, and of fortitude and self-
reliance in all privation and difficulties.

Returning laurel-crowned and victorious
from a foreign war, he was hailed, from his
first landing on his native strand, as the future
President. With what unaffected modesty he
received these new honors — how scrupulously
he abstained from any and every step that might
look like seeking this high office — how calmly
and how simply, when installed as President,
he bore his honors — how resolutely he has
encountered the urgent claims of the station
upon all his faculties — and with what truly
national views he had inaugurated his admin-
istration— I need not attempt to recite. But
when contrasting the universal trust in him,
to carry the country triumphantly through its
difficulties — with the suddenness and the com-
pleteness of his overthrow from the summit of
earthly power — we reflect upon our shivered
hopes and frail human reliances — we may
exclaim with the eloquent French preacher,
" God alone is great ;" and although, in the
presumption of human success, we be too lit-

206

Congressional Summary.

August,

tie minilful of this truth, it is most irresistibly-
brought home to every heart by one such sig-
nal demonstration as that we are now called to
mourn.

I confess myself, sir, to have been, and still
to be deeply moved by this most unexpected
and most lamented death. With no other in-
terest now in political men and political events
than such as belongs to every citizen of a Re-
public— and, albeit, withdrawn, most happily
for myself, fiom the public arena, W'here for
so many years I was an earnest combatant, I
yet had not been unmindful of the scenes pass-
ing at Washington. What American, loving
his country, could be '? But I had been little
excited by them, and not at all by the hot
breath of Disunion, sent forth by turbulent
agitators at the seat of Government — living in
their own little circle, heating each other by re-
ciprocal action — and uttering the cries of their
crazy fanaticism as though it w^ere the great
voice of the people. I knew that the masses
were sound — and that, however politicians
might rave, they could not and would not be
permitted to shake the glorious fabric of our
Union.

I trusted in these masses — and I trusted, too,
in that single-hearted patriotic brave old sol-
dier, whom the unerring instinct of those
masses had called from the field to the Execu-
tive chair. Other men there w^ere of all par-
ties, better known and more eminent than he,
as trained and practised statesmen — but none
of those in so great a degree as he, took hold
of the popular heart, and inspired it with the
confidence, that in the Presidential chair, as at
Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and Buena Vis-
ta, he would be master of himself, and, there-
fore, probably master of events.

In presence of the two Houses of Congress,
Mr. Webster spoke in eulogy of President
Taylor, to the following effect :

At a time w^hen remarkable health and hap-
piness is enjoyed throughout the whole coun-
try, it has pleased Divine Providence to visit
the Houses of Congress with repeated occa-
sions of mourning and lamentation. Since
the commencement of the Session, we have
follow^ed tv/o of our members to their last
home ; and we are now called upon to take a
part in the solemnities of the funeral of the
President of the United States. Truly has a
great man fallen among us. The late Presi-
dent, a soldier by profession, after a splendid
career of military service, had, at the close of
the war with Mexico, inspired the people of
the United States with such a regard and con-
fidence, that, without solicitation, or devious
policy, without turning a hair's breadth from
the path of duty, the popular vote and voice
conferred upon him the highest civil authority
in the nation. We cannot forget that the pub-
lic feeling was carried away in a degree by

the eclat of military renowm. A high respect
for noble feats of arms has ever been found
in the hearts of the members of a popular
government. But it was not to this alone
that President Taylor ow^ed his acceptability
wnth the people and his advancement to high
civil trust. •'! believe," said Mr. Webster,
" that, associated with these qualities, ther^
w^as spread throughout the community a high
degree of confidence and faith in the integrity
and honor and uprightness of the man, I
believe he was especially regarded as both a
firm and mild man, in the exercise of authori-
ty. And I have observed more than once in
this, and in other popular governments, that
the prevalent motives with the masses of man-
kind, for conferring high power on individu-
als, is a confidence in their mildness. Their
parental protection is regarded as a sure and
safe character. The people naturally feel safe
where they feel themselves to be under the
control and protection of sober council — men
of impartial minds, and a general paternal su-
perintendence. I suppose, sir, that no case
ever happened in the very best days of the
Roman Republic, where any man found him-
self clothed with the highest authority in the
State, under circumstances more repelling all
suspicion of personal application, all suspicion
of pursuing any crooked path in politics, or
all suspicion of having been actuated by sin-
ister view^s and purposes, than in the case of
the worthy, and eminent, and distinguished,
and good man, whose death w^e now deplore."

Mr. Seward's speech in Senate, July 2,
1850. The Compromise Bill being under
consideration, Mr. Seward having the floor,
spoke to the following effect :

If an alien in our land were to enter here
during these debates, he w^ould ask whether
California was a stranger and an enemy, or
an unwelcome intruder, or a fugitive, power-
less, and importunate, or a dangerous oppres-
sor. California is none of this. She has
yielded to persuasion, and not to conquest;
she has delivered to us the treasures of the
eastern world ] but she refuses to allow us to
buy and sell each other within her domain.
This is the head and front of her offending.

The President of the United States recom-
mends that California shall be admitted un-
conditionally, while a committee of the Senate
insists on conditions.

I prefer, said Mr, Seward, the Presi-
dent's suggestion, not merely because it is the
President's, though he fully trusted in his
patriotism and wisdom, nor out of disrespect
to the statesmen by whom it was opposed,
but because the proposed conditions w^ere un-
reasonable and oppressive in regard to Cali-
fornia. These conditions are the establish-
ment of a territorial government in New

1850.

Cong7'essional Summary.

207

Mexico, silent concerning slavery : the estab-
lishment of a like government at Washing-
ton; a compromise of a border dispute be-
tween New Mexico and Texas ; and some
collateral conditions respecting slavery in the
District of Columbia, the recapture of fugi-
tives, etc. It is not contended that California
needs the aid of those measures; but she is
avowedly taxed to carry in safety into port,
what would be utterly lost without such assist-
ance.

And why should California be subjected
to this embarrassment % She does not come
to us without right ; for she has a treaty
which is neither denied nor questioned. Her
necessities are great, for her anomalous con-
dition touches not only our sense of justice,
but our compassion. She is not the cause of
these difficulties, for she neither brought the
states into confederation, nor framed the con-
stitution ; she neither planted slavery in the
slave states, nor uprooted it in the free states;
she neither invades New Mexico with Texas,
nor resists Texas with New Mexico ; she
neither buys, sells, holds, emancipates, re-
claims, or harbors slaves ; she has neither
speech nor vote in this angry strife : she has
cut loose from the slight political connection
she had with Utah and New Mexico. The
slave states indeed insist on a right to colo-
nize new territory with a caste, but do not
deny that the community in such territory
may establish a constitution without a caste ;
and this, California, already colonized and
mature, has done for herself.

We have been told that California would
save time by yielding to this most unjust
combination, and the error of this hope has
been fully demonstrated. We have been told
that a minority in another part of the legisla-
ture might prevent her admission, and even
arrest the action of the general government.
But it must work in its own democratic and
constitutional way, or must cease to work at
all; for surely no one or more of the states
can assume the responsibility of bringing the
government to a dead stand by faction.

These conditions are equally unreason-
able in regard to Texas, New Mexico, Utah,
and the District of Columbia, for each of
these parties asks only a just award, and
Congress is to be deemed ready to make a just
one and no other. The incongruous combina-
tion of these claims seems adapted to enable
senators to speak on one side and vote for the
other; to promote the Wilmot proviso, and
yet defeat its application to the only terri-
tories open to its introduction.

While I leave, said Mr. Seward, the
interests of Texas in the care of her honor-
able and excellent senators, I must be al-
lowed to think that their consent to this bill be-
trays a want of confidence in her claims or in

the justice of Congress. A just claim ought not
to need an unjust combination. Those who as-
sume that Texas has a valid title to all of New
Mexico east of the Rio Grande, as high as
the 42d parallel, will necessarily regard that
state as surrendering, for a pecuniary equiva-
lent, an extensive region effectively secured
to slavery, to the equivocations of this com-
promise. Those, on the contrary, who re-
gard the pretensions of Texas in New Mexico
as groundless, will as certainly protest against
the surrender of 70,000 square miles of soil
pregnant with liberty to the hazards of this
adjustment. Both of these parties, I think,
must agree that the United States ought not
to pay Texas the equivalent unless her title
is good, and that if her title is good, then the
United States have no constitutional power to
buy her territory. If they may buy a part of
Texas for purposes not defined in the consti-
tution, they may buy the whole. If they
may buy the territory of a slave state to
make it free, they may equally buy the soil
of a free state to sterilize with slavery. If
it be replied that the title is in dispute, then
the transaction changes character. The equi-
valent is paid for peace, and Texas is not
yet lifted up so high, nor the United States
brought down so low, as to obtain my con-
sent to so humiliating a traffic.

He could vote, the senator continued,
to pay the debt of Texas, on the ground
that the repudiation in the agreement of an-
nexation was fraudulent. But Texas prefers
that we should buy domain and dominion
from her rather than pay her debts. She
must satisfy us then concerning the cardinal
points in the bargain, viz : First, The reason-
ableness of the amount to he 'paid. Second,
The value of tJie equivalent. Third, The title
of the vendor. Fourth, The use to which the
territory is to be applied.

The amount to be paid in the bill of com-
promise is set down in blank, and the blank
kept open. We are obliged to assume that
Texas is to be paid more than her claim is
worth, since she will not trust to a distinct
and independent negociation. The payment
is a condition of the admission of California ;
and thus we see California the desire of the
nation and the envy of the world, chaffering
with money-changers and stock-jobbers to
obtain her admission into the Union.

The extent and value of the acquisition
are equally unsatisfactory. When the ques-
tion is on the sum to be paid, Texas owns
nearly all New Mexico, but when it comes on
the domain to be obtained, it turns out that
we are to cede to Texas a part of that pro-
vince to save the rest. Surely if we concede
to Texas the admiration her representatives
require, they must admit that she knows how
to coin our admiration into gold.

208

Congressional Summary,

August,

Concerning tlie title, it is beyond dispute
that the territory which Texas offers, was
from time immemorial^ an integral part of
New Mexico; that not an acre of it was ever
in ;^the possession of Texas, either by bar-
gain, by conquest, or by treaty concession ;
and that the Uiiited States found it in the pos-
session of New Mexico, conquered, bought it,
and holds it by treaty solemnly executed.
Texas, it is true, asserted in 1826, by a law
on her statute-book^ that her boundary should
be the 42d parallel; that is, she declared her
purpose to conquer so much of New Mexico.
But this purpose she never executed, she came
into the Union without it, and her statute
was, therefore, mere brutem fiihnen. The
United States, in the articles of annexation,
refused to commit themselves to the claim of
Texas. Subsequently the United States
waged war against Mexico, not for the claim
of Texas, but for other causes, and being thus
engaged, accepted New Mexico and Califor-
nia^ as indemnities for the expenses of the
contest, after paying fifteen millions of dollars
for their excess in value. Thus the United
States, free from obligation to Texas, acquired
the territory of New Mexico, making the con-
quest and paying the whole consideration
alone. The claim of Texas is as groundless
in equity, as by the strict rules of law; it is
as good to the whole of California as to New
Mexico.

With regard to the purposes to which the
territory is to be applied, the proposition is
equally unsatisfactory. New Mexico is free
soil now by the operation of unrepealed JMexi-
can laws ; the bill might raise a doubt upon
that subject. I prefer, said Mr. Sew^ard, to
leave New Mexico as it is.

Every phase of this compromise exhibits
injustice to New Mexico, and a dismemberment
of her territory, for which she receives no equi-
valent. Texas already possessing a vast and
fertile domain, is to be still further enriched at
the expense of New Mexico, less extensive
and comparatively sterile. This perversion of
right proceeds upon the ground that either
New Mexico has no certain title, or that she
has no political government to defend it. But
this province was a distinct colony of Spain.
She was a State in the Republic of Mexico,
and afterwards a political territory in that Re-
public. She has domain, population, resour-
ces and qualified dominion, arts, customs, laws,
and religion. She has all of the elements of
greatness, subordinate to the United States,
but nevertheless distinctly apart from other
communities. Pressed by the encroachments
of Texas, and by the jealousy of the slave
States, she implores from us the protection of
her territory and of her constitution. Her an-
cient charter contains the glowing words esta-
blished by the consent of mankind^ and which
Jefferson has made our own ;

'All men naturally were born |free, and
were by privilege above all the creatures, born
to command and not to obey earthly authority,
not derived from their own consent.'

That charter is in our own hands. If we
erase this principle, and give it back to New
Mexico, a mutilated and lifeless thing, we
shall have repeated the crime of the partition
of Poland, the crime of the subversion of the
recent Republic of Italy, the crime of the Stu-
art who seized the charters of the free corpo-
rations of England, and lost a throne, and of
the Guelph who interpolated taxation without
representation into the constitution of Britain,
and lost a continent. It would be an act so
unjust and tyrannical, that upon the principles
of our separation from Great Britain, it would
forfeit our title altogether.

But it is said the ordinance of '87 is unne-
cessary in New Mexico, and therefore is an
abstraction, and that it gives oftence. I can-
not, said Mr. Seward, yield implicit faith to
those who assure me that the peculiarities of
soil and climate in New Mexico exclude slave-
ry. They are combined with other statesmen
who deny that point ; while this bill itself ex-
pressly concedes it, by covenanting to admit
New Mexico as a slave State should she come
in that character. There are slaves at this
moment in Utah, and a benevolent purpose
cannot be conceded to arguments which knit
contradictions as closely as words can lie to-
gether. All promulgations of rights are ne-
cessarily abstractions. Our Declaration of In-
dependence and the Constitution of the United
States are full of such abstractions; the con-
stitutions of some of the slave States contain
them, hopefully looking to future realization.
The abstraction now in question is the right
of all the members of a State to equal politi-
cal freedom. That is the Wilmot proviso —
the proviso of freedom. It can be renounced
safely nowhere, certainly not in New Mexico,
which is the very field of contest. It is the
vantage ground of freedom, and if we surren-
der here, where else shall we make resistance ^
We have taken a breathing spell from An-
nexation of Territory, to divide the gains.
This division once made, no matter how, the
national instinct — an instinct fostered by de-
mocratic sentiments and sympathies, and in-
vigorated by martial ambition, will huiry us
on in a career that presents scarce formidable
obstructions. Whatever seemed attractive to
the Slave States in Louisiana, in Florida, in
Texas, in New Mexico and in California, is
surpassed in the Valley of Mexico, in Yuca-
tan, in Cuba, in Nicaragua, in Guatemala and
in other States of Central America. There are
fields native to the Tobacco plant, to the Rice
plant, to the Cotton plant, and to the sugar
cane and the tropical fruits ; and there are even
mines of silver and of gold. There the cli-
mate disposes to indolence; indolence to luxu-

1850.

Congressional Summary.

211

ry, and luxury to Slavery. There, those who
can read the Wilmot Proviso only in the rigors
of perpetual winter, or in arid sands, will fail
to discern its inhibition. Our pioneers are al-
ready abroad in these inviting regions. Our
capital is making passages through them from
ocean to ocean ; and within ten years these
passages will be environed by American com-
munities, surpassing in power and wealth, if
not in numbers, the unsettled and unenterpri-
sing States now existing there. You will say
that National moderation will prevent further
Annexation. But National moderation did not
hold us back from the Mississippi, nor from
the Nueces, nor from the Rio Grande, nor from
the coast of the Pacific ocean. The virtue
grows weaker always as the nation grows
stronger.

"The demand of the Slave States for a divi-
sion line of 36** 30', or elsewhere across the
continent, between Slavery in the South and
Freedom in the North, betrays the near expec-
tation of these conquests. The domestic pro-
duction and commerce in slaves will supplant
the African slave trade, and new Slave States
will surround the Gulf of Mexico and cover
its islands. These new States, combined with
Slave States already existing, will constitute
a Slave Empire, whose seat of commerce on
the Crescent Levee will domineer not only
over the Southern portion of the continent, but
through the Mississippi and its far-reaching
tributaries, over the valley between the Alle-
ghaniesand the Rocky Mountains. This, Sir,
is the dream of the slaveholder, and this is the
interpretation thereof. I know full well that
it is woven of the stuff which all 'dreams are
made of:' I know how hopeless would be the
attempt to establish and to maintain such
States, and an Empire composed of such States.
But I know that nothing seems to Slavery im-
possible, after advantages already won, and
that calamities distant, and therefore divided,
will not deter it from the prosecution of its pur-
pose, or extinguish the hope of success."

Cherishing these opinions, said Mr. Sew-
ard, I have struggled hard to extend the ordi-
nance of '87 over New Mexico. Failing in
that, he should fall back, as in the case of Ca-
lifornia, and leave New Mexico to the protec-
tion of her ancient laws, deeming her more
safe than in the suspicious security of the com-
promise. This is non-intervention, but it is
compulsory, and not the non-intervention of
treachery. This is the plan proposed by the
President, who anticipated the present failure
from the known discordance of the two Houses
of Congress, as we all might well have anti-
cipated it.

Another condition in the bill of compromise,
relates to slavery in the District of Columbia.
This District, the offspring of the Republic, is
cherished equally by all the States ; but it

VOL. Vr. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

lacks, in the high position that the destinies
of the nation will give it. one element of pros-
perity, the freedom of labor, and one element
of greatness, the dignity of labor. Are these
great interests of the Capital to be kept down
by the weight of California — not California
by herself, for she would need no assistance,
but California loaded with the weight of your
gratuity to Texas, and of the suppression of
freedom in Utah and New Mexico %

The scheme of compromise has engrossed
the Senate six months to the exclusion of eve-
ry other measure. We have been driven and
harrassed into its consideration by alarms of
danger to the Republic. The Commonwealth
labored with wounds that threatened its safe-
ty. Let us then apply the probe to these
wounds, the first of which is the alleged neg-
lect to surrender fugitive slaves.

It has not been proved that three fugitives
a year are withheld against lawful demand.
Nay, said Mr. Seward, I think it is not
proved that even one is so withheld . The value
of slave property has not been impaired one
dollar. Where then is the evil ] The people of
the free States hesitate at the execution of the
act of 1793 among them, without an adequate
provision for distinguishing between the real
fugitive and the free citizen. The remedy pro-
posed is to allow, after surrender, a trial to
the alleged fugitive in the State to which he
is conveyed ; a remedy which will only serve
to aggravate the evil. Are we then prepared
to confess that this proud Republic approaches
its downfall because a slave sometimes finds
refuge under it in spite of its laws'?

The next of these evils is the agitation of
slavery in the District of Columbia, There
are only a thousand slaves here, all told. The
people of the free States remonstrate against
this bondage, but wait patiently until the mind
of the nation can be moved to abolish it. The
bill proposes to stop the traffic in slaves, and
in lieu thereof, to exact a guarantee for the
continuance of slavery. This is healing the
wound by plunging the knife more deeply
in.

The next evil is the encroachment of Texas
upon new Mexico. Well, we will leave the
territory of New Mexico in the keeping of the
President, and her free institutions to the care
of her own people, until she can come here as
a State, and demand admission into the Union.

The fourth of these disasters is the solitude
of 10,000 Mormons in the basin of the Salt
Lake. But this solitude is of their own
choosing ; and w^hen they have gathered a
population adequate to sustain a State Gov-
ernment, they can establish one ; and, in the
meantime, they are living under the protection
of our laws and arms.

The only real wound, then, upon the body
politic is, the suspension of California, and

212

Congressional

Summary.

August

this the President proposes" to us to heal im-
mediately, and by itself alone.

Still, it is said that the country is irritated
and distracted. The country is neither irri-
tated nor excited, but worried and become im-
patient by our own delays.

But it is replied, the slavery question must
be settled. The slavery question never can
be settled, at least by this bill. Slavery and
Freedom are conflicting systems, brought to-
gether by the union of the States, but not
harmonized nor neutralized. Their antagon-
ism is radical, and therefore perpetual. In
entering the career of conquest, you have
kindled to a fierce heat the fire you seek to
extinguish, by throwing into them the fuel of
Propagandism — the propagandism of slavery,
and the propagandism of freedom — and on
neither side can it be arrested. The sea is co-
vered with exiles, and they swarm over the
land. Emigration from all quarters of the
globe goes on. and must go on, in obedience
to laws higher than the Constitution. They
form continuous, unbroken processions of co-
lonists, founders of States, builders of nations;
and wherever colonies, states, or nations are
founded, labor is always there, and commen-
ces its strife for freedom and power. "You may
slay the Wilmot proviso in the Senate Cham-
ber, and bury it beneath the capitol to-day,
the corse in complete steel will haunt your
legislative halls to-morrow.

When the strife is ended in the territories
you now possess, it will be renewed on new
fields ; for both of the parties know, there is
' yet the word hereafter.' "

We subjoin the following Resolutions, as
unanimously adopted on the 10th of June, by
the Convention at Nashville. They seem to
present two alternatives for the settlement of
the controversy, viz. :

The early enactment by Congress of such
laws as may be necessary and expedient to
secure to the slaveholder wishing to emigrate
to the territories with his slaves, his rights of
ownership in them ; or a partition of the ter-
ritories between the sections of the country
upon the basis of the Missouri Compromise
line.

THE RESOLUTIONS.

1. Resolved, That the Territories of the United
States belong to the people of the several States
of this Union as their common property ; that the
citizens of the several States have equal rights to
migrate with their property to these Territories, and
are equally entitled to the protection of the Federal
Government in the enjoyment of that property so
long as the Territories remain under the charge of
that Government.

2. Resolved, That Congress has no power to
exclude from the territory of the United States any
property lawfully held in the States of the Union,
and any acts which may be passed by Congress to

affect this result is a plain violation of the Consti'
tution of the United States.

3. Resolved, That it is the duty of Congress to
provide governments for the Territories, since the
spirit of American institutions forbids the mainte-
nance of military governments in time of peace ;
and as all laws heretofore existing in Territories
once belonging to foreign powers which interfere
with the full enjoyment of religion, the freedom of
the press, the trial by jury, and all other rights of
persons and property as secured or recognized in
the Constitution of the United States, are necessa-
rily void so soon as such territories become Ame-
rican Territories, it is the duty of the Federal Gov-
ernment to make early provision for the enactment
of those laws which may be expedient and neces-
sary to secure to the inhabitants of and emigrants
to such Territories the full benefit of the constitu-
tional rights we assert.

4. Resolved, That to protect property existing
in the several States of the Union, the people of
these States invested the Federal Government with
the powers of war and negotiation, and of sustain-
ing armies and navies, and prohibited to State au-
thorities the exercise of the same powers. They
made no discrimination in the protection to be af-
forded or the description of the property to be de-
fended, nor was it allowed to the Federal Govern-
ment to determine what should be held as property.
Whatever the States deal with as property the Fe-
deral Government is bound to recognise and defend
as such. Therefore it is the sense of this conven-
tion that all acts of the Federal Government which
tend to denationalize property of any description
recognized in the constitution and laws of the
States, or that discriminate in the degree and effi-
ciency of the protection to be afforded to it, or
which weaken or destroy the title of any citizen
upon American Territories, are plain and palpable
violations of the fundamental law under which it
exists.

5. Resolved, That the slaveholding States can-
not and will not submit to the enactment by Con-
gress of any law imposing onerous conditions or
restraints upon the rights of masters to remove with
their property into the Territories of the United
States, or to any law making discriminations in
favor of the proprietors of other property against
them.

6. Resolved, That it is the duty of the Federal
Government plainly to recognize and firmly to
maintain the equal rights of the citizens of the sev-
eral States in the Territories of the United States,
and to repudiate the power to make a discrimina-
tion between the proprietors of different species of
property in the Federal legislation. The fulfil-
ment of this duty by the Federal Government would
greatly tend to restore the peace of the country and
to allay the exasperation and excitement which
now exists between the different sections of the
Union. For it is the deliberate opinion of this
Convention that the tolerance Congress has given
to the notion that Federal authority might be em-
ployed incidentally and indirectly or to subvert or
weaken the institutions existing in the States con-
fessedly beyond Federal jurisdiction and control,
is a main cause of the discord which menaces the
existence of the Union, and which has well nigh

1850.

Congressional Summary.

213

destroyed the efficient action of the Federal Go-
vernment itself.

7. Resolved, That the performance of this duty
is required by the fundamental law of the Union.
The equality of the people of the several States
composing the Union cannot be disturbed without
disturbing the frame of the American institutions.
This principle is violated in the denial to the citi-
zens of the slaveholding States of power to enter
into the Territories with the property lawfully ac-
quired in the States. The warfare against this right
is a war upon the Constitution. The defenders of
this right are defenders of the Constitution. Those
who deny or impair its exercise, are unfaithful to
the Constitution, and if disunion follows the de-
struction of the right, they are the disunionists.

8. Resolved, That the performance of its duties,
upon the principle we declare, would enable Con-
gress to remove the embarrassments in which the
country is now involved. The vacant territories of
the United States, no longer regarded as prizes for
sectional rapacity and ambition, would be gradu-
ally occupied by inhabitants drawn to them by
their interests and feelings. The institutions fitted
to them would be naturally applied by governments
formed on American ideas, and approved by the
deliberate choice of their constituents. The com-
munity would be educated and disciplined under a
republican administration in habits of self-govern-
ment, and fitted for an association as a State, and
to the enjoyment of a place in the Confederacy. A
community so iormed and organized might well
claim admission to the Union, and none would
dispute the validity of the claim.

9. Resolved, That a recognition of this princi-
ple would deprive the questions between Texas and
the United States of their sectional character, and
would leave them for adjustment without disturb-
ance from sectional prejudices and passions, upon
considerations of magnanimity and justice.

10. Resolved, That a recognition of this prin-
ciple would infuse a spirit of conciliation in the
discussion and adjustment of all the subjects of sec-
tional dispute, which would afibrd a guaranty of
an early and satisfactory determination.

11. Resolved, That in the event a dominant ma-
jority shall refuse to recognize the great constitu-
tional rights we assert, and shall continue to deny
the obligations of the Federal Government to main-
tain them, it is the sense of this convention that the
Territories should be treated as property, and di-
vided between the sections of the Union, so that
the rights of both sections be adequately secured
in their respective shares. That we are aware this
course is open to grave objections, but we are ready
to acquiesce in the adoption of the line of 36* 30'
north latitude, extending to tlie Pacific ocean, as
an extreme concession, upon considerations of what
is due to the stability of our institutions.

12. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this con-
vention that this controversy should be ended,
either by a recognition of the constitutional rights
of the southern people, or by an equitable partition
of the Territories. That the spectacle of a con-
federacy of States, involved in quarrels over the
fruits of a war in which the American arms were
crov/ned with glory, is humiliating. That the in-

corporation of the Wilmot proviso, in the offer of
settlement — a proposition which fourteen States
regard as disparaging and dishonorable — is degra-
ding to the country. A termination to this con-
troversy by the disruption of the Confederacy, or
by the abandonment of the Territories to prevent
such a result, would be a climax to the shame which
attaches to the controversy which it is the para-
mount duty of Congress to avoid.

13. Resolved, That this convention will not
conclude that Congress will adjourn without ma-
king an adjustment of this controversy ; and in the
condition in which the convention finds the ques-
tions before Congress, it does not feel at liberty to
discuss the methods suitable for a resistance to
measures not yet adopted, which might involve a
dishonor to the Southern States.

The convention adjourned June 12, to
meet again in six weeks after the adjourn-
ment of the present Congress. On the last
day of their session, the convenlion adopted
an address to the following effect to the people
of Maryland, Virginia^ North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennes-
see, Kentucky, Lousiana, Texas, Missouri^
and Arkansas.

They had met together, they stated, in
obedience to the commands of those they re-
presented, to confer with each other concern-
ing the relation of the people of the Southern
States towards the general government, and
the non-slaveholding states of the Union, on
the subject of slavery.

It is sixteen years since this question and
the Southern rights connected with it, began
to be assailed in Congress. The agitation
was commenced by claiming the right to pe-
tition Congress on any subject whatever;
among the rest, those interdicted to the general
government by the constitution. But it was
clear that the right to petition a legislative
body must be limited by its powers of legisla-
tion, for a petition is only the first step in
legislation. No one can have a right to ask
of another to do what he has no moral or
legal right to do. Nor can any tribunal have
the power to receive and consider any matter
beyond its jurisdiction. The claim, therefore,
to present petitions on this subject, was con-
sidered as an attempt indirectly to assume
jurisdiction over slavery throughout the Union.
The ultimate object of their assailants was
the overthrow of slave institutions, but their
attacks were aimed chiefly at its existence in
the District of Columbia, and at the internal
slave-trade. Conscious of the fatal tendency
of this agitation in Congress, to destroy the
peace and stability of the Union, an effort
was made, supported by a large portion of the
Northern members, to suppress it by a rule in
the House of Representatives, which provided
that all petitions of this kind should be neither
considered, printed^ nor referred. This rule

214

Congressional Summary.

August,

was assailed by the North as an infringe-
ment on the right of petilion, and finally fell
before their almost unanimous voice, and
thus the unlimited power of introducing and
considering the subject of slavery in Congress
was asserted. But this was only one of the
means of agitation set on foot by the people
of the Northern States, Newspapers were set
up, and lecturers sent through the country to
excite it against the institutions of the South,
organizations were started to carry off slaves,
and to protect them by forcible means. Though
the Constitution of the United States requires
that fugitive slaves, like fugitives from jus-
tice, should be rendered up by the States to
which they may have fled, the legislatures of
every Northern State passed laws with the
expressed purpose of defeating this provision.
The agitation was even introduced into the
religious associations throughout the Union,
and produced a separation in the Baptist and
Methodist churches. Thus was an institu-
tion exclusively belonging to the South, wrest-
ed from its control, and instead of receiving
the protection due to it from the general
government, became the object of its unceas-
ing attack. On the breaking out of the Mexi-
can war, instead of the hearty co-operation of
all sections of the country, the North mani-
fested their intention of keeping up the agita-
tion by endeavoring to thrust the question of
slavery into the very first appropriation bill
for carrying on operations. On the close of
the war, an immense territory was added to
the United States. The previous threats were
realized, and the non-slaveholding States im-
mediately claimed to exclude the people of
the Southern States from all territory acquired^
and to appropriate it to themselves. This
pretension, arising not merely from a lust of
power, but from a settled purpose of abolish-
ing slavery by the multiplication of non-
slaveholding States in the Union, is as alarm-
ing as it is insulting. The Southern States
have consequently set forth with great unani-
mity, in their several legislatures, their rights
in the territories of the United States, and
have declared their determination to maintain
these rights, and the more effectually to effect
that purpose the present convention has as-
sembled.

These transactions now force upon our
attention the degraded position occupied by
the South in the councils of the country.
Their representatives daily insulted by the
most opprobious epithets directed to the insti-
tutions which they represent, slavery dragged
into every debate, and Congress become little
else than a grand instrument in the hands of
the abolitionists to degrade and ruin the
South. As States, the South has from its sis-
ter States denunciation and contumely ] as a
part of the Union, it has from the rest of

the Union aggression and robbery. They
are not to extend on account of their in-
stitutions, while the North are to increase
and multiply, that the shame of slavery by
their philanthropic efforts may be extinguished
from among you. But were the South to
yield everything the North now requires,
would their demands stop here'? These are
all means aiming at one great end — the aboli-
tion of slavery in the States. In fifty years,
twenty new non-slaveholding States may be
added, whilst many more which are now
slaveholding, may be joined to the list. Then
there will be no need to put aside the Consti-
tution to effect their grand purpose. The non-
slaveholding States will then have the power
by two-thirds in Congress, and three-fourths
of the States, to amend the constitution, and
thus have its express sanction to consummate
their policy.

But w^hile Northern aggressions have been
thus advancing, the South has adopted a suici-
dal course of action. They have been pas-
sive, will 1st their supporters and the defenders
of the constitution, in the Northern States, in
their efforts to protect them from the agitations
of slavery in Congress have been politically
annihilated, or have turned their foes. They
have tamely acquiesced, until to hate and ])er-
secute the South has become a high passport
to honor and power in the Union. They have
waited until the Constitution of the United
States has been virtually abolished — or, what
is worse, has become what the majority in
Congress think fit to make it. That great
principle which leaves to the general govern-
ment only what is general in its nature, and re-
serves for the local governments whatever is
local and sectional, is uprooted from the Con-
stitution, and Congress has become a section-
al despotism, totally irresponsible to the peo-
ple of the South, at the same time that it is
ignorant of its feelings, condition and institu-
tions.

If we look into the nature of things, such
results will not seem to be either new or
strange. There is but one condition in which
one people can be safe under the dominion of
another people, and that is when their interests
are entirely identical. Then the dominant
cannot oppress the subject people without
oppressing themselves. The identity of in-
terest between them is the security of right
government. Bat, as this identity can scaicely
ever exist between any two people, history
bears but one testimony as to the fate of the
subject people. They have always been com-
pelled to minister to the prosperity and aggran-
dizement of their masters. If this has always
been the case under the ordinary difference of
interests and feelings which exist between
States, how much more certainly must the ex-
perience of history be realized between the

1850.

Congressional Summary,

215

People of the Northern and Southern States.
Here is a difference of climate and productions
throughout a territory stretching along the
whole belt of the temperate zone, affecting the
pursuits and character of the people inhabit-
ing it. But the great difference — the one great
difference — the greatest which can exist among
a people — is the institution of slavery. This
alone sets apart the Southern States as a pe-
culiar people, with whom independence, as to
their internal policy, is the condition of their
existence. They must rule themselves or
perish. Every colony in the world, where
African slavery existed, with one exception,
has been destroyed ; and if this has been the
case under the old and effete governments of
Europe, will it not prevail under the dominion
of the restless people of the Northern States'?
They do not practically recognize the inferior-
ity of the African to the Caucasian race. They
do not realize, because the circumstances of
their condition do not compel them to realize,
the impossibility of an amalgamation between
the races. Exempt from the institution of
slavery, it is not surprising that their sympa-
thies should be against us, whilst the dogma
on which they profess to build their system of
free government — the absolute rule of the
majority — leaves no barrier to their power in
the affairs of the general government, and
leads them to its consolidation. Religion, too,
false or real, fires their enthusiasm against an
institution which many of its professors be-
lieve to be inconsistent with its principles and
precepts. To expect forbearance from such
a people, under such circumstances, toward
the institution of slavery, is manifestly vain.
If they have been false to the compact made
with us in the constitution, and have allowed
passion and prejudice to master reason, they
have only exemplified that frailty and infalli-
bility of our nature, which has produced the
necessity of all governments, and which, if
unchecked, ever produces wrong. The insti-
tution of slavery having once entered the po-
pular mind of the non-slaveholding States, for
action and control, the re^t is inevitable. If
unrestrained by us, they will go on, until Af-
rican slavery will be swept from the broad and
fertile South. The nature of things, there-
fore, independent of experience, teaches us
that there can be no safely in submission.

The limitations of the constitution are de-
signed for the protection of minorities, and
with the minority it rests to defend it when
assailed. The constitution does not protect
the majority, for they have all the powers of
government in their own hands, and can pro-
tect themselves. The South, by submission,
would as much betray their duty, as the North
by aggression.

In what way, then, shall they preserve the
constitution and secure their own safety '?

As a general rule, it is undoubtedly true that
when, in a government like ours, a constitu-
tion is violated by a majority — who alone can
violate it in matters of legislation, it cannot be
restored to its integrity through the ordinary
means of government, for those means being
under the control of the majority are not avail-
able to the minority. For this reason, frequent
elections of our rulers take place, that the
people, by their direct intervention, may
change the majority. But this is no longer a
resource to us, for our representatives have
been true to the trust confided to them, and
have done all that men can do to preserve the
constitution from assaults, while such is the
state of public sentiment at the North, that
every new election only serves to increase the
preponderance of the majority. The ballot-
box is at last powerless for the protection of
Southern interests. The present Congress has
been six months in session, and during that
time slavery has been the absorbing topic of
discussion. Yet nothing has been done to
heal the discontents which so justly exist at
the South. Its attention is now occupied
by the measures proposed in a report made by
a Committee of thirteen members. As these
measures have been pressed on the South as
worthy her acceptance, a brief consideration
of the matters they treat of is deemed proper.

This report embraces four distinct mea-
sures : — 1st, the admission of California as a
Slate, with the exclusion of slavery in her
constitution. 2d, territorial governments to
be erected over the territories of Utah and New
Mexico, with nearly one half of Texas to be
added to the latter. 3d, the prohibition of the
slave trade in the District of Columbia. 4th,
provisions for the recapture of fugitive slaves
in the non-slaveholding States.

The bill excludes the South from the whole
of that part of California lying on the Pacific,
including one hundred and fifty thousand
square miles of territory. This exclusion of
slavery is essentially the consequence of the
legislation of Congress, whether by direct ac-
tion or by confirming and carrying out the
pretensions of the individuals in that territory
who have appropriated the soil to themselves
and erected a government over it. The con-
stitution of California becomes the act of Con-
gress, and the Wilmot proviso it contains is
the Wilmot proviso passed and enforced by
the legislation of Congress. Had this consti-
tution, thus proposed by California, been silent
on the subject of slavery, would the North
have consented to her admission'? The terri-
torial bills brought forward for Califor-
nia at the last Congress were of this nature,
but they were rejected, because the South was
not excluded from this territory in express
terms. The people of California have in this
way been exposed to the inconveniences of

216

Congressional Summary,

August,

being left without a civil government, in con-
sequence of the determination of the South to
defend their o^n rights. Due allowance has
been made for these hardships, and in the re-
solutions submitted by the Convention of the
people of the Southern States, it is recom-
mended that California be admitted as a State
on certain conditions.

The next measure reported by the Commit-
tee of thirteen, relates to the boundary of
Texas and New Mexico. It takes from Texas
territory sufficient to form two large States,
and adds them to New Mexico. This province
is intended in another year to follow the ex-
ample of California, and to be admitted into
the Union with a constitution prohibiting sla-
very. Thus will territory, over which slavery
now exists, be snatched from the South and be
handed over to the non-slaveholding States.
The pretext for this is, that there is some doubt
as to the boundaries of Texas. But Texas, by
her laws when she was admitted into the
Union, had but one boundary, and that was
the Rio Grande. Congress, in the resolutions
of annexation, recognized the boundary by
laying down a line of limitation between the
slaveholding and non-slaveholding States fthe
Missouri compromise line), through that very
part of her territory, the right to which is now
questioned. To vindicate this boundary, the
Mexican war took place, and in the treaty of
Guadalope Hidalgo, it was finally settled be-
yond all doubt, by a clause designating the
Kio Grande as the boundary between Mexico
and the United States. Texas should, un-
doubtedly, be quieted as to her boundaries, but
it should be by a law plainly acknowledging
them. If, after such acknowledgment, the
general government should think proper to
purchase any territory from Texas, the ar-
rangement would be unobjectionable. But
any settlement of these difficulties which
would leave a shade of doubt as to the right
of the South to enter any portion of these ter-
ritories, neither Texas nor the general gov-
ernment have any right to make.

The country proposed to be surrendered
by Texas lies along the western frontier of
the Indian territory. This is now a slave-
holding section and properly is a part of the
South. Place alongside of this, two non-slave-
holding States, and slavery here will have

the same influence to encounter as in the
Southern States, with far less ability on the
part of the Indian to withstand them.

Another concession there is, which the
South is called upon to make, and not even to
the interest, but to the mere prejudices of the
North. Slavery existed in the District of Co-
lumbia, when Congress accepted the cession of
the territory composing it, from the States of
Maryland and Virginia. No one can suppose
that these States could ever have designed
to give Congress any power over the institu-
tion of slavery in this district, for independently
of the wrong done to the inhabitants, it would
be an intolerable evil to have a portion of ter-
ritory between them where emancipation pre-
vails by the authority of Congress. Never-
theless, the bill of Compromise proposes that
Congress should begin the work of emancipa-
tion, by declaring free every slave that is
brought into the district for the purposes of
sale.

For all these concessions to the North, the
South is to receive a return in the fugitive
slave bill. This bill, as it is proposed to
amend it, is quite inadequate to restore the
fugitive to his owner ; and in the second
place, is no concession on the part of the
North, as it gives the South no more than she
is entitled to. More than this, under pretext
of a benefit, it perpetrates a usurpation on the
reserved rights of the Slates. It provides that
a slave may arraign his master before the
courts of the State, and the United States, to
try his right to his freedom. This is virtu-
ally extending the jurisdiction of Congress
over slavery in the States.

The only compromise that the South could
accept without dishonor, was one that has
been already twice sanctioned. If the North
offers the Missouri compromise line to extend
to the Pacific Ocean, though they thereby gain
more than three-fourths of the vacant terri-
tory of the United States, they will have re-
nounced the insufferable pretension of restrict-
ing and preventing the extension of the South,
whilst they themselves should extend indefi-
nitely. The South should take this line as a
partition line between the two sections of the
Union, and, besides this, nothing but what the
Constitution bestows.

1850.

Critical Notices.

217

CRITICAL NOTICES.

The Fast, Present and Future of the Repuhlic.
Translated from the French of Alphonse do La-
martine. New York : Harper & Brothers,
1850.

This is a work written for the people of France :
for every person in France who can read the
French language ; explaining the system of the
Republic, explaining communism, taxation, suf-
frage ; in short, giving the citizen a correct idea
of his position as a republican and a voter, and
instructing him what he should do to maintain his
liberties. The principle of the book seems to be
expressed in the following, which we quote from
the 109th page.

" He who establishes order, multiplies money for
the people. He who foments disorder helps to
famish the people. As soon as this truth shall be
comprehended by the multitude, the wealth of the
people will be rediscovered. That day is not far
off."

This work is a powerful defence of Government,
founded on the fact of its iiecessity. We com-
mend it to every voter and tax-payer in America,
especially those who incline to socialistic doc-
trines.

Hume's History of England.
per & Brothers.

New York: Har-

A new and elegant edition of Hume's unequal-
led History, serial with Gibbon's Rome and the
small edition of Macaulay.

To understand the distinction between simplicity
of style and rude affectation, compare a passage
in one of Carlyle's late pamphlets, with Hume's
eulogy upon King Alfred, in the first volume of
this History.

Hand Book of Medieval Geography and History.
By WiLiiELM PuTz. Translated from the Ger-
man by the Rev. R. B. Paul, M. D. New
York: D. Appleton & Co.

This work is a rapid sketch or skeleton of the
history of the middle ages, with a body of ques-
tions annexed.

Mohammed, the Arabian Frophet ; a Tragedy in
five acts, by George H. Miles. Boston : Phil-
lips, Sampson & Co.

This is the famous tragedy for which Mr. Edwin
Forest gave one thousand dollars. It was selected

as the best out of an hundred. As a natural con-
sequence, on its appearance in print it is attacked
by the press, and condemned almost without a
hearing. For our own part, notwithstanding the
author has received one thousand dollars for his
work, we desire he may receive another thousand,
if that be possible, by the sale of it ; for we are
compelled to rank this tragedy above many that
have attained a great celebrity. Mr. Miles' versi-
fication is very perfect. In the management of the
tragic blank verse, he has not his superior in mod-
ern times. Since Coleridge, it is the best. The
structure of his tragedy is regular, and he follows
the best models in the composition of his plot.
He shows not only the complete scholar in the sub-
stance of his work, but the true artist in its con-
struction. To all these excellencies we have only
to add, that this tragedy of Mohammed is inter-
esting. Although the work of a young author,
it is full of genuine fire. The author compre-
hends the character of the ambitious and fanatical
hero, and paints it with remarkable force. For
those critics who can see nothing good in a work
of art produced on this side the Atlantic, Moham-
med will have no interest. We recommend the
reading of it, not to them, but to the readers of
fiction, properly speaking. Those who truly en-
joy poetry and the Drama ; — to them we are sure
the book will prove an acceptable present. We
take some credit to ourselves for having had the
courage to speak well of a book which has been
condemned in Boston, and the condemnation echo-
ed in New York — which has the misfortune to
have exactly ninety-nine implacable enemies, fa-
thers of the ninety-nine competitors rejected by
Mr. Forest, and worse than all, a circumstance
which seals its fate, received commendation in the
shape of a thousand dollar prize.

RemarTis on tho Colonization of the Western
Coast of Africa by the Free Negroes af the
United States, and the consequent civilization
of Africa, and suppression of the Slave Trade.
New York : W. L. Burroughs, 113 Fulton st.

The Farmer's Guide to Scientific and Practical
Agriculture. By Henry Stevens, F. R. S. E.,
author of the " Book of the Farm." Assisted
by John P. Norton, M. A., Professor of Scien-
tific Agriculture in Yale College, New Haven.
New York : Leonard Scott & Co. 1850.

This periodical, of which the fourth number is
before us, price 25 cents per number, contains, or

218

Critical Notices.

August,

will contain, every thing necessary to be known
by farmers for the most economical and success-
ful cultivation of their land. The present num-
ber is beautifully illustrated. It has the appear-
ance of being an English vrork re-printed in
America. As the directions in it are intended
chiefly for English farmers, and for the most ex-
pensive styles of farming, we know not how far
it may be valuable to the American husbandman.
There is nothing on the cover of this work to
indicate that it is English. To discover that, one
has to read the prospectus. We learn, by ex-
amining the prospectus, that it is a re-print ;
but the fact that it is a re-print ought to have
been honestly stamped upon the title page. In
the prospectus it is said, " The contributions by
Professor Norton will add greatly to the value of
the book by adapting it to the soil, climate,
growth, &c. of our own country," The labor
undertaken by Professor Norton, of adapting this
work to the soil, climate, growth, &c. of the va-
rious sections of our own country, cannot but be
enormous. Professor Norton's knwledge of agri-
culture, and of the various modes of cultivating
lands in all parts of the United States, we pre-
sume, must have qualified him for the important
duty which he has undertaken, of instructing the
American agriculturalist in the right methods of
producing the staff of life, and the substance of
food and clothing. Without such knowledge, no
man can adapt an English work of agriculture to
the uses of the American farmer.

The Life and Correspondence of Robert SoutJiey.
Edited by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert
SouTHEY. In six parts, 25 cts. each. New
York : Harper & Brothers. 1850.

Railway Ecomomy : a Treatise on the new art of
Transport. With an exposition of the Practi-
cal Results of Railways in all parts of the
world. Reprint. New York : Harper & Broth-
ers. 1850.

Dr. Lardner's experience as a writer, and his
remarkable skill in purloining valuable materials
from other writers, will doubtless ensure that this
work shall be one of the best of its kind. We
have here a thick volume of 420 pages, filled with
matter of extreme value and interest, without a
single reference to any other author or authority,
and yet we have not the least doubt that two-
thirds of it is appropriated. The laws of honor
and honesty seem to be gradually ceasing out of
existence among publishers and miscellaneous
authors. To steal literary matter has become
a conventional dishonesty, against which there
seems to be no protection, since editors gave
up being gentlemen. At the present rate at
which things are proceeding, it will soon be-
come impossible for either editors or publish-
ers to acquire property, unless it be under the
protection of an enormous capital : and this the
editors and publishers have brought upon them-
selves by falling into the vile habit of using oth-
er men's labor without acknowledgement. Hon-
esty is the sole protector of regular business j

dishonesty makes numbers poor, and a very few
immensely rich.

Six Months in the Gold Mines. From a Journal
of a three year's residence in Upper and Lower
California. By E. Gould Buffum, Lieut. First
Regiment New York Volunteers. Philadel-
phia : Lee & Blanchard.

The Green Hand: a " short" yarn. New York :
Harper & Brothers.

A re-print from Blackwood of an unfinished
tale, written — as two New York Magazines in-
form us — by the author of " Tom Cringle's Log."
If this be the case, the book before us is a very
posthumous work indeed ; the aforesaid author
having departed this world in quest of a better,
some years since. And if composed by him, the
copy is, in all human — or spiritual — probabil-
ity, communicated to a coterie of transatlantic
" knockers," after only " calling for the alphabet."

Be this as it may, the story is an interesting
one, but sadly mutilated by so dense a sea-fog, as
to be almost as unintelligible to the ordinary reader,
as is the pons asinorum to a dull-headed French-
man. In fact, the tale, with all its improbabilities
and freaks of unfettered imagination, would not
do at all to relate to " marines." Old salts could
only properly appreciate it.

The author informs us that " a short yarn" im-
plies— nautice — an unfinished one, and as this
yarn has been reeled off" for something over two
years, we have no idea of calling the propriety of
the title in question.

We have once heard a humorous tale — although
at the time doubting of its veracity — of a respecta-
ble lady, of the olden time, — one who wore short
gowns, and made her own short-cake with her
own fair hand — having put the shortening into one
of the said comestibles the wrong way, and in
consequence that par consequence, the cake could
not be broken. Perchance a similar misfortune
may have befallen the book under our considera-
tion.

How any critic could have mistaken its style
for that of " Tom Cringle," &c. we cannot ima-
gine. The only point approaching resemblance
between the two, being a peculiar "jerking," a
sort of plumal choreus, occasioning the reader
to turn back, re-peruse the sentence, where these
"fits" occur, and ultimately give up in despair all
hope of understanding the author.

Hylton Horn and its Inmates. By the author of
the " Hen-pecked Husband," &-c. New York :
Long & Brother. 1850.

Hylton Harn is the residence of one Sir Roger
Verney, a particularly crabbed and disagreeable old
gentleman, and the guardian of three spirited girls.
In endeavoring to tame their wills and bend them
in obedience to his own, Sir Roger finds ample
occupation, and is ultimately entirely defeated.
The book is interesting.

1850.

Critical Notices.

219

Woman's Friendship ; a story of domestic life.
By Gkace Anguilar, author of " Home Influ-
ence," &c. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
1850.

The Vale of Cedars, or the Martyr. By Grace
Anguilar, author, &c. New York : D. Apple-
ton & Co. 1850.

In the space to which our remarks are necessa-
rily limited, it would be impossible to do justice to
these charming works, were we to attempt to
sketch their plots, or to convey to our reader's
mind an adequate idea of their real merit.

The hand that traced them is now, also, cold
in death, and there remains to us a fitting rem-
nant of a pure, gentle, and gifted spirit.

The Very Age; a comedy, by Edward S. Gould.
New York : D. Appleton & Co.

A very palpable satire upon a certain clique oi
would-be exclusives in our city, who require no
other passport than the rattle of an empty head.
Moustache-adorned, a bad imitation of foreign bad
manners and a dubious reputation for morality.

Composed mostly of descendants of tradesmen
and mechanics, tailors and coblers, green grocers,
provision dealers and butchers, they regard with
an air of infinite disdain any and every one, un-
possessed of the greasy dollar, to which they have
fallen heirs. They make a capital preserve for
the adventurer. As one of the dramatic personae
says:

" It is very easy to play the Count in New York.
One has but to assume a title, walk in his ties, and
talk broken English — not one of the fashionables
will question his nobility, especially ii his mous-
taches are greased to a point."

Mr. Gould has used the scamp unsparingly, yet
without indulging in the slightest exaggeration.

Frank Fairlegh; a scene in the life of a private
pupil. By the author ot Lewis Arundel, a Rail-
road of Life. New York : Long & Brother.
1850.

One of the best books of the kind that we ever
remember to have read. Free from the gross im-
probabilities, and somewhat loose morality of Mr.
Levers' novels, it yet possesses all their boisterous
form and dashing adventure. Every page is amu-
sing, reminding one of Albert Smith's happiest ef-
forts, and yet without any of his imitation of Dick-
ens. The plot is well conceived and becomes ex-
tremely exciting as we approach the crisis. In
fine, to any and all who are wont to indulge in
hearty laughter, or are in the least afflicted with
ennui, we recommend Frank Fairlegh.

Heloise, or the Unrevealed Secret ; a Tale, by
Talvi. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
1850.

A charming tale by a lady of New York.
Heloise, the heroine, is the daughter of a German
Princess, by a private marriage. Educated by her

father's sister, she looks upon her as her mother ;
nor is it until the death of the former that the se-
cret is revealed to her.

Her aunt, upon her death bed, begs Heloise to
marry her cousin, whom she had hitherto consid-
ered as a brother, and to whom she was warmly
attached.

She seeks him, but finds him entrapped in the
toils of a coquette, and upon the eve of marriage
with her.

In despair Heloise seeks the camp of her father,
a General in the Russian service, and at the
time in Circassia. Her cousin finally discov-
ers the worthlessness of the woman whom he has
chosen, hastens to seek our heroine, and thus the
much to be desired happy conclusion, is attained.
The tale is, in fact, the history of a pure and true-
hearted woman, contrasted with that of a silly
coquette.

The authoress gives proof of an intimate
knowledge of the countries in which the scenes
are laid, a knowledge, it is said, obtained from per-
sonal observation.

A New and Improved System of Notation, by

Ernest Van Heeringer. New York: Hunt-
ington & Savage. 1850.

The Andante of Thalherg ; arranged for the Piano
Forte, by Ernest Van Heeringer. New
York : Huntington & Savage. 1850.

The new method of musical notation, patented
by Mr. Van Heeringer, is at once simple and in-
genious. It dispenses with many of the difficulties
hitherto encountered by the pupil, is a decided im-
provement upon the old system, and entitled to the
thanks of all persons commencing the study and
practice of music.

The various signatures of flats and sharps inci-
dent to the chromatic scale, and presenting so
formidable an obstacle to the advance of the mu-
sical tyro, are, by the new notation, entirely dis-
pensed with, simply by making the printed notes
correspond in color with the key-board of the
Piano Forte, the natural notes being all printed
open loops or heads, and the sharps or flats, with
dark or solid ones. Thus, a white note on G, im-
plies G natural, while a dark note upon the same
line signifies G sharp. Thus the learner can per-
ceive at a glance, which is the proper key to touch,
and is relieved of the necessity of constantly hav-
ing in mind the various chromatic signatures so
perplexing to all beginners.

The Prompter, No. 3. Edited by Cornelius
Mathews. New York : W. Taylor & Co.

The Prompter, No. 3, contains an article upon
" Social Distinctions ;" Mrs. M. Gould's new
Comedy; a capital biography of Jacob Hays;
Life and Portrait of J. C. Murdock ; the Ghost
of John Fisher, an amusing sketch ; something
about dramatic law ; Mr. Cooper's new comedy -,
the Sea Serpent again ; the theatres, musical no-
tices, &c. ; and is in fact a great improvement
upon the two preceding numbers. From the
piquant sketches, and well timed articles, which
fill this and the previous numbers, we think it will

220

Critical Notices,

August,

be safe to predict a popularity and longevity to
the new literary enterprise, which is seldom the
fortune of similar attempts in our day and city.

The Old Oak Chest, a Romance, by G. P. R.
James. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1850.

Although sufficiently interesting to repay the
reader for the time spent in perusing it, the " Old
Oak Chest" possesses less of originality than any
of even Mr. lames' novels, that we have read. It
is, in fact, a literary twin to the " Gentleman of
the Old School," and the more prominent charac-
ters are almost identical. The only difference
between Sir John Haldimond and Sir Andrew
Stalbrooke, between the elder Forest and William
Haldimond, is in names, and throughout the book,
passages continually occur which are perfectly
familiar to any reader of Mr. James.

Speaking of the book per se, we like it, but in
connection with his other works, it is but a repast
of what has already been too often brought upon
the table.

Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
New York : Harper & Brothers. ,

The occasional reading of this elegant Historian
seems to be necessary to correct the harsh and
bad styles created by Carlyle and his imitators.
There is no finer quality of a style than fullness
and ease of diction. Our Carlyleists fall into the
error of mistaking an unhewn rudeness for strength
and efficacy of expression.

This edition of Gibbon's delightful history has
a complete index of the whole work attached to

it. The work is in six volumes, small octavo, in
a good style.

The present volume forms the sixth, and con-
cluding one, of Milman's Gibbon's History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, una-
bridged. It contains a very carefully prepared
Index to the work ; and is now complete in six
volumes.

Uniform in style with the above, are also pub-
lished, Hume's History of England, from the In-
vasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James
the Second, — complete in six volumes, — and con-
tinued from that time by T. Babington Macaulay.

Of the latter work only two volumes are yet
published. The future volumes will appear nearly
simultaneous with their issue in London.

The plan of the above series of Historical Works
was originally projected by the present publishers,
and are known as the " Boston Library Editions."
The prices at which they are now sold, places
them within the means of all ; and their size and
mechanical execution considered, they are believed
to be the cheapest series of standard works ever
offered to the American public. Boston : Phil-
lips, Sampson & Co. 1850.

The Steward; a Romance of Real Life. By Hen-
ry CocKTON, author of Sylvester Sound, «Stc.
New York : Long & Brother. 1850.

We do not admire the production of Mr. Cock-
ton's pen, but a hasty examination of " The Stew-
ard" has convinced us that it is equal, if not supe-
rior, to any of his previous efforts in the field of
very light literature.

^Iplev; ifezz , ?roin.

i:>a*r

■>':-. :'i£. ^ /-Ji,^un/w^-

THE

AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW,

No. xxxiir.

FOR SEPTEMBER, 1850

TO THE POLITICAL READER.

The Danish Question.

The article on the Danish Question,
which occupies the space usually devoted
to critical notices, on the last pages of the
number, was written in Europe, and sent
to us late in the month, by a distinguished
member of the U. S. Senate. In the
number of this journal for November 1848,
the reader will find an article from a
Danish writer, defending the claims of
Denmark.

The Danish quarrel has been made a test
question in European politics ; it will be
fortunate for the Germanic party, if their
side proves on examination to be the side
of true liberty and justice. It is hardly
necessary to caution the reader, who is not
already versed in European politics, that
truth and justice are not always to be found
exclusively on one side, in a diplomatic
war, such as we believe this one to be
between Denmark and the Duchies. The
sympathies of an American will of neces-
sity incline him to the side of popular free-
dom. Could we discover the true inclina-
tions of the people of the Duchies, a deci-
sion might be soon arrived at.

Southern Politics.

In the number of the Review for August
we presented certain grounds of conciliation

VOL. VI. NO. in. NEW SERIES,

between the Northern and Southern ex-
tremes of the Party.

To most of our readers they will appear
neither new nor inadmissible, as they have
been already separately recognized, and in
many quarters accepted, as constitutional
and binding.

It is to their collective force and efficacy,
as applicable to the present, and to all fu-
ture controversy, that we wish to call the
serious attention of our political readers.
Accepted, and acted upon^ they would
silence controversy, and ensure the safe-
ty of the Union, as far as it is endan-
gered by pro -slavery or anti-slavery agita-
tion.

It cannot have escaped the attention of
our Southern readers, at least, that ad~
vantage has been taken of the patriotic feel-
ings of Southern Whigs, to draw them away
from their allegiance to Whig principles,
and as far as possible to confound all
distinctions of party under pretext of a
common interest and a common danger.
Under this broad shield of "patriotism,"
which has two sides and two colors, the
Locofocos, pretending to give up all dis-
tinctions, are re-organizing theu^own forces,
while the attention of the people is divert-
ed from their movements by the pending
agitation.

226

Divided from the Northern Locofocos
by the insuperable barrier of abolitionism,
which has infected almost the entire body
of that portion, Southern agitators have
spared no efforts to produce a similar
breach between Northern and Southern
Whigs.

The revolt of the ultras of the North
from the ranks of the Whig party, whose
nationality and conservatism were too hea-
vy a restraint upon them, is a sufficient evi-
dence of the real condition and intentions
of the Whigs, and ought, in honor, to sat-
isfy those who have suspected them, that
their suspicions have been unjust.

That they have advised the suppres-
sion of the slave-trade in the district of Co-
lumbia, a measure regarded, by many, as
absolutely necessary to the peace of the
Union ; that thev have desired to restrain

the acquisition of new territories ; that
they have exercised the right of regulating
and suppressing slavery, and other institu-
tions, deemed by them injurious to liberty,
in their own states ; these are movements
to which no objections can be raised.
They have exercised, in so doing, rights,
which they hold in common with all the
States.

We are informed, that the leaders of
the so-called " Free-soil" party are en-
deavoring to form an union with the Loco-
focos. They have given abundant evidence
of their intentions, and true political affini-
ties. The Locofoco party in the North
lean strongly toward them, and there is
every prospect of a complete contamination
of that party with the extreme and violent
doctrines of the Provisoists.

At this crisis, nothing can be more sur-
prising to Northern Whigs, than the signs
of disaffection, which have appeared in some
quarters, in the vSouth. They relied upon
their Southern friends to pursue a moderate
and constitutional course, and to maintain
the spirit and organization of the party. In-

Remarks on SoutJiern Politics. Sept.

stead of which, we hear, now and then, o*
Whigs infected with the traitorous spirit of
the Nashville convention, a body, every ac-
tive and organic member of which has
earned for himself political damnation.

Respectable members of that convention
listened seriously to propositions for a
Southern confederacy, to be supported by
an alliance with England, or by monopo-
lizing treaties with that subtle and over-
reaching Power.

The influence of Downing Street was
apparent, at second Land, in the Nashville
Scandal. The head of the serpent has
appeared ; through what base and ordinary
channels he crept thither, it is not now
necessary to inquire.

Let Southern Whio;s wash their hands
of this iniquity. The nation looks to them
to uphold the Union and the Constitution.
From their fellow- citizens of the ultra
portion, the prestige of their ancestral
honor has departed. The older Toryism
is replaced by a new creature, inheriting
its parent's form and feature, and with the
parental leaning toward England ; but in
uo-liness it is more dreadful, and in dimen-
sion more formidable.

Let every true lover of his country for-
tify his heart and his mind against the se-
ductive influence of England, which is at
this moment operating in a thousand ways
to spread discontent and traitorous suspi-
cion among all classes of our people. Her
recent literature infects even our uni-
versities, with doctrines destructive to our
commerce and industry. Her wily and
unscrupulous agents infect our sea-ports
with opinions hostile to liberty and inde-
pendance. The present government of
England intrigues without scruple for its
own interests. *' The English lord is a re-
tired shop-keeper." His manoeuvres in
Nicaragua, and elsewhere, have sufficiently
developed the spirit and system of his di-
plomacy.

1750,

In tlieir grand Struggle for the markets
of the world, the trading manufacturers of
England find themselves embarrassed by a
two -fold contradictory relation with the
United States ; — namely, a relation of ri-
valry with the Northern manufacturers, and
of dependance upon Southern planters.
Their great purpose is, of course, to have
the entire continent. North and South,
thrown open to them as a market for their
wares. All the influence they use, upon
America, is directed to the accomplishment
of that end , in pursuit of which, it is
necessary for them to prevent, by every
possible means, the further establishment
of manufactories in the Southern and North-
ern states.

Dependent upon the South for the great
staple of their manufactures, they desire to
conciliate that portion of our people, and
to infuse into them a spirit of confidence
and dependence. Could a separation be
efiected, of that portion of the confederacy,
without detriment to their own commerce,
the manufacturers of England would be-
lieve that they had effected at least one-
half of their purpose. Every inducement
would be held out to the planters of cotton to
open their ports, and offer a free market in
exchange for their indispensable staple.
The Southern market would be deluged
with the cheap commodities of England,
and the relations of the South to that power
would be those of an agricultural depend-
ency ; — relations, which of all others it

Remarks on Soutliern Politico.

227

deprecates and scorns; and the fear of which,
when they look towards the North, has
driven many to the verge of dis-
union. They wish to exchange dependence
upon their own brothers and fellow-citizens
of the North, a legitimate and natural re-
lationship, and which they have it in their
power to temper and subdue by a rival in-
dustry, for dependence upon a [foreign and
encroaching power, the ancient and per-
petual ememy of their liberties. That
brothers should mutually aid each other, is
the law of nature, and the bond of society ;
but an alliance of the South with Eno-land,
must be more than alliance, — it must, by an
inevitable necessity, become a relation-
ship of greater and less, which no jea-
lousy of the inferior power could modify ;
and the course of such relationships, be-
tween the monied aristocracy of England
and inferior powers, is well illustrated by
the fable of the lion and the eagle, when at
a banquet those royal friends took soup
together from the same shallow dish. Free
trade is the shallow dish, from which the
Lion of England invites the Southern
Eagle to lap with him.

*' Put not your trust in England," should
be the caution to American economists and
politicians. Beware her advice, despise
her taunts, ask no questions of her, and
repel disapproval with equal disapproval.
Our own system is ours and the best, we
wish no interested advice from our neigh-
bors.

228

WTiat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Sept.

WHAT CONSTITUTES EEAL FREEDOM OF TRADE?*

CHAPTER 11.

The reader has seen that the modern
English political economy is founded on a
basis directly the opposite of that upon
which rests the system of Adam Smith, and
that the tendency of the two is in a pre-
cisely opposite direction. Nevertheless,
both profess to teach the advantage of per-
fect freedom of trade. Thus, Mr. McCul-
loch says of the author of the Wealth of
Nations J that he showed " in opposition to
the commonly received opinions of the mer-
chants, politicians, and statesmen of his
time, that wealth does not consist in the
abundance of gold and silver, but in the
abundance of the various necessaries, con-
veniences, and enjoyments of human life ;
that it is in every case sound policy to leave
individuals to pursue their own interest in

their own way ; that in prosecuting branch-
es of industry advantageous to themselves,
they necessarily prosecute such as are, at
the same time, advantageous to the public ;
and that every regulation intended to
force industry into particular channels, or
to determine the species of commercial in-
tercourse between different parts of the
same country, or between distant and inde-
pendent countries, is impolitic and perni-
cious— injurious to the rights of individuals
— and adverse to the progress of real opu-
lence and lasting prosperity."! Never-
theless, while thus aOTeeino; with Dr. Smith
as to the advantage of perfect freedom of
trade, Mr. McCuUoch thought that his

t Principles of Political Economy. Introduction.

* The following additional extracts from Smith's Wealth of Nations, are necessary to complete the
sense of page 137, of article entitled " What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade?" in the last num-
ber (August) :

" The monopoly of the colony trade, besides, by forcing towards it a much greater proportion of the
capital of Great Britain than what would naturally have gone to it, seems to have broken altogether that
natural balance which would otherwise have taken place among all the different branches of British in-
dustry. The industry of Great Britain, instead of being accommodated to a great number of small
markets, has been principally suited to one great market. Her commerce, instead of running in a great
number of small channels, has been taught to run principally in one great channel. But the whole sys-
tem of her industry and commerce has thereby been rendered less secure ; the whole state of her body
politic less healthful than it otherwise would have been. In her present condition, Great Britain resem-
bles one of those unwholesome bodies in which some of the vital parts are overgrown, and which, upon
that account, are liable to many dangerous disorders, scarce incident to those in which all the parts are
more properly proportioned. A small stop in that great blood-vessel, which has been artificially swelled
beyond its natural dimensions, and through which an unnatural proportion of the industry and commerce
of the country has been forced to circulate, is very likely to bring on the most dangerous disorders upon
the whole body politic. The expectation of a rupture with the colonies, accordingly, has struck the
people of Great Britain with more terror than they ever felt for a Spanish armada, or a French invasion.
It was this terror, whether well or ill grounded, which rendered the repeal of the stamp act, among the
merchants at least, a popular measure. In the total exclusion from the colony market, was it to last
only for a few years, the greater part of our merchants used to fancy that they foresaw an entire stop to
their trade ; the greater part of our master manufacturers, the entire ruin of their business ; and the
greater part of our workmen, an end ol their employment. A rupture with any of our neighbors upon
the continent, though likely, too, to occasion some stop or interruption in the employments of some of
all these different orders of people, is foreseen, however, without any such general emotion. The blood,
of which the circulation is stopt in some of the smaller vessels, easily disgorges itself into the greater,

1850.

WTiat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 1

229

work, "towever excellent in many re-
spects," still contained "many errors,"
and those of "no slight importance."

" Dr. Smith," he continues, "does not say
that in prosecuting such branches of indus-
try as are most advantageous to themselves,
individuals necessarily prosecute such as
are, at the same time, most advantageous
to the pichllc. His leaning to the system
of M. Quesnay — a leaning perceptible in
every part of his work — made him swerve
from the sounder principles of his own sys-
tem, so as to admit that the preference
shown by individuals in favor of particular
employments is not always a true test of
their public advantageousness. He consi-
dered agriculture, though not the only pro-
ductive employment, as the most produc-
tive of any ; the home trade as more pro-
ductive than a direct foreign trade ; and
the latter than the carrying trade. It is
clear, however, that these distinctions are
all fundamentally erroneous." — Ibid.

Unhappily for the followers of Dr. Smith,
of the modern English school, this ^''funda-
mental error''^ is the base on which rests
his whole free -trade system, and in the ef-
fort to substitute another they totally lose
sisrht of real freedom of trade. The au-
thor of the Wealth of Nations sought to
discover what was the mode of employing
labor and capital that tended most to faci-
litate the acquisition of " the necessaries,

conveniences and enjoyments of life," ena-
bling the laborer most rapidly to improve
his own condition, and to provide for the
farther improvement of that of his children,
and the result of his inquiries was to satisfy
him that the natural tendency of man was
towards agriculture, which could be im-
proved oxAj by bringing the mechanic and
manufacturer to its aid, the place of ex-
change being thus brought to the neighbor-
hood of the place of production. He saw
clearly that when employed at home the
same capital might perform many more ex-
changes than when employed at a distance,
and that when the farmer and the mecha-
nic exchanged on the spot there was a great
economy of labor, and therefore that what
was needed for the improvement of the con-
dition of man was that he should be allowed
to follow the bent of his "natural inclina-
tion," which led inevitably to making ma-
nufactures and commerce the mere hand-
maids of agriculture — the transporter, the
converter, and the exchanger, being the
aids, and not the masters, of the producers.
In his school, Commerce was not King.

Comparing this natural system with that
of England, he saw that the whole ten-
dency of British policy was that of making
agriculture " subsidiary" to commerce and
manufactures, driving labor and capital
from the profitable employment of produ-
cing commodities to he exchanged^ to the

without occasioning any dangerous disorder ; but, when it is stopt in any of the greater vessels, convul-
sions, apoplexy, or death, are the immediate and unavoidable consequences. If but one of those over-
grown manufactures, which, by means either of bounties or of the monopoly of the home and colony
markets, have been artificially raised up to any unnatural height, finds some small stop or interruption
in its employment, it frequently occasions a mutiny and disorder alarming to government, and embar-
rassing even to the deliberations ot the legislature. How great, therefore, would be the disorder and
confusion, it was thought, which must necessarily be occasioned by a sudden and entire stop in the em-
ployment of so great a proportion of our principal manufacturers 1

" Some moderate and gradual relaxation of the laws which give to Great Britain the exclusive trade to
the colonies, till it is rendered in a great measure free, seems to be the only expedient which can, in all
future times, deliver her from this danger : which can enable her, or even force her, to withdraw some
part of her capital from this overgrown employment, and to turn it, though with less profit, towards
other employments ; and which, by gradually diminishing one branch of her industry, and gradually in-
creasing all the rest, can, by degrees, restore all the different branches of it to that natural, healthful,
and proper proportion, which perfect liberty necessarily establishes, and which perfect liberty can alone
preserve. To open the colony trade all at once to all nations, might not only occasion some transitory
inconvenieney, but a great permanent loss, to the greater part of those whose industry or capital is at
present engaged in it. The sudden loss of the employment, even of the ships which import the eighty-
two thousand hogsheads of tobacco, which are over and above the consumption of Great Britain, might
alone be felt very sensibly. Such are the unfortunate effects of all the regulations of the mercantile
system. They not only introduce very dangerous disorders, into the state of the body politic, but disor-
ders which it is often difficult to remedy, without occasioning, for a time at least, still greater disorders.
In what manner, therefore, the colony trade ought gradually to be opened ; what are the restraints
which ought first, and what are those which ought last, to be taken away ; or in what manner the natu-
ral system of perfect liberty and justice ought gradually to be restored, we must leave to the wisdom of
future statesmen and legislators to determine."

230

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Sept.

far less profitaHe one of transporting and
exchanging those produced in other lands ^
the great domestic trade being valued as
merely " subsidiary^' to a comparatively
trivial foreign one, and that in the effort
to carry into effect this erroneous system
of policy his countrymen had been led to
the commission of acts of great injustice.
Their fellow subjects of Ireland, and of the
colonies, had been deprived of the exercise of
'' the right of employing their stock and in-
dustry in the way they might judge most
advantageous for themselves," in " mani-
fest violation of the most sacred rights of
mankind," with "great discouragement" to
their agriculture, and to the diminution of
their power of producing commodities with
which to trade. Fellow subjects at home
had also been heavily taxed for the pay-
ment of bounties on the importation of va-
rious articles of raw produce, to " the
great discouragement" of British agricul-
ture, upon the improvement of which de-
pended the power to increase the production
of commodities to be given in exchange for
those foreign ones required for the main-
tenance and improvement of their own con-
dition. He saw clearly that this system
was in opposition to man's " Tiatural incli-
naUon^'' and that its direct effect was to
produce an unnatural distribution of popu-
lation, both at home and abroad, and a
diminution every where of the productive
power of labor and capital. He therefore
urged a change of system tending to per-
mit the return of both to the great and
profitable home market, regarding that as
being the mode in which production might be
increased, and the acquisition of the neces-
saries and comforts of life facilitated — and
also as the mode in which the people of
Great Britain would be rendered less liable
to be affected by convulsions in other por-
tions of the world. He thought the farm
more productive of commodities than the
ship. This it is that is denounced by Mr.
McCulloch and the whole of the school he
represents, as " fundamentally erroneous,"
and they advocate what they call freedom of
trade, with the express view of carrying
out the system which Dr. Smith denounced
as being ^' fit only for a nation of shop-
keepers," because calculated to make Great
Britain " the workshop of the world,"
thereby rendering her dependent on the
movements of foreio-iQ nations to an extent

that is inconsistent with the secure em-
ployment of the rights of property, while
preventing the natural increase in the num-
ber of artizans in other countries, io the
discouragement of their agriculture, the
diminution of their productive power, and
consequent diminution of their power to
maintain trade.

Dr. Smith was right or he was not. If
the former, then was Great Britain bound!
to abolish the system which he denounced,
as tending to prevent improvement in the
condition of both laborer and capitalist,
and in case of her failure so to do, her
colonies and the independent nations of the
world owed it to themselves to resist the
further continuance of such a system. —
Colonists, bound by English 5a ws, might,
in perfect accordance with bis views, asso-
ciate for the purpose of refiising to pitr-
ehase the commodities thus attempted to
be forced upon them, and ultimately even
take up arms with a view to throw off
their dependence on the mother country,
and thus place themselves in a position to
assert " the most sacred right of mankind,"
that of exchanging their labor and its pro-
ducts at home instead of submitting to be
cmnpelled to seek a market abroad. Such
in fact, 2ver€ the measures adopted by
these colonies, and to their adoption is due
the fact that they have prospered while all
the other dependencies of Great Britain
have been ruined. Non-importation agree-
ments long preceded resort to arms, and
when at length independence was estab-
lished, some of the measures first adopted
had special reference to this question. Laws
for the protection of manufactures against
the power of Great Britain, were then re-
garded as essentially necessary to the
improvement of agriculture and the pros-
perity of the agricultural interest, and
were especially favored hj the middle, and
most agricultural, states. It was believed
that they tended to increase the power to
produce, and consequently to increase the
power to trade, by bringing the consumer
to the side of the producer, and thus eman-
cipating the great internal trade from
English interferences, such as had been
denounced })j Dr. Smith. U he was right,
so must have been the men by whom sueh
measures were advocated.

If Dr. Smith was not right, and ho certainly
was not if there is any truth in the iihieoij

1850.

WTiat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

231

upon which rests the modern English sys-
tem, then the interests of the colonists
should have led them to devote themselves
to agriculture, to the entire exclusion of
all other purs uits. So far, indeed, were Eng-
lish laws from being "a violation of the rights
of mankind," that their only eifect would
have been that of compelling them to do
that which, had those laws never existed,
their own interests would have led them
voluntarily to do. The land of England
was to be regarded as a machine of con-
stantly decreasing power, while from the
abundance of rich soils and the scarcity of
population in the colonies, there could there
exist no necessity for cultivating any but
those which were most fertile, for which
reason the most profitable course for the
colonists would be to apply themselves
exclusively to cultivation, remaining all
producers on one side of the ocean, and
thus aiding to bring about the conversion
of the whole people of the other side into
artizans, consumers of their products. They
would, as do now the people of Canada and
of India, use the ships of England for trans-
porting their food and their wool, to feed
the men and supply the looms of Eng-
land. The more perfectly her prohibitory
laws were enforced, and the more exclu-
sively they could be compelled to devote
themselves to agriculture the larger would
be the return to labor.

We have thus two systems, the anti-
podes of each other in every respect. The
course of policy which they would dictate
is directly opposite, and cannot by any
possibility produce the same results. To
determine which is right, we must see the
foundations on which they rest, and follow

them upwards, step by step. That done,
we may be qualified to determine what
constitutes real freedom of trade, and why
it is that the advocates of the system now
known as " free trade," are so generally
obliged to depend upon their memories for
their arguments, and their imaginations for
their facts.

The modern system is based upon the
theory of Mr. Ricardo in relation to the
occupation of land, which may be stated as
follows :

First : That in the commencement of
cultivation, when population is small and
land consequently abundant, the best soils,
those capable of yielding the largest return,
say one hundred quarters, to a given quan-
tity of labor, alone are cultivated.

Second : That with the progress of po-
pulation, land becomes less abundant, and
there arises a necessity for cultivating that
yielding a smaller return ; and that resort
is then had to a second, and afterwards to
a third and a fourth class of soils, yielding
respectively ninety, eighty and seventy
quarters to the same quantity of labor.

Third : That with the necessity for ap-
plying labor less productively, which thus
accompanies the growth of population, rent
arises; the owner of land No. 1 being en-
abled to demand and to obtain, in return
for its use, ten quarters, when/esort is had
to that of second quality : twenty when
No. 3 is brought into use, and thirty when
it becomes necessary to cultivate No. 4.

Fourth : That the proportion of the
landlord tends thus steadily to increase as
the productiveness of labor decreases, the
division being as follows, to wit : —

At the first period, when No. 1 alone is cultivated,

" second period, " No. 1 and 2 are cultivated,

" third period, "No. 1,2 and 3, "

" fourth period, " No. 1, 2, 3 and 4, "

" fifth period, « No. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, "

" sixth period, " No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, «

" seventh period, " No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, "

Total Product.

Labor.

Rent

100

190

ISO

270

240

340

280

400

300

100

450

300

150

490

230

210

and that there is thus a tendency to the
ultimate absorption of the whole produce
by the owner of the land, and to a steadily
increasing inequality of condition ; the pow-
er of the laborer to consume the commodi-
ties which he produces steadily diminishing,
while that of the landowner to claim them,
as rent, is steadily increasing.

Fifth : That this tendency towards a di-
minution in the return to labor, and to-
wards an increase of the landlord's propor-
tion, always exists where population in-
creases, and most exists where population
increases most rapidly ; but is in a certain
degree counteracted by increase of wealth,^
producing improvement of cultivation.

232

JVkat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Sept.

Sixth : That every such improvement
tends to retard the growth of rent, while
every obstacle to improvement tends to in-
crease that growth ; and that, therefore,
the, interests of the landowner and laborer
are always opposed to each other, rent
risino; as labor falls, and vice versa.

The necessary consequence of all this is
that while the landlord is enriched, the
laborer is supposed to experience constant-
ly increasing difficulty in obtaining the ne-
cessaries and comforts of life, and the great-
er the tendency to association, the less must
be the power of production, and the less
the power to maintain trade. Population
becomes daily more and more superabund-
ant, and men are more and more compelled
to fly from each other, seeking abroad the
subsistence that is denied to them at home,
and the greater the tendency to fly from
each other, the greater must be the pow-
er to produce and the power to trade.
Arrived abroad, they are supposed to com-
mence the work of cultivation on fertile
soils, and to be enabled to obtain large
wages, while those who remain at home are
forced to waste their labor upon poor soils,
yielding small returns, for which reason it is
deemed highly advantangeous that the lat-
ter should employ themselves at ths loom and
the anvil while the former confine them-
selves to the plough, the former becoming
all consumers, and the latter remainino; all
producers. Thus it has been that the politi-
cal economists ofEngland have been enabled
to satisfy themselves that the fundamental
doctrines of Adam Smith were " erro-
neous," and that free trade instead of indi-
cating the adoption of measures tending to
the localizatioji of manufactures in the
various countries of the world, looks to
the adoption of measures tending to promote
the centralization and inonopoly of ma-
chinery in the island of Great Britain, a
course of policy regarded by Dr. Smith as
tending to diminution in the productiveness
of labor and capital, abroad and at home.

'' To arrive at a well-founded conclusion
in this science," says Mr. McCulloch, " it
is not enough to observe results in particu-
lar cases, or as they affect particular indi-
viduals ; we must further inquire whether
these results are constant and universally
applicoMe — whether the same circumstan-
ces which have given rise to them in one
instance, would in every instance, and in

every state of society, be productive of si-
milar results. A. theory which is inconsist-
ent with a uniform and constant fact must
be erroneous.''

The "uniform and constant fact" is di-
rectly opposed to the theory upon which is
built his whole system, while it is in perfect
accordance with the views of Dr. Smith.
The first poor cultivator invariably be-
gins with poor machinery, and as invariably
does it improve with every step in the pro-
gress of wealth and population. The man
who has no cup takes up water in his
hand, and little is obtained in exchange for
much labor. Ts'ext he obtains a cup, and
water becomes less costly. The arrival of
the carpenter enables him to obtain a pump.
Population grows again, and he and his
neighbors carry through their houses a great
river, from which each draws as much as is
needed for himself, his house, his bath, and
his water-closet, and the labor required to
be given in exchange for all this water is not
as great as in the outset was needed for ob-
taining the little that he di-ank himself. So
with air and light. He begins with the
wmd-mill and the sail, and ultimately ob-
tains the steam-engine and the steam-ship,
and then it is that power becomes cheap.
The gas works furnish light at a cost of
labor that is infinitely small compared with
that which was needed for the maintenance
of the "little farthing rushlight." The
poor man, widely separated from his fel-
low-man, uses wood, and heat is dear.
With growing wealth and population coal
is mined, and the furnace heats the house
at less cost of labor than had before been
required for a single room. The first poor
occupant of the land makes traps in which
to take the wild animals by whom he is
surrounded, and food is dear. He obtains
a rifle and food becomes cheaper. The first
clothes himself in skins, and clothing is dear.
The second obtains cloth, and clothing be-
comes cheaper. The " constant and uniform
fact " is, that in everything else than land
man begins with the poorest machinery,
and that with the growth of wealth and
population, he proceeds onward towards
the best, and we should be therefore war-
ranted in supposing that such would be the
case with land. ]\Ir. Ricardo, Mr. Malthus,
and Mr. McCulloch however, assure us
that such is not the case, and that, on the
contrary, he commences, necessarily, the

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

233

work of cultivation on the best soils, leaving
the poorer ones to his successors, whose pow-
ers of production diminish, therefore, with
the growth of wealth and population. It is
singular, that the fact that this supposed
"observation of a particular result was at
variance with our customary experience,"
in regard to all other results connected with
the appropriation of the powers of nature,
had not induced Mr. Ricardo and his fol-
lowers to hesitate before undertaking to
" modify or reject" the principles laid down
by Dr. Smith, which " account satisfac-
torily for the great number of appear-
ances,'' the test to which Mr. McCulloch
deemed it necessary to subject all theories.
We, however, go further. We say that
theories, to be received as true, must ac-
count for all the facts, and that any theory
at variance with a single well-observed
fact^ is not true. To natural laws there
are no exceptions. Mr. Ricardo and
Mr. Malthus contented themselves with
an effort to account for " the greater num-
ber of appearances,'' and their successors
have followed carefully in their footsteps, in
establishing a theory in relation to land
that is at variance with laws that we know
to govern man in relation to fire, water, air,
light, clothing, transportation, and every
other of the things needed for the mainten-
ance and improvement of his condition, the
consequence of which is, that they have ex-
perienced a perpetual necessity for provid-
ing places of escape for the facts that would
not range themselves in accordance with
the theory.

The reason of all this is that the theory
itself is in opposition to the universal fact as
our readers may satisfy themselves on any
farm in the land. Let them inquire, and they
will find that the occupant did not commence
in the flats, or on the heavily timbered land,
but that he did commence on the higher land
where the timber was lighter, and the place
for his house was dry. With increasing
ability, he is found draining the swamps,
clearing the heavy timber, turning up the
marl, or burning the lime, and thus acquiring
control over more fertile soils, yielding a
constant increase in the return to labor.
Let them then trace the course of early
settlement, and they will find it to have
followed, and that invariably, the course
of the streams, but keeping away from the
swamps and river bottoms. The earliest set-

tlements of the Union were on the poorest
lands of the Union — those of New England.
In South Carolina it has been made the
subject of remark, in a recent discourse,
that their predecessors did not select the ,
rich lands, and that millions of acres of the
finest meadow land in that State still re-
main untouched. The settler in the prai-
ries commences on the outer and poorer
land, making his way, by slow degrees, to
the richer and heavier soils of the centre.
The lands below the mouth of the Ohio are
among the richest in the world, yet they
are unoccupied and will continue so to be
until wealth and population shall have
greatly increased. So is it now with the
rich lands of Mexico. So was it in South
America, the early occupation of which
was upon the poor lands of the Western
slope, Peru and Chili, while the rich lands
of the Amazon and the La Plata remained,
as most of them still remain, a wilderness.
In the West Indies, the small dry islands were
early occupied, while Porto Rico and Tri-
nidad, abounding in rich soils remained un-
touched. The early occupants of England
were found on the poorer lands of the cen-
tre and south of the Kingdom, as were those
of Scotland in the Highlands, or on the lit-
tle rocky islands of the channel. Mona's
Isle was celebrated while the rich soil
of the Lothians remained a mass of tim-
ber, and the morasses of Lancashire were
the terror of travellers long after Hamp-
shire had been cleared and cultivated. —
Caesar found the Gauls occupying the high
lands surrounding the Alps, while the rich
Venetia remained a marsh. The occupa-
tion of the Campagna followed long after
that of the Samnite hills, and that of the
poor soils of Attica long preceded the culti-
vation of the fat ones of the rich Boeotia. The
occupation of the country round Thebes long
preceded that of the lower lands surround-
ing Memphis, or the still lower and richer
ones near Alexandria. The negro is found
in the higher portions of Africa, while the
rich lands alon^ the river courses are un-
occupied. The little islands of Australia,
poor and dry, are occupied by a race far
surpassing in civilization those of the neigh-
boring continent, who have rich soils at com-
mand. The poor Persia is cultivated, while
the richer soils of the ancient Babylonia
are only ridden over by straggling hordes
of robbers. Layard had to seek the hills

234

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Sept.

when lie desired to find a people at home.
The higher lands of Asia are peopled, while
the deltas of the Ganges and the Indus are
in a state of wilderness. Look where we
may, it is the same. The land obeys the
same great and universal law that governs
light, air and heat. The man who works
alone and has poor machinery must culti-
vate poor land, and content himself with
little light, little power, and little heat, and
those, like his food, obtained in exchange
for much labor ; while he who works in com-
bination with his fellow-men may have good
machinery, enabling him to clear and cul-
tivate rich land, giving him much food
and enabling him to obtain much light,
much heat, and much power in exchange
for little labor. The first is a creature of
necessity^ and as such is man universally
regarded by Mr. Ricardo, and all his fol-
lowers, down even to the very latest, Mr.
J. Stuart Mill, who, like his predecessors
in this school, teaches that the necessities of
man increase and his powers diminish with
every increase of population. The second
is a being oi power ^ and as such is man re-
garded by Adam Smith, who taught that the
more men worked in combination with each
other the greater would be the facility of
obtaining; food and all other of the necessa-
ries and comforts of life — and the more
widely they were separated the less would
be the return to. labor and capital, and the
smaller the power of production, as com-
mon sense teaches every man must neces-
sarily be the case.

The first poor cultivator commences, as
we have seen, his operations on the hill-
side. Below him are lands upon which
have been carried by force of water, the
richer portions of those above, as well as
the leaves of trees, and the fallen trees
themselves, all of which have from time
immemorial rotted and become incorporat-
ed with the earth, and thus have been pro-
duced soils fitted to yield the largest returns
to labor ; yet for this reason are they inac-
cessible. Their character exhibits itself in
the enormous trees with which they are co-
vered, and in their power of retaining the
water necessary to aid the process of de-
composition ; but the poor settler wants
the power either to clear them of their
timber, or to di-ain them of the superfluous
moisture. He begins on the hill-side, but
at the next step we find him descending the

hill, and obtainino: larojer returns to labor.
He has more food for himself, and he has
now the means of feeding a horse or an ox.
Aided by the manure that is thus yielded
to him by the better lands, we see him next
retracing his steps, improving the hill-side,
and compelling it to yield a return double
that which he at first obtained. With each
step down the hill, he obtains stiil larger
reward for his kbor, and at each he re-
turns, with increased power, to the cultiva-
tion of the original poor soil. He has now
horses and oxen, and while by their aid
he extracts from the new soils the manure
that had accumulated for ages, he has also
carts and wagons to carry it up the hill ;
and at each step his reward is increased,
while his labors are lessened. He goes
back to the sand and raises the mail, with
which he covers the surface ; or he returns
to the clay and sinks into the limestone, by
aid of which he doubles its product. He
is all the time makinjr a machine which
feeds him while he makes it, and which in-
creases in its powers the more he takes from
it. At first it was worthless. It has fed
and clothed him for years, and now it has
a large value, and those who might desire
to use it would pay him a large rent for
permission so to do.

The earth is a great machine given
to man to be fashioned to his purpose.
The m re he fashions it, the better it feeds
him, because each step is but preparatory
to a new one more productive than the last;
requiring less labor and yielding larger re-
turn. The labor of clearing is great, yet
the return is small. The earth is covered
with stumps, and filled with roots. With
each year the roots decay, and the ground
becomes enriched, while the labor of
ploughing is diminished. At length, the
stumps disappear, and the return is dou-
bled, while the labor is less by one-half
than at first. To forward this process the
owner has done nothing but crop the
ground, nature having done the rest. The
aid he thus obtains from her yields him as
much food as in the outset was obtained by
the labor of felling and destroying the trees.
This, however, is not all. The surplus
thus yielded has given him means of im-
proving the poorer lands, by furnishing
manure with which to enrich them, and thus
he has trebled his original return without
further labor ; for that which he saves in

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

235

working the new soils suffices to carry the
manure to the older ones. He is obtaining a
daily increased power over the various trea-
sures of the earth

With every operation connected with the
fashioning of the earth, the result is the
same. The first step is, invariably, the
most costly one, and the least productive.
The first drain commences near the stream,
where the labor is heaviest. It frees from
water but a few acres. A little higher, the
same quantity of labor, profiting by what
has been already done, frees twice the
number. Ao;ain the number is doubled,
and now the most perfect system of thor-
ough drainage may be established with less
labor than was at first required for one of
the most imperfect kind. To bring the
lime into connection with the clay, upon
fifty acres, is lighter labor than was the
clearing of a single one, yet the process
doubles the return for each acre of the fifty.
The man who wants a little fuel for his own
use, expends much labor in opening the
neighboring vein of coal. To enlarge
this, so as to double the product, is a work
of comparatively small labor ; as is the
next enlargement, by which he is enabled
to use a drift- wagon, giving him a return
fifty times greater than was obtained when
he used only his arms, or a wheel-barrow.
To sink a shaft to the first vein below the
surface, and erect a steam-en^-ine, are ex-
pensive operations ; but these once accom-
plished, every future step becomes more
productive, while less costly. To sink to
the next vein below, and to tunnel to an-
other, are trifles in comparison with the
first, yet each furnishes a return equally
large. The first line of railroad runs by
houses and towns occupied by two or three
hundred thousand persons. Half a dozen
little branches, costing together far less
labor than the first, bring into connection
with it half a million, or perhaps a million.
The trade increases, and a second track, a
third, or a fourth, may be required. The
original one facilitates the passage of the
materials and the removal of the obstruc-
tions, and three new ones may now be made
with less labor than was required for the
first.

All labor thus expended in fashioning
the great machine is but the prelude to the
application of further labor, with still in-
creased returns. With each such applica-

tion, wages rise, and hence it is that por-
tions of the machine, as it exists, invariably
exchange, when brought to market, for far
less labor than they have cost. The man
who cultivated the thin soils was happy to
obtain a hundred bushels for his year's
work. With the progress of himself and
his neighbor down the hill into the more
fertile soils, wages have risen, and two
hundred bushels are now required. His
farm will yield a thousand bushels ; but it
requires the labor of four men, who must
have two hundred bushels each, and the
surplus is but two hundred bushels. At
twenty year's purchase this gives a capital
of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent
of twenty year's wages ; whereas it has
cost, in the labor of himself, his sons, and
his assistants, the equivalent of a hundred
years of labor, or peihaps far more. Dur-
ing all this time, however, it has fed and
clothed them all, and the farm has been
produced by the insensible contributions
made from year to year, unthought of and
unfelt.

It is now worth twenty years' wages,
because its owner has for years taken from
it a thousand bushels annually, but when
it had lain for centuries accumulating
wealth it was worth nothing. Such
is the case with the earth everywhere.
The more that is taken from it the more
there is left. When the coal mines of
England were untouched, they were value-
less. Now their value is almost countless ;
yet the land contains abundant supplies for
thousands of years. Iron ore, a century
since, was a drug, and leases were granted
at almost nominal rents. Now, such leas-
es are deemed equivalent to the possession
of large fortunes, notwithstanding the great
quantities that have been removed, al-
though the amount of ore now known to
exist is probably fifty times greater than it
was then.

The earth is the sole produrer. Mnn
fashions and exchanges. A part of his la-
bor is applied to the fashioning of the great
machine, and this produces changes that
are permanent. The drain, once cut, re-
mains a drain ; and the limestone, once re-
duced to lime, never again becomes lime-
stone. It passes into the food of man and
animals, and ever after takes its part in the
same round with the clay with which it has
been incorporated. The iron rusts and

236

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Sept.

gradually passes into soil, to take its part
with the clay and the lime. That portion
of his labor gives him wages while prepar-
ing the machine for greater future produc-
tion. That other portion which he expends
on fashioning and exchanging the products
of the machine, produces temporary results
and gives him wages alone. Whatever
tends to diminish the quantity of labor
necessary for the fashionino- and exchangino;
of the products, tends to augment the quan-
tity that may be given to increasing the
amount of products, and to preparing the
great machine ; and thus, while increasing
the present return to labor, preparing for a
future further increase.

Widely different is this view of the pro-
gress of the occupation of the land from
that which is taught in the politico-econo-
mical school of England, which professes
to follow in the footsteps of Adam Smith,
yet the doctrine of the Wealth of Nations^
is in precise accordance with it. Dr. Smith
taught that ' ' no equal quantity of labor or
capital employed in manufactures can ever
occasion so great a reproduction as if it
were employed in agriculture. So em-
ployed," he adds, *' it not only puts into
motion a greater quantity of productive la-
bor than any equal capital employed in
manufactures, but in proportion, too, to
the quantity of productive labor which it
employs, it adds a much greater value to the
annual produce of the land and labor of the
country, and to the real wealth and revenue
of its inhabitants." This is denied by those
who piofess to be his followers, and Mr.
McCulloch insists that while increase of
capital applied to land must be attended
with '' a constantly diminishing rate of pro-
fit" no such diminution follows from any
increase in the number of steam-engines,
each in succession of which may be as
perfect as its predecessor, while the new
soils taken into cultivation must, of neces-
sity, be poorer than those previously cul-
tivated, i'o determine this question we
may now inquire in what manner machin-
ery tends to augment production.

The first poor cultivator obtains a hun-
dred bushels for his year's wages. To
pound this between two stones requires
thirty days of labor, and the work is not
lialf done. Had he a mill in the neigh-
borhood he would have better flour, and
he would have almost his whole thirty

days to bestow upon his land. He pulls
up his grain. Had he a scythe, he would
have more time for the preparation of the
machine of production. He loses his axe,
and it requires days of himself and his
horse on the road, to obtain another. His
machine loses the time and the manure,
both of which would have been saved had
the axe-maker been at hand. The real
advantage derived from the mill and the
scythe, and from the proximity of the axe-
maker, consists simply in the power which
they afford him to devote his labor more
and more to the preparation of the great
machine of production, and such is the
case with all the machinery of preparation
and exchange. The plough enables him to
do as much in one day as with a spade he
could do in five. He saves four days for
drainage. The steam-engine drains as
much as without it could be drained by
thousands of days of labor. He has more
leisure to marl or lime his land. The
more he can extract from his machine the
greater is its value, because every thing he
takes is, by the very act of taking it, fash-
ioned to aid further production. The ma-
chine, therefore, improves by use, where-
as spades, and ploughs, and steam-engines,
and all other of the machines used by man,
are but the various forms into which he
fashions parts of the great original machine,
to disappear in the act of being used ; as
much so as food, though not so rapidly.
The earth is the great labor savings' bank,
and the value to man of all other machines
is in the direct ratio of their tendency to
aid him in increasing his deposits in that
only bank whose dividends are perpetually
increasing, while its capital is perpetually
doubling. That it may continue forever
so to do, all that it asks is that it shall re-
ceive back the refuse of its produce, the
manure ; and that it may do so, the con-
sumer and the producer must take their
places by each other. That done, every
change that is effected becomes permanent,
and tends to facilitate other and greater
changes. The whole business of the farmer
consists in making and improving soils,
and the earth rewards him for his kindness
by giving him more and more food the more
attention he bestows upon her."

Every saving in the labor required to
be applied to the work of conversion or
transportation increase the quantity that

1850.

W7iat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

237

may be given to that of production, and
therein is to be found the sole advantage re-
sulting from such saving. That being ad-
mitted, we may now see what is the cause
or the difficulties resulting in England from
the introduction of machinery. The sys-
tem tends to expel labor and capital from
the machine of production, and to drive
them into manufactures, and next by
additional machinery to expel it from the
work of manufacture itself; the conse-
quence of which is that labor is rendered
superabundant and has to seek the alms-
house, there to be supported by aid of
forced contributions of food, taken from
the producers, in support of the system
called "free trade." Such is not the
doctrine of Adam Smith, the tendency of
whose whole book is that of bringing the
consumer to take his place by the side of
the producer, and thus increasing the
power of combination and of production.

The solitary settler has to occupy the
spots that, with his rude machinery, he can
cultivate. Having neither horse nor cart,
he carries home his crop upon his shoul-
ders, as is now done in many parts of India.
He carries a hide to the place of exchange,
distant, perhaps, fifty miles, to obtain for
it leather, or shoes. Population increases,
and roads are made. More fertile soils
are cultivated. The store and the mill
come nearer to him, and he obtains shoes
and flour with the use of less machinery of
exchange. He has more leisure for the
preparation of his great machine, and the
returns to labor increase. More people
now obtain food from the same surfece,
and new places of exchange appear. The
wool is, on the spot, converted into cloth,
and he exchanges directly with the clothier.
The saw-mill is at hand, and he exchanges
with the sawyer. The tanner gives him
leather for his hides, and the paper-maker
gives him paper for his rags. With each
of these changes he has more and more of
both time and manure to devote to the
preparation of the great food-making ma-
chine, and with each year the returns are
larger. His power to command the use of
the machinery of exchange increases, but
his necessity therefor diminishes, for with
each year there is an increasing tendency
towards having the consumer placed side
by side with the producer, and with each
he can devote more and more of his time

and mind to the business of fashioning the
great instrument ; and thus the increase of
consuming population is essential to the
progress of production.

The loss from the use of machinery of
exchange is in the ratio of the bulk of the
article to be exchanged. Food standa
first; fuel, next; stone for building, third;
iron, fourth ; cotton, fifth ; and so on ;
diminishing until we come to laces and
nutmegs. The raw material is that in the
production of which the earth has most co-
operated, and by the production of which
the land is most improved, and the nearer
the place of exchange or conversion can be
brought to the place of production, the less
is the loss in the process, and the greater
the power of accumulating wealth to aid in
the production of further wealth.

The man who raises food on his own
land is building up the machine for doing
so to more advantage in the following year.
His neighbor, to whom it is given^ on
condition of sitting still, loses a year's
work on his machine, and all he has gained
is the pleasure of doing nothing. If he
has employed himself and his horses and
wagon in bringing it home, the same num-
ber of days that would have been required
for raising it, he has misemployed his time,
for his farm is unimproved. He has wasted
labor and manure. As nobody, however,
gives, it is obvious that the man who has
a farm and obtains his food elsewhere,
must pay for raising it, and pay also for
transporting it ; and that although he may
have obtained as good wages in some other
pursuit, his farm, instead of being improved
by a year's cultivation, is worse by a year's
neglect ; and that he is a poorer man than he
would have been had he raised his own food.

The article of next greatest bulk is fuel.
While warming his house, he is clearing
his land. He would lose by sitting idle,
if his neighbor brought his fuel to him, and
still more if he had to spend the same
time in hauling it, because he would be
wearing out his wagon and losing the ma-
nure. Were he to hire himself and his
wagon to another for the same quantity of
fuel he could have cut on his own pro-
perty, he would be a loser, fur his farm
would be uncleared.

If he take the stone from his own fields
to build his house, he gains doubly. His
house is built, and his land is cleared. If

238

"What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Sept.

he sit still, and let Lis neighbor bring him
stone, he loses, for his fields remain unfit
for cultivation. If he work equally hard
for a neighbor, and receive the same ap-
parent wages, he is a loser by the fact that
he has yet to remove the stones, and until
they shall be removed he cannot cultivate
his land,

With every improvement in the machi-
nery of exchange, there is a diminution in
the proportion which that machinery bears
to the mass of production, because of the
extraordinary increase of product conse-
quent upon the increased power of apply-
ing labor to building up the great machine.
It is a matter of daily observation that the
demand for horses and men increases as
railroads drive them from the turnpikes,
and the reason is, that the farmer's means
of improving his land iacreaso more rapidly
than men and horses for his work. The
man who has, thus far, sent to market his
half-fed cattle, accompanied by horses and
men to drive them, and wagons and horses
loaded with hay or turnips with which to
feed them on the road, and to fatten them
when at market ; now fattens them on
the ground, and sends them by railroad
ready for the slaughter-house. His use of
the machinery of exchange is diminished
nine-tenths. He keeps his men, his horses,
and his wagons, and the refuse of his hay
or turnips, at home. The former are em-
ployed in ditching and draining, while the
latter fertilizes the soil heretofore cultivated.
His production doubles, and he accumu-
lates rapidly, while the people around him
have more to eat, more to spend in clothing,
and accumulate more themselves. He
wants laborers in the field, and they want
clothes and houses. The shoemaker and
the carpenter, finding that there exists a
demand for their labor, now join the com-
munity, eating the food on the ground on
which it is produced ; and thus the ma-
chinery of exchange is improved, while the
quantity required is diminished. The
quantity of flour consumed on the spot
induces the miller to come and eat his
share, while preparing that of others. —
The labor of exchanging is diminished,
and more is givan to the land, and the
lime is now turned up. Tons of turnips
are obtained from the same surface that
before gave bushels of rye. The quantity
to be consumed increases faster than the

population, and more mouths are needed
on the spot, and next the woollen-mill
comes. The wool no longer requires
wagons and horses which now are turned
to transporting coal, to enable the fari^er
to dispense with his woods, and to reduce
to cultivation the fine soil that has, for
centuries, produced nothing but timber.
Production again increases, and the new
wealth now takes the form of the cotton -
mill, and with every step in the progress,
the farmer finds new demands on the great
machine he has constructed, accompanied
with increased power on his part to build
it up higher and stronger, and to sink its
foundation deeper. He now supplies beef
and mutton, wheat, butter, eggs, poultry,
cheese, and every other of the comforts
and luxuries of life, for which the climate
is suited ; and from the same land which
aff'orded, when his father or grandfather
first commenced cultivation on the light
soil of the hills, scarcely suflicient rye or
barley to support life.

In the natural course of things, there is
a strong tendency towards placing the con-
sumer by the side of the producer, and thus
diminishing the quantity required of the
machinery of exchange ; and wherever that
tendency does not gi-ow in the ratio of the
growth of population, it is a consequence
of some of those weak inventions by which
man so often disturbs the harmony of na-
ture. Wherever her laws have most pre-
vailed, such has been the tendency, and
there have wealth and the power of man
over the great machine, most rapidly in-
creased. Rent is the price paid for the
use of that power, and it increases with
every diminution in the quantity required
of the machinery of exchange.

The course of things here described is
in accordance with the facts that may be
observed in every improving community,
and equally in accordance with the views
of Dr. Smith, who saw that " human in-
stitutions" had everywhere *' thwarted the
natural inclinations of man" in building up
large cities to be maintained at the cost of
both producer and consumer. It is pre-
cisely that which he would every where de-
sired to see, and that which would every
where have been seen to exist had the na-
tural course of things remained undistur-
ed. He saw that inland countries pro-
duced large quantities of food, and of other

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

239

raw materials too bulky for transportation,
and that the most profitable application of
labor and capital was to appropriate a por-
tion of them to the work of converting
those materials into forms fitting them for
use at home, or for cheap transportation to
distant countries, and that by so doing the
acquisition of the necessaries and comforts
of life would be facilitated. The more
perfectly this view was carried out, the
larger, as he saw, would be the quantity
of labor that could be given to cultivation,
and he denounced every interference with
progress in this direction as being not only
"a discourao-ement of afjriculture," but a
violation of man's " most sacred rights."

Dr. Smith had no faith in the productive
power of ships or wagons He knew that
the barrel of flour, or the bale of cotton,
put into the ship came out a barrel of flour
or a bale of cotton, the weight of neither
having been increased by the labor em-
ployed in transporting it from the place of
production to that of consumption. He
saw clearly that to place the consumer by
the side of the producer was to economize
labor and aid production, and therefore to
increase the power to trade. He was
therefore, in favor of the local application
of labor and capital, by aid of which towns
should grow up in the midst of producers of
food, and he believed that if '' human in-
stitutions" had not been at war with the
best interests of man, those towns would
" nowhere have increased beyond what the
improvement and cultivation of the terri-
tory in which they were situated could
support." How widely different is all
this from the system which builds up Lon-
don, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birming-
ham, to be the manufacturing centres of
the world, and urges upon all nations
*' free trade," with a view to their main-
tenance and increase !

Directly opposed in this respect to Dr.
Smith, Mr. McCuUoch has unbounded
faith in the productive power of ships and
wagons. To him, "it is plain that the
capital and labor employed in carrying com-
modities from where they are to be pro-
duced to where they are to be consumed,
and in dividing them into minute portions
so as to fit the wants of consumers, is really
as productive as if they were employ-
ed in agriculture or in manufactures." The
man who carries the food adds, he thinks,

as much to the quantity to be consumed as
did the one who ploughed the ground and
sowed the seed — and he who stands at the
counter measuring cloth adds as much
to the quantity of cloth as did he who pro-
duced it. No benefit, in his view, results
from any saving of the labor of transporta-
tion or exchange. He has, therefore, no
faith in the advantage to be derived from
the local application of labor or capital.
He believes that it matters nothino; to the
farmer of Ireland whether his food be con-
sumed on the farm or at a distance from it
— whether his grass be fed on the land or
carried to market — whether the manure
be returned to the land or wasted on the
road — whether, of couise, the land be im-
poverished or enriched. He is even dis-
posed to believe that it is frequently more
to the advantage of the people ^f that coun-
try that the food there produced should be
divided among the laborers of France or
Italy than among themselves.* He believes
in the advantage of large manufacturing
towns at a distance from those who produce
the food and raw materials of manufacture,
and that perfect freedom of trade consists
in the quiet submission of the farmers and
planters of the world to the working of a
system which Smith regarded as tending so
greatly to " the discouragement of agricul-
ture," that it was the main object of his
work to teach the people of Britain that it
was not more unjust to others than injuri-
ous to themselves.

He taught that the workman should go
to the place where, food being abundant,
moderate labor would command much food.
His successors teach that the food should
come to the place where, men being abun-
dant and food scarce, much labor will com-
mand little food, and that when population
has thus been rendered superabundant, the

* " It may be doubted, considering the circum-
stances under which most Irish landlords acquired
their estates, the difTerenco between their religious
tenets and those of their tenants, the peculiar te-
nures under which the latter hold their lands, and
the political condition of the country, whether
their residence would have been of any considera-
ble advantage. * * * The question really at
issue refers merely to the spending of revenue,
and has nothing to do with the improvement of
estates ; and notwithstanding all that has been
said to the contrary, I am not yet convinced that
absenteeism is, in this respect, at all injurious.''—
Frinciple8,p. 157.

240

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Sept.

surplus should go abroad to raise more food
for the supply of those they left behind.
The one teaches the concentration of man
and the local division of labor. The other,
the dispersion of man, and the territorial
division of labor. They diflfer thus in
every thing, except that they both use the
word free trade — but with reference to totally
distinct ideas. With the one, Commerce
has that enlarged signification which em-
braces every description of intercourse re-

sulting from the exercise of '^ man's natural
inclination" for association, while with the
other Trade has reference to no idea be-
yond that of the mere pedlar who buys in
the cheapest market and sells in the dearest
one. The system of the one is perfectly
harmonious, and tends towards peace among
men. The other is a mass of discords,
tending towards war among the men and
the nations of the earth.

THE GENIUS OF SLEEP;

A STATUE BY CANOVA.

A SONNET— IMITATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF MISSORINI.

Ah ! see, where purer than the alpine snows,

Born of the chisel of creative art.

The angel beauties of the creature start
To being, — couch'd in delicate repose !
A peace celestial wraps his flowing hair.
As if consenting heaven and nature there.
Had both wrought gladly on the form divine,

To bless the Sculptor in his dream of grace !
Such, and so fair, was Adam, when he first
Sate in the lap of innocence ; — so pure
The joy that on his countenance lay sure ;

Thus full of love the smile upon his face,
When, from his shadowing side, fair Eva burst.

And her first accents told him — " I am thine ."

W. G. S.

1850.

Rodolpli of Hapshurg.

241

EODOIPH OF HAPSBUR6.

History, which has for its object to
teach the lessons of life by recounting the
progress and destinies of nations, borrows
much of its brilliancy and interest from
the mention of great names. No matter
how flourishing may be the condition of
any state, if it produce not illustrious and
marked characters, it is passed by with
slight notice from cotemporaneous or suc-
ceeding annalists. The Germanic Empire
has ever been and will ever be, an object of
great interest to those who search into the
philosophy of the past, while the Low
countries, for centuries better organized,
more peaceful, and more wealthy, excite
little attention, except perhaps in regard
to their commercial relations abroad. It
seems to be the peculiar function of the
storms and commotions of kingdoms to
call forth great men — not necessarily great
inventors — nor great philosophers — but re-
formers, warriors, statesmen. Over the
records of these the mind lingers with
romantic attachment ; with them it asso-
ciates whatever is noble in conception and
splendid in result, and often forgetting the
higher purpose of the historic record, it
ascribes the glory and the progress of the
popular mass exclusively to the individual
ruler. That we are in danger of commit-
ing this error no one can doubt. Histo-
rians generally have left the aflfairs of the
common people to tradition, while engaged
in recording battles, conquests and the ex-
ploits of kings. The favor too, with which
histories of this kind are received may be
regarded as an index of public taste. If
we wished to study the domestic manners
of the English of a past age, if we would
be taken into the family, the halls of busi-
ness and the manufacturing establishment,
if we would follow up, step by step, the
results of invention and industry, we should
find the Pictorial History of England a
vastly better guide than Hume; yet the

VOL. VI. NO. in. NEW 6ERIES.

former sleeps on the library shelves, and
the latter is constantly open on our tables.
We are curious in the manners of other
nations, but in their wars and conquests,
in their great reformers and generals, we
have more than curiosity, we have an
interest amounting at times to enthusiasm.
The error we have mentioned is one to
which we would be especially lenient, for
it serves to stimulate inquiry and fix at-
tention on what we might otherwise neg-
lect or overlook, — the records of the past.
In studying the character or tracing the
destiny of a prince or a dynasty, we inevi-
tably learn 'much of character and man-
ners of the nation over which they reign-
ed. Without some such stimulus to re-
search, the knowledge of those who have
gone before us would be infinitely less
than at present, would scarcely go beyond
antiquaries and historical societies.*

It is not our intention to attempt more
than a sketch of the life and times of
Rodolph, the architect of the fortunes of
the House of Hapsburg ; but in order to do
this, a preliminary notice of the Germanic
confederation is absolutely necessary.

Previous to the reign of Charlemagne,
the history of Germany is but the annals
of perpetual vicissitude and war. Indeed,
what is called the Germanic Confederation

*If heroes and sages are truly the " representative
men" of their nation, being in person an abstract,
or microcosm of their race and age, the study of
their biographies is a department of literature as
important at least, as those more general and con-
fused records that pass under the name of History.
A more powerful incentive to virtue, cannot be
imagined, than the study of the actions and say-
ings of the great and wise of former ages. It is
this part of history to which we would assign the
especial attribute of utility. Philosophical studies
upon the manners and usages of a people far re-
moved from us in time or space, seem to be rather
an intellectual and scholarly luxury — an occupa-
tion for philosophers, much more than for the
masses. — Commentator.

242

Rodolph of Hapshurg,

Sept,

was nothing more than an assemblage of
hostile nations, between which, alliances
were continually made and broken. The
conquering tribe offered to the vanquished,
alliance or extinction. The former alter-
native was of course chosen, until by inevi-
table changes, the order was reversed, and
the victors in their turn sued for life. Still,
the general boundaries of nations remained
for centuries without great changes. On
the sea-coast between the mouths of the
Elbe and Mouse, extending south to the
Rhine, were the Franks, certainly the most
remarkable member of the confederation.
The Allemanni, a similar association of
tribes, occupied what now forms the king-
dom of Bavaria and the duchy of Baden.
North of the Elbe, and crowded in be-
tween what are now Prussia and Denmark,
were the Saxons, at that time a people of
small consequence, yet continually pro-
gressing until in after years we find them
become one of the most influential states of
the empire. Most of modern Prussia was
occupied by the Vandals and the Suevi.
Eastward of these were the Goths, the
parent stock of the Burgundians, the Lom-
bards and the Gepidse, the two former of
which so long continued to influence the
destinies of Europe. Inhabiting the centre
of Germany and circumscribed by the
tribes whom we have mentioned, were a
great number of wandering nations, tribu-
tary to Rome, and of no importance what-
ever.

Such was Germany at the time of the
breaking up of the Roman Empire, during
the fifth and sixth centuries. Immediately
subsequent to this event, there ensued a
remarkable change in nearly all the Ger-
man states. The Lombards passed into
Italy. The Vandals, accompanied by the
Suevi and one or two minor tribes, traversed
the entire length of Europe, and settled in
Spain. The Burgundians moved over to
the western bank of the Rhine. The
Franks pressed out their boundaries to the
right and left. The Saxons pushed far-
ther into the interior, and laid the founda-
tions of the present kingdoms of Saxony
and Hanover. The Allemanni encroached
on the Helvetians. The Goths advanced
slowly southward, and were steadily pushed
on by the Sclavonic nations. Much of
this change was owing to the great extent
of alluring country opened by the dissolu-

tion of the Roman power, and much also
must be attributed to the measures of the
warlike Clovis, king of the Salian Franks,
who had already begun to display that
ambition and native courage which made
his people so dangerous, for centuries af-
ter, to their less martial neighbors.

From this time until the middle of the
eighth century, we hear of little else than
the progress of the Franks, under their
Merovingian kings. To the bold and
adventurous spirit of this nation, we con-
ceive that Europe owes much. It served
to keep the continent in comparative quiet.
It overawed the encroaching hordes of
barbarians who only sought opportunity to
pour down from their northern wastes
upon the more temperate parts of Europe,
scarcely less barbarous. It rolled back
the wave of Mohammedan power, just
when it seemed ready to overwhelm Christ-
endom. Its supremacy culminated under
Charles Martel and Charlemagne, and af-
ter the death of the latter, it played only an
ordinary part in the affairs of the Ger-
manic Empire.

Amid so much of overturning and change,
it could not have been expected that socie-
ty would assume a sound and healthy
organization.

Religion was regarded as fit only for
priests and women. Laws were capiicious,
partial and feebly enforced Military
service was the great source of honor and
profit. Kings rewarded their favorite
knights with titles and lands, the latter of
which could be at any time wrested from
the peaceful proprietor and transferred to
the rapacious soldier. Where other means
of raising money failed, the revenues of
monasteries and cathedrals were summarily
appropriated to the use of royalty. The
check upon the governing power was al-
most entirely nominal. Assemblies of the
people were rarely and with great difficulty
called. The spirit of Roman Jurispru-
dence in supplanting that of the German,
had well nigh destroyed itself. But though
the authority of the sovereign was exces-
sive over the religious and the inferior por-
tions of society, the nobles held themselves in-
dependent and secure. In their castles they
too were sovereigns ; armed men sat at
their tables ; the neighboring peasants
looked to them for protection, and in re-
turn gladly supplied them with the pro-

1850.

Rodolpli of Hapshurg.

243

ductions of a rude and misdirected labor.
If it suited the convenience of a noble, or
was necessary to his safety, he took the
field under his superior ; otherwise he re-
mained quietly at home and defied his
threats. The life of a peasant was con-
sidered of little value, that of a slave was
reckoned next to nothing. A middle class
was wanting ; and Society, consisting of
two distinct and separate elements, an im-
perious aristocracy and a slavish peasantry,
reaped a perpetual harvest of conflict,
violence, and revolution.

Towards the close of the ninth century
the Germanic Confederation began to organ-
ize a government distinct from that of
France. Charlemagne, who governed as a
conquest, nearly the whole of Central
Europe, in accordance with the policy of
the times in which he lived, divided his
immense possessions, at his death, into
nearly equal shares between his sons.
Whether this policy was not the best that
he could have adopted, is somewhat un-
certain, for it may well be doubted if any
one of his heirs could have ruled his empire
for a sino-le week. His kin^-dom must
either fall to pieces from its vastness, or
be peacefully dismembered — and Charle-
mao-ne took the latter alternative. In
seventy years his house became extmct in
Germany, and Arnulfof Bavaria was elect-
ed Emperor. Henceforth the Germans
recognised the rule of her native princes.
There began to be an imperative necessity
at this epoch, for a government of vigor,
energy and home growth. Anarchy had
been gradually sapping the strength of the
Empire, and the moving tribes of the
j>f orth, ever on the watch for opportunities,
were pressing eagerly across the Vistula.
Arnulf proved himself equal to the task
that awaited him. He formed powerful
alliances, he defeated the Huns in several
engagements and kept them from further
encroachments, although to drive them
back to their original boundaries was im-
possible. He is believed to have been the
first continental prince who conquered the
Normans, at that time the terror and the
scourge of Europe. He demanded and
obtained from the Pope the imperial
crown ; for although elected by the una-
nimous voice of the Confederation, he dared
not call himself Emperor except with the
papal sanction. With the death of Arnulf

expired the hopes of his house. His son
survived him but a few years, and elected
to fill the throne, lived just long enough to
see the empire endangered by the incur-
sions of the barbarians, and plunged into
an anarchy seemingly more dark and
gloomy than that from which it had been
so painfully rescued a few years before.

The events, however, of the last two
centuries had not been without permanent
results. Society had become more equal-
ized; the rights of its different portions
better understood. The Third Estate was
still wanting, but the ranks approached
continually nearer to one another. We
may reckon at this time four great classes;
the Nobles, as before ; the freemen, the
freedmen and the serfs. Of the first and
last we have spoken above. The remain-
ing two demand a brief notice.

The freedmen were such as had pur-
chased their own emancipation from bon-
dage, or had been enfranchised by their
masters. They formed a numerous por-
tion of the state, and were made the object*
of special legislation. Their condition
varied according to the terms of manumis-
sion, or the peculiar ideas of the age.
Generally they were subject to the imme-
diate control of their patrons, who no longer
dignified themselves by the appellation of
masters. They were required to work so
many days in the week, or to pay stipula-
ted sums, at certain intervals. Their de-
pendence, galling as it may appear to us,
was really a great improvement on former
modes of servitude, and proved amply
satisfactory to patron and freedman. The
former stood ready at all times to defend
the latter from harm, to shield him from
the demands of others, and to take care of
him when unable to labor. The attach-
ment of the freedman to his patron, often
surpassed that of a favorite slave to a
Southern planter. He was willing to sacri-
fice everything for the honor or the safety
of the family to which he was attached, to
labor to the best of his ability, and to fol-
low his protector to the field.

The freemen, on the other hand,
formed a class entirely different from
any that have been mentioned. They
were rarely proprietors. Still more rare-
ly were they of ignoble extraction. —
Their chief profession seems to have been
that of arms, and the name of knight the

244

Rodolpli of Hap slur g.

Sept.

loftiest distinction to wliich they aspired.
They generally accompanie.d the nobles to
the wars, more as equals and companions
than as inferiors. They would have scorn-
ed the name of hirelings, and yet their
swords were found upon the side of those
who were freest with their broad gold pieces,
and in whose castles the revelings were
loudest and the feast most plentiful. Some-
times they took part in the government,
and if, perchance, they survived the wine
cup and the battleaxe, in their elder years,
they might be found upon the judge's seat,
or in the rude provincial council. In latter
ages they often obtained high ofi&ces in the
Empire, and before nobility became a
strictly hereditary distinction, were fre-
quently ennobled, either by the royal man-
date, or by personal usurpation. They were
disposed for the most part to abandon com-
merce to the freedmen. They enforced
severe penalties upon any of their rank who
married into a lower grade. They reckon-
ed no honors equal to those gained in war.
They were a grade intermediate between
the chivalric knight and the military adven-
turer,— between the chevalier Bayards
and Dugald Dalgettys of after years ; half
nobles, half hirelings ; brave, enthusiastic,
impulsive ; yet virtually dependents upon
the less turbulent aristocracy. In spite of
their manifold misdemeanors, Europe could
have illy spared them, for in addition to
forming the chief barrier to the tyrannical
spirit of the nobles, they contributed
largely to swell the ranks of the crusaders,
and of those terrible armies which in later
days forever destroyed the Mussulman
power on the plains of Poland.

It remains to notice briefly the codes of
laws by which the various tribes of the
Germanic Confederation were governed.
The most ancient of these was the Lex
Salica^ or the code of the Salian Franks.
The origin of this collection has defied the
most skilful investigators. However it
came into existence, it is enough to know
that it was recognized by Clovis, and
amended by Charlemagne and his immedi-
ate successors. Against theft it was pecu-
liarly severe. It inflicted the penalty of
death or an immense fine upon the mur-
derer whose victim was a Frank, but a
comparatively small fine if the murdered
man was a Roman. To the protection of
the weaker eex it was strangely indifierent.

What is even more wonderful, it disclaim-
ed all interference with the duties of hos-
pitality. But, in spite of these faults, it
was the most universally acknowledged of
all the Germanic codes, and its duration
was not at all inferior to its extension.

There were many other collections of
laws besides the Salic. Most of these were
the productions of the wise men to whom
the immediate successors of Charlemagne
assigned the difi&cult task of preparing laws
for partially christianized barbarians. If
any comparison were to be made between
these, as an aggregate, and the first men-
tioned code, our favor would incline to-
wards the latter, although the result solely of
barbaric justice. With the latter, the pro-
tection of female chastity is a matter of the
highest importance ; with the former, it
shrinks into a mere item. The old Franks
had not yet lost that superstitious venera-
tion for woman, so glowingly eulogized by
Tacitus. The Christian lawgivers had al-
ready more than begun to degrade her to
that level from which the spirit of chivalry
centuries after scarcely sufficed to raise
her. In other respects, there is little dif-
ference between the Salian system of laws
and the codes of the Bavarians, Lombards,
Thuringians, or Saxons. The Trisians,
however, carried their gradation of penal-
ties to a nicety unparalleled in ancient or
modern times.

If a man struck another on the head, so
as to make him deaf, the fine was twenty-
four solidi ; if dumb, eighteen ; if blood
merely flowed, one ; if the skull appeared,
two ; if an ear were cut off", twelve ;
if the nose, twenty -four ; if one of the in-
ward teeth were knocked out, two ; if an
angular tooth, three ; if a grinder, four; if
the hand were cut.ofi" by the wrist, forty-
five ; if the thumb, thirteen and a half;
if the index finger, seven ; if the middle
finger, six and a half; if the ring finger,
eight ; if the little finger, six ; if the whole
five fingers, forty-one : and so on of the
rest of the person. Could the minutiae of
law go farther ? And can any one in our
day, with any justice, complain of legal
pedantry or technicality 1*

Thus far we have made no mention of
the power of the church. Nor indeed did
she begin to manifest much of her power

* Dunham's Germanic Empire, vol, I., p. 94.

1850.

Rodolph of Hapshurg.

245

in Germany until the beginning of the
twelfth century, during the reign of the
House of Franconia. From that time till
the accession of Rodolph the leading fea-
ture of Germanic history is the constant
struggle maintained between the Emperors
and the Popes, by the former to extend
their sway over the ecclesiastical affairs of
the German church, as well as over the
temporal concerns of Italy ; by the latter,
to prevent this increase of power. We can
conceive that this struggle wjw«^ have taken
place, sooner or later. The characteristic
of the Emperors was their boundless ambi-
tion, an ambition that received a check
whenever it directed its gaze towards
Rome. It was not the spiritual power of
Rome however, that stood in the way ; for
this the Cassars had little concern. But
at this time the Popes ruled all Italy, and
Italy was then as ever, the goal of Ger-
man ambition. The Popes, on the other
hand, dreaded nothino; so much as the ex-
tension of the imperial sway. To prevent
what they feared, they encouraged rebel-
lion in the Empire, and called in the aid
of the Normans, and subsequently of the
French, to found a kingdom in Italy that
should effectually resist the encroachments
of the Northern power. The struggle
reached its culmination during the reign
of Henry the Fifth, the last of the Fran-
conian House. The Pope prohibited all
ecclesiastics of whatever grade from doing
homage to the Emperor, the latter raised
an army and marched upon Rome to com-
pel a submission which was not granted at
home. A battle ensued between the Ro-
man and imperial forces. The Pope was
taken captive and driven by threats into
a full recognition of the imperial sway and
into a solemn oath that he would never ex-
communicate the Emperor. The latter on
his part promised to respect the dignity and
the immunities of the church, but how well
he kept his word may be inferred from the
fact, that he soon after marched again up-
on Rome, with the resolution to proceed to
extremities against the Pope and those of
his subjects who had displeased him by
yielding to the general council. Pope Pas-
cal fled and died an exile. The excom-
munication of the Emperor was renewed,
until in 1122 a final compromise was in-
stituted between the Empire and the Pa-
pacy. The Emperor renounced the right of
nominating to benefices, and of influencing

canonical elections, but was invested with
the power of conferring a sceptre on who-
ever was elected. This pacification would
probably have been of as short dura-
tion as the other, but for the death of
Henry. With him ended the male line of
the House of Franconia and much of the
disaffection between the church and the
Empire. The state of society however
was but slowly improving. Nobles
were often freebooters, churchmen, war-
riors ; the common people grossly ignor-
ant. The obligations of law and the
sacred dignity of religion met alike with
universal disregard. Yet the history of
the times shows everywhere the signs of
a better future slowly rising upon Europe.
The spirit of chivalry was dawning. Ex-
amples of generosity and sincerity were
becoming more frequent, and the appear-
ance of a new dynasty gave hopes that the
German Empire would gain fresh strength
to emerge from darkness.

We have lingered so long over the
earlier chronicles of the Germanic Confed-
eration, we must pass quickly over the des-
tinies of the Hohenstauffen family. Dur-
ing their reign, of nearly a century and a
half, the Empire progressed steadily in
point of civilization and popular freedom.
The imperial authority lost something of
its former absoluteness. The power of de-
ciding in ecclesiastical litigations passed
from the crown to the Holy See. The im-
perial revenues were diminished. A col-
lege of princes was called into existence,
and became a formidable check upon the
Emperor and a salutary aid in establishing
the independence of individual States. The
municipalities assumed a character hither-
to unknown. At first, each city consisted
of three distinct classes ; the nobles who
defended the walls and drew their re-
venues immediately from the working po-
pulation ; the burgesses who transacted
all business, and maintained the nobility
from the proceeds of an industry and intel-
ligence which the latter despised ; and the
serfs, who served both equally. But as
time elapsed constant familiarity tended to
break down invidious distinctions ; a gradu-
al assimilation commenced, until marriages
between the offspring of nobles and bur-
gesses, and of burgesses and their inferiors,
were no longer felt to be disgraceful or un-
i equal. The number of imperial cities was
increased, and their emancipation from feu-

246

Rodolph of Hapshurg.

Sept.

dal authority rapidly consummated. Con-
federations ensued ; at first, the alliance of
the Rhine ; next, the famous Hauseatic
League. The latter confederation, which
finally embraced eighty of the most consid-
erable towns in Germany, constituted at
first to protect its members against the ra-
vages of the pirates who infested the Bal-
tic, had soon for its chief object the estab-
lishment of a commercial monopoly, to its
own advantage and the detriment of the
rest of Europe. The association founded
four chief factories, at London, Bruges,
Novogorod, and Bergen, and the direction
of affairs was entrusted to managers resi-
dent in Lubeck, Cologne, Dantzic, and
Brunswick. The Leao-ue reached a height
of commercial power and prosperity before
unknown ; its merchants were princes, its
trafficers the honorable of the earth. It
raised and equipped armies, and openly
defied the power of kings. Although, as
just intimated, its influence was to a cer-
tain extent injurious to other portions of
Europe, and its growth of too artificial a
nature to continue long, it was, neverthe-
less, productive of one good which cannot
be overlooked. It served to raise the aris-
tocracy of wealth to a level with that of
birth, and to do away with many injurious
divisions of society.

An interregnum of twenty years after
the extinction of the Hohenstauffen House
once more rendered the imperial throne an
object of ambitious desire, and its posses-
sion was eagerly sought by three prin-
cipal candidates, Ottocar and Otlio of Bo-
hemia and Alfonso of Castile, the latter of
whom had little sympathy with any of the
electors. But an unlooked for Providence
appeared signally to interfere. The suffer-
age fell on Rodolph, Count of Hapsburg,
a prince of inferior dignity and possessed
of but small territories. His early history,
however, is remarkable as displaying the
policy and the courage of the man who was
to unite the discordant elements of the
Germanic Confederation, and organize
from confusion and anarchy a splendid
magnificent imperial power. His paternal
dominions, originally hostile to each other,
— (the type of the greater states in whose
pacification he v^^as afterward to display
Buch uncommon powers) — he brought into
harmony at an early period. His ambitious
and restless spirit thus urged him to fresh

exertions. He made war on his neighbors
on the slightest pretexts, and by conquest
or treaty generally succeeded in gaining
possession of their territories. Nor did he
disdain the less honorable occupation of a
freebooter— an occupation so common
among the German princes. We can hard-
ly conceive of a state in which the profes-
sion of a robber could be embraced by the
nobility, yet it will be necessary to form
this idea, if we would form a right estimate
of the times in which the greatest events of
the middle ages were transacted.

A noble, weary of following his sovereign
to the wars, and who sought upon his own
domains an independence and lawlessness
that could not be found even in the license
of a court generally fixed his seat near a
great road, or oftener by the junction of
four highways. Here he called about him
a numerous retinue of knio;hts and freed-
men attached to him by ties of blood or
mercenary obligations, ready on the instant
to obey his commands and thoroughly un-
scrupulous as to the means of fulfilling
them. A strongly fortified castle enabled
him to bid defiance to the threats of royal-
ty or the attacks of his aggrieved neigh-
bors. No one who passed by his strong-
hold was free from his depredations. Com-
panies of merchants ; bands of pilgrims
journeying to the Holy Land or to the
shrine of some sainted hermit ; monks lei-
surely conveying to the monastry the fat
produce of superstitious proprietors were
pounced upon without scruple, and compel-
led to yield up whatever the rapacity of the
noble might demand Often these trans-
fers were not made without sanguinary
conflicts. It was not an uncommon thing
for traders to maintain troops of soldiers
for their especial defence, and these latter
sometimes proved more than a match for the
confident and reckless followers of the noble
freebooter. Often too, the holy fathers
displayed a skill in the use of weapons
marvellous to those who had not imagined
that monks did anything more than fast
and pray in the cloister, or occasionally
venture out on a begging visit to the neigh-
boring farmers. Frequent crosses by the
way- side attested the result of these engage-
ments, and the exhortations to the pious
traveller to supplicate mercy for the souls
of those who had fallen, suggested mourn-
' fill reflections as to the fate of the dead.

1850.

Rodolph of Hapshiirg.

247

Nor were the ravages of these noble
robbers confined to the highways. If mer-
chants and pilgrims failed, the distance
was not great to some other den of ma-
rauders, and the spoil not less plentiful
than in the former case, though the victory
might not be so easily gained. And one
source of revenue always remained if the
highways were deserted, and the castles of
the neighboring nobles unassailable, or level
with the ground. The wealth of the mo-
nasteries seemed inexhaustible. In truth,
the worthy anchorites of the mediaeval age
ever showed a much better knowledge of
the human heart, and of the avenues to
the pocket, than did the grasping and un-
taught noble. The former flattered and
cajoled, and went away with a whole skin
and plentifully filled bags ; the latter threat-
ened, fought, and bought whatever he ob-
tained only at the price of severe conflict
and sometimes at life itself. In times of
scarcity therefore, his gains were small and
hardly earned, while the monk revelled in
ease and abundance. Aa^oTession on the
monastery became inevitable. The monks
at first attempted to buy a precarious safe-
ty by giving ; afterwards by taking up arms
and covering their battlements with brist-
ling pikes. But even their weapons and
their strong walls did not avail them. The
rapacious freebooter was not accustomed
to allow scruples of religion to interfere with
his demands or those of his followers. The
sacred retreats of piety were indiscrimi-
nately pillaged, and often converted into
heaps of smoking ruins. But more often
they were robbed judiciously. Each visita-
tion left the trembling recluse in hopes that
the attacks of the marauder had ceased, and
each attack proved but the precarsor to a
dozen more. As the prudent husbandman
who leaves a portion of honey in the hive,
and carefully refrains from molesting its
inhabitants, finds in it a perpetual source
of income, so the skillful noble who plun-
dered the monastery occasionally and in
part, and protected it from the ravages of
others, drew from it a constant and lasting
revenue. And often too, in declining
years he compelled the fearful monks at
the point of the sword to canonize him as
their benefactor and patron saint.

Before he was called to the throne Ro-
dolph was but a little in advance of the
marauding nobility we have described. He

was less of a bandit, but more of a conquer-
or. He abandoned the occupation of rob-
bing the packages of merchants and the
wallets of travellers for the more profitable
trade of seizing estates. Neither the bonds
of relationship nor the sanctities of religion
stood in his way toward the increase of
power and territory. He was at one time
excommunicated for burning a monastry.
He ravaged the lands of a wealthy uncle,
and ultimately succeeded by inheritance
to what he had virtually obtained by con-
quest. He routed numerous banditti whose
only crime appeared to him to be that they
were weaker than himself. But among
these more unworthy exploits he often ap-
peared in the character of a true hero. His
lenience to those whom he had subdued
was remarkable. His generosity is record-
ed in a multitude of legends, more in num-
ber than generally falls to the lot of
the great men of a past age. Still, not-
withstanding his courage, his ambition, and
his generous traits, he would in all proba-
bility have remained a prince of the second
order. Count only of Hapsburg and the do-
mains inherited from his uncle, had not an
unlooked for circumstance introduced him
to the notice of the powerful Archbishop of
Mentz, This prelate on his way to Rome
passed by his territories, and applied to him
for an escort as a protection against the ban-
ditti who infested the country as far as the
Italian frontier. Rodolph cheerfully equip-
ped a large force which accompanied the
archbishop to the Eternal city and return-
ed with him in safety to his home, a signal
service which the prelate assured him he
should not soon forget and in the end more
than repaid.

Just at this time, Gregory the Tenth
harrassed by the continual complaints of
the German princes, and fearful lest the
confusion of the Empire should result in
anarchy and the complete estrangement of
the imperial power from Rame, announced
to the confederated States that if they de-
layed longer to choose a sovereign, he
would be obliged to provide one for them.
The elector of Mentz was the first to con-
voke the Diet, and the archbishop with the
remembrance of the favor he had so re-
cently received fresh in his mind, set him-
self earnestly to work to procure the no-
mination of Rodolph. The claims of Al-
phonso and Otho were summarily disposed

248

RodolpTi of Hajpshurg.

Sept.

of ; but the contest between the partizans
of Rodolpli and Ottocar was not so easily
terminated.

The election although tumultuous and
stormy presented no parallel to that which
took place immediately subsequent to the
fall of the House of Saxony, when deputa-
tions from every Germanic nation convey-
ed to the vast plains of the Rhine between
Mentz and Worms ; when whole tribes
clad in uncouth attire and chaunting the
rude songs of their native forests emerged
from the remotest districts of the empire,
and poured down upon the cultivated fields
of the West ; when dukes, and princes, and
nobles, and freemen mingling promiscuous-
ly together asserted their respective claims
to a hearing, and proclaimed themselves
ready to support their candidates by trial
of arms ; and when the popular tumult was
stilled only after many days of the most
strenuous exertion on the part of the dig-
nitaries of the Empire. Policy had taken
the place of lawlessness and impulse, and
the body of the people were content to
stay at home, satisfied that their individual
electors could make a better choice than
themselves. The Archbishop of Mentz,
remarkable alike for his influence and po-
litical sagacity, lost no time in furthering
the cause of his favorite Rodolph among
the electors. To those who instanced the
comparatively humble birth of his candi-
date, and demanded a prince of higher
rank, greater power and more extensive
dominions, he represented that their desires
would be better satisfied by a wise, able,
and courageous ruler such as Rodolph had
shown himself to be, than by one whose bhth
and riches were his only recommendations ;
and so well did he urge these arguments
that he gained over his brethren of the
church without further hesitation on their
part. It seemed a more difficult task how-
ever, to obtain the votes of the secular
electors, most of whom were strongly in-
chned to the side of Ottocar king of Bo-
hemia.

But what in a majority of cases men would
look upon as anything but advantageous,
here resulted directly in favor of the Count
of Hapsburg. He had six unmarried daugh-
ters and several of the electors were bachel-
If chosen Emperor he would be en-

ors

abled to dower his daughters with rich fiefs,
of which the above mentioned electors stood

in great need. The Archbishop without
scruple promised their choice among Ro-
dolph's daughters to the electors of Bava-
ria, Saxony, and Brandenburg ; and the
election of Rodolph was secured. The
news was carried to him while besieging
Basle, the bishop of which had mmdered
some member of his family. So chagrined
was the bishop at the success of his enemy
that he is said to have exclaimed, " Sede
fartiter Domine Deus^ alias^ Rodoljyhus
locum occupabit tenem /" The elevation
of the fortunate Count was instantly and
universally hailed with joy by the citizens
who hastened to swear allegiance to their
new sovereign. He lost no time in pro-
ceeding to Aix la Chapelle, where in
1273 he was crowned King of the Romans
by his friend and patron the faithful Arch-
bishop of Mentz.

But the throne upon which Rodolph was
called to sit was beset by imminent and for-
midable dangers. Robberies and murders
were of daily occurrence throughout the
empire, and the public roads unsafe to the
last degree. It is interesting to see with
what energy and zeal the late marau-
der and well nigh highway freebooter, wa-
ged the war of extermination against all
banditti and robbers of whatever degree.
lu an astonishingly short space of time he
had destroyed in Thuringia alone, sixty
castles. On one day he ordered ninety-
nine highwaymen to be hanged in Erfm'th.
Throughout the whole of his wide domin-
ions he stationed vigilant officers, whose
duty it was to mention all instances of
fraud and violence happening under their
observation. The former experience of
the Emperor was of great aid in ferreting
out the rapacious and the villainous of his
empire. Jonathan Wild would never have
been the eminent thief-taker had he not
once served an apprenticeship in the trade
of lightening the pockets of elderly gentle-
men, and breaking into the houses of the
fat and sleepy burghers of London. In all
times the men who have been most success-
ful in detecting criminals have themselves
passed through at least the initiatory experi-
ences of crime. " Qui vit sans folie^ n^est
fas si sage quHl croit^'' said the wittiest
of moralists in the most dissolute of courts.
If Rochefoucauld had substituted crime for
folic we think the maxim might have lost
nothing in truth by the alteration.

1850.

Rodolph of Hapshurg.

249

But Rodolph had other matters forced
upon him much more difficult in adjust-
ment, and important in result, than razing
bandit castles and sending their inmates to
the gallows. The Papal See was yet far from
being at peace with the Germanic nation
or its ruler. The spirit of revolt and jea-
lousy had been but partially laid. Oil had
indeed been poured on the troubled waters,
but the ground swell still murmured hoarse-
ly to the very threshold of the palace of
the Cassars. During the late reigns
the animosity between the Popes and their
councils and the Emperors, had led to re-
sults alike disgraceful and ruinous to both
parties. With the successive extinctions
of dynasties many of the old causes of grie-
vances had died away, but others of a na-
tional character still survived and seemed
only to gain fresh strength by age. To
the concessions he was about to propose,
and to the articles of peace he was about
to arrange, Rodolph brought all the mo-
deration and art of which he was capable,
and happily for Germany, the Pope to
whom overtures were made was equally
moderate, equally skillful, and equally fond
of peace with the Emperor.

Whatever may have been the merits and
whatever the faults of the mediaeval Ro-
man church, we cannot deny her the praise
of consummate craft in her dealings with
temporal powers. She has ever possessed
the wisdom of the serpent if not the harm-
lessness of the dove. For centuries while
the kingdoms of Europe were clashing in
terrible discord, while the mighty fabrics
of human policy were rocking to their bases
and often falling, only to give place to others
not more lasting, the spiritual despotism
of the papacy gathered constantly about
itself the elements of perpetuity. If mon-
archs quarreled, the only arbiter was the
Holy See, and the judge was seldom the
loser by the decision. And we may well
believe that in the dark and stormy years
of the middle ages the presence of a steady
conservative force exerting an influence
upon a whole continent was eminently pro-
ductive of good, and that its extinction
would have been followed by nothing other
than general anarchy and confusion. Rome
had her legates in every court, her teach-
ers in every village. She awed the tyran-
nical monarch and the impetuous noble,
she gave courage and manly resolution to

the peasant. There was little fear of her
temporal power going too far. Human na-
ture will rarely yield beyond a certain
point and for one instance in which the
Popes forced an abject submission to their
authority, they met with hundreds where
it was necessary to use their power indi-
rectly and cautiously. To the credit of
Rome also it must be said that she often-
est lent her aid to the weaker party, and
that her interference in cases of unjust
spoliation or aggression was not of rare oc-
currence. The church was the minister
of much evil but of vastly more good. For
centuries it was the balance wheel of
Europe, and it lost its mighty influence
only when the complex machine of govern-
ment could move on smoothly without it.
Rome of the nineteenth century has lost
many of the traits which characterized and
ennobled Rome of the twelfth and thir-
teenth. Now, in her dotage, she seeks the
smallest grains of power by tortuous wind-
ings and unworthy fraud, then, in vigorous
youth, she came boldly forward and claim-
ed with perfect confidence what she was
sure of gaining and what was rightfully
her own. She flattered too, and used ar-
tifice, but the artifice and the flattery were
the weapons of skillful astuteness, not the
sole refuge of impotent weakness.

As the conditions of amity between the
Vatican and the Empire, the subtle Gre-
gory proposed to Rodolph that he should
renounce all claim to jurisdiction over
Rome, all authority over the kingdom of
Naples, and all interference in ecclesiastical
elections ; that he should confirm the pri-
vilege of appeal to the supreme pontifi', and
grant the independence of the Germanic
church. Nor was the magnitude of these
demands so great as might at first have
been supposed. Previous monarchs had
allowed them in theory, though they had
failed to concede them in practice. Ro-
dolph was called upon to act sincerely
where his predecessors had acted with du-
plicity. To deny these demands was im-
politic and impossible, to do as others had
done before him would have been to tear
open anew the wounds of the Empire, and
confirm all former contention and anarchy.
The great experiment of concession, in form
and reality, was yet to be made ; and
Rodolph, earnestly desirous, we may be-
lieve, to secure the happiness of his subjects

250

RodolpTi of Hapshurg,

Sept.

at a sacrifice of merely nominal rights, the
loss of which would never be perceived by
the nation, consented to the conditions
proflfered by Gregory. The result was one
of unmixed good. Henceforth the Pope
was a fine ally to him and the empire. —
The Holy See and the council refused
longer to listen to the complaints of his
former rival Alphonso, whom for some time
previous they had kept in suspense, and
announced to all who might be disposed to
contend against the authority of the Em-
peror that he was the rightful ruler of
Germany, confirmed by God and his vice-
gerent, and that whoever questioned his
authority was guilty of rebellion against the
mother church.

But the persuasions of Rome did not
instantly calm the internal dissensions of
the empire. The sturdy Ottocar, who it
will be remembered, was at one time a
competitor with Rodolph, and who seemed
to have yet lingering in his breast a con-
siderable remnant of what has been not
unaptly termed " Teutonic Pluck " ven-
tured in defiance of the authority of Gregory
to raise the standard of revolt against his
successful rival. Those parts of Austria
over which he was sovereign were held
only by a feeble tenure, and had he con-
sulted his own interest wisely he would
have suffered Rodolph to remain at a dis-
tance and in peace. The Emperor convoked
a Diet, but the Bohemian refused to appear ;
openly avowing his independence, and cal-
ling on the German princes to take up
arms against the new Emperor. A few of
them responded to the call ; a larger num-
ber declared their intention of siding with
Rodolph ; the remainder, however, kept
passively neutral, ready to espouse the
cause of the victor. The Emperor taking
the initiative marched directly on Vienna,
and nothing daunted by the sight of the
ruins of the bridge which had recently
spanned the Danube, and which had been
broken down by the retreating soldiers of
Ottocar, threw a chain of boats across the
stream and poured his troops into the streets
of the astonished city.

Resistance was hopeless. The Bohemian
was out-numbered and out-generaled, and
an unconditional submission was exacted by
the conqueror. The famous annalist jEneas
Sylvius, whose love of truth sometimes
yields to his love of the marvellous, has

related a circumstance connected with the
surrender which has excited the curiosity
of critical readers. According to him, a
magnificent pavilion was erected, on the
island of Camberg, in the Danube, in
which the ceremony of investiture was to
be performed. The sides of the tent were
closed that the unfortunate Ottocar might
not be exposed to the gaze of his subjects.
Rodolph, seated on a splendid throne, sur-
rounded by the principal nobles of his court
and the officers of his army, was receiving
the keys of the city and the royal sword
from the kneeling Ottocar, when by acci-
dent or design the tent was unfolded, and
the humbled Austrian was seen in his un-
worthy position by the vast concourse of
spectators which lined the banks of the
river. Ottocar indignantly started to his
feet, charged the Emperor with treachery,
and rejoining his nobles and people urged
them to immediate renewal of war. The
treaty was renounced. A series of san-
guinary battles ensued, until the death of
Ottocar completed the subjugation of his
provinces. For the truth of this narration
historians generally are not willing to vouch.
But that Ottocar chafed under the lenient
rule to which he was obliged to submit,
and that in a subsequent rebellion he was
slain, is not doubted. For ourselves, we
confess a certain leaning to the brilliant
legends and stories with which the medi-
aeval writers were wont to adorn their pages.
That many of them are as fabulous as the
exploits of Curtius and Decius, upon which
Livy has lavished such gorgeous coloring,
we cannot but suppose. To believe them
altogether would be too easy a credulity,
to reject them altogether too harsh a scep-
ticism . Events as romantic and marvellous
as many of those recorded in the annals of
a past age are daily happening in our own
titnes. We record what we see for the
benefit of posterity, and can give them no
security for our veracity but our word. —
Antiquity has transmitted its experiences
to us, and it depends solely on ourselves
whether we will receive them or not. The
incident above mentioned bears no absur-
dity within itself, and if admitted affords a
satisfactory and sufficient reason for the
rebellion of the humbled king. As we
have said, the death of Ottocar was the
termination of the war. His son married
a daughter of Rodolph — in accordance

1850.

RodolpJi of Hapshurg.

251

with the peculiar and favorite policy of the
latter — and became one of the strongest
allies of his father-in-law.

Delivered at leno-th from the outward

difficulties which had so long harassed him,
the Emperor began to develope more clearly
the character of a wise and politic ruler.
For it is not the mere conqueror who builds
up a state, nor will a thousand victories do
more than cripple the resources of a nation,
if to the valor of its generals there is not
added foresight, calculation, and skill in
political economy. Subjugation is but the
first step towards consolidation. The
chafing asperities of sectional manners, the
inevitable jealousies between separate states
require time and the most skillful manage-
ment ever to lose their harsh individualities
and become harmoniously blended. Amid
all of Alexander's conquests he never
founded a state. The Orientals whom he
subdued were Orientals still ; they cher-
ished nothing but hatred to their conqueror,
and waited only a favorable opportunity
to throw ofi" the yoke he had imposed. —
Between the Macedonian and the Indian
there was no assimilation. No mediating
agent had acted on them, and to imagine
that an empire so rudely and hastily con-
structed would long outlast its author, was
as it were, to believe that a column could
be left to stand after the pedestal had been
knocked away. History is full of exam-
ples of the futility of military success,
unaided by civil sagacity. The present
age has seen a memorable instance in the
mighty and perishable fabric reared by the
Corsican conqueror, nor will men soon for-
get the sudden and startling crash of the
falling ruin. Of all nations of antiquity
the Komans best understood the art of
reconciling those whom they subjugated, to
their masters. The great secret of their
success and of the long duration of the em-
pire, lay in the system of colonization
which they adopted from the very first. —
The Roman who was sent from the parent
city to rule the distant and lawless province
early identified his fortunes with the for-
tunes of the state. He civilized, he taught
the arts of life, and those who had been his
barbarian enemies, soon became his enlight-
ened allies and subjects. The Romish
church has not been behind her great
prototype. Wherever she has extended
her sway she has commenced by assimila-

ting herself to society as she found it, and
by taking the initiative in all social melio-
ration and reform, till she made all ranks
her willing auxiliaries and defenders.

Rodolph proceeded in his plans of inter-
nal progress with great wisdom and cau-
tion. He purified and ennobled the great
body of the clergy by raising their social
importance to a much higher grade than
heretofore, and thus taking away the ne-
cessity under which they had labored of
acquiring influence by underhand and sur-
reptitious means. Teachers of religion will
ever mould the opinions of society especi-
ally of its lower classes — to a great extent ;
it remains for rulers to choose whether the
minds of their subjects shall be guided by
men whom they sanction and protect or
whom they despise and degrade. In the
former case, they can at all times feel per-
fect safety in the good will of their people ;
in the latter they are constantly insecure,
and know not but they are treading direct-
ly over the smothered volcano which may
at any moment open the earth under their
feet and engulf them for ever.

Another measure of public policy was
the gradual retrenchment of the expenses
of the Empire. These had been lavish
and prodigal during the administrations of
former rulers and had in a corresponding
degree excited the discontent of the sub-
jects. The taxes necessary to support the
wasteful excess of the court had been en-
ormous. Their collection had been attend-
ed with great difficulty and danger, had
often provoked civil wars, and had been
the cause of much of the popular animosity
against the throne. To remedy this griev-
ance which seriously threatened the inter-
nal peace of the Empire, Rodolph zeal-
ously set himself to work. He reformed
the manners of the court. He abolished
all needless offices. He diminished the
salaries of such as were continued, as far as
was consistent with the proper discharge of
their duties. He promulgated to the peo-
ple the reasons for the various acts, which
they were called upon to sustain, and soon
had the satisfaction of seeing them recon-
ciled to his public measures, prompt to an-
swer the demands of government, and sa-
tisfied with the wisdom of the ministers of
justice. As a proof of the favor with which
they regarded their sovereign, they unani-
mously demanded thenominationof a prince

252

RodolpTi of Hapshurg.

Sept.

of the royal house. In this request the nobil-
ity united. A Diet was convoked, andRo-
dolph's eldest son Albert was invested with
the government of Austria, Styria and Car-
inthia. His second son Rodolph received
Suabia which had recently come within the
limits of the Confederation. It seemed^^asif
the destinies of the House of Hapsburg were
now involved with those of the Empire.
The succession of Albert appeared inevita-
ble, and the future acts of the Emperor
were such as to confirm the general satis-
faction with which his administration had
hitherto been received.

About this period, Innocent Fifth, the
successor of Gregory, endeavored to arouse
Europe to another of those spasmodic
efforts that had. so long convulsed the con-
tinent— the crusades. The late disastrous
expedition under the spiritual sanction of
Clement the Fourth, in which the King of
France and his immense army had miser-
ably perished, did not at all tend to shake
the confidence or diminish the ardor of the
Holy See. Since the eleventh century,
when Peter the Hermit led the warriors of
Europe to the restoration of the liberties of
Palestine, through eight crusades of almost

J Do

unbroken failure and disgrace, the Popes
had not once slackened from their original
zeal. Military forces had been exhausted
only to spring forth into fresher and more
vigorous life. Still, an apathy, an uncon-
cern, a gradual indifference to the warlike
monitions of Rome was settling down over
the Catholic States. To Rodolph, as the
warm friend of the church, and strenuous
supporter of the papal authority, — as a
fearless captain, and, more than all, as an
ambitious prince, — Innocent turned as a
last and sure resort. He pictured to the
Emperor the glory that must follow to
himself and his house from the successful
issue of the expedition, the power that
would be added to the German States, and
the reward he would find in his own con-
science. He represented that one more
effort must destroy the Ottoman power,
already brought down to the verge of ruin
by the repeated blows it had received from
the Christian Pjwers. In fine, he left no
means untried of personal solicitation, of
friendly and skillful embassy, and of the ex-
hortation of the national clergy.

Notwithstanding all his influence and
exhortation, however, no result was effected

other than that a lesson was taught to
Europe that the crusading spirit was buried
beyond hope of a resurrection. For a con-
cise account of the causes of its decline,
we refer without hesitation to M. Guizot.

" A great deal was said in Europe about
crusades, and they were even preached with
ardor. The Popes excited the sovereigns and
the people ; councils were held to recommend
the conquest of the Holy Land, but no expe-
ditions of any importance were now under-
taken for this purpose, and it was regarded
with general indifference. Something had en-
tered into the spirit of European society which
put an end to the crusades. * * The
general movement was evidently arrested.
* ^ * Nothing could revive the spirit
of the crusades. It is evident that the two
great forces of society — the sovereigns on the
one hand and the people on the other — no
longer desired their continuance."

" It has often been said that ^ Europe
was weary of these constant inroads upon
Asia. We must come to an understanding as
to the meaning of the word ' weariness.' fre-
quently used on such occasions. It is exceed-
ingly incorrect. It is not true that generations
of men can be weary of what has not been
done by themselves, that they can be wearied
by the fatigues of their fathers. Weariness
is personal, it cannot be transmitted like an
inheritance. The people of the thirteenth
century were not weary of the crusades of the
twelfth, they were influenced by a different
cause. A great change had taken place in
opinions, sentiments, and social relations.
There were no longer the same wants or the
same desires, the people no longer believed or
wished to believe in the same things. It is
by these moral or political changes and not
by weariness that the differences in the con-
duct of successive generations can be explain-
ed. The pretended weariness ascribed to
them is a metaphor destitute of truth."*

Amoncf

the changes

alluded to by the

eminent Frenchman, must be reckoned
the greater permenency of all civil insti-
tutions. At the time of the first crusades
the surface of the continent seemed like
the surface of a sea shattered by winds and
overstrewn by wrecks. Society was a float-
ing, semi- organized, mass. Portions of it
had no other home than the tent and the
field. Rights of personal property and se-
curity were commonly disregarded. The
holders of estates were at any time liable

* History of Civilization in Modern Europe^
Volume 1, Lecture 8th.

1850.

Rodolph of Hapshurg.

253

to be driven from their possessions and thrust
into vagabondism and the life of banditti. To
all such, to serfs, to the freedmen, to many
of the nobility who panted for a wider field
for their prowess or their rapaciousness,
the crusades had offered signal advantages.
And of such were the ranks of those com-
posed who conquered at Acre, and chant-
ed the praises of the Virgin inside the walls
of Jerusalem. But with the recognition
of civil rights, with security of persons and
property, with the settled demarcation of
national limits and the establishment of
hereditary governments, there at once en-
tered into men's hearts a desire for the re-
pose of peace. The lower classes emanci-
pated in a great degree from that degrad-
ing servitude under which they had so long
groaned, had no further reasons for leaving
their native soil, and gaining a bloody and
doubtful freedom on the plains of Syria.
The freedmen rapidly rising to greater dig-
nities and wealth were too much intoxica-
ted with their new importance to seek a
change of condition. The nobles were
busy in improving their estates, in strength-
ening their titles, and in laying the founda-
tions of future greatness. The time was
past when a call for a new crusade could
collect an hundred thousand warriors from
the fields of Europe. The lack of religious
enthusiasm pervaded all classes simul-
taneously. The day of mere adventure
was over. The age of cautiousness, of
worldly policy, of bargain and sale had
commenced.

Possibly had the Pope made his final ap-
peal a few years later or a few years earlier
it might have been partially answered. But
at the time in which it was promulgated, he
could have expected nothing other than in-
difference. The Emperor was wholly en-
grossed in measures for the establishment of
his power and the aggrandizement of his fa-
mily. Castile was convulsed by a civil
war originating between the claimants for
the throne after the death of Alphonso.
The struggle [^between the Genoese and
Pisans distracted Italy. Tho authority of
the Holy See could scarcely restrain the
Romans and the inhabitants of the ecclesi-
astical States within decent bounds of mo-
deration. The Cumani, a savage people
who occupied the provinces north-west of
Hungary, were pouring in by thousands
on that devoted country, ravaging the

fields, consuming the harvests of the indus-
trious peasants and threatening universal
famine. In short, the circumstances of
Europe were entirely adverse to a crusade.
The Christian possessions on the eastern
shores of the Mediterranean, gained by
incredible expenditure of treasure and hu-
man life, held only by the most watchful
exertion, were successively abandoned.
Acre, the most glorious of conquests, was
the last to yield. It was entered by the
Saracens, in 1291, a day made ever after
memorable by the extinction of the Christian
power in Syria The various orders of re-
lio;ious knio;hts sworn to the deliverance of
the Holy Land at first withdrew to the
island of Cyprus. After that, the Hos-
pitallers established themselves at Rhodes.
The Teutonic knights transferred the seat
of their order to Courland, where, says
Des Michels, " they laid the foundation of
a dominion that existed for a long period."
The decay of the Templars was rapid and
final. Their licentious manners, their
contempt of religion, and above all, their
accumulated riches were strongly against
them. No means were left unexercised
for their extinction. The anathemas
of the church were heaped upon them.
False witnesses were suborned who testi-
fied to their having committed the most
atrocious and unheard of crimes. Those
who were arrested were thrown into the
foulest dungeons of the cities and provin-
ces. Many were taken from confine-
ment only to be burnt at the stake. Others
to save their lives, abjured the sanctities of
the order ; others were frightened into a
partial confession of the iniquities which
had been charged upon them. Their chiefs
were universally executed. The councils
of the Rhone, and the prelates of Spain,
Germany, England, Scotland, and Ireland,
interceded for them in vain. The Pope
declared the order abolished, and their
property confiscated to the Knights of the
Hospital. The former part of the decla-
ration became history ; the latter was ne-
ver realized. The Suzerains, everywhere,
seized whatever of their property remained,
and turned it entirely to their own aggran-
dizement. Thus ended the career of the
Knights Templars, famous alike for their
military prowess, their crimes, and their
misfortunes ; and with them ended the en-
thusiasm of European sovereigns for the

254

Rodolph of Haphurg.

Sept.

establishment of Christianity in the East.

Another no less destinctive feature of
the era over v,rhich we have been lingering,
was the breaking up of the feudal system.
Of the origin of this system it is not our pur-
pose to speak, more than that it dates back
to a period previous to the reign of Char-
lemagne. Its full development is general-
ly reckoned from the tenth century. But
before this time a great step had been ta-
k:n by the conversion of benefices, (by
which we mean grants of land made by
kings to subjects as a return for military
service,) into hereditary fiefs. The act of
Charles the Bold in 879, by which he made
the government of counties hereditary, went
far in addition to render the dukes and
great proprietors independent of the crown
on the one hand, and despotic masters of
the people on the other.

The rise of feudalism was the decay of
barbarism — the former an universal, if not
an inevitable, result of the latter. Some
system of government was absolutely ne-
cessary as soon as men began to be depend-
ent on one another for the conveniences or
the amenities of society. The politics of
ancient civilization had been long forgotten
and the few records that remained mould-
ered within the walls of the monasteries.
Learning was unknown. The equality of
all men before the law was a condition as
yet undreamed of. The stronger prevail-
ed and became feudal lords; the weaker
yielded and became vassals or serfs. The
individual separation of society seemed
complete, the general chaos permanent.
We are told that, to certain of the reflect-
ive minds of that day, the end of all things
appeared near ; that among poets and his-
torians some believed and wrote that the
dissolution of the world must follow this
wide spread anarchy. Still year after year
rolled by, and the demarcations of the so-
cial state became more obvious and durable,
difi'erent classes became more harmonious
in their reflex action, and the feudal sys-
tem was generally and tacitly confessed to
be the only system fitted to the times.
The church yielded to its influence and as-
sumed many of its forms. Royalty made
little opposition to it, since opposition
would only have resulted in defeat and loss
of power. The grasp of feudalism was up-
on all things even to the minutest forms of
common life.

Still although men yielded to the out-
ward feudal s stem, we must not suppose
that they were to an equal degree in love
with its principles. These grand princi-
ples pervaded all society, and their recog-
nition was necessary to the settled peace of
politics and morals, as morals and politics
then existed. But behind feudalism, as
behind some popular disguise, were mon-
archy and the church, distinct, active, and
individual, as ever before. And whether
the church claimed to preserve neutrality,
or owned alliance with feudalism, she was
continually though secretly endeavouring
to destroy it. To efi'ect her purpose she
joined hands with the lowest phases of
radicalism at one time, was with the most
ultra manifestations of high monarchy at
another. It is to these efi"orts of the
church, at different times allying herself
with different principles, and thus rubbing
away the asperities and irreconc.leable
features of each, that we must attribute the
early decline of the system of which we
are speaking. Nor were the cities at all
behindhand in making war against a system
that tended directly to diminish their in-
fluence and importance. In a conflict
between commerce and feudalism the issue
could not lono; be doubtful. The former
must triumph over the latter, by as much
as the love of trade and social equality is
stronger than the love of servitude. Iso-
lated nobles, however much they might
retard the progress of mind, each on his
own domains, could not long resist the tide
of knowledge and free inquiry that poured
inward from the trading cities. The prin-
ciples of democracy once established, their
progressive march could not be checked by
the stiff and lifeless forms of a despotic
society.

It is not to be wondered at that Rome was
an active opponent of feudalism. If the
church for sixteen hundred years has de-
sired anything, it has been that rulers
should recognise her authority and be sub-
missive to her precepts. And just here
was the cause of her dissatisfaction. The
feudal barons and lords disowned her as a
guide, a mistress, or even a help. They
claimed to exercise power by their own
right. In the times of the Roman Empe-
rors, and indeed throughout almost all
historic periods, we find that magistrates
and rulers have acknowledged the suprem-

1850.

Rodoljpli of Hapshurg.

255

acy of religion. They have ascribed their
power to a higher source than themselves.
They have admitted the priests of their
divinities, whether Dagon, or Baal, or
Jupiter, or Vishmu, to their councils, and
have openly commanded the people to obey
them. But the feudal chief had no idea of
such a course of action. That stern indi-
vidualism so peculiar to the northern
nations, he had grafted into his own nobil-
ity, and the fruit of the tree was an utter
and fierce contempt for the authority of
religious teachers. The comparative se-
clusion in which he lived, the despotic
control which he was accustomed to exer-
cise over his family and retainers, and the
complete submission he received in return,
combined to induce forgetfulness of any
superior power. If he recognized any su-
premacy, it was the supremacy of force,
and this latter was the only means by which
his pride could be at all humbled. The
priest was allowed an unnoticeable seat at
the lower end of the table. He was per-
mitted to converse with the women of the
family, and to teach the children a few
rudiments of learning — to be forgotten as
soon as the boy could grasp a spear, or the
girl assist at the banqueting board. He
was permitted to preach docility and obe-
dience to the vassals and serfs, and was
called in to the sick chamber to prepare
with breviary and holy oil the dying man
for heaven. Throughout, his position was
that of an inferior, — not a connecting link
hetwcen the different ranks of society as he
has been sometimes styled, by writers on
this period, but a certain something which
every one might abuse, an object of con-
tempt to the lord, and certainly not an
object of envy to the vassal. And it was
for this disregard of the church and its
ministers that Rome so bitterly hated the
feudal system, — not because it induced
tyranny, not because it suppressed educa-
tion and free inquiry, not because it fostered
slavery ; all these the church could endure,
but solely because it left her out of sight,
or if it interfered at all, interfered only to
aggress and to destroy.

By degrees, as men became more en-
lightened— and the process of enlighten-
ment appears inexplicably slow if we fail
to remember that the means of dissemina-
ting knowledge were almost unknown, and
that the human intellect was undergoing

the pains and labors of a second birth, —
the feudal system seemed more and more
unnecessary and oppressive, and its abo-
lition more practicable. It had never
engrafted itself on the affections of the
people. Although men are generally will-
ing to be governed, they rarely endure
governors who claim power as their own
right, without election, without recognition
of a superior authority human or divine.
And feudal lords were of this class of rulers.
They were the incarnations of despotism ;
in that they acknowledged no appeal from
their commands. Their domination was
that of unrestrained, capricious, individual
will. To this species of domination men
can never for a lono- time submit. So lon^
as personal authority shelters itself behind
the mask of divine appointment, and utters
its mandates as the Delphic priests their
oracles, it may obtain obedience. But let
mere human will * manifest itself without
disguise, and it inevitably moves hatred
and pro'v'okes resistance. The spirit of
insubordination is sure to appear, sooner or
later. For years the hatred against feudal
power had been growing more universal and
deep-rooted.

The extinction of the feudal system was
much hastened by the wise and politic
measures of Rodolph. We have men-
tioned a few of his more important and
beneficial public acts, his suppression of the
titled banditti ; in his time the worst type
of feudal proprietors ; the reconciliation
be effected between Rome and the empire ;
his ennobling of the clergy and the con-
sequent impulse given to education ; and
his refusal to waste the streno;th and the
resources of the confederation upon a fruit-
less and untimely crusade. He had suc-
ceeded in uniting the nobles of Germany in
a remarkable degree. He had greatly
protected the interests of commerce, and
had raised the rank of freedmen and mer-
chants to respectability and honor. So
much indeed had he encouraged trade that

* Our Southern readers will perhaps be reminded
here, that the violent opposition of" the North is
naturally and unavoidably excited only by the
absence of all form of law in a certain department
of their municipal system. A legal amelioration
would soon reconcile the world to them and their
system, beside tending to their own infinite benefit,
and the salvation of the system itself. — Ed.

256

RodolpJi of Hapshurg.

Sept.

it was made a cause of complaint against him
by certain of the sovereigns of Europe. —
They lamented that he lowered his dignity
as an Emperor to any interference with the
petty affairs of business ; that the throne
of Germany should be occupied by a friend
of burgesses and hucksters ; little dreaming
that this course of action was laying the
foundations of permanent empire, and was
helping to do away with that monstrous
system which, however well fitted for the
days of Charlemagne and his immediate
successors, was utterly repugnant to the
spirit of the thirteenth century. The di-
viding lines of society were thus drawn
with less rigor. The fusion of its different
portions became more complete. At the
death of Rodolph, feudalism was a ruling
principle extinct. Traces of it long sur-
vived, and are even now to be discovered
wrought into certain of the monarchical
governments of Europe ; but its vitality,
its vigor, its power have departed forever.
It had lived its day ; its mission was ac-
complished. It now forms a subject of
contemplation rich in philosophy and con-
jecture ; and we conceive that at least a
partial knowledge of its workings is need-
ful, if we would arrive at an intimacy with
the causes of those terrible revolutions
which have not ceased for centuries to
rage among the continental nations.

Kodolph had often been invited to Rome
to receive the imperial crown with becom-
ing state, but he persisted in refusing it to
the end of his life. He is said to have
compared Rome to the cave of the sick
lion, into which many animals were known
to go, but from which none were ever seen
to return ; since many of his predecessors
had gone into Italy for the same purposes
for which he was invited, and had seldom
returned without the loss of some portion
of their rights or authority. To a profound
respect for the Holy See he often joined a
certain impatience of its interference. He
disliked, in particular, the ancient forms to
which the Church has always clung with so
much of superstitious veneration. The
universal custom of issuing laws in the
Latin language, he reprobated and refused
to follow. He caused the edicts of the
German Empire to be written out in the
German tongue, and accommodated to the
popular use. He also caused a complete
constitution to be drawn up in the same

language, which remained for many years
the basis of government.

To the time of his death, which took
place eighteen years after the commence-
ment of his reign, Rodolph continued his
career of national aggrandizement and im-
provement. He subdued the refractory
princes of the outer provinces ; succeeded
in exterminating the banditti, so that little
more was heard of them till the terror of
his name had passed away ; appointed
judges in every part of his vast dominions ;
and replenished the coffers of the empire.
At length the exhaustion of a constitution,
worn by age and labor, warned him to re-
sign the sceptre to other hands. He con-
voked a Diet at Frankfort, and having in-
formed the princes and electors of his in-
tentions, demanded that the imperial crown
should be secured to his eldest son, Albert,
by creating the latter king of the Romans.
The Diet opposed this measure, giving as
their reason that it was against the spirit
of the Confederacy to support two Em-
perors at once. Surprised and vexed at
this unlooked-for refusal, he dismissed the
elective body, and endeavored to dissipate
his anxieties by travelling through his do-
minions. The untimely death of his se-
cond son, Rodolph, went far in company
with his political cares to dispirit and weak-
en his mental and physical frame. His last
journey was from Strasburg to Spire, to
which place he was going to visit the tomb
of the deceased Empress. " This," says
an early historian, " he actually accom-
plished, sooner, perhaps, than he expected;
for being taken ill atGernersheim,he died,
in the seventy -third year of his age, and
his body being carried to Spire, was inter-
red in the great church, together with the
rest of the Emperors.''

No great man ever passes away without
leaving behind him much staple for ana
and anecdote. His personal peculiarities
are noticed curiously, and carefully remem-
bered. His sayings, important and unim-
portant, are invested with an interest not
derived wholly from themselves. His form
and features become matters of history,
thenceforth inseparable from the records of
his achievements. No hero of the middle
ages has, if we except Charlemagne, been
so adorned by tradition as Rodolph, and
certainly this is no cause of wonder, if we
consider his rapid rise from mediocrity to

1850.

Rodolpli of Hapshurg.

2^1

empire, his constant activity and success,
his attachment to the common people, and
his open and magnanimous character. We
have no space to comment on the mass of
anecdote which we find heaped about the
name of the illustrious Emperor. Perhaps
a single incident, taken from a veracious
chronicle, will serve as a specimen of his
judicial pleasantry : —

" A merchant having once complained to
him of an innkeeper at Nuremberg, who refus-
ed to refund a sum of money which he had
deposited in his hands, the Emperor, though
the defendant could not be convicted, took an
opportunity some days after, w^hen he came
with some other deputies of the city upon bu-
siness, to praise his hat, and propose an ex-
change ; accordingly, he no sooner received
the innkeepers hat, than he sent it as a token
to his wife, with a message in her husband's
name, desiring she would deliver to the bearer
the money which the merchant had left in his
hands The stratagem succeeded; the wife
sent the purse, which was restored to the right
owner, and the innkeeper was condemned to
pay a heavy fine."

In figure, Rodolph was tall and thin.
His head w^as comparatively small, his com-
plexion pale, his nose remarkably long, and
his hair scanty. His dress was plain to a
fault — resembling that of an ordinary sub-
ject. It is related that when the conquer-
ed Ottocar surrendered his insignia of au-
thority to the victor, the former, in gorge-
ous apparel, knelt to the latter in a garment
of coarse grey cloth. His manners were
always frank and obliging. He was at all
times accessible to even the meanest of his
subjects who came to ask counsel or de-
mand justice. He was emphatically a man
of the people, and had his type of charac-
ter been more frequent during the middle
ao-es, Europe would, doubtless, have emerg-
ed much sooner from the night in which she
was enveloped.

The period immediately succeeding the
death of Rodolph was confused and stormy.
An interregnum of nine months again dis-
posed the people to demand an Emperor.

A Diet was assembled, at which, (by the
art of a principal elector, who persuaded
each elector separately to vote for the can-
didate of his nomination,) Adolphus, the
Count of Nassau, was chosen, and the here-
ditary claim of Albert set aside. It is need-
less to say that the latter possessed the sym-
pathy of the princes, who were indignant
at the fraud practised upon them. During
seven years he waited his opportunity for
ascending the throne, to which he felt him-
self entitled. Nor was the career of the
present Emperor at all unfavorable to his
designs. Adolphus soon rendered himself
unpopular both to the nobles and the peo-
ple by his extravagance, corrupt manners,
and ostentatious pride. His cruel and un-
worthy massacre of the Jews provoked
universal execration. He was deposed and
soon after slain in battle by the victorious
Albert, who immediately assumed the sove-
reignty, and thus restored the fortunes of
the House of Hapsburg.

Of the subsequent destinies of this fam-
ily we do not propose to speak. We have
delayed sufficiently on its founder and its
proudest ornament. We have seen how,
by the efforts of one man, the '^disjecta
membra" of a mighty empire were brought
into a harmony of union most wonderful,
when we consider the spirit of the age ; we
have seen how long-continued feuds be-
tween temporal and spiritual power were
removed ; how the peace-loving disposition
of a nation was encouraged ; and how a
system, hoary with age and rank with abuse,
was dismissed far on its way to a deserved
extinction. We are conscious of having gone
over the ground imperfectly. We have
left unspoken much that was suggested, as
political example, by the life of the hero
of the thirteenth century. This we leave
to abler hands. We have omitted to no-
tice many of his acts, military and civil ;
but perhaps these fall within the limits of
the historian rather than the essayist. Our
desire was, only to linger reverently for a
time over the tomb of a " Hero of His-
tory." C. B.

VOL. VI. KO. III. NEW SERIES,

258

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

Sept.

MEMOIRS OF THE HOUSE OF ORLEANS.*

•' Where any one quality " says Lord
Maton, " stands'forth very prominently
from a character either for good or for evil,
posterity in general confine their attention
to that alone, and merge every other in
it. " This may be in part the fault of the his-
torian, and it is as a counterbalance to such
a tendency of regular history and biogra-
phy, that books like the one before us
are valuable, entering into minute details,
each illustrative of some other, by means of
which, while the stronger traits of character
lose not their prominence, the lesser ob-
tain also a due consideration.

The " Memoirs of the House of Orleans"
are from the birth of Louis Fourteenth to
the revolution of 1848, relating not only to
individuals of that family, but to the most
distinguished characters connected with
them, in public and private life ; illustrating
the reign of despotism, of constitutional
monarchy, and of free republicanism, and
the advantages and evils resulting from
each. These details as well as all that has
since occurred, leaving it yet to be proved
whether the French people do not lack
some indispensable requisite for a prosper-
ous and permanent self-government.

The professed object of these volumes is
to throw some light upon the " great secret"
bequeathed by Louis Fourteenth, as
an inheritance to his race. The author
, supposes this "secret" to have been
founded in part at least, on the necessity
of watching the ambitious designs of the
younger branch of the Bourbons ; and he is
thought to have alluded to it, in the phrase
" Orleans and Orange."

Some of the most remarkable events of
his reign, tending to illustrate this myste-
rious problem, are the suspicious circum-

stances attending the sudden death of the
Duchess of Orleans, first wife of the Re-
gent, and of her daughter the queen of
Spain ; and also the vile character attri-
buted generally to the Regent Orleans, and
that borne by Philip Egalite, in connec-
tion with the French Revolution of 1830.

The investigation is made in a spirit of
impartial justice, not previously exhibited
to the House of Orleans, and denotes an
honest, candid, and industrious writer.

Always forestalled by prejudice, the
actions of this remarkable family were
never fairly judged by their cotemporaries ;
and the public mind was never fully satis-
fied in regard either to their virtues or
their vices. In retracing their career we
have an advantage. Neither dazzled by
their splendor nor in dread of their power,
neither our public nor our private inter-
ests affected by them, we can contemplate
more calmly and judge more clearly be-
tween the various representations of con-
tradictory historians. If we are shocked
by their vices we are withheld from a
rancorous and violent indignation by the
knowledge of the terrible retribution that
followed ; and we cannot be led into ex-
travagant admiration of virtues of which
we know the motive, the admixture, and
the limit.

The obloquy of the proverb which, with
the title descended from Gaston, Duke of
Orleans, to his nephew Philip, that " an
Orleans would hetray the hand that
raised him to 'power^'^ has continued to
attach, like a curse, to this unfortunate
race ; producing in some a hardened in-
difference, or daring recklessness of opinion,
in others a cowardly weakness and waver-
ing of purpose, alike derogatory to their

* Memoirs of the House of Orleans. By W. Cook Taylor, L. L. D. Philadelphia ; A. Hart, lata
Carey & Hart. 1850.

Woman in France. By Julia Katanagh. Philadelphia : Lea «S& Blatichard. 1850.

1850.

Memoii's of the House of Orleans.

259

characters as men, and to their political
interests. While their vices have been
condemned, it has not been considered
what might be urged in extenuation. —
Even virtue in an Orleans has excited sur-
prise, rather than pleasure — admiration
rather than sympathy ; and the fullest ac-
knowledgment has never been unmingled
with distrust.

We have faith in the opinion held by
many, that virtuous and vicious propensi-
ties often descend from father to son, and
even through remote generations, but not
that it is necessarily so. In every-day life
we constantly see examples of the evil
arising out of such prepossessions. It is
hard to rise above the depressing consci-
ousness of beino: misconstrued. The know-
ledge that a strong bias to condemn exists
in the mind of those who surround us ; —
a predisposition to discredit our virtuous
aspirations, and to look with suspicion
upon whatever course we pursue, is paralyz-
ing. Man needs the sympathy and the
approbation of his fellow-men, and he must
possess a strong will indeed, and an exalted
energy of purpose, whose moral course is
not retrograde under such circumstances of
discouragement.

There appear to have been periods when
different members of the House of Orleans
enjoyed a short lived and even excessive
p»opularity, and the two dukes, Louis and
Louis Philippe, the son and grandson of
the Regent, were, in Paris, regarded with
favor ; but there never has ceased to exist,
in one party or another, a rancorous hatred
of the Regent and his descendants, especi-
ally in the province of Brittany.

The memoirs abound in notes, for which
the author apologizes, but which, to us, are
peculiarly attractive. They supply minute
particulars and important facts not gener-
ally known. It is through the variety of
contemporaneous writers alone, however
contradictory their versions, that we can
approach the truth. A collection of re-
markable incidents and observations thus
obtained, counterbalance the partiality of
historians, and the bias of popular tradi-
tions. Frequent reference is made to the
" Paris Gazette," to La Porte, Madame de
la Fayette, the " Memoirs of Montpensier,"
Madame de Sevignes' letters, and those of
Madame de Maintenon ; also to Fenelon,
Lefevre, De Choisi, and others; but the

chief authorities quoted are St. Simon and the
'' Memoirs de Madame, the Duchess of
Orleans." Mr. Taylor laments the scanti-
ness of material for the private history of
the seventeenth century ; — the garrulous
and minute St. Simon leaving no successor,
and the ponderous collections of Soulavie
being far less reliable.

The first volume opens with an account
of the circumstances which led to the in-
sinuations, propagated by French refugees
in Holland, against the legitimacy of Louis
Fourteenth, which, after being consigned
to merited oblivion for about a century,
were revived by the partizans who sought
to place the House of Orleans on the throne
to the exclusion of the elder branch of the
Bourbons. Our author rejects the suppo-
sition that the " Great Secret" was in any
way connected with these doubts, and from
close examination of the subject concludes
it to have been, in part at least, a certain
policy bequeathed to the elder branch of
the Bourbons to counteract the ambitious
views of the younger.

The vices by which through some of its
members, the House of Orleans has been
disgraced, are not sought to be disguised
but only to be cleared from exaggeration ;
and the weight of those crimes removed
which became affixed to them through a
system of premeditated vilification. We
are presented as in a picture gallery with a
succession of family portraits ; Monsieur,
the Regent ; Philip the Deformed ; the
King of Paris ; Philip Egalite, and Louis
Philippe, and others, less conspicuous in
feature and costume, all bearing a family
resemblance, yet with strong individual
characteristics.

These are interspersed with numerous
graphic sketches, and some richly finished
portraits of Kings, Queens, and Statesmen,
and of the most beautiful and remarkable
women of the two last centuries.

tlere, side by side, are two portraits
widely different : In form, color, and ex-
pression they are a perfect contrast ; " Hy-
perion to the Satyr." The one represents
a monarch in the height of his glory ; joy-
ous and triumphant ; his figure erect and
Loble, his complexion fair, his physiognomy
imposing. It is the Grand Monarque,
" the Magnificent Lord of Versailles,"

" C'est Jupiter en personne

Ou c'est le vainqueur de Mons !'

260

Memoirs of tlie House of Orleans.

Sept,

It is Louis tlie Fourtecntli.
The other represents a feeble, querulous,
despotic old man, shrunken in stature, sit-
ting in sadness and gloomy austerity, his
countenance thinned by care and darkened
by bigotry and suspicion, — this too is Louis
Fourteenth, — in his old age.

Adorned with flowing locks, patches and
rouge, we perceive the portrait of his bro-
ther, the diminutive and dainty IVIgnsieur,
and near by, the lovely face and graceful
form of Henrietta of England, and the
square thick figure, and broad homely fea-
tures of Elizabeth of Bavaria. In the close
costume of a devotee appears the subtle
and hypocritical De Maintenon ; and spark-
ling with wit and intelligence, and impres-
sed with the proud dignity of the race of
Conde, the dark, irregular features of " the
little wasp of Sceaux," the first patroness
of Voltaire, the active and ambitious Duch-
ess de jVIaine.

A little farther on, the fine intellectual
outlines distorted by sensuality and vice,
■we come to the Regent in his robes of
State ; and adorned with more than queen-
ly splendor appears the lascivious beauty
of his daughter, the violent and unprinci-
pled Duchess de Berri.

The next portrait represents a child of
five years, of a pale and delicate yet beauti-
ful countenance. He wears a close fitting
dress of violet, and his curling ringlets are
partially concealed by a round and broad-
brimmed hat with floating plumes ; a white
scarf girds his waist and hangs down to his
satin shoes which are adorned with roset-
tes of diamonds. This is Louis Fifteenth in
his childhood. Behold him in another
phase of his long and eventful reign. A
sardonic smile has displaced the sweet ex-
pression of his features, and the innocent
and amiable child appears transformed to
the malicious and hard-hearted man, — the
indolent and frivolous voluptuary, — the
weak and tyrannical King.

Filling the niches between these royal
portraits, we find the sattelites of their
court and the literati and statesmen of their
day. Cornets and mortar caps, — council-
lors in scarlet robes, — and dukes and peers
in gorgeous mantles, laced gauntlets and
enormous periwigs. Prominent among
these are the President de Mesmes, Vol-
taire, Dubois, and Bishop Fleury. Far-
ther on we come to Philip Egalite and the

Courts of Louis Sixteenth, Charles Tenth,
and Louis Philippe.

Louis Fourteenth, was throughout life,
jealous and suspicious of his brother ; and
Philip of Orleans repaid these feeliogs with
dislike and fear. From earliest childhood
their characters varied in almost every par-
ticular, and equally remarkable was their
dissimilarity of person. The King's taste
for the chase, for war, for magnificence, li-
terature, and the fine arts, contrasted
strongly the eflfeminacy and timidity of
MoNSEiuR, who " loved only gaming, for-
mal circles, dress, and good-eating," and
to whom no music was pleasing except the
sound of bells, which were so delightful to
him, that one feels it a pity they should
not always have been dangling about his
ears. " He danced well," says Madame,
" but it was in the style of a lady ; he could
not dance like a man because (to conceal
his deficiency in stature) he wore high -heel-
ed shoes. He could never be induced to
mount a horse except in time of war, and
when he was in the army, the soldiers said
of him, that he was more afraid of beino;
bronzed by the sun or blackened by pow-
der than of either ball or bayonet."

The education of Monsieur was system-
atically neglected. His preceptor, M. Le
Mothe Vayer, was admonished by Mazarin
not to make " a clever man of the King's
brother." Philip had consequently no taste
for art, literature, or science, nor indeed
for anything but effeminate luxury, and
was incapable of application, of serious
reading, or sober reflection. If in anything
the brothers sympathized it was in exces-
sive regard of etiquette and in the family
vice of gluttony. Madame says, " I have
seen the King eat four plates of different
soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a huge
plate of salad, mutton with garlick, two
good slices of ham, a plate of pastry, and
sweetmeats after all." Of the Duke of
Orleans we are told, that after dinins: with
the King, and " eating very heartily from
almost every dish on the table," he supped
with still greater relish and died next day,
of apoplexy. Thus did they assimilate in
the pleasures of the table. With regard
to etiquette, it was the great feature of the
ao;e ; the outward gloss of its licentiousness.
The court etiquettes of that day remind
one of the hoop petticoats and long black
cloaks tied on by the daughters of Louis

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Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

261

the Fifteenth to conceal their undress when
summoned to the formalities of the King's
dehotler.

So little fraternal affection existed be-
tween the brothers, that the very morning
after the death of Monsieur, the King was
overheard rehearsing the overture of an
Opera with Madame de Maintenon.

The first wife of Philip of Orleans,- was
Henrietta Anne, daughter of the unfortu-
nate Charles 1st of England. Witty and
beautiful, she produced an unparalled sen-
sation at the French Court, and was the
most brilliant ornament of that brilliant
circle. She was a favorite with the King
and he " rode by her carriage, and was at
her side when she took an airing on horse-
back. All the parties of pleasure and di-
versions were submitted to her arrange-
ment." The superiority of her beauty was
acknowledged by all, with one exception,
Pepys, who declares in his " Diary," that
his own wife '* with two or three black
patches on, did seem much handsomer than
she." Henrietta was fond of gallantry,
and much notoriety attended her intrigues
with the Count de Guiche ; some scandal
arose also out of the passion conceived for
her by the Duke of Monmouth, but this
last afforded little ground for any imputa-
tion on her character. In her last mo-
ments, and in the agonies of her fearful
death, when Monsieur knelt at her bed-side
" she threw her arms around his neck and
declared with passionate protestations that
she had never wronged him." The belief
that Henrietta had been poisoned was uni-
versal ; and many persons, and even the
King himself, suspected Monsieur ; but
Louis' doubts were speedily cleared, and
there appears from all the accounts now
collected in relation to that sad catastrophe,
almost a certainty of his innocence.

More interestino; in character than her
mother, and of equal beauty, was Henriet-
ta's daughter, Maria Louisa of Orleans,
afterwards Queen of Spain. " It is record-
ed," says our author, " that Henrietta
never embraced her child, and that it was
on her hand she received the ardent kisses
of the affectionate Maria Louisa." She
was nevertheless so proud of her beauty
that she wished her portrait to be sent to
Charles 2nd, and the picture which was
half-finished when Henrietta died, is now
in the collection of Historical portraits at

Versailles. The young princess, we are
told, regarded her mother rather '' as an
idol to be worshipped than as a parent to be
loved." Though only eight years old, she
was greatly affected by the suddenness of
her death, and when the physician prescrib-
ed a potion for her, she refused it, declar-
ing that she also was to be poisoned ; a
prophecy too faithfully fulfilled. Her
marriage with the Spanish Monarch re-
pulsive to her own wishes, and most un-
happy during its continuance, was termi-
nated by a strange and sudden death.
" This poor Queen of Spain," says Ma-
dame de Sevigne, " when she died, only a
year older than her mother at her death,
died like her mother in a strange manner.
Nothing is said of poison ; the word is pro-
hibited at Versailles ; still the Queen is
dead, and in'the present state of affairs she
is a sad loss."

The second Duchess of Orleans, Eliza-
beth of Bavaria, was the extreme opposite
of her predecessor. In her education at
the Court of Hanover, little attention was
paid to the cultivation of the graces, and
she acquired masculine habits of thought
and action. She was even more wedded
to etiquette than Monsieur, and was shock-
ed at the idea of the courtiers being per-
mitted to sit when in the drawing-room at
Marly. Truthful herself, she despised the
duplicity of the court of France. She thus
describes her own personal appearance : —

"■ I must be very ugly : I have no features,
small eyes, a snub nose, long and flat lips —
poor elements wherewi h to compound a phy-
siognomy. I have large pendant cheeks, and
a broad face. My stature is short, and my
person large ; both my body and legs are
short; altogether, lam a fright. If I had not.
a good heart, I should be insupportable. It
would be necessary to examine my eyes with
a hiicroscope to discover whether they an-
nounce intelligence ; otherwise, it is impossi-
ble to form any judgment of them. It would
probably be impossible to find on earth more
hideous hands than mine. The king (Louis
XIV.) often remarked them, and made me
laugh heartily ; for, not being able to flatter
myself conscientiously with the possession of
a single pretty feature, I adopted the resolution
of being the first to laugh at my own ugli-
ness : the plan succeeded very well, and it
must be confessed that I found abundant ma-
terials for mirth."

" On my first appearance at St. Ger-

262

Memoirs of the House of Orleans,

Sept.

mains," she informs us, " I seemed as if I
had fallen from the clouds. I put as good
a face on the matter as I could, but I saw
clearly that I did not please my husband ;
and, in truth, I was not surprised at this, on
account of my ugliness." She also was a
favorite with the king, and she relates that
when he conducted her to be introduced to
the Queen, he whispered encouragement in
her ear, saying, " Keep up your spirits,
madame ; she is more likely to be afraid of
you than you of her." " The king had so
much pity for my position," she says, " that
he did not wish to leave me ; but sat down
next me, and every time I ought to rise,
that is, whenever a duke or a prince came
into the room, he gave me a slight push in
the side without being perceived."

The passions of Madame were strong,
and united with her German hauteur to
render her sometimes ridiculous. Her an-
cestral pride was greatly offended at the
marriage of her son, (afterwards the cele-
brated Regent Orleans,) to Mademoi-
selle Blois, natural daughter of Louis Four-
teenth and Madame de Montespan. This
is said to have been the great affliction of
her life. " If the shedding of my blood,"
she says, " could have prevented the mar-
riage, I would have given it freely." St.
Simon describes her promenading the gal-
leries with her favorite confidante, Madame
de Chateau- Thiers :

" She walked rapidly, taking large strides,
waving the handkerchief she held in her hand,
weeping without restraint, speaking loudly,
gesticulating violently, and looking for all the
world like Ceres when deprived of Proserpine,
seeking her furiously and demanding her from
Jupiter. Every one out of respect made way
for her, and only passed her to enter the
saloon."

^'Her conduct at theroyal supper-table was
even more outrageous. The king appeared
there as usual. Monsieur de Chartres sat near
his mother, who never loked either at him or
her hushand. Her eyes were filled with tears,
which overflowed from time to time, and which
she wiped away, looking earnestly at every-
body as if anxious to read their thoughts in
their countenances. Her son's eyes were also
red, and neither of them touched scarcely any-
thing. It was remarked that the king offered
madame almost every dish which was set before
him, but she refused him with a stern harsh-
ness, which, however, had not the effect of re-
pressing the king's kindness and attention
towards her.

^' The next morning, the usual levee of
the council was held by the king in the
gallery after mass: Madame attended. Her
son came up to her, as was his custom every
day, to kiss her hand. At this moment Ma-
dame gave him a slap in the face, so loud that
it was heard at the distance of several paces,
and which, administered in the presence of the
whole court; covered the poor prince with
confusion^ and filled the spectators with
amazement."

After the death of Louis Fourteenth,
during the period of the regency, and, in-
deed, throughout his life, (for he survivedher
only one year,) Madame maintained a quiet
but very considerable influence over her son ;
never, however, directed politically, except
in a single unsuccessful instance, (her ur-
gent entreaty for the dismissal of Dubois.)
She knew too well the Regent's invincible
aversion to the interference of women
in affairs of State. His haughty Duchess,
and even his favorite daughter, the Duchess
de Berri, vainly attempted it, and his
courtly and sarcastic rebuff to Madame de
Sabran is notorious. Equally unsuccessful,
and with more mortifying results, was the
attempt of the clever and intrigueing Ma-
dame de Tencin, of whose life we have so
interesting a sketch by our author, that we
are tempted to give it in abstract :

" Among the many mistresses of the Regent,
there was none whose career was so extraor-
dinary, and the incidents of whose life were
so characteristic of the age, as those of Clau-
dine de Tencin.

" In the last years of Louis XIV., when the
hypocritical piety of Madame de Maintenon
had rendered devotion fashionable, and had
restored to the Tartuffes the influence of which
they had been deprived by the satire of Mo-
liere, there resided in a dilapidated chateau
near Grenoble, a family named Guerin, which,
in spite of straitened circumstances^ maintain-
ed all its pretensions to gentility, and took the
title of De Tencin, from the moderate estate
on which they vegetated rather than lived.
The family consisted of a widowed mother^
two sons, and four daughters, two of whom
were marriageable. The eldest son obtained
a diplomatic situation; tlie eldest daughter
married a rich financier ] the second son, call-
ed the Abbe de Tincen, was destined to enter
church ; and the second daughter, Claudine de ^
Tencin, was warned by her mother to procure
a husband within twelve months or to prepare
herself for a convent.

•' Claudine, though pretty, was poor, and
dowries were as great objects of consideration

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Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

263

in Grenoble as in Paris : moreover, she had a
decided taste for contradiction and repartee, so^
that she was called Mademoiselle Nenni
throughout the country, from her habit of al-,
ways replying in the negative. |

" The alternative presented by the mother,
alarmed Claudine : she represented its injus-
tice, if she was to remain in the country, where
no eligible partner was likely to appear. Ma-
dame yielded to this reasoning, and removed
for a season to Grenoble, where Claudine was
presented to fashionable society, in a robe
made from her mother's well-preserved wed-
ding-gown. At her first ball, she captivated
M, de Chandennier, a young man of good fa-
mily and tolerable fortune. He at first medi-
tated nothing more than a little flirtation with
the rustic beauty, whom he hoped to dazzle
and overawe by his superior knowledge of the
world ; but he soon found that he was beaten
at his own weapons. Long before the ball
had concluded, Chandennier had abandoned
all his plans of a wealthy marriage, for love
and a cottage with the beauty of Grenoble.

'^ Five or six days after the ball, it was an-
nounced that a brilliant band of cavaliers was
approaching the dilapidated castle of the Ten-
cins ; and all the preparations usually adopt-
ed by pride ta hide poverty were hastily made
for their reception. A ploughboy, in an old
livery, enacted the part of porter, and the
farm-servants, unprepared by previous drill,
were suddenly transformed into grooms, ush-
ers, footmen, and feudal retainers. Several
amusing blunders were made : the porter,
dazzled by the dresses of the guests, exhaust-
ed himself in mute salutations; the groom was
so charmed with M. de Chandennier's horse,
that he compelled the gentleman to tell him the
price of the animal before he assisted him to
dismount ; and the footmen, instead of mar-
shalling the way, ran against each other, and
knocked their heads together, so that Chan-
dennier in the end entered the saloon without
being previously announced.

" Claudine and her mother had too much
tact to notice the confusion which the polite
Chandennier affected not to perceive.

"After some time, it was proposed that the
gentleman should visit the gardens, accompa-
nied by Claudine and her two sisters, the elder
of whom was only ten years of age. In this
promenade, the conquest was completed : the
mother, who watched from the windows,
though she could not hear the conversation,
easily learned from the cavalier's animated
gestures that his heart was won.

" Chandennier was an ardent lover, but
could not be induced to make a formal propo-
sal of marriage. Evil tongues soon began to
propagate scandal. At a later period, such
attentions might have passed unnoticed ; but at
this period the piety and prudery of Madame

de Maintenon reigned supreme. The ladies
of the provinces, aping the manners of Ver-
sailles, had three confessors apiece, read homi-
lies and were convinced that society was
threatened with total ruin by the profane
levity of rising generations. It was speedily
decided that Claudine had fallen a victim to
vanity and temptation.

"■ The abbess of Montfleury, a distant rela-
tion of the Tencins came to the castle and
informed Claudine and her mother of the
calumnies which had been propogated.

"Claudine overwhelmed Chandennier with
reproaches till he offered to silence the scandal
by making her his wife. Though this had
been the great object of her acts and hopes,
she could not resist the waywardness of her
temper. She declared that the lover should
endure the penance of three months' delay
which she would spend in a convent ; and she
insisted that the abbess should convey her off"
to Mont fleury within an hour.t

Chandemier's self love was wounded by
such caprice ; his friends in Grenoble jested
him on having been the dupe of a village
coquette. His ambitious hopes returned, he
remembered his resolution to seek for a weal-
thy wife, and finally wrote Claudine a letter
in which he showed that he clearly under-
stood the nature of the farce she was playing,
declared himself no longer her dupe and bade
her farewell in cold and cutting terms.

" This rupture grievously disappointed Clau-
dine : she dreaded to face the reproaches of
her mother, and the laughter of the world. —
To escape both, she loudly proclaimed that she
had refused Chandennier, in order to devote
herself to heaven. All the pious people in
the province declared that they were edified
by such a sacrifice. The news reached Paris,
and was the theme of conversation in the sa-
loons of Madame de Maintenon ; and her
profession was made in the presence of all
the clergy and nobles of the south of France.

" The beautiful nun became the rage ; the
parlor of the convent was the centre of attrac-
tion for all the pious and fashionable in
Grenoble and its vicinity ; the devout and the
dissipated flocked hither together. The nuns
were delighted, and the abbess, who was
rather short-sighted, believed that her con-
vent was about to sanctify the whole king-
dom.

" There were, however, some envious people
who thought such scenes not consistent with
conventual propriety. They represented the
state of the convent to Lecamus, the Arch-
bishop of the diocese. One day, when mirth
and gallantry were at their highest in the
parlor, the door was suddenly thrown open,
and the grave prelate stood in the midst of
the astonished assembly. The crowd disper-
sed in an instant, Claudine comprehended

264

Meinoirs of the House of Orleans.

Sept.

the crisis, and stood her ground beside the
abbess.

"Lecamus was a better theologian than
logician. He quoted the rules of his order
and several long passages from St. Agustine,
to all of which Claudine replied by clever ap-
peals to his feelings. Lecamus was quite
won over. He left the convent without pro-
nouncing a word of censure, and when his
more austere brethren remonstrated, he replied
" we must leave the poor young ladies a little
liberty. There is one amongst them a youth-
ful model of innocence and virtue, who has
pledged herself for the conduct of the rest.

'''The worthy archbishop thenceforward
visited Montfleury more frequently than any
other convent in his diocese ; and showed a
marked preference for the sparkling conversa-
tion of Ciaudine ; he sanctioned the amuse-
ments she patronized and lightened the
penances for slight breaches of conventual
discipline at her solicitation. This influence
with the archbishop rendered Claudine all
powerful with the sisterhood ; she was, in
fact, allowed the entire direction of the con-
vent.

"At this period " Fontenelle's Eclogues"
had spread a passion for the imaginative sen-
timentalism of pastoral life throughout France.
In every rank of life, persons were anxious
to become shepherds and sheperdesses ; to
discuss the mysteries of love when they led
their flocks to pasture, and recite pastoral
odes under the shade of the wide-spreading
beech.

" Fontenelle with the sanction of the arch-
bishop presented a copy of his pastorals to
the innocent nuns of Montfleury. The deli-
cious poetry turned their brains, and they
bought a pet sheep which they soon cram-
med to death with sweet-meats.

" M. Destouches, a young landed proprie-
tor in the neighborhood, was seized with the
pastoral mania. He roamed the fields dressed
as a shepherd, reading or reciting favorite
passages from Fontenelle; and sometimes his
voice penetrated into the convent, and brought
a poetical response from the amiable Clau-
dine. M. Destouches was introduced at
Montfleury and became the most favored
visitor of the parlor.

"At this time Louis Fourteenth died, and
the profligate follies of the regency commenced.
The relaxation of morals was felt throughout
France, and M. Destouches was permitted to
give a pastoral fete to the nuns of Mont-
fleury. Claudine was the heroine of the en-
tertainment; she and Destouches discussed
the mysteries of pastoral and Platonic love
until sunset, when the fireworks, having en-
gaged general attention, they turned into a
shady walk, to indulge their interchange of
sentiment more freely. Sentiment soon gave

place to warmer emotions ; Claudine forgot
her habits of negation at the moment they
would have been most useful to her — she and
M. Destouches became more than poetic
lovers, and vowed eternal attachment to each
other.

" The natural consequences followed —
Claudine felt that she was about to become a
mother, and she resolved to confide to Arch-
bishop Lecamus the secret of her situation.
It is easier to conceive than describe the sur-
prise and horror of the worthy prelate. But
Claudine retained her influence over him.
She induced him to inform Fontenelle of the
consequences produced by the influence of his
poetry, and to exert himself to procure a dis-
pensation from the pope. Clement XI. was
an admirer of Fontenelle ; he was also anxious
to gain literary support in France, where the
controversy respecting the bull Unigeniius
was then raging. Claudine was named a
canoness in the Chapter of Neuville. After
having taken possession of her prebend, Clau-
dine retired to a small village near Grenoble,
where she gave birth to a son, who received
the name of D'Alembert. It is scarcely ne-
cessary to add that this boy subsequently
attained European celebrity as the great
mathematician D^Alembert, one of the most
eminent of the Encyclopedist philosophers,
and Fontenelle's successor as perpetual se-
cretary to the French Academy. After a
short time, she received evidence that M. Des-
touches was a faithless lover, and this, united
to some maternal advice which, her mother is
said to have given shortly before her death,
induced the pastoral canoness to set out for
Paris, with the determined purpose of capti-
vating the heart of the Regent.

" At the time when the Canoness de Tencin
set out for Pari^i, the extravagance of the
regency was at its height. A fever of dissi-
pation had turned every brain. The Regent
to secure leisure for his criminal indulgences
had intrusted the entire administration to Car-
dinal Dubois. The sun rose on the unextin-
guished tapers in the Palais Royal. The
Regent's daughter maintained the state of a
queen, and the habits of a courtesan in the
Luxembourg. Songs, suppers, and assigna-
tions made the entire sum of life.

" Claudine was soon invited to the brilliant
assemblies at the Palais Royal, and after
several failures succeeded in attracting the
attention of the Regent.

"Fontenelle, who half persuaded himself
that he was in love with Claudine, visited her
one morning ; her carriage was at the door
and the lady dressed in the most alluring style.
He spoke of love, and was ridiculed, as she
had shown him some attention the day before
he was surprised, but the mystery was ex-
plained when he heard her direct the coach-

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Memoirs of the House of Orleans,

265

man to drive to the Palais Royal, and set her
down at the private entrance. She believed
that her fortune was fixed, when Orleans pub-
licly installed her as hi» mistress, and she
hoped to acquire the same influence in the
state as a Montespan or a Maintenon. She
did not know the Regent : as inconstant as he
was profligate, he parted from a mistress with
as little scruple as he changed his coat,

'• One day when he visited her at her toi-
lette, she reproached him with indolence, his
disregard for glory, and his neglect of the
duties of his station. Orleans in vain en-
deavored to turn her from the subject by witty
replies; but at length worn out, he ordered
his servants to throw open the doors, and to
admit the entire circle of his profligate com-
panions. Claudine, half-dressed, hid herself
behind a screen; but the Regent threw down
the screen, and sarcastically introduced her to
his companions as "a female Plato, peculiar-
ly suited to become a professor in the univer-
sity, or the tutor of any ambitious youth who
wished to combine love with politics and
sentimentality with statistics, adding, that he
had already received enough of her lessons,
and would recommend her to seek another
pupil.

'• Claudine, though bitterly mortified, lost
neither her wit nor her presence of mind. —
Assuming a high tone, she sternly reproved
the Regent for the gross insult he had offered
her, and then, having made a formal rever-
ence to the company, she retired with as much
composure as if she had been a spectator, not
an actor, in the scene. On the stairs she met
Dubois, the regent's powerful favorite, to
whom she briefly related what had just hap-
pened. Dubois at once proposed to her to
take revenge by becoming his mistress, as-
suring her that he would enable her to govern
France in spite of the Regent. The bargain
was soon concluded; Claudine placed herself
under the protection of Dubois, and was per-
mitted to enjoy a large share of the ministerial
authority.

'-'■ After the death of Dubois, her first care
was for the promotion of her brother, and she
sought for an ally in a new lover : She fixed
her choice on the celebrated Due de Riche-
lieu.

'' Richelieu was attracted to Claudine more
by her political abilities than by her personal
charms. Ambition was with them a more
powerful bond of union than love, and their
intrigues against the successive ministers of
Louis XV. would furnish materials for a
volume. More than ten times power eluded
their grasp when success seemed most certain,
until at length Claudine resolved to abandon
political life, which she did with the same
suddenness of decision and inflexible firm-
ness which she displayed in entering and

quitting the convent, and in breaking off her
connexion with the Regent.

" Great was the astonishment of Paris when
Madame de Tencin appeared before the world
as an authoress. From the moment of her
first appearence in print, Madame de Tencin's
saloons became the rendezvous of the lead-
ing philosophers and writers of the age. —
Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Marian, Astruc,
Helvetius, and many others, were her daily
guests ; she applied all her energies to extend
their fame and the circulation of their works,
with the same ardent boldness which she had
previously displayed in more questionable
pursuits. Several other ladies followed her
example, and for some time the patronage of
literature became almost the rage in Paris;
but no saloons ever rivalled those of Madame
de Tencin, because no where else was so
much discrimination shown in the selection of
guests.

An invitation to Madame de Tencin's sup-
pers soon became an object of ambition in
Paris. Literary merit .was the only passport
to these assemblies ; rank and fortune were
of no avail when this great requisite was
wanting. She called the wits gathered round
her '' the beasts of her managerie," and com-
pelled them to submit to her whims and ca-
prices. One of these was very singular. She
presented each of her favorites annually with
a breeches of black velvet, and insisted that
it should be worn as her livery in the evening
assemblies. Proud as M. de Montesquieu
was, he had to receive this strange boon like
the rest. The '-Gazette de France" avers
that more than eight thousand yards of velvet
had been thus used by the amiable canoness.

'^ She was the first who introduced Mar-
montel into public life, and her patronage was
of great service to him in his early struggles.

'•Claudine de Tencin died in 1749, unjustly
calumniated by the Parisian public. It was
her fate to be believed innocent during the
period of her pastoral intrigues, to be accused
of excessive gallantry when she was exclu-
sively devoted to politics, and to be censured
for ambition when she had abandoned all
other pursuits for the enjoyment of a literary
life. She was deeply regretted in her own
circle ; she left legacies to her chief favorites,
all of whom went into mourning as for a near
relation. Even Fontenelle grieved for her,
and thus characteristically expressed his sor-
row.

" The loss is irreparable : she knew my
taste and always provided for me the dishes
I preferred. I shall never find such delicate
attention paid me at the dinner table of Ma-
dame Geoffrin."

From infancy the Regent Orleans dis-
played the most ardent passion for knowl-

266

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

Sept.

edge. He is said to have been an excel-
lent linguist, a sound historian, a mathema-
tician, a naturalist, and, unfortunately for
himself in that age of superstition, a chemist ;
but his precocity in sensuality and profligacy
was equal to his knowledge. His mother com-
pared him to Madame de Longueville, who
of all things professed to dislike 'innocent
amusements." He possessed, naturally,
great courage, — so much that his governor,
the Marquis D'Arcy, thought proper to
suppress it. Through the incapacity of
Marchin and Marshal Feuillade, his first
campaign was unsuccessful, but the Duke's
bravery and skill were manifest, and on his
return, the King, as a mark of respect for
his services, appointed him to the command
of the army in Spain. While there, a plan
was concocted to remove Philip the Fifth
from the Spanish throne, and set up the
Duke of Orleans in his stead. Great con-
fusion was produced in France when this
was discovered ; the dauphin and princes
of the blood demanded that a criminal pro-
cess should be issued against the Duke, and
even the King treated him coolly, but
either influenced by his daughter, the
Duchess of Orleans, or, as some suppose,
having been secretly cognizant of, and not
averse to the plot, forbore to follow up the
facts. The daring defiance, however, with
which his nephew plunged deeper than ever
into debauchery and impiety, completely
alienated from him the regard of his sove-
reign, and no longer a frequent visitor at
Versailles, the Duke thenceforward lived in
suspicious privacy at the Palais Royal, de-
voting himself to chemistry and " the more
questionable pursuits of astrology, alchemy,
and the magical arts of devination." Night
and day his furnaces and alembics were at
work, and it was readily believed that he
was employed in preparing poison.

Our autbor describes Paris at the time
full of sinister adventurers, by means of
whom whole families suddenly and inexpli-
cably disappeared from the world. " As-
sassinations," he says, "were stories of
every day, and the study of poisons intro-
duced by the Medicis, had been carried to
such perfection, that a glove, an embroi-
dered perfume-bag, a scarf or a shawl, were
often the means of conveying it. Fashion
and death moved in concert. The fable of
the tunic of Nessus was transferred to those
robes of gauze and silk which adorn joyous

halls and sumptuous festivities. Even at
the domestic hearth, people trembled when
the silver cup was ofifered to the ruby
lips of infancy, or when a jewel of more
than ordinary brilliancy was seen to sparkle
on the breast of a young lady at some
country spectacle." This was undoubtedly
the superstition and ignorance of the age,
for no such poisons are now believed ever
to have been known.

The successive deaths of the Dauphin, the
Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, and their
eldest son, and the Duke of Berri, attend-
ed with such singular circumstances, im-
pressed the whole nation with the idea that
poisons had been administered. The Duke
of Orleans was believed to be skilled in
them, and, as between him and the suc-
cession these deaths left only Philip of
Spain, who had renounced his pretensions,
and a feeble and sickly child, suspicions
and whispers soon took the form of direct
charges against him. St. Simon asserts,
that these reports were disseminated by
hired agents of the Duke de Maine and
Madame de Maintenon.

The long and imperious reign of Louis
Fom'teenth drew at length to its close.
" That sun," says Lord Mahon, " so bright
in its meridian, so dim and clouded at its
setting, was now to disappear," At his
death, the whole aspect of society became
changed ; a totally difierent political course
was adopted, and great and sudden altera-
tions were effected in the foreign relations
of France. Philip of Orleans, at the period
of his accession to the regency, was in his
forty-second year ; his manners, we are
told, were gentle, his conversation was at-
tractive, and he was skilled in music and
painting. He now gave full scope to his de-
baucheries, and made a bravado of his im-
piety. On being complimented before a
large company by one of the ladies of his
mother's household, upon the apparent de-
votion with which she had seen him poring
over his book at mass, he' replied, ^* You are
a great fool, Madame Limbert, — do you
know what I was reading } It was a vol-
ume of Rabelais which 1 took with me to
prevent my being wearied." When it was
believed, after the death of Louis Four-
teenth, that the Regent would favor the
Jansenists, and act in concert with the par-
liament, the tide of opinion turned in his
favor and he became popular, but the first

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Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

267

illness of the young king revived suspicion.
The accusations of his plotting the death of
Louis Fifteenth were doubtless groundless.
*' With all his failings in private life," says
Lord Mahon, " the Regent was certainly a
man of honor in public, and nothing could
be more pure and above reproach than his
care of his infant sovereign."

The rapid decline of the Duke's short-
lived popularity was hastened by the terri-
ble philippics of Le Grange Chancel and
others of the Duchess de Maine's party,
who collected every scandal that had ever
been invented ; and it was at this time that
Voltaire gave to the world that pointed al-
legory of the court and its morals, his
Tragedy of ^'CEdipus."

The Duchess de Maine's conspiracy, by
which she hoped to overthrow the whole
political system of Europe, brought about
a war with Spain, and an insurrection in
the provinces. But the firmness and energy
of the Regent and his able minister, toge-
ther with the unexampled facilities of credit
afibrded by Law's Bank, ensured to them
a complete triumph and success. In no
instance was the united political skill of the
Regent and Dubois more remarkable than
in their discovery and suppression of the
insurrection in Brittany, and the plot laid
by Philip of Spain for the aggrandizement
of the Duke de Maine, and the deposition
of the Regent. It was easy, comparatively,
to crush, in Paris, this movement in favor
of constitutional freedom, but the provin-
cial nobles and gentry had taken the case
seriously to heart.

I^The connection between France and
Brittany had," says our author, "some
striking points of sunilitude to that between
England and Ireland. The term * Frank'
was used in Brittany, as that of ' Saxon'
in Ireland, to express hatred to an alien
race. The Barons of Brittany preferred
a rude independence in their own castles, to
the splendid servility of the court. Their
dislike to the Franks and their monarch
was nurtured by numerous ballads, describ-
ing the treachery to which every noble
Breton was exposed who ventured to seek
his fortune at the court of Paris." One
of these legends is described by our author.
It is entitled " A Page of Louis XI."

" The ballad opens with a description of the
young page's sufferings in the prison into

which he had been thrown by the King. A
vassel of his house comes to the grating, and
the page sends him to inform his sister of his
danger, and to beg that she would come to
embrace him before his death.

" The second ^fytte' describes the speed with
which the vassal performed his task, and the
distress which his intelligence produced in the
page's family. It ends with the sister's depar-
ture from Paris.

"The third ' fytte' we shall translate literal-
ly. The King's young page said, as he
mounted the first step of the scaffold : ' Death
would have no terror were it not far from my
country, and without sympathizing attend-
ance ; were it not far from my country, were
it not without friends, were it not for my sis-
ter in Brittany. She will ask for her brother
every night; she will ask for her little brother
every hour,' The young page said, as he
mounted the second step of the scaffold, ' I
would wish before I die to have news of my
country; to have news of my sister^ of my
dear little sister. Does she know if?' The
young page said, as he mounted the third step
of the scaffold, 'I hear the tramp of horses in
the street : my sister and her suite are coming !
My sister is coming to see me ! In the name
of God wait a little !' The provost, when he
heard him, replied : ' Before she arrives your
head will be severed from your body.' At
this moment, the dame De Bodinio asked of the
Parisians : ' Why is there such a crowd of men
and women V 'Louis XL, Louis, the traitor,
is going to behead a poor page.' As these
words were spoken she beheld her brother.
She perceived her brother kneeling with his
head on the block. She urged her horse to full
speed, and cried : ' My brother, my brother !
spare him to me 1 Spare him, archers, and I
will give you a hundred golden crowns !' As
she reached the scaffold the severed head of her
brother fell, and the blood spurted on her veil,
so that it was crimsoned from top to bottom.

" In the fourth 'fytte' the lady seeks an au-
dience of the King, to demand why her brother
was put to death. Louis, after some shuffling,
informs her that the'page had killed one of his
favorites. 'Hand to hand and sword to sword,
because he heard the old proverb ; the old and
true proverb : There are no men in Brittany,
but savage hogs.' The lady then defies the
King^ and quits his presence vowing vengeance.

" The fifth and last ' fytte' shows how this
vow was kept. The enraged Bretons invade
Normandy, and slay ten thousand Franks to
avenge the murdered page. There is probably
some historical foundation for the ba 'ad, as
the Bretons did revolt and invade Normandy
during the reign of Louis XL in 1467."

The insurrection of 1719 was quelled by
the Regent with terrible severity. In many

268

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

Sept.

respects it resembled the Irish rebellion of
1798; especially in the betrayal of the
leaders. " It is scarcely necessary," says
our author, " to point out the resemblance
between the conduct of the Bretons to their
insurgent chiefs, and that of ^ Young Ire-
land' in the recent case of John Mitchell."
After the trial of Pontcalec, Montlouis, and
the rest, the Judicial Chamber at Nantes
became the terror of Brittany. When
Pontcalec was asked by his judges, " Lord
Marquis, what have you done V his an-
swer was that of Talmont to the Revolu-
tionarj^ tribunal, " My duty ; do you do
yours." We refer our readers to Mr.
Taylor's volume for a very beautiful and
characteristic ballad, entitled, " The Death
of Pontcalec," illustrative of the hostility
manifested ever since by the peasantry of
Brittany to the House of Orleans ; — a hos-
tility said to have been keenly felt both by
Egalite and Louis Philippe.

The Regent's first acquaintance with
Law was at a gambling table. He ofi'ered
his services in reestablishing the finances,
and was empowered by a royal edict to es-
tablish a bank, the notes of which should
be received in payment of taxes. The
enormous excitement, the wonderful suc-
cess, and the final ruin produced by this
and by the Mississippi scheme are describ-
ed at length, but our limits forbid quotati-
ons. Bancroft's History and others have
made the affair familiar to most readers.
Law made the mistake of extending his is-
sues beyond all possibility of convertibility,
but his system rested originally on a sound
basis, and the French had to blame them-
selves for the insanity of their speculations
in Mississippi stock. In this, as in more
recent delusions, the people were too ready
to believe in an El Dorado. Stories of
gold mines in Canada, and precious spices
growing without cultivation on the alluvial
plains of Louisiana, gained too easy credit,
and the speculations they produced brought
only disappointment, ruin, and death.

It was greatly to the credit of the Re-
gent that he rejected Dubois's advice to
put Law under arrest ; he felt too keenly
that he had been himself equally to blame
with the unfortunate financier ; he assisted
him in escaping from France, and kept up
a correspondence with him for many years.
Such noble traits appear not unfrequently
among the many vices of the Regent. His^

character has never been fully understood.
His apparent carelessness threw the people
off their guard ; but under an appearance
of inattentive simplicity, he disguised a
vigilance which nothing could escape.
Political courage, patient perseverance, and
secret vigilance were the qualities that en-
abled him to control the destinies of Eu-
rope. He knew the great value of the
services of Dubois, and he owed much to
the sagacious counsels of this unprincipled
but most skillful and far-seeing statesman,
whose vigorous intellect, "unnerved either
by poverty in youth, or by pleasure in old
age," grasped at once the foreign relations
and the domestic administration of France,
and created a system as powerful and definite
as that which he overthrew. It was not
until late in life, however, that the Regent,
exhausted by dissipation, resigned to Du-
bois the fatiguing details of business; and
not then, without requiring all the state
affairs to be submitted to him, so simplified
and arranged as to produce the least possi-
ble fiitigue to himself. This great addition
of labor finally undermined the health of
the Cardinal.

Soon after the shocking death-bed scene,
which closed the life of Dubois, the Regent,
who had become more deep in his potations
and more extravagant in his licentiousness,
died of apoplexy in the apartment of th3
young and beautiful Duchess of Phalaria,
— the only one of his mistresses who had
ever truly loved him. The scene is thus
described :

"On entering the apartment, he found the
duchess preparing for a ball, her curling locks
hanging loose on her shoulders, and her dress-
ing-gown not laid aside. He sat down upon
a sofa, and she, taking a low stool, placed
herself at his feet, her head reposing upon his
knees. After a short pause he said to her,
" My fair friend, I am quite worn out with
fatigue this evening, and have a stupefying
headache ; tell me one of those lively stories
which you relate so well." The young lady,
looking up into his face with childish coquet-
ry, and assuming a mocking smile, began with,
'• There was once upon a time a king and a
queen." She had scarcely uttered the words
when the Duke's head sank suddenly on his
breast, and he fell sideways on her shoulder.
As he was sometimes accustomed to take a
brief nap in this position, the lady for a second
or two felt no alarm ; but when she saw his
limbs grow stiff" after quivering with convul-
sions, she sprang to the bell, and rang it via-

1850.

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

269

lently. No one replied. She rushed into the
outer apartments ; they were deserted ; and it
was not until she reached the court-yard that
her cries attracted the attention of a few do-
mestics. Chance had so arranged that the ac-
cident occurred at a time when every body
was either occupied or out visiting. It was
more than half an hour before any medical
man made his appearance, and by that time
the Duke was quite dead."

The female members of the Duke's fa-
mily were his Duchess, the arrogant and
apathetic daughter of Louis Fourteenth and
Madame de Montespan. The Duchess de
Berri, his favorite daughter, ambitious and
dissolute, — the eccentric Mademoiselle de
Chartes, who possessed, like her father,
great versatility of talent, and became Ab-
bess of the Convent of Challes — and the
fascinatins: but indolent Mademoiselle de
Valois, called by her admirers "the prm-
cess with the golden locks." The Regent's
estimation of his son, the young Duke de
Chartes, may be judged by the anecdote of
his pointing to Louis Fifteenth and then to
his son, saying, " Can any man suppose
that I would remove so fine a young prince
to make room for such a dullard as this.^"

This Duke de Chartes, afterward Louis
Philip of Orleans, though he surpassed the
other princes of his house in moral charac-
ter, was proud and reserved, dull in intel-
lect and deformed in person. Educated
by the Abbe Manguin in the most gloomy
ideas of religion, he took no interest in po-
litics and was absorbed in his favorite doc-
trine of the metempoychosis, in which was
strangely jumbled the system of Pythagoras
and the doctrines of Christianity. At the
death of his father he was heir presumptive
to the throne. The disappointment of his
hopes in regard to Mary Leezinska, the
charming and virtuous daughter of Stanis-
laus, probably contributed to the gloomy
tendency of his disposition. Mary Leezin-
ska became the wife of Louis Fifteenth.
Her character was not unlike that of the
Duke, and at a subsequent period, when
suffering under the studied neglect, and
open intidelties of her husband, she la-
mented that she had not been simple Duch-
ess of Orleans instead of Queen of France.
D'Argenson gives the following anecdote of
the pious Duke :

"One day, after he had talked for an im-
mense length of time with the queen, while

no one was permitted to overhear the subject
of their conversation, he suddenly threw him-
self on his knees and spent several minutes in
prayer, earnestly supplicating God to pardon
the thoughts which had presented themselves
to his ima2;ination."

Our author says of him;

" No one of the Orleans family kept a more
vigilant watch over the chances which might
open the succession to the crown of France to
his own branch of the Bourbons : to him, in-
deed, may be attributed the tenacity with which
three successive Dukes of Oileans clung to this
hope, until the last finally grasped the prize;
and in less than twenty years had the mortifi
cation of finding it wrested from his hands."

The distaste of the Duke for state affairs
occasioned the Bishop Frejus — afterwards
better known as Cardinal Fieury to assume
at the advanced age of 78, the office of Pre-
mier, and thus began the best administra-
tion France was under throu2;h the whole
course of the eighteenth century. After
marrying his son, the Duke de Chartes,
to the Princess Conti, the devout Duke
passed the remainder of his life with the
erudite fathers of St. Genevieve.

Louis Philippe, the next Duke of Or-
leans, resided always at the Palais Royal,
and acquired thence the appellation of
" King of Paris." The attempted assassin
nation of Louis Fifteenth, Jan. 6th, 1757,
revived the old suspicion against the Or-
leans family. Royal favor, however, as in
the case of his grandfather fifty years pre-
vious, supported the Duke against these
unjust accusations.

In selecting a wife for his son, the Duke
de Chartes, (afterwards the notorious Phi-
lip Egalite,) his chief consideration was a
large dowry, and he sought accordingly the
hand of Mademoiselle de Pentthievre, the
richest heiress in France, on whom de-
scended all the enormous estates and pen-
sions which Louis Fourteenth had heaped
upon his natural children the Due de Maine
and the Count do Toulouse. The Prince
of Conde souQ-ht also the hand of Made-
moiselle de Pentthievre for his son, the Due
de Bourbon. While the scales were in ba-
lance between the rival claims, the violent
passion conceived by the young lady at her
first acquaintance with the Duke de Char-
tes, decided the case in his favor, and the
marriage was celebrated at Versailles in
. May, 1768, with a splendor rarely eshi-

270

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

Sept.

bited save at tlie marriages of crowned
heads.

The Duke of Orleans, notwithstanding
the alleged weakness of his character, was
the first, after reading Condamine's famous
memoir, then just published, on the sub-
ject of inoculation, to make the trial of its
efficacy in his own family ; his courageous
example thus greatly influencing its gene-
ral adoption.

On the 28th of April, 1774, died Louis
Fifteenth, and France rejoiced at being
delivered from a sovereign who had degrad-
ed the monarchy and almost ruined the
country.

An affecting scene is described by Ma-
dame Campan :

" The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness.
They we; e expecting together the intelligence
of the death of Louis Fifteenth. A dreadful
noise, absolutely like thunder, was heard in
the outer apartment ; it was the crowd of
courtiers who were deserting the dead sove-
reign's anti-chamber to come and bow to the
new power of Louis Sixteenth. This extra-
ordinary tumult informed Maria Antoinette
and her husband that they were to reign, and
by a spontaneous movement which deeply af-
fected those around them, they threw them-
selves on their knees and both pouring forth
a flood of tears, exclaimed " 0 God I guide
tts, protect us, we are too young to govern^

Louis Philip Joseph of Orleans, better
known as Philip Egalite resembled in many
particulars his great grandfather the Re-
gent. Like him, he professed a singular
suavity and even fascination of manner ;
like him he seems to have prided himself
on the shock his extravagances gave to
sober minded people, and even to have
boasted of vicious actions, which he never
committed ; like him too, he was tracked
by the calumnies he wantonly provoked.
He was the patron of literary men. Buffon
was his intimate friend, and when Voltaire
in 1778 arrived in Paris and was denied
admittance as the champion of infidelity,
to the presence of the King, he was re-
ceived with distinction at the Palais Royal.
It was through the influence of the learned
men of Paris whom Franklin met there
daily, that he was able to diffuse that sym-
pathy for the Revolution of America which
by rendering republicanism popular, made
that of France inevitable.

By the way, we observe, that the ridi-

culous excess to which hospitality has some-
times been carried in our country, had cer-
tainly a precedent in the case of Dr.
Franklin in Paris.

"Franklin, in fact, became the rage ; and
those who are acquainted with French society
can easily understand the import of that
phrase. He was followed and hailed in the
streets as an apostle of liberty. In an as-
sembly of three hundred ladies, the fairest was
chosen to crown his silvery hairs with a
laurel garland, and to kiss his withered cheeks;
his portrait was painted on ladies' fans, and a
medal was struck with his t^gj^ and the
motto —

" Eripuit coelo fulmen seeptrumque tyrannis."

Daring the period that Philip Joseph of
Orleans filled the office of Grand Admiral,
he constantly evinced good sense, a kindly
and considerate feeling for the sailors, and
a proper regard for the respect due to his
veteran commander. The volumes before
us contain several letters of the Duke ne-
ver before published, which go far to dis-
prove many calumnies.

The ambition of Egalite was that of a
man who seeks to profit by circumstances
rather than to direct them. Infirm of pur-
pose he was generally gi^ided by those
about him, and yet there were instances
in which his conduct appeared the reverse
of this, as, when La Fayette, knowing the
Duke's popularity in Paris, and aware of
some intrigues for investing him with the
chief authority, induced the King to send
him as Ambassador Extraordinary to Eng-
land, the Duke, in spite of the opposition
of his friends, readily accepted the mission.
Had he been plotting against his sove-
reign he would not have thrown away such
an opportunity of success. He was cer-
tainly spurned and neglected at court be-
fore he openly raised the standard of re-
bellion ; his offers to serve the King and
his country by land or by sea, were harsh-
ly repulsed ; and the countenance given by
the Queen to unjust slanders respecting
him, was a natural cause of resentment.
Stung by a sense of wrong, intoxicated by
popular applause, he was fitted to become
an instrument in the hands of designing
men. His acts of public humanity, and
they were many — were all attributed at
court to an insiduous desire of popularity.

When exiled by the King to Villers-

1850.

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

271

Cotterets on account of his opposition to
the project for a gradual loan, he was
at the height of his popularity. Would he
have so readily submitted to this exile, had
he really entertained the criminal views at-
tributed to him ? We must be pardoned
for quoting at least one document proving
that the Duke was not ready to take an
unjust advantage of his popularity. A
letter addressed by him to a newspaper,
which had proposed the deposition of Louis
Sixteenth and the appointment of the Duke
of Orleans as Regent.

" Sir — Having read, in your journal, your
opinion as to the measures that should be
taken on the return of the King, and that,
also, which your justice and impartiality have
dictated on my account, 1 beg to repeal,
through the same medium, what 1 have pub-
licly declared since the 21st and 22d of this
month to many members of the National As-
sembly, that I am ready to serve my country
on land, on sea, in a diplomatic capacity, in
every otfice which shall demand only zeal
and an unlimited devotedness to the public
good; but, should the question of a regency
arise, I renounce, at this moment and for
ever, the rights which the Constitution gives
me. I shall protest that, after having made
such sacrifices for the happiness of the peo-
ple and the cause of liberty, I am no longer
permitted to have the class of a simple citizen,
in which I have placed myself, with the firm
determination to remain in that order during
life, and that ambition would be in me inex-
cusable inconsistency. It is not to impose
silence on my calumniators that 1 make this
declaration. I am well aware that my zeal
for the national liberty, for that equality which
is its foundation, will always feed the flame
of personal animosity. I despise their calum-
nies : my public life will refute and expose
their blackness and absurdity; but it is my
bounden duty to declare upon this occasion
my irrevocable sentiments and my fixed reso-
lution, that public opinion may not rest on a
false foundation in its calculations as to the
measures it may be found necessary to adopt.

(Signed) "■ Louis Philippe d'Orleans."

Our author represents the manner in which
the name of Egalite was acquired, dijQfer-
ently from the account usually given, and
removes the ridicule and calumny which
has been attached thereby to the Duke.
He went to explain to the municipal coun-
cils, in consequence of the decree against
exiles, that his daughter had only been
sent to England for the benefit of her
health and education.

" The Procureur-syndic of the municipality,
who exercised a sort of public ministry in all
administrative affairs, admitted the substance
of the duke's demand, but objected to the
form. Manuel, who then held the office, was
a rigid republican, and a most pedantic form-
alist. He was the author of a letter addressed
to Louis XVI. in 1791, which began with
these words : " Sire, I do not love kings, and
the Bourbons least of all." He acted on the
sentiment; and, when the duke signed the
formal requisition, he declared that the Mu-
nicipality could not recognize a petition
signed by a Bourbon, that the nation acknow-
ledged no Bourbons since the 10th of August,
and that, before the petitioner could be heard,
he was bound to conform to the national will
by abandoning the proscribed name. Then,
turning theatrically to the statues of Liberty
and Equality, he proposed that the prince
should take one of those as his sponsor at a
revolutionary baptism. Anxious for the safe-
ty of his child, the Duke of Orleans submitted
to this absurd degradation, and thus acquired
the name of Philip Egalite.

"■ So many atrocious calumnies have been
circulated respecting this incident, that we
shall give the narrative of an eye-witness, M.
Serent, who then held an office in the munici-
pal police. ' I was present,' he says, ' and
saw the Duke of Orleans shrug his shoulders
when he received the name of Egalite, which
was given him by Manuel, the Procureur'
syndic. He spoke of it to me contemptuously,
when, as we went out together from the Hotel
de ViJle, I said to him with a smile, 'How
admirably that baptism suits you ! The name
of a nymph given to a colonel of hussars with
black mustaches!' He answered, 'Do me
the justice to believe that I did not come to
the Municipality to change my name, and
that the new name has been imposed upon me.
You heard the mob applaud that stupid
Manuel : what could I do or say ? I came
to plead for my daughter, who is likely to be
proscribed as an emigrant; and for her sake
I was compelled to submit to the burlesque
name imposed upon me.' "

Our author seems to consider the only
utterly indefensible part of Egalite 's con-
duct to be his vote for the death of his un-
fortunate cousin, Louis Sixteenth. The
tide of his extravagant popularity had al-
ready begun to recede ; he was thencefor-
ward condemned, even by the most ardent
Republicans. That reply, " I vote Jor
death ^'''> consigned his name deservedly to
infamy.

He was probably influenced partly by
want of moral courage and partly by re-
sentment. Whatever were bis motives, he

272

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

Sept.

soon paid their penalty. The Duke of
Orleans, after a mock trial, was condemned
and executed. His body was interred,
without ceremony, in the cemetery of the
Madeleine.

The libellers of Philip Egalite have ex-
aggerated the criminality of his intrigues
with Madame de Genlis, and represented
their " orgies" as carried on in daring and
shameless defiance of decency. They were,
on the contrary, at such pains to preserve
appearances, that it was long before the
Duchess herself could be induced to look
upon the governess of her children in the
lio-ht of a rival. ^' No one indeed doubts,''
says our author, " that Pamela Seymour
was the offspring of their illicit love, but
the parties acted too discreetly to expose
themselves to open scandal." Pamela
Seymour was educated, as was also a niece
of Madame de Genlis, with the Princess
Adelaide, and they both accompanied her
into exile.

" Shortly after their arrival in Tournay,
Pamela Seymour was married to a young Irish
nobleman, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, son of the
Duke of Leinster, whose affections she had
gained. When first her marriage was discuss-
ed on her return from England, it was thought
necessary to appoint a guardian, in conse-
quence of the mystery in which the secret of
her birth was purposely involved. She made
the selection herself, in the presence of Ma-
dame de Genlis, who, however, probably
guided her choice. She nominated Barere,
then known only as a man of letters, and a
pleasant companion, whom no one at the time
could have supposed likely to acquire the ter-
rible celebrity which gathered round his name
in subsequent years.

*' Lord Edward Fitzgerald had warmly
adopted the principles of the French Revolu-
tion, and his enthusiasm was not cooled by a
union with the pupil of Madame de Genlis.
Soon after his marriage. Lord Edward returned
to his native country, and became the chief of
the conspiracy formed by the United Irishmen
to overthrow the English Government and es-
tablish a republic in Ireland. Betrayed by an
associate, an armed party was sent to arrest
him, but he made a fierce resistance, and was
not secured until he had been severely wound-
ed. He died in prison from the effect of his
wounds before he could be brought to tiial.

"Lady Pamela married a second time, was
divorced, and then resumed the illustrious
name which it is to be regretted that she ever
laid aside. She lived for some time in obscu-
rity at Montauban ; but, after the Revolution
of 1830, she went to Paris, and obtained a

pension from Louis Philippe. Barere soon
after came to the capital, and one day a lady,
dressed in deep mourning, presented herself in
his antechamber as lady-in-waiting to his an-
cient ward. ' You are attached to a person for
whom I have always felt a sincere affection,'
said Barere to this lady; 'tell me some news
about her ] is she happy V ' Alas ! no,' re-
plied the unknown ; ' but Lady Pamela Fitz-
gerald often speaks with gratitude of the at-
tention her guardian bestowed upon her.' ' I
should greatly like to see the dear good Pa-
mela again,' continued Barere, with a scrutiniz-
ing glance, 'tell her, madame, that I have
carefully preserved her portrait, and that I bore
it about with me during my exile.' ' You have
her portrait V cried the unknown lady ; ' 0,
sir, have the kindness to let me see it !' When
the portrait was shown to her, she involunta-
rily exclaimed, ' Gracious Heaven ! how hand-
some I was !' ' It is you, Pamela,' cried Ba-
rere; 'you can no longer conceal yourself.'
'Yes,' she replied, ^ it is I, who could not over-
come my anxiety to embrace you. You find
me greatly changed, do you not '? But I have
suffered so much. I will tell you the whole
story at some future time.' Then seizins; the
portrait with extreme vivacity, she said, ' Lend
it — lend it to me : I wish to show it to one of
my female friends.' She then took leave with
tears in her eyes. Barere never saw her
again. She died at Paris in November, 1831."

Sensible of the defects in his own edu-
cation, the Duke (Egalite) wished that of
his children to be more worthy of their
birth and rank. On account of the coarse-
ness of his manners, he transferred the edu-
cation of his sons from the learned and
amiable, but unpolished. Chevalier de
Bonnard, to the governess of his daughters.
Madame de Genlis was undoubtedly a
woman of strong mind and great ability.
The greatest objection to her system of
education was, the theatrical sentimentality
and display mixed up with it. She des-
cribes the demolition of the Iron Cage
permitted to the young princes by the prior
of Mont St. Michel, and says, " The
Duke de Chartes, with the most touching
express ion, Sind a strength beyond his years,
gave the first blow with his axe to the
cage, after which the carpenters cut down
the door," &c. Again, when, during their
residence at Zug, stones were thrown in at
the windows, and the Princess Adelaide
narrowly escaped injury, she says : " I
picked up the stone, and got it polished,
and cut into a medallion, with these words
engraved on it, ^Innocence, Providence.'' "

1850,

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

273

Among otKer ridiculous formalities Ma-
daiiK? de Genlis prescribed to her pupils
the exact number of messages which, con-
sistently with the strict duties of friendship,
ouo;ht to be sent on such and such occa-
sions. So much artificial management
could not, we apprehend, have tended to
increase the real sensibility and affection of
these children. In other respects her sys-
tem was more judicious. She paid great
attention to the physical training of her
pupils, early accustoming them to cold and
hardships, of which in later years they had
cause to know the value.

A considerable portion of the second
volume of the ^ ' Memoirs " is devoted to
Louis Philippe, and the short but eventful
lives of his brothers the Duke de Mont-
pensier and the Count de Bagelois. We
have a most interesting account of the
various adventures of Louis Philippe tra-
velling through Germany in a gig, and
throu"-h Switzerland on foot : of his term
of professorship in college, where he taught
mathematics and geography; — his incog-
nito under the name of C ,rbj/, when he
travelled in Norway and Sweden, and was
received with no other passport than his
intelligence and good manners in the cir-
cles of the best society there, his adventu-
rous explorations beyond the arctic circle,
and his hospitable reception at Mersfeldt,
to which place, "forty years afterward,
the obscure and poor guest of these remote
colonies, beino; then Kin«; of the French,
sent as a memorial of his gratitude, a clock
so constructed as to defy the cold of these
icy latitudes.'' His perilous visit to Fin-
land, and finally his voyage to America,
where he witnessed the installation of John
Adams to the Presidency, and made a visit
of some days to the illustrious patriot of
Mount Vernon. It was the opinion of
Washington at that time, that a Republi-
can form of government is only suited to a
new country, and that a restoration was
inevitable in France. The Duke now
reunited to his brothers, who arrived soon
after in America, having been just released
from their long and almost hopeless im-
prisonment, they made together a tour
through the territories of the United States.
An account of this tour is found in the
" Vindication," published under the su-
perintendence of the Duchess of Orleans.
*^ Those who now traverse the Ohio and

VOL. VI. NO. III. HEW SERIES.

the Missisippi in the finest steamers in the
world " says our author, '' will read with
amazement the difficulties and dangers
which travellers had to encounter within
the memory of man."

" They embarked on the Ohio, January 3,
1798. The frost returned thiee days after,
and the navigation was interrupted ; it was
indeed often interrupted, and the course of the
Ohio being then almost through a desert, to
the accidents and dangers arising from cur-
rentSj rapids, and ice, were added great difficul-
ty in procuring food. The frost was so se-
vere, that the cider and milk were congealed
in the cabin of the boat, though it was heal-
ed by a large fire, and by the presence of se-
ven or eight passengers. Four of the boatmen
having been overcome by fatigue, the princes
were often obliged to row and work the ves-
sel at the most dangerous points. The banks
of the river then presented no landscape but
immense forests, in some places extending se-
venty or eighty leagues without interruption.
The voyage became still more painful during
a course of one hundred leagues from the Falls
of Ohio, near Louisville, county of Jefferson,
at the western extremity of Virginia, to Fort
MansaC; near the point where the Ohio falls
into the Mississippi, at the western extremity
of Virginia. The noble travellers had no boat-
men who knew the river, or even understood
how to steer the vessel; thus thej'- had to
keep watch themselves both by night and by
day, in spite of the cold. There were some
entire days when the river was so covered
with ice that they w^ere constantly exposed
to the greatest dangers. Finally, having
reached Mansac, an American garrison,
they landed to obtain some venison from ar^
Indian camp in the neighborhood. At last
they found a good boatman, without whose
aid they could not have descended the Missis-
sippi. They had still five hundred leagues to,
travel before they could arrive at New Or«
leans. They entered the Mississippi near
Fort Jefferson, at the end of January, and
only stopped half a day at New Madrid, tke
first Spanish post. The rapidity of the stream
led them to hope that their voyage would aot
be long; and the weather becoming more oiiild
caused them to fear the breaking up q£ the
ice in the northern part of the river, which
was quite frozen over, though more than a
league in breadth. Under such circursjstances
it was clear they had no time to los5>. From
New Madrid to Natchez, that is to say, along
a line of three hundred leagues, they only met
three habitations. The rapidity oi the stream
and the number of uprooted trees which it
brought down, constrained the pymces to dis-
continue their voyage on the approach) of
night."

274

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

Sept.

After his marriage with the daughter of
Ferdinand Fourteenth, Louis Philippe
lived mostly in retirement in Sicily, until
the overthrow of Napoleon called him to
France. He at once presented himself at
court, but displeased with the preposterous
policy of Louis Eighteenth and his impo-
tent efforts to make the restoration efface
all the traditions and all the glories of the
republic and the empire, the Duke ap-
peared rarely afterward at the Tuileries.
After the accession of Charles Tenth
he went more frequently, but still preserved
in a great measure his retirement.

When called to choose between a crown
and a passport Louis Philippe was forced
by the exigence of circumstances to be-
come King of the French ; and thus at
length was attained that position which was
said to have been ' steadily sought by the
family of Orleans for more than a century.
Thenceforward his elevated station made
more evident to the world both the faults
and the virtues of Louis Philippe. The
prudence which had marked the course of
his early misfortunes, guided still more per-
ceptibly the policy of his government,
while avarice, which had not before ap-
peared in his character, now showed itself
to be one of his strongest motives, and
finally through the first fatal dissensions
with the bourgeoise, when he demanded
from the nation large dowries for his daugh-
ters, and splendid donations for his sons,
was the first movement in the struggle
which caused his dethronement.

The gradual waning of his popularity
was evinced by the indifference with which
the repeated attempts at his assassination
came to be received throughout France.
It had become evident that the King was
withdrawing from the Revolution and bind-
ing himself to maintain the cause of arbi-
trary power, and the consequence was a
reverse the suddenness of which is unpar-
alleled in history.

How serious a lesson is to be read from
all these changing events, the contest be-
tween the despotism of the seventeenth,
and the enfranchised democracy of the
nineteenth century. Revolution upon rev-
olution has produced it. The time when
it was thought sacralige to

*' Gripe the sacred handle of the sceptre,"

Or,

" Threat the glory of a crown.'*

Has passed forever.

'• Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,"

are displaced by an almost unlimited free-
dom of thought and action.

It was terrible, yet it was full of in-
struction, the great struggle which man-
kind witnessed, in the death of the one
and the birth of the other, but it has
taught nations to know themselves, and
through the voices of patriotic and truth-
revering men, still come to us fresh les-
sons of wisdom and virtue, drawn from the
experience of the past.

Led on by the interest of Mr. Taylor's
volumes, we have reached unawares the
limit prescribed to us, and have now neith-
er space nor time to enlarge upon that of
Miss Kavanagh. With some errors, and
much warm, if not extravagant coloring,
she has collected a very interesting group
out of the most remarkable women of
France from the time of the Regency to
the Revolution. Patronesses of the fine
arts and of literatm-e, women elevated by
the noblest virtues and degraded by the
grossest sensuality — Queens, favorites of
Kings, female politicians, and martyrs in
the cause of liberty or conscience. A
Madame de Pompadour, a Marie Antoin-
ette, a Charlotte Corday, — each character
with the variety of interest appropriate and
peculiar to itself.

This interest, however, lies more in the
subject than in the style of the authoress,
which is verbose. She is sometimes elo-
quent, but mostly garrulous. The impres-
sion left upon the mind is as if we had been
in company with a great talker, who gave
to others not only no chance to speak, but
scarcely time to think. We are hurried
along — interested for a time — perhaps even
fascinated by the flow of language, but a
ringing sound is left in our ears, and if ask-
ed to what we have been listening, we are
apt to reply with Hamlet, " Words, words,
words."

A mono- the errors to which we have re-
ferred is the repeated allusion to the un-
grateful abandonment of the death-bed of
Louis Fourteenth by Madame de Main-
tenon. The best authorities give a differ-
ent version M. Lefevre, in his " Journal
des derniers instans du Roi,'''' relates, that
although her services were merely mecha-
nical, and she exhibited no feelmg, she re-

1850.

Memoirs of the House of Orleans.

275

mained day and niglit by bis bed, and tbat
tbe King's last words to ber were, " Tbe
only tbing tbat consoles me Madame is,
tbat you will so soon rejoin me."

One of the lono:est and most interesting
chapters of " Woman in France," is given
to Madame du Cbatelet, tbe " divine Em-
elie" of Voltaire. Tbis is not only agree-
able as relating to tbe most remarkable li-
terary character of tbe eighteenth century,
but also as giving a full and fair specimen
of the women of rank in tbat day.

Tbe story of tbe lovely Circassian, Aisse,
is also well told, and to use the words of
the author, " one of those romantic epis-
odes which never appear to such advantage
as when standing forth on tbe obscurity of
a back ground like the Regency."

The entire story of the life of Mademoi-
selle Aisse is full of interest ; we take
from it the following :

" In the year 1698, M. de Ferriol was pas-
sing through the slave-market at Constanti-
nople, when he was struck with the surpassing
lovliness of a young female child exposed for
sale. He questioned her owner, and learned
that the child had been carried off by the
Turks from the palace of a Circassian prince,
whom they had massacred with all his people :
she was supposed to be his daughter, for her
ravishers had found her surrounded by atten-
dants. Moved with com}»assion at her un-
happy fate, and also actuated by a less pure
and disinterested motive, the French nobleman
purchased the young Haidee or Aisse — the
two names appear to be identical — for the sum
of fifteen hundred livres. On returning to
France, he confided the child to his sister-in-
law, Madame de Ferriol, and then went back
once more to Constantinople, where he resided
as ambassador until the year 1711.

" Aisse, as she still continued to be called,
although she had been baptized under the
name of Charlotte, was kindly treated by
Madame de Ferriol, by whom she was brought
up on a footing of equality with her two sons.

D'Argental and Pont-de-Veyle always loved
their adopted sister very tenderly. The
beauty of Mademoiselle Aisse was remarka-
ble, even in that age of beautiful women : it
blended the passion and fire of the East with
the classical outline of Grecian loveliness and
the animated grace of France. She was
about the middle height, of an elegant figure
and a graceful carriage ; her complexion had,
in youth, that dazzling bloom and transparent
purity which is still the boast of the fine Cir-
cassian races ; her eyes, dark, soft, and
lustrous, shone with truly eastern splendor :
her oval and delicate countenance expressed
the goodness, candor, and finesse of her
character.

"Aissee attracted considerable attention in
the circle of Madame de Ferriol : her extreme
loveliness was not her only charm. If she
was neither brilliant nor witty, she possessed,
however, all the tact and delicacy of a fine
nature : she spoke well, but little, for her
disposition was naturally retiring. It is easy
to judge of what her conversational powers
may have been, by the letters she has left. —
The style in which they are wiitten, though
natural and elegant, is frequently careless and
incorrect : it has not that precision and
purity of idiom which characterize Madame
de Staal's language, nor the strength and wit
of Madame du Deffands's. The merits of
Mademoiselle Aisse's writings are by no
means literary ; they spring from the truth
and tenderness of her heart, from the natural
humility and delicacy of her mind, and from
the sincere and honest abhorrence she ever
displays against the profligacy and vices of
the age. It was this union of rare persona 1
attractions, and of the most noble and amia-
ble qualities of her heart, which led a contem-
porary poet to exclaim : —

" Aisse de la Grece epuisa la beaute ;
Elle a de la France emprunte
Les chavmes de I'esprit, de I'air, et da langage

Pour le coeur je n'y comprends rien;
Dans quel lieu s'est-elle adressee?
II n'en est plus comme le sien

Depuis I'age d'or ou I'Astree."

276

General Winjield Scott,

Sept.

GENEEAL WINFIELD SCOTT.

The State of Virginia has caused to be
prepared for presentation to Major General
Winfield Scott a gold medal, upon whicli
his fame is typified by a solid Grecian
Doric column, with *' 1812" inscribed onits
base, and upon its capital " 1848 " — the
date of the treaty of peace with Mexico.

It would be pleasing to us to adopt the
idea conveyed by this medal in tracing
the career of General Scott. We should
wish to follow him throughout his whole
course, and elucidate the characteristics of
his genius by the simple narration of his
story. But as his biography down to the
commencement of the Mexican war has
already been given by Mr. Mansfield, we
shall confine ourselves in this sketch to a
summary of antecedent events, and re-
serve the greater part of our limited space
for an examination of acts and characteris-
tics during that war, which appear to us
as yet little understood.

Our purpose is not therefore to dwell
upon the great acts of the historical drama,
in which hs has been a prominent actor
for nearly forty years. We do not pro-
pose to present vivid representations of
battles, in which he has been distinguished
as the soldier, the General, and as the
Commander-in-Chief, in order to heighten
the effect of that picture. Still less should
we desire by the scenic effect of any
such representations to divert attention
from the genius and characteiistics of the
man.

But from the ample material which his
labors in the closet and the field furnish,
we shall present, as it appears to ns, the
picture of a generous and magnanimous
man, with genius strengthened by indus-
try ; sternness softened by kindness ; an
indomitable will governed by reflection ;
ability and vigor in war, combined with a
love of peace and order ; and respect and
obedience to the constituted authorities of

his country, unimpaired by an unshriEk-
ing maintenance of his own rights,

Theearly career of Major General Scott
was very brilliant. At the commence-
ment of the war with Great Britain, he
was promoted to a Lieutenant Colonelcy of
Artillery, from a captaincy of light Artil-
lery. The latter commission he had ac-
cepted in 1S08, after the passage of the
non-intercourse act, and when the danger
of war with Great Britain appearing immi-
nent, Congress had increased the army.

At the time that General Scott became a
soldier, he was engaged in the practice of
law in his native state of Virginia, hav-
ing previously received a collegiate educa-
tion at William and Mary college.

With the events of the war of 1812-14,
the promotion of the subject of our sketch
kept pace. He was soon Adjutant Gene-
ral of the army, next Colonel of Artillery,
then Brigadier General, and on the 25 th
July, 1814, ''For his distinguished ser-
vices in the successive conflicts of Chip-
PEW^A and Niagara, and for his uniform
gallantry and good conduct as an officer in
said army," he was bre vetted a Major
General.

He attained this high rank at the early
age of twenty-eight years. In the battle
of Niagara he had been severely wounded,
and when the proclamation of peace fol-
lowed in February, 1815, he was still
suffering from the effect of his wound,
although he had for sometime previously
been the Commanding General at Balti-
more.

The plaudits of his countrymen still
rang in his ears. Governor Tompkins, in
presenting to him a year later, a sword
voted by the State of New York, thus
addressed him: ''Your military career is
replete with splendid events. Without des-
cending into too much minuteness, I may
briefly refer to your exploits in the most

1850.

General Winfield Scott

277

interesting portion of the American Con-
tinent. The shores of Niagara, from Erie
to Ontario, are inscribed with your name,
and with the names of your brave com-
panions. The defeat of the enemy at Fort
George will not be forgotten. The me-
morable conflict on the plains of Chippewa,
and the appalling night battle on the
heights of .Niagara, are events which have
added new celebrity to the spots where
they happened, heightening the majesty of
the stupendous cataract, by combining
with its natural all the force of the moral
sublime.

" The admirers of the great in nature,
from all quarters of the globe, will forever
visit the theatre of your achievements. —
They will bear to their distant homes the
idea of this mighty display of nature, and
will associate with it your deeds and those
of your brothers in arms. And so long as
the beautiful and sublime shall be objects
of admiration among men ; so long as the
whelming waters of Erie shall be tumbled
into the awful depths of Niagara, so long
shall the splendid actions in which you
had so conspicuous a share, endure in the
memory of man."

Such was the tone of public sentiment
which every where greeted our young coun-
tryman, upon the conclusion of peace, but
he modestly thought that whatever industry,
and vigor, and genius had heretofore accom-
plished, much yet remained for him to do
before he could hope to be master of the
science of war. Far from resting upon
the laurels he had gained, in what has
been aptly styled the second war of inde-
pendence, he obtained permission to visit
Europe for professional improvement. —
There, by personal intercourse with Carnot,
and the great generals of the French em-
pire ; by inspection of fortifications ; by
witnessing the movements and discipline
of the allied armies, and in the collection of
books, his time was profitably occupied, and
he returned to the United States prepared
to enter upon a course of study which
would give him self-confidence in any
future war in which his country might be
engaged.

Upon his return he was not idle. In
the year 1821 he published a volume en-
titled, " General Regulations for the Army"
containing every thing necessary for the
government of troops in garrison, in camp,

and in the field. In ] 826, a.s president of
a board of regular officers and distinguished
militia generals, he reported ;

1. A plan for the organization and
instruction of the whole body of the militia
of the union.

2. A system of tactics for the artillery.

3. A system of cavalry tactics ; and

4. A system of infantry and rifle tactics.

In 1835, under a resolution of Con-
gress, he published a new edition in three
small volumes of the infantry tactics, with
all the improvements made thereon, since
the general peace of 1815.

Such were the labors of General Scott,
in the closet, during the intervals of time
when he was not actively engaged in his
military duties ; but during the same
period, which we have thus hastily run
over, his military avocations were by no
means few or unimportant.

The war with the Northwestern Indians,
commonly called the Black Hawk war ;
the direction of which General Scott was
ordered to assume in 1832, was brought
to a conclusion by the battle of the Bad
Axe, August 2d, the day before Gen-
eral Scott had joined General Atkinson,
under whom the operations against the
Indians had until that time been con-
ducted. The fugitive Indians were soon
afterwards collected and brought in pris-
oners. Treaties between the United States
and the Indians soon followed, and Gen-
eral Scott received the approbation of the
government for his conduct, ''' during a
series of difficulties, requiring higher moral
courage than the operations of an active
campaign, under ordinary circumstances."

Allusion is here made by the Secretary
of War (General Cass) to the conduct of
Scott during the presence of that desolating
scourge, the cholera. His conduct is thus
described by an eye-witness : ' ' The Gene-
ral's course of conduct on that occasion
should establish for him a reputation not in-
ferior to that which he has earned on the
battle field, and should exhibit him not only
as a warrior, but as a man — not only as the
hero of battles, but as the hero of humani-
ty. He visited the sick, cheered the well,
encouraged the attendants, and set an ex-
ample to all, which did much towards pre-
venting the spread of a panic, scarcely
less to be dreaded than the original calami-
ty. The mortality was appalling, but at

278

General Winfield Scott.

Sept.

length, on the Stliof September, the infec-
tion disappeared."*

We pass from the difficulties surmounted
in the Northwest to South Carolina, where
General Scott soon after was called upon,
in his position as the commander of the
troops, to exercise all his judgment and dis-
cretion.

The feelings which actuated his whole
course of conduct on that occasion, are thus
described by himself in a letter to a distin-
guished friend, a nullifier, dated Dec. 14th,
1832, from Savannah : " I have always en-
tertained a high admiration for the history
and character of South Carolina, and acci-
dent or good fortune has thrown me into inti-
macy, and even friendship, with almost eve-
ry leader of the two parties which now divide
and agitate the State. Would to God they
were again united, as during the late war,
when her federalists vied with the republi-
cans in the career of patriotism and glory,
and when her Legislature came powerfully
to the aid of the Union. W^ell, the majori-
ty among you have taken a stand, and those
days of general harmony may never return.
What an awful position for South Caroli-
na, as well as for the other States !

"I cannot follow out the long, dark shades
of the picture that presents itself to my
fears. I will hope, nevertheless, for the
best. But I turn my eyes back, and good
God ! what do I behold } Impatient South
Carolina could not wait — she has taken a
leap, and is already a foreign nation ; and
the great names of Washington, Franklin,
Jefferson and Greene, no longer compatriot
with yours, or those of Laurens, Moultrie,
Pinckney, and Marion with mine!

*' But the evil, supposing the separation to
have \)QQn peaceable^ would not stop there.
When one member shall withdraw, the
whole arch of the Union will tumble in.
Out of the broken fragments new combi-
nations will arise. We should probably
have, instead of one^ three confederacies — a
Northern, Southern and Western Union ;
and transmontane Virginia, your native
country, not belonging to the South, but
torn off by the general West. I turn with
horror from the picture I have only sketched.
I have said it is dark ; let but one drop of
blood be spilt upon the canvass, and it be-
comes 'one red.' "

» Mansfield's Life of Scott.

Deeply impressed with the conviction
expressed in the foregoing letter, tlie con-
duct of Scott throughout these difficulties
between the United States and South Ca-
rolina was conciliatory to the last degree.
" He was resolved, (says the Hon. B. W.
Leigh,) if it was possible, to prevent a re-
sort to arms ; and nothing could have been
more judicious than his conduct. Far from
being prone to take umbrage, he kept his
temper under the strictest guard, and was
most careful to avoid giving occasion for
offence ; yet he held himself ready to act,
if it should become necessary, and he let that
be distinctly understood." " He was per-
fectly successful, when the least impru-
dence might have resulted in a serious col-
lision."

At length the passage of the celebrated
compromise act by Congress caused South
Carolina to rescind her ordnance of nullifi-
cation, and the officers and soldiers and
seamen of the United States departed with
the satisfaction of knowing that every act
of theirs, during the apprehended collision,
had been dictated by kindness to their
brethren of South Carolina.

In 1835, the Seminoles of Florida broke
out into open hostilities against the United
States. On the 20th- of January, 1836,
General Scott was ordered to take the com-
mand in that quarter, but after active ope-
rations against those Indians for a few
months, in which they, by scattering, con-
trived in a great measure to avoid colli-
sion with our troops, General Scott was or-
dered to proceed to the Creek country, in
Alabama and Georgia, for the purpose of
subduing that tribe of Indians, which had
meanwhile also engaged in hostilities.

There he proceeded forthwith to orga-
nize the volunteer corps ; and, in the begin-
ning of July, five hundred Indians had al-
ready surrendered prisoners. While thus
zealously and efficiently engaged in the
Creek country. General Scott was sudden-
ly re-called by the President of the United
States, upon private representations made
by the second in command of the army in
the field, through an unauthorized channel of
communication, and his conduct during the
Seminole and Creek campaigns was sub-
mitted to a Court of Inquiry.

The Court, after a patient and laborious
investigation of the charge, pronounced
General Scott's plan of the Seminole cam-

1850,

General Winfield Scott.

279

paiga " well devised and prosecuted with
energy, steadiness and ability." In regard
to the Creek war, they said " the plan of
campaign, as adopted by General Scott,
was well calculated to lead to successful
results ; and that it was prosecuted by him,
as far as practicable, with zeal and ability,
until he was re-called from the command."
Towards the close of the year 1837, in-
surgent movements commenced with the
French population of Canada against their
government. These movements were close-
ly followed by the enrollment of large num-
bers of sympathisers among the border po-
pulation of the United States. "Thou-
sands and thousands met in lodges all along
the frontier, oaths of secrecy were admin-
istered, principal leaders appointed. Gene-
rals and Staff Officers chosen, and at least
for Upper Canada, a Provisional Govern-
ment formed. The Presid»3nt of the Uni-
ted States issued his proclamation, enjoin-
ino- all sood citizens to observe the strictest

op ^ '^

neutrality towards the British provinces.
It had but little effect."*

The arms in the hands of the citizens,
and even those in the State arsenals, within
reach of the borders, were soon seized or
purloined, thus affording eqaipments to the
American Canada Patriots. Some hun-
dreds of these people passed over from
Schlosser to Navy Island, within the British
line, but the insurgent movement in Cana-
da had meantime been apparently crushed.

A small steamboat, called the Caroline,
was employed by the Canada sympathisers
between Navy Island and Schlosser, on the
American shore, as a ferry boat . The first
night the boat commenced her trips the
British fitted out an expedition at Chippe-
wa, passed over to the American town of
Schlosser, killed one citizen and wounded
several others, and after firinjr the boat cut
her loose from her fastenino-s and sent her

over the cataract of Niagara, as was be-
lieved by many at the time, with several
wounded Americans on board. |

This national outrage greatly inflamed
the minds of the people of the United
States, and General Scott, then in Wash-
ington, was ordered to the frontier, and
clothed with full power to call for militia to
enforce the act of neutrality, to defend our

* Mansfield, p. 288.
t Mansfield.

territory against invasion, or to maintain
peace throughout the borders.

During the winter of 1838-9, he was
busy in exercising his influence for peace.
He allowed himself no repose. He passed
frequently along the frontier — sometimes
along the Detroit, and sometimes on the
north line of Vermont, and, in the perform-
ance of this duty of peace-maker, he ad-
dressed on a line of eight hundred miles,
immense gatherings of sympathisers as well
as other citizens. He in those addresses
acknowledged that the burning of the Ca-
roline was a national outrage which called
for explanation and satisfaction ; but, at
the same time, he reminded our incensed
citizens that we lived under a government
of laws. That a republic can have no sure
foundation except in the general intelli-
gence, virtue, respect, and obedience to
law, of its people ; that if, in the attempt
to force on our unwilling neighbors inde-
pendence and free institutions, we had first
to spurn and trample under foot treaty sti-
pulations and laws made by our own repre-
sentatives, we should greatly hazard free
institutions at home ; that no government
can or ought to exist, for a moment, after
losing the power of executing its obligations
to foreim countries, and of enforcino; its
own at home ; that such power depended in
a republic chiefly on the people themselves ;
that we had a treaty with England, bind-
ing us to the strictest observance of amity,
or all the duties of good neighborhood with
adjoining provinces, and also an act of Con-
gress for enforcing those solemn obliga-
tions ; that the treaty and the laws were as
binding on the honor and conscience of
every American freeman, as if he had spe-
cially voted for each ; that this doctrine
was of the very essence of a civilized re-
public, and that the neglect of it could not
fail to sink us into anarchy and universal
contempt.

That the whole subject was in the hands
of the President, the regularly elected of-
ficial organ of the country ; that there was
no doubt the President would make the
proper demand, and failing to obtain satis-
faction, would lay the whole matter before
Congress.

Such harangues from the mouth of a
soldier, not unknown to fame, produced the
happiest effect. Masses of patriots broke off
and returned to their homes, and the friends

280

General Winjield Scoit.

S^fi,

of order were encouraged to come out in
support of order.

On the 10th of April, 1838, Gen. Scott
was ordered to take measures for the re-
moval of the Cherokees beyond the Mis-
sissippi. The duty was happily accom-
plished without bloodshed, although large
bodies of troops had been assembled in their
country with a view to force the emigration
of the reluctant Cherokees. The instruc-
tions of the General to the troops, and his
counsels to the Cherokees themselves, dic-
tated by the spirit of the philanthropist,
effected this happy result.

Scott was again soon on the Northeastern
frontiers, where hostile movements were on
foot in relation to what was known as the
Disputed Territory. Our space does not
permit us to say more than that he again
appeared as a pacificator, and that in con-
sequence of an early friendship between
himself and Sir John Harvey, the Gov-
ernor of New Brunswick, as well as by his
active exertions in Maine, he was enabled
to prevent collisions which might have re-
sulted in war between the United States
and Great Britain.

In 1839, m the National Whis^ Conven-
tion at Harrisburgh, the name of Scott
was brought forward as a candidate for the
Presidency. He received 62 votes, and
the nomination fell on General Harrison.

In 1841, upon the death of General
Macomb, Scott was appointed the Com-
mander of the Army, with his head- quar-
ters at Washington, where he continued in
the performance of his duties until he as-
sumed command of the Army in Mex-
ico.

The war with Mexico broke out in May,
1846. It is not our purpose to discuss the
causes of that war, but the Administration
of Mr. Polk held, that, Texas, before her
annexation to the United States, having
declared the Rio Grande to be her boun-
dary with Mexico, and the United States
having, by the act of annexation, taken
upon themselves the onus of settling the
question of boundary, and Mexico having
refused to enter into diplomatic negotia-
tions for the s.ettlement of that and other
disputed questions, and having refused even
to receive a Minister from the United
States, it had become necessary to take
other measures for sustaining the claims of
Texas and the United States.

In this position of affairs, Gesera! Taylor,
then in command on the west bank of the
Nueces, was ordered to take post on the
east bank of the Rio Grande, and in obey-
ing this order, a detachment from his com-
mand was surprised and assaulted by an
overwhelming Mexican force, and a num-
ber of American soldiers killed, wounded,
aud taken prisoners.

As soon as news of this eveDt reached
Washington, Congress declared, by a large
majority, that war existed by the act of
Mexico, and measures were taken to vindi-
cate the rights and honor of the United
States.

In the state of anxious feeling then pre-
vailing, General Scott was freely consulted
by the Administration, and it was intimated
to him, that he was to command the Army
about to be raised, for the prosecution of
the war. He -at once set himself assidu-
ously at work in arranging the necessary
details, for organizing and dispatching the
volunteers, authorized by the act of the
13th of May, made known to him on the
17th of that month. This bill was de-
fective, in not providing a sufficient staff,
or sufficient company officers, for the regi-
ments about to be raised, and General
Scott at once prepared a supplemental bill,
to provide for these deficiencies. This bill,
the Secretary of War promised to press
upon the attention of Congress, and on the
19th of May, he went to the Senate com-
mittee for that purpose, but at the same
time caused to be inserted a first section,
providing for two additional Major-Gen-
erals, and fom' Brigadier-Generals, for the
regular Army.

The section had been introduced without
the knowledge of General Scott, and it
was then known to him that party leaders
had protested against his being charged
with the war. Indeed, Mr. Senator Ben-
ton, in advocating the measure, avowed it
to be the policy of the Administration to
appoint party Generals to conduct the
war. '' Generals,'' said he, " are wanted,
who would look to the autkoiity which
appointed them. Political talent, more
than mere military skill, is needed to
conduct an invasion successfully."

On the 1 Sth of May, General Scott had
written to General Taylor, informing him
that heavy re-inforcements were to be sent
to the Rio Grande, and that he had been

1850.

General W infield Scott.

281

designated for the command of the aug-
mented army. He added, he feared that,
"with the utmost efforts, the reinforcements
could not be put on the Rio Grande be-
fore the 1st of September, and that he did
not expect to assume the command much
before the arrival of the reinforcements al-
luded to. This letter was read by Mr.
Marcy, before it was dispatched, and one
paragraph in the letter stricken out, upon
his suggestion.

Under these circumstances, Mr. Marcy
undertook, on the 20th, two days later, to
lecture General Scott on his delay, in not
repairing at once to the seat of war. The
Secretary well knew, at the time, the avo-
cations of the General-in-Chief ; that much
yet remained for him to do in Washington,
towards preparing supplies, &c., for the
invading army, and that, in the opinion of
General Scott, military operations could
not be pushed from the Rio Grande before
the 1st of September. From this unusual
and unjustifiable proceeding, on the part
of the Secretary of War — this condemna-
tion in advance — it was apparent to Gen-
eral Scott, that the Administration had
lent itself to what seemed the popular be-
lief at that time, that an army of thirty
thousand men could be collected, equipped,
thrown upon the Rio Grande, and be in
condition to commence military operations
immediately ; or else, that the design of
the lecture of the Secretary was to make
use of this popular belief, for the purpose
of hurrying him off to the Rio Grande,
before the necessary preparations had been
made, or the troops collected, and after-
wards charge the necessary delays which
must occur, before military operations
could be commenced, to his inefficiency,
and recall him.

It was under these circumstances, that
General Scott wrote his letter of the 21st
of May, 1846, to Mr. Secretary Marcy.
In that letter, and the subsequent corres-
pondence, he recited, in detail, the work
that must be done, to collect together, to
transport, to equip, and supply an army.
He proved conclusively, that the army,
materials of war, transportation, and sup-
plies, could not be in readiness before the
1st of September. He then remarks,
" All that I have but sketched, I deem to
be not only useful to success, but indispen-
sable. As a soldier, I make this assertion,

without the fear of contradiction from any
honest and candid soldier."

" Against the ad captandum condem-
nation of all other persons, whoever may
be designated for the high command in
question, there can be no reliance, in his
absence, other than the active, candid, and
steady support of his government. If I
cannot have that sure basis to rest upon,
it will be infinitely better for the country,
(not to speak of my personal security,)
that some other commander of the new
army against Mexico should be selected.
No matter who he may be, he shall at least
be judged and supported by me, in this
office and every where else, as I would de-
sire, if personally in that command, to be
judged and supported."

These representations of Scott had no
effect at the time. The fiat of party was
made to over-ride all patriotic considera-
tions. The assertion that the army could
not commence operations from the Rio
Grande until the 1st of September was ri-
diculed. General Scott was himself cari-
catured, and Mr. Marcy replied on the
25th, that the country would feel impa-
tient if the volunteers were to remain in-
active on the Rio Grande till the 1st of
September, and concluded by informing
Scott, that his services would be confined
to the City of Washington and to the pre-
parations for the vigorous prosecution of
hostilities against Mexico.

But this action of the government was
not destined to endure. Subsequent events
of the war verified the sagacity of the Gen-
eral-in-Chief ; and, notwithstanding all
the efforts of the Administration to falsify
his predictions, the army could not com-
mence its operations from the Rio Grande
until September.

Meantime Scott remained in Washing-
ton, conscious that public opinion would do
him justice with the verification of his cal-
culations, and doing all that he could do in
that position towards the successful prose-
cution of the war. His reliance upon pub-
lic sentiment was not misplaced.

When hostilities between the United
States and Mexico began, the idea was
cherished, that by beating such forces as
Mexico might assemble in defence of her
more remote provinces we might " con-
quer a peac^." Besides, the army then
under General Taylor on the Rio Grande,

282

General Winficld Scott.

Sept.

for tlie invasion of Tamaulipas and New
Leon, another army was placed under
General Wool to over-run Chihuahua, a
third under General Kearny for the con-
quest of New Mexico, and a fourth de-
tachment, afterwards to fall under the
command of Kearny, in California.

New Mexico and California were soon
under American Government. Wool had
made a longj march without encounterincr
opposition'J and Taylor had in September
fought the battle of Monterey, after having
previously in May gained the brilliant
victories of Palo Alto and Resaca within
the boundaries claimed by the United
States.

But, notwithstanding these uninterrupt-
ed successes, the probability of a peace
with Mexico was as remote as at the com-
mencement of the war, and the Adminis-
tration in October appears to have become
satisfied that something else should be done
to accomplish an end at that time sincere-
ly desired. Accordingly, on the 22d of
October, the Secretary of War writes to
General Taylor, "it is believed that Vera
Cruz may be taken ; and having posses-
sion of that city, the castle of San Juan d'
Ulloa might probably be reduced or com-
pelled to surrender. If the expedition
could go forth without the object being
known to the enemy, it is supposed that
four thousand troops would be a sufficient
force for the enterprize, receiving as they
would the co-operation of our naval force
on the Gulf ; but at least fifteen hundred
or two thousand of them should be of the
regular army, and under the command of
officers best calculated for such an under-
taking." This letter of Mr. Marcy shows
that the proposed exhibition was to be a
detachment from the main army under
General Taylor ; that the detachment was
to be commanded by Major-General
Patterson ; that General Taylor must not
make such detachment if it interfered ma-
terially with his plan of operations, and
that it was hoped to carry Vera Cruz by
a coup -de-main^ without looking to ulteri-
or operations from that point ; and, that if
unforseen difficulties in regard to Vera
Cruz should arise, the movement should
be turned against Tampico. The Brazos
Santiago was designated as the place of
embarcation of the detachment. No
siege preparations were made ; and the

whole tenor of the despatch to General
Taylor as well as the instructions to Gen-
eral Patterson,* shew that Mr. Marcy
still proposed nothing more than par-
tial operations. He tells General Patter-
son, " Our object is to strike an ef-
fective blow at the enemy ; and if Vera
Cruz can be taken and by that means the
castle of San Juan d' Ulloa reduced, it
would be an important point in the war ;
but the force which is proposed to be sent
against that place, or the largest which
could be assembled for that purpose with-
out materially interfering with other opera-
tions, may not be sufficient to insure rea-
sonable hopes of success, provided the ene-
my should anticipate our design upon that
place in season to strengthen its defences
and greatly increase his forces at that point. "
" If Vera Cruz should, all circumstances
considered, be found to be too dangerous
an enterprize to be attempted, your atten-
tion will then be directed to the capture
of Tampico."

As soon as these views of the govern-
ment came to the knowledge of General
Scott, he expressed himself strongly against
them. He tells Mr. Marcy, October 27 ;
" Unless with a view to a second or new line
of operations, I regard the possession, by
us, of the city of Vera Cruz and its castle
San Juan d' Ulloa, as a step towards com-
pelling Mexico to sue for peace^ as not
likely to be worth one-tenth of the lives,
time, and money, which their capture would
cost us. In other words, I am persuaded
that our possession of those places would
be of but very little more value than the
present strict blockade of the port ; unless,
as intimated above, the capture should be
promptly followed by a march thence, with
a competent force, upon the capital. To
conquer a peace I am now persuaded that
we must take the city of Mexico, or place
it in imminent danger of capture, and
mainly through the city of Vera Cruz."
Full details are given by General Scott in
his memorandum on the subject for the or-
ganization, embarkation, and landing of
the force necessary for the undertaking,
and on November 12, in a supplemental
memorandum, he writes : " To divide our
forces on the lower Rio Grande and in
the direction of Monterey and Saltillo,

* See Pub. Doc, No. 60, p. 360.

1850.

General Winfield Scott.

283

equitably and wisely between the two lines
of operations upon the enemies' capital,
the positive instructions of the govern-
ment will be needed, besides the pre-
sence on the theatre of war of the high-
est in army rank. The latter, I beg to
say, is the proper officer to carry out on the
spot, the instructions of government in re-
spect to that division, and to direct the
principal attacking column on and from
Vera Cruz."

On the 18th of November, General
Scott was told by the President to hold
himself in readiness for this service, and on
the 20th, he submitted to the Secretary, at
the request of the latter, a draft of the
instructions required. These instructions
were of a definite and precise character.
The duties that he was to perform were
distinctly stated ; the manner in which the
necessary force was to be obtained was
given, and the 1st of February made the
point of time in which it was desirable to
reach the point of descent.

The Secretary did not adopt these spe-
cific instructions, but wrote to General
Scott on the 23d, " to repair to Mexico, to
take command of all the forces there as-
sembled ; and particularly to organize and
set on foot an expedition to operate, on the
Gulf coast, if, on arriving at the theatre of
action, you, (General Scott,) shall deem
it to be practicable. It is not proposed to
control your operations by definite instruc-
tions, but you are left to prosecute them as
your judgment, under a full view of all the
circumstances, shall dictate. The work is
before you, and the means provided, or to
be provided, for accomplishing it are com-
mitted to you, in the full confidence that
you will use them to the best advantage."

No confidence could apparently be
greater, and General Scott, before leaving
Washington, wrote to several eminent
friends : " The President has hehaved
nobly y His expectations of support and
sympathy from his Government were soon,
however, disappointed. While on the route
to the Rio Grande at New Orleans, he first
heard that the project was entertained of
creating the office of Lieutenant-General
for the purpose of superseding him in his
high duties. He scouted the idea that the
President could be guilty of such an act of
treachery, but ere long a public message to
Congress, recommending the creation of

the office, and the announcement that Mr.
Senator Benton would fill it, if created,
disappointed this false hope, and convinced
him that instead of expecting active aid and
support from home, he must look to having
his operations delayed, if not thwarted, by
opposition from the Administration, in or-
der to promote their political scheme.

Far from being awed or deterred by the
developments before him, his faculties were
invigorated, and he exhibited to those
around him a moral and intellectual great-
ness, rising superior to the pressure of ad-
verse circumstances.

It has been stated that the plan which
General Scott proposed for the conquest of
a peace was, to capture Vera Cruz, and
thence by incessant and vigorous move-
ments, either to " take the city of Mexico,
or place it in imminent danger of capture."
The plan of the Administration, until this
suggestion was adopted, had been, not to
interfere with any plan of operations which
General Taylor might have, but in addition
to such operations, to strike at the enemy
on the Gulf coast of Mexico, provided
their suggestion met with General Taylor's
approval.

On the 20th of November, General
Taylor's letter to the Secretary of War,
dated October 15, was received in Wash-
ington. In that letter. General Taylor
thus expresses himself: " It may be ex-
pected that I should give my views as to
the policy of occupying a defensive line, to
which I have above alluded. I am free to
confess, that in view of the difficulties and
expense attending a movement into the
heart of the country, and particularly in
view of the unsettled and revolutionary
character of the Mexican Government, the
occupation of such a line seems to me the
best course that can be adopted. The line
taken might be either that on which we
propose to insist as the boundary between
the republics — say that of the Rio Grande
— or the line to which we have advanced,
viz : the Sierra Madre, including Chihua-
hua and Sante Fe. The former line could
be held with a much smaller force than the
latter ; but even the line of the Sierra
Madre could be held with a force greatly
less than would be required for an active
campaign. Monterey controls the great
outlet from the interior.

" Should the Government determine to

284

General Wivfield Scott.

Sept.

strike a decisive blow at Mexico, it is my
opinion that the force should land near
Vera Cruz or Alvarado ; and after estab-
lishing a secure depot, march thence on the
capital. The amount of troops required
for this service would not fall short, in my
judgment, of 25,000 men, of which at least
10,000 should be regular troops."

It has been seen that the Government
had, previously to the receipt of this letter,
determined upon striking this decisive blow,
and designated General Scott for the com-
mand. He at once, upon reading General
Taylor's letter, submitted the following
propositions :

" I have hastily read General Taylor's
dispatches, which arrived last night. I
suppose that the war must go forward, and
not be allowed to degenerate into a warlike
a peace ^ which would be as bad, or worse,
than B, peace like a war^ involving an in-
definite period of time and waste of money.

" I have the honor to propose :

1 . That for the expedition against Vera
Cruz, 5,000 Regulars and four small bri-
gades of Volunteers, making, say, 6,000
men, with two Volunteer Major Generals,
and four Volunteer Brigadier Generals, to be
taken from the forces now under Major Gen-
eral Taylor, or under orders to join him,
although he may be, for a time, reduced to
a strictly defensive position at Monterey.

2. That to the 11,000 men, (Regulars
and Volunteers as above,) there be added,
say, 4,000 Volunteers, to be divided among
the four old brigades, taken as above, or to
be placed under two new Volunteer Briga-
diers, to be appointed by the President,
according to his pleasure.

3. That the new Volunteers, (nine re-
giments,) be organized and despatched as
rapidly as possible, and also the construc-
tion of the boats for embarbation and de-
barkation, in order that the whole expedi-
tion may be afloat and beyond the Rio
Grande by the 15th of January, or, at the
very latest, the 1st of February, so as to
leave good time for operations on the Gulf
coast before the return of the yellow fever,
to be apprehended in April, but always
certain in May.

4. That, to enable Major General Tay-
lor to resume offensive, or, at least, threat-
ening movements from Monterey upon
Saltillo, San Luis de Potosi, &c., pend-
ing the expedition against Vera Cruz, if

possible, to send him recruits to fill up the
regular corps left with him, and also the
remainder, say, 3,500 new Volunteers, of
the nine regiments.

5. That, to give the certainty of greater
activity and success to the two attacking
columns, it is respectfully suggested that
the President call for additional regiments
of Volunteers.

[6 and 7 proposes other details for In-
creasing the efficiency and strength of the
force.]

(Signed.) WiNFiELD Scott.

Washington, Nov. 21, 1846."

The instructions of the Secretary, dated
the 23d of November, giving the whole
direction of the war to General Scott, fol-
lowed ; and he at once proceeded to the Rio
Grande. While on the route from New
York, he addressed a letter to General
Taylor, intimating his proposed theatre of
operations, and expressing his regret that,
in order to act upon the new line of opera-
tions in time to avoid the dangers of pesti-
lence at Vera Cruz, it would be necessary
to reduce General Taylor for a time to stand
on the defensive. In this letter, and a sub-
sequent one from New Orleans, he also
informed General Taylor that he should be
at Camargo in order freely to consult with
him. When, however. General Scott ar-
rived at the Brazos Santiao;o on the 27th of
December, he learned that General Wool,
with his column, was at Paras ; General
Worth at Saltillo ; General Butler at
Monterey ; General Patterson on the march
from Matamoras to Victoria ; and General
Taylor himself with Twiggs' Division of
Regulars and Quitman's Brigade of Volun-
teers, in march from Monterey to Victoria.
These movements and dispositions were
undertaken by General Taylor, as he ex-
plained in a communication to the War
Department, dated December 8, for the
occupation and defence of the line of the
Sierra Madre. This communication was
not, however, known to General Scott at
that time, and it has been seen that his de-
sign was not to occupy the extensive line
which General Taylor had thus marked out
for defence, but only leave with the latter
a sufficient force for the defence of Monte-
rey and the line of communications thence
to the Rio Grande, and embark with the
remaining force for Vera Cruz, with a view
to ulterior operations against the capital.

1840.

General Winjield Scott.

285

Not being able personally to consult
with General Taylor upon his arrival at
Camargo, General Scott issued his orders
for the execution of his plan of operations.

The force to be divided was a limited
one. The operations against Vera Cruz
and the capital of Mexico were first in im-
portance. General Taylor had himself de-
clared, that, for such operations, 25,000
men were necessary, of whom at least 10,000
should be regular troops. General Scott,
for those operations, took but half the force
which Taylor had estimated to be necessary,
and he left with Taylor a larger force than the
latter a short time previously had left with
Worth and Wool to hold Saltillo. Tay-
lor, too, had, before the battle of Buena
Vista, and after the division of troops, de-
clared, that the force under him would,
doubtless, enr<-ble him to hold the positions
that he then occupied, and this was all that
he was required to do. In fact, it was
more, as Monterey, seventy miles in rear
of the position he then held, had been de-
signated as the head of his line, in confor-
mity with his own suggestion, made in his
letter to the Secretary of War, of the 15th
of October, that " Monterey controls the
great outlet from the interior."

It was all important, too, at the time that
the division of troops was made, that the
descent upon Vera Cruz should take place
before the breaking out of yellow fever on
the coast, and it was therefore necessary
that the division should be made at once.
That this policy was wise is proved by sub-
sequent events, ending in the conquest of a
peace. That General Scott did not take
a larger share of troops than his duties re-
quired has never been pretended. And
that the line of the Rio Grande would be
perfectly covered by the occupation of the
only practicable road for artillery from San
Luis to the Lower Rio Grande, is too evi-
dent to require demonstration. The whole
correspondence, too, of General Taylor with
General Scott and the War Department,
previous to the battle of Buena Vista, shows
that General Taylor did not then consider
his position a hazardous one. He writes
a short time previously that Santa Anna
had been elected President and gone to
the city of Mexico ; that detachments of
the Mexican army have been sent from
San Luis in the direction of Vera Cruz,
and that the army at San Luis were

^ suffering for want of supplies. His dis-
appointment does not appear at that
time to have arisen from the hazardous
nature of the duties with which he was
charged, but rather that the main body of
the American army under Scott was about
to engage in active operations in the heart
of the enemies' country, while he was left
in comparative inactivity, simply to hold a
defensive position. To this feeling Gene-
ral Scott responds, in writing to Taylor, on
the 2Gth of January, thus: ''You intimate
a preference for service in my particular
expedition, to remaining in your present
position with greatly reduced numbers, I
can most truly respond, that to take you
with me, as second in command, would con-
tribute greatly to my personal delight, and
I confidently believe, to the success of that
expedition. But I could not propose it to
you and for two reasons, either of which was
conclusive with me at the moment : 1st. I
thought you would be left in a higher and
more responsible position where you are ;
and 2d. 1 knew that it was not contemplated
by the government to supersede you in, or to
take you from that immediate command."

If such were Taylor's feelings, we may
sympathize with the gallant soldier under his
personal disappointment, in being left
behind, and, at the same time, do jus-
tice to his commander, who, knowing
that to conquer a peace, the war must
go forward at once from Vera Cruz to the
Capital of Mexico, also felt that the iron
nerve of Zachary Taylor would secure the
safety of the line of the Rio Grande.

Our space will not permit us to dwell
upon or explain the vexatious delays which
occurred in providing transportation for the
command of Scott, or the uncertainty in
which he was long kept from the non-arri-
val of the material of war to be provided
for his expedition — but we at once follow
him to Tampico, where he issued the fol-
lowing orders, which, being rigidly executed,
perhaps effected as important consequences
as any other act perform :d during the bril-
liant campaign which then impended :

Head Quarters of the Army,
Tampico, February 19, 1847.
GENERAL ORDERS,
No. 20.

1. It may well he apprehended that many
grave offences not provided for in the act of
Congress "establishing rules and articles for

■:i

286

General JVinfield Scott.

Sept.

the government of the armies of the United
States," approved April 10, 1806, may be again
committed — by, or upon, individuals of those
armies, in Mexico, pending the existing war
between the two Republics. Allusion is here
made to atrocities, any one of which, if com-
mitled within the United States or their orga-
nized territories, would, of course, be tried and
severely punished by the ordinary or civil
courts of the land.

2. Assassination; murder; malicious stab-
bing or maiming ; rape ; malicious assault and
battery; robbery; theft; the wanton desecra-
tion of churches, cemeteries or other religious
edifices and fixtures, and the destruction, except
by order of a superior officer, of public or pri-
vate property, are such offences.

3. The good of the service, the honor of the
United States and the interests of humanity,
imperiously demand that every crime, enume-
rated above, should be severely punished.

4. But the written code, as above, common-
ly called the rules and articles of imr, pro-
vides for the punishment of not one of those
crimes, even when committed by individuals
of the army upon the persons or property of
other individuals of the same, except in the
very restricted case in the 9th of those articles ;
nor for like outrages, committed by the same
individuals, upon the persons or property of a
hostile country, except very partially, in the
51st, 52d, and 55th articles; and the same
code is absolutely silent as to all injuries which
may be inflicted upon individuals of the army,
or their property, against the laws of war, by
individuals of a hostile country.

5. It is evident that the 99lh article, inde-
pendent of any reference to the restriction in
the 87th, is wholly nugatory in reaching any
one of those high crimes.

6. For all the ofifences, therefore, enumerated
in the second paragraph above, which may be
committed abroad — in, by, or upon the army,
a supplemental code is absolutely needed.

7. That unwritten code is Martial Laiv, as
an addition to the written military code, pre-
scribed by Congress in the rules and articles
of war, and which unwritten code, all armies,
in hostile countries, are forced to adopt — not
only for their own safety, but for the protec-
tion of the unoffending inhabitants and their
property, about the theatres of military opera-
tions, against injuries contrary to the laws of
war.

8. From the same supreme necessity, mar
tial law is hereby declared, as a supplemental
code in, and about, all camps, posts and hos-
pitals which may be occupied by any part of
the forces of the United States, in Mexico, and
in, and about, all columns, escorts, convoys,
guards and detachments, of the said forces,
while engaged in prosecuting the existing
war in, and against the said republic.

9. Accordingly, every crime, enumerated in
paragraph. No. 2, above, whether committed
— 1. By any inhabitant of Mexico, sojourner
or traveller therein, upon the person or pro-
perty of any individual of the United States'
forces, retainer or follower of the same; 2.
By any individual of the said forces, retainer
or follower of the same, upon the person or
property of any inhabitant of Mexico, sojour-
ner or traveller therein, or 3. By any indivi-
dual of the said forces, retainer or follower of
the same, upon the person or property of any
other individual of the said forces, retainer or
follower of the same — shall be duly tried and
punished under the said supplemental code.

10. For this purpose it is ordered, that all
offenders, in the matters aforesaid, shall be
promptly seized and confined, and reported,
for trial, before Military Comviissions to be
duly appointed as follows :

11. Every military commission, under this
order, will be appointed, governed and limited,
as prescribed by the 65th, 66th, 67th, and 97th
of the said rules and articles of war, and the
proceedings of such commissions will be duly
recorded, m writing, reviewed, revised, disap-
proved or approved, and the sentences execu-
ted— all, as in the cases of the proceedings
and sentences of courts-martial ; provided,
that no military commission shall try any case
clearly cognizable by any court-martial, and
provided also that no sentence of a military com-
mission shall be put in execution against any
individual, whatsoever, which may not be,
according to the nature and degree of the
offence, as established by evidence, in confor-
mity with known punishments, in like cases,
in some one of the States of the United States
of America.

12. This order will be read at the head of
every company of the United States' forces,
serving in Mexico, or about to enter on that
theatre of war.

By command of Major General Scott :

As early as May, 1S46, General Scott
had presented for the consideration of the
Secretary of War the project of a law
giving expressly to military courts in an
enemies' country the authority above in-
dicated. Congress did not, however, act
upon the recommendation, and it appears
by letters from General Taylor, dated Oc-
tober 6th and October 11th, 1S46, that
the " most shameful atrocities" were com-
mitted by individuals among the troops,
without punishment. In the letter of Gen-
eral Taylor of October 11th, he reports a
cold-blooded mm-der as having been com-
mitted in the streets of Monterey, and
asks the Secretary of war " for instructions

1850.

General Winfield Scott.

287

as to the proper disposition of the culprit
The Secretary replied, November 25th,
1846 : " The competency of a military
tribunal to take cognisance of such a case
as you have presented in your communica-
tion of the 11th ult., viz. the murder of a
Mexican soldier, and other offences not
embraced in the express provision of the
articles of war, was deemed so questiona-
ble that an application was made to Con-
gress, at the last session, to bring them
expressly within the jurisdiction of such a
tribunal ; but it was not acted on. I am
not prepared to say that, under the pecu-
liar circumstances of the case, and particu-
larly by the non-existence of any civil au-
thority to which the offender could be turn-
ed over, a military court could not right-
fully act thereon ; yet very serious doubts
are entertained upon that point, and the
government do not advise that course. It
seriously regrets that such a flagrant of-
fender cannot be dealt with in the manner
he deserves. I see no other course for you
to pursue, than to release him from con-
finement, and send him away from the
army ; and this is recommended. It is
intended to invite the attention of Con-
gress again to this subject, in order to have
provision made for such cases ; but it can-
not be so done as to operate ex 'post facto^
and of course will not embrace the case in
question."

This letter of the Secretary of War
was written after General Scott had left
Washington, and when the Secretary had
before him, a project from General Scott,
dated October 8th, in which the views em-
bodied in his martial law order, afterwards
issued, were recommended for the action
of the Executive.

Such were the circumstances under
which the order was issued ; but, in the
opinion of General Scott, " the good of
the service, the honor of the United States,
and the interests of humanity," demanded
that the numerous grave offences which
he recapitulated, should not go unpunish-
ed ; and, upon assuming command of the
Army of Mexico, he did not shrink from
the responsibility which his station imposed.
His order was rigidly executed, and vic-
tories were won, but not abused, and the
horrors which usually attend the steps of
undisciplined troops in an enemies' country,
so far meliorated as to challenge the admi-

ration of the civilized world, and of the
conquered people themselves.

We will not dilate upon the skill and
science displayed during the military ope-
rations attending the embarkation and land-
ing of the troops for the investment and
siege of Vera Cruz, but simply remark,
notwithstanding the denunciations of a
political sentimentalist, (Mr. William
Jay,) that if Vera Cruz had been carried
by assault and not by siege, the sufferings
of the Mexicans must have been far great-
er than actually happened, while the Ame-
ricans instead of losing all told but 65 men
in killed and wounded, must have lost hun-
dreds. General Scott's first care in all
his operations was for his own army, but
that his Humanity has never been deaden-
ed by the horrors of war, is evinced by
his whole life, as well as by his mar-
tial law order, his summons to the Go-
vernor of Vera Cruz — his notification in
advance to the foreign Consuls in that city,
and his dispatches to the Secretary of War,
especially that of March 25, in which he
reports '' All the batteries, Nos. 1,2, 3, 4,
and 5, are in awful activity."

If members of peace societies, instead of
attacking those who risk their lives in the
service of their country, would preach a
more enlarged civilization ; if they would
go farther and teach by example and pre-
cept the blessed truths of the Christian re-
ligion, and thus possibly hasten the happy
millenium, where universal equality and
fraternity will no longer be simply an as-
piration, but a reality, there would then be
no more wars or rumors of wars. But until
this consummation has been reached, would
it not be well for such persons to reflect,
living as they do under a Goverment insti-
tuted with the consent of the govemed,
that their first duty is to obey the laws of
their country, and if needs be, hazard their
lives for the conservation of society in its
integrity, instead of preaching disobedience
to law and the lawful commands of their
government. Ought they not to furnish
for the regulation of nations, some more
authoritative exponent of the will of God,
than the crude interpretations of their own
consciences } and also in charity recollect,
that in the present condition of the world,
the destruction of all society must necessa-
rily follow the establishment of the doctrine
that the conscience of every man is to be

288

General Wlnjield Scott.

Sept.

considered his true and only exponent of
the will of God.

The incidents and reflections which
crowd upon us, connected with the cam-
paign which followed the capitulation of
Vera Cruz our space will not permit us to
record. We cannot accompany the sub-
ject of our sketch through the battle of
Cerro Gordo, made memorable by an order
of battle written the day before the action
which might have been furnished as the
bulletin of the victory. We cannot linger
over the details of preparation which con-
stitute the most arduous portions of the
duty of the soldier. We cannot follow the
General-in-Chief in his anxiety and disap-
pointments in not being furnished with re-
inforcements and supplies so that he might
at once march upon the Capital of Mexico.
Our space forbids us to dwell upon the re-
flections which occur upon the necessary
discharge of 3000 volunteers in the heart
of the enemies' country, at a time when
they were much needed ; but we must not
omit to say, that on the 29th of May,
when General Scott reached Puebla he
found that he could only muster 5,820
efiective men. This force was evidently
inadequate for farther operations against
the capital, and the army was detained at
Puebla until the 7th of August, awaiting
the arrival of necessary reinforcements.
On the 6th of August, General Pierce,
with 2,600 men, reached Puebla, and on
the 7th, the march against the City of
Mexico was commenced, with an army of
10,700 men.

The mind reverts with pleasure to the
brotherhood which had been generated dur-
ing this period among the soldiers of Vera
Cruz, of Cerro Gordo, and Puebla ; to the
exact discipline which the orders of the
Commanding General, and the able assist-
ance of the commanders of corps had in-
fused, to the good dispositions which this
exact discipline had imparted to the Mexi-
can population, by whom the troops were
surrounded ; to the equal and exact justice
which the military tribunals, instituted by
the Commanding General, had administered
to Mexican and American ; and to the
Heroic feeling which pervaded the small
army about to advance against a capital of
150,000 souls, defended by fortifications,
constructed on the most approved scientific
principles, and manned by an army of
32,000 Mexicans, animated by every motive

of religion and patriotism to defend to the
last extremity, their homes, and as they
also believed their nationality.

The obstacles before this small army
were not concealed from them, nor were
the difficulties exaggerated. They knew
that they were marching against a great
capital — defended as has been described ;
they knew that their line of communication
with Vera Cruz, itself more than a thou-
sand miles from their homes, had been ne-
cessarily left unguarded from the want of
sufiicient troops; they knew that in the event
of defeat, every mountain-pass in their rear
would be occupied by the enemy, and re-
treat effectually cut off' ; they knew that
their Government had not supported them
with either money or proper reinforce-
ments ; but they also knew that they had
a Duty to perform. They knew that no
hope existed for the conquest of a peace,
unless it could be dictated under the walls
of Mexico, or by the occupation of that
capital, and such was the mission that they
meant to execute, or die in the attempt.
This heroic feeling animated officers and
soldiers alike, and leaving behind them at
Puebla nothing but an humble petition to
Congress, to care for their wives and chil-
dren, the march was commenced, August
7th, 1847.

The army advanced in four divisions,
each division taking up its line of march
after a few days' interval. The Com-
manding-General with a squadron of horse,
being, as occasion required, with the dif-
ferent divisions of the army. The enthu-
siastic huzzas with which his presence or
approach was greeted by every corps was
a sure harbinger of that success which
was about to crown the operations of
the army, and must have been doubly
grateful as also evincing the confidence
and affection of his troops. We can-
not follow the army in the brilliant op-
erations in the basin of Mexico, but the re-
sults are thus summed up by General
Scott in his report. " At Conteras, Chu-
rubusco, &c., (August 20,) we had but
8,497 men engaged — after deducting the
garrison of San Augustin (our general
depot) the intermediate sick and dead ; — at
Molinos delRey(Sep. 8) but three brigades,
with some cavalry and artillery; — making in
all 3,251 men — were in the battle ; — in the
two days — September 12 and 13 — our
whole operating force, after deducting,

1850.

General Winficld Scott.

289

again, the recent killed, wounded and sick,
together with the garrison of Miscoague
(the then general depot) and that of Ta-
cubaya, was but 7,180 ; and, finally, after
deducting the new garrison of Cbapul-
tipec, with the killed and wounded of
the two days, we took possession (Sep-
tember 14,) of this great capital with
less than 6,000 men ! And I re-assert,
upon accumulated and unquestionable evi-
dence, that, in not one of those conflicts was
this army opposed by fewer than three and
a half times its numbers — in several of
them — by a yet greater excess.

I recapitulate our losses since we arriv-
ed in the basin of Mexico : —

August 19, 20. Killed 137, including
14 officers ; wounded 877, includiug 62
officers ; missing, probably killed, 38 rank
and file — total, 1,052.

September 8. Killed 116, including 9
officers ; wounded 665, including 49 offi-
cers ; missing 18, rank and file — total 799.
September 12, 13, 14. Killed 130,
including 10 officers ; wounded 703, in-
cluding 68 officers ; missing, 29 rank and
file— total, 862.

Grand total losses 2,713, including 212
officers.

On the other hand this small force has
beaten, on the same occasions — in view of
their capital — the whole Mexican army, of
(at the beginning) thirty odd thousand
men — posted, always, in chosen positions —
behind entrenchments, or more formidable
defences of nature and art ; — killed or
wounded of that number, more than 7,000
officers and men ; — taken 3,730 prisoners,
one-seventh officers, including thirteen
generals, of whom three had been Presi-
dents of this Republic ; captured more
than twenty colors and standards, seventy-
five pieces of orduance, besides fifty-seven
wall pieces, 20,000 small arms, an immense
quantity of shots, shells, powder, &c.

Of that army, once so formidable in num-
bers, appointments, artillery, &c., twenty
odd thousand have disbanded themselves in
despair — leaving, as is known, not more
than three fragments — the largest about
2,500 — now wandering in different direc-
tions, without magazines or a military chest,
and living at free quarters upon their own
people."

This blow was followed up by General
Scott in devising and commencing the exe-

VOL. VI. NO. H. NEW SERIES.

cution of a wise system for the collection of
revenue and the government of the con-
quered country, which would itself make
an interesting chapter in the history of the
Mexican war. But we hasten to the end.
The Mexicans were now without resources.
A treaty was soon negotiated by our Com-
missioner Mr. Trist. It was ratified by the
Senate with but slight alterations, and is
now the existing treaty of amity and limits
with Mexico.

But General Scott had now succeeded,
in conquering a peace. What was his re-
ward .? In the very Capital to which he
had been borne by his victorious troops, he
was " stricken from his high command" by
the fiat of the Administration, and ordered
to appear in the presence of Mexicans as
an accused person, before a court designa-
ted by that authority which had shown "a
set purpose" to crush him, since the com-
mencement of the war. And what was the
shallow pretext which the Administration
offered to extenuate this course of conduct.?
Strip it of its verbiage — it was this and
nothing more. The Administration had
issued an order denouncing the publication
of private reports of military operations, as
tending, necessarily, from their ex-parte
nature, to do injustice to the great body of
officers, who did not endeavor to gain repu-
tation at the expense of their brother offi-
cers by such means. This order of the
Administration General Scott undertook to
enforce, but instead of being sustained by
the authority which issued it, he was de-
prived of his command, on the pretext that
quarrels existed in the army. The pre-
sentation of charges for the enf rcement of
discipline was stigmatized as quarrels, and
General Scott, a victor in many battles, the
successful executor of a plan of operations
resulting in the conquest of a peace, came
to his home sufferino; from disease, con-
tracted in the line of his duty, and accused
by the Executive Administration.

The nomination of General Taylor for
the Presidency, which soon after followed,
relieved General Scott from further active
persecution by Mr. Polk's Administration,
and he has, until called to Washington by
President Fillmore, been residing quietly
in New York, with but little connection
with public functionaries, but as ever deeply
interested in the perpetuity of the Union, and
the honor and glory of the American name.
19

290

Thomas Jefferson,

Sept.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

(Continued.)

Among all the men of the Reyolution-
ary era, Jeiferson is solitary and alone in
the propagation of the pernicious doctrine
of armed resistance to constituted authori-
ties. They are doctrines, however, not
greatly to be wondered at in a disciple of
Jacobinism, who thought that a rebellion,
once in every twenty years, was a political
blessing, and treated such as nothing more
than a natural exuberance of patriotism, a
rekindling of the smouldering fires of lib-
erty. But the evil influence of such teach-
ings, in connexion with one yet so revered
as the father of progressive democracy, is
felt and seen to this day. It was exhibited
clearly in the conduct of one^ who, in long
after years, was folded in the mantle of
Jefferson, and almost adored as his repre-
sentative and worthy successor. The known
contempt of the great Apostle of democracy
for the dignity of constituted authorities,
and especially for that of judicial tribunals,
•was a carte blanche to all the vandalic ex-
cesses and frantic political conduct, which,
in many distinguished instances, have since
"been practised by his partizans. Andrew
Jackson had need to appeal to no higher
authority than the opinion of Jefferson,
when, with the boldness of a Cromwell, at
the head of a devoted soldiery, he impri-
soned a judge in the midst of a great city,
for daring to sustain the right of Habeas
Corpus. And again, in 1834, when, as
the sceptred dictator of the White House,
he sent his famous Protest Message to the
Senate, claiming that he was the direct re-
presentative of the American People^ and
imposing silence on Congress as regards
the acts of the Executive, he had found
enough, in the teachings of Jefferson, to
sanction his haughty usurpations. By these
teachings the Constitution had been reduced

to a mere charter of expediency^ to be set
aside in certain emergencies^ and of this
expediency and these emergencies the Pre-
sident was to be the sole judge. And here
we may pause to say, that the great consti-
tutional speech of Daniel Webster in an-
swer to this Protest, and in crushing refu-
tation of these nefarious pretensions, should
be stereotyped on tables of gold, and bla-
zoned in lasting characters on the official
record-book of the Republic.

The power and political influence of the
federal party terminated, along with the
federal administrations, in March, 1801.
It has never since been resuscitated. But
the truth of history must extort the admis-
sion, that federal men originated, framed,
and carried into successful practice, the
Constitution of 1789, the first genuine re-
publican experiment ever ventured. But
this is not all. The period during which
the federalists held the ascendency in the
administration of the national government,
was one of no ordinary trial. The system
itself was a novelty, founded in the midst
of dissentient opinions, and established in
the face of powerful opposition. Its parts
were to be adjusted and arranged, its pro-
per attributes and limits settled and defin-
ed, the relations of the individual members
with the whole to be harmonized, and the
great and complicated machine to be set in
motion. Besides the necessity of thus cre-
ating from a mass of disorganized materials
the framework of society itself; of devising
a system of finance by which, from a fa-
mily of states hitherto unused to any gene-
ral and common system, revenues should
be raised, bearing equally upon all, and ca-
pable of meeting debts of extraordinary
magnitude for a people whose numbers
were limited, whose resources had not been

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

291

developed, and who were already exhausted
by a long and expensive war ; of adopting
plans of State policy under novel circum-
stances and relations, expansive as the
growth of the nation, and to be permanent
as its existence ; of embodying laws ; of re-
building commerce from its wrecks, and
calling forth arts and manufactures where
they had been unknown ; besides all these,
there were still other obstacles in their path.
Almost coeval with the birth of the Amer-
ican government, commenced a series of
wars which, in extent, magnitude, objects,
and in impressions on the political world,
were the most gigantic in the history of
bloodshed. Institutions, hoary with age
and venerable from their sanctity ; empires
which had seemed as permanent as the ex-
istence of man ; despotisms, whose iron
grasp had for centuries stifled the very
breathings of liberty ; laws, and usages
stronger than laws, which, for good or evil,
had moulded men after their own fashion ;
priestcrafts and castes, obeyed by prescrip-
tion, were at once swept away before the
whirlwind of revolution. The effects of
this convulsion had not been confined to the
shores of Europe or the East. They had
extended to America, also. Here, mean-
while, the same opposition which had ex-
erted itself ao-ainst the formation of a sfov-
ernment, was contmued agamst its opera-
tion. It was with mutiny in the crew that
the federalists had to steer the ship of state
through the dangers of an unexplored ocean,
in this the most tremendous storm which
ever devastated the civilized world. Eveiy
measure which might tend to a develop-
ment of the power of the general govern-
ment, was resisted. Every embarrassment
was thrown in the way of its action. The
impatience which naturally arises from new
burdens, was taken advantage of, though
their object was to pay the price of freedom
itself. Sedition was stirred up to resist
them. Falsehood and misrepresentation
were employed ; distrust excited against
tried and firm patriots. And yet, through
all these shoals and quicksands the two fe-
deral administrations had been fortunate
enough to keep their course harmlessly,
and the government was sustained in all its
original purity. The Constitution remain-
ed intact and unmutilated in a single fea-
ture No emergency had been so pressing,
even through storms of insurrection and

the most difficult diplomatic negotiations, to
create, in the opinion of Washington or of
Adams, any necessity to overstep the pre-
scribed limits of the law. It remained for
the democrats, under the advice of their
anti-federal leader, to find out that occa-
sions might arise to justify the President in
acting independent of the Constitution , as we
shall soon see. Indeed, it is a fact in the
history of the democratic party, no less
true than remarkable, that, notwithstanding
they have ever claimed to be, far excel-
lence^ the party of strict construction, it
has so happened that every one of the four
Presidents who have been elected from their
ranks, (Van Buren, perhaps, excepted,)
have violated leading features of the Con-
stitution, and grasped powers which can
belong only to despots. This charge has
never been made against either the two fe-
deral, the two whio- administrations of Ma-
dison and John Quincy Adams, or the no-
party administrations of Monroe and Tyler,
if we except the alien and sedition laws of
1798. It may be remarked, however, that
these laws, if unconstitutional and odious,
must be laid at the door of the Congress
which passed, as well as of the President
who approved them. The Executive as-
sumed nothing. It only put in execution
a law of the people's representatives. But
the history of republics does not furnish
three bolder innovators on written consti-
tutions, than Jefferson, Jackson, and James
K. Polk.

The great achievement of Jefferson's
first four years of dominion was the pur-
chase of Louisiana. This transaction is
connected with many incidents of singular
political history, to which, as illustrative
of public feeling and opinion at that period,
it may not be inappropriate or unseason-
able to advert. When Jefferson ascended
the Presidental steps, he was regarded
with strongly contrasted feelings by the two
great parties of the country. By his own,
he was represented as the advocate of re-
ligious freedom, and of the rights of man ;
the great apostle of liberty ; the friend of
our revolutionary ally, France ; the foe of
British influence ; a reformer, philosopher,
sage, and genuine republican. The feder-
alists looked on him in a far different
light. They charged him with being a re-
volutionist and Jacobin ; with being blind-
ly devoted to France, and perversely op-

292

Thomas Jefferson.

Sept.

posed to England ; with being hostile to
the Constitution, and the promoter of
partyism ; with being a free-thinker in
politics and religion, whose learning was
used to pervert, rather than to uphold the
landmarks of virtue and liberty. They
argued that his messages and his writings
prove him to have bad in view, through his
entire political and administrative career,
only three great purposes, and that his
whole efforts and influence were directed to
their accomplishment. These were, say
they, the aggrandizement of France, the
humiliation of England, and the demolition
of federalists as a party, and the expatria-
tion of all who held that faith. There can
be very little doubt that Jefferson was
liable to all three of these charges. But
it is not for us rashly to say that the ag-
grandizement of France, or the humiliation
of Enfyland, were the sole objects of his
foreign policy, or that the annihilation of
federalism was his chief object at home.
The purchase of Louisiana, or rather the
circumstances attending that purchase,
have been cited as evidence of the first
proposition, and, collaterally, of the
second. The same may be said, reversely,
of the embargo and non-intercourse laws.
It is with the first of these that we have
now to do, and the facts premised will en-
able the reader to understand more clear-
ly, and to apply as he may deem proper,
the historical incidents belonging to that
transaction. But we must here remark,
that the purchase of that territory was the
Jirst of those violent shocks which the Con-
stitution has since repeatedly sustained
under democratic administrations. The
blows have been sedulously followed up
since, and all the agitation which ever dis-
tracted the country, or seriously threatened
its peace, has grown out of this democra-
tic principle and practice of territorial ag-
grandizement. Louisiana, Texas, Califor-
nia and New Mexico have come to us, for
weal or for woe, through democratic agen-
cy, and as on them must rest the respon-
sibility and consequences of their annexa-
tion, so, likewise, let them have the credit
for what benefits have ensued or may yet
ensue. But the Constitution is not healed,
its infractions are not extenuated by point-
ino" out and pleading the benefits commer-
cially and politically, that have followed
from Ihe purchase of Louisiana. The

wound has been inflicted, and the gap fair-
ly and widely opened for future aggressions
of a similar character. The sanctity of the
instrument has been repeatedly and rough-
ly violated, and no one is able to tell or to
foresee where the mischief will end, or
how far the precedent may be abused by
subsequent acts. History too truly teaches
that the illegal or unconstitutional exercise
of power in the best of times, for the real
benefit of the people and with their silent
acquiescence, has hardly ever failed to be
resorted to, as a precedent, in the worst of
times and often for the worst party or sel-
fish purposes. Recent political events,
under the administration of President Polk,
afford, to our own eyes, a most striking con-
firmation of the truth of the lesson.

The years 1762-63 were marked by
fierce struggles on the American conti-
nent between England, France, and Spain.
During the first year France ceded to
Spain the island of JVew Orleans and all
her possessions west of the Mississippi river,
and the name of Louisiana was thus lim-
ited to that part of the valley. After the
close of the revolutionary war, in settlino:
the boundaries of the United States, some
contentions arose between our own and the
Spanish government, especially as regarded
the free navigation of the Mississippi. —
These differences were not adjusted until
1795, when, during the administration of
Washington, his Catholic Majesty agreed
by the treaty of San Lorenzo, that " the
citizens of the United States shall bo
permitted, for the space of three years
from this time, the navigation of the Mis-
sissippi, with a right to deposit their mer-
chandise and effects in the port of New
Orleans." From several causes, however,
this treaty was not fulfilled until 1798,
and, most probably, but for a change of
administration here, a war between Spain
and the United States would have been the
consequence. In 1796 Spain and the
French Republic formed an alliance, of-
fensive and defensive; and at that time
France began a series of negotiations with
a view to the recovery of her ancient pro-
vince of Louisiana. This was not effected
till 1800, under the consulate of Napoleon,
when, by the treaty of St. Ildefonso,
Spain retroceded to France the colony of
Louisiana, with the boundaries it had
when given up to Spain in 1763. Spain,

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

293

however, still continued to exercise, nomi-
nally at least, the powers of government in
the country, and in 1802 the Jntendant
of the province gave notice that Amer-
ican citizens would no longer be permitted
to deposit their goods at New Orleans, and
this too, without assigning, as by the terms
of the treaty of San Lorenzo, " any equi-
valent establishment at any other place on
the river." This extraordinary violation
of national faith was followed up by acts
of the most offensive nature. The Span-
iards captured and carried into their ports
numbers of American vessels, destroyed
or confiscated American property, and
imprisoned the American Consul. This
conduct, very justly, excited the most
wide-spread indignation among our west-
ern citizens, and many threatened to march
down the country, and take forcible pos-
session of New Orleans. These outrages
occurred long anterior to the assembly of
Congress, in December 1802, and yet,
strange to say, the executive message was
entirely silent on the subject. In January,
1803, the house promptly called for infor-
mation concernino: so delicate a matter, and
this brought the fact of treaty violation on
the part of Spain officially to light. A
message was debated with closed doors,
which, as Jefferson must certainly have
known of the outrages before the session
began, leaves us to deduce questionable
and unfavorable opinions of his conduct.
It certainly was strange and unaccountable,
indicative of but little spirit, and shrouded
with a politic caution and forbearance that
would have done honor to Louis the
Eleventh.

When redress for these wrons;s and a
compliance with treaty stipulations were
demanded of Spain, the American minister
was informed that Louisiana had been
ceded to France. Jefferson then asked for
two million of dollars, and set on foot a
negotiation for the purchase of '* New
Orleans and the provinces of East and
West Florida." Mr. Monroe and Mr.
Livingston were joined in the mission, and
Bet out immediately for Paris.

About the time of the arrival of the Amer-
ican Envoys, Great Britain began to ma-
nifest symptoms of alarm at the ambitious
projects and growing power of Napoleon,
and particularly in his acquisition of Lou-
isiana, and her contemplated possession of

that extensive country with a large army.
With this view the fleet and troops under
General Victor, destined for that country,
were kept so long blockaded that they were
finally disembarked, and turned to a diffe-
rent service. The inventive genius of Na-
poleon suggested an immediate remedy.
He found that it would be impossible for
him to occupy Louisiana, and he therefore
resolved to exchange it for money, which
France needed far more than she needed
transatlantic territory. The fitful peace of
Amiens was drawing to its close, and the
bad faith of England was about to plunge
Europe into a war that laid low all the Con-
tinent, that crippled her own power and
nearly exhausted her means and her credit,
and that carried death and devastation in
its track through a long series of well nigh
fifteen years. So soon as the French Em-
peror had resolved on his course, he con-
voked his council, and announced to them
the approaching rupture. This was early
in March, and Mr. Monroe had not then
joined Mr. Livingston our Minister resi-
dent in France. The designs of the Em-
peror are unfolded by the characteristic
speech made to his confidential advisers,
and seem strikingly to comport with the
subsequent testimony of John Randolph,
" that France wanted money .^ and must
have it.'''' " I will not," said Napoleon,
" keep a possession which would not be safe
i.i our hands, which would perhaps embroil
me with the Americans, or produce a cold-
ness between us. I will make use of it, on
the contrary, to attach them to me, to em-
broil them with the English, and to raise
up against the latter, enemies who will one
day avenge us, if we should not succeed iu
avenging ourselves. My resolution is ta-
ken ; I will give Louisiana to the United
States. But as they have no territory to
cede to us in exchange, I will demand a
sum of money towards defraying the expen-
ses of the extraordinary armament which
I am projecting against England." This
declaration was made in March, only a few
days after the memorable scene with Lord
Whitworth, the English Ambassador to
France. With his usual impetuosity, the
First Consul sent Marbois directly to Mr,
Livingston with instructions to open nego-
tiations, forthwith, concerning the purchase.
Accordingly, when Mr. Monroe arrived in
Paris, he found the business to his hands,

294

Thomas Jefferson.

Sept.

and tLat, instead of the island of New Or-
leans and the small territory of East and
West Florida^ alone, Napoleon was offering
to cede the whole extensive territory west
of the Mississippi. This was a most start-
ling proposition. The American negotia-
tors were confined by certain minute in-
structions, and limited as to the amount to
be expended. But Napoleon, bent on war
and eager for the strife, urged them to a
speedy conclusion of preliminaries ; and on
the 30th of April the bargain was struck,
and for a consideration of fifteen millions of
dollars Louisiana was transferred from the
dominion of France to that of the United
States. Early in May the peace of Ami-
ens was terminated, and Napoleon, having
thus supplied his chests, opened the scene
of those bloody wars which shook Europe
to its deepest foundations, blasted the com-
mercial prosperity of the world, and ended
with the total humiliation and subjection
of France, while his own life was wasted
away on the friendless shores of St. Helena.
The acquisition of this territory was a
perilous and most extraordinary assumption
of undelegated power by one who claimed
to be a model democrat and a strict con-
structionist. It was seriously condemned,
on principle^ by all the opponents of the
administration, among whom John Ran-
dolph of Roanoke, already dissatisfied with
the Jeffersonian policy, now took the most
prominent position. The main grounds of
their opposition were, that the French title
was contingent only, that the undefined
boundaries would furnish a cause of future
contentions, that a fraudulent title had been
obtained from Spain through the Godoy
ministry which might subsequently be disa-
vowed and repudiated ; that Louisiana was
not then in the actual possession of France
but of Spain, which latter objected to the
arrangement, and that the increase of Ex-
ecutive patronage consequent on so vast an
acquisition would render the President al-
most a despot. But there were higher
grounds of opposition than these, and they
are grounds which still exist in principle,
and are impregnable to argument. These
grounds are founded in the Constitution of
the United States. When the treaty was
submitted to the House of Representatives
for the purpose of having it carried into
effect, the question as to the constitution-
ality of that part of it which stipulated for

the admission of the country into the Union,
was made and warmly debated. It was
conceded that foreign territory might be
acquired either by conquest or by purchase,
and then retained as a colony or province ;
but could not be admitted as a State with-
out an amendment of the Constitution. It
was argued that the government of this
country was formed by a union of States^
and the people had declared in the pream-
ble that the Constitution was estalDlished
"to form a more perfect union'''' of the
" United States." The United States here
mentioned could not be mistaken. They
were the States then in existence, or such
other new States as should be formed with-
in the limits of the Union, conformable to
the provision of the Constitution. Every
measure, therefore, contended the opposi-
tion, which tends to infringe the present
Union of the States here described, was a
clear violation of the very first sentiment
expressed in the Constitution. The incor-
poration of a foreign territory into the
Union, so far from tending to preserve the
Union, was a direct inroad upon it ; be-
cause it destroyed the "perfect union" con-
templated betwixt the original parties by
interposing an alien and a stranger to share
the powers of government alike with them.
Pressed by arguments of this kind and
by the opinions of Jefferson himself, those
who advocated the treaty, took medium
grounds, contending that the treaty merely
stijpulated that the inhabitants of the ceded
territory should be hereafter admitted into
the Union, according to the principles of
the Constitution ; that by taking possession
of the territory it did not necessarily follow
that it must be admitted into the Union ;
that this would be an after question ; that
the territory would not be admitted into
the Union unless warranted by the princi-
ples of the Constitution. But they were
met by the answer that there was no diffe-
rence, in principle, between a direct incor-
poration, and a stipulation that such incor-
poration should take place ; because, as the
national faith was pledged in the latter case,
the incorporation must take place ; that it
was of no consequence whether the treaty
itself gave such incorporation, or produced
the laws which gave it ; and that the ques-
tion still returned whether there exists, un-
der the Constitution, a power to incorpo-
rate a foreign nation or people into the

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

295

Union either by a treaty or by law. Lat-
ter experience, we may here remark, en
passant, has afforded the ground of propo-
sing as a further query, whether such can
be done by a mere joint resolution of the
Senate and House of Representatives, in-
dependent of the treaty power under the
Constitution, and in utter disregard of the
two-thirds rule ! And yet this was done by
the same legitimately descended radical
democracy in the case of Texas, which, in
our humble opinion, has about as much
Constitutional connection with this Union
as Cuba or Liberia.

But it is no less singular than true that
Jefferson himself confessed, to the fullest
extent to the un-constitutionality of such
acquisition of territory, or of its admission
into the Union as a State. He admits that
the Constitution wUl bear no such latitudi-
nous construction, yet recommends the
adoption of the treaty, and afterwards, the
incorporation of Louisiana into the Union.
The volumes before us contain divers let-
ters illustrative of this inconsistency between
theory and practice, and explanatory of so
strange an anomaly. He addresses Lin-
coln, and Breckenridge, and Nicholas par-
ticularly, arguing most conclusively against
the constitutionality of the very act he had
recommended and which he resolved to'
sanction as President. In one place he
puts the question in its strongest light by
saying, " I do not believe it was meant
that we might receive England, Ireland,
Holland, &c., which would be the case
on your (viz : the Attorney General's) con-
struction.'' If not these, it might be
asked, how will we admit Louisiana ; or,
if Louisiana, why not England, Ireland,
and Holland? It is evident that if the
clause of the Constitution can be construed
so as to admit one, the same rule of con-
struction will cover the admission of all,
or, vice versa^ if one be excluded by the
Constitution, all are excluded. That pos-
terity to which Jefferson is so fond of ap-
pealing, and which has witnessed each
successive onslaught and partizan foray on
the Constitution which have grown out of,
and been justified to the people, from this
precedent and this conduct of the great
democratic Apostle, must judge also how
far the first comports with the clause of the
Constitution specifying that new States
" may be admitted hy Congress^'' and

another clause binding the President on
oath to protect and defend the Constitu-
tion of the United States." We have
only to remark that if Congress be the
power to admit new States, it is clear that
such States can be formed only out of ter-
ritory belonging to the United States at
the time the power was given, for, by the
same Constitution, the Congress cannot, in
any manner, approach a foreign govern-
ment. This is a prerogative of the Pre-
sident and Senate. As respects the
inconsistency of Jefferson's conduct with
his opinions, and then these with respect to
the form of obligation prescribed to be taken
by the President on his accession to that
office, candor demands nothing short of
severe censure. The Constitution is not to
be made subordinate to expediency^ and an
upright officer must respect his oath, if
we would desire to steer our political
course in harmony and safety. If the
Rubicon is passed, Rome must lie at the
mercy of the dictator. She will have
nothing to shield her from indignity, for
that is the sacred boundary. Neither
will fancied or prospective benefits justify
a departure from the plain letter of the
Constitution, or from the stringency of
official obligation. Every President might
constitute himself a judge, and frame, in
this manner, a pretext for any conquest or
any expenditure of the public money. As
illustrative of this we might point to the
successive innovations which have followed
the acquisition of Louisiana. The Flori-
das, Texas, California, and New Mexico
were all the natural fruits of this first
spurious blossom. The late President,
fortified by illustrious examples and pre-
cedents, pursued an unscrupulous course
of conquest with scarcely a decent pretext,
expending millions of money, and destroy-
ing thousands of men, and in defiance of
the inevitable consequences of civil discord
and sectional agitations, Since 1803 the
country has scarcely been five years in
repose. It has been torn and distracted
by ill-boding dissensions. The tone of
public sentiment has been infected. —
It has been poisoned with the thirst
for some species of political excitement.
At the North, the Canadas afford fruit-
ful sources for indulgence in this vi-
cious propensity. At the South, since
Texas has been annexed and since Mexico

296

Thomas Jefferson.

Sept.

has been subdued and pillaged, Cuba has
become the centre of this dangerous attrac-
tion, and sooner or later must share the
fate of the two former. The public
taste of both sections seeks gratification
only in this species of furor. We are con-
strained to say that all this is justly charge-
able to the example of Jefferson, and
whether it bring weal or woe his fame must
answer to that posterity to_ which he ap-
peals.

The gi'eat mass of the people, however,
were agreed as to the importance of this
acquisition of Louisiana, and all must ac-
knowledge that, batiDgthe wounds inflicted
on the Constitution, its purchase has re-
sulted in incalcdable benefits to the United
States, thus Jefferson was so fortunate as
to find, that an act which might have called
for impeachment under some circumstances,
has been regarded as the most meritorious
of his public career. So much, we per-
ceive, is the world governed in its public
conduct, by considerations, rather of inter-
est and policy, than of conformity to estab-
lished rules of law.

But it is not to be disguised that in his
haste either to accommodate France, or to
avoid a collision with Spain, Jefferson suf-
fered the purchase to be, in some sense,
unwisely concluded. In the first place,
the sum of fifteen millions was probably
thrice as much as needed to have been
given, because TSapoleon knew, at the time
of the purchase, that on the renewal of
war in Europe the whole country of Louis-
iana would be taken possession of by the
British, and consequently be lost both to
France and to Spain. In the next place,
the treaty was glaringly imperfect from
the fact that no definable or tangible boun-
daries had been fixed or ao-reed on as
respected the territory transferred. Con-
sequently, Spain being exasperated any
way, a state of hostility betwixt her own and
the cabinet at Washington soon sprung up in
relation to the legitimate boundaries of Louis-
iana. The United States claimed to the river
Per dido east of the Mississippi and to the
Rio Bravo on the west. But the negotia-
tions under this mission entirely failed.
The Spanish court not only denied the
right of the United States to any portion
of territory east of the INIississippi ; but, in
the most peremptory manner, declared
their claim to the Rio Bravo to be totally

unfounded. A long and angry correspond-
ence took place between the Spanish ne-
gotiator, Lon Pedro Cevallos, then Sec-
retary of Foreign Affairs, and the Ameri-
can Ministers. In the negotiations with
France respecting the purchase of Louisi-
ana, Mr. Monroe and Mr. Livingston had
been given to understand that the terri-
tory extended as far east as the Perdido,
and that the town of jNIobile would fall
within the limits of the cession. And we
may also here observe that at the same
time Bonaparte had given verbal assurance
that should the United States desire to
purchase the Floridas, his aid towards ef-
fecting that object would be readily afford-
ed at some future suitable time. In con-
sequence of this intimation, Mr. Monroe
while at Paris, in 1804, made known the
object of his mission in a note to Talley-
rand, and requested aid of Bonaparte
agreeable to his former assurances. But, in
the meantime, a change had come over
the spirit of the French Emperor's policy.
The means acquired in 1803 by the sale
of Louisiana had been totally exhausted by
his subsequent wars, and he was now again
pressingly in need of money. He there-
fore made a convenience of short memory,
and not only professed total forgetfulness
of all such assurances, but gave unmis-
takeable signs of a favorable disposition to-
wards Spain. This, however, was one of
those artful demonstrations, or feints, so
often and so consummately practised by
Xapoleon, in the accomplishment of his
ambitious designs, Spain was indebted
to France. France was in need of money,
and Spain had no money with which to
pay her debts. He therefore once again
resolved to make the United States sub-
sidiary towards raising means for the pro-
secution of his European conquest. With
this view, during the negotiation between
Spain and the United States respecting the
boundaries of Louisiana, a certain paper
in the handwriting of Talleyrand, but not
signed by him, was put into the hands of
the American Minister at Paris. It re-
quired but little acquaintance with French
diplomacy to gather a full clue to the de-
signs of the Emperor from this paper. It
set forth that the present was a favorable
time for the United States to p2irc7iase
the Floridas of Spain ; that the same could
probably be obtamed ; and that Napoleon

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

297

would assist tlie United States by using his
influence with Spain to induce her to part
with them. It was also suggested, in the
same indirect way, that in order to insure
a favorable result, the United States must
assume a hostile attitude towards Spain,
and put on the appearance of enforcing
their claims. These singular and indirect
communications, were, of course, made
known to the American President ; and
Jefferson, with unaccountable deference to
such questionable advice, embodied the
same in his message to Congress. After
going through with a concise preliminary
statement of the matter in dispute, and
with divers hints as regarded the probable
dispositions of France in case of hostilities
with Spain, he adopts almost the precise
language of the anonymous paper when he
says, '■' Formal war is not necessary, and
will not probably follow ; but the protec-
tion of our citizens, the spirit and honor of
our country require that force should be
interposed to a certain degree. It will
probably contribute to advance the object
of peace. But the course to be pursued
will require the command of means^ which
it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield
or deny." It will be perceived that this
message covers every design, and answers
the whole purposes of Napoleon. His ad-
vice was scrupulously followed, though
given quite exception ably ; hostilities were
threatened and Spain was bullied. The
" means'^'' were what the Emperor wanted,
and he resolved to coax and dally with the
United States, and to intimidate Spain, that
the first might furnish to the last money
enough to extinguish her indebtedness to
France, and thus enable him to prosecute
his series of conquests.

In consequence of this message Congress
voted two millions of dollars that Jefferson
might purchase the Floridas. But the ap-
propriation was not made in quiet. It met
with the most resolute opposition. John
Randolph openly denounced it as subservi-
ency on the part of Jefferson to the Emperor
of France, and then made public, for the
first time, that, on his arrival at Washing-
ton, the Secretary of State had told him,
*' that France wanted money ^ and that we
must give it to her^ or have a Spanish
and French warP Randolph was the
Chairman of the Committee to whom
this message was referred. He opposed

the two million appropriation on several
grounds, all, as we think, equally cogent
and reasonable. The money had not been
explicitly asked for in the message ; — that,
after the failure of negotiations based on
right., to purchase the territory would be
disgraceful ; — that France, thus encourag-
ed, would never cease meddlins; with our
affairs, so long as she could extort money
from us; and, that the Floridas, as he
thought, and as France had at first admit-
ted, were regularly ceded to us at the time
of the Louisiana purchase, and, therefore,
France was bound to make good her word
and our title. But opposition availed noth-
ing. The money was appropriated, and
it is certain that the same never reached
Spain. On the contrary, it is a fact of
history, that it was carried to Paris on
board the United States ship Hornet, and
passed into the coffers of Napoleon. Not
a foot of territory, as the facts of the case
will clearly demonstrate, was acquired by
this appropriation. In fact, it may be
safely inferred that, having stopped it in
Paris on a claim that Spain owed France,
Napoleon used it to subjugate the very
power to whom it was justly due, if due at
all, and to whom it should properly have
been paid.*

Anterior to Jefferson's Presidency, the
Constitution of the United States, admin-
istered by those who aided in its compi-
lation had been found to answer its purpose
without being subjected to violent con-
structions, or rather to flagitious miscon-
structions. It was founded in genuine
republican principles, and one of the greatest
errors of republics was sought to be avoided.

* The treaty of the cession of the Floridas, con-
eluded at Washington 22 February, 1819, between
Spain and the United States, having been ratified on
the one part by the King of" Spain, and by the Presi-
dent of the United States on the other part, possession
was taken of these provinces, according to treaty.
On the 1st of July General Andrew Jackson, who
had been appointed Governor of the provinces of the
Floridas, issued a Proclamation, declaring " that
the government herotofore exercised over the said
provinces, under the authority of Spain, has ceased,
and that of the United States of America is estab-
lished over the same, that the inhabitants thereof
will be incorporated in the union of the United
States, as soon as may be consistent with the prin-
ciples of the federal constitution, and admitted to
the enjoyment of all the privileges, rights, and im-
munities of the citizens of the United States. —
' Holmes' Annals, vol. '^d,pA^^'

298

Thomas Jeffersoni

Sept.

This was territorial acquisitions and ex-
tension. If other than the original limits
of the original Thirteen States had been
contemplated in its provisions for territo-
rial governments, aline added would have
closed the question and settled the point
forever. This was not done, and the
obvious inference is, as Jefferson himself
argued, that no foreign territorial acquisi-
tion was ever anticipated, or provided for
by the framers of the Constitution. The
only clause which the radical and progres-
sive democracy can claim, on which to rest
their policy of territorial extension, is the
clause which declares that Congress may
admit new States. We have even thought
this a strained interpretation, and a bad
argument. All the rules for construing
language with which we are acquainted,
lay down, as the first principle, that a sen-
tence must be interpreted connectedly,
and all its parts brought into a harmonious
whole, if we would seek its true meanino".
We cannot arrive at its meaning by con-
struing only detached portions, or clauses
of a clause. The postulate in this instance
is destroyed by applying the rule to which
we have referred ; for the latter portion
of the clause relied on by the democracy
affords a key by which the first may be
fully understood. '•'' New States may be
admitted by the Congress into this Union ;
but no new State shall be formed or erected
within the jurisdiction of any other State ;
nor any State be formed by the junction
of two or 'inore States or parts of States
without the consent of the Legislatures of
the States concerned, as well as of the
Congress."*

The first part of this sentence, granting
the power, is governed by the latter clauses,
defining the manner in which State3 are
to be formed, if it is governed at all ;
and if it was not intended to be thus
governed, the two parts of the whole
clause should have been disconnected by
something else than a mere semi-colon.
Nor is it reasonable to suppose that the
*' Legislatures" spoken of were foreign
Legislatures ; for this government cannot
prescribe for foreign Legislatures. Imme-
diately succeeding this is the clause giving
to Congress the care and regulation of the

territory" and " other property 5eZo?i^-

* Const. U. S.

ing to the United States ^''^ which con-
cludes by declaring " that nothing in this
Constitution shall be so construed as to
prejudice any claims of the United States,
or of any particular State." This can
refer only to negotiations for territory be-
tween the United States and "particular"
States of " this Union." Neither, of these,
could well have conflicting " claims" to
the " territory or other property," of any
other country than this.

We shall not dwell longer on this branch
of the subject. These are briefly our views
of Constitutional construction. It will be
seen that Jefferson himself had previously
urged the same doctrine, though his con-
duct clearly belied his inculcations, and
this, too, in the face of his ofiicial oath.
An example so pernicious, traced to a per-
son so revered as a Constitutional ex-
pounder by a great and powerful party
who profess to own his principles, cannot
be too severely or too unqualifiedly con-
demned. A life of action, it is true to
some extent at least, must be a life of
compromise, if it is to be useful. A pub-
lic man is often under the necessity of
consenting to measures' which he disap-
proves, lest he should endanger the suc-
cess of other measures which he thinks of
vital importance. But the historiographer
lies under no such necessity, and we feel it
to be a sacred duty to point out the errors
and to condemn the malfeasances of one who
yet exercises a baneful influence on the
mind of the country. Nor do we conceive
that Thomas Jefferson is entitled to the
charity of this rule when adjudging his
public conduct. From 1792 until his
election to the Presidency, he had been
particularly addicted to inveighing against
the slightest Constitutional departures in
others. He had thus well nigh succeeded in
bringing temporary disrepute on certain
measures of Washington's administration,
and had stirred up against that of the
elder xYdams such a storm of popular in-
dignation as was satisfied only with the
overthrow of federalism, and which even
yet exists in connexion with his name and
his party.

This is, as we have remarked, only the
first of those glaring infractions of the Con-
stitution which marked the dawn of the
democratic administrations, and which have
since continued to distinguish the democra-

1850.

Thomas Jefferson,

299

tic successors of the great Apostle. We
have yet before us the task of narrating
others of a similar character, which must,
in the minds of some at least, diminish the
hitherto overshadowing and undisputed
claims of one distinguished by the supe-
rior reverence of his countrymen. This
must be reserved for a future number.

The effects of a change from good gov-
ernment to bad government, says a great
essayist, are not fully felt for some time after
the change takes place. The talents and
virtues which a good Constitution generates
may, for a time, survive that Constitution.
Thus the administration of Thomas Jeffer-
son, notwithstanding its assaults on vital
features of the Constitution and its approx-
imation to the calm of despotism, is gene-
rally regarded as the golden age of genuine
democratic government. Thus, also, do
the reigns of princes who have established
despotisms by means of their personal
popularity, and supposed subserviency to
the popular will, shine in history with a
peculiar brilliancy. During the first years
of tyranny is reaped the harvest sown dur-
ing the last years of liberty. The Augus-
tan age was rich in great minds formed in
the generation of Cicero and Caesar. And
yet, says Macaulay most aptly, the fruits of
the policy of Augustus were reserved for
posterity. So, also, to bring the matter
home, the age of Jefferson, Madison, Mon-
roe, and John Quincy Adams, was rich
in minds formed in the generation of

Washington. The fruits of this reign
of liberty were fully reaped during
the dictatorship of Andrew Jackson. —
In the time of Jefferson, such was the
prestige of his name in connexion with de-
mocracy, the masses of the people could
not be made to understand that liberty and
the Constitution might be seriously en-
dangered by his example. The effects of
this example were effectively checked by
the conservative administrations of Madi-
son, Monroe, and the younger Adams, two
of whom were recognized as prominent
leaders of a great party, which was fast ris-
ing on the ruins of federalism to oppose the
anarchial tendencies of the radical Jeffer-
sonian democracy. But under the iron do-
minion of Andrew Jackson, on whom, as
we have said, the mantle of the great Apos-
tle had fallen, the whirlwind of Jacobinism
rose to its height, and for eight years the
country bowed submissively beneath the
rule of a fierce spirit, whose pernicious im-
pulses were never controlled by considera-
tions of prudence or of consequences. In
our next we shall enter on a period of the
Jefferson administration if not more impor-
tant at least more entertaining in point of
historical incident, and which serves to il-
lustrate, equally with the acts just narra-
ted, the deliterious influences of Jefferson's,
example in politics and in his administra-
tion of the federal government.

J. B. c.
LoNGWOOD, Ml., .Tune, 1850.

300

The Tariff of \MQ.

Sept.

THE TAEIFF OF 1846.^

It is a natural consequence of the pre-
cariousness of human life, that men prefer
a small immediate to a greater prospective
benefit. This tendency is more operative
when such benefit is proposed as the result
of a system of action, and not of one act ;
and thus it occurs, that most men who are
sufficiently awake to their immediate inter-
ests, hold an attachment to a peculiar form
of government as a matter of education
and of habit, rather than of reflective opin-
ion. The direct pressure of evils from a
bad form of government, is nearly the sole
cause of recognition, by the generality, of
the advantages of an organization founded
on correct principles.

Therefore is it, that it becomes peculiarly
incumbent on a people, in the first age
of a state, so to arrange the development
of their resources that a consideration
for their industrial interests, may not, in
the conting-encies of international inter-
course, urge a disregard of the course dic-
tated by the interests of the system of
government which meets their recognition.
It should be their aim to secure complete
Industrial Independence.

The duty is incumbent on the only
representative of Republican Democracy
to develop those resources, which must
maintain for it the power to resist the
attacks to which the principle of its being
will be subjected. Without the wealth
and resources of its manufacturing districts,
what resistance could Great Britain have
made against Napoleon, and without that
resistance, what would have been the con-
dition of Europe at the present time }

Let us not dream of the quiet existence
of Republicanism ; that we may pass our
time from hence and hereafter, like Rasse-
las in the happy valley, entrenched from

harm by natural barriers. In the present
state of humanity, a great truth cannot live
in quiet. We would say " God speed" in
sincerity to all who advocate peace.
Their labors have their use, but there never
will be permanent universal peace till Re-
publicanism is everywhere triumphant.

The French nation are perhaps theo-
retically correct in politics, but they have
yet to vindicate their title to that character
of self-control, wherewith alone Democracy
can flourish. With regard to the Repub-
lics south of us, systems which require
an habitual resort to the point of the
lance and the muzzle of the escopeta, to
regulate their action, too much resemble
Anarchy, to be called Republicanism.

There is then no other than Switzerland,
whose government at this moment per-
forms its functions, (like the Roman Sen-
ate, maintaining a vain show of dignity
before Brennus and his Gauls,) in awe of
Prussian and French military force. Its
councils are helplessly subject to the dip-
lomacy of the Kings of Europe. | It is
not a free Republic.

We alone, of all nations, have given suffi-
cient evidence of a clear national perception
of the principle of self-government. As
our duty to God, it is our duty to human-
ity, to keep this flame perpetually burning,
through the life of that state whose exist-
ence is now so glorious ; that when, here-
after, the mouldening remains of our

t " In fact the proposition (from the French
Government— M. Gaizot— to the British Foreign
office, concerning the affair of the Sonderbund)
amounted in other words to this, that if they re-
fused our mediation, we (the five powers) would
compel them by force of arms to adopt our views.'*
— Lord Palmerston's speech, (June 25} on motion
of " want of confidence !"

* Letters of Hon. Abbott Lawrence to Hon. Wm. C. Rives, of Virginia.
Report of the Secretary of the Treasury. 1850.

1846.

1850,

The Tarif of 184:6.

301

Capitols shall have been rounded by the
hand of time to the shape of those western
mounds, whose lengthened shadows, trailed
on the prairies by the setting sun, remind
the traveller of the fading away of the glory
of a people, all the nations of the earth,
here and in other lands, living under a Re-
publicanism broad as the sunlight, shall
ascribe their free condition to us and to our
example.

We have now to consider a practical
means to this end, offered to us^ in
three letters from a citizen of the United
States, now beyond the voice of parties and
the bounds of party lines, and representing
the whole country and all parties, at the
court of the first monarchy of Europe. —
These letters are written to a citizen of
another State, (now our minister to the
French Republic ;) a State, in that part of
the Union whose labor, being almost en-
tirely agricultural, is depreciated in value
by the competition of the new regions
opened to the hand of man, in the progress
westward of the tide of our population.

The coming discussion in Congress, in
regard to the principles advocated in
these letters, causes them to be brought
again prominently before the public eye ;
and now we seek to repeat the warnings
against the Tariff of 1846, in the light of
those results predicted four years ago, as
contingencies ; which, those warnings hav-
ing been then unheeded, now stare us
plainly in the face. The letters contain
practical suggestions for the full attain-
ment of National Industrial Independence.

Among the causes mentioned by Wash-
ington * as likely to " disturb the Union,''
the first in his enumeration, as well as in its
natural importance, was, the " endeavour to
excite a belief, that there is a real differ-
ence of local interests and views ;" — and
there can be no purer or more worthy gift
laid upon the altar of our Country and
its Union, than an exposition of the
exact relations of the interests of its differ-
ent sections, and a full formed and plainly
drawn plan for the more intimate connec-
tion of the people of the United States, of
the South, the North and the West.

But it is not in the industrial develop-
ment which ranks the different sections as
producer and consumer, that we find the

* Farewell Address.

only bond of Union, The idem velle
atque idem nolle cannot exist between the
seller and the buyer as such, in cases where
the origin of supply may vary, and the
locality of demand may change.

The relations of producer and consumer
are no permanent bond of political union.
If a tree trunk of equal value from the
shores of the Baltic can be obtained at less
cost, the ship builder on the Mersey asks
the repeal of the timber duties and leaves
his Canadian brother to tell his regrets to
the trees of his neglected forests.

Let us not sentimentalize in legislation.
The components of cost are the cost of
production and of transportation to a mar-
ket ; but this latter forms no element of
price unless demand is greater than supply.
Each one will naturally buy where he can
buy cheapest. Protection asks that the
interests not of to day only but of here-
after be considered.

The constant tendency of industry is to
diminish the cost of transportation ; for the
industry of any nation is first agricultural,
then manufacturing. One great ground
on which we urge protection is that by it
each State of our Union may perfect
within itself, as far as its natural advantages
will permit, the regular adjustment of its
industry. We desire that each State may
be, as far as maybe, within itself a nation.
We look with confidence to '' the pressure
from without," tothe unity within, of a na-
tional character unique in its elements, and
to the bonds of a common attachment to
Democracy, and a common prosperity, to
secure the Union.

The nomad hordes of Tartary, who dwell
upon the desert steppes of Risguis, have a
system of government and a religion, and
respect the social relations. Their Khans,
their Knodshas, and their wives, are held in
due regard. But they stay but a short
time on the plain whose aspect may have
tempted them : they soon crave other
scenes, and, — marring the face of nature
without substituting the beauties of art, —
leave no more lasting record of their stay,
than the print of their horses feet upon the
grass of the steppe.

Such is semi-civilization, and such in
character, though not in degree, notwith-
standing our further progress in the arts,
would be the story of our existence on the
whole Atlantic border, from the regular

302

The Tariff of \MQ,

Sept.

operation of the laws of migration, were
there no means, when the lands of the Atlan-
tic slope have been once subdued,to prevent
their abandonment to weeds and useless-
ness.

The letters of Mr. Lawrence advert to
the glorious reminiscences attached to Vir-
ginia in the early time of our national ex-
istence, and allude to the fact, that that
State, whose sons have so freely contributed
to the advancement and glory of the com-
mon Union, has, as far as development of
its own resources goes, advanced so liitle,
that, in view of the rapid progress of some
of the other States of the Union, it appears
almost to have retrograded. " I have
thought," says Mr. Lawrence, "that the
State of Virginia, with its temperate cli-
mate, variety and excellence of soil, ex-
haustless water-power, and exuberant min-
eral wealth, contains within herself more
that is valuable for the uses of mankind, in
these modern days, than any other State in
the Union."*

It was partly in view of these magnifi-
cent natural resources, not then near so
well known, perhaps not fully imagined,
that Mr. Jefferson foretold the competition
of the Potomac with the Hudson, as an
avenue of trade and commerce. |

What has been the sequence of Mr.
Jefferson's sanguine anticipations .'' New
York city now numbers a population of
hundreds of thousands, — its name is heard
wherever floats a flag, — the peninsula which
groans under its huge burden, like that
which bore up ancient Tyre, is inadequate
in area to hold the great breadth of its edifi-
ces, which crowd each other for a standing
place. How stands it with Norfolk — with
some ten thousand inhabitants .' Its wharves
are almost tenantless, and the quiet of re-
pose, one half the year, is found in its
quarters of trade.

This is a signal failure of a prediction
uttered by one, who, however we may ob-
ject to his derelictions, and political im-
moralities, must still be esteemed one of
our ablest statesmen, one, perhaps, among
the wisest of those who hewed from the
quarries of historical experience the well-
formed model of our Union. A remark,
too, predicted on a state of things within
the control of man, and therefore within

*P. 4.

t Notes on Virginia, p. 20.

the ken of those who study men and their
institutions.

" The settlement, and development of the re-
sources, of the western country, have brought
into existence an active effectual competition
with your people, in the great staple of your
agricultural products, viz., wheat. Indian corn,
and tobacco. Maryland and North Carolina,
like yourselves, are essentially affected by
competition from the same quarter. Can you
expect to compete successfully with the West-
ern regions of our country, where, without
much labor, the soil produces double, and
sometimes even more, to the acre, than the
average crops of the last mentioned State V' *

But the Western States have a further
advantage. " The internal improvements
of the country already finished, have brought
Boston within the distance of four days'
travel of Cincinnati ; and even the Missis-
sippi herself bears down upon her bosom
the products of the West, at less than half
the freight that was charged a few years
ago."t

Here, then, are exposed the main causes
of these evils, whose effect dwindles, almost
to a European standard, the growth of some
of our States ; some, who labored among the
most laborious to secure to this and suc-
ceeding generations, the benefits of a polity
whose peculiar merit is in its avoidance of
European errors.

These causes, however prejudicial they
may appear, are now seen only in the com-
mencement of their operations. " In 1790,
by the first census, Vnginia had 12 per-
sons to the square mile, and New York 7^ ;
now, Virginia contains 19, and New York
53 to the square mile. The condition of
the two Carolinas is much the same as Vir-
ginia." The population of North and
South Carolina increased from 1830 to 1840
" 2 J per cent in ten years. Even in Great
Britain the increase was 11 per cent." J

Such is the warning of the past. Where
would the next quarter of a century have left
us, without a change of policy } The state-
ments we hereinafter present, from the Re-
port of the Secretary of the Treasury, with
regard to the establishment, within a very
few years, of cotton manufactures in the
Southern States, are ample evidence that the
people of the South-East are not disposed
to yield without an effort to the dwindling
of their political influence, and the reduc-

* Mr. L.'s letters p. 4. t p. 4. X p. 31.

1850.

The Tariff of IS^Q.

303

tion in value of all their fixed investments,
and to hang in the rear of the march of the
nation.

Although the theory of our Constitution
is based upon equal representation, and
hence that of numbers is considered just ; yet
it is evident that the establishment of the
Senatorial representation of the States,
(although " at once a constitutional recog-
nition of the portion of sovereignty remain-
ing in the individual States, and an instru-
ment for preserving that residuary sove-
reignty,"*) is not in practice, the sole
guarantee against undue influence of par-
ticular States, and consequent danger to
other States of the Union.

There would be manifest impropriety and
injustice in the attempt to crush the growth
of any State. But the magnifying of the poli-
tical importance of a State is as surely
the consequence of its excessive growth, as
it is sure, that such increase of its political
weight, though not contrary to the terms,
is contrary to the spirit of our institutions
There remains, then, no alternative for the
protection of State Rights in this regard,
but the action of such means as will in-
crease the population and wealth of the
State which adopts them.

No obstacles other than temporary ones
can resist the progress of manufacturing
industry and the realization of its bene-
fits in this country. Nor from sectional
causes should any one desire it. There is,
we well know, a sentiment in each of these
States, and in all the South, which reci-
procates that broad national feeling,
which prompted the presentation by the au-
thor of a plan to remedy these evils.

We will now rapidly trace the remedy.
Reducing the property of a country to its
ultimate components, we find two great
items, land and labor, and the result of
the employment of these two. '' Agricul-
ture, the foundation of wealth, depends on
production and a market for these pro-
ducts."!

The chief elements of cost in the mar-
kets where the agricultural products of the
South and West are sold, are, — 1st. The
cost of production to the cultivator : this
amount depending mostly on the compara-
tive fertility of the land. Here the West-
ern States, so far as they are under culti-

* Madison. t Mr. L.'s letters, p. 20.

vation, have a comparative advantage which
no aid of art or science can equalize. 2d.
The cost of transportation. This, as al-
ready stated, is gradually being diminished
to the Western States, by internal im-
provements and other means.

But this latter is a matter within control,
and here is presented to the States of the
Atlantic coast the means of equalizing the
balance. To use these distant markets,
" a well adjusted system of internal im-
provements,"* is essential; in order to
diminish the cost of transportation. —
But, more important still, there is an ad-
ditional means, — to reduce to a mini-
mum, in the cost of transportation, this
drain upon the profits of the Atlantic
States. " The remedy is, to create a mar-
ket at home for your surplus agricultural
products."!

The extent of this evil is stated in these
letters in brief, for it needs no amplify-
ing. We have extracted from them
the statement of the causes therein conclu-
sively exhibited, and from the same source
we learn the remedy. The remedy, in
each state, is, " the encouragement of agri-
culture, in the establishment of manufac-
tures." J

If we will but note with attention their
respective peculiarities, there is a deeper re-
lation than that of fanciful analogy, between
the conditions of the existence of individual,
and of aggerated humanity. The life of a
State is, in many respects, as the life of a
man. The knowledge of, and the love for,
the radical principles of its polity answers,
as it were, in a State, to the living mind ;
whose development in an individual State
or man, may be greater or less. The har-
monious arrangement and due proportion-
ing of its industrial interests, of its material
machinery of production and consumption,
bears to the entire national entity, the re-
lation of the material body to a man.

The array of names, famous in Arts,
on the roll of the Carolinas, the whole
book of their public history, proclaims those
States as possessing the soul of Democratic
Republicanism ; bnt their friends must say
of them as it was said of Paul, by his ene-
mies of Corinth, their " bodily presence is
weak." " The aggregate product of the
two Carolinas in 1840 was $59,595,734,

*P. 6. tp. 5. tp. 20.

304

The Tariff of lUQ.

Sept.

with a population of 1,347,817. The pro-
ducts of ^Massachusetts with a population
of less than 800,000 people, amounted at
the same time to $100,000,000, and now
the products of labor and capital are more
than $120,000,000."* This last is the
amount, not of the accumulation of large
percentages of profit, but of the steady and
gradual addition of moderate profits, or di-
versified labor, constantly employed. t It is
the repeated addition of the minute pro-
ducts of libor, the labor of the man, of the
waterfall, and of the coal mine, that builds
their cities, and dots their granite hills
with smiling towns and villages.

It is said in these letters, " I have in-
troduced these statements for the purpose
of exhibiting fairly the true condition of
some of the old States, and to awaken the
public mind in those States to the impor-
tance of bringing out their productive la-
bor, by introducino; new branches ; in order
that the industrial classes may be profit-
ably employed, and to show that the States
named have as great a stake in protecting
the labor of the country as any other in the
Union. They have now but little else than
soil and physical power remaining." J

The practical means of working the re-
quired change are thus considered. " There
are two'classes of labor, intelligent, and un-
intelligent. The foroier is that kind of
labor which requires a considerable amount
of mental culture, with active physical
power. This combination is capable of
applying Science to Art, and of producing
results that are difficult, and oftentimes
complicated. The latter description of
labor, is of that character which depends
principally on physical strength ; this qual-
ity of labor you (referring to Virginia) have
in abundance, and I hope you are not with-
out a tolerable supply of the higher class.
You may, without doubt, commence the
manufacture of almost every description of
articles requiring but little skill, and pro-
secute the work with success. Manufac-
tures of such articles as iron, hemp, wool,

*P. 31.

t We learn by an article in the Merchant's Mag-
azine for Dec. 1849, (Condition and Prospects of
the American Cotton Manufactures in 1849,) that
the average of dividends of twenty of the first
class mills in New England, for the year 1849, was
5 6-10 per cent.

IP. 31.

cotton, leather, &c., wrought into the
coarser and more common articles would
succeed with you."*

We pause a moment to note this classi-
fication of labor. M. Guizot, whose bolts
and bars have recently snapped in his
hands when he attempted to close the
gates to the moral progress of a people,
thus writes of labor : " Labor is subject to
natural and general laws — in every situa-
tion, in every variety of labor, in every
class of laborers, diversity and inequality
arise and subsist ; inequality of intellectual
power, of moral merit, of social importance,
of material wealth."

The feeling, so little creditable, which
we may observe in the work " Democracy
in France," would change the onward
course of humanity to retrogression in re-
garding each of the laboring classes as im-
mutably a toiler at day wages ; but this
distinction of labor as intellio-ent or unin-
telligent, is the only distinction as to labor,
of which a state can correctlv be cognizant.
This application only is the result of the
nature of things, and is the true distinction,
which, in the correct theory of Republic-
anism, attaches to the labor alone, and
does not, as in monarchical Europe, induce
as with the shirt of Is essus, the individual
of the working classes, the separate human-
ity, perhaps capable of all advancement,
apt for all contingencies, able, it may be,
to leave behind " footsteps on the track of
time," with the character of the circum-
stances which in infancy may have sur-
rounded him.

We place side by side in contrast these
two views so widely difi"ering, of labor.
The one from France, from a statesman,
who would keep France under " the cold
shade of aristocracy," the other from a
statesman of America, who, like all of us,
seeks to walk by the light of the sun of
democracy alone. And we do it for this,
because that there is no plainer definition
of the respective difi"erences, no fairer ex-
position of the comparative values of the
two systems of polity, than in these two
contrasted views of labor.

" Hmnan progress," says an American
writer,! (now no longer living,) is the re-
sult of an ever active law, manifesting it-

*P. 5.

t Chief Justice Durfee.

Works, p. 330.

1850.

The Tarif of ISiQ.

305

self cliiefly in scientific discovery and in-
vention, and thereby contiolling legisla-
tion, and "iving enduiing improvement to
all social and political institutions." It is
well and tliougktfuUy said : From disco-
veries in science, and iiuproveraentsin art,
result free political institutions and the ob-
ject of both is identical. We will now ob-
serve the reproduction by this effect of a
new cause.

One main argument, for democracy
arises from the difference in the mental
structure of individuals, were the mental
peculiarities of an individual transmitted
unchang d to his posterity there would be
comparitiv^ely little advantage in Repub-
licanism over Despotism. But each in-
dividual possesses an idiosyncracy, which,
though resembling in some respects that of
his immediate ancestor, in the main, diffeis
widely.

The function of Democracy is to assist
in, by removing obstacles to, the manifes-
tation of this. Democracy is the practical
recognition of the individuality of mm.
This manifestation is mainly effected, with
the bulk of the population, the majority,
only by their labor, from the diversification
of which arise new improvements and dis-
coveries.

It is thus, the peculiar interest of the
labeling classes, that their labor should be
diversified, and this diversification brink's
with it the direct advantage of enhanced
compensation. " To place the people in a
condition of p9rman:;nt and solid pi-o.speri-
ty, we mu.st encourage home industry, by
obtaining the greatest amount of produc-
tion ; this can only be obtained by diversi-
fying labor, which will bring with it high
v/ages ; and unless the labor is well paid,
our countiy cannot prosper." *

Diversification of labor is the industrial
means to secure to the laboring classes the
benefits Oi" Democracy. Democracy clears
away all ob'>tacles to ihe development of the
full powers of man. This the Fathei's of
the R.^public have given to us. Diversifi-
cation of labor fiicilitates the application of
those capacities to science and a:t. This
also, mast be secured in an united capacity
as a people. Division of labor en.sures the
full effect of such application, and here
private action begins. We are now to ob_

VOL. VI.

*P. 20.

NO. III. NEW SERIES.

serve the mode in which the causes are to
be kept in action.

The use of the powers exercised by a
free government, is, obviously, as to each
individual, but the execution of his own
will. The chief modes in which the will
of an individual can legitimately, in society
in its normal state, act directly to control
the execution of the will of another, in
matters appertaining only to the latter, are
two. The one acts upon the child, and is
the power of the parent. The other acts
upon the adult, and is the power of public
opin-on. The main objects for which these
powers act for the good of society, are
these :

Education facilitates the development of
the powers of the human mind, and by
labor the physical powers ol man, and the
resources of the earth, are developed.
These causes act and re-act upon each
other. By the former of the above-men-
tioned modes of action, viz. — the will of
the parent, delegated for convenience and
certainty of operation to the State, educa-
tion is effected. By the latter powerful
mode of action, viz. — that of public opi-
nion, the application of labor may be ef-
fected.

" Let it be considered respectable for
every man to have a vocation, and to fol-
low it. Let your common school system
go hand in hand with the employment of
your people. A general system of popular
education is the lever to all permanent
improvement.* To this we add, " A.II in-
tellectual culture should be founded on the
principles of our Holy Religion."! This,
then, is the system for the advancement of
a State to the full fruition of the principles
of Republican Democracy, It is founded
on the true principles of political philoso-
phy, and we leave it to the reflection and
judgment of the reader.

While advocating the general policy of
the introduction of manufacturing industry
in the South, as a matter of the first im-
portance to all of us, ii is not to be forgot-
ten, that the temporary state of the busi-
ness and financ 'S of the country, and the
immediate demands of trade, must, with
t'le exercise of judgment, decide the man-
ner and time of this introduction.

We have now the pi asure to turn the

*P. 7.
20

tp. 6.

306

The Tarif of I8ie.

Sept.

readers attention to the progress already
made in the South and West in the course
of industrial development which we have
sketched from these letters. Ucder date
of December 1849, it is stated,* that there
are in South Carolina sixteen factories
containing 36,500 spindles, with a capital
invested of about one million of dollars.

In Georgia, (November 1849,) they
have 36 cotton mills with 51,140 spindles. "f

In Alabama, 10 factories are in opera-
tion, with a capital of half a million invest-
ed, and it is stated that there will shortly
be 20,000 spindles in operation.

In Tennessee there are 30 factories with
36,000 spindles.

We hold that these States have not been
before, but are now, upon the path of
prosperity to the rest of the Union, as well
as to themselves. Discoveries in science,
inventions in art, do not come by revelation.
They are the fruit of opportunity. Who
can tell what immense wealth of inventive
genius, what vast opulence of constructive
power may be unnoticed and unknown
with some of the laboring classes in the
States, whose sole industrial pursuit being
agriculture, offers no facility for its devel-
opment. " Hands, that the rod of empire
might have swayed," as the poet Gray ex-
presses it : that might have recorded for
empires, secrets of mechanical or chemical
science which would change the face and
the destinies of nations. It is a theme for
other thought than the sentimental reveries
of poets.

By what has already been done, we
know what may be done, now that new
squadrons of the vast army of American
labor, are wheeling into rank. J " The in-
crease (in the consumption of raw cotton)
in the United States from 1816 to 1845,
has extended from 11 million pounds to
176,300,000 pounds in 29 years, being an
auo^mentation of sixteen -fold. The increase
in Great Britain in the same period of time
has been from 88,700,000 pounds to 560,
000,000 pounds, being an augmentation
of less than seven-fold, against an increase
in the United States of sixteen-fold "J

* Documents accompanying Report of Sec. of
Treasury. 1850.

t " The actual amount really invested in the
Georgia manufactories is not far from $2,000,000."
— Savannah Georgian, July 11, 1850.

X P. 26.

The subsequent portions of the letters
are occupied with a view of the manufac-
tures of the country, and their relative pro-
gress, and an exposition of the effects to be
expected on the same from the passage of
the Tariff Act then under consideration,
since passed, and known as the Tariff Act
of 1846.

Adherence to a political opinion is fre-
quently not the result of reasoning, and
when to casually imbibed prejudices in fa-
vor of one conclusion, is added the bias of
partizanship against its opposite, the opin-
ions of individuals under these influences
are apt to vary widely from a just view.
There are also sources of differences of opin-
ion which we may recognise without impu-
tation upon the intellects or hearts of those
with whom they exist. They come from
idiosyncracies and are unexplainable.

One result however, has occurred from
one or other of these causes, within a few
years in the Political History of the United
States, that, while the irregularities and
evil consequences resulting from the passage
of the Tariff Act of 1846, have, in some
particulars, been existing in then- full vigor,
the country at large, has not in the annual
account of the state of its affairs from the
Executive, been apprised of them.

We much regret that the limited space
of a monthly Review will not allow us to
give an abstract of these letters. Lord
Bolingbroke remarks that, that book which
requires abiidgement, is not worth reading ;
and these letters being tersely epitomized,
to give an abstract of them, would be but
to present them with important omissions.
The intention is, at the present time, to
take advantage of the incoming of a Whig
Administration, and a presentation of an
account of the actual state of the industrial
and fiscal affairs of the country', in the Re-
port of the Secretary of the Treasury, to
compare events become a part of history
with the clear delineation of them present-
ed in anticipation, four years ago in these
letters, and to urge a repeal of the Tariff
Act.*

The effect to be anticipated from the sa-

* The unfortunate arrangements connected with
the public printing at this session of Congress have
delayed the exposition (by retaining from general
circulation the accompanying docum.ents to the
Report of the Secretary of the Treasury to which
we wish our readers to refer,) till the present time.

1850.

The Tariff of IMQ.

307

crifice of the Industry of the country to the
unrestrained competition of a nation ah-eady
far beyond us in the course of manufactur-
ing industry, was fully shown. If, it was
said, a deficiency of the revenue is escaped,
it will be only by excessive importations,
followed by a drain of specie, and its con-
sequences, the prostration of the business
of the whole country and ultimate suppres-
sion of the banks.

Now, although the speech of the Prime
Minister of England, (Sir R. Peel,) pro-
posing a remission of certain duties, arriv-
ed atl:he very date of these letters, was it
an anticipation on which legislative action
could, with just regard to the interests of
the country, be had, that a reduction of
duties in Great Britain would be made to
such an extent as to justify our giving up
our domestic markets for our agricultural
products, to seek across the ocean for a
foreign one.

It was said* "in case of the repeal of the
duty on wheat, little will be exported from
the United States to England" in ordina-
ry years of harvest^''' and calculation as to
the probability of repeal was made or ob-
servation of the fact that the statesmen of
England are imbued with a nationality of
feeling that acknowledges no force in theo-
retical appeals in favor of preferring the in-
dustry of a foreign country to that of their
own.

The tariff act of 1846 was passed and the
parties in all parts of the country, against
whose earnest remonstrances this course of
legislation was adopted, prepared them-
selves as well as they might, to s.istain,be-
sid3S the evils of fluctuation and casual re-
verses inseparably attendant on business,
the effect of the hostile action of their own
government.

But now came in an interfering cause.
One of those strange events whish cannot
be foretold by man, which science has failed
to explain, and which art is powerless to
prevent ; when no human quality avails but
patience, and in whose presence we can
only sit silently and wait, observing reve-
rently the manifestation of a power before
which we are powerless.

A lono- course of legislation had placed
the industry of Ireland, in subjection to the
action of England, — to whose tender mer-

« Page 10.

cies Free-traders at home wish us to con-
fide our industry.

The natural result has followed. The
industry of Ireland was prostrated ; so ab-
jectly prostrate that millions of its popula-
tion depended for their entire subsistence
on a single root. And here we are remind-
ed of a singular circumstance. " The con-
stitution of Ireland" (said Mirabeau in
1782, while proposing a destruction for
certain political refugees from Geneva,)
" has been much modified, and seems likely
to be modified still more. It would be ab-
surd to deny that Ireland is becoming the
most free of any country in the world, and
the most desirable for men who feel the
value of freedom."*

Since then, the Irish Union has taken
place, and other great events affecting Ire-
land's destiny. It would be absurd to have
expected of Mirabeau that he should have
prophesied, but as the causes which have
placed Ireland in her present condition,
were then in operation, in different forms,
we think it not time lost to note, while ob-
serving their effect, how great and disas-
trous has been the action of these causes,
then so little calculated upon by statesmen
of that time. Causes, which may be traced
to one great root, viz. : the prejudicial ef-
fect upon the industry of one nation, of the
legislative action of another, in other words,
the want of National Industrial Indepen-
dence

To return, — when the time came to har-
vest this crop, miserable at the best, the
spade that should have dug an edible from
the earth, glanced through a mass of rot-
tenness and premature putrefaction ; a fit
emblem of the industrial policy of a coun-
try whose labor knew no diversification.

The food of the country was gone. How
and where to find other food. Anywhere,
anywhere, for a nation was starving ! The
grain growers of the Baltic and Black Sea
had been as little capable of prognostica-
ting an Irish famine as those who passed
the American tariff act of 1846, and no-t
having expected the contingency, were un-
able to supply the demand.

The ^' ordinary years of harvest,'^ on.
which the author of the letters bad calcula-
ted, had been succeeded by an extraordi-
nary year of no harvest. The exportation

* Memoirs. Vol. iv p. 100.

SOS

The Tarif of iSie.

Sept.

of grain from the United States, exceeded
by millions, double the most sanguine
dreams of those who, by means of the
tariflFof 1846, had shaken as with an earth-
quake, the laboriously constructed edifice
of American industry, which now, thanks
to a famine, had still a chance to stand.

The balance of trade was enormously in
our favor. The result was many millions
added to our wealth, and the cause stimu-
lating importations, assisted also the in-
crease of the revenue. The predictions
of our bankruptcy had not been fulfilled,
and probably none rejoiced more at the
benefit to our country than the Whig par-
ty, and the author of these letters.

The province of Statesmanship is, to
regulate the affairs of nations, by knowl-
edge of the laws which under usual natural
conditions, govern human action. The
wisdom which can prognosticate at a year's
distance, unprecedented phenomena in
nature, is as far above Humanity, as the
folly which would predicate legislation or
the expectation of such abnormal pheno-
mena, is below it. But we will do the Free
Trade party in the United States justice.
They made as little calculation on any fa-
mine in Ireland, and as such a " sky-sent"
argument with the unthinking and unrea-
soning, in favor of their policy, as any one
else. What we claim is, what is conceded
by every intelligent person, not blinded by
partizanship, that through the Irish famine
then occurring, the effect of the Tariif of
1846, was for a long time nullified.

It is not a new thing that a sudden ab-
normal operation of physical causes has
produced a political change which could
not have been anticipated. Some now liv-
ing will recollect how the progress of the
Revolution in Venezuela, in 1812, was
checked and the course of events changed,
by the earthquake which destroyed Carac-
cas, and re-established the authority of the
Spanish Cortes.*

Klaproth| narrates a similar occurrence
in China, " L'empire," he says, "fut en-
core, en 173, afflige, par des maladies con-
tagieuses que . . . faisaient d'affreux rava-
ges dans toutes les provinces. Cette epi-
demic parait d'avoir ete une veritable peste
. . . Enfin, un certain Tchang-Kio . . .

* Hist, of Thirty Years Peace. Martineau.
t Tableau Historique de i' Asie.

pretendit avoir trouve un remede infaillible
contre la contagion . . . Ce remede . . . lui
fit bientot une grande reputation, etc., etc
. . . il eut une multitude de disciples . . .
Cette empirique devint bientot le chef d'un
parti puissant, etc . . . bientot son armee
s'eleva a 500,0C0 combatants," etc. etc.

Thus it seems, there being a contagious
malady prevalent in China, by dexteious
management of an " empirique," it was
made useful in organizing 500, OCO to sus-
tain quackery in power, Peihaps some
may perceive an analogy between this case
and that of the favor shown to free trade
theories and theorisers in '47 in the United
States. The Chinese case, however, was
one of a plague and not a famine.*

Let us note the actual meaning of the com-
mercial dependence upon foieign nations,
urged upon us by the advocates of the
Tariff of 1846. Pufferdorf states that

t The reader may be amused by an extract from
the Democratic Review (published in New York)
for Auguht, 1849 " It has been said that the de-
feat of Mr. Lawrence's motion las-t year, was
owing to the famine of 1847. Alas, for the fee-
ble argument ! There is no famine this year. and
the export of bread fctuffs, as compared with last
year, are as follows :

Export of Bread Stuffs from United States to
Great Britain, Sept. to July \st.

Flour Ebls. Meal Bbls. Wheat, Corn.

1848. 160,086 98,444 215,139 3,700,065

1849. 1,007,640 79,704 1,048,593 12,333,890

We give another quotation, "This quantity (of
grain and flour imported into Great Britain in 1847)
was greatly enhanced, and also the price by the
failure of the potatoe crop. A recurrence of that
misfortime in 1846 produced the enormous import
indicated in the table," (therein above given.) —
Dem. Review for Dec. 1848,^. 559.

Further, " The year 1848 was one of good har-
vests in England. This year, as announced from
the throne, the potatoe crop has again failed, and
the quantities (of bread stuff) sent forward will
be far in excess of last year. — Dein. Review for
April 1849, p. 379.

From which quotations we may conchide, that,
1st. The Irish famine really was the cause of our
great exportation of bread t tuff- in 1847. 2nd. That
the Dem. Review knew it in Dec. 1848. 3d. That
the U. S. tariff has but httle effect on the demand
for bread stuffs in G. Britain, and consequently on
our export of these articles thereto. 4th. That the
Dem. Review knew this in April 1849. 5th. That
in August 1849, the same Review had forgotten
entirely both these items of its former knowledge.
The exercif e of the accustomed abilities of the De-
mocratic Review seems in this case to have been
pretermitted.

1850.

The Tariff cflQiQ.

309

''• Charles V. used to say of the Nether-
landsrs that there was not a nation under
the sun, that did detest more the name of
shivery and yet if you did manage them
mildly and with discretion, did bear it more
patiently." *

Thus it stands, that amelioration which
has substituted for vanquished enemies the
* parole d'honneur,' and the delivery of the
sword for the barbarous triumphal proces-
sion, and the passage beneath the crossed
spears, has given to the intolerable burden
of political subjection, the modified form of
commercial dependence.

The only legitimate commercial depen-
dence between separate nations, as a per-
manent condition is that of barbarous and
civilized nations, primarily, and, secondarily
that which results from the interchansje of
commodities which it is impossible for one
of the countries to produce : and this per-
manency is but comparative, because of the
tendency to civilization and to the amelio-
rations of science and art. The growth of
manufactures is but the mask of the na-
tural development of the national " phy-
sique."

The tendency of humanity, the evident
tendency of the age, is to individualisation ;
of what value otherwise were political and
social freedom ? The first motive of ac-
tion in the human breast not relating solely
to self, is emulation ; here competition is
the " vis motiva " of progress.

From the institution of unchangeable
castes, the Brahmin and the Pariah in
India, through their modification, the feu-
dal institutions of Continental Europe gen-
erally, we come, in passing westward, to
the improvements which commerce has
introduced into the social structure of
Great Britain ; the facility of social eleva-
tion, whose most recent and prominent
evidence is in the notable denial, by the
present Prime Minister of England (him-
self of England's aristocracy) of the power
of judgment by the House of Lords, upon
a high concern of legislation. f

But still the distinction of classes sub-
sists in England, and it is only in the
United States, still further Westward,

* Int. to History of Europe, p. 261,

t Lord John Russell's speech upon the vote of

the House of Lords in the matter of the Greek

claims.

that man stands upright in the full majesty
of his nature, belonging to no class, attaint-
ed by no hereditary disability and com-
mences life, should his accidents so rule,
by sustaining himself through the mere
exercise of his mechanical powers, and
marching upward, if his natural abilities
warrant it, perhaps to be the chosen ruler
of some twenty million others, political ex-
amplars of magnified humanity.

Individual action is but the type of na-
tional action. The protection of individual
ri2;hts, is the reason for national a<x2reo;a-
tion. An "esprit du corps" is but the
reflex of self-love, and in the arrangements
inevitably induced by the peculiarities of
lanofuao;e, of relio;ion, Pao-an or Christian,
of genuine national character, we find the
unavoidable conclusion that he who may
innocently seek his own individual happi-
ness, not interfering with others, may also
legitimately forward that interest by com-
bining his efforts with those whose pro-
pinquity of residence, similarity of char-
acter and identity of condition indicate
them as his countrymen and nearest friends.

We owe an apology to our readers for
thus diverging from practical argument,
but if what we have now urged is correct,
the abstract reasoning so much in vogue, in
favor of Free Trade as the bond of uni-
versal brotherhood, and the dawn of the
millenium, crumbles into dust.

Do we not all remember in our National
History, the proposition made by British
Statesmen acting loyally as became them,
in the interest of Great Britain, to give
that country exclusive commercial rights
in view of the political supremacy over her
thirteen colonies.

This proposition was the beginning of
the great, the peaceful struggle for supre-
macy between the Anglo Saxon race, and
the accumulated capital resulting from cen-
turies of labor of the most laborious race
heretofore on earth, in conjunction with the
living physical energies of a mass of operatives
content to exist without accumulation for
themselves ; — and the new American race,
formed by the union of the enterprising,
the hardy, the free-spirited, the selected
of every nation under heaven, with but
little save the natural capital of land and
labor, a few short years ago, but with their
exertions for production and accumulation
intensified by education which awakens

310

The Tariff of \UQ.

Sept.

iheir desires, "by Political Equality wbich
facilitates the gratification of them, and a
just administration of laws which confirms
to all, their possessions.

The temporary failure of the foreign
crops has passed away. It is, we think
generally understood and everywhere con-
ceded, that our imports this year have, so
far, exceeded our exports by from twenty
to thirty million dollars.* "It may be
said, that our exports will increase with
our imports ; this supposition I think fal-
lacious." We claim an acknowledgment
of the absolute fulfilment of this prediction,
in its spirit and its terms.

Nor do we find ourselves in position to
make an inferior claim with regard to the
prediction herein contained. " If the pre-
sent movement against the Act of 1842
shall succeed, in accordance with Mr.
Walker's plan, it must be followed soon
by a counter movement, if not on the part
of the people, the government itself will
recommend it for revenue."! The meet-
ings at Pittsburg, Trenton, Newport and
elsewhere, are sufiicient evidence that if
Government has partly, through the sac-
rifice of the interests of the people, been
saved from the necessity of calling for re-
lief throuo;h the alteration of the Act, the
people have, through the pernicious opera-
tion of the tariff, found it necessary to
commence a counter movement.

Where complete codes of " Revised
Statutes" exist, and where Constitutions,
are altered periodically, as in our country,
the excuse that a practical avoidance at
occasional expense of morality, of certain
provisions of laws is better than the insta-
bility resulting from radical alteration of
injudicious or presently inapplicable laws ;
such excuse, having force under other
circumstances is here inoperative.

It is the boast of our judicial decisions,
of the laws which originate them, of the
constitutions which lie behind these laws,
of the whole system of polity in fact, which
comprehends these, that all are closely ad-
apted to the times and our circumstances.
The sole excuse then, for a law which
corrupts the public morals, is here worth-
less.

Still more objectionable is it, when the
evil effect resulting from such laws is ex-

*P. 9.

tP. 27.

aggerated by placing the party more par-
ticularly acted on, in the dilemma of sac-
rificing his morals or his pecuniary profit.
It would be the conclusion of one conver-
sant with the operation of laws affecting
commerce, and estimating at its proper
standard the high character of the Ameri-
can merchant, that such legislation must
result in the diminution of the business
conducted by Americans.

" 1 deem this {ad valorem) feature in
the bill a violation of sound principle, and
such as must be condemned by all parties,
whose experience and knowledge are of
value. It is no other, in practice, than to
drive from our foreign trade a large num-
ber of honest importing merchants, and to
place the business in the hands of unscru-
pulous foreigners. Time may reveal the
truth of this prediction." * '' I do not say
that all foreigners commit frauds on the re-
venue ; far from it ; but I do say that enor-
mous frauds have been perpetrated by
foreigners, under ad valorem duties, and
will be again, — prostrating the business of
honest foreign and American importers." j*

We extract from the Report of the Se-
cretary of the Treasury for 1849, answers
to questions propounded by him to the Col-
lectors of the Custom Houses of the United
States :

From the Custom House at Philadelphia. " Taking the
quarter ending on the 30th of Sept. 1845, (prior to" the
enactment of our present Tariff,) the amount of imports
at this port was,

For American account, $2,075,930

For foreign account, 185,613 $2,261543

While in the corresponding quarter of the current
year (of 1849) it was,

For American account, I

For foreign account,

Showing an aggregate increase in

the quarter just elapsed of
Of which, on American account,

account, $325,183 ; that is to say, on American account,
an increase on the importations of the quarter ending
Sept. 30, 1845, for the same account of, thirUjtwo per cent,
and, on foreign account, of two hundred and seventy-five
per cent, — showing a vast preponderance in favor of
foreigners."
From the Custom House of Boston, " You will observe

$5i935,392

741,782

510,796 $3,252,578

$991,035
,852, and on i'oieign

$5,938,803

that in 1845, the imports were

Of which, on American account, $5,184,745

On foreign account, 750,647

And in 1849, the imports were

Of which, on American account, $4,806,935

On foreign account, 1,131,868

Showing that the importations on foreign account were
increased fifty-one per cent from 1845 to 1849, and that those
on America7L account were diminished seven per cent, during
the same period.

Further, " the importations on foreign
account from the British American Colo-

* P. 32.

tP. 11.

1850.

The TariJ of IMQ.

311

nies have increased 105 per cent., and those
on American account have diminished eight
per cent. ; while from Cuba the increase on
foreign account has been 213 per cent, and
the diminution on Ainerican account has
been 53 ^er cent, from 1845 to 1849."

The returns from the New York Custom
House, corresponding with the above from
Philadelphia and Boston, had not been re-
ceived at Washington at the date of the
collation of these documents, (December,
1849,) but we find it stated in an able let-
ter from the Collector at New Orleans,*
that, under the operation of the specific
duties of the Tariff of 1842, the imports
at New York on foreign account were 44
per cent. " Under the ad valorem Tariff
of 1846, the proportion of these imports is
75 per cent, on foreign, to 25 per cent, on
American account ; " and this in '* the
city where about 62 per cent, of the entire
revenue is collected."

It is needless to amplify. We add only
this. " Treasury^Department, Washington,
Dec. 1st, 1849. By official returns, on file
in this department, it appears that the num-
ber of instances in which the value of goods,
wares and merchandise imported in the
ports of New York, Boston, and Philadel-
phia, have been advanced on the entries,
by the United States appraisers, above the
values declared in the invoices during ten
months from Jan. 1st to Oct. 31st, 1849,
inclusive, is fifteen hundred and forty-six."
Let it be borne in mind that these entries
are made under the sanctity of an actual
appeal to the Deity to witness to the truth
of the statements therein contained. The
demands of morality alone, one would think,
might be sufficient reason for the removal
of this stumbling-block in the way of the
public.

Had the blindness of party zeal permit-
ted the heeding of the warning predictions
in these letters, now so entirely fulfilled,
we had been spared the imputations on our
legislative sagacity, now ascribed in our
official records and public history.

Could the ceaseless waves of political
agitation be made to turn for a few years
aside from this corner-stone of our national
prosperity, the American system, till it is

* Samuel J. Peters, Esq.

settled on a firm basis; could we with-
draw from it, what President Madison called
"the pestilential influence of party animo-
sity," it were well. We can ask no for-
bearance of an opposition founded on con-
viction, true or erroneous, but in a matter
of this importance to the country, mere
partizanship is unworthy of us all.

We will quote from these letters of Mr.
Lawrence, a suggestion applicable to every
State in the Union. " If the prominent
men of Virginia of both political parties,
will give up their party warfare, and resolve
themselves into a ' Committee of the Vl^hole,
on the Commonwealth, to improve the state
of Agriculture' by making two blades of
grass grow where there is now but one ; if
they will establish manufactures, and carry
on a well-adjusted system of internal im-
provements, they will then have done some-
thino; that will be substantial, abiding: —
which will stand as memorials of their pa-
triotic devotion to the interest of the peo-
ple, through all time."*

Among the ancient Germans, at certain
times, the veiled mysterious symbol of the
earth was taken on a car to receive in
passing among the habitations of its wor-
shippers their adoration. " During its pro-
gress," says Gibbon, "the sound of war
was hushed, quarrels were suspended, arms
laid aside." " Pax et quies tunc tantum
nota, tunc tantum amata," says Tacitus,
from whom Gibbon takes the story.

Not in the spirit of idolatrous worship,
but with the spirit of moderation and self-
control, becoming Christians and Repub-
licans, is this offering of party spirit in the
presence of the country, and of the Union
which preserves its greatness, inculcated
upon us ; and if, as will be acknowledged,
political intolerance is the badge of medio-
crity, it must also be acknowledged, that
there is no nobler spectacle below the stars,
than that of the citizens of every party, of
all shades of opinion, uniting to place the
country of their pride in a position to main-
tain worthily the independent attitude which
circumstances from God have placed her
in. " Our strength and glory is in uphold-
ing and maintaining the Union."!

*P. 6.

tP. 23.

312

Bulwer Lytton as a Novelist.

Sept.

BULWEE LYTTON AS A NOVELIST.

Not the least noticealle among the
events of the woild of letters, dming the
past five years, is the revulsion of popular
opinion regarding the moral and liteiarj
character of Bulwer's works. The general
discredit into which they had fallen was
only equalled by the ill reputation fastened
upon their readers. The piess teemed with
cynical and shallow ciiticisms of Pellhan
and Eugene Aram, and infused into the
public mind a feeling strongly allied to hor-
ror against fiction in general, and Bulwer's
fictions in particular. The clerical watch-
men of the land took up the prevailing
sentiment, and in measured discourses
coupled the name of the best novelist with
that of the most licentious poet of the
country. A few timid apologies that ap-
peared from time to time in well meaning,
but Radical, prints, were indignantly scout-
ed. Such a fever, it was evident, could
not last. Ernest Maltravers was discover-
ed to be by no means as fearful a monster
as he had been represented ; and the beau-
tiful moral of Zanoni was triumphantly held
up as a refutation of the weighty charges
urged against its author. Then followed
the Caxtons, the most exquisite in art and
healthful in tendency of any modern fic-
tion, sweeping away a cloud of prejudices,
and opening the way for a more favorable
reception of its elder sisters. An acute and
genial criticism in the Westminster, and a
more superficial, but no less genial, review
in Eraser's Magazine, hastened the progress
of truth in the public mind. It is no longer
considered criminal to read a book by the
author of Devereux ; and moral essayists
have forborne to class him among those
whose genius has but rendered their impiety
more detestable, and their infamy more
lasting.

From a multitude of works in the seve-

ral departments of Fiction, the Dramii,
History, and Criticism, bearing eaeh and
all in a greater or less degree the impress
of a penetrating and versatile niiiid, the
good have been selected and pteserved, the
bad overlooked and rejected, by a tiibunal
to which the author must ever look for re-
ward and honor. From this tribunal, Bul-
wer has received, not merely once or a few
times, the stern sentence of condcniJiation,
and bowing reverently to its decisions, and
undaunted by ill success, has essayed again
and again to piove himself capable of per-
fotming what he had undei taken. A play
hissed from the boards was the imaiediate
precursor of the Lady of Lyons. The
mortification of repeated failures were ne-
cessary to perfect the liper efforts of the
growing genius. The decisions of the forum
of letters having worked their full effect
upon the author, are settling down into the
calm majesty of recognized law. A niche
has been granted him in the g) and Pantheon
from which, with a few volumes at hisfeet, he
can fearlessly look out upon the desdations
of time. Happy Author, be content with the
society of Alice and the Caxtons, and seek
not to exhume Falkland and Godolphin
from that grave in which a now indulgent
age would willingly forget them ! Happy
age, that can at last do justice to a gifted
son, and can temper the severity of justice
with the gratefulness of praise — teaching
the author the salutary lessons of life by no
harsher means than rebuke — and oblivion
— of error !

It is hazarding little to assert that Bul-
wer will not be familiarly known to poste-
rity as a dramatist, an essayist, or a histo-
rian, while as a novelist he will remain a
classic, and be embalmed on the same
shelves with Fielding and Scott. He has,
it is true, courted the Historic Muse with

1840.

Bulwer Lytton as a Novelist.

313

success, and has shared no mean triucjphs
in Criticism and the Drama. But his his-
to;ies are not stamped with the broad seal
of perpetuity, nor are they written with that
subUme and touching relf-reliance which
inspired the ancient Greek to style his only
woik *' KTrtiia h aa." His cssays, from their
peculiar nature, can scarcely outlive the
memory of the occasions that gave them
birth. And from the vast host of forgot-
ten and ever vanishing dramas it were vain
to attempt to recall the artificial and
unworthy sisters of the Lady of Lyons, —
the latter, too, gradually lapsing into the
number of clever plays of a past day, oc-
casionally revived with formal brilliancy,
and then once more consigned to their cere-
ments ; to the last, less honoring, than
honored by, the names of their authors.
Nor shall this be a matter of deep regret
to Bulwer or to the world. To few is it
given to be remembered in more than one
capacity. And in proporlion as remem-
brance is narrowed down and concentrated,
is it rendered intense and permanent.
Cic(3ro is not to us what his vanity prompt-
ed him to personate — a poet ; Shelley is
not a novelist; Newton is not an expound-
er of prophecy. Let it be sufficient for
Bulwer that in a single field of literature he
has labored arduously and with rare profit ;
and that the nurselings he has therein
planted and watered shall live in the vigor
of undccaying youth long after the hand of
the gardener has forgotten its cunning.

An elaborate review of Bulwer's writ-
ings is not here intended To such as de-
sire to know what and how much he has
given to the world, and the spirit with
which his offsprings has been made, a mere
reference to the two articles above mention-
ed is amply sufficient. The object of the
present paper is to survey the popular
story-teller in a manner hitherto but little
attempted ; to direct attention to the min-
ute rather than the general ; in fine, to
show, if possible, why he has, in his own
peculiar line, so distanced all competitions,
and actually achieved immortality, while
others have been merely grasping after pre-
sent fame.

As a preliminary step, it will be neces-
sary to set forth briefly the recognized ideal
of a Novel, and to distinguish it from the
Romance. This is a task demanded by the
present scheme of criticism, and not out of

place in correcting a prevailing error of the
day, which tends to call every fiction a
novel, forgetting ihat a fiction is not by
necessity a novel more than a play is by
necessity a tragedy ; that an acute and
skillful observer of cotemporaneous society-
may make biit a sorry figure if tiansported
a century or more into the past, or placed
upon a distant shore to gather materials for
his pages ; and, on the oiher band, that a
zealous and eloquent antiquarian may be
the less at home in the every day woiM
by as much as he has turned over the dusty
folios of Bede or the Rhynjer, or revelled
at the tables of the Second Charles or the
Fourteenth Louis.

A novel is a picture of society, a deline-
ation of manners, increased in interest and
effect by the aid of plot and incideRt. It
is an epitome of philosophy, dramatised
and rendered popular. It is an elucida-
tion of morals from more facile examples
than the stubborn and often paradoxical
facts of history. Its main object is to coa-
vey instruction through the cliannels of
amusement, to familiarize knowledge to
the wise, to allure the careless and ignor-
ant into the temple of learning by spread-
ing carpets under their feet, and hanging
the pillars of the stern edifice with fruits
and flowers ; and, for accomplishing this,
it claims no mean share of honor. It ap-
proaches perfection in proportion as it com-
bines the most of profit with the most of
interest, and fails, when to meagre and un-
natural incident there is subjoined a harsh
and forced moral, in this, as in other
fiction it is necessary that events be pro-
bable and harmonious, and character's con-
sistent and symmetrical ; that action should
justly follow purpose ; and that nothing
should be introduced which does not bear
directly on the story. But vastly more
than other fiction it requires to be philoso-
phic and sci'utinizing. With it, style is a
secondary consideration, and imagination
not necessarily a leading feature. The
same graces of diction and levities of fancy
which elsewhere adorn the tale, here lend
their aid primarily to point the moral. A
novel has done little if its readers do not
rise from its pages, strengthened in intel-
lect and exalted in sentiment, with a better
knowledge of the world and its ways.
From no class of writings should more po-
sitive good be expected, and if it fail to

314

Bulivei' Lytton as a Novelist.

Sept.

accomplisli what has been mentioned as its
object, the fault lies only in the miscon-
ceptions, or the inadequate powers of those
who have essayed its composition.

What then should be the cualifications
of the novel writer, of whom so much is
demanded, and whose errors are so injuri-
ous to the interests of society and the rules
of art ? What infallible criterion shall he
find by which to trim and round his work
till it assume the clearness and the sym-
metry of a statue or a painting ? Alas,
there is none. To the youthful chess-
player asking for advice, Phillidor could
do little else than reply, " play well, play
well." So the neophyte in fiction- writ-
ing, beside a few plain rules, there can be
given but this counsel, *' write well, write
well." In the arts, the human form may
be measured and divided ofi" with such
scrupulous accuracy that if the learner will
but faithfully observe his directions, he
may soon hope to produce a work that shall
satisfy the dogmas of art, if not its genius and
spirit. But there are no scales of feet and
inches for the passions — the intellect — the
soul; and he who would describe their various
workings, and would limn them in true
colors, must be content to learn them by
slow, steady and watchful experience.

Still it may not be amiss to state a few
requisites, without at least some of which,
it is impossible for a novel writer to suc-
ceed. He must possess a copious share of
the analytical faculty, which disjoins, and
unravels, and separates causes from effects,
and discovers the true connection between
purpose and event. He must be largely
subjective, a reasoner from himself, out-
wardly, he must give to externalities a cer-
tain coloring from his own peculiar views,
and may not be the mere mouth-piece of fo-
reign impressions. More than this, it is need-
ful that he delineate passion and character
minutely and faithfully, painting the soul if
possible as one would paint a series of land-
scapes, in which though the general features
of the fields and rivers remain the same, the
elements above assume new combinations,
and give to land and water continually vary-
ing appearances. With aspirations for cre-
ating and describing he must possess de-
scriptive and creative power. He must
enjoy the rare faculty of throwing himself
by turns into each character he summons
up, and forgetful of his personality, be for

the time submerged in his own representa-
tion. His men and women must not be
abstractions, otherwise he merely writes
philosophical argument or tedious mono-
logue. And if he be a true student of art
he wUl not fail to strive after dramatic
effect, the benefits of which he shares to an
equal extent with the writer of romance.

A romance is a panorama of outward
life, and when panoramas wherever exhi-
bited are representations of classic or
foreign scenes, so is the romance told of
other times or of other countries. It may
or it may not be written to inculcate a sen-
timent ; it may contain no philosophy, or
may render what it contains wholly sub-
servient to incident ; it may give no in-
structions except in external manners ; it
may scrutinize only the surface, and in-
duct no farther into character than its out-
ward disguises. A successful writer of
romance surveys men and manners in
mass, avoids all analytic investigations of
character, and deals for the most part in
broad and free strokes, rather in nice and
discriminating touches. He is often mi-
nute never intricate. His plots are rarely
complicated or labored ; his thoughts never
above the comprehension of the most or-
dinary minds. He is vivid, startling, and
fond of efi'ect. His descriptions are elab-
orate, ornamented and not seldom gor-
g ous. His scenes are laid either in the
most magnificent domains of nature, or in
the stately courts of kings. His charac-
ters are from the extremes of society, or
whenever taken from the middle class are
remarkable in mind or person. He is con-
tinually shifting the theatre of action, and
is as regardless of time and space, as if the
flight of a dozen of years were no interrup-
tion to the thread of his story, or the tran-
sition from continent to continent the work
of an hour. His genius is essentially ob
jective. JVothing that he relates conveys
to us the bias of his own mind — and so
generally is thi^ true of the romance wri-
ters of the present century, that we should
know almost nothing of their inward his-
tory if their work were the only clue. And
above all he is intensely dramatic — a mas-
ter of light and shade — skilled in the
thousand arts of the stage and in the ma-
nagement of the foot-lights.

The union of these two distinct, and in
several particulars, opposite sets of quali-

1850.

Bulwer Lytton as a Novelist.

316

ties, is never perfect, and is rarely witness-
ed to any marked extent. Those who,
possessed of the one, have assayed to pro-
duce what could only be the effects of the
other, have uniformly failed, and among
this number must be reckoned Bulwer.

It is easy to understand after a careful
perusal of even one of his best works, why
he has triumphed so splendidly over the
difficulties of the novel, and has fallen so
signally before those of the romance. He
is gifted with a mind singularly philosophi-
cal and penetrating, but wanting in syn-
thetical power, and that rare faculty of se-
lecting from confused groupings of incident
precisely those features which shall harmo-
nize into one symmetrical whole. He
builds with small fragments, not with gene-
rous masses ; with the brick of London and
not the rocks of Stonehensfe. In the sub-
tilties and intricacies of man's nature ; in
the labyrinths of deceit and perversion by
which the heart of every member of socie-
ty of the present day is girt about, he is
profoundly versed. He has made man his
study — man in every form — the Higway-
man,* the man about town,| the Enthusi-
ast of an idle philosophy, J the secluded
Scholar, II the politician, § the brilliant and
imperious Genius. IF Upon the portraitures
he has drawn of these there is stamped the
seal of truth, over each of them is thrown
the mantle of a rich imagination and be-
tween each there is preserved a clear and
wonderful distinctness. It was but shallow
criticism that ranked Bulwer with Byron,
as an eternal reproducer of himself, that de-
clared Pelham to be Maltravers and Mal-
travers, Pelham, and Eugene Aram, either.
The peculiar turn of mind in both these
great writers has led them into infusing
more or less of themselves into their crea-
tions, but what in the poet was morbidity
and excess, is in the novelist, health and
moderation. Cain and Manfred are aliases
of one individual, and that individual is
Byron, but Aram and Maltravers are as
widely apart as the antipodes, you perceive
between them a faint, an intangible resem-
blance, a subtle similarity, and there ends
their relationship.

One who reads Bulwer's novels will not
fail to notice upon every page the results of

*Paul ChfFord. tPelham. JZanoni, ||Eugene
Aram. ^Lumley Ferrers. ITErnest Maltravers.

searching analysis and nice observation. —
Nor will he d^my the truth of much to
which he would not before have dreamed
of giving utterance. He will continually
observe that he is reading men by their
motives, that he is taken into the inner
heart of Humanity, that by the guidance
of the Arch-Master he is inducted into the
hidden chambers of the vast machine, and
while levers, and cranks, and shafts, are
working and groaning around him, is
taught the secrets of the whole fabric. As
he reads on, it will involuntarily occur to
him that all this is true, all this has passed
heretofore under his very eyes, yet always
crude, unsystematized and shapeless. The
scattered and heterogeneous materials he
daily sees about him, are well coined and
presented to him for companionship and
use. He feels that he is richer by what
he has read, not that he of necessity car-
ries away more than he before possessed,
but that he has his knowledge in a more
tangible and orderly form. It is, to use
the figure of the coin, rounded, stamped,
and ready for circuktion.

The delineation of passion has ever been
justly regarded as the most diflacult of all
tasks propounded by art. If any one who
has felt within himself the workings of pas-
sion— and who has not — imagined that its
expression is easy, let him cooly sit down,
pen in hand, and attempt to describe even
his own feelings on occasions of stormy ex-
citement ; or if he challenge a more rigor-
ous test of his powers, to portray the feel-
ings of an imagined character. Let him
after completing his manuscripts put them
carefully away for a few days and then sub-
mit them to his own candid judgment, or
compare them with similar efforts by
the great masters of literature. The re-
sult will not be doubtful. Nor will he
again read a successful depiction of passion
without the profoundest reverence for the
genius of its author.

Now of all modern prose writers it is
in this most difficult art that Bulwer emi-
nently excels. Much of his skill is to be
attributed to native genius, and not a small
portion to his close and practical study of
the human heart. He has avoided a com-
mon and fatal error — that of at mpiuig to
represent passion by rhapsody, sentiment,
or raving, according as the fee ing is that
of ambition^ love or anger. The general-

316

Bulwer Lytton as a Novelist

Sept.

ity of fictitious cbaracters appear to utter
the language of passion as if it did not
concern themselves at all, but was only
intended to move others ; their words,
perhaps intrinsically eloquent, issue from
carved and marble lips ; the multitude
may be charmed, rapt, convulsed but the
memoir remains motionless and unaltered.
That there is art displayed here is un-
questionable, but it is art of an inferior
order, and not worth havinof if there is a
possibility of attaining to a higher. It is
the art that produced Juno and Cato, not
that which created Macbeth and Lear.

Without claiming for Bulwer he art of
Shakespeare it is not too much to say that
his is an art similar in kind, though une-
qual in degree. He has faithfully imbibed
the spirit of the master, and may justly
claim an honorable rank in the same school.
And it is here that he excels, and immea-
surably, the mighty Romancer of Abbots-
ford. The latter was a writer almost
perfect in his way, vivid, energetic, versa-
tile, picturesque and proverbially dramatic,
but he rarely attempted to depict passion
other than by its ultim.ite effects, and most
tangible outward expressions. When he
has essayed a different course he has re-
ceived few plaudits from the multitude,
and generous critics have kept silence.

Scott best expresses passion by pictur-
esque description, and by leaving much to
the imagination. Further effort he gener-
ally avoids — and wisely. All will remember
the vivid picture in Kenil worth, where
Elizabeth discovers the feelino; existino;
between Leicester and Amy. The scene
would have been wrought by Shakespeare
into a passage of terrible and unmixed pas-
sion. Scott has given us a gorgeous
picture, but it is only by the Queen's walk
and gesture that we guess at the extent of
her anger. So in the Bride of Lammer-
moor, after Ravenswood has returned from
the wedding of Lucy Ashton, the author
has left us to imagine the tumult in his
breast from the following external descrip-
tion. '^ Caleb lighted the way, trembling
and in silence, placed the lamp on the table
of the deserted room, and was about to
attempt some arrangement of the bed, when
his master bid him begone in a tone that
admitted of no delay. The old man re-
tired, not to rest, but to prayer ; and from
time to time crept to the door of the de -

partment, in order to find out whether
Ravenswood had gone to repose. His
measured heavy step upon the floor was
only interrupted by deep groans ; and the
repeated stamp of the heel of his heavy
boot, intimated too clearly, that the wretch-
ed inmate was abandonino; himself at such
moments to paroxysms of uncontrolled
agony." *

As the ancient painter threw a veil over
the face whose terrible workinsrs he was
unable to depict. So Scott has here veiled
passions he could not express. This dis-
plays contrivance, ingenuity, knowledge
of stage effect, but it also displays a want
of meataphysical power.

Compare with the instances just quoted
the scene between Alaltravers and Cesarini,
when the former has discovered the fear-
ful fraud by which the Italian has caused
the estrangement and finally the untimely
death of Florence Lascelles.

" And as thus he stood, and wearied
with contending against, passively yielded
to, the bitter passions thac wrung and
gnawed his heart, he heard not a sound at
the door below, nor the footsteps on the
stairs, nor knew he that a visitor was in
the room, till he felt a hand upon his shoul-
der, and turning round, beheld the white
and livid countenance of Castruccio Cesa-
rini.

" ' It is a dreary night and a solemn hour,
Maltravers" said the Italian, with a dis-
torted smile ; " a fittino; night and time for
my interview with you."

" ' Away, said Maltravers, in an impa-
tient tone. ' I am not at leisure for these
mock heroics.'

" ' Ay, but you shall hear me to the end.
1 have watched your arrival ; I have count-
ed the hours in which you have remained
with her ; I have followed you home. If
you have human passions, humanity itself
must be dried up within you, and the wild
beast in his cavern is not more fearful to
encounter. Thus, then, I seek and brave
you. Be still. Has Florence revealed to
you the name of him who belied you, and
who betrayed himself to the death .^"

" ' Ha !' said Maltravers, growing very
pale, and fixing his eyes on Cesarini, ' you

* Bride of Lamermoor, vol. II. page 47. See
" Art in Fiction," II Vol. Bulwer's Miscellanies.

1850.

Bulwer Lytton as a Novelist.

317

are not the man ; my suspicions lighted
elsewhere !'

" M am the man. Do thy worst !'

" Scarce were the words uttered, when,
with a fierce cr^ , Malti avers threw himself
on the Italian ; he tore him from his foot-
ing, he grasped him in his arms as a child,
he literally whirled him around and on
high ; and in that maddening paroxysm, it
was, perhaps, but the balance of a feather,
in the conflictino; elements of reveno;e and
reason, which withheld Maltravers from
huriino; the criminal from the fearful heio;ht
on which they stood. The temptation
passed ; Cesarini leaned, safe, unharmed,
but half senseless with mingled rage and
fear, against the wall.

'' He was alone ; Maltravers had left
him ; had fled from hiiuseU"; fled into the
chamber ; fled for refuge from human pas-
sions to the winff of the All-Seeino; and All-
Present, 'Father,' he groaned, sinking
on liis knees, 'support me, save me ; with-
out thee 1 am lost !'

" Slowly Cesarini recovered himself and
entered the apartment. A string in his
brain was already loos-med, and, sullen and
ferocious, he returned again to goad the
lion that had spared him. Maltravers had
already risen from his brief prayer. With
locked and rigid countenance, with arms
folded on his breast, he stood confronting
the Italian, who advanced toward him with
a menacing brow and arm, but halted in-
voluntarily at the sight of that command-
ing aspect.

" ' Well, then,' said Maltravers at last,
with atone preternaturally calm and low,
you are the man. Speak on ; what arts
did you employ V

" ' Your own letter ! When, many
months ago, 1 wrote to tell you of the
hopes it was mine to conceive, and to ask
your opinion of her I loved how did you
answer me ^ With doubts, -""ith deprecia-
tion, with covert and polished scoin, of the
very woman whom, with a deliberate trea-
chery, you afterwards wrested from my
worshipping and ado-ing love. That let-
ter 1 garbled. I made the doubts you ex-
pressed of my happin3ss seem doubts of
your own. I changed the dates. 1 made
the letter itself appear written, not on your
first acquaintance wi'h her, but subsequent
to your plighted and accepted vows. Your

own hand-writing convicted you of mean
suspicion and of sordid motives. These
were my arts.'

"'They were most noble. Do you
abide by them, or repent .?'

" ' For what 1 have done to tJiee I have
no repentance. Nay, 1 regard thee still
as the aggressor. Thou hast robbed me of
her who was all the world to me ; and be
thine excuses vs^iat th y may, I hate thee
with a hate that cannot slumber — that ab-
jures the abjuct name of remorse. I exult
in the very agonies thou endurest. But
for her, the stricken, the dying ! 0 God, O
God ! The blow falls upon mine own head !'

" ' Dying !' said Maltravers, slowly, and
with a sudder. " No, no - not dying - or
what art thou } Her murderer ! And what
must 1 be ? Her avenger !'

" Ov^erpowered with his own passions,
Cesarini sank down, and covered his face
with his clasped hands. Maltravers stalk-
ed gloomily to and fro the apartment.
There was silence for some moments. At
length •Maltravers paused opposite Cesari-
ni, and thus addressed him.

" You have come hither, not so much to
confess the basest crime of which man can
be guilty, as to gloat over my anguish, and
to brave me to revenge my wiongs. Go,
man, go ; for the present you are safe.
While she lives, my life is not mine to
hazard, if she recover, I can pity you and
forgive. To me your oiFmce, foul though
it be, sinks below contempt itself. It is
the consequences of the ciime as they re-
late to — to — that noble and suffering wo-
man, which can alone raise the despicable
into the tragic, and make your life a worthy
and a necessary offering, not to revenge,
but justice ; life for life, victim for victim.
'Tis the old law — 'tis a righteous one.'

" ' You shall not, with your accursed
coldness, thus dispose of me as you will,
and arrogate the option to smite or save.
No, continued Cesaiini, stamping his foot;
' no ; far from seeking forbeaiance at your
hands, I dare and defy you. You think I
have injured you ; J, on the other hand,
consider the wroni has cone from you,
But for you, she might have loved me,
have been mme. Let that pass. But for
you, at least it is certain that I should
neither have sullied my soul with a vile
sin, nor brought the brightest of human

318

Bulwer Lytfnn as a Novelist.

Sept.

beings to the grave. If she dies, the mur-
der may be mine, but you were the cause,
the devil that tempted to the offence. 1
defy and spit upon you ; I have no softness
left in me ; my veins are fire ; my heart
thirsts for blood. You — you — have still
the privilege to see, to bless, to tend her ;
and I — I who have loved her so — who
could have kissed the earth she trod on —
I — well, well, no matter — I hate you — I
insult you — I call you villain and dastard
— I throw myself on the laws of honor,
and I demand that conflict you defer or
deny.'

"'Home, doter, home; fall on thy
knees, and pray to heaven for pardon ;
make up thy dread account ; repine not
at the days yet thine to wash the black
spot from thy soul. For, while I speak, I
forsee too well that her days are numbered,
and with her thread of life is entwined
thine own. Within twelve hours from her
last moments we meet again, but now I am
as ice and stone ; thou canst not move me.
Her closing life shall not be darkened by
the aspect of blood — by the thought of the
sacrifice it demands. Begone, or menials
shall cast thee from my door ; those lips
are too base to breath the same air as hon-
est men. Begone, I say, begone !'

" Though scarce a muscle moved in the
lofty countenance of Maltravers — though
no frown darkened the majestic brow-
though no fire broke from the stedfast and
scornful eye, there was a kingly authority
in the aspect, in the extended arm, the
stately care, and a power in the swell of
the stern voice, which awed and quelled the
unhappy being whose own passions exhaust-
ed and unmanned him. He strove toflino"
back scorn to scorn, but his lips trembled,
and his voice died in hollow murmurs
within his breast. Maltravers regarded
him with a crushing: and intense disdain. —
The Italian, with shame and wrath, wrest-
led against himself, but in vain ; the cold
eye that was fixed upon him was as a spell,
which the fiend within him could not rebel
against nor resist. Mechanically he moved
to the door; then, turning round, he shook
his clenched hand at Maltravers, and with
a wild and hysterical laugh, rushed from
the apartment."*

The most superficial reader of Bulwer and

♦Ernest Maltravers, Book IX, Chapt. VI.

Scott cannot have failed to observe the
difference in power, just pointed out, and
elucidated. And throughout the pages of
the great Romancer he will look in vain
for a parallel to the passage last quo-
ted. Brief as it is, and standing alone
as it is here presi^nted, stripped of'^he ex-
citing influences of the foregoing pages, a
mere fragment, it yet shows a rare and high
order of art. There is no avoidance of the
difficulties of the scene, nofear ofgrapplino-
with its mighty perplexities, even when
anything but complete triumph would be
utter failure. Taken in connection with
what precedes and follows, it is a master-
piece, a conception to which few livino"
writers could attain, unequalled in vio-or
by anything even in that wonderful accu-
mulation of metaphysical strength — the im-
mortal Caleb Williams

According to the views which dfferent
classes of readers take of life will be their
estimate of Bulwer's novels. Many deem
them too highly colored, too full of starthng
passion, and too deficient in the plain and
homely. They complain of want of sym-
pathy with his characters. They cannot
help feeling interested in them, but they
have little in common. Hiscreationsseem
to possess too much of the abstractly phi-
losophic— too little of the every day real.
These objections are not so much urged
against the Caxtons, as they were against
his earli,?r works, Eugene Aram, and De-
vereux, and Ernest Maltravers.

Not to deny that Bulwer sometimes acts
the hierophant only to the initiated, it may
be observed that in crit.cism, the distinc-
tion between the True and Real should
ever be faithfully noticed — althougjh in
fact it rarely is. To illustrate the import-
ance of this distinction by referrino- ao-ain
to technical Art, the greatest of painters
have painted Truth ; the most common
place, Reality. In the execution of the
latter there is merit, but little genius, and
no exercise of the conceptive faculty. Ra-
phael best pleases those whose eyes are open-
ed to Beauty and Truth by educated intel-
lect and feeHno;. Teniers suits the boors
of a market town, who applaud painted
tuinips and tobacco pipes in proportion as
they are like the real ones. The skillful
critic acknowledges the merit of fidelity to
the visible and the R^^al, but bows reve-
rently to conceptions of the Ideal and the

1850.

Bulwer Lytton as a Novelist.

S19

True. The 'majestic Apollo and the an-
gelic Madonna are none the less true
if none of mortals ever shone in similarly
glorious beauty.

It is, therefore, the highest praise of
Bulwer's novels, considered as works of art
and art-directed genius, that they are more
fully appreciated by the highly educated,
than the mass of the community. They
are universally read, it is true, but one class
reads for the philosophy and the moral ;
the other for the story ; as in the theatre,
the boxes applaud Hamlet's soliloquy, and
the pit encores the ghost and the duel with
Laertes. No doubt, the tens of thousands
of fictions that are yearly cast into the
bubbling whirlpools of literature, swim fa-
mously for a while, but they nevertheless
rapidly disappear and but single ones are
left of myriads. Lady Alice, and Wuther-
ino- Heio-hts, and a kindred birth, float their
brief hour and sink forever — but men's
eyes still gaze on Ivanhoe, Zanoni, Wie-
land. The mass cannot rescue any book
from oblivion — its preservation depends
solely upon the unerring taste of the illu-
minati of letters.

Upon Bulwer's romances judgment can
be easily passed, with the exception of
Rienzi and the Last Days of Pompeii ;
which would have been novels if written
by Romans, and are romances only in
name ; they are neither much better nor
worse than the generality of their kind —
and will live about as long — unless they
shall be preserved to posterity by their for-
tunate relationship to the Caxtons. As
descriptions of past times and manners
they are labored, erudite — and uninterest-
ing ; minute as catalogues — and almost as
tedious ; diversified with unseasonable phi-
losophy, sentiment far in advance of its
times, and moralizing entirely out of place
with the moralists. Take from the number
— happily small — a few eminently beautiful
passages, and the remainder will equal a
corresponding quantity of James or Ains-
worth. Indeed, it is unfortunate for Bul-
wer, and his error must be set down amono-
the infirmities of genius, that he ever wrote
them. Critics generally have taken his
novels and romances as a mass, and have
judged them accordingly ; a mode of pro-
ceeding as unfair as irrational. They have,

in consequence of this course, been some-
what puzzled to locate him, and have com-
promised the matter by placing him mid-
way between! James and Scott. This may
be called criticism, but it still leaves us in
the dark, for James and Scott are fellow
travelers of a diflferent road from that of
Bulwer, and the road is endless and steep,
and Scott is upon a height to which our
dazzled eyes can scarcely reach, and James
is so far down in the dark valley that we
cannot bring our measuring instruments to
bear on him. The tendency of Bulwer's
path is no less heavenward, its ascent is
even more difficult. He has successfully
scaled dizzy heights, and his clear voice
ever and anon rings to us from afar ; but
when he forsakes this path, and attempts
to tread in the steps of Scott, we hear only
his feeble wailings from the dim obscurity
below.

With the moral of Bulwer's novels the
present criticism has little to do. Yet it
is daily becoming more evident that their
tendency, with an exception or two in the
case of his eailiest works, is healthful and
noble. Particularly is this true of the
Caxtons of which it has been justly said,
that it would make an excellent Sunday
School book. A truthful opinion, and yet
one that sounds strangely to the ears of
many who are repeating to themselves
the anti-Bulwer anathemas they heard a
decade since. He who hopes at all, finds
much to hope for in the future career of
Bulwer. Forgetting the crudities and the
sins of a youth atoned for by tears of bit-
ter anguish, he will recognize in the now
matured genius the same promise of good
to come. He will see the skillful master
in possession of a mighty instrument, the
true art of fiction. Can the result be
doubtful } And can any one be so forget-
ful of the claims of art and letters as to
counsel the workman to lay by the craft in
which a busy youth has been spent, and
consign the experience of a life time to a
dead and hopeless oblivion } May fiction,
sanctified in the parables of a Perfect
Teacher, continue as heretofore an influ-
ence persuasive and powerful ; and may
Bulwer Lytton as in his latest and best
efforts array it ever on the side of Truth,
Morality and Religion. c. b.

320

Congressional Summary.

Sept.

CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY.

The fate of the Compromise Bill being
finally determined by stiiking out all the ma-
terial parts, and leaving nothing but that por-
tion which provided for a Territorial Govern-
ment for Utah, in this mutilaied condition it
passed the Senate on the first of August. On
the same day Mr. Clay made the following
remarks on the causes of the failure of this
bill :

They had presented to the country a measure
of peace and tranquillity — one which would
have harmonized every discordant feeling.
That measure had met with a fate, not al-
together unexpected, but which as respects the
country, he extremely deplored. For himself,
personally, he had no cause of complaint
The majority of the Committee to which he
belonged had done their whole duty, faithful-
ly and perseveringly. If the measure has
been defeated, it has been defeated by extrem-
ists on both sides of the chamber.

'•Now, Mr President," the Senator conti-
nued, "I stand here in my place, meaning to
be unawed by any threats, whether they come
from individuals or from States. I should de-
plore as much as any man living or dead that
arms should be raised against the authority of
the Union, either by individuals or by States.
But, after all that has occurred, if any one
State, or a portion of the people of any Slate,
choose to place themselves in military array
against the government of the Union, I am for
trying the strength of the government. lam
for ascertaining whether we have got a gov-
ernment or not — practical, efficient, capable of
maintaining its authority, and of upholding
the powers and interests which belong to a
government. Nor, sir, am I to be alarmed or
dissuaded from any such course by intimations
of the spilling of blood. If blood is to be
spilt, by whose fault is it to be spilt ? Upon
the supposition, I maintain it will be the fault
of those who choose to raise the standard of
disunion, and the endeavor to prostrate this
government; and, sir, when that is done, as
long as it pleases God to give me a voice to
express my sentiments, or an arm, weak and
enfeebled as it may be by age, that voice and
that arm will be on the side of my country,
for the support of the general authority, and

for the maintenance of the powers of the
Union."

In the Senate, Auojust 2, the followinjj; bill,
for the settlement of the boundaries of Texas,
was passed by a vote of 30 to 20 :

A bill proposing to the State of Texas thf: establishment
of her northern and western boundaries, ihc relinquish-
ment by said stare of all territory claimed by her exte-
rior to sa d boundaries, and of all her claim upon the
Unired States.

He if enacted, &c., That the following propositions shall
be, and the same hereby are, offered to the State of Texas,
which, when agreed to by the said state iu an act passed
by the yeneral assembly, shall be bindin<: and ohliQ:atory
upon the United States and upon the ta d State oi Texas ;
Provided, That said agreement by the f^aid general assem-
bly shall be given on or before the 1st day of December,
1850.

First. The State of Texas will agree, that her boundary
on tiie north shall commence at the point at which the
meridian of 100 degrees west from Greenwich is inter-
sected liy the parallel of 36 degrees and 30 minutes north
latitude^ and shall run from said point due west to the
meridian of 103 degrees west from Greenwich ; thence
her boundary shall run due south to the GJd degree of
north latitude ; thence on the said parallel of 32 degrees
of north latitude to the Rio Bravo del Norte : and thence
with the channel of said river to the Gulf of M xico.

.^econd. The State of Texas cedes to the United States
all her claims to territory exterior to her limits and bound-
aries, which she agrees to establish by the lirst article of
this agreement.

Third. The State of Texas relinquishes all claim upon
the United States for liability of the debts of Texa-, and
for compensation or indemnity for the surrender to the
United States other ships, forts, arsenals, cu-tom houses,
custom-house revenue, arms and ammunitions of war, and
public buildings, with their sites, which became the pro-
perty of the United Stntes at the time of the annexation.

Fourth. The United States, in con-^ideratiou of said re-
duction of boundaries, cession of territory, and relin-
quishment of claims, will pay to the State of Texas the
sum of ten millions of dollars in a stock bearing five per
cent, interest, and redeemable at the end of fourteen years,
the interest payable half-yearly at the treasury of the
Uniied States.

Filth. Immediately after the President of the United
States shall have been furnished with an .luthentic copy
of the act of the general assembly of Texas, accepting
these propositions, he shall cause the stock to be i.-sued in
favor of the State of Texas, as provided for in the fifth
article of this agreement.

Provided, also, That live millions of said stock .«hall not
be issued until tiie creditors of the said state, holding
bonds for Texas, for which duties on i.nports were spe-
cially pledged, shall first file, at the treasury uf the United
States, releases of claims against the United States for or
on account of said bonds.

The vote was as follows :

\k AS— Messrs. Badger, Bell, Berrien, Bradbury, Bright,
Gas.-, Clark. Clemens. Cooper Davis of Mass., Dawson,
Dickinson. Dodge of Iowa, Douglas, FelcL, Foote, Greene ,
Houston, King, Norri^, Pearce Phelps, Ra-k, Shields,
Smith, Spruance, Sturgeon, Wales, VVhilcomb and Win
throp — 30,

1850.

Nays— Messrs. Atchison, Baldwin, Bamwell, Benton,
Butler. Chase, Davis of Miss., Dodge of Wis., Ewing, Hale,
Hunter, Mason, Morton, Seward, Soule, Turney, Under-
wood, Upham, Walker and Yulee — 20.

In Senate, August 13, the bill for the admis-
sion of California as a State, was passed by
the following vote :

Yeas— Messrs. Baldwin, Bell. Benton, Bradbury, Bright,
Cass, Cliase, Cooper, Davis of Mass , Dickinson, Dodge of
Wis., Dodge of Iowa, Douglas, Ewing, Green, Hale, Ham-
lin, liouston, Jones, Miller, Norris, Phelps, Seward, Smith,
Shields, Spruance, Sturgeon, Underwood, Upham, Wales,
Walker, Winthrop and Whitcomb.

Nays— Messrs. Atchison, Barnwell, Berrien, Butler,
Clement, Davis ot Miss.,Foote, Hunter, King, Mason, Mor-
ton, Pratt, Sebastian, Soule, Turney and Yulee.

The following is a copy of the bill :

A BILL

For the admission of the State of California into the Union.

Whereas, the people ot California have presented a con-
stitution and asked adnission into the Union, which con-
stitution was submitted to Congress by the President of
the United States, by message, dated February thirteenth
eighteen hundred and titty, and which, on due examina
tion, is found to be republican in its form of government.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Kepresenta
lives of the United Slates of America, in Congress assem
bled, That the State of California shall be one, and is here
by declared to be one, of the United States of America,
and admitted into the Union on an equal footing witli the
original States, in all respects whatever.

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That until the repre-
sentatives in Congress shall be apportioned according to
an actual enumeration of the inhabitants of the United
States, the State of California shall be entitled to two
Representatives in Congress.

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That the said State
of California is admitted into the Union upon the express
condition that the people of said State, through their Le-
gislature or otherwise, shall never interfere with the pri-
mary disposal of the public lands within its limits, and
shall pass no law, and do no act whereby the title of the
United States to, and right to dispose of, the same shall be
impaired or questioned ; and they shall never lay any tax
or assessment of any description whatever upon the pub-
lic domain of the United States ; and in no case shall non-
resident proprietors, who are citizens of the United States,
be taxed higlier than residents ; and that all the navigable
waters within the said State shall b« common highways,
and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of said state as
to the citizens ot the United States, without any tax, im-
post, or duty therefor ; Provided, That nothing herein
contained shall be construed as recognizing or rejecting
the propositions tendered by the people of California as
articles of compact in the ordinance adopted by the con-
vention which formed the constitution of that State.

August 15, the bill for providing a territori-
al government for New Mexico passed the
Senate.

The first section of this bill enacts that all that portion
of territory of the United States, hounded as follows, to
wit: Beginning at a point in the Colorado river, where
the boundary line of the Republic of Mexico crosses the
same ; thence eastwardly with said boundary line to the
Rio Grand ; thence lollowing the main channel of said
river to the parallel of the thirty-second degree of north
latitude ; thence eastward with said degree to its intersec-
tion witli the 103d degree of longitude west from Green-
v?ich : thence north with said degree of longitude to the
parallel of the 38th degree of north latitude ; thence west
with said parallel to the summit of the Sierra Madre ;
thence south with the crest of said mountains to the 37th
parallel of north latitude ; thence west with the said par-
allel to its intersection with the boundary line of the State
of California ; thence with the said boundary line to the
place of beginning, be, and the same is hereby, erected
into a temporary government by the name of the territory
of New Mexico. Provided, That nothing in this act con-
tained, shall be construed to inhibit the government of

VOL. VI. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

Congressional Summary.

321

the United States from dividing said territory into two or
more territories, in such manner and at such times as
Congress shall deem convenient and proper, or from at-
taching any portion thereof to any other territory or
state. Provided, further, That when admitted as a
state, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall
be received into the Unioh, with or without slavery, as
their constitution may prescribe at the time of their ad-
mission.

The seventeenth section enacts that the provisions of
this bill be suspended until the disputed boundary between
the United States and the State of Texas shall be adjusted :
and when such adjustment shall have been effected, the
President of the Unitad States shall issue his proclamation
declaring this act to be in full force and operation, and
shall proceed to appoint the officers herein provided to be
appointed for the said territory.

In the House of Representatives, August 6,
a message was received from President Fill-
more, transmitting the following letter to the
late President from Governor Bell of Texas,
and an answer thereto from the present Secre-
tary of State : —

To his Excellency Z. Taylor, President of the United States :
Executive Department, >
Austin, Texas, June 14th, 1850. j

Sir — By authority of the Legislature of Texas, the Ex-
ecutive of the State, in February last, dispatched a spe-
cial commissioner, with full power and instructions to ex-
tend the civil jurisdiction of the state over the unorganized
counties of El Paso, Worth, Presidio and Santa Fe, situ-
ated upon its northwestern limits — the commissioner ha3
reported to me in an official form, that the military officers
employed in the service of the United States, stationed at
Santa Fe, interposed adversely with the inhabitants to the
fulfilment of his object, by employing influence in favor
of the establishment of a separate state government east
of the Rio Grande, and within tiie rightful limits of the
State of Texas. I transmit to you herewith the Proclama-
tion of Colonel Monroe, acting under the orders of the
government of the United States, under the designation of
Civil and Military Governor of the Territory of New
Mexico. I have very respectfully to request that your
Excellency will cause me to be informed, at your earliest
possible convenience, whether or not this officer has acted
in this matter under the orders of his Government, and
whether his Proclamation meets with the approval of the
President of the United States.

With assurances of distinguished consideration, I have
the honor to be your Excellency's most obedient servant.
(Signed) P. H. BELL.

In his message on the subject^ the President
calls attention to the fact that the Legislature
of Texas has been convened by the Governor,
for the purpose of establishing by force her
claim over the territory on the East side of
Rio Grande, heretofore regarded as an inte-
gral part of the Department of New Mexico.
These proceedings^ he says, may well arrest
the attention of all branches of the Government
of the United States ; and he is rejoiced that
they occur while the Congress is yet in ses-
sion, for a crisis may yet be brought about
which shall summon both Houses of Con-
gress, and still more emphatically, the Execu-
tive Government to an immediate readiness for
the performance of their respective duties.
The President^ after alluding to the Constitu-
tional powers of the Executive to employ the
whole military resources of the country to
suppress any combinations against the laws,
which cannot be suppressed by the ordinary
course of judicial proceedings of the power
vested in the Marshals; points out what would
21

322

Congressional Summary,

Sept.

be the duty of the Executive in case of such
opposition. Texas, as a state, has power to
maintain her own laws, so far as they are
not repugnant to the laws of the United
States, to suppress insurrection, and to punish
treason ; but this power is only local and
confined within her own limits. If Texan
IMilitia march into any State or Territory of
the Union to enforce any law of Texas, they
become trespassers and intruders ; and if they
there obstruct any law, or seize individuals to
be carried off for trial elsewhere, and such
posse should be too powerful for the local and
civil authorities, they are to be prevented and
resisted by the authorities of the Udited States.
The President has no power to consider the
question between Texas and New INIexico;
it rests betw^een Congress and Texas. He
can only regard the actual state of things as
they existed at the date of the JNIexican treaty,
protecting all of the inhabitants of that terri-
tory in their liberties and property.

So far as I am able to comprehend, says
President Fillmore, the claim of title on the
part of Texas appears to Congress to be well
founded in whole or in part. It is in the com-
petency of Congress to offer her an indemnity
for a surrender of that claim in a case like
this, surrounded as it is by many cogent con-
siderations, all calling for amicable adjust-
ment and immediate settlement. The govern-
ment of the United States would be justified,
in my opinion, in allowing an indemnity to
Texas, not unreasonable or extravagant, but
fair, liberal, and awarded in a just spirit of
accommodation. I think no event would be
hailed with more gratification by the people
of the United States than the amicable adjust-
ment of questions of difficulty which have
now for so long a time agitated the country,
and occupied, to the exclusion of other sub-
jects, the time and attention of Congress.

By direction of President Fillmore, Mr.
Webster replied to the letter of Governor
"Bell, to the following efiect :

In answer to your first interrogatory, viz..
Whether Colonel Moxroe. in issuing the pro-
clamation referred to, acted under the orders
of this government; that proclamation, writes
Mr. Webster, was issued in consequence of
a letter of instructions given in November,
1849, by the late Secretary of War, by order
of the ja,te President, to Lieutenant Colonel
McCall. This order instructs Colonel McCall
to assist the neople of New jMexico in the for-
mation of a government for themselves. He
Avas to act altogether in subordination to the
wishes of the people, and by no means so as
to influence or direct by personal or official
authority, their primary action in this matter.
The whole object of this order evidently is
that the President did not wish that the qiio.si
■military government there existing, should be

in the way of the formation by the citizens of
that territory, of a free, popular, republican
government for their own protection, should
they so choose.

To judge intelligently and fairly of the
transaction, INlr. Webster continues, we
must recall the circumstances of the case as
they then existed.

Previous to the war with ]Mexico, commenc-
ing May 1846, the territory of New JMexico
was a State of the Mexican Republic, and
was governed by her laws. In August of
that year, General Kearxey, acting under
orders from this government, entered Santa
Fe, the capital, at the head of his troops, and
announced by proclamation his intention to
hold the department with its original boun-
daries and under the name of New Mexico.
In this proclamation he guaranteed the inha-
bitants protection and a free government, on
the same day he established a constitution,
providing the executive legislative and judi-
cial departments of the government, defining
the right of sufTrage and establishing a code
of laws, and the trial by jury. By this con-
stitution, the members of the lower house of
Legislature were apportioned among the coun-
ties, over which Texas has since endeavoured
to establish her jurisdiction.

In December of the same year, continues
Mr. Webster, a copy of this constitution and
code was transmitted by President Polk to
Congress. In his message on that occasion,
he disapproves of these portions of the con-
stitution which give to conquered inhabitants
of the territory a permanent territorial govern-
ment and rights which can only belong to ci-
tizens of the LTnited States. Those regula-
tions however, for the security of the con-
quest, for the preservation of order and the
protection of the right of the inhabitants, he
recognized and approved.

Nearly four years have elapsed since this
quo.si military government was established and
received the qualified approval of President
Polk. In the mean time peace has been con-
cluded with Mexico, and a boundary line es-
tablished that left this territory within the
United States, thereby confirming to this
country by treaty what it had acquired by con-
quest. This treaty, in perfect accordance with
the proclamation of General Kearney, declar-
ed that the inhabitants of the territory should
be incorporated into the United States, and
be admitted at the proper time to all the rights
of citizens ; and, in the meantime, be protected
in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property,
and religion. 'Thus it will be seen that the
authority of the United States over New Mex-
ico was the result of conquest, and the pos-
session held in the first place, was of course a
military possession.

The military government then, existing at

1840.

Congressional Summary.

323

the date of the order, existed there of inevi-
table necessity. It existed as much against
the will of the Executive as against the will
of the people. The late President thought,
that, under these circumstances, it v^^as justifi-
able in the people of the territory to form a
constitution without previous authority from
Congress, and thereupon apply for admission
as a State. It was under such a state of
things and such opinions, that the order of
November last was given. This order indi-
cates no boundary and defines no territory ex-
cept by the name New Mexico. And so far as
that indicated anything, it referred to a known
territory, organized under military authority
and approved by the Executive, and left with-
out remonstrance or alteration by Congress
for more than three years.

Secondly, you ask whether the proclama-
tion of Colonel Monroe meets with the ap-
proval of the President of the United States ?

To answer this, it is necessary to consider
the object of the proclamation and its effects.
If its object be to assume the authority to set-
tle the boundary dispute, then the President
has no hesitation in saying that the object does
not meet with his approbation; for neither
the Executive nor the inhabitants of New
Mexico have any such authority. But it has
been shown that Colonel Monroe could have
had no intention of this kind, and that his aid
was merely given to assist the people in form-
ing a State Constitution to be afterwards pre-
sented for approval to Congress. What then
would be the effect of this constitution ] If
it compromits the rights of either party to

that question, then it does not meet the Pre-
sident's approbation, for he deems it his duty
to leave the settlement of that question to its
proper tribunal. The dispute is between the
United States and Texas and not between
New Mexico and Texas. If those people
should voluntarily come under the jurisdiction
of Texas, such consent would not bind the
United States, nor if they should claim the
title for the United States, would it deprive
Texas of whatever rights she might possess ?
They could only be affected by her own acts
or a judicial decision. The Constitution of
New Mexico could have no legal validity un-
til it was recognized by the law-making
power of the Government of the United States.
Hence the formation of this constitution is a
mere nullity except as a petition to Congress
to be admitted as a State. But as it is the
right of all to petition Congress for any law
it might constitutionally pass ; and as he
thinks the act can prejudice no one, the Pre-
sident feels bound to approve of the conduct
of Colonel Monroe in issuing the proclama-
tion.

I an directed also to state, continued Mr.
Webster, that in the opinion of the President,
it would be unjust to suppose that the late
President desired to assume an unfriendly
attitude towards Texas. The object of the
executive government has been, and is now,
to secure the peace of the country; to main-
tain as far as practicable the state of things
existing at the date of the treaty ] and to up-
hold the rights of the respective parties, until
they are settled by competent authority.

324

The Danish Question,

Sept.

THE DANISH QUESTION.*

In the Southern part of the peninsula
of Denmark, between the North Sea and
the Elbe on the one side, and the Baltic
on the other, is a little tract of land, of
rather less extent than the State of Mas-
sachusetts, usually put down in our School
Atlases as within the limits of Denmark.
The climate is pleasant, the soil is fertile,
the inhabitants are industrious, and nature
seems to have marked them out for a hap-
py people. Yet the world has seen within
only a few weeks on this very tract of
country, eighty thousand human beings
meet in conflict ; and after a terrific battle
of two days, separate leaving five or six
thousand of their number dead on the field.
It has seen them, too, after the struggle,
retire only to prepare anew for another
and severer strife. It has seen England
and Russia, France and Austria, holding
conferences together at London for months,
discussing the afi'airs of one of the petty
parts of the pettiest kingdom of Europe,
and promulgating the result of their deli-
berations in protocols and supplements to
protocols. And the world (or at least the
Western part of it) seeing these things, has
asked itself why these little Duchies con-
taining together not much more than
1 ,000,000 people, should trouble the heads
of Nesselrode and Palmerston, of Bunsen
and Swartsenburg, and should threaten to
involve Europe in war. That is just the
question we shall undertake very briefly to
answer.

Before entering on the subject, we de-
sire to say a simple word on our increasing
interest in European politics. One of the
best legacies left us by our greatest man,
were the words " it must he unwise in us
to implicate onrsdves^ hy artificial ties,
in the ordinary vicissitudes of her (Eu-
7'ope'^s) politics^ or the ordinary combina-

tions and collisions of her friendships or
enmities.''"' This was also a cardinal ar-
ticle in the political creed of the late Pre-
sident Taylor ; and we knew that while he
lived and held the reins of power, it would
be scrupulously and exactly carried into
practice in the administration of the Gov-
ernment. But our country has lost the
controling influence of his sagacity and
honesty in the hour when she needs them
most. And it requires no extraordinary
foresight to perceive, that however wise or
just a policy it may be (and no one is more
firmly convinced of its wisdom or its jus-
tice than ourselves) the time must soon
come when America can no longer isolate
herself from the world. Heaven grant we
are no true prophet. Enjoying the bless-
ings of liberty, surrounded with the com-
forts of life, the meads of education open
to the poorest in the community, having
no paupers to support, America could best
spend her energies in the development of
her own resources, and the elevation of the
condition of her own people. But we fear
(and we speak it boldly) — we fear it is in
vain to hope for such wisdom. Our rea-
sons are these.

Every one who has watched the current
of Continental politics for a few years past,
even from this side of the water, must
have seen that from one end of Europe to
the other two great principles are con-
stantly brought in contact — the principle
of absolutism, represented in Russia, and
the principle of liberalism represented,
generally, in England. American ideas of
this conflict are not very vivid, as (with
shame we say it) our knowledge of Europe-
an afi'airs is too often derived only from
our own journals ; and these in their turn,
are, with some honorable exceptions, made
up from the " jTme.?," a journal entirely

* The manuscript of the above article was not received until the day of publication. The critical
notices of new books for this month were necessarily postponed, though they were in type, to make room
for matter the interest of which would have been weakened by a month's delay.

1850.

The Danish Question.

325

in the absolutist influence. But tlie fact
is not the less true. Nor is the conflict
passive merely. Russia has active agents
in every court in Europe : and there is no
doubt (though the fact is not susceptible
of proof) that she has a subsidized press in
her employ. On the other hand the files
of " blue books," the annual attempts to
overthrow Lord Palmerston, and the de-
bates they cause — now on Italy, now on
Spain, and now on Greece — show that
England too is busy propaganding. The
truth is, there is in Europe an organized
interference in the domestic afiairs of the
various nations of the Continent. Propa-
gandism is a theoretically unrecognized,
but constantly existing element of interna-
tional law.

Nor are these ideas confined to cabinets.
They are forced upon cabinets by popular
struggles. The people of the Continent,
struggling under oppression, have per-
ceived the necessity of greater liberty, for
their more perfect moral and intellectual
development. They have become alive
to the fact that they have' rights from Hea-
ven, above those doled out to them by law :
and if, in the efibrt to possess themselves
of their natural birthright they have oc-
casionally been guilty of excesses, blame
only those who, by blinding them, have
made them unable to endure the light.
The influence of absolutism, under the
specious pretence of preserving order, has
been actively directed against all these
efibrts. We have seen how sad have been
its efi'ects in Hungary. We are now to
record its interference with the afiairs of
the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein.

The countries agitated with these ideas,
are constantly sending to our shores men
fleeing from the oppressiveness of a state of
society they find themselves unable to
overthrow. They come by thousands to
our new country ; they fell the forest and
turn up the prairie ; they organize states
and elect members of Congress : they be-
come, to all intents and purposes, with us
and of us. Forswearing all allegiance to
their old country, they love it all the more
in their hearts ; — and loving it thus all the
more for the separation, and embued with
the doctrines of interference and propagand-
ism, they form already a very important
element in our political organization. It
requires (as we have already said) no pro-
phetic eye to foresee, that at no very dis-

tant day the party which desires their
votes must adopt their political creed —
modified it may be, but recognizing the
principle of interference. We sincerely
hope we are mistaken ; but we speak not
as a partisan, but as a politician, aiming to
view the future in the wider light of philo-
sophic truth.

The Danish peninsula consists of Jutland
on the North, Schleswig in the middle, and
Holstein in the South. These, with the
Islands of Zealand, Laaland, Funen,
Alsten, Fehmern, &c., on the East, and
several other islands on the West, make up
what is popularly, though incorrectly, call-
ed the Kingdom of Denmark. Jutland,
Zealand, Funen, and Laaland are entirely
Scandinavian, and compose the principal
part of Denmark proper. Holstein, in-
habited by about 500,000 people of Teuto-
nic origin, is entirely German, is a part of
the German Confederation, and is subject
to the King of Denmark — not as King of
Denmark, but as Duke of Holstein.
Schleswig (the original home of the Angles)
separated from Holstein by the river Eyder,
and comprising within its limits the islands
of Alsen and Fehmern, is the real cause of
the present dispute. It contains about
700,000 inhabitants, of whom 150,000 are
of Danish or Scandinavian origin, the rest
of Teutonic or German. Thus much for
the position of the parties.

Now for the points at issue. They are
briefly these two : —

1. A question of the succession. In
Holstein the Salique law prevails. In
Denmark it does not. The Crown of
Denmark is about to fall into the female
line. This must (legally) sever Holstein
from the Danes. Whether it will, in like
manner, sever Schleswig, depends on the
solution of the second question, which is —

2. As to the constitutional rights of the
Duchies. Denmark is, or rather was, prior
to 1S4S, entirely absolutist in its form of
Government. Holstein, possessed a con-
stitution, in the enjoyment of which, it was
protected by the Germanic Confederation.
Schleswig-Holstein claims that for four
hundred years Scheslwig has been joined
with Holstein in the administration of its
afiairs, that it is really part of it, and en-
titled to the equal participation in all its
rights. Denmark, on the other hand,
claims that Schleswig is an integral
part of Scandinavian Denmark, and as

326

The Danish Question,

Sept.

such, subject with that, to the will of the
King. She also undertakes to go beyond
that, and consolidate both the Duchies,
Denmark proper, and the provinces, under
one form of united government, which
claim Schleswig-Holstein resists as an in-
fringement upon its ancient rights.

We cannot hope, within the limits of a
magazine article, to discuss either of these
questions, — much less both. A more
knotty " statement of fact," never delight-
ed the ingenuity of a lawyer. The relation
of the Duchies toward^ each other and to-
wards Denmark shifts each instant we look
upon it. There is nothing tangible in it.
We think we have conquered the difficul-
ties, when, lo ! (like the genius in the Ara-
bian Nights almost overcome by the Queen
of Beauty,) the last seed of the pomegran-
ate becomes alive again ; and well for us if
we, like her, are not destroyed in the con-
flict. We shall only endeavor to state
some few historical facts, and then deduce
from them, as best we can, our own view
on the question. After that, we shall try
to briefly exhibit the immediate causes of
the present war.

We dismiss all argument drawn on either
side from the early limits of Germany, as
both parties agree about the facts. Doubt-
less, the Eyder was the Northern boundary
of the empire, and is the Northern boun-
dary of the Confederation, if that unfortu-
nate distracted country can be said now to
have any bond of union, beyond that of a
common origin and a noble literature.
When modern Europe first began to
emerge from mediseval chaos, Schleswig
was found in intimate relations with Hol-
stein, and in a hostile attitude to Denmark,
to whom its fealty was due : and from the
beginning of the twelfth to the middle of
the fifteenth century, this relation contin-
ued, growing each year more intimate, as
the prosperity it caused became the more
manifest. In 1448, a long strife about the
succession was terminated by the election
to the county, by the Estates, of Christian
I. Count of Oldenburg, and at that time,
by a similar election. King of Denmark.
The Estates, however, declared in the
resolution electing him, that they did not
elect him as King of Denmark^ but be-
cause they placed especial confidence in
him, and required of him a promise, which
was given, that the countries of Schleswig
and Holstein should always remain uni-

ted The County of Holstein was raised
by the Emperor to the rank of a Duchy,
and the investiture granted to Christian
and his male descendants. In 1474, a like
investiture was made on the part of Den-
mark, of the Duchy of Schleswig, to the
Oldenburg family, jTor themselves and their
MALE descendants.

From 1448 forward, for nearly two cen-
turies, the Crown of Denmark, and the
sovereignty of the Duchies continued elec-
tive. But in each, the respective States
General confined their choice to the mem-
bers of the House of Oldenburg. On the
death of Frederic I. this house split into
two branches, the Royal line, and the Got-
torp line. The Royal line in turn was
subdivided into the elder or Throne line,
and the younger line, the head of which is
the present Duke of Augustenberg. The
present head of the Gottorp line is the
Emperor Nicholas of Russia.

When the lines separated, Denmark
continued to elect from the elder line.

But the sovereignty of the Duchies was
shared in a peculiar way. Each duchy
was divided into a ducal part and a royal
part. In the former the Gottorp line ruled,
in the latter the royal line. The division
was not made of Holstein to the one, and
Schleswig to the other, but of parts of
each duchy to each line, as if the two
were one in interest.

In 1 6 1 6 , the then head of the Gottorp line
died, leaving a will providing that his sons
should succeed by right of primogeniture ;
and in 1622, in consequence of this will,
and the accession of the estates to its pro-
visions, the succession of so much of the
duchies as was subject to the Gottorp line,
became hereditary in the place of being
elective.

In 1660 a like change took place in
Denmark. The " Royal Law" of Fre-
deric in. provided that the Crown of Den-
mark should be hereditary for all his de-
scendants, whether male or female^ the
males taking first. It is immaterial to
notice the manner in which the Gottorp
line became dispossessed of the Duchies.

It is sufficient to say, that after a long
contest during which various success at-
tended either party, in 1773 they finally
renounced all right to Schleswig in favor
of the King of Denmark, his heirs and
successors to the royal throne ; and to
Holstein in favor of the same and his male

1850.

TJie Danish Question.

327

descendants, and in their default, to his
brother and his male descendants.

Now we ask attention to the following
facts, clearly deducible from the foregoing :

1 . The Crown of Denmark goes to heirs
female in default of heirs male.

2. The Duchy of Holstein goes to the
heirs male lineal, and in default of such,
to the heirs male collateral.

3. The Duchy of Schleswig, by its ori-
ginal settlement in 1448, by its investiture
in 1474, and by its continued existence,
being inseparably united with Holstein,
must follow in the same line of succession,
otherwise the union decreed to be insep-
arable, would be severed. Some German
writers, (among others M. de Grumer to
whom we are principally indebted for the
foregoing facts) assume that the ducal part
of Schleswig (the Southern and Central
portion of the country) follows the Danish
order of succession. But it seems to us
that the order of succession was settled in
1448, and that no arbitrary decree or ces-
sion of a monarch can change that which
was then definitely determined.

So long as heirs male continued to the
Danish line, this difference would be of no
practical importance. But (and this is
what gives to it its consequence) the male
line of Denmark approaches its end. The
present King has been twice divorced and
is childless. His uncle is past sixty
years of age and without heirs. If both these
die without male issue the Crown of Den-
mark will pass to the female line. In this
event, the Duke of Augustenberg as the
lieir male collateral rightfully becomes the
chief of the Duchies ; and a monarchy
which once held a not unimportant posi-
tion in Europe, becomes again shorn of
some of its chiefest provinces, and reduced
to the level of a fourth rate power.

The late King, anticipating this contin-
gency, on the 8th of July 1846 issued
Royal Letters Patent, indicating his will
that " the succession of the royal law
should have full force and validity in the
Duchy of Schleswig" and that as to the
Duchy of Holstein all his efforts should
tend " to bring about a full and entire in-
tegrity of the States of Denmark^''''
which in plain English means that he
would try to incorporate the Duchies into
the absolute Kingdom of Denmark.

This the Duchies have resisted, throw-

ing themselves back on theu" old constitu-
tional rights. And here we come to the
second point above stated as at issue be-
tween the two parties.

The Kingdom of Denmark was, at the
time of these letters, the only absolute
monarchy in Europe. The nobles of Rus-
sia, even, have an indirect influence over
the Emperor. But in Denmark the will
of the King was an absolute law. It is
melancholy to see how a nation, once free,
consented to surrender its liberties. In-
heriting comparative freedom, protected
by their insular position from foreign ag-
gression, surrounded with everything to in-
duce a love of liberty, the free aspirations
of their souls freshened by contact with
the ocean, they let their inheritance glide
away, as the tide flows through their own
channel. The mob law substituted for
absolute power by the Revolution of 1848
(which we shall soon notice) has shown
even less regard for constitutional rights
than the despotism it supplanted.

The Germanic Duchies, however, have
preserved intact their ancient rights. These
are : —

1. To exist independent of Denmark .
The title to the sovereignty is distinct
from the title to the sovereignty of Den-
mark. The tenure by which it is held is
distinct. The line of its succession is dis-
tinct. The rights, it gives over the people
it subjects, are distinct. The Teutonic
Duchymen are themselves a distinct peo-
ple, speaking a different language, having
different laws enacted by their own inde-
pendent Parliament sitting at Kiel within
their own territories. They have their
own army, their own Germanic navy, their
own system of taxation and of disbursing
their revenues.

2. The right to exist together. Schles-
wig has existed separate from Denmark for
600 years — constitutionally attached to
Holstein for 400 years. Both Duchies
have had during that time a common lan-
guage, common laws, a common parlia-
ment or estates, a common army, a com-
mon navy, and a common system of taxa-
tion. They have, in addition to these, as
we have already shown, a common head
and a common rule of succession. Do not
these make a common political body .?

3. The right to exist liberally. The
right to exist at all in a manner contrary

328

Tlie Danish Question,

Sept.

to the will of the sovereign implies consti-
tutionalism, and with constitutionalism
comes liberalism : so that this is a neces-
sary sequitur from either of the other rights.

The present deplorable war has been
produced by the actual invasion of these
rights by the crown, and by the threaten-
ed change in the law of succession in the
Duchies whenever opportunity shall offer.
Far behind it all, the hand of Russia is
visible, exerting her influence to stop the
spread of liberalism by destroying its
sources, and taking under her wing the lit-
tle maritime power of Denmark, which
holds the keys of the Baltic, to make it at
once a thorn in the side of Prussia, and a
worse than a thorn in the event of a con-
test with England. Her interest in the
settlement of this question has been great-
ly misconceived It has been said that
she stands as the collateral heir, to whom
the Duchies may eventually come if sever-
ed from Denmark, and that therefore the
true policy of those who wish to keep her
out of the Peninsular is, to aid in the con-
solidation of all its integral parts. Not
so, however. The renuciation by Catha-
rine in 1767 in behalf of Paul I., confirm-
ed by him in 1773 on coming of age, cuts
off the throne of Russia from all claim to
the succession : and the wiser policy of the
present cabinet of Petersburg is, instead
of reviving discarded claims to create new
ones, by making its support necessary to
the rulino; house.

But to return from such a digression to
our historical review. The late King,
Christian VIIl., foreseeing the disintegra-
tion of his dojiinions, made it the object
of his life to assimilate the institutions of
the Duchies to those of the Kingdom. He
set to work deliberately to root up the
rights of self-government. He introduced
a new system of banking and of regulating
the military affairs of the Duchies. He
removed German and appointed Danish
officers to all stations of power or emolu-
ment in them. And finally, as the crown-
ing act, he issued the letters patent of
July 8, 1846, to which we have already
adverted, extending the "royal law" to
Schleswig, to a part of Holstein also, and
declaring his intention of incorporating the
remainder of the latter within his Danish
dominions, when he could devise some way
to do it. We ought to have stated, per-

haps, that these letters were not unherald-
ed. Without observing many previous
evidences of the intention of the Crown,
it is enough to say that the Roeskild as-
sembly of estates in 1844 petitioned the
King to " declare in a solemn manner that
the Danish monarchy, Denmark proper,
the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein,
together with the Duchy Lanenberg shall
form one sole indivisible empire and be an
undivided heritage according to the royal
law," &c. &c. To this the Royal Com-
missioner replied, expressing his " sympa-
thy with the nation," and assured the
movers that " His Majesty would certain-
ly be pleased with a petition of this kind."
His Majesty preserved a gracious silence,
till the estates of the Duchies, alarmed at
the indications of Royal wishes, and pushed
forwcird by the demonstrations of a univer-
sal popular repugnance, on the 21st Dec.
1844, filed a caveat in the form of a pro-
test of great moderation and ability. A
" royal notification" replied to this, ex-
pressing astonishment at it, reiterating
substantially the views of the King, and
announcing that orders had been issued to
the Commissioners in the Duchies, forbid-
ding them to receive any further petitions
and protests concerning this affair. The
arbitrary monarch would not allow even a
discussion of the question.

On the 6th of January, 1848, King
Christian died, and the present monarch
ascended the throne, whispering to him-
self, so loudly as to be overheard, his
sense of his unfitness for the station. His
doubts were shared by others. He re-
tained at first the ministry of his father,
and on the 20th of January issued letters
patent full of professions of paternal love,
and redolent with the desire of unity. The
cry of national unity was taken up by the
radicals of the capital, who, themselves,
without law or constitution, looked with an
envious eye at their German brethren in
the possession of both. Only two days
after the death of Christian (says Messrs.
Droysen and Samwer) it was proclaimed
by their leaders that a constitution had be-
come a necessity — such a one as should
re-unite Schleswig to Denmark, and pro-
tect Holstein in her peculiar institutions.
On the 28th the King, yielding to the
pressure, promulgated a decree for the in-
troduction of a constitution. A general

1850.

The Danish Question.

329

assembly of tried men was called to decide
on this and other things, and the manner
of electing delegates in the Duchies point-
ed out. Meanwhile the mob of the capi-
tal and its organ continued to press on the
Government the idea of unity. The
Schleswig-Holsteiners, on their part, moved
to prevent their incorporation into the
Danish monarchy, and determined to send
a delegation to Copenhagen to look after
their rights.

Then came the French Revolution of
February, the news of which darted through
the European system like a galvanic shock,
convulsing the most distant extremities.
The old ministry trembled and fell. The
men of the Casino began to hope. They
organised themselves in their resorts.
They nightly collected assemblies of the
discontented about them. They harangued
them on their rights. They spoke of the
past glories of Denmark. They pictured
her future, shorn of the Duchies. They
won their infuriated hearers to the cause of
unity. While struggling with despotism
for an admission of their own rights, these
misguided men forgot to show to others the
justice they demanded for themselves.
They pledged the radical party to the fur-
therance of the views of despotism.

The capital heaved with convulsions.
The Government felt the shock. Cabinets
were formed and dismissed in a vain at-
tempt to h )ld out against the revolution.
On the 20th of March a meeting of thou-
sands was held at the Casino, and addressed
by a wood sawyer. They resolved anew
the resolution of unity, and determined to
force the decision before the deputation
from the Duchies could arrive. On the
21st the deputation left Kiel. On the
22d at 8 o'clock in the morning it arrived
m Copenhagan. The Casino had poured
its flood into the street. A new ministry
hostile to the Duchies was pressed upon
the King. He yielded. The Casino tri-
umphed without dwelling on the parleys
which took place between the Monarch
and the deputies, or on the moves and
counter moves made by the adverse parties
of the capital to get or keep the reins of
power, suffice it to say that the party of
unity prevailed. A ministry was formed
on this basis, headed by Count Moltke,
who was literally assailed by the moderate

liberals of Copenhagen, for having aban-
doned his former views, and compromised
the honor of the Crown by yielding to the
demands of the mob. The deputation was
admitted to an audience, and the prede-
termined refusal given to its prayer. Its
members were held, as it were, prisoners,
and obliged to receive undesired hospitali-
ties. No steamer was allowed to sail for
Kiel, lest the news of the refusal should
precede the troops of Denmark into the
fortifications of the Duchies. In a few
days they were permitted to return. They
found that, in their absence, the people, on
the receipt of the news of the revolution,
in the belief that their Duke (the King of
Denmark) was acting under direction of
others, had organised a provisional gov-
ernment, to defend "a German country
from the Danes."

It is needless now to follow the diploma-
tic moves that succeeded this, and much
less to fight over again the battles it
caused. These events are so fresh in the
minds of all, that we shall not ofiend our
readers' pride by asking them to go over
the ground with us. After two years of
diplomatic sluggishness, the parties have
again found themselves face to face on the
battle-field — the Danes still under the rule
of the Casino, the Duchies still under
their Provisional Government. Prussia
has withdrawn her troops, having concluded
a peace with Denmark for herself and
Germany. Sweden has in like manner
withdrawn, and the original parties have
been left to fight it out for themselves.
A bloody battle has ( nsued, in which both
have shown great bravery, and which
threatens not to be the last.

The present position of the great powers
of Europe deserves notice. The relatioa
of it will close the story.

It was sometime since whispered that
England was about to abandon the Schles-
wig-Holsteiners to their fate. In the latter
part of June these rumors assumed so defi-
nite an appearance that Prussia, with all
Europe opposed to her, was forced to con-
clude with Denmark the treaty of peace
from which, immediately, the present war
grew. The 4th of July came the first
protocol : and on the 2nd of August, the
representatives of England, France, Russia,
Sweden, Denmark, and Austria met

330

The Danish Question.

Sept.

together at the Foreiirn Office in Downins;

C C D

Street, and " put forth the following de-
claration :

" Section 1. That the unanimous desire of
the aforesaid powers is that the state of the
possessions at present united under the domin-
ion of His Danish Majesty be maintained in
its integrity.

" Section 2. In consequence they acknow-
ledge the \visdom of the views which deter-
mine His Majesty the King of Denmark to
regulate eventually the order of succession in
his Royal House so as to facilitate the arrange-
ment by which the aforesaid objects may be
attained, without impairing the relations of
the Duchy of Holstein with the Germanic con-
federation."

By section 4, they reserve the right to
enter into future ao-reements " to give an
additional pledge of stability to these ar-
rangements by an act of European recog-
nition."

Such a union as this, if the parties to it
do not quarrel, must result in a forcible
settlement of the question. But the re-
flecting man may well pause to inquire
how long a ^'settlement," conceived in
injustice, perpetrated in wrong, and main-
tained by force, can exist in the present
state of human advancement. If HoLstein

is of right entitled to a Germanic Consti-
tution— if Schleswigr is of right entitled to
be joined to her — if both are of right en-
titled to a male succession — and if the
people of both know these rights and are
determined to abide by them — not all the
force of Europe can reconcile or hold
them to injustice. It may for a while re-
press the patriotism which impelled them
to fight superior numbers at Idstedt,
the heroism which enabled them to sus-
tain themselves so long in that contest,
and the devotion which animates them
with a fresh vigor after defeat. It may re-
press these, but it cannot destroy them.
The seed may lie buried, but while it is
buried, it will fructify. The duchies are
Grerman — their love is for Germany —
their hopes are for Germany — and if dis-
united Germany ever realizes its hope of
Union, the struggles of Schleswig-Hoistein
will be renewed.

We have said nothing of the little
duchy of Lanenburg, as we have not wish-
ed to add any unnecessary perplexities to
a question which has quite enough of its
own. Lest we be thought to have ignored
the existence of its 50,000 inhabitants, we
have added this explanation.

1850.

Miscellany.

331

MISCELLANY.

On the 2nd June, Sir Robert Peel expired,
after a few days illness, caused by injuries
received by a fall from his horse. He was
observed to reel in his saddle a few moments
before he fell, and this, together with an usual
absence of manner w^hich had been previously
noticed in him, makes it probable that his fall
was occasioned by a fit. One of his ribs was
broken, and pressed upon his lungs, producing
intense pain which was only relieved by
death.

Sir Robert Peel, though for many years
enjoying a greater celebrity and reputation
than any man in the United Kingdom, was
himself of humble, origin. His father was a
manufacturer of cotton goods, who had amass-
ed an immense fortune, and becoming ambi-
tious of founding a family as well as proud of
the early promise of his son^, procured for
him a seat in Parliament. Here the talents of
Mr. Peel and the advantage his father's im-
mense wealth gave him, rendered him at once
of decided influence. At the opening of the
session in 1810, he was chosen to second the
address in reply to the Royal Speech. He
was afterwards appointed Under Secretary of
state during the administration of Mr. Perci-
val. The assassination of that minister lead-
ing to a dissolution of the cabinet, Mr. Peel
was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland.
He was then (in May, 1812^) only twenty-six
years of age, but he held this difficult and
important office through a period of great ex-
citement till 1818. Being elected the repre-
sentative in Parliament of the University of
Oxford, he resigned his office in the cabinet and
continued to serve as a member of Parliament,
unattached. The part he had taken against Ca-
tholic Emancipation recommended him to the
Electors of Oxford University ; but on a change
in his opinions on this question in 1828, he was
rejected. In 1819, Mr. Peel was appointed
Chairman of the Committee appointed to in-
quire into the state of the Bank of England.
Heretofore, a strong advocate of the system of
irredeemable paper-money which the policy
and the necessities of Pitt had fastened on the
nation, so complete was the change in his
opinions caused by the evidence produced by
this committee, that he brought in a bill, known

afterwards as Peel's Act, requiring the Bank
of England gradually to resume specie pay-
ment, and settling the currency of the countryj
on its present metallic basis. This measure,
though necessary, produced a terrible revul-
sion and severe distress throughout the king-
dom, and for a time Mr. Peel became the
object of violent party vituperation. In 1822
he was raised to the head of the Home-otfice,
in which position he was enabled to put into
operation his views for the gradual mitigation
of the Penal Code of Great Britain. He did
this by a reformation, and not by a revolution,
in the criminal laws of the country, and pro-
ceeded, throughout, with the advice and con-
currence of technical and experienced lawyers.
The measure was received by the whole coun-
try with favor, and contributed to give for a
time, an unbounded popularity to the admin-
istration. On the breaking up of this cabinet
by the retirement of Lord Liverpool, Mr. Peel
resigned. In 1828 he returned to the Home-
office, and in conjunction with the Duke of
Wellington, and in face of the strenuous oppo-
sition he had always manifested towards
Catholic Emancipation, repealed the disabili-
ties of the Roman Catholics. By this trim-
ming to the demands of political expediency,
he lost in a great degree the confidence of the
people in his integrity of purpose. The mea-
sure was just and necessary, and his change
of opinion was in this case undoubtedly sin-
cere, but frequent vacillations, such as marked
the whole of Mr. Peel's career, always attach
a shade of suspicion to the principles of public
men.

About this time (1830) occurred the revo-
lution of the three days in France, and the
Wellington administration, with its high Tory
predilections and opposition to all reform, fell
before the influence it imparted to the rising
democratic spirit in Great Britain. In 1832,
under the administration of Lord Grey, the
Reform Bill passed. The popular impulse
grew with each concession, and the Cabinet,
wishing to resort to the old system of coercion
to put down the discontents in Ireland met
with such opposition from the new House of
Commons, that it resigned. The next admin-
istration also fell, and Sir Robert Peel, who

332

Miscellany.

Sept.

had fallen heir to the immense estate of his fath-
er, and was at that moment in Italy, was called
home to take the helm of state at a time when
strono; hands had shown themselves unequal
to the task. But after an inellectual struo:g]e
of three months, he was forced as-ain to yield
the seals of office. In 1841 he aarain went
into office, and in 1845 he accomplished the
repeal of the Corn Laws.

In the character of this statesman, we find
less of originality and extended views than of
political tact and a practical readiness for all
circumstances and emergencies. Rendered inde-
pendent by his great wealth of popular caprice
or party tyranny, he was ready to brave tempo-
rary disfavor with the people for what he con-
ceived to be their ultimate good. His position
as the head of the manufacturing interest, car-
ried him into power, as that interest slowly
but surely gained a preponderating influence
in the country. At the time of his death, no
man in the country enjoyed a greater degree of
the confidence of his countrymen than Sir R.
Peel. There was no very great degree of en-
thusiasm, perhaps, but a steady reliance on his
skill and shrewdness, gained by nearly half a
century's experience, in arresting political
storms, and in distinguishing between the im-
potent raging of faction and the resolute de-
mands of a rising and powerful opinion.

There has been a sanguinary battle between
the Danish troops and those of the Duchies
of Schleswig-Holstein. The Danish army
numbered upwards of 38.000 men, whilst that
of the Holsleiners was only 28,000. The
loss on both sides is very great. Some esti-
mates make the whole number killed and
wounded nearly 8,000. The victors must have
suffered severely, since they were contented to
remain in possession of the field of battle,
without following up their advantage. The
retreat of the Schleswig-Holsteiners was made
in good order. They are again upwards of
26,000 strong, and are recruiting their ranks
with the utmost energy. Much enthusiasm
prevails throughout Germany for their cause.
The contending armies remain encamped
close to each other, without any hostile move-
ment except an exchange of shots at intervals
between the outposts. Since the retreat of
the Holstein army within the territory of
Holstein proper, the head-quarters of General
Willisen have been fixed in the fortified town
of Rendsburg. The Danes are throwing up
field-works at different points around the town
of Schleswig to guard it against attack ; but
neither side from present appearances, con-
templates an immediate renewal of hostilities.
From a deficiency of officers in the Holstein
army, the Government has invited all _such
throughout Germany to enter their ranks.
From the enthusiasm felt for the cause of the

Duchies, officers have since arrived in greate^
numbers than are requisite. Hanoverian troops,
by connivance probably of the Government of
Hanover, have been noticed among the Holstei-
ners. The Danish ^linister of War has issued
a notice that such officers and privates will not
be considered as under the protection of the
law of nations, and are not entitled to receive
the treatment of prisoners of war. General
Willisen. in return, declares that he will hold
the five hundred Danish prisoners responsible
for whatever may happen to those of the
Schleswig Holstein party.

Our Charge d' Affaires in Portugal, Mr. Clay,
has demanded his passports, and left Lisbon.
The cause is, the refusal of the Portuguese
Government to pay all the claims pressed by
the American Charge. These claims amount
to about $300,000, all of which they have
finally acknowledged, with the exception of
S90.000, the sum demanded for the destruction
of the privateer General Armstrong by a Brit-
ish cruiser in the neutral port of Fayal, during
the last war. At the time, Portugal remon-
strated warmly with Great Britain for the vio-
lation of its neutrality. She now asserts that
this remonstrance was in consequence of mis-
information, and that the privateer commenced
the conflict by first firing on the boats of the
frigate. She offers to leave this portion of the
claim to the arbitration of a maritime power
of the second rank, equally interested with
herself in maintaining the rights of neutrals.
This, Mr. Clay has, in consequence of his in-
structions, refused.

In the midst of the abuse lavished on this
country by English and Continental journals
on account of the piratical expedition against
Cuba, and which this government could no
more prevent than they can the more quiet in-
vasions by their own burglars of our bank-
vaults and dwelling houses, it should be borne
in mind that Spain herself, in the face of good
faith and treaties and humanity, feeds the
prosperity of her favorite island by conniving
at the introduction of African slaves. If the
spirit of adventure among our citizens which
has filled up our Western wilds, and is now
peopling the shores of the Pacific, sometimes
breaks into the comity and law of nations, we
still have little sympathy for any power that
puts herself under the ban of all nations, by-
encouraging this horrible traffic. On the very
night when Lopez was driven ofi the shores
of Cuba, upwards of one thousand slaves were
landed upon the island. It is stated that
during the government of the present Captain-
General, the importation of negroes has been
carried to the highest pitch. It is well known
that Cuba is indebted in great part for her

1850.

Miscellany.

333

flourishing condition to the cheapness of this
imported slave-labor.

Louis Napoleon has commenced his " pro-
gress" through France. His proposed course
was first to Lyons, and thence to return to
Paris by Strasburgh and Metz.

General Lamoriciere has gone to Switzer-
land, for the object, it is said, of an interview
with General Cavaignac. General Lamori-
ciere is said to be the bearer of an important
document, signed by many of the principal
leaders of the Republican party, acknowledg-
ing General Cavaignac as their political leader,
and pledging him their warmest support
should he oner himself as a candidate for the
Presidency of the Republic.

The Committee appointed to investigate the
demand made by the Minister of War for an
extraordinary credit of 1 3,000,000 f., of which
a portion was intended to meet the expenses of
the proposed camp at Versailles, have reported
against the measure (General Oudinot, who
was chairman, taking the most prominent part
in opposing the demand). The Government
have, consequently, renounced the intention of
forming the camp, and has thus got rid of the
probable defeat of the ministry and the threat-
ened differences between the President of the
Republic and the Assembly.

Paris has been visited by a terrible thunder-
storm, attended by torrents of rain. In some
places the water was four feet deep. Shops
and cellars were inundated. The carriage-
horses were up to their shoulders. Coaches
plied in the Boulevard Montmartre to convey
persons across for one sou.

Parallel with the slavery agitation on this
side of the Atlantic, runs the discussion in
Great Britain of the expediency of maintain-
ing an African squadron for the extermination
of the slave-trade. While most men on this
continent feel, and feel deeply, that the legis-
lation of to-day is not for ourselves alone, nor
for a single generation, but for nations yet
unborn, — that kingdoms, surpassing in extent
and power any that the world has yet known,
may receive from the acts of this year and
even this month their fruitful germs of good
or evil, full of interest is the fact, that in the
English Parliament are debates equally as
portentous for futurity as those in Congress.
Thus coincidently, these are no longer ques-
tions of caste, nor of dominant and subject
races, — they remain no longer with those that
look at these institutions gloomily but chari-
tably, a calculation of relative good or ill,
and with those that view them partially but
reasonably, as of doubtful ability to withstand
the democratic and republican march of the
age ; but they become an ethnical problem of
the most terrible import. Shall Europe or

shall Africa be engrafted on this new world %
Shall the white race, raised through centuries
of turbulence and struggling and convulsion to
its present pitch of civilization, be lifted on
these shores to a height that even incredulity
cannot but hope for, or shall Africa pour over
her dusky millions to give us in the Southern
continent a black America as we now have a
black Hayti ? with its unutterable vice, its
baboon Emperors, and the green stagnation of
its human life '? Nor is this the end of it.
Such a future gives, in the Western as has
always been seen in the Eastern Indies, the
picture of a feeble race of men, inert from
nature, and weak from barbarism, and with
the inevitable M'ealth that a wealth-producing
soil and climate must create, to suffer beneath
successive irruptions of northern conquerors.
To elucidate the vast importance of the le-
gislation that is now going on concerning these
subjects, we give in a condensed form, an ar-
ticle from the Edinburgh Review of July last^

Report on the Slave Trade from Lords and
Commons. 1848-49.

Although the Committees of the Lords and
Commons came to opposite conclusions on this
subject, it should not be overlooked that whilst
the Lords were unanimous, all the principal re-
solutions in the Commons condemnatory of the
African squadron, were carried only by the cast-
ing vote of the Chairman. The balance of opi-
nion is consequently decisive, and is adverse
to the abandonment of our measures of repres-
sion. The unequivocal vote, too, of the pre-
sent session, and the confidence with which
the Cabinet have staked their political exist-
ence in support of the same opinion, speak
still more positively. Z

It has been argued that England can ill
afford to spend one farthing in support of
measures, however philanthropical, which do
not immediately affect her own people. This
argument only makes it the more necessary to
point out that our warfare against the slave
trade is justifiable on the score of economy as
well as philanthropy.

No one at all familiar with the subject will
pretend that Brazil, the chief slave market,
can be as effectually restrained by treaties or
by moral influence as by the vigilance of the
African squadron. The Brazilian Government
is utterly powerless for this purpose. To pre-
tend the contrary would be to add the scandal
of hypocrisy to our other scandals.

From first to last, the history of the case
has been misrepresented. By .many the expenses
of the squadron have been greatly exaggerat-
ed. Others persist, in spite of the clearest
evidence, in considering the coast of Africa
as the grave of our officers and seamen. An-
other objection i?, that but little good has been
effected, in spite of the immense outlay, and

334

Miscellany.

Sept.

the length of time through ^vhich it has been
continued. A review of the real facts of the
case will show, that though Sir W. Dobbin's
Act was passed in 1788, the British slave
trade was not abolished till 1807. But even
after the Abolition Act, from 1807 to 1815, we
continued inactive ] and when at last we put
forth our strength, our first measures were un-
successful from inexperience. Five or six
ships, ill-selected, and. unsuited for the duty,
were ordered to cruise off the African coast
for the suppression of the slave trade. Till
1824, the smaller vessels were all removed
from their stations during several months of
the year, to avoid the rainy season. More-
over, our treaties with foreign powers restrict-
ed all our operations ;. one flag or another was
never wanting, under which the slaver could
carry on his deadly calling ; and it was not
till 1839 that the last obstacle of this kind,
the protection of the Portuguese flag, was
swept away. In that year, the strength of the
squadron was not only greatly increased, (the
armament being raised from 700 strong to
3.000,) but its efficiency was enhanced in a
great degree by the treaty obligations which
other countries had contracted with us. Our
success at that time promised to be complete.
Since then, various causes have concurred to
check it, — the doubts suggested, during Lord
Aberdeen's administration, as to our legal
powers, and the alteration of the duties on
sugar in 1842, and still more in 1846. We
thus find that instead of the experiment of
forcible repression having had a trial of a
quarter of a century, it should be considered
as confined within the limited period of seven
or eight years. Dudng these years, we un-
hesitatingly affirm its success to have surpass-
ed the expectation of the most sanguine.

Equally great with the misrepresentation of
the duration of the experiment, has been the
exaggeration of its cost. Instead of the round
sum" of one million of pounds, at which the
expense is so often stated, a careful estimate
taken from the records of the Admiralty Office
and comprising the expen.^e of the wages of
crews, wear and tear of hulls, masts, &c.,
wear and tear of machinery of steam vessels,
value of coals, &c., show an aggregate charge
for one year (1846) of £301,523. Allowing
£200,000 more for incidental expenses, in-
cluding the charge of the 2^Iixed Commission
Courts, which cost about £25,000 per annum,
yet even thus we have only one half of the
amount usually stated as the annual cost of
the squadron. And with regard to its un-
healthiness, European skill and care have
rendered the African station as healthy as the
rest of our naval stations in the tropics. The
second Resolution of the Lords affirms, ' That
all the evidence goes to prove that the preva-
lent impression as to the general uuhealthiness

of the cruising squadron is without founda-
tion.'

The argument pertinaciously advanced
against the maintenance of the African
Squadron declares that it entails an immense
cost on the nation without any result — the
slave-trade still raging as before. We sub-
mit to the reader a brief investigation, produc-
ing the following conclusions : —

I. The squadron has not been a failure in
as much as it has materially diminished both
slavery and the slave-trade. Without this
restriction, these evils would enormously in-
crease, and prove most disastrous to the
human race, both in Africa and in Cuba and
Brazil ) condemning Africa to ruin and devas-
tation, and filling Cuba and Brazil with a
greatly augmented slave population, more cru-
elly treated than at present; while the hor-
rors of the Middle Passage would continue as
fearful as ever, with thousands of additional
victims.

II. The cost of our naval armament is not
more than these great objects are worth, even
in a pecuniary point of view, for the expense,
as we have seen, is not more than half of
what it is usually represented ; whilst, were
the squadron withdrawn, England would suf-
fer from the destruction of her legitimate
commerce with Africa, and from the total
ruin of her West Indian Colonies.

First then as to the question whether the
slave-trave would not largely increase if our
vessels were withdrawn %

The best answer to this question is to point
to the extraordinary profits of the successful
slave dealer. The price of a full-grown male
slave, in Cuba, at the present time, is £100,
and has been £125 ; while in Africa he would
have cost from £lOto £20, — the cost of tran-
sit being from £3 to £4 more. In Brazil the
price is generally lower than in Cuba ; but
a cargo which in Africa is worth £5,000, in
Brazil will fetch £25,000, making 500 per
cent, profit. Now whence this difference
between the first and last cost ^ Clearly, it
marks the intensity of the demand and the
degree of difficulty and prevention accom-
plished by the squadron. It is the scale of
the efficiency of the suppression system. It
is because there are many instances of failure
in the trade, to set off against one of success.
Should this pressure be removed, it is obvious
that the price would fall to its natural level.
Assuming this to be one-third of its pre-
sent rate, the demand would be almost unlim-
ited. The gulf opened for this absorption of
human victims would widen year by year.

On sugar plantations the rapid consump-
tion of human life keeps up a steady yearly
demand. In the English West_ Indies, the
slave population, amounting in 1818 to
558,000, was diminished in twelve years by

INDEX.

Angling (Review, P. P.) 32.

Arctic Regions, Map of, 571.

Aspects of Nature, by Alexander Van Humboldt,
(Review of,) Deserts. Their division into the
Desert proper or Sahara ; the Leanos or plains
on the eastern coast of South America, which
are half the year devoid of vegetation ; the
Steppe, furnishing subsistence throughout the
year for pastoral tribes, and the Copse, or bar-
ren, shrubby wastes of the North of Europe ;
the physiognomy of Plants, as an indication of
those natural features that direct the civilization
of races ; volcanoes, 143.

Bremer, Miss, at Home, 423.

British encroachments and aggressions in Central
America ; commercial importance of Bay of
Fonseca ; Island ol Tigre ; seizure by the Bri-
tish of the Port of San Juan de Nicaragua ; ef-
fect of relative geographical position of Great
Britain and the United States on Asiatic com-
merce ; advantage to the United States of ship
canal by route of Lake Nicaragua ; Buccaneers
originators of English intercourse with these re-
gions ; character of the natives; difficulties be-
tween Spain and Great Britain respecting this
territory ; final relinquishment of all claim by
British government ; revival of British attempts
on decline of Spanish power ; grants from the
Mosquito king to Jamaica traders ; revocation
of grants ; seizure of the port of San Juan by
the British ; war on Nicaragua ; British exhibit
of the Mosquito question ; letter of Lord Palm-
erston ; refutation, 188, 335.

Browning's Poems, (Review,) 388.

Cabriolet by Ik. Marvel, 162.

Clay, Mr., speech of, (Review); policy of the na-

tion in regard to slavery and its extension ; sup»
pression of slavery in all territories of the United
States by act of central government ; expedien-
cy discussed ; special message and scheme of
President Taylor; advice of the President to
New Mexico to form State government ; re-
commends early admission of Caliiornia ; Boun-
dary question between New Mexico and Texas
to be brought before Supreme Court and settled
on international principles ; resolutions offered
by Mr. Clay ; power of Congress to legislate for
territories undeniable but inexpedient; proposi-
tion of Mr. Clay re.'^pecting boundary and debts
of Texas ; abolition of slavery in District of Co-
lumbia ; slave trade in the District ; rendition
of fugitive slaves ; slave traffic between the
States ; compromise line between slave and free
territory ; such line illusory ; slave or white la-
bor cannot be forced where they have not their
proper conditions ; balance of power ; dissolu-
tion of the Union ; disastrous consequences, 219.

Cooper, J. Fenimore, Works of (Review by G. W.
P.) 406.

Cuba (Review) '' Cuba and the Cubans, by the au-
thor of Letters from Cuba ;" geographical and
commercial importance ol Cuba ; revolutions in
that island ; horrible political persecutions ; de-
scriptions of plantations, their beauty and luxu-
riance ; indolence and luxury ol the Cubans ;
women of Cuba, their early beauty ; religion ;
statistics of education ; impoitance of Cuba as a
possession to England or to the United States,
512.

Democracy in France, by M. Guizot (Review, by
O. ) ; sources of imperfection of human judgment ;
the evil of the times imputed by M. Guizot to its
idolatry of democracy ; government in a demo-
cracy ; radical theories ; democracy a govern-
ment of induction, from the experience of num-
bers as recorded by their suffiage ; aristocracy a

Index.

government of syllogism, from the partial expe-
rience of a few ; right to government, vi^here
resting — democratic republic ; its origin ; essen-
tial elements of society in France, viz : the fa-
mily, property and labor ; political elements of
society in France, viz : the legitimists, the bour-
geoisie, the socialists ; condition of permanent
government : M. Guizot's standard is the empi-
rical example of England, not the inductions of
general history, nor the laws of social science ;
moral conditions of social quiet in France, viz :
the family spirit, the political spirit, and the reli-
gious spirit, 1.

Dana, Richard H., poems and prose writings of,
(Review, G. W. P.) 66.

Duel without seconds, a daguerreotype from the
State House of Arkansas, 418.

Everstone, by the author of Auderport records,
77,168,269,369,497,603.

Franklin, Sn* John, and the Arctic expeditions ;
Scoresby's voyages ; Ross's voyage ; Buchan's
voyage ; voyages of Parry ; Lyon's, Clavering's
and Sabine's voyages ; Franklin's second expe-
dition ; Ross's second voyage ; Sir John Frank-
lin's last expedition, 572.

" Judge not lest ye be judged," 300.
K.

King, Hon. Thomas Butler, report on California,
(Review) ; colonization in America ; increase
and expansion of population ; necessity of ex-
tending the geographical limits of the Union ;
peace policy ; expansive power of the republic ;
rapid settlement of California ; abstract of Mr.
King's report on that country ; yield of the gold
mines ; cost of the California colony to the old
States; advantages and disadvantages; Mr.
Clay's committee of thirteen ; objects of the
committee ; States should be admitted to the
Union for other reasons than those given by the
opposing factions, 443.

Lynch Law, uses and abuses of, (P. P.) sum-
mary justice, its occasional necessity — Back-
woodsman— conditions which give rise to Lynch
Law — " Regulators" and " Moderators" — an-
ecdotes of those associations, 459.

M'lle dela Seigleire, 17—129.
Moss and Rust— Poetry, (G. M. P.) 640.
Montaigne, Michel de, works of — (Review) 47.
Macaulay's history of England, (Review J. B. C.)
347.

The Old Homstead — a poem, 529.

Poe, Edgar A. (Review, G. W. P.) 301.
Poetry— Moss and Rust, (G. M. P.) 640, the Old

Homestead, 529 — Shipwreck, a Ballad, by W.

155.

Rabelais, Francois, Essay on the life and writings
of, — Humor of different nations ; birth, educa-
tion, and early traits of Rabelais ; account of
his more celebrated works ; Pantagreul, 487.

Read's poems or a caution to critics, 287.

Report of the secretary of the treasury, (J. D. W.)

Receipts and expenditures for the fiscal years end-
ing July 1849 and 1850 ; advantages political
and economical of collecting a revenue of cus-
toms ; system of public debt, its advantages ;
existing national debt ; growing expenses of the
government ; necessity for an efficient and eco-
nomical means of increasing the revenue ; pro-
position of Mr. Meredith ; commerce ; its val-
ue not always in the ratio of its profits ; politi-
cal economy, its fallacies ; intercourse of men,
social as well as economical ; comparison of
direct and indirect taxation ; direct taxation un-
favorable to agricultural interest ; England cir-
culates free-trade doctrines in this country to
sustain her manufactures ; all tariffs more or
less protective ; heavy duties most protective,
and furnish largest revenue at expense of foreign
capitalists ; eventually their result is a better
market for our cotton and food growers as well
as manufactures, 113.

Republic, stability and growth of the ; coloniza-
tion ; instability of European governments,
causes of the ; democracy an established form
of government in America ; reason of its sta-
bility ; the three dimensions of power in a
State, internal solidity, durability, and extent ;
the aim of statesmanship to augment these ;
extension of the State ; colonial systems, that
of America the most effectual ; colonization by
the Greeks ; Egyptians, Phoenicians, Romans ;
Russian, Dutch, Spanish, French and English
colonization ; defects of English colonial pol-
icy ; the thirteen American colonies ; origin of
the Union ; colonial policy of the United States
should be calculated to promote the peaceful
enlargement and confirm the internal strength
of the Empire ; the war faction ; necessity of
adopting a settled policy to avert the evils of
war, 556.

Reviews. — Aspects of Nature, by Alexander Von
Humboldt, 143 ; Browning's Poems, 388 ; Cu-
ba and the Cubans, 512 ; Dana's Poems and
Prose writings, QQ ; Michel de Montaigne, 47 ;
Macaulay's History of England, 347 ; Poe's
W^orks, 301 ; Read's Poems, 287 ; Sidonia, 400 ,
Shirley, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, 230;
Rabelais, 487 ; Works of J. Fenimore Cooper,
406.

Shipwreck, a Ballad, (by W.,) 155.
Southern Views of Emancipation and the slave
trade. Introductory remarks ; Northern and

hidex.

Southern extremes no index of state of feeling
in the country at hirge ; views of both sections
should be fairly stated and discussed ; " Slavery
and the slave trade in the District of Columbia,"
by a Mississippian ; " Letter on Slavery as a
domestic institution," by a Virginian, 331.

Shirley, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, (Re-
view by T. C. C), 230.

Sidonia, (Review), 400.

Spain, her ways, her women, and her wines, 292.

St. Pierre's Story, 55.

Seward, Hon. William H., Ex-Governor and U.
S. Senator of the State of New York, biogra-
phy of ; early history ; 1828, Mr. Seward joins
the whig party ; chosen President of Young
Men's State Convention at Utica ; 1830, elected
Senator from the 7th district ; advocates the
cause of internal improvement and universal
education ; opposes removal of deposits of pub-
lic moneys from United States Bank ; nomina-
ted for Governor; whig cause unsuccessful, and
Mr. Seward retires to his professional avocations ;
1837, Mr. Seward elected Governor of the State
of New York ; extracts from his first annual
message ; " anti-rent" agitation ; controversy
between New York and Virginia respecting fu-
gitives from justice ; re-elected Governor f ad-

vocates internal improvements, law reform,
land distribution, educational progress and a
diminution of expenses of naturalization ; de-
clines a third nomination ; resumes professional
pursuits ; case of Freeman the murderer ; Mr,
Seward checks lynch law, and popular preju-
dice ; during contests of 1848 addresses whiga
of Ohio and Pennsylvania ; extracts from
speeches; February, 1849, elected Senator of
United States ; extracts from celebrated speech
in the United States Senate, of March 11th,
1850, on the admission of California in connec-
tion with the slavery question, 622.

Western Prairies ; their beauty and characteristics ;

Western people, (T. C. C), 423.
Whitney's Pacific Rail Road ; Letter of Mr.

Whitney to the Editors of the London Times,

641.

Yeadon, Hon. Richard, memoir of ; Mr. Yeadon's
family and education ; becomes editor of the
Charleston, (S. C.) Courier ; his services in the
legislature, in various public stations in South
Carolina, 477.

THE

AMERICAN

E V

«T0 STAKt) BY l^BE COi^STITtJTlON/'

NEW SERIES, VOL. YI -WHOLE VOL. XII

NEW-YORK:

PUBLISHED AT 118 NASSAU STEEET.

1850.

i-ib zz.hy ii.jVL.Whihjj.'Sv Jioxa a JPiiotogTapii iv Mad. Viheri
for the Am. WhtjIUi^iay.

THE

AMERICAN WHIG RE¥IEV,

No. XXXIV.

FOR OCTOBER, 1850.

THE SPANISH AMERICAN REPUBLICS,

AND THE CAUSES OF THEIR FAILURE.

CENTRAL AMERICA.

The Spanish American Republics, since
their independence, have exhibited a spec-
tacle full of sorrow to the friends of free
institutions throughout the world. Their
general history has been one of anarchy and
blood, with scarcely a page from which we
do not turn in horror and disgust. The
partisan struggles which, in our own
country come and go like a summer storm,
agitating the public mind for an instant, but
leaving it all the quieter when past, have
been marked in these Republics by a spirit
of fierce intolerance, which can only be
born of the deadliest antagonism, and of
which few among us can form any adequate
conception.

The first effort of a triumphant party is
not only to crush but exterminate its op-
ponent ; and it hesitates not 'in adopting
the extreme measures of confiscation, exile,
and death, in the attainment of its objects.

So long as it wields the power, it is ab-
solute, tyrannical, despotic. He who en-
tertains principles or opinions counter to
the dominant faction, must guard his words
and actions, under peril to property and
life.

The consequences are plain and inevi-
table ; hate, distrust, intrigue, revolution.
The gall which flows in harmless, inky
torrents through an untrammelled press,

VOL. VI. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

and the energy which exhausts itself on the
stump, or dies away in idle reverberations in
the domes of our legislative halls, here
rankles in the heart of the man who feels
himself the victim of proscription and op-
pression, and nerves him for deeds which
would chill the blood of our bitterest parti-
san, after the depletion of a newspaper ar-
ticle or an hour's harangue ; and the skill
in combination and arrangement, which
with us is devoted to no worse purpose
than that of packing conventions, dictating
the decrees of a caucus, and canvassing a
city, finds scope and verge enough in deep-
laid, perilous plots against the existing
order of things — for w^hatever the tendency
of that order, it wears the garb of wrong.

This intolerance precludes the existence
of parties, as we understand them, — the
safe-guards of every free commonwealth,
and necessary to its healthful existence.
Precluded from a free expression of opin-
ons, and shut off" from legitimate action,
every opposition is driven to move in secret
conclave, and its measures bear the form,
if they do not conceal the spirit of treason.
Discovery is persecution, perhaps death ;
and scarce a possibility of relief or change
is offered, except through that last and
most dangerous resort, Revolution.

It is easy to conceive how a system of
22

338

Tlie Spanish American Repuhlics.

Oct.

detestable espionage on one hand, and a
scarcely less detestable system of intrigue
on the other, would spring up under such
a condition of things. The man of the op-
position, however laudable his objects or
pure his motives, is of necessity a conspira-
tor ;| and every conspirator, is by equal
necessity, a prey to suspicion, which, in its
turn, where the perils are so great, under
some real or fancied necessity, leads to
treachery, and entails a long series of bloody
revenges.

The disastrous results of these conditions,
are not only felt in the general political sys-
tem, but in every part of the social and civil
body. Law, that sacred intangibility,
which next to God, merits and should re-
ceive the respect andobedince of men, here
loses its divinity, and confounded with the
tyranny and the worst passions and im-
pulses of the men who should be its im-
partial ministers, but who wield its terrors
for the vilest of purposes, is despised and
contemned. That religious deference from
which it derives its majesty and force, and
without which it degenerates into a pretext,
is utterly destroyed ; and society is resolved
into a chaos of conflicting elements, where
might lords it over right, where life nor
property is safe, and where neither honor,
virtue nor wisdom can long survive.

It will, no doubt, be conceded, indeed it
is evident, that the demoralization of the
Spanish American Republics, is the proxi-
mate cause of the intolerance which we
have pointed out. But whence has this
demoralization resulted ? The Spanish
character is not deficient in the nobler at-
tributes of humanity ; the Spanish people are
not less susceptible to lofty impulses than our
own, and are perhaps more theoretically,
if less practically comprehensive, than we
are. There is not in their individual nor in
their collective character anything which
renders them incapable of exercising the
rights, or enjoying rationally the benefits,
of self-government. And those of our
people who complacently ascribe the gene-
ral failure of the Spanish Republics, to a
radical, psychological defect of the Spanish
race, commit a grievous but a very natural
error. With the exception of Chili, all of
them have been, thus far, undoubted fail-
ures. But it should be remembered, that
the origin of these Republics was widely dif-
ferent from that of our own. Among all the

impulses to colonization on this continent,
we seek in vain for any, of that exalted
character which brought our fathers hither.
Among all the adventurers who flocked here,
our ancestors alone had practically solved
the grand problems of civil and religious
freedom. Very different was the advent of
the little band of self-relying, earnest men,
despising and despised of kings, who silently
sought a refuge in America, relying on their
own right arms and their God for support,
— and that of the steel-cased cavaliers, the
pride and flower of Spain, impelled by
ambition and avarice, sustained by the
the proudest monarch of the world, en-
joying the full sunshine of royal favor, fol-
lowed and cheered on by the enthusiasts of
a proselyting faith, inflamed by the wildest
dreams of conquest, and striking for the
dominion of the world !

On the one hand the world saw, taking
deeper and wider root, a people jealous of
their rights, securing every possible conces"
sion in their charters, resisting every en-
croachment on their privileges, and religi-
ously excluding from their midst the aristo-
cratic forms of the old world, — becoming
daily more self- relying and distinct, and
more imbued with the spirit, and familiar
with the forms, of self-government. The
blessings and privileges of freedom came to
them, as the reward of long, unwearying,
enlightened endeavor ; when attained, like
the slowly accumulated competence of the
laborer, they knew how to value and how
to use them. Our revolution was the con-
summation of centuries of well-directed,
rational effort for freedom.

In Spanish America, on the other hand,
amidst the magnificence of the tropics, and
the fragments of aboriginal greatness, were
diff"used a people, reflecting alike the splen-
dors and the corruptions of a powerful
court and of an arrogant aristocracy. The
highest incentives to action were the favors
of artificial and hereditary greatness, or the
accumulation, by whatsoever means, of
that wealth by which those favors might be
purchased. The fame of those whose
names fill the earlier pages of the history of
this people, is that of conquerors alone.
They encountered unprecedented dangers,
displayed an energy unparalleled in human
achievement, overturned empires, and trod
with bloody steps over more than half a
continent. Yet it was for the aggrandize-

ISgO.

The SpanisJi American Republics,

ment of the crown of Castile and Leon,
alone ; and the iron men who executed
these great deeds, prostrated themselves
before the throne of their sovereign, to re-
ceive their reward in marquisates, com-
mands, and grants of lands and mines,
and powers almost arbitrary, over the con-
quered inhabitants of the new world. —
After them followed the viceroys, emulat-
ing the kings of Europe in their regal
pomp ; and setting up new courts, amongst
a new aristocracy, more rigorous and ex-
acting than the old. Here, in short, were
reproduced, in many of their most odious
forms, the systems of monarchical Europe,
followed by their entire train of corruptions
in church and state. Power and wealth,
from the first, rapidly concentrated in the
hands of the few ; and ignorance and su-
perstition brooded with leaden wings over
the minds of the many. There were no
longer empires to conquer ; no more Mon-
tezumas and Atahualpas, upon whose hum-
bled shoulders a new Cortez and Pizzaro
might rise to renown ; and the years which
followed were marked by none of those
startling achievements which lend a lustre
to wrong, and throw a glory over crime,
blinding us to its enormity, and almost re-
conciling us to its contemplation. The
viceroyalties of Mexico, Guatemala, and
Peru were no longer the prize of the brave
and daring ; they were filled by the arro-
gant minions of a court, and attained by
arts which a Cortez and Alvarado would
have scorned to use. A degenerate aristo-
cracy filled the places of the conquistadors,
and added the vices of efi'eminacy and in-
dolence to the crimes of cruelty and op-
pression.

Under this order of things, nothing
beyond a very qualified advance, on the part
of the people, was possible. And this ad-
vance, such as it was, took place in spite of
the obstacles which this very order of things
interposed. But it was not sufficiently
great to lead to a comprehension of what
constituted the primary and essential ele-
ments of civil freedom. Truly Republi-
can Institutions are the loftiest develop-
ments of human wisdom ; and their exist-
ence presupposes, not only a general diffu-
sion of, but high attainment in knowledge,
amongst the people at large. Their per-
manence depends upon the general intelli-
gence and morality. In the Spanish

American colonies, it is obvious, such an
advance was impossible. They did not
even keep pace with the meliorations and
improvements, which the lapse of time was
slowly but surely bringing about in Europe,
and which even Spain herself could not
resist. These colonies were borne down
and restrained, not only by the weight
of an irresponsible local government, im-
perial except in name ; but by that of a
decaying and exacting empire on another
continent, which forced the life's blood from
their veins to sustain its own languid exist-
ence,— a double curse, which those colo-
nies most deeply felt, but which they knew
not how to remedy. The sense of wrong
was keen amongst their people, but their
ideas of redress were vague and indefinite ;
rather the offspring of the instincts of self-
preservation and revenge, than the sugges-
tions of reason and experience.

In due course of events, by a series of
regular progressions, came on our own
revolution, — a struggle for objects clearly
defined and well understood. It was suc-
cessful, and the proximate cause of that
great civil and moral convulsion, which
burst the ligatures that priestcraft and
kingcraft had been binding, fold on fold,
for a thousand years, on the passive limbs
of Europe, and which we call the French
Revolution. Events like these, in spite of
viceroys, and edicts of suppression, and the
whole machinery of despotism, could not
be kept unknown to the world. The In-
dian brooding over his wrongs in the deep
valleys of the Andes, or delving in
mines of El Paso in Peru ; the Creole on
the narrow slopes of Chili, or the higher
plains of Mexico, and around the vol-
canos and broad lakes of Central Amer-
ica, heard the distant tread of revolutions, —
and his heart leapt, his eye kindled, and
his muscles tightened as he heard. The
leaven sank deep in the Spanish American
Colonies, and thoughts of change, and
high aspirations for the future, too often
blackened by envy and hate, and not
always unmingled with the wild long-
ings for retribution and revenge, thence-
forth filled the mmds of their people. —
Continental Spain early felt the shock of
the Revolution in France ; hoary with
abuses, and blackened with corruption,
yet glorious in recollections, the crumbling
fabric of her greatness fell, never to arise

340

The Spanish American Republics.

Oct.

again. Her mission of conquest and pro-
pogandism was ended, and all that
was, or is, or will be left of her, is her
Great Past ! Yet in her fall, the colonies,
like the ivy around the old tower which the
earthquake has prostrated, still clung to
the ruins. The power of the viceroys was
fresh and strong, while that of the King
was weak. They still cherished their
allegiance for the throne of Ferdinand and
Isabella, although profaned by a Bona-
parte, and surrounded by foreign bayonets ;
and exhibited ^to the world the singular
spectacle of an empire vigorous at the ex-
tremities while dead at the heart. There
was something admirable in the devotion
with which they clung to their traditions.
Even the colonists themselves forgot
for a moment their grievances and wrongs
in recollection of their past glories and
greatness, and in contemplation of the land
of their fathers, the dominions of the Great
Charles, prostrate and powerless at the
feet of France. Spain, harsh, exacting,
cruel, was still their mother country ; and so
far as patrotism consists in simple love of
country, the Spaniard and his descendant is
always a patriot. The Creole girl, though
centuries intervene, and her ancestral blood
has been fed from a hundred diverse springs,
still cherishes with pride the lute like
liquid pronunciation of her Andalusian
ancestors ; or in indignant reply to an un-
acceptable proposal, with the brow of a
Catherine, and the lip of a queen, ejacu-
lates, " /So?/ una Catalina /" I am a
Cataline girl !

With the restoration in Spain, the feel-
ing of patriotic sympathy among the Spa-
nish colonists died away, and they felt, in
the still unrelenting rule of tbe viceroys,
that the reforms which that restoration had
brought about in Europe, were not for
them. The viceroys, on the other hand,
with the colonial aristocracy, and the
priesthood — themselves, in their almost
unlimited power and great wealth, consti-
tuting a most formidably ecclesiastical oli-
garchy,— saw with alarm the progress of
these very reforms. The representative
principle had been introduced in Spain ;
the power of the monarch, hitherto practi-
cally absolute, had been limited ; the aris-
tocracy reformed ; the clergy shorn of its
undue privileges ; primogeniture abolished ;
and the great principle of ^^Igualidad ante ^

la Ti^^y^'' Equality before the Law, boldly
promulgated. They feared the spread of
the spirit of liberalism which had worked
these marvelous changes at home. Nor
were their fears unfounded. In spite of
distance, in spite of ages of depression,
although ignorance and superstition held
almost absolute sway in the Spanish colo-
nies, rays of the new light reached Ame-
rica, and men were found who began to
talk boldly of human rights, and to hint at
their future recognition. The voice of
Freedom, grateful to the rudest ear, had its
thousands of listeners. It fell upon the
depressed people like strains of music upon
the savage, in a whirl of exciting and
pleasurable emotions. Vague hopes of an
unknown future, shone out upon the clouds
which enveloped the present. The more
enlightened enthusiasts dreamed of a
Utopia about to be realized ; the Creole, of
a new order of things, in which he should
stand equal with the highest ; the Indian of
the return of those traditional glorious days,
when the democracy of Tlascalla, like that
of Sparta, had its simple but severe laws,
wisely adapted to its own wants and condi-
tion, and when their fathers wore no hated
foreign yoke ; but few, if any, entertained
any clear idea of what constituted true Re-
publicanism, or comprehended the process
by which its enjoyment might be attained
and secured. The best, not to say the
wisest among them , like the revolutiooists
of France, fell into the error of supposing
that a people weary of tyranny, and enthu-
siastic for freedom, were of necessity able to
comprehend its requirements, and fulfil its
conditions, while they enjoyed its latitudes.
Republics are of slow growth ; they are, to a
certain extent, the results of that high de-
velopment of humanity which they are, in
turn, adapted to perfect. While then the
more abstract truths of Republicanism were
promulgated with eloquence and force, the
means for the attainment of rational free-
dom were lost sight of, or but imperfectly
recognized. Separation from Spain was
the first grand practical object kept in view ;
this accomplished, it was deemed all else
would follow.

It has been a subject of remark, with many
perhaps of suspense, that the dismember-
ment of the Spanish empire, and the inde-
pendence of its American colonies, were so
easily accomplished. That it was, in great

1850.

The SpanisJi American Republics.

341

part, due to the weakness of the mother
country, is indisputable. But there were
other causes favoring that result, to which
we shall briefly allude.

The aristocratic portion of the Spanish
American population, by which is meant
not only those who held places or derived
importance from their connection with the
government, but those, also, whose princi-
ples where monarchial and exclusive in
their tendency, including the vast body of
the richly endowed priesthood, were not
only astonished at the spread of liberal
principles at home, but feared that the
sweeping reforms there effected would ex-
tend to America, and reach their own body.
They trembled for their prescriptions and
privileges. But self-confident and pre-
sumptuous, claiming to possess the educa-
tion, and most certainly possessing the
wealth of the colonies and the power
which it confers, they saw with less alarm
the development and promulgation of libe-
ral ideas in America. And when the cry
of " Separation from Spain'''' \^as raised,
they caught it from the lips of the liberals,
and made it almost unanimous. In this
separation they saw not only their present
security, but the perpetuation of their cher-
ished powers and privileges. The viceroy
hoped from the reflex and representative of
an emperor to become himself a king, to
shine with original not borrowed lustre ; and
the aristocracy to rise from a colonial de-
pendency to a national rank and indepen-
dence. They looked forward to the estab-
lishment of a political and priestly oligar-
chy, which should dominate over the igno-
rant masses, with more than their present
powers and distinctions. Thus the abso-
lutism, the old intolerances, the prejudices,
and corruptions of Spain, born of priest-
craft and tyranny, took refuge in America,
and made their final stand against the pro-
gress of liberal sentiments. The hetero-
geneous union thus effected, for the accom-
plishment of the single object of separation
from Spain, was successful. Except in
Mexico, and some of the seaport strong-
holds of South America, this result was
achieved with scarce a struggle. Spain
confided in her colonial officers to maintain
the integrity of the empire ; and when
these failed her, she knew too well her own
weakness to prolong a contest which our
own revolution had shown her must be

hopeless. Nowhere was the separation ef-
fected with greater unanimity, and more
easily, than in Central America, and to
that country do we more particularly refer ,
in the paragraphs which follow.

But no sooner was the separation effect-
ed, hardly had the mutual congratulations
upon that result been exchanged, when
the people called, in a voice of thunder
for absolute independence, on the basis,
so far as they could comprehend it, of the
great Republic of the North.

And now commenced that deadly, un-
compromising struggle between the two
grand antagonistic principles which we have
indicated ; represented, on one side, by a
rich and powerful aristocracy, and a jealous
and beneficed clergy, and on the other by
the people, sensible of their abstract rights,
rich only in their devotion, but enthusias-
tically attached to what they understood to
be Liberty and Republicanism ; between,
in short, what in Mexico and Central
America, have been called the Serviles and
Liberals ; names which we shall henceforth
use in this article for the sake of easy dis-
tinction. From a struggle for supremacy,
it is easy to perceive, how this contest be-
came one of extermination ; for there can
be no compromise, no fusion, between prin-
ciples so implacably hostile as those which
now divided the Spanish American colo-
nies. Hence has resulted, in great part,
that fierce intolerence which we pointed
out and deplored at the commencement of
this article ; and hence that series of revo-
lutions and counter revolutions which have
hitherto distracted the Spanish x\merican
States, and in which the great mass of our
people see only the rivalship of petty
chieftains, and partisan struggles for ascen-
dency.

Our own revolution was little beyond a
contest for the form of Republicanism ; its
substantial advantages had already been won
slovs^ly and in detail, the fruits of a series of
popular advances, commencing at Rimy-
mede, where the barons broke the sceptre
of absolutism, and practically triumphing
under the commonwealth, when Cromwell
struck down with iron glaive both King
and barons. The deadly encounters be-
tween the two principles, which with us ran
through a period of centuries, in the Span-
ish American States have been concentra-
ted within the shorter period of years. The

342

The Spanish American Repuhlics.

Oct.

revolution is still going on ; the rights of
man are not yet fully vindicated ; the tri-
umph of Republicanism not yet attained; the
downfall of Servilism not yet complete.
It is most true the eiForts of the Liberals
have not always been wisely directed, and
that by falling into the excesses of their
opponents, they have retarded and imperil-
led their own success. It is not less true
that they had to operate more upon the
feelings, and less upon the judgment of the
people, than the leaders in our own eman-
cipation ; and in the frenzy of excitement,
have been forced into the commission of
deeds disgraceful to their cause, and which
they were the first to deplore. But the
odium of the bloodiest and most revolting
features of the contest belongs not to them.
The whole course of the Serviles has been
marked by atrocity. They have shown
neither tolerance, generosity, nor mercy ;
and have given a cast of brutality and bar-
barism to every struggle in which they
have been engaged.

It is not within the scope of this article
to go into a detail of the political history
of Central America since the separation
from Spain, much less of Mexico and the
other States, in all of which might be traced
the development and working of the princi-
ples and causes which we have pointed out.
We have to deal only with generalities. It is
perhaps enough, in the way of illustration, to
point out the success of the Serviles in Mex-
ico in the establishment of an ephemeral em-
pire, under Iturbide. Their triumph how-
ever was brief, and with the fall of that
short-lived empire, monarchy disappeared
forever from the North American Conti-
nent.

It is not to be doubted, indeed, it is ca-
pable of proof, that the Serviles of Cen-
tral America originally contemplated the
establishment of an independent Kingdom
or Monarchy, which should comprise the
ancient Vice-Royalty, or as it was called,
the Kingdom of Guatemala. But the Pro-
visional Junta which was convoked immedi-
ately after the separation, showed a large
majority of Liberals, who, in spite of the ef-
forts of the astonished and almost paralysed
Serviles proceeded to administer the oath of
absolute independence^ and to convoke a
national constituent assembly which should
organize the country on the basis of
Republican Institutions. The Serviles were
Eow suddenly and painfully aroused from

their self-confident dreams ; they found
themselves in an impotent numerical mi-
nority ; the people which they had de-
spised and expected easily to control, had
come boldly forward and claimed their
rights. In the meeting of the National
Assembly and the proclamation of the Re-
public, they foresaw the destraction of their
cherished hopes, and the loss not only of
the new privileges and powers which they
had hoped to gain from the separation, but
of all which they had ever possessed. Un-
der these circumstances they witnessed with
anxious envy the establishment of an em-
pire in Mexico ; and, distrusting their own
strength to resist the popular will, deter-
mined to forego a portion of their hopes, to
secure the realization of the rest They
sought the incorporation of Central Ameri-
ca in the Mexican Empire, and demanded
the assistance of the now triumphant Ser-
viles of that country for the accomplish-
ment of that object. The proposition
flattered the vanity of Iturbide, and titles
and decorations were asked and promised
in anticipation of its success. Assured of
this support, they took new courage, and
with desperate zeal endeavored to turn the
tide of popular feeling.

The Constituent Assembly nevertheless
met, pursuant to the convocation of the
Provisional Junta, in Guatemala, the rich-
est and most populous city of the country ;
but unfortunately, from having been the
seat of the viceregal court, the only city
clearly devoted to the Servile interest. It
was in fact, and still is, the centre of Servil-
ism ; whence all its plans are organized,
and whence all its operations are directed.
The assembly, notwithstanding all the
efforts of the Serviles, who with pompous
promises and golden dreams of opulence
and felicity under the empire, had en-
deavored to seduce the ignorant and mer-
cenary portion of the people into the sup-
port of their plans, and with partial
success, — the assembly, to their mortifica-
tion and chagrin, showed a large majority
of Liberals in its constitution. An attempt
to corrupt this majority, signally failed ;
and then was made the first direct and
open attack upon the popular party, — the
initiative violence in that long series which
has since distracted that devoted country,
and brought it to the brink of utter ruin.
The hall of the Constituent Assembly was
blockaded by armed bands, and its deliber-

1S50.

The Spanish American Repuhlics.

343

ations forcibly suspended. A number of
the most distinguished members among the
liberals, Bedoya, Maida, and others were
assassinated, and by treason, violence and
blood, Servilism gained its first triumph in
Guatemala.

The people of Central America were
scattered thinly over a wide country, and
from their diffusion prevented from (fon-
centrating in support of their representa-
tives. It was weeks after these events,
while anxiously awaiting the promulgation
of a Republican charter, that the unsus-
pecting people were startled by the procla-
mation of the Serviles, proposing the adhe-
sion of the country to the Mexican Empire !
Men stood aghast. Their leaders had
fallen or were incarcerated in the dungeons
of Guatemala ; and to crown their distress,
treason stalked into their own ranks.
Gainza, a weak but popular man, who had
presided over the Provisional Junta, sedu-
ced by the promises of the Serviles, and
delirious with the prospect of a brilliant
advancement in the empire, as the reward
of his treachery, had joined the triumphant
faction.

Stimulated by gold, confused bands of
men now invaded the streets of Guatemala
and the adjacent towns, invoking death on
the leaders of the Liberal party, and de-
manding the proscription of all who ad-
hered to them. They invaded the houses
of the Liberals, and added murder to rob-
bery and pillage. But to give an appear-
ance of formality to the meditated out-
rage, a spurious convocation was made,
at the head of which, with practical irony,
was placed the traitor Gainza. This con-
vocation affected to submit the question of
incorporation with the Mexican empire,
not to the people, but to the decision of
the municipalities and the army ! The
day was fixed for the trial, too early how-
ever to permit of returns to be received
from any except the immediate dependen-
cies of Guatemala. The army, reorgan-
ized by the usurpers, and made up of their
instruments, stood ready to second and en-
force their wishes. Few had the courage
to oppose these proceedings, and they did
so at the peril of their lives; and, as was
to be anticipated, by the votes of a mer-
cenary army, and of the alarmed and
trembling municipalities, fraudulently com-
puted, it was declared that the question of
aggregation to the Mexican Empire was

carried ; and a decree to that effect was
at once issued. A force, previously soli-
cited from Mexico, was already on its
march, under the command of Gen. Fili-
sola, to effect by foreign bayonets, the con-
summation of the fraud thus successfully
commenced.

As we have said, these movements of
the Serviles were for a considerable period
scarcely known beyond the immediate vi-
cinity of Guatemala, and were unsustained
by the people at large. No sooner did the
people recover from their astonishment,
than they set themselves to work to oppose
the attempted usurpation. San Salvador, the
nearest province to Guatemala, and the cen-
tre of Liberalism, was the first to hear of the
events which we have recorded, and the
first to adopt measures of resistance. The
oligarchists felt their insecurity, and
hastily despatched a force to check the
demonstrations in San Salvador. The
sturdy republicans of that little province
as hastily took the field, and the Servile
army, notwithstanding its superior num-
bers, was met and beaten. For the first
time the representatives of the two great
antagonistic principles, which we have un-
dertaken to define, met on the battle field —
unfortunately not the last. The soil of
Central America is drenched in blood, its
energies almost exhausted, and the end is
not yet.

The shock would have been fatal to the
Serviles, and that battle might have se-
cured their downfall for ever. But almost
simultaneously with the news of their over-
throw came the imperial forces of Mexico.
With renewed confidence the Serviles ral-
lied their despairing army, and the frater-
cides of Gautemala marched side by side
with the troops of the empire, upon the
victorious Liberals. Suffice it to say, after
a long and bloody campaign, by fraud and
force, the forces of San Salvador were
broken up, and her prostration completed.

With this campaign commenced those
atrocities, which, through retaliation and
otherwise, have given to Central Amierican
warfare a character of savage barbarity,
almost unprecedented in history. The
mercenaries of Mexico acknowledged no
restraint. They despised the soldiery with
which they were associated, and when not
in active duty, spread terror wherever they
were quartered, alike amongst friends and
foes. The vilest outrages, rape, robberyj

344

The Spanish American Repuhlics.

Oct.

and murder, were of daily occurrence.
Drunken soldiers swarmed the streets and
public places of the towns and cities, and
wantonly attacked and wounded, often
slew, the first they encountered. The
black flag of the empire was everywhere
the signal of rapine, and blood and murder
the synonym of " Viva el Emperador ! "
The public treasury was exhausted, the
rich robbed, and the public charities confis-
cated to support the foreign and mercenary
forces ; and the people, no longer enjoying
the protection of law, and everywhere the
victims of a brutal soldiery, were driven to
defend their individual rights, and to re-
venge themselves in detail upon their op-
pressors,—thus aggravating the horrors of
disorder and anarchy. The public demo-
ralization was complete ; and such was the
triumph of Servilism !

But that triumph was of short duration.
In the midst of these events, came the
startling news of the downfall of the em-
pire of Iturbide, before the well-directed
energies of the Liberals of Mexico. The
forces of Filisola were at once disbanded,
and the Serviles again thrown upon their
own resources. Finding success in the
course originally marked out impossible,
they resorted to a new system of tactics.
They no longer opposed the meeting of the
constituent assmbly, but sought to bend it
to their purposes. To this end, they ex-
erted their utmost skill and energy. They
aimed to establish a practical dictatorship,
which should some day, by an easy transi-
tion, resolve itself into their cherished form
of a Monarchy.

The deliberations of the Assembly ter-
minated in the adoption of the Constitution
of 1824. It was, however, contested,
chapter by chapter and section by section,
but vigorously and triumphantly sustained
by the Liberals. The guarantees of indivi-
dual rights, the representative principle,
and the liberty of the press, were tacitly
concurred in by the Serviles, because they
feared to oppose them. But they were
the first to be assailed and overthrown
when the Serviles subsequently attained the
ascendency. The plan of Federation con-
tained in the new constitution met with
their most determined hostility ; and, look-
ing to centralization, they as vehemently
opposed the recognition of the local and
internal powers, and qualified sovereignty
©f the several states. In this they were

sustained by many of the Liberals them-
selves, who, thought these provisions were
not adapted to the present wants of the
country.

The new Constitution was, nevertheless,
accepted, and the Serviles seem for a while
to have abandoned their unpatriotic oppo-
sition and insane designs. The enthusiasm
of* the people was at its height, and to op-
pose it was madness. In spite of many
radical defects, and . of many formidable
assaults, this Constitution lasted for a whole
decade, and exercised a most beneficial in-
fluence upon the country ; and had the
people at large possessed that general in-
telligence which prevailed amongst our own
people at the time of their independence,
and which, while it gave them a clear in-
sight into their wants and requirements,
preserved them from the arts and sophistry
of demao;oo;ues and designino; men, — then,
no doubt, it would have been reformed and
perpetuated, and given peace, happiness,
and prosperity to the country. " Even as
it was," observes a Central American writ-
er, " no one, whatever his prejudices, could
fail to perceive the advance in the manners
and customs, and the change in the spirit
of the people of Central America, during
the ten years of freedom of the press which
this Constitution secured."

But it did not endure. With an unedu-
cated but excitable people, unacquainted
with their duties, and without a clear
knowledge of their prospective or immedi-
ate requirements, on the one hand, and a
large and powerful faction, deadly hostile
to every form of Republicanism, on the
other, it was impossible for it to stand. In
vain did the enlightened leaders of the
liberal party labor to sustain it. Their an-
cient foes sowed wide and deep the seeds of
local discord, and by all possible means en-
deavored, but too successfully, to bring the
Federal and State Governments in conflict.

The Constitution of 1824 disappeared,
and darkness and anarchy again settled
over Central America. Subsequent events
must form the subject of another article,
in which we shall trace the further course
of that implacable contest between Ser-
vilism and Liberalism, the origin of which
we have pointed out, and which, aggravat-
ed hy foreign intervention^ is still going on
in most of the Spanish American Republics,
and of which discords and revolutions are
the deplorable fruits.

1850.

Our Foreign "Relations.

345

OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS.

MR. E. G. SQUIER, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, CENTRAL AMERICA.

The American People Iiave not Mtlierto
busied themselves with the affairs of Eu-
ropean nations. Notwithstanding their
sympathy with republican reformers, and
protection and favor extended to refu-
gees and exiles, they have not, as yet,
offered to interfere, or to arbitrate with au-
thority, between nations or parties on
the other side of the Atlantic. Their
forbearance has been dictated by motives
of prudence, for the most part. The
policy of Washington was held to be a
necessary and strictly prudential policy ;
necessary for the safety and unimpeded
growth of the young Republic, and pru-
dent in view of the uncertainty as to what
might be the wishes and intentions of the
people themselves, in other countries, where
the doctrines of liberty and human right
liad not then, and perhaps may not for
ages to come, obtain a solid footing with the
multitude. The neutrality of America has
been, also, carefully maintained, in order
that the emigration of republicans to this
country may not be impeded by any jea-
lousy on the part of the European powers.

In return for this forbearance on our
part, it has been our expectation, and de-
mand, that the European powers should
reciprocate, by abstaining from interfer-
ence between ourselves and sister repub-
lics upon the northern American Conti-
nent. It has been expected and demand-
ed, that the powers of Europe shall abstain
from pushing conquests upon the northern
continent. England alone has chosen to
make herself an exception to the rule.
For many years, by a system of alternate
intrigue and violence, she has been pos-
sessing herself of the richest parts of the
continent, south of Mexico.

In the Texas affair ^ England overshot her

mark, by a too hasty recognition of that re-
public ; a measure by which she hoped to
ingratiate herself with the Texans, and pro-
mote her own schemes of conquest, but by
which she justified Texas, and deprived
herself of the wished for opportunity of in-
terference. Nevertheless, by the seizure
of Roatan, an island which commands the
Gulf of Honduras, by her attempts upon
the Island of Tigre, upon the other side,
by which she hoped to become undisputed
master of the Pacific coast, and by her oc-
cupation of the Mosquito country, to say
nothing of the Balize, she has already made
a clear manifestation of her designs ; which
are no less, than to master all communica-
tions between the two oceans, and finally
to regulate, for her own advantage, the
trade between Europe and Asia, and be-
tween the two shores of the New World.
The regions of which Great Britain has al-
ready possessed herself are some of the rich-
est in the world, and exceed in extent, the
entire area of New England.

England, we are credibly informed, will
not object to the purchase of Cuba by the
United States ! No, indeed ! she is willing
to concede that, if she is permitted quiet-
ly to possess herself of territories of much
greater value to herself. England does
not wish to purchase, or possess, Cuba;
since if she did so, it would be necessary
for her to liberate the Cuban slaves. That
Island would thus become a bill of expense
to England. But to possess territories
not encumbered with a species of property,
which it is the present necessity of Eng-
land to destroy, whenever it falls under
her power, she is sufficiently eager. The
operations of England in India are too far
removed to be taken cognizance of by the
people of America. The favorite doctrine

346

Our Foi'eim Relations,

Oet.

of tlie Balance of Power is indeed fully il-
lustrated there, — England in one scale, and
the rest of the world in the other — but it
is quite out of our range of vision. In
America, on the contrary, we can see and
understand the operation of this njighty
quibble .

The natural remedy, on our part, is, of
course, to adopt the same doctrine. Ame-
rica in one scale, and all the world in the
other. While the people of America are
the most industrious and peaceable, they
are at the same time the most warlike and
adventurous in the world. The best ar-
mies, the best officers, the largest resources,
the greatest ardor and perseverance, will
of course be acknowledged ours ; — our
land rings from end to end with martial
sounds ; every American is the defender of
freedom and of his country, and he needs
only to adopt from England her favorite
doctrine of the balance of power, — the right
of seizing and holding, whatever can be
seized and held, — to make him the scourge
and terror of the world. Americans, and
Republicans generally, dislike a defensive
position. It is safer to aggress than to
apologize. It is better to be over jea-
lous and regardful of one's own rights and
interests, even to the degree of encroach-
ment, than to appear, or to be, remiss and
timid ; and it is not a little to be wondered
at, that, with all our imitations of the
manners and opinions of the better class in
England, we have not carried our imitation
a step farther, to be consistent, and adopted
her political doctrine, of conquest and bal-
ance of power. We submit it to the seri-
ous consideration of our fellow citizens,
whether it might not be well for us, her
humble imitators, and younger brothers, to
carry our imitation of England, the model
country of the world, a little further } —
England is very successful ; why should not
we be more so i We have more men,
more money, and a better position ; our
successes might be proportionately greater.
Jesting apart, we are bound by honor, as
well as by paramount interests, to stave off
all attempts of a foreign and uncongenial
power, to fasten upon the southern part of
this continent. Were the great railroad,
projected by Mr. Whitney, completed, we
might suffer the insult, to be spared the
trouble ; but as we are situated at present,
it is really alarming to see our only safe

communication with California and Oregon,
commanded by the forts and navies of our
sole rival ; and annoying indeed it is, to
learn from common rumor, that an English
minister at Washington not only has the
assurance, (to use a mild phrase,) to warn
our government against a modification of
the tariff, least it might occasion " unplea-
sant feelings," or disagreeable sensations,
we forget which, in the susceptible bosom,
(pocket.^) of Mr. Bull, but soon after to
hear of " influences," Heaven save the
mark ! attempted by this very formidable
plenipotentiary, to oust our American
Charge d'Affaires from the very point which
he has defended, with all the patriotism and
gallantry of a true American, against the
aggressions of Great Britain herself.

England seems of late to have an almost
ubiquitous presence in our affairs. First
we hear of her in Texas, trying to effect a
separation of that Republic from its natu-
ral allies. A few months after, British
ships made their appearance, a little too
late, at San Francisco, after the American
flag had been run up. IS^ow she is at
Roatan, and has seized upon the island
that commands the Gulf of Mexico, and
the trade between New York and Califor-
nia. Rumors now come to us, that the
Disunionists of the South are on very
friendly terms with Great Britain, and that
that very respectable power is quite favorable
to their designs ; nay, that Southern English
proprietors have advised the separation.
Soon after we hear of gentlemanly cautions
to our government, against altering our
tariff, and of the unpleasant feeling such a
measure might excite in England, &c., &c.
This is really being a great deal too busy.
It excites " unpleasant feelings," — very !

Come we now to the subject of this ar-
ticle, namely, to the life and conduct of a
gentleman, who has been made, by cir-
cumstances and his proper duty, the repre-
sentative of American rights, and of the
American doctrine, in regard to foreign
conquest on this continent.

The subject of this notice was born in
the town of Bethlehem, Albany County,
New York, on the 17th of June, 1S21. He
is consequently, not yet 30 years of age,
but the spirit of the American people is
the spirit of youth, and it is natural and
becoming that the enthusiasm, the courage
and the progressive spiiit of the natioa

1850.

Mr. E. G. S<iuier.

347

should be represented by those forward
and fortunate spirits to whom youth is only
an advantage.

Mr, Squier is the sixth in descent from
Samuel Squier, the friend and Auditor* of
Oliver Cromwell, and afterward his first
lieutenant. The sons of Samuel, to wit,
Philip and Samuel, emigrated to America
after the restoration, and settled first in
Boston, but removed afterward to Connec-
ticut. They were among the first, and the
most active and influential, in resisting the
aggressions of the mother country.

Philip Squier, the great grandfather of
the present representative of the family,
was an officer under Wolcot, in that most
brilliant military enterprize of our colonial
history, the capture of Lewisburgh; his son
Ephraim Squier, was among the earliest
and most efficient movers in the Revolution.
He was the next neighbor and bosom friend
of Colonel Knowlton, (who afterward fell
at Harlaem heights,) and fought by his side,
second in command, at Bunker's hill.
Ephraim Squier and Knowlton were
among the last of those sturdy patriots who
defended the memorable retreat from Bun-
ker's hill, when the rear of the American
army, after expending their last shot, was
slowly forced from the heights by the
superior force of the British. He served
also as a captain, in that devoted Con-
necticut regiment, which made its way
through the forest of the Kennebeck,
under Arnold, and emerged in the dead
of winter, half naked and almost famished,
before the astonished garrison of Quebec.
He, too, was one of that little band which
fought out the live long winter day,
amid the storm of battle and the ele-
ments, against overwhelming odds, in
the narrow streets of the rock-built
city. That expedition was perhaps the
most boldly conceived and bravely ex-
ecuted of any undertaken during the war,
and had a great effect upon the country,
and upon the enemy, by showing the spirit
and resolution of the colonists.

At Saratoga, the remnant of this force
again met the enemy, with better success.
The Connecticut regiment moved down
from the hills of Stillwater, and made that
famous charge upon the British camp which
turned the fortunes of the day.

* See Appendix, A.

Sharing in the confidence and personal
friendship of Putnam, Webb, and Parsons,
and entrusted by Washington with secret
services of danger and responsibility. Cap-
tain Squier served out the war, and then
returned to his farm ; where he resumed his
original and humble calling, happy in the
consciousness of having discharged his duty
to his country. He died in 1842, at the
advanced age of ninety seven years. He
was a man respected and beloved by those
who knew him .

The father of our friend is, and has been
for the last twenty years, a minister of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, well known
by his pious labors in the northern part of
this state and of Vermont. His circum-
stances did not allow him to give his chil-
dren an expensive education, and as is
customary in such cases, his son was per-
mitted to earn his own education, by in-
structing others in winter, and doing the
work of a farm laborer in the summer's
vacations. He thus acquired what he knows,
by his own well applied industry ; and has
prudence and industry, — the best inherit-
ance of his fathers, — much more to thank,
than fortune.

Our friend distinguished himself, at school,
by the same insight into human nature and
aptitude in dealing with men, — -a quality
supported by courage, and a thoroughly
cheerful and active temperament,—
which has since been the cause of his
remarkable success as a diplomatist. For
an American diplomatist, who has to con-
tend with so much dull cunning and preten-
tious pride, we can think of no qualities
more admirable than a cheerful, and
peculiarly American, self-reliance, and con-
tempt of exterior and superficial distinc-
tions. To this Mr. Squier adds a facile
and agreeable style, in speaking and writ-
ing, well adapted for the detail of public
business and for political argument. An
almost intuitive talent in the mathematics
and geometry were all that was needed to
make our friend what he has since become,
the topographer, and the political defender,,
of regions hitherto but little known, but
which are now beginning to attract the at-
tention and excite the cupidity of several
powerful nations.

Weary of the laborious and inactive life of'
a teacher, Mr. Squier qualified himself for
the duties of a civil engineer, but was

348

Our Foreisn Relations.

Oct.

prevented by the financial disasters of
1837-8 and 9, from turning this new
knowledge to account. In 1841, without
money and without friends, he went to seek
his fortune in the city of Albany, and there
became a writer for the daily press, and
wrote for the party of prison reform, in
their paper, the " New York State Me-
chanic." He became, though not recog-
nized as such, the virtual editor of that
print ; which exercised a great influence in
accomplishing the objects for which it was
established. The very able documents
prepared by the commission of the State
Mechanics' Association, with the sanction
of the Executive, on the state of our prisons,
were principally from the hand of Mr.
Squier. From these reports the principal
arguments in favor of prison reform were
chiefly taken by the press. In the organ-
ization of the Mechanic Societies Mr.
Squier discovered that talent by which he
was afterward distinguished as a party
manager, in the great election of 1844.
During the whole of this time, while un-
dergoing great responsibility and perform-
ing labors that would have destroyed any
but the most active constitution, corres-
ponding for several papers, and writing
extensively for the Monthly Magazines,
and even attempting to establish for him-
self a literary magazine, in Albany, our
friend struggled with every degree of
poverty and privation.

The struggle of the mechanics for prison
reform proved to be successful, and the
paper, having been established solely for
the attainment of that object, was discon-
tinued. Mr. Squier, being consequent-
ly without employment threw together
a mass of information which he had collect-
ed, into a volume upon China. The Bri-
tish proceedings at Canton exciting at that
time much attention, the work sold well,
but, as usual, with small profit to its author.

Up to this time, although known as an
inflexible whig, Mr. Squier had taken no
open part in politics. Sundry spicy arti-
cles of his, for the newspapers, anonymous-
ly published, had, indeed, attracted some
attention, and the secret of their authorship
leaked out among the managers. This
was in 1843, just previous to the great
struggle of '44. Van Buren was employ-
ing the entire force of his party to secure a
second nomination, and both parties pre-

pared themselves for one of the severest
political contests which this country ever
witnessed.

The State elections of the Spring of
1844 were esteemed to be of vital import-
ance, from the prestige which it was sup-
posed their result would give to the suc-
cessful party. The struggle was to be be-
gun in Connecticut, and Van Buren had
resolved to carry that little state, in order
to show that the objection of non-availa-
hility^ made against him, was unfounded ;
and to show, farther, that bis anti-tariff
letters had not weakened him in the North.
From want of efficiency in the Whig orga-
nization and Whig press, in Connecti-
cut, that State had for many years given
loco-foco majorities, and the abolitionists,
now become a party, had drawn around
them a considerable number of conscien-
tious Whigs. Under these circumstances,
the active Whigs of Connecticut deter-
mined to redeem their State, and to strike
the first victorious blow. It was absolutely
necessary that a fearless and efficient press
should be established. In seeking for an edi-
tor they fixed upon Mr. Squier, and invit-
ed him to Hartford ; where, in the month of
November, he issued the first number of
the Hartford Journal, with the words,
"Henry Clay, our first, last and only
choice," inscribed above its columns. Mr.
Squier engaged in this work with an en-
ergy and impetuosity which surpass-
ed all expectation, and even gave offence
to the timid and the moderate. The
struggle on the side of the Whigs was no
longer one of defence, as had been custom-
ary ; the editor of the " Hartford Journal"
did not understand, or would not practise,
the soft arts of an apologist. The mea-
sures of the opposite party were vehem-cnt-
ly attacked and condemned. The youpg
men of the State were roused, and the
entire State organized in Clay clubs,
by the advice and under the ordering hand
of the leader in that brilliant conflict. The
Western custom of " stump speak-
ing" was now introduced in New Eng-
land, and during the whole winter, poli-
tical meetings were held almost week-
ly in every township and even in every
hamlet of the State. Our editor was also
the original suggester of these meetings.
He devoted the best hours of the day to
editing his paper, and rode out nightly to

1850.

Mr. E. G. Squier.

349

some meeting, witliln eight or ten miles of
Hartford. A canvass of the State was
made, so complete that on the night pre-
vious to the election, on the second of April,
it was announced with confidence, not only
that a majority would be given for the
Whigs, but even the very number of that
majority, within 100 votes ; a result, the
most perfect ever known, and absolutely
surpassing in accuracy the enumeration of
a census. The knowledge of this result
was attained by the personal correspondence
of our editor, in whose desk might be seen,
on that evening, the written evidence of the
result. Practical politicians will understand
by what enormous labor it must have been
collected. We may see, by this instance,
how the qualities of men are transmitted
from father to son, and what inestimable
service might have been rendered by such an
agent in the cause of liberty, in the time of
the Revolution. During the whole of this
contest, the democracy struggled with the
energy of desperation. The experienced
agents of Van Buren, skilled in his artful
tactics, swarmed everywhere ; but they were
forced by the tactics of our editor into a
defensive position, which in politics is, per-
haps always, a disadvantageous one. Mean-
while, the journal was scattered broad-cast
among the people ; its press rested not
night nor day ; it was to be found in almost
every house in the State, and is conceded
to have been the most efficient instrument
in that extraordinary contest.

The course of these events was closely
observed by politicians, of all parts of the
Union ; on the final result depended all
their hopes for the future. If the loco-
focos triumphed, and upon those broad,
national, issues, which had been brought
forward at the first, and upon which, by
mutual consent, the campaign was to be
conducted, it was conceded that the nomi-
nation and election of Van Buren were ine-
vitable. If the Whigs succeeded, on the
other hand, their success in the nation was
deemed to be certain. It was, therefore,
not without high hope on one side, and per-
turbation on the other, that the announce-
ment was copied from the "Journal," a
few days previous to the election, that ^' the
result was no longer doubtful, and that it
was now certain that the Whigs would
carry the State, by a majority of at least
4,000 votes.'' The election showed the

largest popular vote ever cast in the State
of Connecticut, and confirmed the predic-
tions of our editor.

Those whose political recollections go
back to that time, will remember the wild
enthusiasm with which the result in Con-
necticut was received by the Whigs of the
Union. Nor will those who were present
forget the deluge of flowers which fell upon
the delegation of Whig Young Men from
Connecticut, who occupied the place of
honor, in the great Whig National Con-
vention of Young Men, which met at Bal-
timore the May following, when they were
escorted in triumph through the streets of
that city.

It was universally conceded at the time,
that to the system of tactics and organiza-
tion which was introduced by the editor of
the " Journal," and to the influence of that
paper, the Whig successes in Connecticut
were, in great part, attributable.

This struggle settled the question, and
locofocoism, although it triumphed in the
Union, was too thoroughly beaten to make
much fight in Connecticut, at the Presiden-
tial election.

Early in 1845, Mr. Squier accepted an
offer to become the editor of the ^' Scioto
Gazette," published at Chillicothe, in Ohio
— the former State paper, and the oldest
newspaper beyond the Alleghanies. In
going to Ohio, he was greatly influenced by
a desire to investigate the antiquities of the-
Mississippi Valley, of which the accounts
were as yet vague and imperfect. For this,
the intervals of a weekly newspaper allowed]
him ample time. He then became ac-
quainted with a gentleman who had paid
some attention to the subject, and after-
wards engaged with him in the systematic
investigation of the monuments of the
entire West. The results of these re-
searches are now partially before the pub-
lic, in the first volume of the " Contribu-
tions to Knowledge," published by the
Smithsonian Institute.

In the fall of 1846, Mr. Squier was
elected Clerk to the Ohio Representatives,
and resigned his editorial duties. He then
devoted himself wholly to scientific pur-
suits.

These brought him early in connection
with many eminent men, of kindred tastes,
both in this country and in Europe. —
Among these was the late Albert Gallatic,

360

Our Foreign Relations.

Oct,

with wtom he corresponded, and was on
terms of intimacy, up to the period of Mr.
Gallatin's decease. Before the publication
of the great work on American Antiquities,
of which he was the author, he was elected
a member of many learned societies here
and abroad, besides receiving the honorary
degree of A. M. from the University of
New Jersey. Mr. S. may take a just pride
in numbering such men as Humboldt and
Jomard amongst his correspondents.

Humboldt says, that, " with Dr. Mor-
ton's Crania Americana^ the work of Mr.
Squier constitutes the most valuable con-
tribution ever made to the archeology and
ethnology of America."

The Smithsonian Institute has just pub-
lished the results of Mr. S.'s Exploration
of the " Aboriginal Monuments of New
York," and an eminent publishing house
have in press a more philosophical work on
the monuments and mythological systems
of the aboriginal inhabitants of this conti-
nent, by the same author, — which takes a
more comprehensive view of the matters of
which it treats, than any work hitherto
attempted.

After the election of General Taylor,
;and with a view to the further and more
successful prosecution of archeological in-
quiries, his friends urged upon the Presi-
dent the appointment of Mr. S. as Minister
to Central America, — a country fruitful in
Tcmains of the highest order of aboriginal
5irts. And, with a liberal comprehension of
vthe matter, and acting upon the same en-
lightened policy which sent Botta to Nine-
veh, and Washington Irving to Spain,
General Taylor made the appointment,
idurino; the first month of his administration.
This was the first diplomatic appointment
made by General Taylor. Among the gen-
tlemen exerting themselves in behalf of Mr.
.Squier, — and the application was made on
grounds superior to mere party considera-
itions, — ^may be named Prescott, the histo-
jian of Spain ; Sparks, Everett, Gallatin,
Irving, Stephens, Potter, Lieber, Morton,
Bradish, Butler, Trumbull, Anthony, (of
jR,. I.,) Bebb, (of Ohio,) Lawrence, &c.,
&c., — "an array of supporters," says
the National Intelligencer, in announcing
the appointment, " as we happen to know,
at once imposing and irresistable."

The 'political importance of the mission
confided to Mr. Squier, has but lately be-
come apparent to the people of the United
States, and it is unnecessary, upon the pre-
sent occasion, to say, what all the world
knows, that Mr. Squier became the first de-
fender of American interests and honor, in
that part of the world, and was the first to
rouse the people of the United States to a
sense of the importance of maintaining the
integrity and independence of the Republics
of the Isthmus against the open aggressions
and secret designs of Great Britain.

In the intervals of his official duties, Mr.
Squier pursued his favorite investigations,
with signal success. The results will, by
and by, be given to the public. A number
of interesting monuments have already ar-
rived in the United States, and are depo-
sited in the Smithsonian Institute.

A variety of articles on matters con-
nected with these researches have appeared
in the scientific journals of this country and
Europe. Several papers on New Mexico,
the Traditions of the Algonquins, Ameri-
can Ethnology, &c., including a Review of
the Mosquito question, have appeared in
this journal.

As a true representative of free institu-
tions, Mr. Squier has exerted a powerful
conciliatory influence upon the people of
the Southern part of this continent, and
the formation of the new Confederation of
the States of the Centre, is due to his direct
exertions.

A review of the country, its topography,
and resources, together with a report on the
route, and practicability, of the proposed
canal, constituted one of the preliminary
despatches sent by our Charge d'Afiaires to
the Department of State, at Washington.
It has been ordered to be printed, by Con-
gres, and will shortly appear. We venture
to call the attention of those entrusted with
the delicate task of appointing men to fo-
reign missions, to the importance of select-
ing those who are able and willing to collect
and transmit such information ; and, above
all, to secure and retain the services of such
as are zealous for Republican institutions,
and active in promotmg amicable and pro-
fitable intercourse between our own and the
sister Republics of the Continent.

1S50.

Mr. E, G. Sqtdcr.

351

APPENDIX

Like Cromwell's " auditor," this revo-
lutionary worthy was no idle adherent of
the cause which he espoused. He was
among the very first to improve, and carry
out, that local organization, which under the
form of " Committees of Public Safety,"
exercised so important an influence in con-
centrating public opinion, and in securing
that concert of action, without which the
revolution would have been a failure.
The canvass of his own town, made by the
old soldier, is still in existence, and gives
the name and political bias of every person
capable of bearing arms in the township.
The patriots who could be entrusted with
the confidential communications of the su-
perior or Metropolitan Committees are spe-
cially noted, and not less than six gradua-
tions of patriotism are indicated before
arriving at the ultimate Tory. The dan-
ger to be feared from the Tories, it seems,
was estimated by their intellectual abilities,
rather than by their position, doings, or by
their activity. Thus " J. B." is marked,
"able man, not active, but must be
looked to." " R. M. rank but noisy — a
coward, no fear of him." Only one was
designated as " able, rank, and fearless,"
and it is worthy of remark that he was
seized the very night when the resolution
" to resist to the death" reached the Town
Committee of Safety.

It is a singular fact, that although the
colonists were, for some years before the
outburst, on the verge of revolution, yet,
it was not until " the blood of their brethren
cried aloud to heaven," that they entirely
threw off their loyalty. Thus, we find the
old soldier under notice, as late as August
1774, proposing and carrying, in general
" town meeting," the following preamble
and resolutions, which as an interesting
and instructive illustration of revolutionary
times, we insert entire : —

DECLARATION.

" We, the good people of Ashford, of the
County of Windham, and Colony of Connec-
ticut, being seriously affected with the consi-
deration of the alarming situation of the
American colonies and plantations in general,

and being roused by the late unconstitutional
attempts on the province of Massachusetts
Bay, by blocking u p theharbor of Boston in par-
ticular; and considering that province as only
suffering first in the cause of liberty, — (God
only knows which will be next ! ) ; and being
unable to conceive how any creature, although
a king, can be invested with a power to des-
troy sacred liberty, the richest gift of a kind
Creator, —

" Voted., That we be loyal and true subjects
of his Majesty, George the 3rd., and as such,
resolve to defend virtuous Liberty, the bul-
wark of the English constitution, and we
declare, that in so doing, we do seek the pre-
servation of his Majesty's crown and dignity,
and the well-being of every true Englishman.

" Voted, That we heartily commiserate with
our distressed brethren at Boston, and are wil-
ling to cast in our mite, to help, relieve, com-
fort and assist them, and to encourage them to
hold out ; reminding them also, that struggles
for Freedom are glorious struggles !

'^ Voted., — That we will unite in the good
measures that may be adopted by the General
Congress to meet at Philadelphia, in Septem-
ber next, and do the utmost in our power to
encourage industry and our own manufac-
tures ! !

" Voted., — That we do now appoint a Com-
mittee, to correspond and confer with similar
Committees of the to vvns of this or the neigh-
boring colonies, respecting the matters afore-
said, and to take subscriptions for the benefit
of our distressed brothers of Boston, and to
transmit the same to the Overseers of the out-
raged inhabitants of said town.

" Voted, — That the Town Clerk be directed
to transmit a copy of the above proceedings
to the Selectmen of Boston, and to the printer
of the New London Gazette, directing him to
print the same."

The above was passed in full meeting
without a dissenting voice. The sym-
pathy of the good people of Ashford, for
their Boston brothers, was of a practical
kind ; and their understanding of what
constitutes true independence is shown in
their resolution, " to encourage industry
and their own manufactures.'''' The apos-
tles of the fallacy miscalled " Free Trade"
would have found few followers among the
sturdy, sound-thinking, republican yeoman-
ry of revolutionary Connecticut.

352

Out Foreign Relatiojts.

Oct.

Some time ago, Thomas Carlyle pnlb-
lisbed, in Frazer's Magazine, an article,
entitled, *' Thirty-five Unpublished Letters
of Cromwell," which was reprinted in
LittelPs Living Age, in this country. That
these letters were genuine, we have the
testimony of the family of Mr. E. G.
Squier, by whom a portion of the letters
were communicated to Mr. Carlyle. "Au-
ditor Squier," who figures largely in these
letters, is the identical Samuel Squier, the
ancestor of our Charge. Mr. Carlyle, in
a letter to that gentleman, remarks, in his
rough, humorous, way, upon the transmis-
sion of certain qualities or the traits of the
" rebel," which he detects in his cores-
pondent.

A very specious critic in some London
magazine, undertook to show that these
same " Thirty -five Letters" had been
palmed off upon Carlyle for a jest, and
were utterly modern, and fabricated for
the express purpose of gulling the English
"Hero worshipper." It is highly agreea-
ble to ourselves to be made sure of their
authenticity.

To freshen the recollection of the reader,
we reproduce two of the most important of
thes3 letters ; for the rest, our want of space
obliges us to refer the curious to the origi-
nals in Littell.

NO. XXXV.

" Cornet Auditor Squier, it would appear by
my correspondent's recollections of the lost
journal^ was promoted to be lieutenant for his
conduct in Naseby fight : ' he afterwards got
wounded in Wales or Cornwall • place named
Turo. I think,' — undoubtedly at Truro in
Cornwal], in the ensuing autumn. Here, next
spring, 1645-6, while the service is like to be
lighter, he decides on quitting the army al-
together.

To Lieutenant Squier at his Quarters, Tavis-
tock: These.

3 March, 1645.
" Sir, — In reply to the Letter I got this morn-
ng — I am sorry you ' so' resolve ; for I had got-

ten you your Commission as Captain from the
Lord General, and waited only your coming to
give it to you. Think twice of this. For I in-
tended your good ; as I hope you knew my mind
thatwise. But so if you will, — I will not hinder
you. For, thanks be given to God, I trust now all
will be well for this Nation ; and an enduring
Peace be, to God his glory and our prosperity.

" Now there is between you and me some reck-
oning. Now I hope to be in London, say in three
weeks, if God speed me in this matter. Call at
the Speaker's, and I will pay you all your due.
Pray send me a List of the Items, for guide to me
[for me to guide.] Let me know what I owe
your Brother for the Wines he got me out of Spain
to my mind. — Sir, let me once more wish you
' would' think over your resolution, that I may
serve you. — Your friend,

Olivee Cromwell.

" Squier, in his idle moments, has executed
on this sheet a rude drawing of a pen and
sword ; very rude indeed ; with these words :
' Ten to one the Feather beats the Iron ;' that
is Squier's endorsement on this last remaining
letter from Oliver Cromwell ; indicating a
nascent purpose, on the part of Squier, to
quit the army after all.

NO. III.

'■'To Mr. Samuel Squier [subsequently Cor-
net and Auditor Squier.]

London, 3 May, 1642.

" Dear Friend, — I heard from our good Friend
W. [Wyman?] how zealous in the good Cause
you were. We are all alive here, and sweating
hard to beat those Papists : may the Lord send us
His holy aid to overcome them, and the Devils
who seek to do evil.

" Say to your Friends that we have made up our
Demands to the control of the Navy, and Train-
bands of the Counties' Militia, also all Forts and
Castles ; and, with God's aid, we will have them
if he [the King] likes or dislikes. For he is more
shifty every day. We must do more also, unless
he does that which is right in the sight of God and
man and his people.

" I shall come to Oundle, in my way down, this
time ; as I learn you live there a great time now.
So may you prosper in all your undertakings, and
may the Lord God protect and watch over you.
Let them all know our mind. — From your friend,

0. C."

1850.

WTiat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

353

WHAT CONSTITUTES REAL FREEDOM OF TRADE?

CHAPTER IIL

It has been shown that the system of
Adam Smith looks to concentration with
local division of labor ; the artisan and the
agriculturist taking their places by the side
of each other. Concentration involves in-
crease of population, \kQ division of land,
and the combined action of man. It has also
been shown, that the system of the modern
British school looks to the dispersion of
population and the territorial division of
labor, the people of one part of the world con-
fining themselves to agriculture, while those
of another part devote themselves chiefly to
the transport and conversion of the products
of agricultural labor. The machinery of
conversion is thus centralized, and centra-
lization and depopulation go always hand
in hand with each other. Depopulation
is accompanied, necessarily, by diminu-
tion in the number of owners and occu-
pants of land, and diminished power of com-
bination among men.

Both are called free-trade systems, yet
they differ in every point. The corner-
stone of the one is found in the power of
prod,uction^ while that of the other is found
in the necessity for trade. To ascertain
which is the real free-trade one is the ob-
ject of this enquiry.

The amount of injury resulting from in-
terference with perfect freedom is depend-
ant upon the importance of the matter, or
thing, interfered with. The prohibition to
walk would be seriously inconvenient,
whereas a similar prohibition of dancing
would be unimportant. All men require
to do the one, while to none is it necessary
to do the other. All men have labor to
sell, while few require to purchase nut-
megs. The trade in land, whether by pur-
chase and sale, or by arrangements for its
occupation, is immense, while that in silks
is comparatively small. Land and labor

VOL. VI. KG. IV. NEV\r SERIES.

are the great instruments of production,
while nutmegs and silks are among their
products. An interference with trade in
the former to the extent of one per cent,
would be more injurious than one amount-
ing to a hundred, with trade in the latter.

The system of Dr. Smith looks to free-
dom of trade in the instruments ofproduc*
tion^ while that of the modern British
school limits itself to freedom of trade in
their products, as we propose now to show.
That done, it will not be difficult to deter-
mine which is the real free-trade school.

The slave does not sell his labor, nor does
he choose his master. The land he culti-
vates is undivided. He and his fellow
slaves work together in gangs, and volun-
tary association is unknown. He is a
creature of necessity and as such is man
universally treated by Mr. M'Culloch.

The freeman sells his labor and chooses
his employer. The land he cultivates is
divided from that of his neighbor man. He
combines his efibrts with those of his fel-
low-men for the accomplishment of almost
every object in life. He is « heing of
power and as such is man universally re-
garded by Dr. Smith.

The first poor cultivator is surrounded
by land unoccupied. The more of it at
his command the poorer he is. Compel-
led to work alone, he is a slave to his neces-
sities, and he can neither roll nor raise a log,
with which to build himself a house. He
makes himself a hole in the ground which
serves in lieu of one. He cultivates the
poor soil of the hills to obtain a little corn,
with which to eke out the supply of food
derived from snaring the game in his neigh-
borhood. His winter's supply is deposited
in another hole, liable to injury from the
water which filters through the light soil
into which alone he can penetrate. He is
23

354

WJiat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 7

Oct.

in hourly danger of starvation. At length,
however, his sons grow np. They com-
bine their exertions with his, and now ob-
tain something like an axe and a spade.
They can sink deeper into the soil ; and
can cut logs, and build something like a
house. They obtain more corn and more
game, and they can preserve it better. The
danger of starvation is diminished. Being no
longer forced to depend for fuel upon the
decayed wood which alone their father
could use, they are in less danger of perish-
ing from cold in the elevated ground which,
from necessity, they occupy. With the
growth of the family new soils are cultiva-
ted, each in succession yielding a larger re-
turn to labor, and they obtain a constantly
increasing supply of the necessaries of life
from a surface diminishing in its ratio to
the number to be fed; and thus with every in-
crease in the return to labor the power of
combining their exertions is increased.

If we look now to the solitary settler of
the west, even where provided with both
axe and spade, we shall see him obtaining,
with extreme difficulty, the commonest log-
hut. A neighbor arrives, and their com-
bined efforts produce a new house with less
than half the labor required for the first.
That neighbor brings a horse, and he makes
something like a cart. The product of
their labor is now ten times greater than
was that of the first man working by him-
self. More neighbors come, and new
houses are needed. A "bee" is made,
and by the combined effort of the neighbor-
hood the third house is completed in a day ;
whereas the first cost months, and the
second weeks, of far more severe exertion.
These new neighbors have brought ploughs
and horses, and now better soils are culti-
vated, and the product of labor is again
increased, as is the power to preserve the
surplus for winter's use. The path be-
comes a road. Exchanges increase. The
store makes its appearance. Labor is re-
warded by larger returns, because aided by
better machinery applied to better soils.
The town grows up. Each successive ad-
dition to the population brings a consumer
and a producer. The shoemaker wants
leather and corn in exchange for his shoes.
The blacksmith requires fuel and food, and
the farmer wants shoes for his horses ; and
with the increasing facility of exchange
more labor is applied to production, and

the reward of labor rises, producing new
wants, and requiring more and larger ex-
changes. The road becomes a turnpike,
and the wagon and horses are seen upon it.
The town becomes a city, and better soils
are cultivated for the supply of its markets,
while the railroad facilitates exchanges
with towns and cities yet more distant. The
tendency to union and to combination of
exertion thus grows with the growth of
wealth. In a state of extreme poverty it
cannot be developed. The insignificant tribe
of savages that starves on the product of the
superficial soil of hundreds of thousands
of acres of land, looks with jealous eyes on
every intruder, knowing that each new
mouth requiring to be fed tends to increase
the difficulty of obtaining subsistence;
whereas the farmer rejoices in the arrival
of the blacksmith and the shoemaker, be-
cause they come to eat on the spot the
corn which heretofore he has carried ten,
twenty, or thirty miles to market,. to ex-
change for shoes for himself and his horses.
With each new consumer of his products
that arrives he is enabled more and jnore
to concentrate his action and his thoughts
upon his home, while each new arrival
tends to increase his power of consuming
commodities brought from a distance, be-
cause it tends to diminish his necessity for
seeking at a distance a market for the pro-
duce of his farm. Give to the poor tribe
spades, and the knowledge how to use
them, and the power of association will
begin. The supply of food becoming more
abundant, they hail the arrival of the
stranger who brings them knives and cloth-
ing to be exchanged for skins and corn;
wealth grows, and the habit of association —
the first step towards civilization — arises.
The little tribe is, however, compelled
to occupy the higher lands. The lower
ones are a mass of dense forests and dreary
swamps, while at the foot of the hill runs
a river, fordable but for a certain period of
the year. On the hill side, distant a few
miles, is another tribe ; but communication
between them is difficult, because, the
river bottom being yet uncleared, roads
cannot be made, and bridges are as yet un-
thought of. Population and wealth, how-
ever, continue to increase, and the lower
lands come gradually into cultivation,
yielding larger returns to labor, and ena-
bling the tribe to obtain larger supplies of

1850.

Wliat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 7

355

food with less exertion, and to spare labor
to be employed for otber purposes. Roads
are made in the direction of the river bank.
Population increases more rapidly because
of the increased supplies of food and the
increased power of preserving it, and
wealth grows still more rapidly. The
river bank at length is reached, and some
of the best lands are now cleared. Popu-
lation grows again, and a new element of
wealth is seen in the form of a bridge, and
now the two little communities are enabled
to communicate more freely with each
other. One rejoices in the possession of a
wheelwright, while the other has a wind-
mill. One wants carts, and the other has
corn to grind. One has hides to spare,
while the other has more shoes than are
required for their use. Exchanges in-
crease, and the little town grows because
of the increased amount of trade. Wealth
grows still more rapidly, because of new
modes of combining labor, by which that
of all is rendered more productive. Roads
are now made in the direction of other
communities, and the work is performed
rapidly, because the exertions of the
two are now combined, and because the
machinery used is more efficient. One
after another disappear forests and swamps
that have occupied the fertile lands, sepa-
rating ten, twenty, fifty, or five hundred
communities, which now are brought into
connection with each other ; and with each
step labor becomes more and more pro-
ductive, and is rewarded with better food,
clothing, and shelter. Famine and disease
disappear, life is prolonged, population
is increased, and therewith the tendency to
that combination of exertion anions^ the
individuals composing these communities,
which is the distino-uishinsf characteristic of
civilization in all periods of the world, and
in all nations. With further increase of
population and wealth, the desires of man,
and his ability to gratify them, both in-
crease. The nation, thus formed, has
more corn than it wants ; but it has no
cotton, and its supply of wool is insufficient.
The neighboring nation has cotton and
wool, and needs corn. They are still di-
vided, however, by broad forests, deep
swamps, and rapid rivers. Population in-
creases, and the great forests and swamps
disappear, giving place to rich farms,
through which broad roads are made, with

immense bridges, which enable the mer-
chant to transport his wool and his cotton
to exchange with his now rich neighbors
for their surplus corn or clothing. Nations
now combine their exertions, and wealth
grows with still increased rapidity, facili-
tating the drainage of marches and thus
bringing into activity the richest soils ;
while coal mines cheaply furnish the fuel
for converting limestone into lime, and iron
ore into axes and spades, and into rails for
the new roads that are needed to transport
to market the vast products of the fertile
soils now in use, and to bring back the
large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and the
thousand other products of distant lands
with which intercourse now exists. At
each step population and wealth, and hap-
piness and prosperity, take a new bound ;
and men realize with difficulty the fact that
the country which now affords to tens of
millions all the necessaries, comforts, con-
veniences, and luxuries of life, is the same
that, when the superabundant land was
occupied by tens of thousands only, gave
to that limited number scanty supplies of
the worst food : so scanty that famines were
frequent and sometimes so severe that
starvation was followed in its wake by pes-
tilence, which, at brief intervals, swept
from the earth the population of the little
and scattered settlements, amonoj which
the people were forced to divide themselves
when they cultivated only the poor soils of
the hills.

We have here that order of thino-s which
" necessity imposes," and which is, never-
theless, " promoted by the natural inclina-
tions of man."* Unhappily " human insti-
tutions" have every where "thwarted natu-
ral inclinations," and thence has arisen the
necessity for such enquiries as the present.

The picture here presented is that of in-
creased productive power resulting from in-
crease of population, facilitating the devel-
opment of that first of all " the natural in-
clinations of man," the love of association,
and every act of combined exertion involves
an exchange of labor for labor. The hus-
band provides the food and the wife pre-
pares it for the table. The owner of a
horse lends it on one day to the owner of a
plough, and on another borrows the plough

* See quotation from Wealth of Nations, p. 134,
ante.

356

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Oct.

itself. The farmer ploughs the land, and
his neighbors assist to make the crop. The
grist miller grinds his grain, and the cot-
ton miller aids him in converting his flour
into cloth. On one day he hauls timber
for the carpenter, and on another the car-
penter repairs his barn. The blacksmith
shoes his horses, and he feeds the smith. —
The railroad owner aids him in going to
market, and the store keeper assists him in
converting his surplus produce into iron. —
The little capitalist carries his small accu-
mulations to the savings bank^ which lends
them and other savings to the man who de-
sires to build, and by him they are divided
among the laborers, the brick makers, the
stone cutters, the masons, the carpenters,
the lock makers, the hinge makers, the
glass blowers, and the numerous other per-
sons whose combined efforts are required
for the production of the house. The large
capitalist associates with his fellows in the
creation of a bank, which facilitates the
exchanges of coffee, sugar, tea, cotton, flour,
ships, land, and houses. Combination
of action is thus seen in every act of life,
and the more perfect the power of associa-
tion the larger must be the power of pro-
duction, and the larger the amount of
trade, for every act of combined exertion
is an act oj trade.

This habit of voluntary association is the
essential characteristic of self-government.
Without that, it can have no existence. In
this country, the type of the whole system
is found in "the bee :" the union of the old
settlers to put up a log-house for the newly
arrived family. Starting from that point,
it may be found in every operation of life.
The logs are to be rolled, the roof of the
barn is to be raised, or the corn is to be
husked. Forthwith, all assemble, and the
work which to the solitary laborer would
have been severe, and often impossible, is
made " a frolic" of, and an hour or two of
combined exertion accomplishes what oth-
wise might have required weeks, or months.
Does the new settler want a horse, or a
plough, or both r One neighbor lends him
the first, and another the last, and he soon
obtains a horse and a plough for himself;
whereas, without such aid he might have
toiled in poverty for years. A place of
worship is needed, and all, Methodists,
Episcopalians, Baptists and Presbyterians,
unite to build it ; its pulpit to be occupied

by the itinerant preachers of the wilder-
ness. The church brings people to the
neighborhood, and promotes the habit
of association, while the lesson taught
therein promotes the love of order : and in
a little time the settlement is dotted
over with meeting-houses, at one of which
Baptists, and at another Presbyterians, meet
each other, to listen to the man whom as
their teacher they have united to select. —
Is one of these houses burnt, the congre-
gation find all others of the neighborhood
placed at theii' command until the loss can
be repau-ed. JNText, we find them associat-
ing for the making of roads, and holding
meetings to determine who shall superin-
tend theii- construction and repair, and who
assess the contributions required for the
purpose. Again, we find them meeting to
determine who shall represent them at the
meeting of the county board, or in the
Assembly of the State, or in the Congress
of the Union. Again, to settle where the
new school-house shall be built, and to de-
termine who shaU collect the funds neces-
sary for the purpose, and select the books
for the little library that is to enable their
children to apply with advantage to them-
selves the knowledge of letters acquired
from the teacher. Again, they are seen
forming associations for mutual insurance
against horse thieves or fire ; or little sav-
ings' funds, called banks, at which the man
who wishes to buy a horse or a plough can
borrow the means necessary for the pur-
pose. Little mills grow up, the property
of one or two, and expand into larger ones,
in which all the little capitalists of the
neighborhood, shoemakers and sempstress-
es, farmers and lawyers, widows and or-
phans, are interested : little towns, in
which every resident owns his own house
and lot, and is therefore directly interested
in their good management, and in all mat-
ters tending to their advancement ; and
each feels that the first and greatest of
those things is perfect security of person
and property. The habit of combined ex-
ertion is seen exercising the most benefi-
cial influence in every action of Hfe, and it
is most seen where population and wealth
most abound: in the states ofTVew Eng-
land. There, we see a network of asso-
ciation so far exceeding what is elsewhere
to be seen as to defy comparison. The
shipwright, and the merchant, and the

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

357

more advanced and loss active capitalist,
unite with the master in the ownership of
the vessel ; and all unite with the crew in
the division of the oil which is the result
of the cruise. The great merchant, the
little capitalist, the skillful manufacturer,
the foundry-master, the engineer, the work-
man, and the girl who tends the loom,
unite in the ownership of the immense mill:
and millions of yards of cloth are furnish-
ed to the world by this combined effort on
the part of individuals who, if they work-
ed alone, could not have supplied thou-
sands. The property-holder of the city,
and the little capitalists, are everywhere
seen combining their exertions for the con-
struction of roads and the building of
steamboats, by the use of which the habit
of union is increased. In every relation
of life, the same tendency to combination
of action is seen to exist. Everywhere,
man is seen helping, and governing him-
self. That he may do this effectually,
wealth is necessary, for men cannot live
near each other while forced to cultivate
the poorest soils. Wealth thus produces
union, which is seen most to exist where
wealth most exists : more in the east than
in the west, and more in the north than in
the south. Union in turn produces wealth
which grows more rapidly in the north and
east than in the west and south ; and thus
wealth, combined action, and power of
self-government, with a constant increase
in the respect for laws which they them-
selves have made, manifested alike by in-
dividuals and by States whose population
counts by millions, and corresponding in-
crease in the return to labor, are seen con-
stantly advancing ; each helping and help-
ed by others.

Every act of combination here describ-
ed is an act of trade. That trade may
grow, it is necessary that man should
be enabled to act in accordance with
that natural tendency of the human mind
which leads him to desire to associate
with his fellow-man, and thus it is that
the love of society leads to increase in the
power to produce, with necessary increase
in the power to exchange. That he may
gratify that natural desire, increase of po-
pulation is needed. The people of towns
and cities combine their efforts far more
readily than those of the most densely peo-
pled country, and those of Massachusetts

and Rhode Island do so with infinite facili-
ty compared with those of Texas or Ar-
kansas ; and they in turn enjoy the advan-
tage resulting from the exercise of this
power to a much greater extent than do
the people of the Rocky mountains.

That combination may exist there must
be diversity of employment. It is only
occasionally that the farmer can aid his
brother farmer. Both raise nearly the
same commodities, and both desire to ex-
chano;e for cloth and iron. The suo;ar
planter and the cotton grower are in the
labor market at one and the same time,
seeking aid for the purpose of securing their
crops, and can of course render no assist-
ance to each other. The furnace master,
on the contrary, can mine his coal or his
ore in winter, when the farmer and his
sons, their horses and wagons, are other-
wise unemployed, and then when summer
comes, they can return to work on the
farm. The blacksmith and the carpenter
can suspend their work in harvest time.
There is, in fact, scarcely a day of the far-
mers' life in which he cannot advantage-
ously combine his efforts with those of his
neighbors, the blacksmith, the carpenter,
the butcher, the miller, the tanner, the
weaver, and the road maker, for the im-
provement of their common condition.
With every increase in the density of popu-
lation, we should, therefore, find increase in
the ratio of production to population, with
constant increase in the power of individuals
and of communities to exchange their labor
and its products for those of other indivi-
duals and communities, accompanied by
a constantly augmenting increase in the
number of exchanges effected.

Combination of action and increase of
trade are thus the natural results of in-
creased population, and increase in the
power of voluntary association. It cannot
exist to any extent among a scattered
people wholly employed in agriculture.

" In the lone houses and very small villages
which are scattered about in so desert a coun-
try as the highlands of Scotland," says Dr.
Smith, " every farmer must be butcher, baker,
and brewer, for his own family. In such
situations we can scarce expect to find even a
smith, a carpenter, or a mason, within less
than twenty miles of another of the same
trade. The scattered families that live at eight
or ten miles distance from the nearest of them,
must learn to perform themselves a great num-

358

Tl^/iat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Oct.

ber of little pieces of work, for which, in more
populous countries, they would call in the as-
sistance of those workmen. Country work-
men are almost everywhere obliged to apply
themselves to all the diJferent branches of
industry that have so much affinity to one
another as to be emploj'ed about the same
sort of materials. A country carpenter deals
in every sort of work that is made of wood ;
a country smith in every sort of work that is
made of iron. The former is not only a car-
penter, but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, and
even a carver in wood, as well as a wheel-
wright, a plough- Wright, a cart and wagon-
maker. The employments of the latter are
still more various. It is impossible there
should be such a trade as even that of a nailer
in the remote and inland parts of the higlands
of Scotland. Such a workman at the rate of
a thousand nails a-day, and three hundred
workino; davs in the vear. ^vill make three
hundred thousand nails in the year. But in
such a situation it would be impossible to dis-
pose of one thousand; that is of one day's
>voik in the year."

When, on the contrary, population has
increased and the power of combination
has risen, the habit of association is
great, and the division of labor almost in-
finite. Its effects are thus exhibited by
Dr. Smith :

" It is the great multiplication of the produc-
tions of all the different arts, in consequence
of the division of labor, which occasions, in
a well-governed society, that universal opul-
ence which extends itself to the lowest ranks
of the people. Every workman has a great
quantity of his own work to dispose of bevond
what he himself has occasion for ; and every
other workman being exactly in the same sit-
uation, he is enabled to exchange a great
quantity of his own goods for a great quantity,
or, what comes to the same thing, for the price
of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies
them abundantly with what they have occa-
sion for, and they accommodate him as amply
with what he has occasion for, and a general
plenty diffuses itself through all the different
ranks of the society.

Observe the accommodation of the most
common artificer or day-laborer in a civilized
and thriving country, and you will perceive
that the number of people, of whose industry
a part, though but a small part, has been em-
ployed in procuring him this accommodation,
exceeds all computation. The woollen coat,
for example, which covers the day-laborer,
as course and rough as it may appear, is the
produce of the joint-labor of a great multitude
of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the
wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the
Bcribler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller.

the dresser, with many others^ must all join
their different arts in order to complete even
this homely production. How many mer-
chants and carriers, besides, must have been
employed in transporting the materials from
some of those workmen to others who often
live in a very distant part of the country ?
How much commerce and navigation in parti-
cular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-
makers, rope-makers, must have been employed
in order to bring together the different drugs
made use of by the dyer, which often come
from the remotest corners of the world 1 What
a variety of labor, too, is necessary in order
to produce the tools of the meanest of those
workmen! To say nothing of such compli-
cated machines as the ship of the sailor, the
mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the
weaver, let us consider only what a variety
of labor is requisite in order to form that very
simple machine, the shears with which the
shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the
builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the
feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal
to be made use of in the smelting-house, the
brickmaker., the bricklayer, the workmen who
attend the furnace, the millwright, the forger,
the smith, must all of them join their different
arts in order to produce them. Were we to
examine, in the same manner all the different
parts of his dress and household furniture, the
coarse linen shirt which he wears next his
skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed
which he lies on, and all the different parts
which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which
he prepares his victuals, the coals which he
makes use of for that purpose, dug from the
bowels of the earth, and brought to him. per-
haps, by a long sea and a long land-carriage,
all the other utensils of his kitchen, all the
furniture of his table, the knives and forks,
the earthen or pewter plates upon which he
serves up and divides his victuals, the different
hands employed in preparing his bread and his
beer, the glass window which lets in the heat
and the light, and keeps out the wind and the
rain, with all the knowledge and art requisite
for preparing that beautiful and happy inven-
tion; without which these northern parts of
the world could scarce have afforded a very
comfortable habitation, together with the tools
of all the different workmen employed in pro-
ducing those different conveniencies; if we
examine, I say, all these things, and consider
what a variety of labor is employed about
each of them, we shall be sensible that, with-
out the assistance and co-operaiion of many
thousands, the very meanest person in a civil-
ized country could not be provided, even ac-
cording to, what we very falsely imagine, the
easy and simple manner in which he is com-
monly accommodated. Compared, indeed,
with the more extravagant luxury of the

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

359

great, his accommodation must no doubt ap-
pear extremely simple and easy ; and yet it
may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation
of an European prince does not always so
much exceed that of an industrious and frugal
peasant, as the accommodation of the latter
exceeds that of many an African king, the
absolute masters of the lives and liberties of
\tT\. thousand naked savages."

With every step of increase in the power
to exchange labor for labor, the necessary
result of increased population, the habit of
voluntary association increases, the slave cul-
tivating the undivided land of others, pass-
ing into the freeman who cultivates his own,
and land becoming more and more divided,
and thus the trade in land grows with every
increase in the power to exchange labor
and its products.

The first poor cultivator, the slave of his
necessities, occupies such spots as his small
means will permit him to use. He has
yet acquired no power to compel the land
to yield him what is needed for his com-
fortable subsistence. With the acquisition
of the spade he turns under, and thus ex-
pels, the wild grass, substituting for it the
oats, or the barley, or the rye, as he deems
one or the other best fitted for his purpose.
In the outset he requires much land, be-
cause but small portions can be made to
yield to his demands any return whatsoever.
With the growth of his wealth, and the
acquisition of axes and ploughs, other por-
tions, however, become productive 5 and,
by degrees, he finds, on a few acres, more
continuous employment for his time than,
in the outset, was found upon a thousand.
His family, too, has grown. If all continue
to cultivate the whole quantity, there will
be great waste of labor. The territory he
has occupied covers several square miles ;
and the time required to walk to and from
their work will be so much deduction from
that which should be given to the cultiva-
tion of the soil, or of their own physical
and mental powers. Each takes his share,
and each builds himself a house. Each
cultivates his own land, and each calls upon
his brothers for aid in harvest, in building
a barn, or rolling logs, or quarrying stone.
All are separate, but all are therefore inter-
ested in making roads by which all may be
enabled to unite. While all lived in the
same house, their labors were wasted in
bringing home the fruits of the field, and
the J had no leisure for making roads. Now

that all work separately, and that each
man eats on his own land the rye or the
oats needed for his support, each feels more
and more the advantage to be derived from
increasing the facility of obtaining the aid
that may be required ; and thus the divis-
ion of land consequent upon the increase of
wealth in the form of spades and axes, tends
to produce increase of wealth in the form of
roads, thereby increasing the po?^;er of union,
while diminishing the necessity therefor.
Each labors on his own land, and each la-
bors faithfully, because laboring for himself.
Each makes or procures from elsewhere,
some machine calculated to increase the
powers of himself and his neighbors ; and all
combine, at times, to procure those things
which, important to all, are beyond the
means of any.

If we look to Attica in the days of her
prosperity, we see a tendency to the divi-
sion of land, and the union of men. If we
look to her in the da3^s of her lowest poverty,
we see Herodes Atticus universal proprie-
tor, and universal builder, while union
among men has ceased to exist. If we
look to Rome in the days of Servius, we
see a vast body of small proprietors enrich-
ing themselves by the cultivation of their
own land. If we look again, we see
universal poverty, the numerous little and
prosperous proprietors being replaced by
Scipios and Pompeys, owning vast tracts
and overwhelmed by debts, while disunited
men have become slaves. So, again, if we
look to Gaul, or Africa. Everywhere
throughout the world, the tendency to
division of land and combination of action
among men has grown with the growth of
wealth : while poverty has produced its
concentration in the hands of a few pro-
prietors, and disunion among its occupants.
We see this now exhibited on a large scale
in the south of Spain, where a few gran-
dees have replaced the honest, industrious
and enlightened Moors, who combined
their exertions for bringing into activity
the best soils of their own land, and for
fashioning their products ; thereby enrich-
ing their country aiud themselves.

The great business of mankind is the
production of food, and the raw materials
of commodities and things necessary to en-
able man to enjoy the conveniences, com-
forts or luxuries of life. That he may do
this, the Deity has given him the com-

360

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Oct.

mand of a great machine in whicli exist all
the elements of production, waiting only
the application of the ph j sical and mental
powers with which he has been endowed,
to render them available for his purpose.
The gift was accompanied with the com-
mand to labor, that he might have food for
himself and his children ; to labor, that he
might have clothing and shelter ; to labor
that he might acquire knowledge ; to labor,
that he might enjoy leisure and repose. It is
a great laboratory, in which combination of
effort yields largely, but can scarcely have
existence when population is small and
men cultivate the poorer soils. To com-
bination division is essential, and where
that does not exist, the progress of cultiva-
tion is always slow. Hence the wretched con-
dition of all commons, and of all lands up-
on which exists the partial right of com-
mon, as on most of those of France, under
the system of vaine 'pature* Starting
from the point of absolute barbarism, when
all land is held in common, it will be
found that cultivation improves with every
approach towards absolute ownership.
Thus, it is better now in every part of
England than in any part in the days when
men were serfs, and had in land no pro-
perty whatsoever. It is better where short
leases exist than where all are tenants at
will. It is better where long leases exist
than where they are short, and the highest
cultivation is invariably found where the
owner and occupant are one and the same,
and where there exists every inducement
to the most perfect economy of time and
labor. It is thus far better in Cumberland,
where heads of families are generally pro-
prietors of a few acres, than in Wilts or
Dorset, where it is held in large masses,
and cultivated by hired laborers. This
may again be seen in the high cultivation
of the peasant proprietors of the valley of
the Arno ; in the rich fields and the neat and
comfortable houses of the small landhold-
ers of Belgium ; and in the high prosperity
of the same class in Norway. The division
of land, and its cultivation by the owner
for his own profit, are the necessary conse-
quences of the growth of wealth ; and with

* The lands of France being unenclosed, cattle
are turned loose upon them in the autumn, and thus
each man in a neighborhood is enabled to exercise
a partial right of common over his neighbor's land,
a system that is found most injurious to the pro-
gress of agriculture.

each step in this direction agriculture be-
comes more and more a science, furnishing
employment for minds of the highest order,
and yielding the largest returns to their
exertions. It ceases to be the labor of the
slave, and becomes the refined and elegant
occupation of the gentleman, who gives to
the direction of a small estate all his facul-
ties, and obtains a liberal reward for permit-
ting a portion of its proceeds to be applied
to its improvement ; while to those who ex-
ecute with their hands what he plans with
his head, large wages are aflforded ; and he
finds in this employment greater happiness
than was enjoyed by those of his predeces-
sors whose thousands of acres were scratch-
ed by serfs to enable them to pay the ran-
som to his captor on the field of battle.

Such is the tendency of things when
wealth and population grow. War and
waste produce a reverse effect, and' land
concentrates itself in fewer hands. Hence
it is that the ao;e of barbarism, dio-nified with
title of that of the Feudal System, has been
seen to inflict upon the world the right of
primogeniture, another of the weak inven-
tions by which man endeavors to set aside
the great laws of nature ; but over which
she invariably tiumphs when men remain
at peace.

These views are in perfect accordance
of those of Dr. Smith wko thought that
nothing could be " more contrary to the
real interest of a numerous family than a
right which, in order to enricli one, beggars
numerous children." Nothing, in his opin-
ion " could be more completely absurd than
the system of entails."

''They are founded," says he, " upon the most
absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that
every successive generation of men have not
an equal right to the earth, and to all that it
possesses ; but that the property of the pre-
sent generation should be restrained and regu-
lated according to the fancy of those who died,
perhaps five hundred years ago. Entails,
however, are still respected, through the
greater part of Europe; in those countries,
particularly, in which noble birth is a neces-
sary qualification for the enjoyment either
of civil or military honors. Entails are
thought necessary for maintaining this exclu-
sive privilege of the nobility to the great
offices and honors of their country; and that
order having usurped one unjust advantage
over the rest of their fellow-citizens, lest their
property should render it ridiculous, it is
thought reasonable that they should have
another. The common law of England, indeed,

1850.

TVhat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

361

is said to abhor perpetuities, and they are
accordingly more restricted there than in any
other European monarchy; though even Eng-
land is not altogether without them. In
Scotland, more then one-fifth, perhaps more
than one-third part of the whole lands in the
country, are at present supposed to be under
strict entail.

'• ' Great tracts of uncultivated land were in
this manner not only engrossed by particular
families, but the possibility of their being di-
vided again was as much as possible preclud-
ed for ever. It seldom happens, however,
that a great proprietor is a great improver. In
the disorderly times which gave birth to those
barbarous institutions, the great proprietor
was sufficiently employed in defending his
own territories, or in extending his jurisdic-
tion and authority over those of his neigh-
bors. He had no leisure to attend to the
cultivation and improvement of land. When
the establishment of law and order afforded
him this leisure, he often wanted the inclina-
tion, and almost always the requisite abilities.
If the expense of his house and person either
equalled or exceeded his revenue, as it did
very frequently, he had no stock to employ in
this manner. If he was an economist, he
generally found it more profitable to employ
his annual savings in new purchases than in
the improvement of his old estate. To im-
prove land with profit, like all other commer-
cial projects, requires an exact attention to
small savings and small gains, of which a
man born to a great fortune, even though na-
turally frugal; is very seldom capable. The
situation of such a person naturally disposes
him to attend rather to ornament, which pleases
his fancy, than to profit, for which he has so
little occasion. The elegance of his dress, of
his equipage, of his house and household fur-
niture, are objects which, from his infancy, he
has been accustomed to have some anxiety
about. The turn of mind which this habit
naturally forms, follows him when he comes
to think of the improvement of land. He
embellishes, perhaps, four or five hundred
acres in the neighborhood of his house, at ten
times the expense which the land is worth
after all his improvements ; and finds, that if
he was to improve his whole estate in the
same manner, and he has little taste for any
other, he would be a bankrupt before he had
finished the tenth part of it. There still remain,
in both parts of the united kingdom, some
great estates which have continued, without
interruption, in the hands of the same family
since the times of feudal anarchy. Com-
pare the present condition of those estates
with the possessions of the small proprietors
in their neighborhood, and you will require
no other argument to convince you how un-
favorable such extensive property is to im-
provement.

" • If little improvement was to be expected
from such great proprietors, still less was to
be hoped for from those who occupied the land
under them. In the ancient state of Europe,
the occupiers of land were all tenants at will.
They were all, or almost all, slaves, but their
slavery M^as of a milder kind than that known
among the ancient Greeks and Romans, or
even in the West Indian colonies. They were
supposed to belong more directly to the land
than to their master. They could, therefore,
be sold with it, but not separately. They could
marry, provided it was with the consent of
their master ; and he could not afterwards
dissolve the marriage by selling the man and
wife to different persons. If he maimed or
murdered any of them, he was liable to some
penalty, though generally but to a small one.
They were not, however, capable of acquiring
property. Whatever they acquired was ac-
quired to their master, and he could take it
from them at pleasure. Whatever cultivation
and improvement could be carried on by means
of such slaveS; was properly carried on by
their master. It was at his expense. The
seed, the cattle, and the instruments of hus-
bandry, were all his. It was for his benefit.
Such slaves could acquire nothing but their
daily maintenance. It was properly the pro-
prietor himself, therefore, that in this case
occupied his own lands, and cultivated them
by his own bondmen. This species of slavery
still subsists in Russia, Poland, Hungary,
Bohemia, Moravia, and other parts of Germa-
ny. It is only in the western and south-
western provinces of Europe that it has
gradually been abolished altogether.

" '• But if great improvements are seldom to
be expected from great proprietors, they are
least of all to be expected when they employ
slaves for their workmen. The experience of
all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates
that the work done by slp,ves, though it ap-
pears to cost only their maintenance, is in the
end the dearest of any. A person who can
acquire no property can have no other interest
but to eat as much and to labor as little as
possible. Whatever work he does beyond
what is sufficient to purchase his own main-
tenance, can be squeezed out of him by vio-
lence only^ andnotby any interest of his owm.
In ancient Italy, how much the cultivation of
corn degenerated, how unprofitable it became
to the master, when it fell under the manage-
ment of slaves, is remarked both by Pliny and
Columella. In the time of Aristotle, it had
not been much betLer in ancient Greece.
Speaking of the ideal republic described in the
laws of Plato, to maintain 5000 idle men (the
number of warriors supposed necessary for its
defence), together with their women and ser-
vants, would require, he says, a territory of
boundless extent and fertility, like the plains
of Babylon."

362

What Constitutes "Real Freedom of Trade ?

Oct.

We see thus that Dr. Smith's whole
system looks to increased freedom of trade
in labor and land, the great instruments of
production. The base on which it rests
is that land, being the great source of
all production, the labor which is applied
to its cultivation is that which is most pro-
ductive of " the necessaries, conveniences,
and luxuries of life." He desired there-
fore to increase the quantity that might be
given to cultivation, by diminishing that
required for transportation, and he saw
that when the laborer took his place by
the side of the food, he not only diminished
the necessity for transporting the food it-
self, but he also aided in the conversion of
other raw materials into commodities ready
for use, so as to fit them for cheap transport-
ation to distant countries, thus increasing
the power to trade both abroad and at
home. It was obvious to him that the
more men worked in combination with
each other the more productive would be
the labor of each, and the greater would
be the number whose labors might be ap-
plied to the work of production. The ne-
cessary consequence of this would be that
while each might consume more, each
would be enabled to accumulate more rapid-
ly, and each step in the progress of accumu-
lation would be but the prelude to a new and
greater one, and that thus would wealth
grow more rapidly than numbers, facilitating
still farther the progress of population, and
causing to increase still more rapidly the
habit of association, and the power to pro-
duce, to consume, and to accumulate.

Increase of produce necessarily involves
increase of trade, for there are more com-
modities in which to trade. So likewise
with increase of accumulation, for the in-
vestment of savings involves the exchange
of food and clothing for the labor employed
in clearing and draining lands, the build-
ing of houses and mills, the opening of
mines, and the erection of furnaces. The
more men work in combination with each
other, the greater will be the power to
produce, and the greater, necessarily, must
be the power to consume and to accumu-
late, and thus is it seen that, with the growth
of population and wealth, the trade in labor
and land, and in the products of both, tends
to increase more rapidly than population,
and each is seen to be helping, and helped
hjj the other.

It has been shown that the work of cul-

tivation is invariably commenced upon the
poorer soils, and that it is only with the
growth of population and wealth that the
richer soils — the heavily timbered lands,
the flats and the swamps, — can be cleared
or drained. So long as the farmer has to
depend on distant markets, he must apply
himself to the production of those articles
of which the earth yields but little in return
to labor, and which therefore coaimand a
high price, and will bear transportation, and
so long he must continue unable to clear
and drain the richest soils. He cannot
raise potatoes, or turnips, of which the
earth yields by tons, for he has no market
on the land, and they will not bear trans-
portation. Concentration makes a mar-
ket on the land for the products of the land,
as the mechanic placed among the food
consumes largely, and is a customer to the
farmer for those products of which the
earth yields largely in return to labor. The
system of Dr. Smith tended to bring the
mechanic to the food, and thus to increase
the power to produce and the power to trade.

The soil that is constantly cropped for
the supply of distant markets becomes ex-
hausted, and its occupant is compelled to
fly to lands still more distant, with con-
stant diminution in the return to labor.
The system of Dr. Smith looked to placing
the consumer by the side of the producer,
enabling the farmer to obtain large crops to
be consumed on or near the land, the refuse
of which could be returned to the land, thus
increasing instead of diminishing its produc-
tive powers, and thereby facilitating the
growth of population, the power of com-
bination,the power to trade, and the amount
of trade.

With increase in the power of produc-
tion the power of accumulation necessarily
increases, and with each step in the pro-
gress thereof the demand for labor increas-
es, and the laborer acquires more and more
the power to determine for himself to whom
he will sell his labor and what shall be its
price. The value of present labor in-
creases as compared with the proceeds of
accumulated labor, called capital, and while
the productiveness of labor is constantly
increasing, the froportion which can be
claimed by the owner of landed or other
capital is constantly decreasing^^ leaving to
the laborer a constantly increasing propor-
tion, with consequent increase in the facility
of converting the laborer working for others

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

363

into the little capitalist working for himself
— owner of a little farm, or of a machine of
some description calculated to render his
labor more productive. Division of land is,
therefore, the necessary consequence of the
system of Dr. Smith,which looks everywhere
to increase in the freedom of man, and to
increase in the power of voluntary associa-
tion, the combination of the exertions of the
mechanic and the occupant of land for the
purpose of increasing the productive power
of labor and land, being, in his estimation,
the one thing needful for the improvement
of the condition of man.

The following view of the effect of the
division of land in increasing production,
is from a recent writer, who, being a be-
liever in the theory of over-population,
may be regarded as excellent authority : —

"The one thing needful is obviously to
make land yield the largest possible surplus,
after adequately remunerating the cultivator;
and that small farms can afford a larger surplus
than similar portions of a large one, is evident
from the fact of their paying higher rents.
Further proof may be found in Flanders and
Lombardy, when the densest populations in
Europe, and those in a large proportion town
populations, are maintained in comfort by land
divided among small farmers. How this end
is attained, is surely of comparatively little
importance \ even if it were true that the im-
plements and methods of small farmers are
clumsy and defective, that they disdain the aid
of science, and require twice as much labor
as would suffice under a different system, it
would still be manifest that they possess some
advantage which more than compensates for
all these drawbacks. In spite of their adher-
ence to old practices, they manage to get more
from the land than the large capitalist with all
his improvements, and after receiving sufficient
for their own consumption, they have a large
residue for sale. (They thus have more trade
without the family, as the trade within the fa-
mily increases, and this is evidence that the
system is the one that constitutes freedom of
trade.) They might, perhaps, do better still by
imitating some of the methods of the large
capitalist; but even as it is, they do better
than he does, and their plan must, on the
wholcj be better than his. Nothing can be
more unjust, however, than to stigmatize the
culture of small farms as necessarily rude and
inartificial. The small holdings of the Flem-
ish peasantry not only bear heavier crops than
lands of the same quality in the best farmed
districts of England or Scotland, but the land
is kept much cleaner, is much better drained,
and much more abundantly manured. It may
be true that in Great Britain large farmers are

almost the only improvers ; but this is because
few except large farmers have leases, and
consequently any motive for improvement.
When small farmers have any hold on the
land, as in Norway, Belgium, Switzerland,
and France, they combine to raise funds for
any project that promises to be generally be-
neficial. In this way chann'els many miles in
length are made for irrigation or drainage ;
and a dozen owners of three or four cows, or
occupiers of as many acres, combine to make
cheeses as large and fine as any that Cheshire
can produce ; and even to establish a beet-
root manufacture, the most extensive and sci-
entific of all modern agricultural operations.
Mutual cooperation thus places within the
reach of small farmers almost every advan-
tage possessed by their wealthy rivals. The
principal difference in their modes of procedure
is, that the former being less able to purchase
extensive machinery, employ a larger relative
quantity of labor. This, however, is the re-
verse of disadvantageous either as regards
themselves or the public. The agricultural
class constitute the nerves and sinews of a
nation, and its increase so generally deprecat-
ed by political economists, only becomes an
evil when it encroaches on the nourishment
which might be reserved for other classes. If
additional agricultural laborers can procure
subsistence without detracting from that of
other people, their existence is a material ad-
vantage. If by the labor of two men the
produce of a piece of ground can be so much
augmented as to furnish ample subsistence for
both, and yet leave as great a surplus as when
only one cultivator was employed, the double
application of labor increases both the strength
and the wealth of the country. If the surplus
be greater than before, it increases also the
income of the proprietor of the land. Now,
this, and much more than this, takes place on
small farms. Labor there is much more pro-
ductive than on large ones. Most of the
work is done under the master's eye, and
much of it done by his own hands, or those of
his family. All the laborers have motives for
exertion unknown to hired servants, or at least
are subject to a vigilant supervision which a
larger landholder cannot exercise. They
bestow on their w^ork a care, patience, and as-
siduity, which cannot be purchased at any
price : and these qualities much more than
compensate for any waste of labor caused by
bad tools or injudicious arrangement. The
produce of the soil is so much increased in
consequence, as not only to provide for the
consumption of the additional cultivators, but
to leave a larger quantity remaining than if
fewer laborers, without the same motives for
industry, had been employed. If, then, Ihe
merits of a system may be judged of from its
results, the subdivision of farms would be fa-
vorable instead of injurious to agriculture. It

364

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade 1

Oct.

would certainly occasion a change of practice,
and would cause more labor to be employed,
but it would increase the power of labor in a
greater degree. A larger proportion would
thus become applicable to the payment of rent,
and to the consumption of the non-agricnltu-
ral part of the community ; provisions would
grow cheaper, but landlords, notwithstanding,
would receive incomes as large^ if not larger,
than at present." *

This is strong, but how much stronger
would it not have been had its author been
satisfied that with the increase of produc-
tion, the landlord would be entitled to
claim a smaller proportion as rent, and
that while the amount of his rent would be
increased, the laborer would retain not only
a larger quantity but a larger proportion
of the increased quantity. Every one
knows that the more rapid the increase of
capital in the form of cleared lands, ploughs,
harrows, mills, and furnaces, the greater is
the necessity of the capitalist for the la-
borer, and the higher the price of labor,
and experience teaches us that that price
is always such as to give to the laborer a
larger proportion of the product. In for-
mer times, the owner of land took two-
thirds, and production was then very small.
Later, he was compelled to be satisfied with
one-half, but more recently it has been es-
timated at only one-fourth. In former
times, the rate of interest was from ten to
twenty per cent, whereas it is now but five,
and such is the movement in every com-
munity in which the wealth increases in its
ratio to population.

Of the efiect of this an idea may be
formed froui an examination of the foUow-
mg Table, in which the facts are compared
with the theory of Mr. Ricardo, upon which
is based the whole modern English politico-
economical system :

RICARDO

S DOCTRINE.

OBSERVATION.

6 d

0) r^

01 Si

o J

P-I

First period

100

—

100

Second "

190

180

Third «

270

240

120

Fourth "

340

280

180

100

Fifth

400

100

300

250

100

150

Sixth "

450

150

300

330

120

210

Seventh "

490

210

280

420

140

280

Eighth "

520

280

240

510

155

355

Ninth "

540

360

180

620

170

450

Tenth «

550

450

100

740

180

560

Eleventh

550

870

190

680

* Thornton, on Over-population, p. 331.

The quantity divided among the owners
of land increases as the proportion dimin-
ishes, while the laborers obtain an increased
proportion of an increased quantity.*

It will be obvious to the reader that the
power of the laborer to accumulate capital
must increase with each and every step in
this direction, and equally so that when the
laborer goes to the food, the tendency will
be towards the acquisition of a piece of
land, the cultivation of which may enable
him healthfully and profitably to employ his
hours of leisure. " Its cultivation," says
Mr. Thornton, from whom we continue to
quote : —

" costs him nothing, but serves rather as an
amusement for the leisure of himself and fa-
mily, enabling all but the very youngest to
make themselves useful. Abundance of ma-
nure is found in the refuse and scraps of all
kinds that would otherwise be thrown away.
Nothing is wasted, and habits of thrift and
industry are formed. The produce being pro-
portioned less to the extent of the ground,

* This proportional law of distribution, proving
the perfect harmony of the interests of the laborer
and capitalist, was first published by the author of
this article, in 1837. It is now adopted, and pub-
lished as Ids own, in his Harmonies Economiques,"
by Mons. Basiiat, who says of it :

" Such is the great, admirable, consoling, neces-
sary, and inflexible law of capital. To demon-
strate it is, as it appears to me, to strike with dis-
credit the declamation, with which our ears have so
long been dinned, against the avarice and the ty-
ranny of the most powerful instrument of civiliza-
tion and of equalization, that results from the
exercise of the powers of man. *****
Thus the great law of capital and labor, as regards
the distribution of the products of their joint la-
bors is settled. The absolute quantity of each is
greater, but the proportional part of capital con-
stantly diminishes as compared with that of labor,

" Cease, then, capitalists and laborers, to look
upon each other with eyes of suspicion and of
envy. Close your ears to those absurd declaimers,
of whom nothing equals their pride if it be not their
ignorance, who, under the promise of future har-
mony, begin by exciting present discord. Recol-
lect that, say what they may, your interests are
one and the same — that they cannot be separated
— that they tend together towards the realization
of the general good — that the sweats of the pre-
sent generation combine themselves with those
generations that have past — that it is right that
each who has united in the work should have a
portion of the remuneration — and, that the most
ingenious as well as the most equitable division
takes place among you by virtue of providential
laws, and by means of free and voluntary arrange-
ments, without requiring the aid of a parasitic
sentiment alism to impose upon you its decrees, at
the expense of your well-being, your liberty, your
security, and your dignity."

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

365

than to the care and attention hestowed upon
it, is infinitely greater than a large occupier
could have obtained from the same space ; and
besides the direct addition which it makes to
the laborer's means of existence, enables him
to keep pigs, poultry, &c., at little or no ex-
pense. He enjoys a variety as well as an
abundance of articles of diet, which, even if
he possessed their value in money, it would
be scarcely possible for him to buy, and he
has besides a resource on which he may rely
when other means of livelihood temporarily
fail. A day laborer is always liable to be
thrown out of work by a number of causes,
when, if he is entirely dependent on wages,
he may become involved in inextricable diffi-
culties, whereas with the help of a stock of
food of his own raising, he might easily strug-
gle through his embarrassment. The occu-
pancy of a little land does away with much
of the precariousness, which is the worst fea-
ture in the laborer's condition ; and this is
particularly the case when the land is the la-
borer's own property, as it would not impro-
bably become, in circumstances such as those
supposed, when he might often be able to save
a little money. He then feels himself suffici-
ently independent not to be overanxious about
the future ; but not so much so as to grow
careless of obtaining work, or of satisfying his
employer. On the contrary, finding that he
has been admitted into a higher order of soci-
ety, he uses every exertion to maintain his
new position. Men of this class are com-
monly the most diligent and trustworthy, as
well as the most respectful servants."*

This is in accordance with every-day
experience. As the laborer becomes a
little capitalist he feels him self animated by
HOPE, and his exertions increase, while he
becomes more careful and economical, and
thus it is that with every increase in the
ratio of wealth to population there is seen
an improvement in the moral, as well as in
the physical condition of man. He ac-
quires the habit of combining his exertions
with his neighbor, and with each such
combination his powers of production in-
crease, and therewith there is an increase
in the power to trade. We see thus that
it is in the direction of concentration — that
of placing the consumer of food in the
midst of the producers of the food — that we
must look for freedom of trade, and in that
direction it was that it was sought by Adam
Smith.

With the growth of the habit of combi-
nation, schools are established at which

* Thornton, on Over-population, p. 334.

children are cheaply educated, books and
newspapers increase in number, the intel-
lectual condition is improved, and men are
enabled to employ their labor more advan-
tageously, with further increase in the
power to produce, and in the power to
trade. The habit of union produces a
habit of peace and love of harmony, and
the power of self -protection increases, with
diminished necessity for employing men in
the unproductive labor of carrying swords
or muskets, and also diminished necessity
for collecting taxes for their maintenance,
the consequence of which is that capi-
tal grows with increased rapidity, and with
it there is an increase in the power to pro-
duce, and in the power to maintain trade.
With each such step wealth increases in its
ratio to population and the laborer is enabled
to demand a still increased proportion of the
increased product, and to become, with still
increased facility, a capitalist, the indi-
vidual and the community exercising from
day to day more perfectly the form of self-
government. Thus it is that the system
taught by Adam Smith tends to the im-
provement of the physical, moral, intellec-
tual, and political condition of man, while
with each step in the progress of improve-
ment there is increased power to maintain
trade.

This order of things it is which in every
country is " promoted by the natural in-
clinations of man, "'^ and '^ if human inclina-
tions had not thwarted those natural
inclinations, the towns could no where
have increased beyond what the improve-
ment and cultivation of the country in
which they were situated could support.""]*
The artisan and the laborer would have
been every where seen placing themselves
where food was cheap, and " the beauty
of the country, the pleasures of a country
life, the tranquility of mind which it pro-
mises, and wherever the injustice of human
laws does not disturb it the independency
which it really affords," would have been
every where found to have " charms that
more or less attract every body. "J There
would thus have been made every where
a market on the land for the products of
the land, and '' the inland or home trade,
the most important of all, the trade in

* Wealth of Nations, Book III. Chap. I.
' t Ibid. X Ibid.

366

WJiat Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

Oct.

which an equal capital affords the largest
income," and creates the greatest employ-
ment for the people of the country, " would
not have been considered as " subsidiary
only to the foreign trade."*

Such was the political economy of Adam
Smith, and it is impossible to read his book
without a feeling of admiration for the man
who saw so clearly, and so early, the course
of policy that most tended to increase the
happiness and respectability, the strength
and independence, of men and of nations.
He believed in the advantage resulting
from division of the land, and pointed
distinctly to the course which tended
to its accomplishment. He felt with " the
small proprietor," knowing " every part
of his little territory," and viewmg it with
" all the affection which property, especi-
ally small property naturally inspires, and
who on that account takes pleasure not
only in cultivating it, but in adorning

* Wealth of Nations, Book IV. Chap. I.

it," and is therefore, " of all improvers the
most industrious, the most intelligent and
the most successful."*

The whole system of Dr. Smith looks to
increase in the power to trade resultingfrom
increase in the power of man to gratify his
" natural inclination" for association with
his fellow men. That of his successors
looks, as will now be shown, to increased
necessity for trade^ and diminished power
to trade resulting from a necessity for di-
minution in the power of man to gratify his
'' natural inclination" for marriage, and for
association with his fellow-men. In the
school of the one, commerce is regarded as
the handmaid of agriculture. In the other,
" Commerce is King," and it is that com-
merce with distant nations which was re -
garded by Dr. Smith as yielding the small-
est returns to the labor and capital em-
ployed.

* Ibid. Book III. chap. IV.

SONNETS TO FILL BLANKS.

irUMBER ONE.

This is a " Sonnet," made to fill a blank :

First of a " Series," writ for the Review,

To please the publisher, " who would greatly thank'

An author friend, " to furnish one or two."

A Shakspere Sonnet, three quatrains and a couplet :

In form correct, in sense mere prose, good Reader,

With not a grain of poetry to trouble it,

(Save the above line,) no more than in a " leader."

Fost script. A favorable opportunity.

Is offered here, to warn all " earnest souls"

That the first quality of a sonnet is unity,

Which they'll not find in Wordsworth, nor in Bowles,

Here, Mr. Publisher, don't stare, — be civil,

Send me this sonnet to the (printer's) devil.

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

367

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

PART III.

The trial of Burr.

We now enter on a period of Jeffer-
son's administration which excites intense
interest and curiosity, and has connect-
ed it with the fortunes of a man, whose
great talents and address had foreshadowed
for him a reputation of the most enviable
exaltation, when the path to renown was
crossed by his evil genius. That man was
Aaron Burr, and his evil genius was Tho-
mas Jefferson. It was a grapple between
giant champions, whose resources of
mind were too vast, and whose enmity,
mutually and bitterly entertained, was too
deeply rooted, to terminate the struggle
with other than appalling consequences to
one party, or to both. In one case, how-
ever, mind was aided by power, and vast
political and official influence, and, as
might be supposed, these united, over-
whelmed the weaker antagonist.

Aaron Burr was a native of the State of
New Jersey, and one of the early gradu-
ates of Princeton College. His earliest
exhibitions of character pointed to those
traits, which were afterwards developed in
his eventful career. He was impetuous,
restless, persevering, and willful. Soon
after graduating, he joined the Revolution-
ary army, under Montgomery and Arnold,
and accompanied those generals in their
awful and dreary march across, the wilder-
ness to Quebec. His indifference to fa-
tigue and hunger, and his strict imparti-
ality as an officer, sharing with his soldiers
the privations of the march, and openly
condemning an opposite conduct in Arnold,
gained him the admiration and deep affec-
tion of the men, while it elicited the com-
mendation and respect of a majority of the
officers. After the siege of Quebec was
formed, Burr volunteered his services as
aid to Montgomery, and was by that offi-
cer's side, when he fell. He caught the

dying patriot in his arms, and in defiance
of the storm of grapeshot which roared
around, maintained his post of affection
and duty, until proper assistance was ob-
tained. Burr was the only one of Mont-
gomery's suite who escaped on that fatal
day.

Returning from Canada, he became an
inmate of Washington's military family, at
headquarters near New York, and partici-
pated in all the actions which occurred be-
tween the American and British armies
around that city. But his intercourse with
the Commander-in-Chief soon became res-
trained and unpleasant, and resulted in a
mutual personal aversion, which lasted
during Washington's lifetime ; but for
which no particular reason was ever assign-
ed. In consequence, when the disaffec-
tion broke out against Washington, among
the army officers in 1777, and it was con-
templated to supersede him with Gates,
Burr actively and openly took sides for the
latter. This opposition, added to previous
unpleasant passages, only served to increase
Washington's prejudices. In long subse-
cjuent years, during the first Presidency
under the Constitution, this dislike was
bitterly evidenced, and the depth of Wash-
ington's aversion fully developed. A depu-
tation of the Democratic members fif Con-
gress, appointed by a caucus, thrice waited
on the President, with a request that he
would appoint Burr, minister to France,
They were thrice peremptorily refused,
Washington declaring each time that he
would never appoint one to office in whose
integrity he had no confidence. This
anecdote should not, however, be rashly
taken as irrevocable and infallible evidence
against Burr. It was known that, from the
first, Burr had expressed himself freely and
harshly as to the qualifications of the Com-

368

Thomas Jefferson,

Oct.

mander-in-Chief, that lie liad condemned
his movements around Long Island and
New York, and that he had severely criti-
cised the plan of the battle of Monmouth,
in which battle Burr commanded a brigade
in Lord Stirling's division. These facts
were well known to Washington, as well as
the partiality entertained by Burr for
Gates 5 and, in the absence of any tangible
cause ever assigned by the General or his
friends, we are forced to conclude that a
shade of personal pique and rancor may have
influenced the usually strict and admirable
equanimity even of this illustrious and re-
vered personage. He would, indeed, have
been more than mortal, could he have en-
tirely subdued all such feelings — feelings
common to the best as well as to the worst
of men.

In March, 1779, Burr tendered his re-
signation to the Commander-in-Chief. It
was accepted by Washington, in a letter
the most complimentary and flattering to
Burr's military ambition. He subsequently
was admitted to the practice of the law in
Albany, and in the spring of 1782 was
married to Theodosia Prevost, widow of
Colonel Prevost of the British army, and
mother of that Theodosia, who afterwards
became so distinguished in connection with
her father and husband, and whose myste-
rious and melancholy fate, while giving rise
to many awful and fanciful conjectures,
blighted and crushed the sole remaining
earthly hope of her solitary and suffering
parent.

The history of Burr's political career in
New York, and in the Senate of the United
States ; his contest with Jefferson for the
Presidency, and his duel with Alexander
Hamilton, are well known to every general
reader, and have been elsewhere alluded to
in this essay. Pie left the chair of the
Vice-President in March 1805, and closed
his connection with the Senate with one of
the most eloquent and affecting valedicto-
ries ever made on such an occasion. " The
whole Senate," says Mr. Davis, in his me-
moir, " were in tears, and so unmanned
that it was half an hour before they could
recover themselves sufl&ciently to come to
order, and choose a Vice-President pro tem.
One Senator said that he wished the tra-
dition might be preserved, as one of the
most extraordinary events he had ever
witnessed. Another being asked, the day

following that on which Mr. Burr took his
leave, how long he was speaking, after a
moment's pause, said he could form no
idea ; it might have been an hour, and it
might have been but a moment ; when he
came to his senses, he seemed to have
awakened as from a kind of trance ?">*

Bending beneath the weight of heavy
afflictions, and pursued, both by the Demo-
cratic and Federal parties, with a vengeance
that seemed to compass nothing short of
his life. Burr, now fallen from his high estate,
became a wanderer and a desperado. The
envy and rancor of Jefferson were fully
aroused against him, in consequence of
their recent rivalry, and the democratic
party, of course, sided with Jefferson. He
had slain Hamilton in a duel the year be-
fore, and the federal party panted for the
blood of their idol's murderer ; for as
murderer he had been denounced and in-
dicted in New York. His mind and tem-
perament were too ardent, and his am-
bition too insatiable and restless to remain
inactive. The domestic circle afforded
him no comfort. The charm of his home,
once his delight and happiness, had fled.
The wife of his youth, the devoted partner
of his joys and his adversities, was cold in
the tomb. His daughter, sole pledge of
their love, was married and removed into
a distant State of the South. His pro-
perty, suffering for want of attention during
his ostracism, had melted away, leaving him
distressingly in debt. His early friends
avoided him, as one contaminated or pro-
scribed, whose approach was a shadow of
evil, and whose touch was death. Profes-
sional pursuits were out of the question.
Law business was not to be intrusted to
a fugitive from the law. Political ad-
vancement was forever closed to his efforts.
No party would recognise him who was
alike abhorred by democrat and federalist ;
— the object of Jefferson's hatred, and whose
hands were stained with the blood of
Alexander Hamilton. Thus bereaved and
branded. Burr became another Ishmael.
Every man's hand was against him ; it
was no wonder that his hand should soon
be turned against every man. His man-
ner, his conduct, his conversations, his
very looks were watched with the eye of
suspicion. He fled from the haunts of

* Vol. 2nd, p. 363.

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

369

man and souglit the wilderness, in hopes
there to create some employment calculated
to appease his restlesness, and turn aside the
gloomy fate which threatened to overwhelm
him. Even here he was not beyond espion-
age. The friends and parasites of the
jealous and inflamed President kept their
eyes on him, and sent frequent reports to
Washington. If he sojourned at the
house of any man, that man was from that
day marked. He staid a short time with
General Dayton. Dayton welcomed him
as an old revolutionary soldier, failed to
abuse hospitality by communicating with
the President, and, as a penalty for his con-
tumacy^ was subsequently indicted, along
with Burr, as a conspirator. It was the same
in the case of John Smith. He responded to
the invitation of Herman Blannnerhasset,
who was anxious to join in his land specu-
lations, and paid a visit to the famous
island in the Ohio. Blannerhasset, nar-
rowly escaping with life, was afterwards
stigmatized as a traitor, plundered of his
wealth, and became a melancholy wander-
er. He lounged a few days at the Hermi-
tage, and even enlists its honored tenant in
his scheme of invading Mexico, in case of
war with Spain.* The lion nature of An-
drew Jackson had not then been aroused,
and the emissaries of Jefferson approached
him with monitory voices. They succeeded
for the moment, and he writes an anxious
letter to Burr. Burr replies to his satisfac-
tion, and then the awakened lion raises his
defying mane ; and, for once, the jproscrib-
ers falter, and are ignominiously baffled in
their selfish machinations. They succeeded
in ruining every body else, who had held the
remotest connection with this hapless exile.
The grand juries of Kentucky twice
lodged accusations against Burr. He was
honorably acquitted on both occasions. On
both of these occasions he was defended by
Henry Clay, who was afterwards so far
duped by false testimony in the hands
of Jefferson, as to repent his efforts, and
then openly affronted, (by refusing to speak
to). Burr at the New York City HalLf
And yet it is a fact well authenticated
that the very document in possession of
Jefferson, and on which rested the evidence
of Burr's treason^ had been mutilated by

* Vide Memoirs of Burr, Vol. 2d, Page 382.
t Vide Prentice's Clay, page 34.

VOL. VI. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

General Wilkinson, and he so acknow-
ledged at Richmond.* At this time there
was a strong probability of hostilities be-
tween Spain and the United States, and it
was known that the President had instruct-
ed the commander of the forces to drive
the Spaniards beyond the Sabine. It had
become a popular sentiment, even then,
that in case war was begun it should end
only by the conquest of Mexico. To this
project no one was more intensely wedded
than Andrew Jackson, as evinced both by
a letter to Governor Claiborne, produced
by General Wilkinson as an appendix to
his testimony on the Burr trial, and by his
sympathy with Aaron Burr. Burr was a
military man by nature, and his greater
ambition was to excel in military achieve-
ments. He was more tenacious of his
revolutionary, than of either his political
or professional fame. He was evidently
fired with the scheme of invading and con-
quering so splendid a country as Mexico,
with its ancient treasures, its mines, and
its magnificent cities ; and the more so,
that he might thus retrieve his fallen for-
tunes. He was not friendly enough to the
Government to ask or obtain honorable
service, with such prominence as he court-
ed, under its direct auspices. His plan,
as disclosed on the trial at Richmond, evi-
dently was to raise an independent force,
to be near the scene of action, and to be
prepared to strike a grand blow on the first
opening of hostilities. With this view, he
must have entered into communication
with General Wilkinson ; for as that officer
was already in high command, and enjoyed
the boundless confidence of his government,
Burr was too sagacious to have attempted
his seduction, by offering him peril and un-
certainty, for safety and certainty. This
tallies with the testimony of General Eaton,
not with his inferences. It is not contra-
dicted by that of Commodore Truxton,
or Dudley Woodbridge, who was to have
furnished the boats intended to convey the
expedition. Nor would Burr without a clear
understanding with Wilkinson, have un-
dertaken to pass the whole American army
with less than one hundred ragamuffins.
This project of invading Mexico, under
the countenance, and not by orders, of the
Government, was certainly not intended as

* See Am. State Papers, [Mis.] vol. 1st. p. 542.
24

370

Thomas Jefferson,

Oct

treason, which consists only in *' levying
war against the United States," or aiding
and comfoiting the enemies of the country.
It certainly was a rash and reprehensible
movement, and if designed to have been
pursued independently of the Government,
it was a punishable offence, but not trea-
son. The more reliable conclusion is that
Burr, unfriendly to Jefferson, and bitterly
persecuted by him, endeavored to use
Wilkinson as an instrument for opening
hostilities ; for, under his orders, Wilkinson
might do this at any time, and thus bring
the whole within the shelter of the Govern-
ment. The plan was to proceed under the
apparent authority of the Government,
without directly asking its connivance.
And if, it may be remarked. General
Wilkinson, who was clearly playing a
double part, (perhaps it might not be un-
fair to say a treble part,) intended to play
the traitor towards Burr, it is certain that
he played his hand well. Burr never sus-
pected him until after his interview with
one Swartwout, whom he had sent to Wil-
kinson with the letter in cipher. As soon
as he had made the discovery, he abandon-
ed the idea, turned attention again to the
Washita purchase, and resolved to await a
more favorable crisis. This lucky discovery
saved his life. Being thus guarded, he direct-
ed himself to other projects, less question-
able. If Burr had been proven to have been
at Blannerhasset's island, when the boats
started down the Ohio, the overt act would
have been made out, and in all probability
the Government would have obtained a con-
viction.

By this time, however, Jefferson had
fixed his talons on Burr, and appearances
seemed to justify the conclusion that the
blood of his ancient rival would be soon
Spilled to satiate his jealousy and rancor.
He had been informed of Burr's movements
months before ; but merely to suppress the
mischief, was no part of the tactics he had
prescribed for his conduct. Burr was al-
lowed to continue his preparations, and
Jefferson looked on supinely, in the hope
that some plain act which might be tortur-
ed into overt proceeding, should have been
unwarily committed. His design was not
so much to quell disaffection, as to secure
his prey. At length a communication from
General Wilkinson induces him to believe
that the time has come, and he issues the

order for the destruction of the boats and
property of the expedition at the island,
and for the arrest of Burr. The first is
done forthwith ; and in a short time, the
main victim being stopped near Fort Stod-
dart, on the Tombigbee, is conveyed by a
military escort to the city of Richmond,
Va., and placed on trial for his life.

The proceedings of this famous trial have
been long embodied as a part of the na-
tional history. A more important state
trial never occurred, not excepting even
that of Warren Hastings. All that was
interesting or romantic in Burr's previous
history ; all that could charm the fancy
in connection with Blannerhasset and his
beautiful island home ; all that was magni-
ficent and inspiring, as regarded the ancient
country of the Aztecs and the Montezumas,
were concentrated and thrown into this
trial. There were startlino; rumors, too,

O 7 7

that many, among the highest and most
popular, would he hurled from their proud
positions as the testimony progressed . Add-
ed to these, it was known that Jefferson
had enlisted ardently in the prosecution,
and would move his whole official influence
to crush the man who had once competed
with him for the Presidency. The odds
against Burr were truly appalling, and his
chances for escape seemed to be completely
blocked. Against the powerful personal
influence of an implacable enemy ; the
machinations of two enraged political par-
ties, to whom he was alike odious ; the
whole artillery of the Government, and the
prejudging voice of an aroused and indig-
nant nation, was opposed a single indivi-
dual stripped of power, and of property,
and of home ; abandoned by friends, and
from whom even relatives shrank with trepi-
dation. In all America one only heart throb-
bed in unison with his own ; but that one
heart — devoted — fixed — changeless ; sen-
sitive alike to his joys and his sorrows, was
to him more than all America, or all the
world. It was the heart of Theodosia, ' ' sole
daughter of his house ! "

Throughout the whole period from the ar-
rest until the discharge of Burr, and his de-
parture for England, the conduct of Jefferson
was obnoxious to grave criticism, and evinc-
ed a want of magnanimity unworthy of his
great fame and his exalted station. True
taste would have suggested to him a digni-
fied neutrality of action, especially in view

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

371

of his official prerogative of pardon, should
the accused be brought in guilty ; but
more than all, in view of his past relations
with the distinguished prisoner. He chose
to pursue a course less delicate ; aided the
law by personal exertions, and mingled
officially in the prosecution by employing
eminent counsel to assist the District Attor-
ney for the United States. Jt is said that
he expended more than an hundred thou-
sand dollars of the public money in aiding
this prosecution. His letters to the Dis-
trict Attorney, Mr. Hay, are full of the
most ireful and splenetic effusions against
the judge, the counsel for defence, and the
prisoner. He even condescends to charge
ih.Q federalists ^ as a party, with sympathis-
ino; in the treasons and troubles of Aaron
Burr. " The federalists make Burr's cause
their own, and exert their whole influence
to shield him ivom punishment .^'^'^ " Aided
by no process or facilities from the federal
courts, but frowned on by their newborn
zeal for the liberty of those whom we would
not permit to overthrow the liberties of
their country, we can expect no reveal-
ments from the accomplices of the chief
offender. Of treasonable intentions, the
judges have been obliged to confess there
is a probable appearance. What loophole
they will find in the case, when it comes to
trial, we cannot foresee. Eaton, Stoddart,
and Wilkinson, will satisfy the world^ii not
the judges^ of Burr's guilt. The nation
will judge both the offender and judges
for themselves. If a member of the Exe-
cutive or of the Legislature does wrono;,
the day is never far distant when the peo-
ple will remove him. They will see then,
and amend, the error in our Constitution
which makes any branch independent of the
nation. They will see thatoz^e of the great
co-ordinate branches of the Government,
setting itself in opposition to the other tivo^
and to the common sense of the nation^
proclaims impunity to that class of offen-
ders which endeavors to overturn the Con-
stitution, and are themselves protected in
it by the Constitution itself; for impeach-
ment is a farce which will not be tried
again. If their protection of Burr produ-
ces this amendment, it will do more good
than his condemnation."! In this last letter,

* See letter to Bowdoin, vol. 4th, p. 72. Jef.
Corres.
t Letter to Giles, vol. 4th, p. 73 and 74.

four points are very clearly made. It is evi-
dent that he intends to cast an ungenerous
slur at Chief Justice Marshall, iha federal
judge, offending ; it is evident that, in con-
ducting Burr's trial, having despaired of
doing anything in Court, he intends to play
the game out, to arouse the anger of the
nation against the errors of the Constitu-
tion ; it is evident that he insinuates an
attack on the independence of the Judicial
department of the Government ; and it is
evident, that in the ebullition of his parti-
san acerbity, he casts a censure on the
Senate of the United States, because their
impeachment of Judge Chase, at a previous
session, did not terminate in his displace-
ment. Now with all due deference to the
opinion of our distinguished subject, we
must be permitted to say, that in our
opinion. Burr's projected invasion of Mex-
ico, by itself, would have done much less
harm than this proposed degradation of the
Judicial Department of the Government.
We have no sympathy with Jefferson's
views on this question, and hold them to
be wholly irreconcilable with his professed
democracy ; for, to our view, his plans
would ultimately have led to a centraliza-
tion of all power in the hands of the Exe-
cutive. The time may come when a popu^
lar President, and a subservient Senate, may
place in judicial seats mere instruments of
Executive will. This is one way in which
despotism may approach, and not an im-
probable one ; quite as probable as in mili-
tary form. We have seen, thus far, suffi-
cient evidence to convince us, that Jefferson,
despite his favor for democratic principles,
leaned towards a policy which strengthened
the Executive arm of the Government, and
weakened the judicial arm. But besides
claiming for the Executive an ultimate
judicial authority, looking to entire supre-
macy, as we have shown some pages back,
he, on this occasion, demanded, and had
nearly obtained, a suspension of the Habeas
Corpus, and usurped the right to seize,
impress, and imprison witnesses. These
arbitrary acts and demands are in full ac-
cordance with the spirit of his letters just
quoted; and go to illustrate, that public
liberty is not always safest in the hands of
ultra democrats. Dan ton and Robespieire
conversed speciously, and harangued elo-
quently, about the liberties of France,
when the Place de Louis Quinze was

372

TJiomas Jefferson.

Oct.

reeking daily with the blood of slaughtered
victims, and the guillotine dealing its
death strokes by the minute. We do not
mean to say that Jefferson would have been,
under like circumstances, either a Danton
or a Robespierre. But we mean to say
that, in his Presidential conduct on this
occasion, he was arbitrary, Tindictive, and
unjustifiably bent on shedding the blood of
Aaron Burr. Nor can we at all concur in
his harsh and yituperative censures on
Chief Justice Marshall. That eminent
judge may have experienced uncommon
embarrassment at this trial, and, in conse-
quence, exhibited more than usual hesita-
tion and inconsistency in delivering legal
opinions. The array of learned counsel,
■ the vast importance of the cause, the en-
lightened audiences ever present, and the
distinction and acknowledged legal acumen
of the prisoner himself, very naturally con-
tributed to produce both embarrassment
and occasional inconsistency. It has rarely
fallen to the lot of any judge to have had
occasion to seek so earnestly for the truth,
both as to law and evidence ; and none
ever presided with more dignity and impar-
tiality, in the most responsible station in
which one can be placed. Old and previ-
ously settled principles of law were more
than once battered down by refined argu-
ment. New principles and points were
sprung and discussed, with an ability seldom
if ever displayed on any former occasion.
Every point of law was jealously disputed,
on one side or the other, and the nicest
discrimination was necessary to distinguish
between mere forensic powers and pro-
fundity of argument. Judge jMarshall
proved equal to all these requisites.

The conduct of Jefferson, on this occa-
sion, is liable to reprehension on still an-
other ground . He exhibited a degree of In-
tel :rance, and impatience at being crossed,
that argued downright Jesuitism. Among
the counsel for Colonel Burr was old
Luther jMartin of Maryland, one of the
framers of the Constitution. He mani-
fested a deep and sincere zeal in the cause
^f his client, and, when warranted, did not
scruple to charge home cuttingly on the
real prosecutor — Thomas Jefferson. He
especially animadverted on the President's
.presuming to withhold awy papers necessary
to the defence of Burr, and declared that
Jefferson 'S papers were no more sacred than

those of his client, who had been robbed
of the same by order of the Government.
This, together with the charge of violating
the New Orleans post office, in the person
of General Wilkinson, although believed io
be true, stung Jefferson to the quick, and
roused his fierce resentment. His rage
might have been justified, had he suggested a
less excptionable means of vengeance. But
passion and the pride of power blinded him.
On the 19th of June, he thus writes to
Mr. Hay : — " Shall tee move to commit
Luther Martin as 'particeps criminis with
Burr } Graybell will fix on him mispri-
sion at least. And, at any rate^ his evi-
dence will serve to put down this unprin-
cipled and impudent /eJeroiZ hull-dog.^ and
add another proof that the most clamorous
defenders of Burr are his accomplices. "* We
cannot imagine any language more excep-
tionable than this, when uttered by a high
dignitary of state, nor any course of conduct
so really mean and unfair on the part of a
chief magistrate. It shows the effervescence
of an over- wrought party bitterness, and be-
trays a willingness to abuse power by using
it for purposes of private revenge. It is
well known that Burr was acquitted, both
as to treason and to misdemeanor. The
verdict was proper, and the only one that
could have been justly rendered under the
circumstances. After months of lono; tes-
timony and tedious legal arguments, the
counsel for Burr had moved that the further
progress of the trial be arrested, inasmuch
as it had been proved that Burr was not
present when the overt act, as charged in
the indictment, had been committed, and
that, therefore, all other testimony was ir-
relevant. This motion threw consternation
and surprise among the prosecutors, and
produced one of the most learned, discur-
sive, and powerful legal arguments to be
found in the whole course of judicial pro-
ceedings. Wirt characterized it as '* a
bold and original stroke in the noble sci-
ence of defence, and as bearing marks of
the genius and hand of a mastery He
stated his objections to the point, and en-
forced them in one of the most splendid
forensic displays ever recorded. It will
stand a favorable comparison with Burke's
celebrated chef d'ceuvre in the great case

* Vol. IV., p. 87, Corres.

1850.

Thomas Jefferson:

373

of Warren Hastings before the British Par-
liament. Independent of its power as an
argument, it stands unrivalled in point of
eloquence and emphasis of delivery. After
having described Burr and Blannerhasset ;
coupling the first with all that was dangerous
and seductive, and the last with all that
was interesting and romantic ; painting
vividly the beautiful island on the Ohio —
its blooming shrubbery — its gorgeous pal-
ace — the noble library which opened its
treasures to the master — the celestial mu-
sic which melodized its recesses, and
charmed " the beautiful and tender partner
of his bosom ; '^ after dwelling on its quiet,
rural scenes, and its domestic innocence and
loveliness, interrupted and perverted by the
arrival of Burr, — he scouts the idea that
Blannerhasset can now be made principal
instead of accessory, and closes with the
emphatic appeal : " Let Aaron Burr, then,
not shrink from the high destination he has
courted ; and having already ruined Blan-
nerhasset in fortune, character, and happi-
ness forever, let him not attempt to finish
the tragedy by thrusting that ill-fated man
between himself and punishment." But
splendor of oratory and majesty of descrip-
tion did not meet the issue, or answer the
case. The defence held obstinately to the
naked and resistless principle of the law,
and its inevitable application to the point
submitted. It involved all, it reached and
covered the whole merits of the case, but
the Chief Justice did not waver. He
walked boldly up to his duty, and charged
the Jury that such was the law. Of
course, a verdict of " Not Guilty" was
the consequence.

It might have been supposed that this
elaborate and painful trial, its exposures
and its mortifications, and this verdict,
would end the matter, so far as content-
ment, under the consciousness of duty hon-
estly discharged, was concerned. The law
had had its fair operation, the prosecution
had staked all, the defence had risked all,
and the jury had pronounced. But Jeffer-
son had been deprived of his vengeance,
and the event rankled within his bosom.
His anger and dissatisfaction found vent,
and, strange to tell, his grandson's has been
the hand to parade his weakness and his
vindietiveness before a curious world. A
letter to Mr. Hay, found on page 102, vol.
4th, of the work before us, contains this

remarkable and petulant language : " The
event has been — {Here follows a number
of stars ^ quite signijicant) -^ — that is to
say, not only to clear Burr, but to prevent
the evidence from ever going to the
world (!!!). It is now, therefore, more
than ever indispensable, that not a single
witness be allowed to depart until his testi-
mony has been committed to writing. The
whole proceedings will be laid before Con-
gress, that they may decide whether the
defect — (viz., the omission to convict., we
suppose,) — has been in the evidence of
guilt, or in the law, or in the application
of the law, and that they may provide \hQ
proper remedy for the past and the future.
* * * This criminal.^ {that is., Burr,) is
preserved to become the rallying point of
all the disaffected and the worthless of the
United States, and to be the pivot on which
all the intrigues and conspiracies which
foreign governments may wish to disturb
us with, are to turn. If he is convicted
of the misdemeanor, the Judge must, in
decency., give us respite by some short con-
finement of him ; but we must expect it to
be very short."

We must award to Mr. Thomas Jefferson
Randolph a more than usual share of can-
dor and concern for the public, in thus
surrendering the worthy object of his
veneration to the scarifiers of political
journalists and reviewers. But we must
again object to his taste. It would have
been better to Lave altogether suppressed
such a letter to his confidential friend and
agent ; but it was a grievous error to cur-
tail and star it. The inferences liable to
be drawn from its general tenor will be far
more unfavorable to his grandfather than
would the part of the sentence omitted.
But the whole letter is objectionable, — es-
pecially the parts we have quoted and itali-
cised. It exhibits the discontents of a mind
laboring under tormenting disappointment
at having lost its victim It unfolds the
desire of its author to dishonor the Consti-
tution by threatening to appeal from a
Judicial Tribunal to Congress and to the
people. It .shows that Jefferson was capable
of undermining, or endeavoring to dishonor,
2. judicial officer., because, instead of labor-
in f^f to convict and hang an accused person, as
the President evidently wished he should do,
he had, with the guard of a jury, sternly
administered the law. It proves that Jef-

374

Thomas Jefferson.

Oct.

ferson, In the fury of thwarted vengeance,
was willing to urge on Congress to act re-
trospectively^ or fall on some " remedy for
the past," which would still enable him to
pursue and destroy his enemy. It accuses
the Court and Jury of deliberately pre-
serving a criminal^ that he might incite
" the disaffected and the worthless" against
his country. Now we protest utterly
against the inculcation of such principles,
and must hold the language and intent as
eminently seditious in tendency. We feel
at liberty to denounce, and repudiate, such
teachings, let them emanate from what
source they may. Because Jefferson is
claimed as being the apostle, par excel-
lence of democracy ; we do not choose to
receive from him, under this assumed sanc-
tion, maxims that would have startled Na-
poleon in the days of his greatest power,
and would drag an English King from his
throne. It will not do to panegyrize Re-
puhlican liberty under federal adminis-
trations, and then, in its name, grasp at
powers which were never dreamed of in
connection with Federal usuryations.
The sedition law of '98, so much complain-
ed of by the nation, could work its mis-
chiefs only under the sanctions of a judi-
cial tribunal. The Executive had very
little to do with its operations. But if
Jefferson's recommendations at this time
had been carried out ; if the Habeas Cor-
pus had been suspended ; if the inculca-
tions gleaned from his various letters had
been reduced to practice, the Executive
would have been supreme in legal and
civil matters, as it is already in military af-
fairs. Here is another and striking proof,
that they who boast most speciously of
genuine democratic principles, are not al-
ways the safest persons to be trusted with
power.

In connection with this trial of Aaron
Burr is mixed up another affair, which
although somewhat collateral to the main
issue, yet serves to show how determined
Jefferson was to bring about a speedy con-
viction of the prisoner. Among those who
had been violently arrested in New Or-
leans by order of General Wilkinson, and
dragged to Richmond to testify against
Burr, was a Dr. Erick Bollman. This man
was a German, and was distinguished for
character, science, and enterprise. In
1794, in company with a young South

a rolinian, he crossed the Austrian frontiers,
made his way into Moravia, and resolved
to undertake the desperate effort of libera-
ting Lafayette from the dungeons of 01-
mutz. By means of his profession, he gain-
ed some communication with the captive,
who was said to be gradually sinking under
the effects of confinement. After repeat-
ed efforts they contrived to enable La-
fayette to quit his prison, but it was only
a momentary release. He was soon re-
taken, and along with his heroic friends,
again buried in the depths of his dungeon.
So great was the resentment against Boll-
man and his coadjutor they were chain-
ed by the necks to the floor of the apart-
ments they severally occupied. After
six month's confinement, however, Bollman
and Huger were released at the intercession
of a powerful and influential nobleman.
Bollman became a naturalized citizen of
the United States, and in 1806, in some
way, was connected with the schemes of
Colonel Burr. In December of that year
he was arrested, and told for the first time,
that he was particeps criminis with a trai-
tor at the head of several thousand ^troops,
and whose design was to levy war against
the United States. Indignant at being
thus wickedly connected, and totally dis-
believing all treasonable intent on the part
of Burr, he solicited, on his arrival in
Washington, a personal interview with Pre-
sident Jefferson. He there made a full re-
velation of the whole plan and schemes of
Burr so far as he knew them, utterly repu-
diating all designs of any attempt to dis-
turb the Union. But he had unwarily
committed himself to an artful diplomatist,
who cared little about his disclaimers or im-
pressions, so that he could use him in
gathering any fact that might subserve his
purpose of indicting, convicting, and hang-
ing, Aaron Burr. A short time after this
interview, and in order to make matters
doubly sure, Jefferson addressed a note to
Bollman, adroitly worded, and solicited him
to put in writing what he had communica-
ted verbally, but pledging his '-^ word of
Ar>i%or" that the same "should never be
used against Bollman," and " that the
paper should never go out of his hands."
To this proposition, Bollman very artlessly
and unhesitatingly, but most thoughtless-
ly, assented. It was the seal to his ruin
and ostracism. It was scarcely given be-

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

375

fore a pretext was set up tliat it involved
matters which seriously implicated the
author in Burr's misdemeanors, and that
sufficient cause for indictment by the grand
jury existed. BoUman was a prisoner,
confidently relying on the President's word
of honor. In June 1807, he was summoned
before the grand jury at Richmond, as a
witness against Burr, his testimony being
predicated on what he had divulged to the
President. By this time he had been ap-
prized of the snare set for him, and he re-
fused to testify in a cause where he might
inculpate himself. But Jefferson had plan-
ned his tactics. He had privately de-
spatched to Mr. Attorney Hay, a full par-
don for Bellman, in order to deprive him of
that plea. Bollman not having been in-
dicted or tried, denied that he needed any
pardon, and refused it with indignation
in open court, as a '-'• badge of infamy''''
proffered him by Jefferson. The District
Attorney repeatedly thrust it at him, and,
to Bollman's great surprise, referred undis-
guisedly to the document he had penned
for the President, on his word of honor
that the same should not be used against
him^ and never go out of the President's
hands. At this time, Bollman charges, it
was not used against him only, but actually
was in the hands of Mr. Hay, who had
allowed General Wilkinson to read it also.
The existence of such a paper became so
notoriously public, that it was even sent
for, and demanded by the grand jury, sit-
ting on the case of Aaron Burr.*

Now, let these transactions be construed
as they may, the most charitable and in-
dulgent will find much to condemn in the
conduct of Jefferson, One fact is clear
and unquestionable. Jefferson certainly
broke deliberately his word of honor , and
without assigning any reason to palliate the
violation. In his zeal to convict Burr,
Jefferson had withheld papers necessary to
the defence ; had sanctioned the most vio-
lent outrages on personal liberty, to com-

* See Extracts from Bollman's pamphlet, p.
Burr's Memoirs.

pel the attendance of witnesses; had vio-
lated the law by removing the accused be-
yond the limits of the territory in which
the crime was alleged to have been com-
mitted ; had opened the doors of the nation-
al treasury to engage assistant counsel in
the prosecution ; had turned prompter and
prosecutor himself ; had refused to attend
court on a subpoena duces tecum ; had of-
fered, by dangerous stretches of power, to
break up the defence by imprisoning on a
doubtful charge one of the leading counsel,
and had done all that he dared to do, to
gain the cherished object of his desire. But
all this was better than betraying the con-
fidence of an injured man, a prisoner and
in his power. Candor, as a reviewer, calls
on us to place the brand of unqualified re-
prehension on such conduct.

Before dismissing this branch of our sub-
ject, it may not be inappropriate to men-
tion, that Burr always denied, that treason
against the United States, or the dismem-
berment of the Union, ever formed any
part of his design in these movements.
He denied it first, when questioned seri-
ously, to Andrew Jackson. He denied it,
in the confidence of client and counsel, to
Henry Clay. He denied, under the seal
of devoted friendship to Senator Smith,
declaring, '^ if Bonaparte with all his army,
was in the western country for the purpose
of accomplishing that object, they would
never again see salt water." He denied it
indignantly on his dying bed, exclaiming,
" I would as soon have thought of taking
possession of the moon, and informing my
friends that I intended to divide it among
them." A careful perusal of the evidence
adduced on his trial, and an impartial re-
view of all the facts and circumstances of
his case, satisfies us that Burr was sincere
in the above declarations. The precise
objects he had in view, will, in all proba-
bility, never be ascertained. His ambition
and restlessness led him into many wild
schemes, and perhaps many censurable
errors, but we are nevertheless satisfied,
that he was a persecuted man, and the vic-
tim of a malignant proscription.

376

Political Economists, Henry C. Care^.

Oct.

POLITICAL ECONOMISTS

HENRY C. CAREY.

" Political economy," says Mr. Mill,
— one of the most philosophical and candid
of the modern school of foreign writers on
this subject — " reasons from assumed pre-
mises — from premises which might be to-
tally without foundation in fact, and which
are not pretended to be universally in ac-
cordance with it."

It is not to be wondered at, that those
who begin their reasoning from such points
of departure, should fall out by the way ;
and that occasion should be found for the
frank declaration of Mr. McCulloch, the
highest living authority of that school —
" The differences which have subsisted
among the most eminent professors of
political economy, have proved excessively
unfavorable to its progress, and have gene-
rated a disposition to distrust its best estab-
lished conclusions."

It is not to depreciate the claims of the
science that we have cited these humilia-
ting confessions by its learned Doctors.
They furnish us sufficient explanation, and,
in some measure, justification, for the indif-
ference with which its present teachings are
regarded by the class who pride themselves
upon being called practical men. It requires
no small assurance, with such avowals star-
ing them in the face, in enduring print, for
the pundits of this distracted sect, to stand
up, as they do, and call upon statesmen
and legislators in the name of the whole, to
listen to their voice, as if it were accord-
ant and unanimous — to accept their guid-
ance in the conduct of the most important
operations of government, affecting the ma-
terial, intellectual, and moral well-being of
millions, as if they were all agreed ; and in
this advanced stage of the world's history,
mankind ought to have become too wise to
hesitate about deferring to their authority.
If we would translate their conduct and
their pretensions into language, it would
be something like this : " We have started

from various and conflicting hypotheses, — -
each man of us framing his own, — of what
we regard as the way of the world's going
on, in the business of accumulating, dis-
tributing, and consuming wealth. These
may be totally without foundation in fact,
and are not pretended to be universally in
accordance with it. We have discoursed
of value, of profits, of rent, and the like
general terms with which our science is con-
versant. We have not agreed at all in de-
fining them, and the differences between
us have not been merely verbal, but funda-
mental, reaching to the essential properties
of things, and the widest consequences in
action. We have found out, some of us, laws
in virtue of which, the race of man is in a
constant and fatal course of progressive de-
terioration, in those physical comforts which
our studies concern themselves about. It
is marching on to increasing famine and
misery. This discovery is the peculiar
merit of our modern school — ^the new Acad-
emy. This, which it was not given Adam
Smith to see, has been reserved for our
eyes, and it lies at the foundation of our
recent teachings, shaping and coloring them
all. We have, consequently, discarded as
erroneous and heretical, much, very much,
that Adam Smith inculcated, and we have
refrained from the exposure of many of his
errors, lest we should impair the supersti-
tious worship paid to his name,* — that name
in which we now call upon you to let
things alone — to abstain from any effort to
protect the industry of your people, against

* Francis Horner, one of the first contributors to
the Edinburgh Review, and a thorough-paced ad-
vocate of the so-called Free Trade policy, wrote,
in 1803, to a friend who had recommended to him
to bring out an annotated edition of the Wealth of
Nations. " I should be reluctant to expose Smith's
errors, before his work has produced its full effect.
We owe much at present to the superstitious wor-
ship of Smith's name, and we must not impair
that feeling till the victory is more complete."

1850.

Political Economists, Henry C. Carey.

377

the adverse legislation of foreign states, and
the death grapple of foreign private com-
petition. This we teach, with one accord,
as a rule of universal application, attempt
no protection,, and let the world wag.'^''

Such are the dictates of the prevailing
school of foreign economical writers. The
plausibilities of each have vogue with his co-
terie of adherents. The practical truth that
is in each has gained for him the support of
a certain number of practical men — their
speculations have ceased to be the occupa-
tion of mere students, and have passed into
action. They come to us now from across
the Atlantic, backed by the authority of
Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell,
and with the weight which attaches to the
strong common sense supposed to be the
basis of the English character, and repre-
sented by the profession and example of
the British Lords and Commons. There
was a time when it might do for us, whigs
and protectionists, to rely upon the instinc-
tive detection by our people of the errors
in fact, and fallacies in reasoning, which are
involved in the defence of the Foreign Trade
policy, which calls itself i^ree Trade. Every
individual has his notions upon this general
subject. It is impossible that he should
have made his way to man's estate, in this
trading world, without having generalized
the results of his observation into certain
formulas — little snatches of proverbial phi-
losophy — by which he is governed in his
private conduct, as well as in his judgment
upon public measures. Time was, perhaps,
when we might trust to these, for working
sound conclusions in the general mind, and
keeping it obstinately right, in spite of the
lectures of the professors in our colleges,
and the solemn treatises of the systematic
economists. That time, we apprehend, has
passed. The time never was, when we
could rely upon contemptuous sneers at
theorists, or the attempted refutations by
members of Congress and editors of news-
papers, who theorized equally with them,
but less logically, and have struggled to
maintain sound positions by unsound argu-
ments, and brought weakness instead of
strength to the cause they labored to serve.
Of this there has been more than enough —
more than either business or policy will per-
mit us to remark upon. What we have want-
ed was systematic instruction in true politi-
cal economy, to meet and overcome systema-

tic instruction in false — When thousands of
educated young men are sent out every year
from our colleges into the arena of active
life, to exercise the power which knowledge
always possesses over ignorance, every one
of whom has had carefully instilled in him
the dogmas of the foreign economists, and
the reasonings by which they are support-
ed, it is surely time that we should have
an American system, presented equally,
formally, fully, and logically. These young
men cannot well have a faith made up of
shreds and patches. It must be a consis-
tent whole. The hour has been crvino- out
for the man who should do this great ser-
vice, and, in our judgment, the man has
come, in the person of Mr. Carey, — the
text-book, in his writings.

The name of Mr. Carey is not a new
one in economical literature, nor is its re-
putation merely American. On the con-
trary, as we shall have occasion to show
before concluding this notice, it is quite
as well known, and we regret to indulge a
suspicion, more highly and worthily appre-
ciated upon the Continent of Europe than
in our own. In the year 1837, he pub-
lished Part First, of his Principles of Poli-
tical Economy, treatino; of the laws of the
production and distribution of wealth.
This was followed in 1838 by Part Second,
" of the causes which retard increase in the
production of wealth, and improvement in
the physical and moral character of man,"
and, in 1840, by Part Third, " of the causes
which retard increase in the numbers of
mankind," and Fourth "of the causes
which retard increase in the political con-
dition of man." The distinguishing char-
acteristic of this work, in its manner, is
the elaborate and extensive collection and
comparison of facts. Travellers, Plisto-
rians. Statisticians, are laid under contribu-
tion, and no principle is advanced without
large citations, from every quarter, to prove
or to elucidate its truth. Mr. Carey went
upon the notion that the science could
only deserve that name, in so far as it was
founded upon the observation of facts and
carried forward by induction from them.
He has felt himself bound at every step to
show, not the versimilitude but the verity
itself, of his statements — not that the con-
clusions were likely to be true merely, that
they followed by just course of reasoning— -
but that the reasoning was just and com-

378

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey,

Oct.

plete, because its results were borne out
by visible experience in what we may style,
tbe second series of facts. It is not diffi-
cult for us to reason with the precision of
syllogism, if we can be absolutely sure,
that all facts have been observed and taken
into account, — that have relation to the
matter. But that we have, in point of fact,
taken them into account, is only to be
learned by bringing the conclusion from
time to time to the test of comparison with
facts ^ of as many different series, as there
are stages in the process of ratiocination.
The whole philosophy of the matter is in-
volved in the remark that '* truth is
stranger than fiction." Fiction must look
like truth or it is felo de se. Truth is
under no such law, and perpetually shows
itself in novel and unexpected forms,
which have no prototype and consequently
no similitude.

We shall see pretty soon to what issue
the habit of Mr. Carey's mind has con-
ducted him. Meantime, it occurs to our
recollection, that in a series of the work
published shortly after its appearance, this
feature was deprecated as a fault. The
reviewer thought it would have been bet-
ter to lay down the principles in due
method, and leave it to the reader to see that
the facts must be in accordance with them.
That course has been extensively pursued
by other writers, and with striking results.
It is a circumstance which Mr. Mill had
in mind, probably, when he wrote the sen-
tence which we began this article by quo-
ting.

The leading feature in which the doc-
trines of this work of Mr. Carey differs
from those of Mai thus, Ricardo, senior,
and the modern school of foreign Econo-
mists in general are,

1. The demonstration that land, like
every other commodity, owes all its value
to labor, and that rent, instead of being, as
defined by Ricardo, "that compensation
which is paid to the owner of land for the
Hse of its original and indestructible pow-
ers," is only interest upon the capital
which has been expended upon and about
it, in bringing it to its existing condition.
That, consequently, the profits resulting
from investments in land obey the same
laws as those affecting capital in other
forms.

2. " That as population and capital in-

crease, and as cultivation is extended over
the inferior soils ^ labor becomes more
productive, and there is a constant diminu-
tion in the proportion claimed by the
owner of capital, whether applied to the
improvement of land or to the transporta-
tion or exchange of commodities, accom-
panied by a constant increase in the pro-
portion retained by the laborer, and a con-
stant improvement of his conditio n.

We have chosen the second law, in the
words of Mr. Carey, from page 141 of his
1st volume, for the purpose of bringing
distinctly into view the phrase which we
have put into italics. It is repeated on
the next page in the statement of the laws
applied to capital, with the addition, that
further capital is accumulated with greater
facility, and that though the proportion of
the capitalist is diminished, yet that smaller
proportion yields him a constantly increaS'
ing quantity of commodities, and thus a
smaller amount of labor is required to re-
cover a given amount of inc me.

It requires but little reflection to con-
vince one, that this is the permanent, in-
flexible, law of human progress.

It is apparent that every improvement
in the machinery of production is such in
virtue of the fact that it diminishes the
quantity of labor necessary to attain the
possession of a given commodity. Let it be
an axe, or a tin kettle, which will serve the
purpose of illustration as well as any more
complex and costly product of labor. It
is equally plain that the improvement once
achieved, axes and tin kettles of equal
quality must henceforth forever command
a less price in labor than before. A
given amount of labor will, under the
influence of competition, command more of
them than before ; in precisely the propor-
tion that the labor cost of their production, —
including, of course, the distributive charge
upon each axe or kettle requisite to com-
pensate the interest, and wear of the capi-
tal or accumulated labor invested in the
machinery, — has decreased. But what is
capital but the aggregate sum of the axes
and kettles already in existence } The
relative power of labor, in respect to capi-
tal, the proportion which it can command
of the fruits of their jomt exertion and use —
the value and dignity of man, as compared
with things, is advancing in ceaseless pro-
gression with the increase of population and

1650.

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey,

379

of wealth. That the return to the capital-
ists, for the use of the accumulated labor
of himself, or those whom he represents, in
virtue of purchase or inheritance, also in-
creases absolutely^ though relatively dimin-
ishing, is shown by considerations which we
are not careful to reproduce here. In
this day, when so many are attempting
the artificial reconstruction of society, upon
the notion that the physical and moral con-
dition of the laborer is deteriorating, that
aspect of the law which looks to his ad-
vantage, is the most interesting.

In this very year of grace, 1850, Mons.
Fr. Bastiat, membre correspondant de
PInstitute, representant du People, &c.,
one of the most prominent economical
writers of France, who is glorified by his
admirers as the French Cobden, has given
to the world, at Paris, a book which he
styles Harmonies Economiques. It is de-
voted, more than to any thing, to the eluci-
dation and enforcement of the law of which
we have been speaking, and which Mr.
Carey gave to the world for the first time.
Bastiat uses it, and the inferences manifestly
deducible from it, with crushing force
against the communists and socialists, who
are perplexing his nation with fear of
change. He writes, as Frenchmen are
prone to do, in the heroic vein, and in a
highly rhetorical manner, but it must be
confessed, with general adroitness of argu-
ment and felicity of diction. On page
280 of his book, he comes to the formal
annunciation of this law in the following
terms: "J'ose poser, comme inebranla-
ble, quant a la distribution de ce bien-
etre, I'axiome suivant." '"'' A mcsure que
les capitaux s' accroissent la 'part ahsolue
des capitalistes dans les produits totaux
augmente et leur part relative diminue.
Au contraire les travailleurs^ voient aug-
menter leur 'part dans deux sens.''''*
" Such," he continues, 'Vis the great,

THE ADMIRABLE, CONSOLING, NECESSARY
AND INFLEXIBLE LAW OF CAPITAL. To

demonstrate it, it seems to me, is to over-
whelm with discredit the declamations which

* " I have dared to lay down as an axiom
that cannot be shaken, the following rule in rela-
tion to the distribution of wealth. ' In proportion
as capital increases, the share of the capitalist in
the sum of products, increases absolutely, while it
diminishes relatively. The laborer, on the con-
trary, sees his share augmented, as well relatively
as absolutely.' "

have so long assailed our ears, against the
AVIDITY, the TYRANNY, of the most power-
ful instrument of civilization and of EQUAL-
IZATION, which human powers produce."

Mons. Bastiat is, we think, well war-
ranted in his assertion. If Mr. Carey had
done no more in this world than supply
that demonstration, he would have made
as large a contribution to Political Econ-
omy, as any, the most eminent, of hia
predecessors ; larger than any of his con-
temporaries— one large enough, it might
fairly be supposed, to draw an acknowledg-
ment from a man who has availed himself
of his labors so extensively, and prizes
them so highly, as Mons. Bastiat. He
has copied his very arrangement from Mr,
Carey — he has used his language, his illus-
trations, and tables of figures, repeatedly ;
he has scarce an idea, which is not to be
found in the work of which we are speak-
ing, and yet the solitary reference to his
creditor is this : At page 404, he cites
from Mr. Carey's book an extract from
the proceedings of the South Australian
Association, and proceeds, " The associa-
tion, believing that this disaster, (the ruin
of the Colony of Swan River,) arose
from the cheapness of land, advanced the
price of theirs to twelve shillings per acre.
But," adds Carey, from whom I have bor-
rowed this quotation, " in his in ti eduction,
addressed to the Youth of France, he un-
blushiugly arrogates for himself the entire
originality of his views — compares them
with those of Malthus, Ricardo, &c., and
dismisses Carey's among ''a crowd of
other systems of a less general scope, that
I shall not mention."

It will have been observed, by the reader
who is acquainted with the modern school of
English economists, that the two laws we
have noted, as the remarkable feature of
Mr. Carey's work, are sufficient to estab-
lish a wide discrepancy between his views
and the speculations of Ricardo, Malthus,
and their followers, although he was as yet
so far misled by their authority, as to con-
cede, that in the commencement of culti-
vation, when population is small and land
abundant, the best soils are alone cultiva-
ted, and that with the progress of popula-
tion men are driven to those of succesive-
ly inferior quality. The theory of Rent,
which is based upon this assumption, was
1 hailed, when first promulgated, as the great

380

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey.

Oct.

discovery of the age. A new school arose,
all of whose theories were founded upon
its truth, and who have corrected what
they deem the errors of Adam Smith, by
the fresh light, and broader vision, which
this acquisition has afforded them. Ricar-
do taught that " the natural tendency of
profits is to fall ; for in the progress of so-
ciety and wealth, the additional quantity
of food required is obtained by the sacri-
fice of more and more labor." He held,
too, that rent being paid by reason of the
necessity of resorting to soils of progres-
sively lower degrees of fertility, and neces-
sarily advancing as the difference between
the best lands, thus first cultivated, and
those last brought into use, increases, the
share of the laborer in the products of ag-
riculture will be diminished, while that of
the landlord will be increased. That, con-
sequently, as the average rates of profits
and wages, in all employments, tends to a
level, ihQ condition of the laborer and the
landless capitalist grows more and more
inferior to that of the landlords, with a
continual tendency in both to become ulti-
mately his slaves.

Mr. Carey, examining the historical
records of the Ions: settled nations of the
earth, and comparing the conditions of man,
capital, and land, as described in reliable
accounts of contemporary societies in dif-
ferent stages of industrial progress, discov-
ered that their theories were at war with
the facts. When his analysis had detected
the law which governs the division, in dif-
ferent periods of the progress of national
wealth, between the laborer and the capi-
talist, of the fruits of their co-operative ac-
tion, it supplied him with a corrective, and
demonstrated the existence of a counter-
acting; force, the modifications due to whose
influence did much towards harmonizmg
the results of error with observed facts.
There was sufficient vitality in the partial
truth, to preserve the falsehood mixed up
with it from destruction. It enabled
him, also, to fortify his faith against the
dreary forebodings of Malthus, who, pur-
suing the doctrine of Rent, '^ the great
glory of the school of Ricardo," to its
legitimate conclusions, proved that the
Divine command, " increase and multiply
and replenish the earth," was but an in-
junction to the race to hurry on to starva-
tion—an invitation to suicide. He found

that the laws of capital provided for its i
growth in a more rapid ratio than that of |
population, and that the course of this
world was so ordered, that its natural pro-
gress was towards ever increasing comfort,
and virtue, instead of destitution, misery
and vice. It was made clear to his com-
prehension that the cause of Rent was not
that assigned — that land, instead of bearing
a larger value than the labor expended in
bringing it into its existing condition — a
monopoly price — always represented a less
value in exchange, and could at all times
and in all places, be purchased by the
equivalent of less labor than that which
had been employed in its improvement.
But, while thus discarding the theory of
Rent in its formula and its consequences,
he had not emancipated himself from the
falsehood assumed as truth, with which it
starts. True, he had perceived that " The
soils first cultivated are very frequently
not those of the highest fertility. It is
well known that the rich bottom lands of
the west, covered, as they are, with large
timber, are not those most sought after.
The settler prefers that which is somewhat
inferior, but which is clear and ready for
cultivation. Timber is, therefore, an ob-
jection to him, and he will take land of
second or third quality, ready for use^
rather than No. 1, that requires to be
cleared."*

But he every where impliedly treats
such cases as exceptional and receives it
as the general rule that men first cultivate
the superior soils, and are driven by ne-
cessity to those of successively lower fer-
tility.

The fiction is perpetually repeated, un-
der circumstances, where, to one who,
having under his guidance learned the
truth, now reverts to his earlier work — it
would almost seem to indicate a wantonness
of perverse phraseology — an affectation of
paradox.

To recur to a former quotation :

"As population and capital increases, and
as cultivation is extended over the inferior soils,
further capital is accumulated with greater
facility," &c.

Substitute superior for inferior^ in the
italicised member of this sentence, and the

* Principles of Political Economy, vol. 1, p. 38.

1850.

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey.

381

proposition carries conviction to the sense
as soon as it strikes the eye or ear. What
was before incongruous and discordant, be-
comes harmonious — almost self-evident and
a truism. It was precisely to this substi-
tution that Mr. Carey's subsequent enqui-
ries Sifter facts conducted him.

It is difficult to conceive a proposition,
which being sheer fiction, possessed more
the appearance of truth, than that men in
the midst of an ample supply of fertile
and unappropriated lands, will always in
the first instance subject to cultivation
those only which are capable of yielding the
largest return. It is not strange that the
declaration should have been accepted so
readily, as a manifest fact. Truth is
stranger than fiction. The strong convic-
tion with which it impressed the minds of
the foreign economists, is evinced in the
unflinching boldness with which they met
and embraced every inference logically
deducible from it. With them, in relation
to this fundamental error, the reductio ad
ahsurdum signally failed. When it led
them to an absurdity, they received the
absurdity without hesitation, and incorpo-
rated it forthwith into their creeds. The
more startling are the principles of doc-
trine and practice to which it conducts
them, the more do they magnify the im-
portance of the discovery. They have
vindicated their honesty as well as their
faith, in such measure as is seldom given
to writers upon any matter of mere ter-
restrial concernment.

In the year 1848, Mr. Carey published
The Past, the Present, and the Fu-
ture. His examination of history, and
observation of contemporaneous facts, had
satisfied him that the premise assumed by
the modern school has no existence as a
fact, — that it never has existed in any
country whatsoever ; and that it is con-
trary to the nature of things that it should
have existed or can exist. On the con-
trary, he shows the original settlers " in-
variably occupying the high and thin lands,
requiring little clearing and no drainage ;
those which can yield but a small return to
labor : and as invariably travelling down
the hills and clearing and draining the
lower and richer lands, as population and
wealth increase."

" Passing thus, at every step, from the poor
to the better soilS; the supply of food, and of

all other of the necessaries of life, increases
daily, and men consume more while accumu-
lating wealth with constantly increasing ra-
pidity. The danger of famine and disease
passes away. Increased returns to labor and
daily improving condition, render labor pleas-
ant, and man applies himself more steadily as
his work becomes less severe. Po])ulation in-
creases, and the rapidity of its increase is
seen to be greater with each successive gene-
ration, and with each is seen an increase of
the power of living in connection with each
other by reason of the power of obtaining
increasing supplies from the same surface;
with each is seen an increase in the tendency
to combination of action, by which their la-
bors are rendered more productive — their
wants increased — the desires and the facilities
of commerce augmented : tending to produce
harmony, and peace, and security of person
and property among themselves, and with the
world; accompanied by constant increase of
numbers, wealth, prosperity and happiness."

It is not our purpose to make any cita-
tions from the beautiful and convincing
demonstration by which this text is sup-
ported. It consists in elaborate historical
examination of the progress of settlement
and cultivation, in the United States,
Mexico, South America, Great Britain,
France, Italy, Greece, India, &c. This is
the first and essential point in Carey's
method of treating a subject. That having
been established it is proper to explain
the rationale of the phenomena, and to ex-
hibit their consonance with what might be
anticipated by theorizing, and how the facts
could or should have been discovered by
sagacious conjecture, — reversing the meth-
od of the English economists, — that of
reasoning " from assumed premises which
might be totally without foundation in
fact."

Nor is it our purpose to detail the con-
clusions to which this discovery has opened
the way, with one remarkable exception,
presently to be noticed.

We pause here to give audible expres-
sion to the astonishment which cannot well
fail to be felt by every reader, that when the
imaginary discovery or elucidation of a single
supposed fact should have given such high
reputation to its authors ; — should have
founded a new school of economists, which
continued for forty years with ever fresh
glorification of the brilliancy and impor-
tance of the theory of rent, — its refutation
should have excited so little sensation, and

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey.

Oct.

especially in tlie native country of the man
to whom the world owes this great obligation.
How comes it, that after being led astray for
forty years in a wilderness of delusion,
with perpetual beating of drums and sound-
ing of trumpets in honor of our guides, the
voice of congratulation and praise should
be so low and feeble for him who restores
us to safe paths, — that after wandering
among quagmires and pit-falls in Stygian
gloom, broken only to reveal " gorgons
and hydras and chimeras dire,'' lowering
upon the traveller — sights and sounds un-
holy, besetting him on every side — obedience
to the very commandments of God, de-
nounced as leading infallibly to night and the
pit — how comes it that there are no thanks
for him who leads us to cheerful scenes and
bright prospects, — who vindicates the ways
of God to man, and opens to his race the
vista of Hope and of Progress ? We can
find no answer honorable to our country-
men. '' The Past, the Present, and the
Future," which has found no reviewer in
America, has found them in the Revue des
deux Mondes, and elsewhere on the Con-
tinent and in England. The principles of
political economy introduced into no Col-
lege in the United States,* have been
translated into Swedish and made the text-
book of the University of Upsal. A
chapter on the philosophy of commercial
crises from a continental author, (M. Co-
quelin) avowedly founded, and with due
acknowledgment, upon Carey's work, is
translated and published in the Merchant's
Magazine, to be read by bankers and
merchants of his own country, to whom
the original is less known than the Koran.
It has not yet been remarked, but such
is the fact, that up to the period of the
composition of*' The Past, Present and Fu-
ture," indeed until about half of that work
had been written, Mr. Carey was with the
rest of the economists, a zealous advocate
of what they denominate Free Trade and
an opponent of protection. The prepara-

* Since writing the above, we have been informed
that " Carey's Political Economy," and" the Past,
the Present and the Future," have been adopted as
text-books — in some New England College —
think, you, where the sons of the cotton manufac-
turers are educated, or in Pennsylvania, amidst
the coal mines and the iron mills'? — not a bit of it,
but in the University of Virginia, where the chil-
dren of the Abstractionists are congregated.

tion of this book opened to his mind the
philosophy of concentration. It instructed
him that in the natural progress of things,
in the course of real Free Trade, the con-
sumer of food takes his place side by side
with its producer, and that both share the
fruits of the common mother earth, most
largely, while she gives them in the greatest
profusion where there is the least waste in
the machinery of exchange. That the loss
from the use of the machinery of exchange,
is in the ratio of the bulk of the article to
be exchanged, f)od standing first in the
scale, which diminishes until we come
to fine laces and cutlery. It became ap-
parent to him that

" In the regular course of human affairs, the
man who nnakes the shoes eats the food pro-
vided by the man who desires to wear them;
and he does so because it is easier for him to
bring the awl and the lap-stone, by aid of which
he can make one thousand pair of shoes, than
it is for the farmer to carry to him the food
necessary for his support while doing it. This
tendency struggles incessantly to develop it-
self, and is seen on every occasion making its
appearance, but it has ahnost invariably been
crushed ] the effect of which has been that the
people of the United States are now far more
widely scattered, and far less wealthy, than they
otherwise would have been. They have been
compelled to use a vast quantity of inferior ma-
chinery of exchange, in the form of roads and
wagons, in place of the superior machinery of
steam-engines and mills ; and they have been
driven to begin on poor soils in the west,
yielding ten bushels of wheat to the acre,
when otherwise they might have worked their
way down into the rich soils of the river-bot-
toms further east, portions of which may, at
all times, be bought for far less than the cost
of production. Pennsylvania abounds iii
bottom-land that can be cultivated, when the
farmer can find a market at his door for milk
and cream and butter ; hut, in the meantime,
her citizens go west to seek other lands that
may produce something that will bear carriage
to the distant markets of the world. It is now
obvious what has been the reason of this, (the
Tariff Policy,) the single case in which the
policy of the Union has appeared to depart
from the direction of perfect freedom of trade.
We have always deemed such interference as
erroneous, but are now satisfied that the error
has been with us.

"Man everywhere must commence with the
poor soils, and the richer ones cannot be culti-
vated until the commerce and produce are
brought together. Whatever foreign interfer-
ence tends to prevent this union, tends to com-

1850.

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey.

383

pel men to scatter themselves over poor soils,
to prevent increase in the reward to labor, and
to prevent advance in civilization ; and resist-
ance to suck interference is a necessary act of
self-defence. The article of chief consump-
tion is food, of which rich soils would yield
larger quantities in return to half the labor re-
quired on the poor ones; and half the differ-
ence would convert into cloth all the cotton
and wool produced, and make the iron used,
in the Union. Such being the case, the exports
required to pay for English labor are so much
absolute loss, while the great machine itself,
{the earth,) suffers in the loss of labor that
would double it in product and in value."—
Past^ Present, and Future, pp. 117 and 118.

Here we have the philosophy of Protec-
tion, deduced in logical sequence, from the
principles of Free Trade, by a writer on
eystematic economy, pursuing his investi-
gations alio intuitOj and singular only in
this, that he has sought to learn and to
auo-ment his favorite science in the true
spirit of Bacon, and has the candor and
courage, when accurate observation and
sound induction have led him to the disco-
very of a previous error, to proclaim the
fact and accept and enforce the antagonis-
tic truth.

Retaining all his former convictions, in
favor of the justice and policy of Free
Trade, he has found the way to attain it,
and advocates Protection for the sake and
in the spirit of Free Trade. He comes
forth against the foreign economists, fur-
nished at all points with weapons from their
own armory and shouting their own battle-
cry — death to all interference with the
liberty of man to employ his industry in
such manner as his instinct of self-interest
may dictate.

The people of the United States have
not this liberty. It is denied them, not by
the positive prohibition of their own Gov-
ernment, but by the refusal and neglect of
that Government to interpose between
them and the Colonial policy of England.
That liberty must be recovered. We must
conquer a peace. We must achieve perfect
freedom of trade through perfect protection.
Mr. Carey adopts, in this regard, the sen-
timent of the motto of Massachusetts :

"Ense petit placidum sub libertate quietem."

He regards the whole system of indirect
taxation as mere petty larceny. As a re-
Tenue system, it is the plunder of the poor

for the sake of sparing the rich. He believes
that if we desire to preserve peace, arrest
the process of dispersion, and promote con-
centration upon rich soils, " it can only be
done by increased protection, by aid of a
tariff that is not for revenue — a tai iff Vv^hose
direct object shall be that of establishing
the right of every man to determine for
himself where he will live and how he will
employ his labor or his capital, or both."
In the brief sketch we have thus given,
it has been our principal object to show the
progress of an enlightened and honest mind
towards the truth, and incidentally to do
something towards redeeming the study of
political economy from unjust obloquy, by
showing that prosecuted in the right spirit,
it conducts to conclusions in perfect har-
mony with their observation and experience.
Such men will not undervalue the advan-
tage of weaving scattered facts into a con-
nected system, of exhibiting their relation
to each other, and the rationale of their
existence, of generalizing the history of the
phenomena, connected with the production,
distribution, and consumption of wealth in
comprehensive laws. The progress of an
individual in knowledge as well as his facil-
ity in making a ready application of it to
the solution of the various practical ques-
tions which the exigencies of life present,
depends upon the extent to which he has
condensed it from particulars into generals.
A man may learn and remember an indefi-
nite number of the properties of the circle,
and may be able to demonstrate them geo-
metrically, or he may carry them all in his
memory, and all other possible properties,
(if any such there be,) which have escaped
attention, wrapped up in the brief formula
2 a X — x'^^=z^ and evolve them when ne-
cessity requires. Every one can see which
is the must convenient mode of packing
away a given amount of knowledge.

It need not be supposed that a work of
economical instruction is necessarily dry
because it is methodical. We know few
books more entertaining than ''The Past,
the Present and the Future. ' ' A young lady
might read it, without suspicion that she
was becoming indoctrinated in anything
serious enough to be called scientific, and
would probably be greatly surprised to
discover that she knew more of political
economy than is to be found in the arm-
chairs of most Professors. A few extracts,

384

Political Economists. Henry C. Caret/.

Oct.

all that our limited space allows, must suf-
fice as a specimen of the style of the book :

^'In 'the good old times' of Ivanhoe and
Richard, when fertile land was abundant and
people rare, the Saxon hogs roamed the woods,
living upon acorns produced from oaks that
Cedric lacked the means to fell. Later, half-
starved sheep fed upon the lands incapable of
yielding grain^ but cows and oxen were few,
because the fine rich meadow was covered
with wood and so saturated with moisture as
to be inaccessible. Maids of honor then lux-
uriated on bacon, and laborers banqueted upon
'the strength of water-gruel/ as did sixty
years since many of the people of those north-
ern counties,* which now present to view the
finest farms in England, the rich soils com-
posing which were then awaiting the growth
of population and of wealth. A piece of fat
pork was, in those days, an article of luxury
rarely to be obtained by the laborer. Even
within a century, the bread consumed by a
large portion of the people was made of bar-
ley, rye, and oats, the consumption of wheat
being limited to the rich ; the quantity pro-
duced being small. It is now in universal use,
although so recently as 1727 an eight acre
field of it, near Edinburgh, was deemed a curi-
osity. As late as 1763, there was no such
person as a public butcher known in Glas-
gow. It was the custom of families to buy a
half-fed ox in the autumn and salt down the
meat as the year's supply of animal food.
The state of things there, is an index to that
which existed in the Lothians, and in North-
umberland and other counties of the north of
England, where may now be seen the most
prosperous agriculture of Britain. At that
time men cultivated, not the best soils, but
those which they could cultivate, leaving the
rich ones for their successors : and in this they
did what is done now every day by the settlers
of Illinois and Wisconsin." — The Past, the
Present, and the Future, page 55.

'^ Wealth tends to grow more rapidly than
population, because better soils are brought
into cultivation; and it does grow more rapid-
ly, whenever people abandon swords and
muskets, and take to spades and ploughs.
Every increase in the ratio of wealth to po-
pulation is attended with an increase in the
power of the laborer as compared with that
of landed or other capital. We all see that
when ships are more abundant than passen-
gers, the price of passage is low — and vice
versa. When ploughs and horses are more
plenty than ploughmen, the latter fix the
w^ages, but when ploughmen are more abundant
than ploughs, the owners of the latter deter-
mine the distribution of the product of labor.

* Eden.

When wealth increases rapidly, new soils are
brought into cultivation, and more ploughmen
are wanted. The demand for ploughs pro-
duces a dem.and for more men to mine coal
and smelt iron ore, and the iron-master be-
comes a competitor for the employment of the
laborer, who obtains a larger proportion of
the constantly increasing return to labor. He
wants clothes in greater abundance, and the
manufacturer becomes a competitor with the
iron-master and the farmer for his services.
His proportion is again increased, and he
wants sugar, and tea, and coffee, and now the
ship-master competes with the manufacture!,
the iron-master and the farmer ; and thus with
the growth of population and wealth there is
produced a constantly increasing demand for
labor 5 and its increased productiveness, and
the consequently increased facility of accumu-
lating wealth are followed necessarily and cer-
tainly by an increase of the laborer's propor-
tion. His wages rise, and the proportion of
the capitalist falls, yet now the latter accumu-
lates fortune more rapidly than ever, and thus
his interest and that of the laborer are in per-
fect harmony with each other. If we desire
evidence of this, it is shown in the constantly
increasing amount of the rental of England,
derived from the appropriation of a constantly
decreasing proportion of the product of the
land : and in the enormous amount of railroad
tolls compared with those of the turnpike :
yet the railroad transports the farmer's wheat
to market, and brings back sugar and coffee,
taking not one-fourth as large a proportion for
doing the business as was claimed by the
owner of the wagon and horses, and him of
the turnpike. The laborer's product is increas-
ed, and the proportion that goes to the capital-
ist is decreased. The power of the first over
the product of his labor has grown, while that
of the latter is diminished.

^' Nothing is more frequent than references
to those ' good old times,' when the laborer
obtained food more readily than at present, but
no idea can be more erroneous. The whole
quantity of food at this time consumed in
England is at the lowest estimate sixty times
as great as in the days of Edward III., while
the population is but little more than six times
greater. Divided among the whole people, the
average per head would be ten times as great,
in quantity, without taking into account the
difference of quality. In those days of bar-
barous wassail, the waste among the nobles
and their followers was prodigiously great.
In our day economy prevails everywhere, and
it prevails necessarily, for as the standard of
living rises with the increase of production, the
proportion that falls to the land, or to capital
in any other form, tends to decrease. Increase
of wealth tends therefore to beget economy,
and economy begets wealth; and the more
fertile the soil cultivated the greater will be

1S50.

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey.

385

the, power of the laborer, and the greater the
necessity for economy on the part of those who
represent landed or other capital, and who do
not themselves work. The proportion now
consumed by the wealthy and their attendants
— by those who consume and do not produce,
is very small compared with what it was in
those ' good old times,' and therefore the pro-
portion going to the laborer is very large, while
the quantity to be d ivided is so greatly increas-
ed. The great mass of the present large pro-
duct goes directly to the tables of those who
work, while a very small proportion of it is
prepared for the tables of those who do not
work, and even of that a large portion is eaten
at last by people whose position in society
renders employment desirable. The Queen
eats less in weight than the man who mines
the coal that is use;d in her palace. Lord John
Russell consumes less than any London por-
ter, and Sir Robert Peel is, we doubt not, out-
done by most of his servants.

"Of the mass of food provided for the peo-
ple of England, nine-tenths are eaten by the
laboring class. If any be disposed to deny
that this view is correct, let them endeavor to
satisfy themselves what else becomes of it.
That the whole is eaten is certain. That the
class who do not labor is small, and that they
cannot consume much more, per head, than
others, are equally certain ; and if so, it must
be obvious that the proportion which their
consumption bears to the quantity consumed
must be very small indeed; and equally so
that what they do not eat must be eaten by the
great class who labor.

" Such is likewise the case with clothing.
The quantity consumed is thousands of times
greater than it was at the period to which we
have referred, and it is chiefly consumed by the
class who work. Ladies and gentlemen buy
more than colliers and farm-laborers, but they
do not wear out as much. They change fre-
quently, but their cast-ofF clothes pass from
hand to hand and are worn out by those who
work. In no part of Europe is the mass of
rent, or of profits of capital employed other-
wise than on land, so great as there : yet in
none do the people who pay the rent, or those
profits — those who work — enjoy so large an
amount of the conveniences, comforts, and en-
joyments of life. In none is there so great a
tendency to an increase of the laborer's pro-
portion, — of his power over the product of
his labor, — while in none is the quantity to be
divided so great. In none, therefore, is there
so great a tendency to elevation and equality
of physical, moral, intellectual and political
condition, because in none do wealth and po-
pulation grow so rapidly, facilitating the cul-
tivation of the lower and more productive
soils. In no time past has there been so rapid
an increase as now. Never has the tendency

VOL. VI. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

to cultivate those soils been so great, and ye
never has the product of labor increased in so
great a ratio : and never has the proportion of
the landlord so rapidly diminished." — lb. p. 66.

**** * ****

"" Such is the course of events, when man is
allowed to follow the bent of his inclinations,
which, however, he rarely is. When men are
poor, they are compelled to select such soils as
they can cultivate, not such as they would.
Although gathered around the sides of the same
mountain range, they are far distant from each
other. They have no roads, and they are un-
able to associate for self-defence. The thin
soils yield small returns, and the little tribe
embraces some who would prefer to live by
the labor of others rather than by their own.
The scattered people may be plundered with
ease, and half a dozen men, combined for the
purpose, may rob in succession all the mem-
bers of the little community. The opportunity
makes the robber. The boldest and the most
determined becomes the leader of the gang.
One by one, the people who use spades are
plundered by those who carry swords, and who
pass their leisure in dissipation. The leader
divides the spoil, taking the largest share him-
self, with which, as the community increases,
he hires more followers. He levies black mail
on those who work, taking such portion as suits
his good pleasure. With the gradual increase
of the little community, he commutes with
them for a certain share of their produce,
which he calls rent, or tax, or taille. Popula-
tion and wealth grow very slowly, because of
the large proportion which the non-laborers
bear to the laborers. The good soils are very
slowly improved, because the people are un-
able to obtain axes or spades with which to
work, and to make roads into the dense forests.
Few want leather, and there is no tanner on
the spot to use their hides. Few can afford
shoes, and there is no shoemaker to eat their
corn while making the few that can be bought.
Few have horses, and there is no black-smith.
Combination of effort has scarcely an exist-
ence. By very slow degrees, however, they
are enabled to reduce to cultivation better
lands, and to lessen the distance between
themselves and the neighboring settlement,
where rules another little sovereign. Each
chief, however, now covets the power of tax-
ing, or collecting rents from the subjects of
his neighbor. War ensues. Each seeks
plunder, and calls it 'glory.' Each invades
the domain of the other, and each endeavors
to weaken his opponent by murdering his
rent-payers, burning their houses, and wasting
their little farms, while manifesting the utmost
courtesy to the chief himself. The tenants
fly to the hills for safety, being there more
distant from the invaders. Rank weeds grow
up in the rich lands thus abandoned, and th«

386

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey.

Oct.

drains fill up. At the end of a year or two.
peace is made, and the work of clearing is
again to be commenced. Population and
wealth have, however, diminished, and the
means of recommencing the work have again
to be created. Meanwhile the best lands are
covered with shrubs, and the best meadows
are under water. With continued peace, the
work, however, advances, and after a few
years, population and wealth, and cultivation^
attain the same height as before. New wars
ensue, for the determination of the question
which of the two chiefs shall collect all the —
so-called — rent. After great waste of life and
property, one of them is killed, and the other
falls his heir, having thus acquired both glory
and plunder. He now wants a title, by which
to be distinguished from those by whom he is
surrounded. He is a little king. Similar
operations are performed elsewhere, and kings
become numerous. By degrees, population
extends itself, and each little king covets the
dominions of his neighbors. Wars ensue on
a somewhat larger scale, and always with the
same results. The people invariably fly to the
hills for safety. As invariably the best lands
are abandoned. Food becomes scarce, and
famine and pestilence sweep off those whose
flio-ht had saved them from the sword of the
invader. Small kings become greater ones,
surrounded by lesser chiefs who glorify them-
selves in the number of their murders, and in
the amount of plunder they have acquired.
Counts, viscounts, earls, marquises, and dukes
now make their appearance on the stage, heirs
of the power and of the rights of the robber
chiefs of early days. Population and wealth
go backward, and the love of title grows with
the growth of barbarism.* Wars are now
made on a larger scale, and greater ^ glory' is
acquired. In the midst of distant and highly
fertile lands occupied by a numerous popula-
tion, are rich cities and towns oifering a copi-
ous harvest of plunder. The citizens, unused

* It is amusing to trace with each step in the
progress of the decay of the Roman Empire, the
gradual increase in the magnificence of titles : and
so again with the decline of modern Italy. In
France, titles became almost universal as the wars
of religion barbarized the people. The high-
sounding titles of the East are in keeping with the
weakness of those by whom they are assumed, as
are the endless names of the Spanish grandee with
the poverty of the soil cultivated by his dependents.
The time is fast approaching when men of real
dignity will reject the whole system as an absur-
dity, and when small men alone wdl think them-
selves elevated by the title of Esquire, Honorable,
Baron, Marquis, or Duke. Extremes always meet.
The son of the duke rejoices in the possession of
half a dozen Christian names, and the little retailer
of tea and sugar calls his daughter Amanda Mal-
vina Fitzallan — Smith, or Pratt: while the gentle-
man calls his son Robert, or John.

to arms, may be robbed with impunity, always
an important consideration to those with whom
the pursuit of ' glory ' is a trade Provinces
are laid waste, and the population is extermi-
nated, or if a few escape, they fly to the hills
and mountains, there to perish of famine.
Peace follows, after years of destruction, but
the rich lands are overgrown : the spades
and axes, the cattle and the sheep are gone :
the houses are destroyed : their owners have
ceased to exist : and a long period of absti-
nence from the work of desolation is required
to regain the point from which cultivation had
been driven by men intent upon the gratifica-
tion of their own selfish desires, at the cost of
the welfare and happiness of the people over
whose destinies they have unhappily ruled.
Population grows slowly, and wealth but little
more rapidly, for almost ceaseless wars have
impaired the disposition and the respect for
honest labor, while the necessity for beginning
once more the work of cultivation on the poor
soils, adds to the distaste for work, while it
limits the power of employing laborers.
Swords or muskets are held to be more honora-
ble implements than spades and pickaxes. The
habit of union for any honest purpose is almost
extinct, while thousands are ready, at any mo-
ment, to join in expeditions in search of plunder.
War thus feeds itself by producing poverty,
depopulation, and the abandonment of the most
fertile soils ; while peace also feeds itself, by
increasing the number of men and the habit of
union, because of the constantly increasing
power to draw supplies of food from the sur-
face already occupied, as the almost boundless
powers of the earth are developed in the pro-
gress of population and wealth." — lb. p. 83.

We have left ourselves no room to speak
of a, series of Essays under the the title of
the Harmony of Interests, Agricultural,
Manufacturing, and Commercial, contri-
buted by Mr. Carey to Skinner's Agricul-
tural Magazine, the Plough, the Loom, and
the Anvil, and which we understand are
shortly to be collected in a volume. This
work is the supplement, what preachers
sometimes call the practical application, of
doctrines developed in his former publica-
tions.

In it he makes an elaborate examination
of the statistics of production and consump-
tion in the United States, and contrasts
the results in the several periods in which
the protection policy has prevailed with
those in which it was abandoned. He
demonstrates by detailed and authentic
official statements of the Treasury De-
partment through the entire series of years
from 1816 to 1849, that the productive

1850.

Political Econojnists . Henry C. Carey.

387

power of the country has increased under
every protective tariff and diminished un-
der the compromise act and the tariff of
1846, and that with every increase of pro-
ductive power, the power of importation
and consumption has increased also.

This done, so far as statistics can do it,
in the first three chapters of the book, the
remainder is devoted to an exposition of the
philosophy of protection — the explanation
of how it is that protection tends to increase
production and consumption, why it is that
protection is required and how it affects
each of the great industrial interests. It
treats specifically and separately on the in-
fluence of the protective policy, on com-
merce, on population and emigration, on
the farmer, the planter, and the capitalist,
the laborer, on the currency, on the politi-
cal condition of man, on the revenue and
expenditure of government, &c. To the
discussion of all these topics, Mr. Carey
brings that copious illuotration, as well
from the records of the past, as of cotem-
poraneous history, which distinguishes his
method of handling the subject from the
dry didactic style of most others who have

occasion to speak or write upon it. The point
of view from which he contemplates these
topics, will be to most readers as entire-
ly novel, as is the line of argument pursued.
To those who have been deluded by the
pretensions of the opponents of protection,
that their system is that which conduces to
freedom of trade, there will seem to be
something paradoxical in the declaration
with which he concludes that it has been
his object " to prove that among the peo-
ple of the world, whether agriculturists,
manufacturers or merchants, there is per-
fect harmony of interests, and that the
happiness of individuals as well as the gran-
deur of nations is to be promoted by per-
fect obedience to that greatest of all com-
mands, ' Do unto others as ye would that
others should do unto you.' "

But as we have said, our limits forbid
any extended notice of this work. If what
the little we have said shall stimulate a
curiosity which may lead our readers to
its perusal, we shall have rendered them a
service, — for which we doubt not, they will
be grateful, — and accomplished all we in-
tend.

388

Sydney Smitli's Sketches of Moral P/iilosojyJiy.

Oct.

SYDNEY SMITH'S SKETCHES OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

English books find American readers
from tlie one eii'cumstance of a common
language, and from no especial congeniality
of character between the two nations or
common direction of thought. Even in
New England coteries, where the moth-
er country is aped and loved with pro-
vincial fervor, the speculative, and spe-
culating Yankee is the mental antipodes
of the exact, routine loving Englishman.
The New Englander is of pure English
descent, and yet there is not a single na-
tion of the North of Europe with which
he has as little in common as with the Eng-
lish. Social life, as German and Swedish
moralists have of late opened it to us, is
in those countries, in a thousand lights and
shades the daguerreotype of our own.
And even the contemplative, metaphysical
mind of the German race is witnessed in
our own countrymen in their love of social
and political "abstractions." On the
Continent, wherever political convulsions
liave broken up the old forms of society,
with the more equal distribution of wealth
we find a more complete distribution of
knowledge. In France, as the class of
small proprietors increases, the national
literature becomes popularized. In Great
Britain, literature is for men of leisure, ripe
scholars, rich and highly disciplined minds,
with whom the pursuit of knowledge is the
occupation of their life. But with us,
knowledge is sought in moments snatched
from exertion ; — the soil is fruitful but
neglected, and the seed consequently
should be perfect and adapted to take in-
etant root.

Science must now be stripped of that
veil of mystery which has so long ob-
scured its fair proportions, and must be
content to be robed in the habiliments
of every day life. Heretofore, like the
gods on Olympus, its feet have been
^dden in clouds impervious to the gaze

of mortals, while it only held converse
with the privileged few dwelling in the
higher regions. Not willingly do these
yield up their power and privileges, but
civilization has warmed the frozen depths
of society, and from the abyss is heard a
sound of many voices clamoring for know-
ledge. It was no mere caprice of fashion
that changed the gorgeous and gi'otesque
apparel of a half-barbarous age, into the
simple costume of this century Perukuea
and powdered hair, gold lace and velvets,
were discarded because men of cultured
mien were found in classes who had neither
the means nor the leisure to spend half of
their mornings under the hands of the
barber, or fortunes in personal endowment.
In like manner, thought has forced its way
into the ranks of those once only hewers of
wood and drawers of water, and they now
seek to tear from knowledge its patrician
livery, and to make it free to all mankind.

No where are these rubbish-barricades
greater than in metaphysical science.
From the obscurity of its terms, the seeker
must waste years in grappling with the
obscurities of its language. And yet these
difficulties once overcome or partially ob-
viated, there is no science in which the
common mind can advance with such free-
dom and independence ; for its materials
are in every man's breast, or to be gained in
his ordinary intercourse with his fellow-men.

Neither do we think it requires a
greater power of intellectual vision than
is constantly called forth by the practical
pursuits of life. In the difficulty of giving
intelligible and fixed appellations to phases
of mind which are not only of difficult re-
presentation, but variable and fleeting
when once called up, lie the chief impedi-
ments to the diffusion of mental and moral
science, and not in a peculiar demand for
intellectual subtlety or reach. The disci-
ple can always follow the master, if that

1850.

Sydney Smith'' s Sketches of Moral Philosophy.

389

master only knows what he means himself,
and has the genius to express his meaning
definitely and clearly.

This merit the book before us undoubt-
edly possesses, whatever may be its faults
in other respects. Whatsoever the author
has to say, he says it boldly, in plain ser-
viceable Saxon, and the reader is never
befogged by the obscurities of intricate style,
nor lost in the hopeless attempt at unfold-
ing shadowy half-expressed ideas. From
the cursory manner in which the different
subjects are treated, we would have little
reason to expect any thing but a bald re-
capitulation of the outlines and leading
theories of moral philosophy. Instead of
this, we are delighted by a hearty and
manly discourse, such as Attic youth listen-
ed to long since, amid groves and academic
shades. It has all the flavor and life of
conversation, partaking of the warmth of
the subjects treated of, and varying in
interest with them. Sometimes he becomes
grave and clerical, then breaks out into
dashing and jovial talk, rather startling in
this phase of literature. One page will
gleam with the sharpshooting of wit, anoth-
er fairly tremble beneath the rolling fire
of humor.

All this is in good taste, and what is more
to the purpose, we gain from it a hint of
what is the chief deficiency in works of
psychological science. In consequence of
the sensuous origin of lang-uajre, there
are no means of treating subjects of
this nature in the straightforward and
precise manner so easily gained in pos-
itive science. Mankind first name ob-
jects of sense around them, and there-
from give names, in consequence of some
hidden resemblance, to purely mental pro-
cesses. The similarity here is not between
the thought and the object, but between
the thought and certain trains of ideas
to which the object gives rise. Hence all
discission on the operations and divisions
of our minds must be doubly metaphori-
cal. If we would convey a train of ideas
conceived with the utmost mathematical
and logical accuracy, we are forced to do
it by means of a series of similitudes which
weaken, and may in other minds entirely
pervert the meaning. The only way to
surmount this obstacle is to pile analogy
upon analogy, metaphor on metaphor, — to
j^resent the thought from all points of view, —

to paint it grotesque in humor, severe in
wit ; with the glow of poetry, and the
hardness of common-sense. This our
author does, and does well, and without any
great profundity this book will reach more
minds and take deeper root than many a
work of more learning and pretension. It
will soften many of those prejudices which
regarded mental and moral philosophy as
the arctic region of science, chilling, life-
less, misty ; for it displays the warm life
that beats under the unattractive exterior.
For the greater popularity of metaphysics
he puts in the following plea : —

" The existence of matter is as much a mat-
ter of fact as the existence of mind : It is as
true that men remember, as that oxygen united
to carbon makes carbonic acid. I am as sure
that anger and affection, are princi})les of the
human mind, as I am that grubs make cock-
chafers ; or of any of these great truths which
botanists teach of lettuces and cauliflowers.
Those that would cast a ridicule upon meta-
physics, or the intellectual part of moral phi-
losophy, as if it were vague and indefinite in
its object, must either contend that we have
no faculties at all, and that no general facts
are to be observed concerning them, or they
must allow to this science an equal precision
with that which any other can claim.

" A great deal of unpopularity has been in-
curred by this science from the extravagances
or absurdities of those engaged in it. When
the mass of mankind hear that all thought is
explained by vibrations and vibratiuncles of
the brain, — that there is no such thing as a
material w^orld^ — that what mankind consider
as their arms and legg, are not arms and legs,
but ideas accompanied b}'' the notion of out-
7iess, — that we have not only no bodies, but
no minds ; that we are nothing in short but
currents of reflection and sensation ; all this,
I admit, is well calculated to approximate in
the public mind the ideas of lunacy and intel-
lectual philosophy. But if it be fair to argue
against a science, from the bad method in
which it is prosecuted, such a mode of reason-
ing ought to have influenced mankind centu-
ries ago to have abandoned all the branches
of physics as utterly hopeless. I have surely
an equal right to rake up the mouldy errors
of all the other sciences ; to reproach ast^^ono-
my with its vortices ; chemistry with its philo-
sopher's stone ; history with its fables; law
with its cruelty and ignorance ; and, if I were
to open the battery against medicine, I do not
know where I should stop. Zingis Khan, when
he was most crimsoned with blood, never
slaughtered the human race as they have been
slaughtered by rash and erroneous theories of
medicine."

390

Sydney SmitK's Sketches of Moral FliilosopJiy .

Oct,

Concerning the vagaries that have cast
discredit on intellectual science, his wit
thus separates the chaflf from the wheat.

" Bishop Berkely destroyed this world in
one volume octavo ; and nothing remained
after his time but mind ; which experienced a
similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in
1737 ; so that with all the tendency to destroy,
there remains nothing left for destruction ;
but I would fain ask, if there be any one
human being from the days of Protagoras
the Abderite to this present hour, who was ever
for a single instant a convert to these subtle
and ingenious follies '? Is there any one out
of bedlam who doubts of the existence of mat-
ter ? who doubts of his own personal identity?
or of his consciousness ? or of the general cre-
dibility of memory '? Men talk on such sub-
jects from ostentation, or because such wire-
drawn speculations are an agreeable excercise
to them ] but they are perpetually recalled by
the necessary business and the inevitable
feelings of life to sound and sober opinions on
these subjects. Errors to be dangerous must
have a great deal of truth mingled with them;
it is only from this alliance that they can ever
obtain an extensive circulation. From pure ex-
travagance and genuine unmeaning falsehood,
the world never has and never can sustain
any mischief. It is not in our power to be-
lieve all that we please ; our belief is modified
and restrained by the nature of our faculties,
and by the constitution of the objects by which
we are surrounded. We may believe anything
for a moment, but we shall soon be lashed
out of our impertinence by hard and stubborn
realities. A great philosopher may sit in his
study, and deny the existence of matter, but
if he take a walk in the streets, he must take
care to leave his theory behind him. Pyrrho
said there was no such thing as pain ; and he
saw no prooj that there were such things as
carts and wagons ] and he refused to get out
of their way ) but Pyrrho had, fortunately for
him, three or four stout slaves, who followed
their master, without following his doctrine;
and whenever they saw one of these ideal
machines approaching, took him up by the
arms and legs, and, without attempting to con-
trovert his arguments put him down in a place
•of safety."

We do not think the position he takes
as to the progress and practical utility of
Moral Philosophy sufficiently high ; while,
from its views as to the manner and means
of its utility, we differ toto coelo.

" Some very considerable men are accustom-
ed to hold very strong and sanguine language
respecting the important discoveries which are
o be made in Moral Philosophy ] but then

this appears to be the difference ; that Natural
Philosophy is directed to subjects with which
we are little or imperfectly acquainted ; Moral
Philosophy investigates faculties we have al-
ways exercised, and passions we have always
felt. Chemistry, for instance, is perpetually
bringing to light fresh existences ; four or five
new metals have been discovered within as
many years, of Ihe existence of which no
human being could have had any suspicion ;
but no man that I know of, pretends to dis-
cover four or five new passions, neither can
anything very new be discovered of those
passions and faculties with which mankind
are already familiar. We are, in natural
philosophy, perpetually making discoveries of
new properties in bodies with whose existence
we have been acquainted for centuries : Sir
James Hall has just discovered that lime can
be melted by carbonic acid ; but who hopes
that he can discover any new flux for avarice ?
or any improved method of judging, and com-
paring ]"

But these new elements in positive
science have been all along known to the
senses, but only in the way the senses
act, and in combination with other ele-
ments. Observation and reflection sepa-
rate each element from the other principles
of matter, and then present it for cognition
by the senses in its pure unmixed state.
In like manner, the consciousness has no
knowledge of our passions and faculties
except as a whole, no matter how complex
they may arise to it ; but by observation
and reflection on their conditions, each
combination is resolved into its constituent
parts, and each part then held up to the
consciousness for appreciation. If this
can be done, surely the insight it will give
us into the vices, foibles and virtues of
men, will constitute a species of knowledge
far above all wisdom that men have hither-
to heaped up, and a dim reflection in its
penetration of the piercing vision of God.

" There may, indeed/' he says, '^ be specu-
lative discoveries made with respect to the
human mind ; for instance^ Mr. Dugald Stew-
art contends that attention be classified among
our faculties. Now, if attention be a faculty,
it is certainly a discovery^ for nobody had
ever so classed it before Mr. Stewart ; but
whether it be so, or only a mode of other fa-
culties, it is of no consequence in practice ;
for nobody has ever been ignorant of the ini-
portance and efficacy of attention, whether it
be one thing or whether it be the other."

Whatever is the source of the power of

1850.

Sydney BmiWs Sketclies of Moral Tliiloso;pliy ,

391

attention, there is no quality that exercises
the same influence in the right guidance of
the understanding ; and a knowledge of its
true function would throw much light up-
on the course to be followed in its educa-
tion. For instance in the study of mental
science, power of abstraction, or attention,
and vigor of the generalizing faculty are both
necessary. Should attention be a primitive
form of the mind, and not a mere mode of
the reasoning faculty we would hardly
plunge at once into the turbid depths of
metaphysics, but gradually strengthen the
mind to the required pitch by turning it to
those studies in which little generalization is
necessary, but which require a certain de-
gree of abstraction ; and, at the same time,
by a parallel course cultivating the reflec-
tion by pusruits, calling for only a moderate
degree of concentrated thought.

But if attention be, as we suspect, a fa-
culty that operates on the emotions, pas-
sions, and desires, as well as the intellect,
then we have before us an element of enor-
mous weight in all estimates of human
character, and so far from a knowledge of
it being of no practical utility, we are con-
vinced that there can be no clear compre-
hension of the workings of the human soul
without admitting this or a similar indepen-
dent power. As an instance of the mani-
festation of this faculty, and in proof of the
usefulness of a knowledge of mental sci-
ence, we would mention a fact stated by
medical writers concerning the different
treatment of insanity in different nations.
Among the French, melancholy, or mono-
mania, is often cured by the removal of the
individual from the scenes and external
causes of his malady. Among the Ger-
mans such a course is sure to aggravate the
disease. The French are deficient in
power of concentrated attention, while the
Germans possess this characteristic in a
marked degree. Now, if attention be only
a mode of intellect, then it gives no expla-
nation of this singular fact ; but if it be a
distinct faculty, we obtain at once a clue to
the whole phenomena, and a new principle
is established for discriminative treatment
in individual cases. It would produce a
fixedness of emotion, a dwelling not only
upon ideas, but states of feeling, before
which the external world would seem dim
and dream-like, leaving nothing real but
the exaggerated conceptions of a diseased

fancy. The sufferer in this case carries his
world with him, and may change his skies
but not the agony that rends his soul ;
while distance only adds fuel to the imagi-
nation. Here the actual cautery of habit is
a severe, but the only remedy. But where
there is a deficiency of this faculty, the
character takes its hue from the circum-
stances and events of the moment ; and by
leaving behind the exciting causes, new
scenes and events soon displace mental
confusion and uproar.

What our author says of the efficiency
of this science as a mentul discipline should
be received with a degree of caution. The
same mental processes are exercised as fully
in the ordinary occupations of men. Not
only the judge, the advocate, the politician,
the preacher, but every man in the varied
exigencies of life, call into play the same
intellectual powers as the metaphysician.
Besides, we doubt the utility of too inces-
sant and absorbed intellection. It weakens
force of character, which can only be gain-
ed in the actual battle of life. If we would
acquire constraint of our volitions, and the
manliness of self-control, we can only do it
by mixing in the strife and temptations of
the world.

But the bow may be kept too long bent,
— the tension may become too great, and
then the complete rest from more distract-
ing thoughts afforded by the absorption of
mental science, is welcome and useful. The
soul of man, torn by care, ambition, pas-
sion, folds its wings on the shores of intel-
lect, and sleeps.

The following will commend itself to the
reader, in these days when opinion is a
power above all laws, the Fate above
Jove ; — when a vague and ill-defined
maxim will convulse a continent, and war-
ring abstractions rend an empire in twain.

" Next to this we have the abuse of words,
and the fallacy of associations; compared
with which, all other modes of misconducting
the understanding are insignificant and trivial.
What do you raean by what you say ? Are
you prepared to give a clear account of words
which you use so positively, and by the help
of which you form opinions that you seem
resolved to maintain at all hazards % Perhaps
I should astonish many persons by putting to
them such sort of questions : — Do you know
what is meant by the word Nature ? Have
you definite notions of Justice ? How do you
explain the word chance ? What is virtue %

392

STjdney SmitJi's SlcetcJies of Moral ThilosopTiTj ,

Oct.

Men are every day framing the rashest pro-
positions on such sort of subjects, and prepar-
ed to kill and to die in their defence. They
never, for a single instant, doubt of the mean-
ing of that which was embarrassing to Locke,
and in which Leibnitz and Descartes were
never able to agree. Ten thousand people
have been burned before now, or hanged, for
one proposition. The 'proposition has no mean-
ing. Looked into and examined in these days^
it is absolute nonsense. A man quits his
country in disgust at some supposed violation
of its liberties, sells his estate, and settles in
America. Twenty years afterwards, it occurs
to him, that he had never reflected upon the
meaning of the word, — that he has packed up
his goods and changed his country for a sound.
Fortitude, justice, and candor, are very neces-
sary instruments of happiness; but they re-
quire time and exertion. The instruments I
am now proposing to you, you must not des-
pise,— grammar^ dejinition.; and interpretation
— instruments which overturn the chains of
logocracy in which it is so frequently enslaved,
•js- -x- * * * -K- •!{• There are men who
suffer certain barren generalities to get the bet-
ter of their undertakings, by which they try
all their opinions, and make them their perpe-
tual standards of right and wrong: as thus —
Let us beware of novelty; the excesses of the
people are always to be feared : or the contra-
ry maxims — that there is a natural tendency
in all governments to encroach on the liberties
of the people ; or, that everything modern is
probably an improvement of antiquity. Now,
what can be the use of sawing about a set of
maxims to which there is a complete set of
antagonist maxims 1 For, of what use is it
to tell me that governors have a tendency to
encroach on the liberties of the people ? and
is that a reason why you should throw your-
self systematically in opposition to the gov-
ernment '? What you say is very true, what
you do is very foolish. The business is, to
determine at any particular period of affairs,
which principle is in danger of being weakened,
and to act accordingly like an honest and
courageous man ; not to lie like a dead weight
at one end of the beam, without the smallest
recollection that there is any other, and that
the equilibrium will be violated alike which-
ever extreme shall preponderate "

Of all the subjects discussed in this book,
the lectures on Wit and Humor possess the
greatest interest, not only from the acute-
ness with which they are treated, but as
coming from one who owned a world-wide
renown as the prince of humorists. We
have winced beneath the sheen of his blade
on this side of the Atlantic ; and for the
sake of the impartiality with which he

chastised both friends and foes, at home
and abroad, our national vanity has pardon-
ed him, though he sometimes laid down his
rapier with its deadly lunge, and stooped
to the hammering invective of his coun-
trymen.

After sketching the yarions theories and
definitions of wit laid down by previous
writers, he gives his own hypothesis. " Ob-
serve," he says, " I am only defining the
causes of a certain feelino; in the mind,
called wit ; — I can no more define the feel-
ing itself, than I can define the flavor of
venison. We all seem to partake of one
and the other with a very great feeling of
satisfaction ; but why each feeling is what
it is, and nothing else, I am sure I cannot
pretend to determine.''

Wit he considers to arise from the sur-
prise occasioned by the discovery of certain
relations or conmuities of ideas, while hu~
mar springs from a similar surprise caused
by their incongruities. It must be sheer
surprise, however, and unaccompanied by
any higher feeling, for the more intense
emotions, such as awe, compassion, anger,
the sense of beauty and subhmity, diminish
or completely destroy the subordinate per-
ception of wit.

" Surprise is so essential an ingredient of
w^it, that no wit will bear repetition; — at least
the original electrical feehng produced by any
piece of wit can never be renewed. * * *
The relation discovered, must be something re-
mote from all the common tracks and sheep-
walks made in the mind ; it must not be a
comparison of color Avith color, and figure with
figure, or any comparison, which, though in-
dividually new, is specifically stale, and to
which the mind has been in the habit of mak-
ing many similar ; but it must be something
removed from common apprehension, distant
from the ordinary haunts of thought, — things
which are neTer brought together m the com-
mon events of life, and in which the mind has
discovered relations by its own subtlety and
quickness. -ss- 4c- -^ -x- Now, then, the
point we have arrived at, at present, in build-
ing up our definition of wit, is, that it is the
discovery of those relations in ideas which are
calculated to excite surprise. But a great deal
must be taken from this account of wit before
it is sufficiently accurate ; for, in the first
place, there must be no feeling of conviction
of the utility of the relation so discovered. If
you go to see a large cotton-mill, the manner
in which the large water-wheel below works
the little parts of the machinery seven stories
high, the relation which one bears to anotherj

1850.

Sydney S7nith''s Sketches of Moral Philosophy.

393

is extremely surprising to a person unaccus-
tomed to mechanics — but there is a sort of ra-
tional approbation of the utility and ijnport-
ance of the relation, mingled with your sur-
prise, which makes the whole feeling very
different from that of wit. At the same time,
if we attend very accurately to our feelings,
we shall perceive that the discovery of any
surprising relation, even of this kind, produ-
ces some slight sensation of wit. * * *
* ^ The relation between iileas which ex-
cite surprise, in order to be witty must not
excite any feelings of the beautiful. ' The
good man,' says a Hindoo epigram, ' goes not
upon enmity, but rewards wilh kindness the
very being who injures him. So the sandal-
wood, while it is felling, imparts to the edge
of the axe its aromatic flavor.' Now here is
a relation which would be witty if it were not
beautiful : the relation discovered betwixt the
falling sandal-wood, and the returning good for
evil, is a new relation which excites surprise ;
but the mere surprise at the relation, is swal-
lowed up by the contemplation of the moral
beauty of the thought, which throws the mind
into a more solemn and elevated mood than is
compatible with the feeling of wit."

This definition of wit beins; attacked at
the time with much severity, and the ob-
jection raised that there were innumerable
cases of relations oi facts ^ which excited
surprise, but not the feeling of wit, (al-
though there was no rational approbation
to explain its absence as in the instance of
the cotton-mill,) he unconsciously leaves
his first position, and is forced to the ground
that the surprise must be attended by a feel-
ing of power or superiority of mind. This
superiority is manifested only by the per-
ception of the relations of ideas^ a province
of the highest powers of the understanding,
and not by the perception of the relations
of facts, which is one of the lowest. There
is no wit in finding a gold watch and seals
hanging upon a hedge, for it is a relation of
facts discovered without any effort of mind.
Any man, he says, can ascertain that a calf
has two heads, if it has two heads. The
reverend lecturer is getting a little personal
with his assailants, and must suspect the
flaw in his theory. His hypothesis loses its
simplicity, and becomes confused aud un-
satisfactory.

Congruities of words are certainly as
easily discovered as congruities of facts, and
require even less of the higher powers of
thought. Yet, he admits the pun as a
legitimate form of wit, although of a lower

caste, and not admitted, in consequence,
into good company. The wit of language,
he says, is so miserably inferior to the wit
of ideas, that it is very deservedly in bad
repute. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes
its appearance which seems for a moment
to redeem its species ; but we must not be
deceived by them, he says : it is a radically
bad race of wit.

"A pun, to be perfect in its kind, should
contain two meanings ; the one common and
obvious, the other more remote : and in the
notice which the mind takes of the relation
between these two sets of words, and in the
surprise which that relation excites, the plea-
sure of a pun consists. Miss Hamilton, in
her book on Education, mentions the instance
of a boy so very neglectful, that he could ne-
ver be brought to read the word patriarchs;
but whenever he met with it, he always pro-
nounced it partridges. A friend of the writer
observed to her, that it could hardly be consi-
dered as a mere piece of negligence, for it ap-
peared to him that the boy was making gome
of the patriarchs. Now here are two distinct
meanings contained in the same phrase : for
to make game of them is, by a very extrava-
gant and laughable ignorance of words, to
rank them among pheasants, partridges, and
other such delicacies ; and the whole pleasure
derived from the pun, consists in the discovery
that two such meanings are referable to one
form of expression."

This is a most inconclusive and indefinite
explanation to the phenomena of punning.
Every man must recollect numberless in-
stances of puns, which fulfil all of these
conditions, and yet differ very materially in
the degrees of mirth they excite. Some,
indeed, impress us as of the highest order
of wit, while others are fairly nauseating in
the contempt they inspire.

Concerning Humor, our author justly re-
jects the hypothesis of Hobbes, who defines
laughter to be " a sudden glory, arising
from a sudden conception of some eminency
of ourselves, by comparison with infirmity
(inferiority) of others, or our own former
infirmity." It is true, Mr. Smith argues,
the object of laughter is always inferior to
us ; but then the converse is ??o^true, — that
every one who is inferior to us is an object
of laughter ; therefore, as some inferiority
is ridiculous, and other inferiority not ridi-
culous, we must, in order to explain the
nature of the humorous, endeavor to dis-
cover the discriminating cause. This dis-

394

Sydney Smitli's Sketches of Moral Fhilosopliy,

Oct.

criminating cause is incongruity^ or the '
conjunction of objects and cii"cumstances
not usually combined.

" To see a young officer of eighteen years
of age, come into company in full uniform,
and in such a wig as is worn by grave and
respectable clergymen advanced in years,
Vfould make everybody laugh, for it is a
complete instance of incongruity. Make this
incongruous officer eighty years of age, and a
celebrated military character of the last reign,
and the incongruity almost entirely vanishes :
I am not sure we should not be more inclined
to respect the peculiarity than to laugh at it.
If a tradesman of corpulent and respectable
appearance, with habiliments somewhat osten-
tatious, were to slide down gently into the
mud, and dedecorate a pea-green coat, I am
afraid we should all have the barbarity to
laugh. If his hat and wig, like treacherous
servants, were to desert their falling master, it
certainly would not diminish our propensity to
laugh ; but if he were to fall into a violent
passion, and abuse everybody about him, no-
body could possibly resist the incongruity of
a pea-green tradesman, very respectable, sit-
ting in the mud, and threatening all the pass-
ers-by with the effects of his wrath. Here
everything heightens the humor of the scene, —
the gayety of his tunic, the respectability of
his appearance, the rills of muddy water which
trickle down his cheeks, and the harmless vio-
lence of his rage ! But if, instead of this, we
observed a dustman falling into a pond, it
would hardly attract attention, because the
opposition of ideas is so trifling, and the in-
congruity so slight."

It is seldom that we meet with as rich a
union of the dramatic and the philosophical
as the above, the representation of the thing
itself, and along with it the acute analysis ;
and, to leave out the emotion of surprise,
which he interposes between the incongru-
ity and the feeling of mirth, and to take
the incongruity itself as its true conditions,
we believe that it is an approach to the
real theory both of wit and humor. If we
examine closely into the meaning which
our author attaches to the term surprise,
we find that he has confounded the emo-
tion which goes by that name, and which
we see constantly manifested without the
least wit or humor beinsr attached to, or
arismg from it, with the mere suddenness
with which the mind shifts from one train
of ideas or feelings, to another at variance
with it. Now, if we adopt the hypothesis,
which our author subsequently disputes,

but with little effect, that there is no liu^
mor^ but that of character, that is of emo-
tion (meaning thereby all those mental
states which are not intellectual,) and con-
sider still further that wit is only another
term for intellectual perception, and unat-
tended by laughter, we may perhaps find
the key of the whole mystery. In this
view, the incongruity which is the condi-
tion of humor, is merely the sudden and
rackino; revult-ion from one state of feelincr
to another which is in some respect opposed
to it. It is convulsive, often painful, even
when yielding a great degree of enjoyment,
and, when extreme, produces hysterical
laughter. It is a harsh wrenching of the
soul from its equilibrium, a sudden collapse
from its positive to its negative state. We
should observe that all perception of char-
acter is emotional. As our author says
above of the feeling of wit and flavor of
venison, we can only define their condi-
tions. The reason why we cannot define
them by the intellect alone is because we
cannot perceive them by the intellect
alone.

For instance in the case of the respecta-
ble tradesman in pea-green, it is his forlorn
and helpless condition compared with his
intense ferociousness, his piteous appealing
distress still struggling with the importance
of well-fed and well-feeling respectability.
All this is represented on our own con-
sciousness, and we enter intuitively into
the feelings of the sufferer, but only in a
slight degree, and the consequence is mirth.
It may be asked why the object of our
amusement is not himself convulsed with
laughter since our own proceeds from a
mere reflection of liis feelings. But rage
and agony fill his soul, and emotion does not
interpenetrate emotion but in each degree
commingles in proportions, the more of one
the less of the other. Were his nerves of
feminine weakness, and not sustaining severe
tension, mirth would be manifested in the
shape of a painful hysterical giggle.

We believe that no instance of wit or
humor, producing laughter, can be shown,
in which character cannot be proved to be
the essential element. The scene described
by our author, to refute such a theory, and
considered by him as entirely devoid of
" character," appears to us to be full
of it.

1850.

Sydney Smith' s SketcJies of Moral JPhilosopJiy.

395

" One of the most laughable scenes I have ever
seen in my life was the complete overturning
of a very large table, with all the dinner upon
it. What of character is there of seeing a
roasted turkey sprawling on the floor ^ Or
ducks lying in different parts in the room,
covered with trembling fragments of jelly '?"

A fortunate intimacy with these dainties
veils their absurdity, but a first sight of
animals served up for food would be full of
caricature. When the subsequent familiarity
would be removed by the novel positions into
which such an accident would throw them,
the mirth-producing causes would be man-
ifest. We are feasted, reader, on roasted
racoon, and the best sauce for the dish was
the comparison of the creature's present
helplessness with the perfect gravity and
composed look with which he first looked
from the tree-top, under which we after-
wards ate him.

Wit^ then, we would consider as a con-
fused and inaccurate term, having no dis-
tinct meaning, unless it be the old and
obsolete one implying a high degree of all
the powers of the understanding. There
is satisfaction and even acute pleasure
attending the exercise of these powers, but
it is serene ; bright but cold like the upper
regions of air ; while the pleasure of mirth
is warm and tempestuous, like the earth-
dwelling emotions which are its conditions.

But the intellect notices these conditions
as objects, by language, as facts, and
through reason. Intellectual incongruities
therefore, when they refer to these objects,
necessarily, but accidentally, present emo-
tional incongruities.

This view of the subject would remove
the stigma which our author attaches to
incongruous facts as a vehicle of humor.
If these facts are the effects, or serve as
the representation of character, they are
proper means of inducing mirth. Words
too, which are partly sensuous or founded
on tones which are the natural language of
emotion, often produce the effects of the
highest degree of wit. Puns consequently
are legitimate wit, where they are not the
mere jingling of words, but present at the
same time incongruous feelings. In the
instance, given by our author of the boy
who made game of the patriarchs by per-
sisting in considering them partridges, the
humor is found in the incongruity of the
dignity belonging to that early form of au-

thority, with the frightened feebleness of a
hevy of patriarclis cowering and quailing
before the arrow of the hunter. The drol-
lery of the thing is heightened by the con-
trast of the real stupidity of the boy with
the cleverness which such an interpretation
would attribute to him.

The above hypothesis will explain the close
connexion between genius and wit. As
the author correctly states, almost all the
great poets, orators and statesmen of all
times have been witty. Caesar, Alexander,
Aristotle, Descartes, and Lord Bacon, ivere
witty men ; so were Cicero, Shakspeare,
Demosthenes, Boileau, Pope, Dryden, Fon-
tenelle, Jonson, Waller, Cowley, Solon,
Socrates, Dr. Johnson ; and so has
been almost every man who has made
a distinguished figure in the House of
Commons. He considers, consequently,
that wit is a strong evidence of a fer-
tile and superior understanding. Ob-
servation will hardly bear him out in
this. The humorist is not necessarily a
man of genius ; but genius will often stray
into the regions cf humor, for when human
life and human conduct hold such a large
share in our knowledge and our attention,
restless thought will ever delve in this
The wit manifested by men of

mme.

intellectual ability is consequently often
accidental, for, from their quickness of
thought, they perceive the intellectual in-
congruity of jarring feeling, and thus stum-
ble into humor. Like the pieces of flesh
thrown over by the merchants into Sin-
bad's vale of diamonds, so thickly the
gems are strewn, that the most careless
cast from the strong hand will secure the
flashing treasure.

We have dwelt the long^er upon the lec-
ture on wit and humor, from the reputation
of the author in this respect, and from the
curiosity that would be felt for the views
of one who so well exemplified them in his
writings. But as we turn over the leaves
we meet every where the flavor of the Attio
salt. It charms us the more, through the
rest of the book, from its unexpectedness,
most writers on such subjects as Taste,
Beauty, Instinct, or the Faculties of man
and beasts, deeming it proper to pull a sort
of metaphysical gown and wig over their
style. Hear this: —

" Every body possessed of power is an ob-
ject either of awe or sublimity, from a justice

396

Sydney Smith's Sketches of Moral Philosophy.

Oct.

of the peace up to the Emperor Aurungzebe —
an object quite as stupendous as the Alps.
He had thirty-five millions of revenue, in a
country where the products of the earth are,
at least, six times as cheap as in England : his
empire extended over twenty-five degrees of
latitude, and as many of longitude : he had to
put to death alone twenty millions of people.
I should like to know the man who could have
looked at Aurungzebe without feeling him to
the end of his limbs, and in every hair of his
head ! Such Emperors are more sublime than
cataracts, i think any man would have
shivered more at the sight of Aurungzebe, than
at the sight of the two rivers which meet at
the Blue Mountains in America, and bursting
through the whole breadth of the rocks, roll
their victorious and united waters to the East-
ern Sea."

This is delicious ; and to the purpose
too, for the sublime is all the better brought
out in this picture by its setting of bur-
lesque.

One of the most interesting of these lec-
tures is that on the faculties of animals as
compared with those of men. He treats the
subject with his characteristic humor,
and with a plain common-sense, which
seems really to aim at making the subject
clearer, instead of plunging it in deeper
mystification. This will lose him his title
as a great philosopher, but it suits the
reader charmingly. After giving the vari-
ous theories of philosophers, that of the
Peripatetics, which allowed to brutes a
sensitive power but denied them a rational
one, that of the Platonists which allowed
them an inferior sort of reason and under-
standing, that of Lactantius giving them
every thing that men have but religion, that
of Descartes makinsr them mere machines
destitute of all thought and reflection, not
forgetting the theory of the philosophical
Jesuit, who considered that each animal
had a familiar spirit, and that a devil was
roasted with every chicken, dived with
every duck, grazed with every ox, and swam
with every turbot, he speaks of the usual
distinction, drawn between the intelligence
of men and of animals, of instinct and
reason .

^' Now the question is, is there any mean-
ing to the term instinct 7 what is that mean-
ing ? and what is the distinction between in-
stinct and reason ? If I desire to do a certain
thing, adopt certain means to effect it, and
have a clear and precise notion that those
means are directly 'subservient to that end,
•—there I act from, reason ; but if I adopt

means subservient to that end, and am uni-
formly found to do so, and am not in the least
degree conscious that these means are subser-
vient to that end, — there I certainly do act
from some principle very different from reason ;
and to which principle it is as convenient to
give the name of instinct as any other name.
If I build a house for my family, and lay it
out into different apartments, separating it
horizontally with floors, and give the obvious
principles on which I have done so, — here is
plainly an invention of meaning, and an ap-
plication of previous experience, which any-
body would call by the name of reason ; but if
I am detected making folding doors to the
drawing-room, putting up snug shelves in the
butler's pantry, and making the whole house
as convenient as possible, without the slight-
est knowledge or suspicion of the utility of
these things, — there, it is very plain, I am not
constituted as other men are.j ^ _ ^
Bees, it is well known, construct their combs
with small cells on both sides, fit for holding
their store of honey, and for receiving their
young. There are only three possible figures
of the cells which can make them all equal
and similar without any useless interstices ]
these are the equilateral triangle, the square,
and the regular hexagon. It is well known to
mathematicians that there is not a, fourth way
possible in which a place may be cut into little
spaces, that shall be equal, similar and regu-
lar, without leaving any interstices. Of the
three, the hexagon is the most proper both for
conveniency and strength ; and, accordingly,
bees — as if they were acquainted with these
things — make all their cells regular hexagons.

■X- * -K- * *

It is a curious mathematical problem, at
what precise angle the three places which
compose the bottom of a cell ought to meet, in
order to make the greatest possible saving or
the least expense of materials and labor. This
is one of the problems belonging to the higher
parts of mathematics, which are called pro-
blems of maxima and minima. It has been
resolved by some mathematicians, particularly
by Mr. Maclaurin, by a fluxionary calcula-
tion, which is to be found in the ninth volume
of the " Transactions of the Royal Society of
London." He has determined precisely the
angle required ; and he found by the most ex-
act mensuration the subject could admit, that
it is the very angle in which the three planes in
the bottom of the cell of the honey-comb do ac-
tually meet. How is all this to be explained ?
Imitation it certainly is not : for after every
old bee has been killed, you may take the
honey-comb and hatch a new swarm of bees,
that cannot possibly have had any communi-
cation with, or instruction from the parent.
The young of every animal although they
have never seen the dam,— will do exactly as
all their species have done before them. *

1850.

Sydney Smitli's Sheiclies of Moral PJiilosopJiy.

397

* * « It would take a

senior wrangler at Cambridge, ten hours a
day, for three years together, to know enough
mathematics for the calculation of these pro-
blems, with which not only every queen bee,
but every under-graduate grub is acquainted
the moment it is born. * * »

If you shake caterpillars off a tree in every
direction, they instantly turn round and climb
up, though they had never formerly been on
the surface of the ground. This is a very
striking instance of instinct. The caterpillar
finds its food, and is nourished upon the tree,
and not upon the ground ; but surely the cater-
pillar cannot tell that such an exertion is ne-
cessary to its salvation ; and, therefore, it acts
not from rational motives, but from blind im-
pulse. Ants and beavers lay up magazines.
Where do they get their knowledge that it
will not be so easy to collect food in rainy
weather as it is in the summer 1 Men and
women know these things because their grand-
fathers have told them so ; ants, hatched from
the Q.g^ artificially, or birds hatched in this
manner^ have all this knowledge by intuition,
without the smallest communication with any
of their relations. Now, observe what the
solitary wasp does ; she digs several holes in
the sand, in each of which she deposits an
e^g, though she certainly knows not that an
animal is deposited in that ^^^^ — and still less
that this animal must be nourished with other
animals. She collects a few green flies, rolls
them up neatly in separate parcels (like Bo-
logna sausages,) and stuffs one parcel into
each hole where an egg is deposited. When
the wasp-worm is hatched, it finds a store of
provisions ready made ; and what is most
curious, the quantity allotted to each is ex-
actly sufficient to support it, till it attains the
period of wasphood, and can provide for itself.
Here the little creature has never seen its pa-
rent ] for by the time it is born, the parent is al-
ways eaten by sparrows ; and yet without the
slightest education or previous experience, it
does every thing that the parent did before it.
* * * Insects are like

Moliere's persons of quality, — they know
everything (as Moliere says,) without having
learned anything. 'Les gens de qualite sa-
vent tout, sans avoir rien appris.' "

We think our author, in these opinions,
attributes to a blind unthinking instinct,
much that belongs to a superior natural
perception guided by an inferior but active
reason. The boasted reason of man would
be powerless but for a certain intuitive
knowledge, which serves as its foundation,
and furnishes its data. One of these intui-
tions is that which relates to the forms and
outlines of matter, a mode of this being the
perception of angularity. The bee, when he

starts from home on his daily toil, circles
among tree-tops and banks of bloom, erra-
tic, seemingly without thought but to sa-
tisfy his hunger and his avarice. But the
whole diagram of his course is plain before
his mind, and when his store is complete,
he strikes out in a direct unerring " bee-
line" for his hive. Books of natural his-
tory are full of instances of this trait in
animals more common among wild than do-
mesticated. But even domestic animals,
though somewhat degraded by civilization,
do not entirely lose this power. A horse,
when taken by a circuitous route over
ground unknown to him, will often make
for his distant stable with the same direct-
ness as if it was in full sight. Every angle
in his journey has been measured intuitively
and stereotyped on his memory, the dis-
tance between the turns he measures by
a knowledge partly intuitive partly the re-
sult of experience, and without being able
to demonstrate the problem, he understands
it. Men have this same knowledge, but
crippled by disuse and the substitutes
which civilization and reason bring. The
Indian and the hunter have it ; and the
blind man, by its aid, steps with confidence
through his starless night. Every one, who
attends at all to the operations of his own
mind, must have noticed, when alone in for-
ests, that he has a tolerably clear conscious-
ness of his position and bearings with regard
to the point of departure, though the country
may be entirely new to him. People
wanting in this power, invariably break
their nose when left in a dark room, before
they find the match or the bell-rope. The
navigator winds through the seas by the
clumsy aid of compass and calculation,
while the wild-fowl above his head, by in-
tuitive knowledge, not instinct, reach their
destination as surely. Reason is often like
a crutch to the healthy limb, — it destroys
the natural power.

Such a faculty, guarding and guiding
the steps of animals, and clearer in them
than in men, may be the source of the
architectural skill of the bee. It is not
blind instinct, but knowledge^ understand-
ingly and discriminately applied. He
builds his hexagons by the same special
intelligence that completes the diagram of
his daily wanderings, and leads him home-
wards with the precision of a magnet.
Where the hexagon is useless, he discards

Slcdney 87711^8 Sketches of Moral FliilosopJiy,

Oct.

it. If a beetle or other large insect gets
into the hive, and cannot be conveniently
removed, the bees first destroy the interlo-
per, and then cover him with a "smooth
dome of wax, of irregular shape according
to the size and form of the insect. The
exception proves the rule ; and we see
from this that the little commonwealth
comprehend not only the use of the pecu-
liar form of their cells, but the limitation
of the use.

If we look for instinct, we must seek it
in the simpler pursuits of the animal, and
not in those occupations that are almost
human in their complexity. Instinct
teaches the bee his peculiar food, and sends
him to gather pollen to build the roof and
sides of his house. It teaches the ant and
beaver from what materials to construct
their habitations, but leaves them, like the
bee and man, to the regular processes of
intelligence for the skill to build them.

But instinct is still allied to thought ; —
it is a subordinate perception, a special
faculty, narrow and fixed upon a particular
point. We should not confound it, as our
author does, with the passions and desires
which it only directs to their objects.
Ants and beavers lay up magazines of pro-
visions ; where do they get their know-
ledge, he asks, that it will not be so easy
to collect food in rainy weather as in sum-
mer } But do men toil through the sunshine
of life to provide for the cloudy days of old
age } Do they not feel deep pleasure in
mere acquisition ? And do we not see this
passion constantly manifested irrespective
of future wants ? It serves an ultimate
purpose unknown to the animal, but so it
does with man — at least in the latter case, it
gives the incentive which reason could not
always give with the same force. To
ants and men and beavers, the love of pro-
perty gives government, and society and
laws, and provides for the feebleness of in-
fancy and old age.

In the habits of the caterpillar, men-
tioned by our author, we find a very strik-
ing case of instinctive action. But even
here the instinct is not altogether blind. His
motto is Excelsior, but like all creeping
things he is discreet about it. He does
not refuse to crawl downward, if necessary.
While turning over the pages of this very
book, we noticed one of these insects on a
dead branch that projected athwart the

window. He crept upward, carefully ex-
amining every small twig and projection on
his route. On arriving at the end of the
branch, and finding none of the juicy har-
vest, he turned about and marched deli-
berately down again, at a steady quick jog.
His whole movement showed disgust. Here
the instinct was not a mere blind impulse,,
without knowledge of its objects, but was
evidently under rational control. The
wasp, however, and the unconscious cares
of its maternity would seem to be an unde-
niable case of pure instinct.

In the lectures on Taste and the Beau-
tiful, the philosophy of Alison, denying any
power in matter to excite originally these
emotions, is rejected. On these points the
author's opinions are confused and contra-
dictory. He confounds sensational im-
pressions with the pleasures of mere intel-
lectual perception, and these again with
the warmer and very different pleasure
excited by the beauty of outward objects.
And concerning the power of material ob-
jects to arouse emotion, his own views, in
different parts of the work, are far from
consistent.

" Every man is as good a judge of a ques-
tion like this as the ablest metaphysician.
Walk ia the fields in one of the mornings of
May, and if you carry with you a mind un-
polluted with harm, watch how it is impressed.
You are delighted with the beauty of colors ;
are not those colors beautiful % You breathe
vegetable fragrance ) is not that fragrance
grateful % You see the sun rising from be-
hind a mountain, and the heavens painted with
light ; is not that renewal of the light of the
morning sublime '? You reject all obvious
reasons, and say that these things are beauti-
ful and sublime, because the accidents of life
have made them so ; — I say they are beauti-
ful BECAUSE God has made them so ! that
it is the original, indelible character impressed
upon them by Him who has opened these
sources of simple pleasure, to calm, perhaps,
the perturbations of sense, and to make us
love that joy which is purchased without
giving pain to another man's heart, and with-
out entailing reproach on our own."

This passage will show some of the er-
rors to which we allude. But the position
itself, few, we suspect, wiU be inclined to
dispute. However much we may mystify
ourselves concerning the emotion caused
by the grander features of nature, such as
the sky, the ocean, streams, mountains,

1850.

Sydney Smith'' s Sketches of Moral Philosophy.

399

forests, no one, having the true relish for
the beauty of the outward world, and ap-
preciating this beauty in the leaf as much
as in the tree, in the brook singing among
pebbles as well as in great rivers draining
continents, finding it in every ordinary
aspect of nature, can ever be satisfied with
any theory of association. The author,
who has this taste in common with all of
his countrymen through the whole length
of the island from the Cockney to the
Highlander, rejects such interpretation of
a sentiment that is next to religion.

By refusing this hypothesis, we are not
forced to the notion that brute matter can
call forth emotions of this high order, for
we still have the alternative of the active
and living causation that breathes through
nature.

In the discourse on the active powers of
the mind, the author adopts the philosophi-
cal views of Hartley, making association a
great moral principle and deriving from it
every passion, affection and desire. Ac-
cording to this theory nothing is necessary
to make any man whatever he is, than a
capacity for feeling pleasure and pain, and
the principle of association.

"A young child soon after his birth, has
not the least desire to do good or harm to any
one ; he has no such passions ; and it is our
business to explain how he gets them. The
food he eats or drinks gives him pleasure ; but
observing in process of time, that the nurse is
always present when he receives his food, the
sight of the nurse gives him pleasure, because
it reminds him of his food ; yet in process of
time the idea of that food is obliterated, and
the sight of the nurse gives him pleasure, and,
without the intervening idea that she is useful
to him, he loves her immediately after his
appetite of hunger is satisfied, as well as be-
fore : his passion for her, which first pro-
ceeded from an interested motive, becomes
quite disinterested; and he loves her without
the slightest reference to the advantages she
procures him. This is the origin of his love
for his nurse ; and then, as all kindred ideas
are very easily associated together, he pro-
ceeds from loving her, to desiring her good ;
for, perceiving that other people like what he
likes, it is very natural that the idea of his
own gratification in eating, should suggest the
idea of the nurse's gratification ; and that he
should offer her a little morsel of his apple or
his cake, or any puerile luxury which he hap-
pens to be enjoying. The association is easy
to be comprehended, and seems perfectly na-
tural. Besides, a child begins very early to

associate his own advantage with benevolence.
Cake, and commendation, the parent of cake,
are lavished upon the child who shows a dis-
position to please others. Cuffs, and frownS;
and hard words, are the portion of a selfish
and a malevolent child : he begins with loving
benevolence lor the advantage it aflfords him;
and ends with loving it for himself; he is not
born with love of anything, but merely with a
capacity of feeling pleasure; which he first
feels for the milk, then for the mother, because
she gives him that milk, then for her own
sake ; then, as she makes him happy, associa-
tion gives him the idea of making her happy ;
and he gains so much by benevo]ence_, that he
loves it first for the advantages it affords, then
for its self. Reverse all this, and you will
have the history and progress of the malevo-
lent passions. A young child hates nobody.
If you were to pinch or scratch him, he would
feel pain ; but if you were to do it often, he
would associate the idea of you with the idea
of pain, and would hate you, first on account
of the ideas you suggested, then hate you
plainly and simply without any cause. Again :
a child is deterred from doing anything by
threats and by pain ; and he perceives that
other persons are deterred by similar means;
he therefore associates these ideas with pre-
vention ; threatens and beats whoever contra-
dicts him ; and cherishes resentment as a
means of gratifying his will, and effecting
whatever object he has in view. It is quite
impossible that a child can be born with any
feeling of resentment. He can never tell that
to prevent another child from beating him, is
to beat him again ; it w^ould be an enormous
thing that he, who does not know black from
scarlet, should be acquainted with the dominion
which pain has over the mind, and make use
of it to accomplish his purposes; and yet, such
is the opinion that they adopt, who consider
this passion as innate, and coeval with our
existence."

They adopt no such opinion ; — they no
more consider that the child uses this na-
tural weapon of anger from any calculation
of its utility, than that it should draw its
mother's milk for the sake of the health
and strength it gains from it. But such
opinions are held by the advocates gener-
ally of the selfish system of morals ; a
system to which the Hartleian theory of
association is very near akin. And in fact,
these two systems are strangely interming-
led by our author, as will be seen through-
out the whole of the above extract. He
presents however, in a lively manner, the
main features of a doctrine, barren indeed,
but attractive from its simplicity.

The hypothesis assumes that all pleasure is

400

Sydney SmitK^s Skecches of Moral PhilosopJiy .

Oct.

alike, diiFering only in degree ; that the
gratification the child feels at receiving his
food is similar to the gratification he re-
ceives from the presence of his nurse ; and
that the pain of a bruise or hurt is similar
to the pain attending the passion of resent-
ment or terror. Fear it considers the ex-
pectation of pain, and hope the expectation
of pleasure.

No one will deny that pleasure or pain
may be the causes or conditions of affection
and resentment, and that these latter feel-
ings might lie dormant without the action
of the first to bring them into life ; but the
doctrine of Hartley regards it as merely a
transference of emotion. A feeling of
complacency it makes, not only the found-
ation, but the reality of the highest attri-
butes of men ; while his most malign pas-
sions are only extreme degrees, not of an-
noyance proceeding ^from pain, but of the
pain itself.

The best refutation of this doctrine, so
recommended by our author, he gives to
ns himself in his sketch of the philosophy
of Epicurus.

" In the first place, the plan' of solving
all the phenomena of the passions by the
dread of bodily pain and the love of bodily
pleasure, is very simple and beautiful ; and I
have no doubt that several of the passions
commonly supposed to be original, may be
proved to be put in motion by these springs of
the machine : but it will not do for all ; for
how shall we explain compassion by it ]
I learn what pain is in another man by know-
ing what it is in myself] but I might know
this without feeling the pity. 1 might have
been so constituted as to rejoice that another
man was in agony ; how can you prove that
my own aversion to pain must necessarily
make me feel for the pain of another ? I have
a great horror of breaking my own leg, and I
will avoid it by all means in my power 5 but
it does not necessarily follow from thence that
I should be struck with horror because you
have broken yours. The reason that we do
feel horror, is that nature has superadded to
these two principles of Epicurus, the prin-
ciple of pity ; which, unless it can be shown
by strono;er arguments to be derived from any
other feeling, must stand as an ultimate fact in
our nature.'''

Some of the supicious appearances about
the Hartleian system, our author points out
himself, and with an ingenuousness that is
truly admirable in a science where bigotry
and partisan feelings have gone to such

furious extremes, and where zealous theo-
rists have even sought to roast each other
alive.

^' I have heard it said, as an objection
against this theory, that there is a neatness in
it, an arrondissement^ which gives it a very
great appearance of quackery and imposture.
This is very likely ; but I am not contending
that the theory loolcs as if it were true, but
merely that it is true. At the same time, there
is a great deal of merit in the observation : for
discoveries in general, especially upon such
very intricate subjects, are more ragged, un-
even, and incomplete ; here there is little li2;ht
and there a great deal of darkness ; in one
place you make a great inroad, and there you
are stopped by impenetrable barriers ; but here
is one master-key which opens every bolt and
barrier : a philosophy which explains every-
thing, and leaves the whole subject at rest for
ever. All these are certainly presumptive
evidences against the theory: but if it perform
all that it promise, those presumptive eviden-
ces, are, of course, honorably repelled."

This is manly and honest, and in the
midst of the special pleading that all men
make for their pet theories, it is as refresh-
ing as a *' meadow-gale in spring." The
careless air, and the book is full of like in-
stances, veils a deep truth. Men that
reason closely, but only from a limited
number of data, and this is the true meta-
physical or scholastic cast of mind, fall in-
variably into a sort of intellectual bondage
to theory. Starting from varied hypothe-
ses, on insecure premises, they are led irre-
sistibly to conclusions wide as the poles
asunder. Thrown thus into doubt, tor-
turing to such eager minds, they willingly
let circumstances incline them to some
favorite doctrine. Shutting their eyes to
all else, which their concentration of
thought, an element in their acuteness,
easily enables them to do, they proceed to
measure the universe by their Procrustean
systems. They seek truth along the track
of preconceived theory, built upon premis-
es too often insufficient, and permit them-
selves to receive no hues from the number-
less influences that bear upon all social and
moral questions. They shun the drudgery
of induction, but delight to roam through
the ramification of hypothesis. It is
their natural channel of thought, and
their mind sports on its current with ease
and delight.

We repeat that the clearness with which
the author treats his cloudy subject, and

ISoO.

Sydney Smithes Sketches of Moral FJiilosopliy.

401

the interest that his wit gives to topics, not
devoid of interest themselves, but, from
their apparent dryness, repulsive to the
general reader, must render this book in
time deservedly popular. Its errors must
be viewed with leniency, for it was never
meant by the author for publication, but
written by him while still a young man and
delivered as lectures to a large and mixed
audience of both sexes. The necessity be-
fore such an audience of giving vivacity
and sustained interest to matters, where to

sustain attention was indispensable, was
well suited for developing the shrewd-
ness, and rich vein of the lecturer. But
we can easily see how their evident want
of profundity rendered him averse to giving
these lectures to the public, while even
friendly critical authorities were for a time
doubtful of their success : but clear and
broad views, and perspicuous expression of
thought, are as rare a genius as profundity,
and a thousand times more quickly appre-
ciated and trained to utility. T. C. C

SONNETS TO FILL BLANKS.

JfUMBER TWO.

" Begin, my pen ! write thou another Sonnet :'*

There's poetry, sure, in that ! Why, yes ; and so.

There's architecture in a lady's bonnet.

And tragedy in Punch's puppet-show :

And many a sonneteer, when, all a' fire.

He writes, makes poetry, but never a poem ;

His proud ambition and his hot desire

To write and be a poet, only throw him

Into a fine confusion : and, like children.

With drum and penny trumpet, music mad,

He rends Apollo's ear with noise bewilderin',

Harsher, 't endure, than women shrieking " shad.

Fresh shad !" or chimney-sweep, whose howling cry

Does but express his great " desire to sty." *

* " Ambition, rash desire to sty," i. e. to mount, to ascend.— /^fiwccr.
VOLi Vli NOi IVk NEW SERIES. 2Q

402

[Mr. G. P. R. James'' Toems on America.

Oct.

MPv. GEORGE PAYNE EAINSFORD JAMES

POEMS ON AMERICA.

Mr. G. p. R. James, is known to the
rea,ding world- — which with us comprises
nearly the entire community, or at least
all the exempts from " bib and tucker"
thraldom — as the author of a very exten-
sive number — not assortment — of novels.

He is known as the proprietor of a cer-
tain ubiquitous pair of horsemen who
always trot over the opening pages, much
as a squad of Colonel Postley's Huzzars
cavort upon their grocer-wagon steeds, in
advance of some civico-military procession
in our city. To borrow a Milesian-ism,
the horsemen are Mr. James's " Faugh a
Ballagh." It may perhaps be but justice
to state that the grand entree, in his last
emanation, was efiected by infantry. Mr.
James is known as sole owner of an im-
mortal Methusalasean Corps of characters,
comprising a sharp valet, a poaching' far-
mer, a gallant old gentleman, who is pitted
against an ancient scamp, a beautiful, ac-
complished, and particularly stupid heroine,
who stands ready to fall plump into a
lover's arms upon the first OjBPer — in fact
prepared to make very liberal advances to
secure so profitable a consignment, a steady
and highly respectable young man, who
does the marrying, invariably and inevita-
bly, a dashing shrewd careless head-over-
heels friend, who is always turning up just
in the ''nick of time," at unseasonable
hours, in the most impossible, unheard of
and out-of-the-way places — and in incom-
prehensible situations, &c., &c. These
characters emulate the longevity of that
highly respectable individual, Mr. Cooper's
'* Leather Stocking," who, as Dr. Holmes
remarks, was once got by his owner into a
'' Coffin," but could not be induced to stay
there.

Mr. James marries, han^s, or shoots ofi"
his puppets regularly in his three volumes,
but lo and behold ! in the course of a brief
month or so, up they pop again, as lively
as ever, and ready for a new campaign,

requiring but a change of clothes for their
next journey.

With sober prose, however, it is not our
present purpose to deal.

Mr. James has come among us as a lectu-
rer— to pick up a la Buckingham, a few grea-
sy pork-besmeared and corn-fed Cis- Atlan-
tic dollars. He is about to lecture upon the
middle ages, of which task, — as he is a mid-
dling writer, one who has studied his sub-
ject middling carefully, and has attain-
ed a middle age himself, — we imagine he
will acquit himself middling well. With
this last, even, we have little to do, nothing
in fact, with him as a lecturer, but yet
something as a man to be lectured by.

It is with Mr. James, as a poet, we have
to deal, not with his poetry as a whole, —
which would be but a small whole, by the
wa}^ — but with his poems on America.
The series has not yet been collected and
bound. In fact it would make but a small
volume, as it consists of but two pieces,
that we wot of. Yet we deem it our duty
to rescue them from the impending danger
of oblivion. The first of these productions
evidently came directly from the author's
heart, while the second is an inimitable speci-
men of what our respected friend Samuel
Slick, Esq., clockmaker, terms "soft saw-
der." We will submit both, to the reader,
piecemeal, and accompanied by a running
commentary, for fear that the whole taken
entire, at once, might prove too strong a
dosj to be palatable.

So very extraordinary a poem as the first,
of course required a preface, and according-
ly we find the following from the pen of
the author's friend, L. (Lever.)

" Mr. Editor. The accompanying lines I
forward for insertion in your Magazme, ex-
actly AS I RECEIVED THEM, nor., although
not intended for the public eye (beins? only Mr.
James's private opinion,) do I fear any re-
proach FROM THEIR DISTINGUISHED WRITER,
IN OFFERING THEM FOR PUBLICATION UU-

1850.

Mr. G. P. R. Ja?nes'' Poems on America.

403

authorized. (Mi-. James having said it, do'nt
care who knows it.) They are bold (we
believe him,) manly and well timed (per-
haps they were then.)

''Yours. L. "

This preface and the accompanying lines
appeared in the '* Dublin University Ma-
gazine^"^ in 1846. Mr. James probably
wrote them after he had dined, when
" wine was in,'' and must have recited
or sung them to his friend " L." at
some other time when wine was going in.

There is no doubt but that he /eZ^^them,
as they breath a vindictive spirit that none
but a good hater could feel, or express,
and as a poem they possess infinitely
greater merit than any of the very medio-
cre rhymes which have hitherto trickled
from his pen. Mr. James's note to Mr.
L. succeeds the preface.

" My dear L. — I send you the song you
wished to have. The Americans, when they
so insolently calculated upon aid from Ireland
in- a war with England, forgot that their own
apple is rotten to the core.

"A nation with five or six millions of
slaves, who would go to w^ar with an equally
strong nation with no slaves, is a mad people.
"Yours, G. P. R. James."

A CLOUD IS ON THE W^ESTERN SKY.

A cloud is on the western sky,

There's tempest on the sea.
And bankrupt states are blustering high,

But not a whit care we.
Our guns shall roar, our steel shall gleam,
Before Columbia's distant stream

Shall own another sway.
We'll take our stand.
And draw the brand,

As in the ancient day.

Vastly well ; Mr. James, but about the
"bankrupt States,'^ we would just hint,
that it is not polite to call names — and that
it were wiser in you to first remove the
beam from your own eye, and pay off your
own ''small account." With regard to
your guns roaring, we think that Master
John would roar rather louder than his
guns, if Brother Jonathan did but grapple
with him in earnest. You will "draw
your brand," as you did in " the ancient
day," indeed. In the " ancient day," the
brand which you drew, was a brand of dis-
grace upon your back, a brand of defeat
from the same " Washington," whom you
so bespatter in poem No. 2, with your un-
asked for laudation.

" They count on feuds within the isle,
They think the sword is broke.
They look to Ireland, and they smile,

But let thtm bide the stroke.
When rendered one in hand and heart.
By robber war and swindler art,
Home griefs we cast away."
&c., &.C., &c.

This was in 1846, and ere its close we
"looked to Ireland," not with a smile,
but with a pitying tear. " Swindler art"
spread its white sails upon the ocean, and
opened its granaries to scatter bounties with
a free hand among the starving Irish, who,
if they were " one in heart and hand" with
their English neighbors, were very far from
being one in "purse and pantry."

It is time, however, to introduce a few
verses of poem No. 2, which we present as
an antidote to the virulence of its precur-
sor. They were written by Mr. James on
board the Washington ; and the author has
taken especial care that they should receive
an extensive newspaper publication.

THE WASHINGTON.

" The Washington, the Washington !
How gallantly she goes.
Green fields she finds before her steps,
She leaves them clad in snows.

The green field of the ocean.
The snow flake of the foam ;

Receive and follow, as she treads
Her pathway to her home.

God speed thee, noble Washington,

Across the mighty main.
And give thee wings to traverse it,

A thousand times again !

Not wrongly hast thou taken,
The glorious chieftain's name,

Who won his country's liberty.
Amidst the battle's flame."

Turn we now from " soft solder" to
" real feelings."

" Oh let them look to where in bonds.
For help their bondmen cry.
Oh let them look, ere British hands

Wipe out that LIVING LIE.
Beneath the flag of Liberty,
We'll sweep the wide Atlantic sea,
And tear their chains away."
&c., &C-, &c.

'Pon honor, Mr. J. ! this is rather potent.
America, and American Liberty, a living
lie ? This " living lie," may account for
Mr. James's " scraps'' turning into "soft
soap" as soon as he is fairly in it. As to

404

Mr. G. P. R James' Poems on America.

Oct.

the " Bondsman's Cry," we only wish
Mr. J. could hear the negroes give out a
few despau-ing moans at a " corn shuck-
ing."

" Veil starry banner, veil your pride,

The blood-red cross before,

Emblem of that by Jordan's side,

Man's freedom price that bore.

No land is strong that owns a slave.

Vain is it wealthy, cra%, brave !

Our freedom for our stay.

*****

" Shout, dusky millions, through the world !

Ye scourge driven nations, shout ;

The flag of Liberty's unfurled.

And Freedom's sword is out ;

The slaver's boastful thirst of gain

Tends but to break his bondsmen's chain,

And Britain's on the way \

To take her stand.

And draw the brand,

As in the ancient day.

Hung be our (not heavens, but) " stars"
with black immediately, as Mr. James has
ordered. The " blood-red cross" is after
them, looking very cross indeed.

The said cross may be " emblem of that
by Jordan's side," but it looks to us vastly
like the mark of the beast upon a certain
flag lately very busily employed in poking
opium down John Chinaman's throat, the
coolest piece of wholesale rascality and dry
land piracy, since " the middle ages."

" No land is free that owns a slave.'*

What say you. Sir Oracle, to the house-
hold slaves of " IMerrie England" to your
miners, ignorant as brutes, ignorant of the
blessed light of God's own sun, ignorant
of even the respective proprieties of the
sexes .'' What say you to the harnessing
of women like horses, in hideous under-
ground caves — slaves indeed !

" Shout dusJcy millions through the world.'*

Yes, shout. But why ? Mr. James says
" Britain's on the way," — by "Britain" we
presume Mr. James modestly means him-
self, and this must have been the " shadow
cast before" the coming advent — his ad-
vent. We imagine he intends to do all
the work with his own hands, and wish Gar-
rison, and Gerrit Smith, Abbey Kelly, and
the Black Douglas, (African — not Scot's)
joy of their new laborer in the cause.

The other lines we really want patience
to criticise. We can stand such abuse,

With the printer's permission, we will
present the remainder of these delectable
productions, cozily, side by side, and thus
have a better opportunity to compare them.

No sordid triumph wa s the chiefs ;

No sordid triumph thine,
Though war, unwilling, was his task.

And thine aim, peace divine.

The links his good sword severed.

When heavy grew the chain,
Even of England's brotherhood.

Thou shalt unite again.

But links of love the bond shall form,

To bind the east and west.
While child and mother long estranged.

Fly to each other's breast.

And may'st thou, as thou tread'st the sea.

Till thy long wand'rmgs cease.
Be, like the patriarchial dove,

The messenger of peace."

G. P. R. James.

but cannot endure the cloying sweetness of
the " soft sawder," the treacle in which the
potion of jalop is now enveloped.

We know not which is the most delight-
fully refreshing, the boastfully impotent
swagger of the earlier, or the deliciously
cool impudence of patting us on the back,
in the latter poem, We^ Mr. James —

" We want no praise
And least of all such praise as you can bring us.'*

Tom Moore took very good care not to
return after inditing his famous and in-
famous libel. Hall, Hamilton and Dickens,
have followed his example. jNIrs. Trollope,
— honest woman — having swindled her
creditors in Cincinnati , ran away and
abused us,but staid away. Mr. James, how-
ever, has exhibited greater courage — he
calls us all the names in the calender, and
then asks our good people to give him their
" sweet voices."

We trust Mr. James will publish the
twain. In large type, on hot-pressed paper,
gilt edged, and wide margined, embellished
with a correct view of the two horsemen as
a frontispiece, and a vignette of a flag —
the " emblem of that by Jordan's side" for
a taU-piece — and our word for it, it would
seU.

We hope to receive a copy from the
grateful author, for the suggestion, and to
conclude, sincerely wish Air. James a bet-
ter temper, or a wiser manner of showing
it, and also such success in this country as
he may deserve.

1850.

Life and Correspondence of Camjphell,

405

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF CAMPBELL.*

The Biography of Poets has, of late,
become a prolific subject. At short inter-
vals we have had the lives of Goldsmith,
Coleridge, Southey, Keats, and now of
Campbell. It is a high privilege thus to be
made acquainted with the intellectual and
moral nature, the outward circumstan-
ces, associations and influences of their
daily life, whose written thoughts alone
have hitherto been known to us ; but there
is a boundary to this privilege, which the
delicate mind suofo-ests in readinir, and the
judicious and honorable mind oversteps not
in writing. An author's life belongs but
in a degree, to the public, his books being
only another portion of his life, cannot be
given to the world entirely apart ; they
bring with them thoughts connected with
others, unexpressed, and in receiving what
is given, we claim also what remains be-
hind. But only for that portion of his pri-
vate history which actually bears upon his
works, more or less remotely, do we ask ;
that portion by which we can ascertain
whether the experience of actual life has
given reality to his perceptions, and how
far his own passions and prejudices have
colored his delineations ; what has led him,
more or less, as it may be, to the sublime
or the beautiful, to generalization or indi-
viduality, to the ludicrous or the tender, the
passionate or the philosophic.

Dr. Beattie, in the work before us, has
given an over lengthy, and yet not a full
or satisfactory life of Campbell. The task
devolved upon him through a mutual friend-
ship, and at the repeated request of
Campbell, renewed in his last illness.

There is much in the narrative that
might well have been omitted. The let-
ters not having the requisite connexion
with it in regard to time, an obscurity en-
velopes the biography which leaves the

mind unsatisfied ; Trivial events of pri-
vate life are brought into strono- light
while matters of deeper interest are left
in the mist. It is, to say the least,
ill-judged to hint at subjects which may
not be fairly and openly discussed ; if
the interest of curiosity is awakened, the
facts are likely to be sought at other
sources, and brought out under exaggera-
tion. Of Campbell's literary career the
biography affords the same lengthy but
broken outline ; and we find the poet in
various positions of change where no cause
is apparent. And here we must add, that
notwithstanding the Doctor's over-strain-
ed delicacy upon certain mysterious sub-
jects, he has gone in others to the op-
posite extreme, and ofiiciouBly introduced
specimens of early, hasty, and unre vised
verse, which scarcel^y tend to increase the
author's fame. It is remarkable that the
nice sense of responsibility which indu-
ced the biographer to withhold matters
of more importance to the reader and
less to the poet, should not lead him
to respect the tact and discretion through
which Campbell himself consigned such
"repented sins" to oblivion. Alas, poor
Campbell ! " The evil that men do lives
after them,"

The good Doctor impressed, almost to
adulation, with the greatness of bis subject,
sentimentalizes upon matters of very small
moment. He is given to quotations not
always remarkably choice, and has an un-
fortunate way of bringing them in when
least expected or called for. If he remarks
that the poet was fortunate in his friend-
ships the observation is eked out with
" Friendship ! mysterious cement of the soul !"
If we are told that the poet walks upon
the borders of a lake, we have the addi-
tional information that,

* Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell. Edited by William Beattie, M. D. New York : Harper
& Brothers. 1850.

406

Life and Cori'espondence of Camphell.

Oct.

" Gay with gambols on its finny shoals
The glancing wave rejoices as it rolls."

In allusion to a quarrel between Camp-
bell and his bookseller, we have the pathetic
illustration of

" How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept."

and we learn that the poet on his marriage
was ready to exclaim, " with a brother
poet,"

" The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth !"

Mr. Campbell and his ^'brother poet,"
are certainly indebted to the Doctor for a
very interesting position.

Campbell's correspondence is light and
agreeable, but does not carry out and en-
large, as fully as we might expect it
to do, the sentiments that pervade his
poems. Admitted to the private corres-
pondence of an admired author, pleasurable
anticipations expand, and we look eagerly
for the confirmation or dispersion of opin-
ions formed upon his works ; but the prose
of Campbell is of so wholly diiferent a
stamp from his poetry, and so few of his
letters are expressive of serious observation
and philosophy, that they scarcely enlarge
our estimation of the moral, and throw lit-
tle additional light upon their intellectual
character. Still, they afford pleasing illus-
trations of his well known geniality of tem-
perament, his amiability and generosity,
and the enthusiastic fervor of his friendship.
In justice to Dr. Beattie, we must add that
in the double of&ce of friend and physician,
lie has proved himself able to give a truthful
transcript of the poet's latter days, and if
of these lengthening shadows we have a
little too much, the Doctor has at least the
merit of not crossing them with his own ;
he has wholly avoided that besetting sin of
biographers, egotistical parade.

The biography commences with a lengthy
and rather uninteresting genealogical histo-
ry of the family of Kirnan, of which the
poet was a lineal descendant. Campbell
attached not that pride and importance to
genealogy, which is common to his country-
men. The seal, given to him, bearing the
family crest, elicited a no less noble senti-
ment than —

" Ne'er may the scroll that bears it yield
Degenerate thoughts or faithless words."

The poet's father, a wealthy merchant,
engaged in the Virginia tobacco trade, was
reduced suddenly to poverty, in his sixty-
fifth year, through the immediate commer-
cial difficulties consequent upon the war of
1775 ; but more solicitous for uprightness
than for wealth, he bore the reverse with
equanimity. The small surplus remaining
after the payment of his debts, he increased
by taking young gentlemen of the Glasgow
College to board, thus averting what would
have been the only unbearable evil of pov-
erty, the inability to give his children such
an education as should supply the want of
patrimony. Mr. Campbell was a zealous
member of the Scotch Kirk, and early in-
stilled the principles of piety into the minds
of his children. He had improved his na-
tural abilities by reading and intercourse
with society. His friends were among the
eminent men of the University ; Adam
Smith and Thomas Reid, for whom the
poet was named, were his intimates.

Campbell held in high veneration and
love the memory of his father.

Mrs. Campbell, the poet's mother, pos-
sessed far less of the amenity and sweet-
ness ascribed to her husband ; but she was
of a noble nature, full of energy and firm-
ness. She was fond of reading and of
literary society ; warm- hearted, shrewd,
and vivacious. She was fond of her family,
and of her son, and always took occasion
to speak of herself as " Mrs. Campbell, of
Kirnan," and " mother to the author of the
' Pleasures cf Hope.-' " It would be diffi-
cult to say, from which parent Campbell
derived his genius ; the mother alone seems
to have enjoyed poetry, and through her
his infant ear became accustomed to the
ballad poetry of his country. Both parents
had a taste for music. j\Irs. Campbell
rocked the cradle of her children to the air
of " My poor dog Tray," and in the wane
of life, continued occasionally to sing it,
when proudly and tenderly she connected
with it the verses adapted by her sen. The
father, too, was fond of naval songs, and it
may be that his voice first touched those
tender chords, which, in after years, pro-
duced the noblest lyrics of the age.

Of the numerous family of Mr. and Mrs.
Alexander Campbell — eight sons and three
daughters, — it is sufficient to know that
they were talented and highly respectable.
One of the sons married a daughter of

1850.

Life and Correspondence of Cam^hell.

407

Patrick Henry. The poet was the young-
est, and lived to be the sole survivor of the
family.

Campbell's talents were of remarkably
early development, and passingly it may
be observed, that he produced if we except
the " Last Man," no great poetical work
much after the age of thirty. When only
eight years old he was entered at the gram-
mar school under the tuition of Mr. Alison,
who, soon perceiving the genius of his
young pupil, spared no pains for his im-
provement. Under his judicious and affec-
tionate training, the natural ambition of the
boy, and that strong desire of approbation
which was the leading trait of his character
through life, produced their usual results.
At the age of twelve he wrote translations
from the Greek, and received prizes. The
Greek poets early became his favorite study,
and on them was gradually formed the
pure, classic taste which, more than genius,
gave to 'his own poems their beauty and
success. This early enthusiasm for the
Greek Drama returned forcibly in his de-
clining years; in proof of which "reju-
venescence of youthful taste," the au-
thority is quoted of Mr. St. John, Consul-
General at Algiers, who says, '* In
conversation at table, Campbell never
seemed to be aware that he had any parti-
cular claim to the merit of a poet. His
great ambition — and he made no effort to
conceal it — was to be considered a Greek
scholar." In all respects the boyhood of
Campbell foreshadowed remarkably the
character of the future man : indeed, in
many things, he was through life, a boy. A
boy in his affections, his sensibilities, his
trustfulness and his weakness. The same
love of a practical joke by which he gained
a warm seat at the fire side, while his fel-
low students crowded to read his witticisms
and impiomptus written on the wall, sug-
gested in after years, the imitation of the
nightingale by which he cheated his wife
and her friend into exstacies ; and the same
generous spirit which made him the redress-
er of wrong among his school-fellows, pro-
cured for him afterwards the title of the
"Champion of Poland." The same ten-
derness which appropriated the crown-piece
given by his mother for his journey to
Edinburgh, to the purchase of the picture
she admired — " Elijah, fed by the ravens,"
appeared in the fervor of his friendships

and the felicity of his conjugal life, and
still more in the deep pathos which, more
than their elegance of versification, — more
indeed than any other quality, constitutes
the charm of his poems. It was the same
keen sensibility to praise or blame which,
in his school-days, alternately elevated and
depressed his spirits, and sent him, in after
life, abruptly from Longman's table and
the society of Scott, Davy, Ellis and
Young, *' because," says Dr. Irving, " he
could not attract all the attention to which
he evidently thought himself entitled."

At the university, as at school, Campbell
maintained a high standing, and was com-
missioned by Professor Jardine to examine
the exercises sent in by other students in
the logic class. In his second college ses-
sion he wrote " The Irish Harper," the
first song which has been considered wor-
thy a place in his published works. Dur-
ing the existence of a debating club, of
which young Campbell was the leader, his
turn for satire, (which seems nevertheless,
not to have been remarkably keen or
pointed,) made him some enemies ; — pro-
bably these were the same "malignant
scriblers" who, in after time, according to
Mr. W. Irving's ''''Introductory^'''' "took
a pleasure in misrepresenting all his actions,
and holding him up in an absurd and dis-
paraging point of view." Resentment
cherished forty years afterwards, was over
sufficient for these shafts of boyish ridicule
thrown without malice and remembered not
beyond the moment by their author. The
eloquence of the Scotch Reformer Gerald,
at whose trial and execution Campbell was
present, made so vivid an impression upon
his mind, that on returning to college a
visible change was apparent in him. He
became subject to fits of abstraction, of
which no longer poetry but politics were
the theme ; probably the liberality of his
political opinions, and his admiration of a
republican government grew remotely from
the excitement of this period. It was not
long however, before the muse asserted her
legitimate claim, and retiring still more
from the society of his young companions,
he began to woo her in good earnest. His
brother Daniel, who was his room-mate,
annoyed by the irregular hours of the poet,
took delight in playing off practical jokes
in retaliation. One morning, arrangements
having been made over night for break-

40S

Life and Correspondence of Camphell.

Oct.

fasting together early, Daniel, punctual to
the minute, waited anxiously in the par-
lor for his brother whom he had left in an
unusual state of forwardness. He waited
ten minutes and then called to him ; anoth-
er ten minutes and he gave a second and a
third summons, but with no better suc-
cess.

" At the same instant the Poet entered, and,
laying some pages of manuscript on the table,
^ There,' said he, with an air of satisfaction,
' there is my apology. A rare thought struck
me during the night — I was afraid of its esca-
ping, and having taken the pen in my hand, I
could not lay it down until I had reduced it
to rhyme. You'll soon see whether I have
been idle or not.' -Very good,' said Daniel,
' let's have a look at it.' ' There it is,' said
Tom. handing it to him with one hand, and
helping himself to a slice of toast with the
other. Daniel was silent for a minute. ' Ha !
very good this — very fine indeed!' 'Yes, I
thought you would say so.' ' And this is why
you had so restless a night 1' 'Yes, I had
some poetical throes, but you see I have hit it
off at last.' ' You have^ my boy,' said Daniel,
appearing to read with much attention. ' Well
— what do you think of it V inquired the
Poet, rather impatiently. ' Why,' said the
critic, ' to tell you the truth, I think it wants
fire, don't you V ' Perhaps,' said the author,
with hesitation. 'Yes — it certainly wants
fire ;' and, suiting the action to the word,
Daniel twisted up the manuscript and thrust
it between the bars of the grate."

Campbell appears once to have directed
his studies towards the church, and subse-
quently gave his attention to surgery, me-
dicine, and, finally, the law. He also en-
tertained thoughts of a mercantile life. —
During some of the College sessions, he
was employed in the house of a Glasgow
merchant, and, at a subsequent period, soon
after leaving the University, made actual
preparations to join his merchant brothers
in America. An ardent desire to alleviate
the infirmities and necessities of his aged
father, aroused his energies, and failing,
through want of money and patronage
in all these objects, he applied to Pro-
fessors Arthur and Young for advice.
Through their influence, a situation was
oft'ered as teacher, in a gentleman's family,
in the island of Mull, of which, in the in-
terval of his fourth and fifth sessions, he
was glad to avail himself. However un-
congenial the duties upon which he was

about to enter, he had pleasant anticipa-
tions of a residence in the Hebrides, expect-
ing to draw inspiration from the wild heaths
and shores of a country, with the poetic
legends of which he had, from childhood,
been familiar.

Had the poet enjoyed more opportunities
of studying nature ; had he been able to
retire more frequently from the tumult of
the city and the gossip of Sydenham, to
such scenes of rest and refreshment as the
Hebrides and the Highlands, we should
now, perhaps, be in the enjoyment of richer
and more abundant results of his genius.
The poem entitled " Caroline," less read,
.perhaps, than any other in the printed col-
lections, was addressed to a young lady from
Inverary, visiting at Sunipol during the
poet's residence there. She is said to have
made an impression upon his heart ; but
the passion was probably more ardently
expressed than felt ; for, nearly at the same
time he seems to have addressed a rustic
beauty in strains of equal admiration.

Dr. Beattie, with his accustomed dainti-
ness, says : " While he justly admired the
queenly rose, he was not inattentive to the
lowly violet that grew at its feet."

Returning to Glasgow, he supported
himself through the "winter by tuition.
During the last session at College, he gain-
ed two prizes ; one for the Clioepliorm of
Aristophanes, and the other a Chorus in the
Medea of Euripides, which last is included
in his printed poems. Taking final leave
of the University, Campbell resided at
Downie, in the Highlands, where he was
engaged as a private tutor, and wrote his
Monody on Miss Broderick ; a not very
successful imitation of Pope's '' Elegy to
the memory of an unfortunate Lady," and
also an " Elegy," which, shortly after-
wards, did him the good service of attract-
ing the interest of Dr. Anderson — and
here, discouraged by the failure of all his
efforts towards a more lucrative and honor-
able calling than that of a tutorship, out of
the disappointment of his hopes arose lite-
rally the *' Pleasures of Hope ; " for he
turned to poetry for consolation. Here he
found the original of mfmy discriptions, not
only of that poem, but of those which af-
terwards beautified his " Gertrude." The
passages alluding to '^ Green Albion," were
chiefly drawn, we are told, from the recol-
lections of Downie and Sunipol. At no

1850.

Life and Correspondence of Cajnphell.

409

time of tlie poet's after life does he appear
to have been in a situation so favorable
to the enrichment of his imagination, as
amid those wild and romantic scenes. His
favorite haunts, and the farm-house where
he lodged, in the neighborhood of his pupil,
are thus described by Campbell's successor
at Downie :

" On the shore of that great arm of the sea,
known as the Sound of Jura, and within an
hour's walk southward of the termination of
the canal, which connects the northern ex-
tremity of Loch Fyne with that Sound, stands
the secluded and homely farm house of ' Dow-
nie.' This was the abode of the Poet imme-
diately before the publication of his great work,
and it was hence that he proceeded —taking
his way on foot, by what is now the track of
the Crinan Canal — to claim for himself that
distinguished place which he afterwards held,
and is likely long to hold, among the most
highly gifted men of his day."

"On descending towards the bay the visiter
directs his steps towards a hill smaller than all
the rest, and rising, by a pleasant and gentle
ascent, directly from the back of the house.
The hill is covered, towards its lower acclivi-
ties, by a line, beautiful green sward, and near
the top breaks out into rugged and sterile cliffs.
Its summit is the point to which any person
in that locality will instinctively direct his
steps, in order to obtain an extensive command
of the prospect around him. This was ' the
Poet's Hill,' a favorite place of resort with
Campbell. Scarcely a day passed in which,
at one hour or another, he w^as not to be found
on its summit. From that elevation the eye
looks down towards the beach, where consi-
derable masses of rock bar all access to the
coast ; while the vast expanse of the Sound of
Jura, with all its varying aspects of tempest
and of calm, stretches directly in front of the
spectator. The Island of Jura, ' with treble
hills,' forms the boundarj^ of the opposite
coast. Far southward the sea opens in broad-
er expanse, towards the northern shore of Ire-
land, which, in certain states of the atmosphere,
may be faintly descried. Northward, at a
much shorter distance, is the whirlpool of
^ Corrievrecken,' whose mysterious noises
may occasionally be heard all along the coast.

" The view, in all directions, wide, varied
and interesting, presents such a wonderful
combination of sea and mountain scenery, as
cannot fail to captivate the eye of the specta-
tor, and fix itself indelibly in his memory. All
around is now classic ground.

'^ On re-approaching the house of Downie
the visiter will remark a small wing attached
to its western side known by the name of the
* Bachelor.' It is entered by an internal wood-

en staircase, and consists of a small apartment
with one window, and a recess of sufficient di-
mensions to contain a bed. That room was
at once the private study, the class-room, and
dormitory of the Poet. When 1 last visited
the house — after an absence of more than for-
ty years — I found the w^hole in nearly the same
condition in which it was when occupied by
the Poet — only a different family were then its
occuj)ants. It w^as in that room that some of
the brilliant episodes of the 'Pleasures of
Hope' were brought into the shape in which
they were afterwards presented to the notice,
and gained the unanimous admiration of the
British public."

We find him next in Edinburgh, endea-
voring to obtain literary employment from
the periodicals, and to find among the book-
sellers a purchaser for the copyright of his
Translations of Euripides and jEschylus ;
disappointed in which, he was glad to ac-
cept, on a very small salary, the ofl&ce of a
copying clerk. At length, his introduction
to the author of " The Lives of the British
Poets," gave a new turn to his fortunes.
The personal beauty of the poet, attracting,
as he passed their windows, the admiration
of Dr. Anderson's daughters, enquiries
concerning him were made of his compa-
nion, Mr. Park, who placed in their hands
a copy of the " Elegy," with which the
Doctor was so well pleased as immediately
to invite the author to his house.

Dr. Anderson was Campbell's first patron.
Through his recommendation, Mundell,the
publisher, offered the poet twenty pounds
for an abridgment of Bryan Edwards's
^' West Indies." This was a work of time,
and, during its preparation, he wrote, among
other lyrics, that which, of all others, be-
came the most widely popular, ^' The
Wounded Hussar." Its becoming a "street
ballad," (the most convincing proof of its
popularity,) was a serious annoyance to the
sensitive author. In latter years, judging
from the following anecdote, he felt differ-
ently :

" Coming home one evening to my house in
Park Square, where, as usual, he had dropt
in to spend a quiet hour, I told him that I had
been agreeably detained listening to some
street music near Portman Square. ^ Vocal
or instrumental V he inquired. ' Vocal : the
song was an old favorite, remarkably good,
and of at least forty years' standing.' ' Ha !'
said he — 'I congratulate the author, whoever
he is.' — ' And so do I — it was your own song,.

410

Ijife and Correspondence of CampheJl.

Oct.

the Soldier's Dream : and when I came away
the crowd was slill increasing.' * Well — ' he
added, musing, ' this is something like popu-
larity!' "

From Mundell Campbell continued to
receive employment, but quite inadequate
to his expenses, so that he was obliged still
to instruct pupils in the Greek and Latin.
" In this vocation" he says " I made a
a livelihood as long as I was industrious.
But ' The Pleasures of Hope' came over
me. I took long walks about Arthur's seat
conning over my own (as I thought them)
magnificent lines ; and as my ' Pleasures of
Hope' got on, my pupils fell off."

Finding that Edinburgh was likely to
be the field of his exertions, Campbell in-
duced his parents to remove there. " The
Pleasures of Hope" was now ready for the
press, but funds were wanting to defray
the expenses of printing. Mundell was
finally induced to purchase it, at what
some of his friends considered a very inade-
quate value. *' The copy-right of my
' Pleasures of Hope,' " says Campbell,
*^ worth an annuity of two hundred pounds
for life, was sold out and out for sixty
pounds in money and books." It must
be considered that, in this estimate, he al-
luded to an offer made by a London pub-
lisher three years afterward, when he had
acquired a reputation. Dr. Irving remarks,
very justly, that Mundell was not to be
censured for illiberality ; the author being
an obscure young man, untried and un-
known as a poet. Moreover, Campbell's
publishers volunteered to him, for several
years afterwards, the sum of fifty pounds
on every new edition of the poem ; and,
notwithstanding, the very common com-
plaint of authors against such " vampires^''''
this is not an unusual instance of book-
seller's liberality. A recent article in the
,*' North British Review," states, "that
there is hardly a publisher in London, how-
ever " grasping" he may be, who has not,
time after time, paid to authors sums of
money, 'not in the bond.'" Campbell
was not perhaps more inclined than others
of his profession to decry the " Gentlemen
of the Row," yet many of his letters in-
dicate a one-sided view of the business of
publication ; true, he acknowledges on one
occassion that Gerry was friendly beyond
what he had " a right to expect," and on
another he designates Mr. Murray as "a

very excellent gentleman-like man — albeit
a bookseller," but the general tone of his
feeling and expression towards publishers is
complaining and harsh. In regard to
Cadell's proposition for an edition of the
British Poets to be edited jointly with
Scott, Campbell writes thus :

" As to the butteraceous bookseller, I have
no objections to him ) but I am sure I should
prove a so-so associate with you. I thought
it proper, however, to let you know how far
I had gone with the London gentry, lest they,
devising cunningly to ask our terms separately,
should found an over-reaching bargain. They
asked my terms for thirty lives, and I gave in
the same estimate which Sir James Mackin-
tosh offered — a thousand pounds. Now, ver-
hurn sapienti — they are the greatest ravens on
earth with w^hom we have to deal — liberal
enough as booksellers go — but stilly, you know,
ravens, croakers, suckers of innocent blood
and living men's brains ! . . . One man
offered to stake his whole reputation on the
work for £l50. This was told to me — as a
damper is thrown over muslin that is going
to be singed— but I still took what Dr. Ander-
son calls high ground, and talked of a £1000
as a small perquisite for this labor. I told
the bookseller that a reputation that was
staked so cheap, did not deserve to be impaled
— whereat the bookman laughed, conceiving
that it must be wit as it was a pun."

In a letter to Richardson, he complains
of finding the London booksellers prone to
insult all but the prosperous and indepen-
dent, and says to Dr. Currie, " I want to
haul in from the book- selling tribe as many
engagements as possible, of such a kind as
will cost me as little labor and bring as
much profit as may he. The plan I mean
is a large, complete, respectable collection
of English poetry, of which the compilation
would cost me no great effort. =«= * *
If you know any bookseller in your place,
and possess an aristocratic influence over
him, all I wish is that you would drive him
into this scheme ! Although you should
ruin him by it, it is only ruining a book-
seller, and doing a benefit to a friend."

All this, though partly, perhaps, said in
jest, gives us a peep at the other side of the
canvass. There is certainly a good deal
of mistaken opinion afloat upon this sub-
ject, and we cannot resist quoting the fol-
lowing from the article before alluded to :

" The cautious publisher is the author's best
friend. If a house publish at their own risk a
number of works which they can not sell, they

1S50.

"Life and Correspondence of Camphell.

411

must either go into the Gazette at last, or
make large sums of money by works which
they can sell. When a publisher loses money
by a work, an injury is inflicted upon the lite-
rary profession. The more money he can
make by publishing, the more he can afford to
pay for authorship. It is often said that the
authors of successful works are inadequately
rewarded in proportion to thejr success; that
publishers make their thousands, while au-
thors only make their hundreds. But it is
forgotten that the profits of the one successful
work are often only a set-off to the losses in-
curred by the publication of half a dozen un-
successful ones. If a publisher purchase a
manuscript for X500, and the work prove to
be a ' palpable hit' worth <£5000, it may seem
hard that the publisher does not share his
gains more equitably with the author. With
regard to this it is to be said, in the first place,
that he very frequently does. But we can
hardly admit that publishers are under any
kind of obligation to exceed the strict terms of
their contracts. If a piiblisher gives £500 for
a copyright, expecting to sweep the same
amount into his own coffers, but instead of
making that sum, loses it by the speculation,
he does not ask the author to refund — nor
does the aiUhor offer to do it. The money is
in. all probability spent long before the result
of the venture is ascertained ; and the author
v/ould be greatly surprised and greatly indig-
nant, if it were hinted to him, even in the most
delicate way, that the publisher having lost
money by his book, would be obliged to tiim if
he would make good a portion of the deficit
hj sending a check upon his bankers.

■^' We repeat, then, that a publisher who
loses money by one man's books, must make
it by another's, or go into the Gazette. There
are publishers who trade entirely upon this
principle, which, indeed, is a kind of*^ literary
gambling. They publish a dozen works, we
will suppose, of which six produce an abso-
lute loss; four just cover their expenses; and
the other two realize a profit. The publisher,
especially ii he be his owm printer, may find
this answer in the end ; it may at least just
keep him ont of thie Bankruptcy Court, and
supply his family with bread. But the sys-
lena can not be a really advantageous one
either to publishers or authors. To the latter,
indeed, it is destruction. No inconsiderable
portion of the books published every year en-
tail a heavy loss on aiithor or publisher, or on
both — and the amount of this loss may be set
down, in most instances, as so much taken
from the gross profits of the literary profes-
siop. If Mr. Bungay lose a hundred pounds
by the poems of the Hon. Percy Popjoy, he
l?as a hundred pounds less to give to Mr. Ar-
thur Pendennis for his novel. Instead of pro-
testing against the over-caution of publishers,

literary men, if they really knew their own in-
terests, would protest against their want of
caution. Authors have a direct interest in the
prosperity of publishers. The misfortune of
authorship is not that publishers make so
much money, but that they make so little. If
Paternoster Row were wealthier than it is,
there would be better cheer in Grub street."

To return from our digression. Camp-
bell's circle of acquaintance began now to
enlarge. At the bouse of Dr. Anderson,
he formed his earliest connections' with
men of letters. He made the acquaintance
of Gillies and Henry Erskine ; and was
much in the family of Dugald Stewart,
who introduced him to the man whom he
delighted to call his " intellectual father,"
— Alison, the well-known author of the
work upon " Taste." Graham, author of
the " Sabbath," and Thomas Brown, the
philosopher, were on friendly terms with
him.

After disposing of his poem , he retained
the manuscript for revision, and, in his
*' Dusky lodgings, in Rose street," he gave
the strictest erfamination to every line, and
closely analyzed every sentiment. Dr.
Anderson, who had pledged his word to the
public for its merits, was constantly urging
him to fresh diligence, while his own fasti-
dious taste at one moment renewed the im-
pulse, and at another drove him to despair.
A young painter in his neighborhood, whose
room he frequently visited in his discon-
tented moods, endeavored to cheer him one
evening, by relating that a mutual friend
from Glasgow had that day expressed great
glee at seeing, by chance, a stray proof-
sheet of the forthcoming poem. Instead
of succeeding, it only made matters worse.
" Supposing," says Campbell, " they should
all find out, one day, as I did this morning,
that the thing is neither more nor less than
mere trash ; would not the author's predi-
cament be tenfold worse, than if he had
never written a line } They may well call
their proof-sheets ' deviVs proofs;'' I assure
you, that, to-day, I could not endure to
look at my own work." On that very
evening, supping with Somerville, *' be
grew wildly merry," and very readily took
up his companion's suggestion, of becoming
a great man on the strength of a single
poem.

The opening lines of the " Pleasures of
Hope'' were written last. Dissatisfied with

412

Life and Cori'espondenee of Caw.j)heTi.

Oct.

them, as first written, Campbell had made
frequent attempts at alteration, and as often
abandoned them. One morning. Dr. x\.n-
derson called early, found the poet in bed,
exhausted by a night of excitement and
labor. On a table, by his side, entirely re-
written, lay the manuscript of the admired
opening, as it now stands. It was at length
announced to the public. The author
touched most skilfully upon the subjects of
greatest general interest; he had expressed
the spirit of the time, and the poem was re-
ceived as a new and brilliant star . The public
seemed to realize the remark of Goldsmith,
that " works )f genius should not be judg-
ed from the faults to be met with in them,
but by the beauties in which they abound,"
and of the merits of the poem there was
but one opinion. The young poet, who
had tremblingly awaited the decision, was
greatly elated by this unlocked for applause ;
but his own appreciation of the poem was
below that of the public voice : he felt that
his power of production was not equal to
his conception, and that he had not reach-
ed the standard of his own refined taste.
There is no doubt that the poem was over-
rated, and no one was better convinced of
it than the poet himself.

The episode of '^ Conrad," which, by its
application to her own and her father's
misfortunes, touched the feelings and called
forth the admiration of Mad. de Stael,* is,
for the most part, ridiculously obscure and
mawkishly moral. For example, the stanza
commencing —

" No ! not the quaint remark, &,c."

What is the sense of

** Step dame Nature every bliss recalls
Fleet as the meteor o'er the desert falls.'* 1

To the question,

** Say, can the world one joyous thought bestow
To Friendship, weeping at the couch of Wo ?

We have the answer.

** No ! but a brighter soothes the last adieu, —
Souls of impassioned mould, she speaks to you."

* Stockholm, ce 5 Janvier, 1813.

Pendant les dix annees que m'ayent separe de
I'Angleterre, Monsieur, le Poeme anglais qui m'a
cause le plus d'emotion — le poem qui ne me quit-
tait jamais — et que je relisai sans cesse pour adoucir
mes chagrins par I'elevation de Tame — e'est Les
de I'Esperance. L'episode d'Ellinore, surtout,
allait tellement a mon coeur, que je pourrais la
relirc vingt fois, sans en affaiblir rimpression.

A "brighter" 2c7ia( ? The world?
Who '' speaks to you .^" — the world .'*

" Weep not she says at Nature's transient pain."

But now follows the redeem insj senti-
ment,

" Congenial spirits pari to meet again."

one of those " golden lines" of which Dr.
Beattie says " they have become identi-
fied with the language, and familiar as
household words."

With consummate skill the poet has the
art of finishing each paragraph or stanza,
as Pope and others have done before him,
with a forcible or brilliant line ; in his ad-
miration of which, the reader forgets to
criticise what precedes it ; just as an
audience after witnessing an indifferent
ballet, or melo-drama, are sent home over-
powered by the machinery of illuminated
palaces, castles blown into the air, or bril-
liant ascensions in the clouds.

Campbell's genius was not of the high-
est order ; it inclined to follow rather than
to lead, but it was in harmony with the age,
and the political excitements of the time
were favorable to him. He knew that the
success of the "Pleasures of Hope,"
might in part be atttibuted to its adapta-
tion to the reigning enthusiasm in regard to
freedom, and partly to the thhst for poetry
consequent upon the dearth that had suc-
ceeded the time of Cowper and Burns,
His greatest satisfaction was perhaps in
being admitted to the familiar acquaintance
of the same literary men who had been the
friends and patrons of Burns : these were
Mackenzie, Alison, Dr. Gregory, Stewart,
and Playfair ; all of whom recognized him
as a poet of genius, worthy to succeed the
" inspir d peasant."

Campbell now " began to be invited
out." His favorite song " Ye Gentlemen
of England," heard at a musical soiree,
suggested the composition of his first na-
tional lyric, "Ye Mariners of England,"
which was not completed until the year
afterward, when in Altona, under a feeling
of awakened patriotism, caused hy the an-
nouncement of a war with Denmark, he
finished, and sent it to Perry for the
" Morning Chronicle."

The success of his " Pleasures of Hope"
braced him up to commence another poem :
this was to be an Epic, entitled " The

1850.

lAfe and Correspondence of Camphcll.

413

Queen of the North ;" but though engage-
ments were entered into with a publisher,
and even many of the illustrations designed
and partly executed, the poem was never
finished. He first intended to apostro-
phize Edina from ship-board by moonlight ;
then to have transported himself, in ima-
gination, to the castle-height, describing
the scenery visible fiom that point, and
whatever of classical or romantic he could
connect with it. " One of the places of
Mary's Refuge," he says " is to be seen
from the top. After a sketch of the mur-
der-closet of Rizio, an episode on the col-
lege will conclude the poem.''

Our Biographer gives us some speci-
mens— extracts from the fragment which
is all that was written of the poem ; but
those do not incline us to sympatize in the
Doctor's regret that the theme was discon-
tinued.

With the purpose of enlarging his views
of society, and acquiring perhaps thereby
some of that ease of manner, which he
might feel to be requisite in the more pol-
ished circles into which he was likely hence-
forward to be admitted, Campbell now
made arrangements to travel, and Germany
was the point where his wishes chiefly
centered. The literature of that country
was beginning to be cultivated widely in
England, and he longed to hold friendly
conference with the authors he admired.
He was supplied with letters of introduc-
tion to many eminent persons, and among
others to the venerable Klopstock. Camp-
bell's letters from Germany are the most
interesting of the collection. To his
brother in Virginia, he gives a description
of the engagement which he witnessed in
the taking of Ratisbonne by the French.
" It formed" he says, " the most interesting
epoch of my life in point of impressions."
These ''impressions," and the field at
Ingolstadt, which he saw the day after the
battle, strewn with the slain, produced the
celebrated poem of " Hohenlinden," which
battle he did not witness.

This winter he composed several minor
pieces ; the first which was sent to the
Morning Chronicle was "Lines on visiting
a scene in Argyleshire," sketched during a
visit to the paternal mansion in 1798, and
finished at Hamburgh. He also sent to
Perry " The Soldier's Dream." At Al-
tona he became intimate with the Irish

Refugees, and among them Mr. Anthony
Mac Cann. " It was in consequence "
says Campbell, " of meeting him one
evening on the banks of the Elbe, lonely
and pensive, at the thoughts of his situation,
that I wrote the " Exile of Erin." This
was sent to Perry and also the " Ode to
Content," which indicates that the passion
for " Matilda" was of earlier date than
the Biographer ascribes to it.

Campbell had laid out a plan of life for
himself and his friend Richardson whom he
hoped to induce to join him in a continen-
tal tour to be performed chiefly on foot.
'' Nine months' journeying," he writes,
" in Bohemia, Bavaria, Austria, Hungary,
and Turkey, will do. Then we shall rest
to compose poems, novels, and romances,
somewhere or other." "Let the place of
our retreat be any where but the North of
Germany, for that is odious. Salsburg, or
Prague, or Hungary." " The classics
shall be our household Gods in summer
quarters. Livy, Virgil — history and poet-
ry from their purest fountain." * * *
" What a stock of knowledge, of conversa-
tion, of all that is sacred and valuable to
the mind of man, can we not gather from
travelling together and alternately resting
for years to come!" Campbell was so
litde aware of the great political crisis at
hand, so little did he suspect how soon the
term of his residence in Germany must
consequently expire, that only a few days
before the English squadron appearing off
the Danish shore, obliged him to return in
haste to his native country, he addressed
his friend as follows : —

" We shall make a tour with all the inqui-
sitive activity of minds that wish to receive
new impressions themselves, and communicate
their effect to others. We shall jot upon our
blotter the events of the day, extend these
remarks at our halting places, when we take
lodgings in any of the large towns. We shall
mine our way into libraries, and pluck from
the shelves every volume that can instruct us
in the curiosities of the country which we
visit. The labor of quoting, transcribing, ar-
ranging, moralizing, shall be in common; we
shall intersperse it with studs of poetry, and
Poetry, as I have always maintained, is to be
indebted to art and study, as well as every
other pursuit. Finally, we shall sell our
copyright and publish with our joint names.
I have already meditated a preface — think of
this yourself. I lay, last night, sleepless till
seven o'clock in the morning, with filling up

414

Life and Correspondence of Camphell.

Oct,

the liglits and shades of this picture, of which
I give you the outlines : — We are down at
Munich in the twinkling of an eye ] the ex-
pense, I vouch for it, need not, if you will
deign to walk^ exceed three pounds a piece.
That place is a glorious field for curiosity,
anecdote and description. The adjacent sce-
nery towards Salzburg; exceeds all the world ]
and greatly sublime, and deliciously verdant
as it is^ you know, a pair of poets uniting the
freeborn rights of travellers to the titles of fic-
tion, need not hesitate to make, by a bold
dash of the pen, mountains larger than ///e,
and scenes finer than reality ! But in plain
hodden-grey truth, the scenery of these parts
rieeds only fidelity of description to make them
interesting. Oh, John! what flourishes at
every romantic cottage overhanging the steep
pathway ! What lines of light glimmering
obscurely on the rich bottom of the valley !
What cataracts and precipices, winding shores
and extensive plains, where the spires and bat-
tlements oi distant cities shine at sunset on the
extreme verge of the horizon ! Then Hunga-
ry ! its songs, its music, which we shall get
copied and translated for our work. You
shall also mineralize; and having discovered
new facts in the crystallization of minerals, in
these unransacked quarries, we shall calmly
sit down to defeat all existing systems on the
subject ; and with a two-edged sword, give the
death-blow to Hulton\s hell-fire^ and Kirwan's
Noah's-Ark-ical theory !"

The first intelligence which greeted
Campbell's return was that of his father's
death, and with that affectionate generosi-
ty which marked through life his conduct
towards his mother and sisters, he thence-
forward shared with them his scanty earn-
ings. An edition was forthcO)Bing of the
" Pleasures of Hope," which the publish-
ers had, with great liberality, permitted
him to publish on his own account, by sub-
scription : on the strength of this he con-
tracted a loan to clear off some family debts
which were a source of anxiety to his moth-
er ; — a "judaic loan" he calls it, which
hampered his success for a long time, and
became doubled through the interest, be-
fore he was able to discharge it.

In the midst of these difficulties he was
introduced, at Dugald Stewart's, to Lord
Minto, who encouraged him with promises
of patronage and success, and invited him
to pass the ensuing season at his house in
London, where, to avoid a sense of depend-
ence, it was agreed that the poet should
perform the service of private secretary.
The official duties were Hght, the " poet's

room" was prepared for his exclusive use,
and he was now enabled to pursue the sug-
gestions of his own mind without obstruc-
tion. It does not however appear that
much was produced, in the literary way,
during this London winter : the time was
chiefly improved to enlarge the poet's circle
of acquaintance, and his knowledge of the
world and society. He enjoyed a very de-
lightful intercourse with the Kemble family
and Mrs. Siddons. At Perry's table he
met many distinguished literary characters,
and was introduced, according to the biogra-
pher, by Lord Holland, but according to
Campbell, by Mackintosh, to " The King
of Clubs," — a place dedicated to the meet-
ings of the reigning wits of London. Not-
withstanding its brilliancy and erudition,
the conversation here displeased the poet
from the fact, as he avers, that he found
" all eager to instruct and none willing to
be instructed,'' — and very possibly also,
from the operation of the same feelings be-
fore alluded to, which overcame him at the
table of Mr. Longman. ISevertheless he
afterwards refers to these meetings with a
kindly recollection, and says, " I long once
more to behold those Knights of Literature
sporting at their jousts and tournaments in
that brilliant circle.'' The society of Mr.
Telford was particularly agreeable to
Campbell : and so sincere and lasting was
this gentleman's admiration, that at his
death, some thirty years afterwards, he
willed the poet a considerable legacy.

This winter " Lochiel" was produced,
respecting which, and the line so frequent-
ly quoted,

" Coming events cast their shadows before,"

the followuig anecdote is preserved :

"■ He had gone early to bed, and still medi-
tating on the wizard's ^'Warning," fell fast
asleep. During the night he suddenly awoke,
repeating —

Events to come cast their shadows before \

This was the very thought for which he had
been hunting during the whole week. He
rang the bell more than once with increased
force. At last, surprised and annoyed by so
unseasonable a peal, the servant appeared.
The Poet was sitting with one foot in the bed
and the other on the floor, with an air of mix-
ed impatience and inspiration. ' Sir, are you
ill V inquired the servant. ' 111 ! never better
m my life. Leave me the candle, and oblige

1850.

Life and Correspondence of Camphcll.

415

me with a cup of tea as soon as possible.'
He then started to his feet, seized hold of the
pen, and wrote down the ' happy thought ;'
but as he wrote, changed the words 'events
to come,' into coming events, as it now stands
ii\ the text. Looking to his watch, he observ-
ed that it was two o'clock ! — the right hour
for a poet's dream ; and over his ' cup of tea'
he completed the first sketch of Lochiel."

" What a grand idea ! " said Scott to

Washino-ton Irvino;, ia allusion to this re-

111
markable line ; " it is a noble thought, and

nobly expressed." * * * "He left

out several fine lines in Lochiel, but I got

him to restore them."

One passage of which Campbell seems

himself to have regretted the omission, is

the following :

Wizard — I tell thee yon death-loving raven shall
hold
His feast on the field, ere the quarry be cold ;
And the pall of his wings o'er Culloden shall

wave
Exulting to cover the blood of the brave."

This is fine and powerful ; but with re-
gard to its admission we should demur.
The mere allusion to the raven., as it now
jstands in the poem, suggesting, — not des-
cribing,— is far more sublime.

" For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it

stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing

brood."

How much more efi'ective this intimation
of the raven than the descriptive passage.

This poem, with that of " Hohenlin-
den," which appeared at the same time,
fully sustaining the author's reputation,
encouraged his friends to hope that he
might give a fuller sweep to his genius,
and exert his powers to attempt something
on a grand scale, which should fulfil the
public expectation. But the fact was, that
advantageous as in many respects was his
residence in the family of Lord Minto, he
never felt quite at ease there. Ennui often
overpowered the spirit of poetry, and he
declared himself, after writing ^'Lochiel,"
to have lost both the faculty and the incli-
nation. The fashionable aristocracy was a
new world to him. He felt cold in the at-
mosphere around " that little thing, called
quality.'''' He considered the conversation
of Lord Minto's guests " not worth covet-
ing," and remarks, that " the human mind
at a certain elevation of rank grows more

barren than the summit of the Alps and
Appenines." The secret of all this may,
perhaps, be found in a subsequent confes-
sion, '* Pride and shyness are always spar-
ring in my inside."

Campbell undervalued prose composi-
tion. Returning to Edinburgh, he spent
much time in writing what he terms " in-
glorious articles in prose," for an Edinburgh
bookseller, and edited an edition of some
Greek tragedies. In writing his continua-
tion of SmoUet's History, such was his
apprehension of " losing caste^'''' in the
descent from lofty rhyme to mere historical
compilations, that he bound his employers
to secrecy. To his friend, Richardson, he
confesses the weakness ; acknowledging his
reluctance and its cause ; but to Lord
Minto he says, " the compensation'''^ was in-
sufficient to induce him to put his name to
the work, and adds, " I feel interested even
to enthusiasm in my undertaking." This
is not the only instance afforded of the ten-
dency of the English system of patronage
to lower the standard of independence and
truth among; authors.

The following winter, residing with Mr.
Telford in London, Campbell wrote his
" Historical Annals," and attended to the
new edition of his poems. He had got in-
to an expensive mode of life, and had not
the means to support it. He had no de-
finite aim, and was looking anxiously for
some change., he scarce knew what. The
quarto edition at length appeared, and was
profitable to him. It contained new poems
and was widely circulated, though it was
the seventh edition. Its sale enabled the
author to shake off pecuniary difficulties,
and to think of getting married. If, how-
ever, the " cherub content" was written
in Germany, three years before, it was not
*' in the course of this summer" that
Campbell first fell in love with his cousin,
Matilda Sinclair." Be this as it may,
they were married, despite the substantial
objections suggested by the worldly wisdom
of the young ladies father. She is thus de-
scribed :

" Such was the striking character of Miss
Sinclair's features and expression, that in
whatever society she appeared, she was sure
to command attention. Happening to be at
the Opera in Paris with her brother, in 1802,
and wearing a turban and feather — her favor-
ite head-dress — the Turkish ambassador, who

416

Life and Correspondence of Camphell.

Oct-

sat in the opposite loge^ was so captivated by
her appearance, that he sent his secretary to
inquire of one of the company who sat next
her, who that ' dame si distinguW was ? and
having ascertained that she was a Scotch
lady, he declared that 'he had seen nothing
so beautiful in Europe.' Her features had
much of a Spanish cast ; her complexion was
dark, her figure spare, graceful, and below the
middle size. She had great vivacity of man-
ners, energy of mind, a sensibility — or rather
irritability— which often impaired her health ]
with ' dark eyes, which, when she smiled, or

gave way to any mental emotion, threw over
er features an expression of tender melan-
choly."

Here then was the expected " change."
Life now, for a time, put on new and bril-
liant colors ; but, though " Matilda" was
his, he could not " part with ambition"
nor resign his " gay hopes" at the moss-
covered shrine of Content. He did not
enter the marriage state without a full sense
of its responsibilities, but it was hard to
learn the secret of economizing himself or
his money. His vital energies were often
exhausted under the pressure of an en-
forced effort to redeem the hours of health
which he had wasted. He had yet to learn
how he could profitably tax his powers.
** Such" he writes, " is the effect of matri-
mony ! I verily believe it has changed
me like the aurifying touch of Midas, from
dross to gold. Last summer I was an idle
dog ; this summer I am a sober industrious
man, working for my wife and family twelve
hours — composing nearly a sheet a day.
Alas, not poetry — but humble anonymous
prose. Destined to face the world unclaim-
ed, unnamed, like a babe in the foundling
hospital." Again, a few months later,
" 1 have a little too much industry ; for
the constant consciousness of what I have
now to answer for, beats an alarm-bell in
my heart whenever I detect myself indo-
lent." * * * U ^ ^-^g ^jj^ ^ j^^y -j^

the box, are strong temptations to accept
of any situation that offers sure support.
The woods of Botany Bay were preferable
to uncertainty.'''' This was in allusion to
the vacancy of the Regent's chair [in the
University of Wilna, for which he had
sent in his name as a candidate, but
unsuccessfully as it afterward proved. —
Notwithstanding the complaint of " too
much industry," Campbell gave so little
to the public at this time that it was

evident he must have discarded in the
morning what he wrote at night. It was
this and his " eternal chiselings" that has
caused him to be considered a slow writer.
In fact he composed rapidly — the " biogra-
phy" says " a sheet a day" but this is al-
most beyond belief.

A difficulty with the publisher to whom
he had contracted for the " annals," be-
came a source of much uneasiness. The
fault seems to have been on the author's
side, and his friends had great difficulty in
effecting the reconciliation which was pe-
culiarly essential to him. In a letter to
Richardson, he alludes to the effect pro-
duced by these circumstances on his healthy
complaining of broken night rest and fever-
ish days ; this affords the first insight to
" certain habits" respecting which the bio-
grapher, up to this point, carefully avoids
any allusion. A dreadful fluctuation he-
tween stupor and feverish excitation. *

* * " I have been too much confined
this year past, and the the medicines which
I have used have undone my nerves.''''
Again — " I have secured a good store of
Port wine ; and yet, I assure you, by the
order of my physician, and from better mo-
tives, I have laid aside every propensity to
take one glass more than does me good.''''
This was probably true, but there is no
doubt, that if the propensity was laid aside
for a time, if was afterward renewed.

At Michelmas, this year, (1804) Camp-
bell removed with his family to Lydenham,
where he resided seventeen years. Dr.
Beattie thus describes the Poet's domicile.
" It stood on a gentle eminence ; it consist-
ed of six rooms, two on each floor, the"attic
story of which was converted into a private
study. From this elevation however, he was
often compelled, during the summer
months to descend for change of air, to the
parlor ; for in the upper study, to use his
own words, he " felt as if inclosed within
a hotly seasoned pie." * * * " With
its green jalousies, white palings, and sweet
scented shrubs and flowers covering the
little area in front, it had an air of cheer-
ful seclusion and comfortwhich harmonized
with the tastes and wishes of its gentle in-
mates !" Dear Doctor ! He takes the de-
light in all this of a little girl arranging
her baby-house and fitting her dolls with it.
His fame having preceded him, Camp-
bell was warmly received at Lydenham,

1850.

Life and Correspondence of Camphell.

417

and, notwithstanding ill health and some
terrible family afflictions during his long
residence there, he had " bright intervals"
on which he ever afterwards looked back
with pleasure. But though Sydenham
was the birth-place of " Gertrude," and
*' O ^Conner's child," there is no great sa-
tisfaction in a review of that portion of the
poet's life. Seventeen of his best years
ought to have been more productive.
" There he is," said Jeffrey to Washington
Irving, " cooped up in Sydenham, simmer-
ing his brains to serve up a little dish of
poetry, instead of pouring out a whole cal-
dron."

His sentimental intercourse and corres-
pondence with the Mayos, remind us of
Cowper and his female worshippers ; but
far enough removed was the eleo;ant leisure
of Cowper's retirement from the toilsome
and anxious hours which alternated with
poor Campbell's enjoyments. Besides his
own, he had his mother's establishment at
Edinburgh to provide for, and to meet
these demands he continued to make liter-
ary engagements both in prose and verse ;
compilation, abridgement ; — any thing he
could obtain ; — translations and other mat-
ter for the "Star" newspaper, and papers
for the "Philosophical Magazine." He
wrote doggedly — without the right stimu-
lus : — only occasionally he felt the beating
of the poetical vein, — " Lord Ullin's
Daughter," "The Turkish Lady," and
" The Soldier's Dream" were revised and
finished during the second year, also the
" Battle of Copenhagen," in which he ap-
pears to have imitated the plain strong
style of Drayton, in the " Battle of Agin-
court." This Poem of twenty-seven stan-
zas, was afterwards reduced to eight, and
published as it now stands, — the "Battle
of the Baltic." In a letter to Sir Walter
Scott, we have the original, and also the
first idea of the " Specimens of the British
Poets." In this he applied to Scott for
such literary aid as one friend may fairly
ask of another : desirino; him to mark such
passages in Chatterton as he should deem
suitable, and to request of Erskine to read
Falconer's " Shipwreck," and give report
of the best passages. "I am wading
through oceans of poetry" he says '^ where
not a fish is be caught." The negotiations
for uniting his name with that of Scott,
which finally fell through on account of

VOL. VI. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

*^ the difference ofterms" with the book-sel-
lers, was a great disappointment ; in which
state of mind he again addressed Sir
Walter.

"I trusted to Longman and Rees' letting you
know, as was their duty, the result of the ne-
gotiation respecting the ^ Poets 5' they have
been dilatory, I understand. It is ])robable,
however, that Mr. Rees, being in Scotland,
would bring the story along with him — a story
disgraceful even to booksellers. They have
taken Alexander Chalmers into keeping for
300/. to perform this task. I expected to have
filled this ensuing winter with the pleasing
task of co-operating with a friend— and a
friend of proud fame — in writing the lives and
characters of our Bards. Poor Bards ! you
are all ill-used, even after death, by those
who have lived on your brains. And now,
having scooped out those brains, they drink
out of them, like Vandals out of the skulls of
the starved and slain, served up by the Gothic
Ganymede, Alexander Chalmers.

" To drop metaphor, my dear Friend, I have
winter approaching, and all the happiness I
built on this employment is gone ! I hope I
shall soon have out a volume of fugitive
pieces, and I have several pieces of poetry on
the stocks ; but I have been worn by pain and
sickness, far beyond the power of poetry," -^^
* * "I can now cherish no hopes of

any agreeable undertaking, unless your ex-
tensive influence over Constable, or some of
the Edinburgh trade, can chalk out some plan
of which, as in the last intended, I ^could be
your coadjutor. It is for this purpose I write
to you. Your extensive thoughts have gone
over so many subjects, that there are probably
several great works (of prose I mean) in your
view ; and in some of these it might happen
that the exertion of my industry might be em-
ployed under your banners. Under the gen-
eral fits of pain or debility, to which I have
been for sometime subject, I am utterly unfit
for any p/a«//M/ exercise of the imagination*
but, having learnt the great art of sitting so
many hours' a day at my desk — every day
that I am not positively overcome with sick-
ness— T know I can now trust much to my
indu&^ry- The great difficulty is breaking
proposals to those who are unfortunately the
oily patrons of literature. I am no match for
them. They know the dependence of my for-
tune, and they avail themselves of it. Long-
man & Rees have engaged me to write a
small collection of Specimens of Scottish Po-
etry, and affix a Glossary, with notices of two
or three lives. . . . meagrely and miserably
cramped down to a most pitiful thing. Yet,
having lost every nerve of application to the
poetical pieces I was going on with, I took
this in hand because it was compatible with
27

4l8

Life and Correspondence of Campbell.

Oct,

the state of health and spirits, which are the
thermometers of my poetry. The selection
is a matter of taste, not of historical or anti-
quarian illustration. I think I have the
sources of the work pretty clearly before me ;
but 1 shall not consider myself safe, till I
have from you— if you will have the kind-
ness to note them down — a list of the best
compilations of Scottish poetry which you
would recommend. I have finished the few
slight sketches of lives which are to accom-
pany the Poems, viz., Burns, Ramsay, Fergu-
son. As for the two last, perhaps you will
say I am chronicling small beer. I hope I
shall be able to send you my little volume of
originals in a few weeks. Believe me, my
dear friend, yours very sincerely,

"Thomas Campbell."

Lockhart, thinks the public had no tri-
vial conapensation for the failure of this
project, in Campbell's " Specimens of
English Poetry."

About this time, under the administra-
tion of Charles Fox, and through the in-
terest of Lord Minto and others, Campbell
received a pension of .£200 per annum.
This was however, only the nominal
amount : by reductions of taxes &c., it was
in reality sunk to £168 per annum. The
state of his health was such, that he regarded
the pension as his only defence from pre-
mature dissolution," enabling him to fol-
low the recommendation of his physicians
to go to the sea-side. The improved state
^f his circumstances gradually restored the
tone of his rnind and shortly afterward, was
•written the first sketch of " Gertrude of
Wyoming." He was now able to turn his
mind to more congenial pursuits. The
new poem was in progress, when he had
the misfortune to lose one of his warmest
friends, Mr. Mayow, — the original of his
'-'- Albert." In a letter to Miss Mayow we
find the stanza nearly the same as it after-
ward appeared in the poem.

" The verses I have transcribed. Th^y will
not have the least value, unless the cit",um-
stances under which they were written be ex-
plained. They relate directly and solely, in-
deed, to the most venerable of mankind ; they
were written from the contemplation of his
character — from the impulse which his benign
.and beautiful countenance occasioned; but
they were not applicable as the testimony of
my veneration for him, which, in justice to
my own feelings, and in justice to his inesti-
mable memory, I wish to give to the world as
exclusively his tribute. That must be the
task of another hour.

"The case is, I was engaged, about the
time of the afflicting intelligence, in a poem^
where a character such as his is one of the
most important : the description of serenity in
mature life — of that composure which is not
the result of indifference, but of the fire, fervor,
and sensibility of earlier life, subdued and
sweetened by reflection. Such were the traits
which I thought I saw in his countenance.
His mouth most peculiarly appeared to me to
indicate extreme sensibility ; his front seemed
to have the stamp of a proud and delicate
sense of honor, which, I may speak freely,
must have made his feelings in youth vehe-
ment, and strongly determined to their objects.
But in his age, I think I see him smiling on.
this world with love for all that deserved his
love, and with pity for [all who deserved it
not : —

" How reverend was that face, serenely aged
Undimm'd by weakness, shade, or turbid ire !
Where all but kindly fervors were assuaged ;
Such was the most beloved, the gentlest sire :
And though, amidst that calm of thought entire.
Some high and haughty features might display
A soul impetuous once — 'twas earthly fire
That fled Composure's intellectual ray,
As iEtna's fires grow dim before the rising day."*

There is also, in another letter, a hint that
one of the daughters of this gentleman sat
for " Gertrude," herself. To the comple-
tion of the annals he still felt himself
bound ; and he relieved the tedium of the
labor by going into convivial company,
which tended towards the growth of habits
little accordant with the high standard
of which he was giving a solemn earnest
in his poem. Of Gertrude he began to en-
tertain sanguine hopes. He says, "I have
given some touches of my best kind, to the
Second Part." '' I feel a burning desire
to add some sweet and luscious lines at
certain parts of "Gertrude." "Be not
alarmed ; I know and see distinctly, — most
distinctly — what I have to do with the
poem . I feel at the prospect of these new
touches, unbounded delight." He then
beseeches Mr. Richardson " never to show
these vain and conceited expressions." A
request, which if not in this instance, cer-
tainly in some others of an earlier date,
•vhere the innermost recesses and weak-
nesses of the poet's heart are laid bare to
his friend, should, in better faith, have been
complied with: we allude more particu-
larly to his first letters from Germany.

* See " Gertrude of Wyoming ;" Part 1st.,
Stanza 8th.

1850.

L^ifc and Correspondence of Camphell.

419

The " Specimens," were still going on ;
it was a work peculiarly suited to his taste
and his ability. The following letter upon
the subject will be read with interest : —

" I trust in God and good books, that I shall
make the work at once entertaining, and fully
fraught with information. Having full con-
fidence in my own internal resources to say a
good deal of English Poetry, which has not
yet been said, and equal confidence in those
external resources, I hope to make the narra-
tive and biographical part as accurate, as the
critical and illustrative part w^ill, I trust, be
original and amusing.

The plan of the work is a selection of all
the genuine English Poetry that can be con-
densed within reasonable bounds, with literary
and biographical dissertations prefixed to each
of the poets. I shall admit no specimen that
is not of either already acknowledged excel-
lence, or of such excellence as, if hitherto
unnoticed, I may be able to vindicate and
point out. There is much excellent poetry in
our language which no collector has, to this
day, had the good sense to insert in any com-
pilation ; and there is a considerable portion
which is either unknown to the bulk of more
tasteful readers, or known and admired among
individuals only, and never rescued from neg-
lect by any popular notice. The men of taste
seem to keep those admired passages, like
mistresses, for their own insulated attachment.
I wish to see them brought before the public
for general admiration. Did I ever speak to
you of some valuable passages in Crashaw %
These are specimens of the beauties I allude
to, which it is obvious that Milton had warm-
ed his genius with, before he wrote his Para-
dise Lost. Among these is the soliloquy of
Lucifer : —

* Art thou not Lucifer ] he to whom the droves

Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given %
The nimblest of the lightning- winged loves,

The fairest, and the first-born smile of Heaven 1
Look, in what pomp the mistress-planet moves,

Reverently circled by the lesser seven ;
Such, and so rich the flames that from thine eyes
Oppressed the common people of the skies . . .'

"And, in another place : — •

* What, tho' I missed my blow ] yet I struck high,
And to dare something, is some victory.'

*'One sees here the line —

* Which, if not victory, is yet revenge,'

" and Milton, I think it can be proved, saw

this in English, although it is a translation.
•5«- * -x- * *

"Well — I have digressed too far. In the
biographical part, it is quite evident that to be
accurate; and to enter with simple interest into

the short story of each poet, is quite sufficient
for my object. Instead of branching out to
discover creeks and streamlets in the tide of
their history, I shall content myself with the
true course of the stream. I shall leave to
antiquaries, for instance, to discover the exact
number of Milton's house in Bunhill-fields;
I shall reserve my full strength of research for
the true appreciation of his powers as a poet;
of the state in which he found our poetical
language, and of the influence which he be-
queathed to it ; I speak of this as a thing to
be done, although I have much done already.
I give Milton as a specimen of what I mean
to do with the great poets from Chaucei down-
wards ; because you know, to a tittle, how far
I am acquainted wi<^h Milton. The poets pre-
ceding Milton, and after Spenser, are numer-
ous ] I mean to treat them differently. A man,
or rather a god, like Milton, is to be described
in all his attributes, as a great unity. Those
minor beings are to be classed, male and fe-
male, according to their tribes. I shall endeav-
or, with as much industry as I can employ, to
analyze them individually, like a natural his-
torian; and then attempt as much philosophi-
cal generality as possible. I mean to class
them in groups, as one should class the Words-
worths and Darwins of the present day. This
classifying labor must apply, however, more
particularly to the older poets. We know suf-
ficient of the latter poets, and we live too near
them to need such arrangements, or indeed,
without prejudice, to be able to arrange them
in any but a consequent order."

In the summer of 1809 *^ Gertrude of
Wyoming" appeared; and the extent of
the author's already acquired celebrity was
evinced, by the enthusiasm of its reception.
Jeffrey foresaw its prosperity : in a letter
to the author he expressed freely his opinion
of its faults and merits. '' Many of your
descriptions" he says, "come nearer to the
tone of the ' The Castle of Indolence,'
than any succeeding poetry, and the pathos
is more graceful and delicate. But there
are faults too, for which you must be scold-
ed. It is too short, — not merely for the
delight of the reader — but for the devel-
opment of the story, and for giving full
effect to the scenes. It looks almost as if
you cut out large portions of it, and filled
up the gaps very imperfectly." Jeffrey
objects farther, that " nothing is said of
the early love, and of the childish plays of
the pair," and " nothing of their parting
and the effects of separation on each." It
is doubtless an easy matter to

•' Give receipts how poems should be made,"

420

Life and Correspondence of Camphcll.

Oct.

but we must beg leave to opine tbat had
Gertrude been composed after Jeffrey's
receipt, at least as far as regards the
"children's plays,'' it would have argued
poverty and want of power in the poet. It
was the fault of Wordsworth and other
poets of that day to dwell upon subjects
not sufficiently dignified, but it was never
so with Campbell, his subject and his sen-
timents were serious ; and they placed
him high in rank among those who contri-
buted to purify and elevate the public
taste above the meritricious school of the
preceeding century.

In the tender and delicate passion of

Waldegrave and Gertrude^ Campbell's

genius is exquisitely developed, and any

additional touches would have marred

rather than improved the delineation.

When Campbell drank with an honest
thirst at the sacred fountains, he imbibed
health and vigor ; but when from any less
natural or spontaneous impulse, the result
was different. Fresh from the perusal of
the ancient classics, and filled with their
beauty, he sought, in his earlier poem, to
model himself upon their stately elegance ;
and in so doing, lost the earnestness of his
own nature, and produced the effective
rather than the true. Without that effort,
*' Gertrude" is the more purely classic,
both in style and in the unity with which
the entire action illustrates the pervading
sentiment of Love. The former poem ad-
dresses itself to the feelino-s through elocu-
tion, — the latter through tenderness and
passion. The thoughts are not less glow-
ing nor the imagery less poetic in the
"Pleasures of Hope," but they lack the
silver cord of continuity which holds toge-
ther the pearly and delicate beauties of
" Gertrude." The first passages of both
were re -wrought with long and patient
elaboration, and sometimes over polished.
" Write," said Jeffrey, "one or two things
without thinking of publication, or of what
will be thought of them. I am more mis-
taken in my prognostics than ever I was in
my life, if they are not twice as tall as any
of your fall dressed children." And mis-
taken he was — as the published specimens
collected for the present volume amply tes-
tify. The Poet's thoughts undressed
would never have excited the attention and
admiration produced by their artistic finish.
It is easy to see where Campbell is true to

himself. It is in the pathetic. He was
by nature strictly a lyrist ; and it is only
in the tenderness and passion of the lyric
that he reaches his highest excellence. In
attempting to paint he always falls into the
rhetorical. The interest of " Gertrude "
is only sustained by its lyrical action, char-
acter and passion.

With the second edition of " Gertrude"
appeared the most deeply pathetic, — the
most highly finished and powerful of Camp-
bell's productions ; — The " O'Connor's
Child," a poem that satisfies at once the
intellect and the imagination. So closely
to our hearts has its deep and serious ten-
derness allied it, that we shrink from allud-
ing, as in the justice of criticism we must,
to that one line of bathos, which, following
upon an exclamation of dignified grief, dis-
turbs for a moment the earnestness of our
sympathy :

" But oh ! that midnight of despair !
When I was doomed to rend my hair."

We will not pause to smile, but with a
feeling almost as if we had committed sa-
crilege, hasten on to the agonizing catas-
trophe :

" Another's sword has laid him low —

Anothei-'s, and another's ;
And every hand that dealt the blow
Ah me ! it was a brother's ! "

Then comes the prophecy, and that gi^and
and sublime finale, which we cannot apolo-
gize for giving entire :

" A bolt that overhung our dome

Suspended till my curse was given.
Soon as it passed my lips of foam,

Pealed in the blood-red Heaven.
Dire was the look that o'er their backs

The angry parting brothers threw. —
But now, behold ! like cataracts.

Come down the hills to view
O'Connor's plumed partisans,
Thrice ten Innisfallian clans

Were marching to their doom :
A sudden storm their plumage tossed,
A flash of lightning o'er them crossed.

And all again was gloom ;
But once again in Heaven the bands
Of thunder spirits clapped their hands."

This exquisite poem was a portion of the
new school of passion, in which nothing
had been previously written, if we except
the " Monody" of Cowper, who, after all,
may be said to have given the key note, not

1850.

Jjife and Correspondence of Camphell.

421

only to Campbell, but to Byron, Words-
worth, and Scott.

The admiration expressed by Goethe, of
Campbell's power of exciting high emotions
was probably called forth by the perusal of
"O'Connor's Child." Goethe, no doubt,
dipped as lightly into Campbell as he did
into other English poetry, and would be
likely to select that poem as shorter and
more easily comprehended. He would not
so highly have commended either of the
longer poems, they being far less in ac-
cordance with his peculiar taste ; far less
Goethian.

In April, 1812, Campbell gave his first
lecture on poetry, at the Royal Institution.
Sir Walter Scott, in allusion to it, says : —
" I hope that Campbell's plan of lectures
will succeed, I think the brogue will be
got over, if he will not trouble himself by
attempting to get over it, but read with fire
and feeling." Campbell's own account of
his plan is as follows :

" I begin my first lecture with the Princi-
ples of poetry — I proceed in my second to
Scripture, to Hebrew, and to Greek Poetry.
In the fourth I discuss the poetry of the
Troubadours and Romancers, the rise of
Italian poetry with Dante, and its progress
with Aristo and Tasso. In the fifth, I dis-
cuss the French theatre, and enter on Eng-
lish poetry — Chaucer, Spencer, Shaks-
peare. In the sixth, Milton, Dryden,
Pope, Thompson, Cowper, and Burns, are
yet unfinished subjects."

This course of lectures was eminently
successful ; he had crowded audiences and
warm applause. " Sidney Smith," he says,
" patronizes me a little too much — but I
forgive him." " A second course," we are
told, ^' was applauded to the echo.'' Camp-
bell was now at the zenith. About this time
he was introduced by his " Chieftain's
lovely daughter," Lady Charlotte Camp-
bell, to the Princess of Wales, of which
honor the poet expresses a fear that it may
prove " too much luck." " I shall be ob-
liged," he says, " to go to the opera, in
consequence of having told the great per-
sonage that I loved operas to distraction !"
" Then why dont you go often to them .^"
she demanded. " They are so expensive,"
quoth i^ * * * * Next day a ticket
for the opera arrived ! God help me ! This
is loving operas to distraction ! I shall be
obliged to live in London a month to attend

the opera-house — all for telling one little
fib." Here is patronage again !

The poet's health again declining, he
went, by order of his physician, to Brigh-
ton, where he met with Herschel, the as-
tronomer, — "the great, simple, good, old
man," as he calls him. " He is seventy-
six, but fresh and stout ; and there he sat,
nearest the door, at his friend's house, al-
ternately smiling at a joke, or contentedly
sitting without share or notice in the con-
versation. Any train of conversation he
follows implicitly ; anything you ask he
labors, with a sort of boyish earnestness, to
explain." * * * " He described to
me his whole interview with Buonaparte ;
said it was not true, as reported, that Buo-
naparte understood astronomical subjects
deeply ; but aff'ected more than he knew."
* * # a Jq speaking of his great and
chief telescope, he said, with an air, not of
the least pride, but with a greatness and
simplicity of expression, that struck me
with wonder, — ' I have looked further into
space, than ever human being did before
me.'"

In 1802, Campbell was in Paris, and
visited the Louvre in company with Mrs.
Siddons, where he was excited to tears by
the beauty of the Apollo. He was not so
much overpowered, however, but that he
could take out his pencil, in the full pre-
sence of the God, — "within two yards"
of him, — and write :

" Oh, how that immortal youth, Apollo,
in all his splendor — majesty — divinity —
flashed upon us from the end of the galle-
j.y pj * # * u y{q seems as if he had

just lept from the sun." * * * " ^\^q
whole is so perfect, that, at the full distance
of the hall, it seems to blaze with propor-
tion. The muscle that supports the head
thrown back — the mouth, the brow, the
soul that is in the marble, are not to be ex-
pressed." * * * Many years after-
wards, referring to the period he wrote in
allusion to Mrs. Siddons, " Engrossed as I
was with the Apollo, I could not forget the
honor of being before him in the company
of so august a worshipper ; and it certainly
heightened my enjoyment to see the first in-
terview between the paragon of Art and that
of Nature. She, like a true admirer, was not
loquacious ; but I remember she said, —
' What a great idea it gives us of God, to
think that he has made a human being ca-

422

Life and Correspondence oj Camplell.

Oct.

pable of fashioniDg so divine a form.' At
this time, though in her forty-ninth year,
her looks were so noble, that she made you
proud of English beauty — even in the pre-
sence of Grecian sculpture."

Soon after his return to England, the
poet received, through the death of his
Highland cousin, Mac Arthur Stewart, a
legacy of five hundred pounds, left to him
for a reason highly creditable to himself.
*' The old man, when giving instructions for
his settlement, observed that little Tommy,
the poet, ought to have a legacy, because
lie had been so kind as to give his mother
sixty pounds yearly out of his pension."

Thenceforward Campbell had need to
struggle no longer against the ills of pov-
erty. He continued to reside at Sydenham,
and his health and spirits improved.
About this time, he met with a genuine
Irish bull, which he communicated to
Sneyd Edgeworth for the use of his sister.
So many are spurious, that we cannot help
noticing it. It was a letter to a dead
woman, adddressed, — " Hunter, No. 5,
rioog street, London," and ran thus :

'^JUNE 3, 1410.
'^ Madam, I have received a letter from
London Dated the 5th of May spakeing of
your Death and Desireing me to go to London
to administer to the property as the undwright-
ing do not agred I take to give you this notice
to Wright to me to undecave, or er this I Avill
he on the London Road the wrighter deceris
me to Derect to James Web at Mr. Daniels
No 59, Lecestoer Squair pray wright by Re-
turn of post while I am getting Redy for the
Jurney we are all well in our Hulbs and be-
lieve me your Senceir Cousin John M'Lun."

The " Specimens" had been suspended
through the non-fulfillment of a promise
given by Richard Heber for the loan of
some rare volumes which Campbell thought
■ absolutely necessary to his farther progress.
The Bibliomaniac finally redeemed his
pledge, and the work was renewed. His
Lectures also were now being arranged for
the press. Scott made a proposal which,
had Campbell accepted, — the remaining
Biography might have afforded more grati-
fying testimonies of the poet's future emi-
nence. Dr. Beattie hesitatingly suggests
what, no doubt would have proved true,
that had Campbell, through a professorship
become identified with the University of
Edmburgh, new energies would have been

called forth, and in the use and application
of his fine classical knowledge, much might
have been enlarged in poetry. The old
encumbent of the History chair in the
University had not lectured for some
years, and it was supposed the office of
colleague, with the prospect of succession
to the chair, might be agreeable to Camp-
bell ; but for some reason unexplained, it
was declined.

Dr. Beattie alludes in this place, and on
other occasions, to the early friendship
subsisting between Campbell and Wash-
ington Irving. The Doctor has an inflated
way of speaking of all Campbell's associ-
ates as if they were dear friends : He
doubtless had many, and those most
warmly attached, but, if we except the
" Scotch Brotherhood," he was on terms
of close intimacy with very few of the lead-
ing literary men of the day. A dinner
given at his house in Sydenham, to Crabbe,
Rogers, and Moore, seems to have been a
memorable era in his life. Mr. Irving's
acquaintance with him commenced in 1810,
through Mr. Archibald Campbell, at whose
request he negotiated for the poet, with an
American publisher ; they did not meet
until several years later, and then the ac-
quaintance ^'though extending over a
number of years, was never intimate."
" To tell the truth," says Irving, '* I was
not much drawn to Campbell." '*Iknew
little but what might be learned in the
casual intercourse of general society."

At the request of Mr. Roseoe, the " Lec-
tures" delivered in London, were repeated,
with some difierence of arrangement, be-
fore the ^' Royal Institution of Liverpool."
The only poems, worthy of his reputation,
written within the last three years, were
the celebrated Ode to the Kemble Festi-
val, and the " Rainbow ;" — but, " in the
fire" as he expresses it, " not yet red hot
enough for the anvil," he had another
(Theodoric,) on which he built hopes
never to be realized.

In May, 1820, with the view of gather-
ing materials for his lectures, and consult-
ing the public libraries, he re -visited
Germany. Before leaving England he
entered into an agreement with Colburn,
the Publisher, to edit, on his return, the
New Monthly Magazine, for a term of
three years, to commence the first of Jan-
uary. At Bonn he renewed acqaintane©

1850.

Ziife and Correspondence of Camphell.

423

witli Sclilegel, of whom he says "He is
ludicrously fond of showing oif his English
to me, — accounting for his fluency and
exactness in speaking it, by his having
learnt it at thirteen. This English, at the
same time, is in point of idiom and pronun-
ciation, what a respectable English parrot
would be ashamed of." " He talks with-
out listening, even to questions, upon sub-
jects on which he has not information."
* * * "At times, when he dwells on a
subject of which he is really master he is
quite his own original and animating self;
l)ut when he has nothing to say, he proses
away, like the clack of a mill where there
is no corn to grind."

Leaving his son, now in his sixteenth
year, at Bonn, under the care of the Pro-
fessor of Physics, Dr. Meyer, Campbell re-
turned to England and commenced the
duties of his editorship. He met with some
discouragement in the refusal of contribu-
tions from the highest sources, to which he
first applied ; but notwithstanding this, he
filled his contribution list respectably,
and, devoting for a season all his time and
energy to the work, was able to make a
fair start, and redeem the promise given to
the public. The pressure of these duties
obliged him to remove from Sydenham to
London.

During the remainder of this year, the
calm of domestic life was ruffled by anxi-
ties in regard to his son, who unexpectedly
returned ; and by the now evident premo-
nitions of his approaching insanity, dissi-
pated all the parental hopes. Only a short
time before, poor Campbell had said " the
1}ea.m of expectation that has dawned up-
on me within these few months that my
boy will yet be an ornament to us, creates
an era in my existence." It was long be-
fore the unhappy parents could bring them-
selves to view the case in its proper light.
The disease was undoubtedly hereditary.
Campbell had married his cousin ; her sis-
ter had already been under the discipline
of an asylum, while Mrs. Campbell her-
self is frequently alluded to as being in a
nervous and irritable state. After mature
consideration, and by the best advice, the
young Campbell was placed in a lunatic
asylum, where he remained for several
jears, and though afterward sufficiently
recovered to be removed, his health appears
n.Qit to have been fully restored during his

father's lifetime. The mother's delicate con-
stitution gave way under the afflictions and
she survived but a few years.

Among Campbell's contributions to the
New Monthly this year was the " Last
Man" by many considered equal if not su-
perior in poetical conception and expres-
sion to all his preceding efforts. It was
the last, the parting song, the requiem of
his genius. From this time he seems to
have written nothing quite worthy of him-
self.

The scheme for establishing in London
a University, which had long dwelt in
Campbell's mind, was now suggested pub-
licly. It was to have no church influence
nor rivalship ; "it was to combine various
points in the German method with what-
ever seemed most eligible in the systems
pursued at home." To collect facts and
to test the system by clear observation,
Campbell went again to Berlin ; but his
health had been greatly impaired by his
recent anxieties, and a gentleman who met
him there says " All appear to share the
surprise experienced by myself at his
(Campbell's) decrepid appearance."

Campbell founded some fallacious hopes
upon having originated the University
scheme, which he called the only import-
ant event in his life. No mention is made
of the presidency or even of a professorship
being offered him. He must have antici-
pated a different result ; for in answer to
a communication he had received, stating,
that a strong party among the students of
Glasgow were desirous of his election to
the Rectorship of that University, he
writes, " Whatever be the issue, believe
me, that I shall feel equally sensible of
your kindness whether it be that I sup
with you^ as Lord Rector, at Glasgow ; or
that you dine and condole loitTi me for my
won -rector ship in London. There was
great enthusiasm among the students of
Glasgow in regard to their new Lord Rec-
tor, (for Campbell accepted unhesitating-
ly, the call.) Contrary to all precedent,
he was elected a second and even a third
time ; though on the latter occasion Sir
Walter Scott was set up against him. His
popularity with the collegians never de-
clined ; to his latest day he always spoke of
them as his " darling boys," and his heart
was in the duties of the office.

In commemoration of the third election,

424

Life and Corresjpondence of Camphell.

Oct.

the more advanced students instituted a
literary association which they called " the
Campbell club. " It was at first exclusive,
but became more general in its character,
and so continues to the present day. The
anniversary of Campbell's election is still
celebrated, and they now drink in solemn
silence to the memory of him whose health
used to be received with acclamations.

Within a year after the death of Mrs.
Campbell, the poet removed from his house
in Seymour street to a much larger one,
fitted up expensively , at Whitehall. " In
making this change" says Dr. Beattie, in
his most beatific manner, " he acted upon
the suggestions of an amiable and accom-
plished friend, deeply interested in his wel-
fare, and destined, as he fondly imagined
to restore him to the happiness of married
life." The name of the " amiable and ac-
complished" lady, — able so soon to con-
sole the poet for his late bereavement, is not
given. The sort of whispering my sterious-
ness with which the biographer endeavors
to throw over the affair a veil of romance,
has the effect to excite various unsatisfac-
tory conjectures. All that our curiosity is
able to make out with certainty is the name
of " Mary ;" — that she was a tory, not
youthful, and had resided at Sydenham.
Placing the facts together, and " hoping
we dont intrude'''' we turn back to a short
poem, written during the earlier years of
his married life at Sydenham, one stanza
of which runs thus :

" Beside that face, beside those eyes.
More fair than stars, e'er traced in skies

By Newton or by Galileo.

Oh how could'st thou, although a brute.
Upon that face when gazing mute —

How couldst thou crush the gentle foot

Of Mary Wynell Mayow !"

Campbell himself, in a letter to Scott,
alludes lightly to the affair and says, " I
laughed at the regrets of my Edinburgh
friends about my intended marriage with a
certain lady. * * * The baseless fab-
ric of a vision !"

In 1831, the editorship of the New
Monthly and also the " Biography of Sir
Thomas Lawrence" which he had com-
menced, were resigned ; the former be-
cause "he got into scrapes and lawsuits,"
the latter, because the booksellers " hur-
ried" him. Finding himself largely in
arrears with the publisher of the New

Monthly he embarked in another editorial
in order to free himself j but disappointed
in this, mortgaged his poems and rented
his new house to defray Colburn's debt.

In the interval between his resignation of
the " New Monthly" and ©ommencing
with " The Metropolitan," he went, for
relaxation and the benefit of sea air to St.
Leonards, where he wrote his '' View of
St. Leonards," the followinsi; two lines of
which he has designated as " his best."

" And here the Spring dips down her emerald

urn
For showers io glad ike earth."

Here, in his small lodgings, " hung over
the sea, like the stern of a ship," we find
him in renewed health and spirits, at the
age of fifty- two, leading off' " bevies of
fair maids" in moonlight walks along the
cliffs of Hastings, " listening to the night-
ingale, repeating poetry and picking up
wild flowers" like another " Apollo among
the muses."

In a letter to his sister, he writes : — " I
am now more than ever in love with St.
Leonards, and, during my "convalescence,
you might have seen me skipping and
sauntering among the rocks, as happy as a
whelp or a child — the two happiest things
in nature, except a convalescent poet."
The followino; is a ludicrous account of a
visit from some young ladies, who came
with their aunt, not exactly knowing
whether they were to see a Mr. or a Miss
Campbell, and being received by the poet,
in his " night-gown and black cowl." " It
was not," says Campbell, " till I called apoB
their grandmamma, dismounting from a
handsome steed — whip in hand — my best
blue coat half-buttoned over a handsome
waistcoat, with dandy spurs and trowsers,
and all the airs of ' a fine young man,' thai
they gave up considering me as an eMerlj
spinster."

We have seen a portrait of Campbell in
his favorite " blue coat," but it was hj an
inferior artist, and gave us bo very Mgh
idea of the personal beauty which has heen
attributed to him. It bore no iBtelleetual
resemblance to the following description :

'^ He was generally careful as to dress, andl
had none of Dr. Johnson's indiiFereace to iine-
linen. His wigs were always nicely adjust-
ed, and scarcely distinguishable from natujal
hair. His appearance was interesting aa^l

1850.

Life and Correspondence of Camphell.

425

handsome. Though rather below the middle
size, he did not seem little ; and his large dark
eye and countenance bespoke great sensibili-
ty and acuteness. His thin quivering lip and
delicate nostril were highly expressive. —
When he spoke, as Leigh Hunt has remarked,
dimples played about his mouth, which, ne-
vertheless, had something restrained and close
in it — as if some gentle Puritan had crossed
the breed, and left a stamp on his face — such
as we see in the female Scotch face rather
than the male. . . In personal neatness and
fastidiousness — no less than in genius and
taste — Campbell in his best days resembled
Gray. Each was distinguished by the same
careful finish in composition — the same classi-
cal predilections and lyric fire, rarely but stri-
kingly displayed. In ordinary life they were
both somewhat finical."

When Sir Thomas Lawrence was paint-
ing his portrait, the poet exhibited great
solicitude. At one time he writes, " If
you see Lawrence again, implore him to
say what he decides about my ' lovely por-
trait.' I have got so smoky and old-look-
ing, that I wish to get back my imaginary
beauty, just to see how I shall look when
I grow young again in heaven. That is
the merit of Lawrence's painting ; he
makes one seem to have got into a draw-
ing-room in the mansions of the blessed,
and to be looking at one's self in a mirror."

The Metropolitan, after passing through
various hands, became at last the property
of Marryatt, the novelist. Campbell and
Marryatt were joined by Moore, and, for
a time, all went on prosperously. When
or why Campbell's connection ceased with
this magazine, we are not informed.

The cause of Poland had, for the last
two years, occupied a large portion of his
thoughts and time. The Polish Associa-
tion was gotten up entirely through his ex-
ertions. He was at the same time engaged
in writing his " Life of Mrs. Siddons," a
task enjoined upon him almost with her
latest breath. She had been one of his
earliest friends, and his allusionss to her
in his " correspondence," are frequent,
and in the warmest strain of admiration
and respect. In his retrospective notes he
eays :

" Mrs, Siddons was a great simple being,
who was not shrewd in her knowledge of the
world, and was not herself well understood,
in some particulars, by the majority of the
world. The universal feeling towards her
was respectful, but she was thought austere :

but with all her apparent haughtiness, there
was no person more humble when humility
became her. From intense devotion to her
profession she derived a peculiarity of man-
ner— the habit of attaching dramatic tones and
emphasis to common-place colloquial subjects,
but of which she was not in the least con-
scious, unless reminded of it. 1 know not
what others felt ; but I own that I loved her
all the better for this unconscious solemnity
of manner. . . She was more than a woman
of genius ; for the additional benevolence of
her heart made her an honor to her sex and to
human nature." . . . "In the foUow-ing
passages," he adds, " Joanna Baillie has left
a perfect picture of Mrs. Siddons :—

Page. Madam, there is a lady in your hall.
Who begs to be admitted to your presence.

Lady. Is it not one of our invited friends 1

Page. No : far unlike them. It is a stranger.

Lady. How looks her countenance 1

Page. So queenly, so commanding, and so noble,
I shrunk at first in awe ; but when she smiled
Methought I could have compassed sea and land
To do her bidding.

Lady. Is she young or old 1

Page. Neither, if right I guess ; but she is fair ;
For time hath laid his hand so gently on her.
As he too had been awed. . .
So stately, and so graceful is her form,
I thought at first her stature was gigantic ;
But, on a near approach, I found in truth
She scarcely does surpass the middle size.

Lady. What is her garb *?

Page. I cannot well describe the fashion of it —
She is not decked in any gallant trim.
But seems to me, clad in the usual weeds
or high habitual state.

Lady. Thine eye^ deceive thee, boy.
It is an apparition thou hast seen.

Friherg. It is an apparition he has seen,
Or— -it is Jane de Montfort !

Jane de Montfort, Act. II., Scene I."

Campbell, no doubt, entered upon her
Biography with enthusiasm, and it was
eagerly received by the public, but its cele-
brity was only for the day.

From the close of his connection with
the " New Monthly," may, perhaps, be
dated the gradual decline of Campbell's
literary celebrity. The cold reception
given to Theodoric had been a deep morti-
fication to him. He seems now to have
exhibited an occasional asperity and irrita-
bility, wholly contrary to the natural
sweetness of his disposition. He wrote
little, and that not in his best manner, for
he no longer had, what be required, the
stimulus of an assured success. Stars of
magnitude had arisen in the literary hori-
zon, where, for a time, he had shone alone.
His taste, so cultivated and refined, was

426

Life and Correspondence of Cainphelh

Oct.

not to be cheated ; lie was not only " afraid
of the shadow his own fame cast before
him," but he also felt that theirs was a
wider and hii>;her rano^e, and he shrank
from attempting it. It was better — so his
Scotch shrewdness had taught him, — to
rest upon the laurels he had won, than to
go forth to battle, when the strength of the
god-head was with them, — not him. " It
is unfortunate for Campbell," said Mrs.
Campbell to Irving, " that he lives in the
same age with Scott and Byron." Camp-
bell loved to be familiarly recognized in his
poetic character, and often to his friends
designated himself as "your poet," but
there was not in his life so much of the
visionary as is commonly attributed to the
■*' sons of song." He read men as they
are ; had few idiosyncracies ; and, in his
companionship and principles especially,
enjoyed the actual more than the ideal. It
is not unfair to sa;, that his ardor in the
cause of Poland was stimulated by the
gratitude of the exiles, and by his being
kept, through it, in a position of public im-
portance. He fed, as it were, his own en-
thusiasm, until it became almost a monoma-
nia. "I was with him," says Dr. Mad-
den, " the day he received an account of
the fall of Moscow. Never in my life did
I see a man so stricken by profound sor-
row ! * * # * J feared that if this
prostration of all energy of mind and body
continued, his life or his reason must have
sunk under the blow."

Disappointed in his political ambition,
and no longer " the observed of all observ-
ers," as the most admired poet of the day,
he was happy to be distinguished as the
Friend of Poland. As the vision of a
poetic immortality faded before him, his
hand relaxed its grasp, and he turned to
other sources for consolation ; — and those
were not wanting of a more enduring
nature.

" He spoke frequently, if led to it, of his
feelings while writing his poems. When he
wrote 'The Pleasures of Hope,' fame, he said,
was everything in the world to him : if any
one had foretold to him f^en, how indifferent
he would be now^ to fame and public opinion,
he would have scouted the idea ; but, never-
theless, he finds it so now. He said, he hoped
he really did feel, with regard to his posthu-
mous fame, that he left it, as well as all else
about himself, to the mercy of God : — ' I be-
lieve, when i am gone, justice will be done to

me in this way — that 1 was a pure writer. I;
is an inexpressible comfort, at any time of
life, to be able to look back and feel that I
have not written one line against religion or
virtue.'

" Another time, speaking of the insignifi-
cance which, in one sense, posthumous fame
must have, he said : — ' When I think of the
existence w^hich shall commence when the
stone is laid above my head — when I think of
the momentous realities of that time, and of
the awful ness of the account I shall have to
give of myself — how can literary fame appear
to me but as — nothing ! Who will think if it
then ? If, at death, we enter on a new state
for eternity, of what interest, beyond this pre-
sent life, can a man's literary fame be to him %
Of none — when he thinks most solemnly
about it.' "

A highly interesting scene, illustrative
of the decline of Campbell's popularity is
related in Mr. Irving's " Introductory,"

" It was at an annual dinner of the Literary
Fund, at which Prince Albert presided, and
where was collected much of the prominent
talent of the kingdom. In the course of the
evening, Campbell rose to make a speech. I
had not seen him for years, and his appear-
ance showed the effect of age and ill health ;
it was evident, also, that his mind was obfus-
cated by the wine he had been drinking. He
was confused and tedious in his remarks ;
still, there was nothing but what one would
have thought would be received with indul-
gence, if not deference, from a veteran of his
fame and standing ; a living classic. On the
contrary, to my surprise, I soon observed signs
of impatience in the company ; the poet was
repeatedly interrupted by coughs and discord-
ant sounds, and as often endeavored to pro-
ceed ; the noise at length became intolerable,
and he was absolutely clamored down, sinking
into his chair overwhelmed and disconcerted.
I could not have thought such treatment pos-
sible to such a person at such a meeting.

"Haliam, author of the Literary History of
the Middle Ages, who sat by me on this occa-
sion, marked the mortification of the poet, and
it excited his generous sympathy. Being
shortly afterwards on the floor to reply to a
toast, he took occasion to advert to the recent
remarks of Campbell, and in so doing, called
up in review all his eminent achievements in
the world of letters, and drew such a picture
of his claims upon popular gratitude and
popular admiration as to convict the assembly
of the glaring impropriety they had been
guilty of — to soothe the wounded sensibility
of the poet, and send him home to, I trust, a
quiet pillow."

In his visit to Algiers in 1834, the total

1850.

Ijife and Correspondence of Cam'phell.

427

change of climate, scenery, society and
mode of life seemed almost miraculously
to revive his energies. He found there,
in a pamphlet published about the colony,
his own opinions in the New Monthly,
quoted, with honorable mention of him-
self;— and, on the eve of publication, a
translation of his poems. The glory of
his jouth seemed, for a brief space, renew-
ed. His private letters are full of vivid
description, and surpass his " Letters from
the South,'' sent to the New Monthly.
He returned to England, looking younger
than when he left ; and even Dr. Beattie
admits that, for a time, " the company and
conversation of the African traveller, were
more courted than those of the poet."

The '' Life of Petrarch," which as in
other instances, he had rashly undertaken
from a short lived enthusiasm, and found
himself unable to complete to his own satis-
faction, was advancing slowly, and had
become an irksome labor.

In the winter of 1841 , he took a lease of a
house in Victoria Square, Pimlico,andmade
a proposal to Mrs. Alexander Campbell to
resign to his care his niece, her daughter,
expressing his intention to provide for her.
It was about this time that he exhibited
occasional aberrations which excited at once
ridicule and pity. Fascinated with a child
whom he had met in the street, in one of
his evening walks, he resorted to the sin-
gular alternative of the following newspaper
advertisement to discover her name ; —

Aprit 19th. — A gentleman, sixty-three years
old, who, on Saturday last, between six and
seven, p. m., met, near Buckingham Gate,
with a most interesting-looking child, four
years of age, hut who forbore, from respect
for the lady who had her in hand, to ask the
girl's name and abode, will be gratefully
obliged to those who have the happiness of
possessing the child, to be informed where she
lives, and if he may be allowed to see her
again. A letter will reach the advertiser, T,
C, at No. 61, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.

Another anecdote is related denoting
the same irregularity : — Hearing of the
benefit derived from the German baths,
he abruptly and without preparation em-
barked for Rotterdam, without money suf-
ficient for his expenses, and leaving his
friends in a state of anxious uncertainty.
He wrote from Wiesbaden to Doctor Beat-
tie, requesting him to send the bank notes

he would find in the bed-room press, in
the house in Victoria Square. The ser-
vant left in charge of the house showed the
Doctor and his solicitor, whom he took with
him, the bed-room where the press stood.
This repository seemed not to have been
locked, and was occupied by articles of
dress, books, &c., all of which were care-
fully examined — but no money was discov-
ered. Portmanteaus, table- drawers, coat-
pockets and even canisters were emptied,
with no better success : after re-readins:
the letter, to be sure that there was no
mistake, the press was ransacked again —
but in vain ; the search was concluded to
be hopeless, when, in shutting the press-
doors, the point of an embroidered slipper
stood in the way. Taking it in hand to
push it back, it felt hard : on examination
it was found to be stuffed with white paper
matches, such as are used to light candles.
One of these twisted like a whip cord was
unrolled, and turned out to be a ten pound
Bank of England note. Here was the
treasure : every bit of paper untwisted
disclosed the same. The full amount
contained in both slippers was three hun-
dred pounds.

This year the " Pilgrim of Glencoe and
other Poems" appeared, — a volume made
up chiefly of minor pieces composed at
various times. The Launch Ode is good,
but neither the occasion nor the execution
raise it to an equality with " The Mari-
ners of England."

Campbell was now so evidently " break-
ing up," that, says the Biographer, "those
who met him in the street saluted him with
ill-dissembled sorrow. "

In 1848, he left London ; and taking
his niece, Mary Campbell with him, went
to reside permanently at Bologne. His
friends seem not to have admitted the ex-
pediency of this step ; they took leave of
him with a feeling that he could return to
them no more ; and it was not long before
he began himself to know that his days
were numbered. The following spring Dr.
Beattie was summoned by Miss Campbell
to the death-bed of his friend.

The following are extracts from a jour-
nal of the last two weeks : —

'^ We entered the library, adjoining the
Poet's bedroom, and the next minute found us
at his side. We were all greatly shocked :
for he was sadly changed. The arrival ol

428

Life and Correspondence of Camphell.

Oct,

old friends seemed to revive him. His words
were, as he held my hand — ' Visits of angels
from heaven,' — thinking, perhaps, of the drea-
ry interval since we parted in London. He
spoke to each with a faint smile, but in few
words, and with that peculiar lightening of
the eye which gave forcible expression to all
he said.

It was thought doubtful at one time this
morning whether he was quite conscious of
what was said in his presence. Of the fact,
however, a little artifice soon furnished us
with proof. We were speaking of his poems.
Hohenlinden was named; when, affecting not
to remember the author of that splendid lyric,
a guess was hazarded that it was by a Mr.
Robinson. . . ' No,' said the Poet, calmly,
but distinctly, ' it was one Tom Campbell.' "
f June 12th.~Ee has passed a tolerable
night — sleeping at intervals— and taking a
little food vdien it was offered to him ; but
there is nothing encouraging — no actual im-
provement ; and if at all changed since yes-
terday, it is for the worse.

" By his desire, I again read the prayers
for the sick; followed by various texts of
Scripture, to which he listened with deep at-
tention ; suppressing, as much as he could,
the sound of his own breathing, which had
become almost laborious. At the conclusion
he said : ' It is very soothing !' At another
time I read to him passages from the Epistles
and Gospels; directing his attention, as well
as I could, to the comforting assurance they
contained of the life and immortality brought
to light by the Savior. When this was done
I asked him, ' Do you believe all this ]' ' Oh
yes !' he replied, with emphasis—' I do !' His
manner all this time was deeply solemn and
affecting. When I bes:an to read the prayers
he raised his hand to his head— took off his
nightcap — then clasping his hands across his
chest, he seemed to realize all the feelings of
his own triumphant lines: —

' This spirit shall return to Him

Who gave its heavenly spark ;
Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim

When thou thyself art dark ! —
No ! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine.

By Him recall'd to breath,
Who captive led Captivity,
Who robb'd the Grave of victory

And took the sting from Death !'

^'June 14fA.— All night at the sufferer's
bedside.^ Never shall I forget the impression
these night-watches have left on my mind.

/ • • his words are few — pronounced
with an eflbrt — and often inarticulate; but
there is no murmur; no complaint; and he
repeats the same answer—' tolerable.' , .
• - . . The respiration is becoming
more difficult and hurried : his lips are com-

pressed—the nostrils dilated — the eyes closed
— and the chest heaves almost convulsively.
Quam mutatus ah illo ! He is still conscious,
however; and the very compression of the
lips discovers an effort to meet the struggle
with firmness and composure.

"At two o'clock he opened his eyes, and
then, as if the light of this world were too
oppressive, closed them. He is now dying.
The twilight dews of life are lying heavy on
his temples.

* * -x- -Jf -x- -x- -x-

"At a quarter past four in the afternoon,
our beloved Poet, Thomas Campbell, expired,
without a struggle. His niece, Dr. Allatt, and
myself, were standing by his bedside. The
last sound he uttered was a short faint shriek
— such as a person utters at the sudden ap-
pearance of a friend — expressive of pleasure
and surprise. This may seem fanciful — but
I know of nothing else that it might be said to
resemble.

" Sunday. — This evening, between nine
and ten o'clock, the body was removed from
the upper chamber, and placed in its leaden
coffin— near ' his own chair' — in the drawing-
room. The ceremony was witnessed by the
immediate friends and servants of the family.
It was very impressive — aided by the deep si-
lence—and the recollection that this room was
but recently fitted up for the social enjoy-
ments of life. The body w^as removed from
the bed on the coffin-lid — without discompos-
ing a limb or a feature. The stars were
shining through the windows at the time —
along the staircase and passage, lights were
placed — ^just sufficient to direct the steps of
the bearers— and if the silence w^as interrupt-
ed, it was only by a sigh or a whisper."

There was an uncertainty in regard to
the Poet^s remains being interred at West-
minster, but, after some preliminaries with
the Dean of Westminster, it was deter-
mined, and accordingly they were taken to
London, and on Wednesday, July 3rd,
1 844, attended by a large multitude of all
ranks and conditions, deposited in a grave
at the extremity of an angle formed by the
monuments erected to the memory of Ad-
dison and Goldsmith, and closely adjoining
that of Sheridan.

When the coffin was lowered into the
grave the crowd pressed eagerly round ;
and when the Rev. Mr. Milman arrived
at that portion of the ceremony in which
dust is consigned to dust Col. Szyrma^
one of the numerous body of Poles who
were present, brought a handful of earth,
taken for the purpose from the tomb of
Kosciosko, and scattered it over the coffin.

a P 1

1850.

Congressional Summary.

429

CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY.

Correction. — Owing to a mistake in the
Telegraphic Report of the President's Message
of August 6th, and which was unfortunately
transmitted throughout the country in every
direction, the President was made to say, that
<' the claim of title on the part of Texas ap-
pears to Congress to be well-founded in whole
or in part."

The above mistake crept into the last'number
of this journal. The true wording is as follows :
"i/" the claim of title on the part of Texas

be well-founded, in
the competency of

appears to Congress to
whole or in part, it is in
Congress," &c.

On Friday, September 6, the Texas Boun-
dary Bill, from the Senate, amended by the
Bill for the Territorial Organization of New
Mexico, (this amendment was afterwards con-
curred in by the Senate,) passed the House of
Representatives, by a vote of 108 to 98. The
vote was as follows :

AYES— (For the Bill.)

Indiana — Albertson, W. J. Brown, Dunham,
Fitch, Gorman, McDonald, Robinson-7.

Alabama — Alston, W. R.W. Cobb, Hilliard-S.

Tennessee — Anderson, Ewing, Gentry, I. G.
Harris, A. Johnson, Jones, Savage, F. P. Stanton,
Thomas, Watkins, Williams-11.

New York — Andrews, Bockee, Briggs, Brooks,
Duer, McKissock, Nelson, Plicenix, Rose, Scher-
merhorn, Thurman, Underhill, Walden, White-
14.

Iowa — Deffler-1.

Rhode Island — Geo. G.King—1.

Missouri — Bay, Bowlin, Green, Hall-4.

Virginia — Bayly, Beale, Edmunson, Haymond,
McDowell, McMullen, Martin, Parker-8.

Kentucky — Boy&, Breck, G. A. Caldwell, J.L.
Johnson, Marshall, Mason, McLean, Morehead,
R. H. Stanton, John B. Thompson-lO.

Maryland — Bowie, Hammond, Keer, McLane-4

Michigan — Buel-1 .

Florida— £;. C. Cabell~l.

Delaware — /. W. Houston-!.

Pennsylvania— CAes^er Butler, Casey, Chandler,
Dimmick, Gilmore, Levin, Job Mann, McLana-
han, Pitman, Robins, Ross, Strong, James
Thompson,-13.

North Carohna — R. C. Caldwell, Deberry, Out-
law, Shepperd, Stanly-5.

Ohio — Disney, Hoagland, Potter, Taylor, Whit-
tlesey-5.

Massachusetts — Duncan, Eliot, Grinnell-3.

Maine — Fuller, Gerry, Littlefield-3.
Illinois — Thos. L. Harris, McClernand, Rich-
ardson, Young — 4.

New Hampshire — Hibbard, Pcaslee, Wilson-3.
Texas — Howard, Kaufman-2.
Georgia — Owen, Toombs, Welborn-3.
New Jersey — Wildrick-1.
Total for the bill, 108.

NAYS— (Against the Bill.)

New York — Alexander, Bennett, Burrows,
Clark, Conger, Gott, Holloway, W. T. Jackson,
John A. King, Preston King, Matteson, Putnam,
Reynolds, Ramsey, Sackett, Schoolcraft, Silves-
ter—17.

Massachusetts — Allen, Fowler, Horace Mann,
Rockwell-A.

North Carolina — Ashe, Clingman, Daniel, Ven-
able-4.

Virginia — Averett, Bocock, Holliday, Meade,
Millson, Powell-6.

Illinois — Baker, Wentworth-2.

Michigan — Bingham, Sprague-2.

Alabama — Bowden, S. W. Harris, Hubbard,
Inge-4.

Missouri — A. G. Brown, Featherston, McWil-
lie, Jacob Thompson-4.

South Carolina — Bint, Colcock, Holmes, Orr,
Wallace, Woodward-6.

Connecticut — Thomas B. Butler, Waldo-2.

Ohio — Cable, Campbell, Carter, Corwin, Crow-
ell, Nathan Evans, Giddings, Hunter, Morris,
Olds, Root, Schenck, Sweetzcr, Vinton-15.

Pennsylvania — Calvin, Dickey, Howe, Moore,
Ogle, Reed, Thaddeus Stevens-1.

Wisconsin — Cole, Doty, Durkee-3.

Rhode Island — Dixon-1.

Georgia — Haralson, Joseph W. Jackson-2.

Indiana — Harlan, Julian, McGaughey-3.

Vermont — Hebard, Henry, Meacham, Peck-4.

Arkansas — Robert W. Johnson-1.

New Jersey — James G. King, Newell, Van
Dyke-3.

Louisiana — La Sere, Morse-2.

Maine — Otis, Sawtelle, Stetson-3.

Missouri — Phelps-1 .

New Hampshire — Tuck-1.
Total nays, 98.

Absent or not voting:

Ashmun, Mass.
Bissell, 111.
Cleveland, Conn.
A. Evans, Md.
Freedley, Penn.

Bocock, Va.
Hampton, Penn.
Hannonson, La.
Hay, N. Jersey.
Nes, Penn.

430

Congressional Summary.

Oct.

Goodenow,M.Q.
Gorman, Ind.
Gould, N. York.
Hackett, Ga.
Hamilton, Md.

Risley, N. York.
Spaulding, do.
Stepens, Ga.
WiLMOT, Pa.

Wood, Ohio-20.

Votes for the Bill :
Northern Whigs, 24 Northern Dems. 32

Southern do. 25-49 Southern do. 27-59

Total, - - 108.

Votes against the Bill :

Northern Whigs, 44 Northern Dems. 13

Southern do. 1-45 Southern do. 30-43
Special Free Soilers, - - - 10.
Total, - - 98.

Total voting, 206. Absent, 20. Speaker, 1.
Vacant, 2 seats (in Mass.)

On the following day, the Bill for the Ad-
mission of California, and the Utah Territorial
Organization Bill, in the shape in which they
came from the Senate, passed the House of
Representatives. The California Bill was
passed by the decisive vote of 150 to 57; and
the Utah Bill by 97 to 85.

The first section of that bill enacts as fol-
lows :

That all that part of the territory of the
United States included within the following
limits, to wit : bounded on the West by the
State of California, on the North by the Ter-
ritory of Oregon, on the East by the summit
of the Rocky Mountains, and on the South by
the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude, —
be, and the same is hereby created into a tem-
porary government, by the name of the Terri-
tory of Utah ; a7id^ when admitted as a State,
the said Territory^ or any portion of the same,
shall be received into the Union, with or with-
out slavery, as their Constitution may prescribe
at the time af their admission : Provided, that
nothing in this act contained shall be constru-
ed to inhibit the Government of the United
States from dividing said Territory into two
or more Territories, in such manner and at
such times as Congress shall deem convenient
and proper^ or from attaching any portion of
said Territory to any other State or Territory
of the United States.

On the 9th of September, President Fillmore
signed the Texas Boundary, New Mexico,
California, and Utah bills, and they are con-
sequently laws.

On the 12th, the Fugitive Slave bill, from
the Senate, passed the House of Representa-
tives, unamended, by a vote of 109 to 75.

The first and second sections of this bill
provide that the United States Courts shall
appoint Commissioners, before whom claims
for runaway slaves shall be examined.

Section 3, Provides, that the number of
these Commissioners shall be, from time to
time, enlarged, so as to afford reasonable faci-

lities for the reclamation of fugitives from
labor.

Section 4. Provides that, upon satisfactory
proof being presented by the agent, or owner,
the Court, or the Justice of the Peace, or the
Commissioner, shall grant certificates to the
claimants, with authority to remove the fugi-
tive to the State or Territory whence he fled.

Section 5. Provides, that it shall be the duty
of the United States Marshals and deputies to
execute all warrants issued under the provi-
sions of this act ; and that if the Marshal
neglect his duty of endeavoring to secure a
fugitive under demand, he shall pay a fine of
one thousand dollars ; and that if the slave
escapes from him, when once in his posses-
sion, he shall pay the value of the slave ; and
that the posse comitatus shall be subject to be
called out by the officers of the law in its ex-
ecution.

Section 7. Provides, that any person resist-
ing the law", or aiding in the escape of a fugi-
tive, shall be subject to a fine not exceeding
one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not
exceeding six months, and shall pay to the
party thus deprived of the services of the fu-
gitive, the sum of one thousand dollars for each
fugitive so lost.

In the Senate, September 10, the bill for the
suppression of the slave trade in the District
of Columbia being under discussion, Mr.
Sew^ard moved in amendment : That slavery
in the District be entirely abolished : — that its
abolition depend on the vote of the inhabi-
tants ; and that in case, on such vote being
taken, it should be in favor of emancipation,
the sum of two hundred thousand dollars be
appropriated to pay the owners of the slaves
for whatever loss they may suffer.

Mr. Baldwin, of Connecticut, objected to
this proposition, as tending to embarrass the
harmonious action of the two Houses on this
subject. He preferred that Congress should
act finally upon this bill, before entering upon
the consideration of any other proposition,
which, however desirable, there is less reason
to believe will be immediately successful.

Mr. Mangum, of North Carolina, observed
that, under proper auspices, he should have
voted for the abrogation of the slave trade in
the District. He should now change his course.
He should vote for no proposition of that
kind. He was convinced that it was impos-
sible to satisfy certain gentlemen. They would
urge on their objects, though they should cause
blood to flow knee-deep over the whole South,
and over the wreck of this Union.

Mr. Dawson, of Georgia, called the atten-
tion of the country to the feeling which ex-
isted among some of the members of this
body. When Congress were endeavoring to
harmonize the conflicting interests and pas-

1850,

Congressional Summary.

431

sions of the country, and had begun to hope
that the best of feeling had been restored, not
only here, but throughout the Union, we still
find a disposition to raise and agitate quistions
which have been already decided. The ques-
tion arises, whether this is the offspring of that
kind of patriotism which ought to burn in the
breast of every American, or whether it is not
an emanation from disappointed political as-
pirations. Whether it is not an effort now
making to divide this great country for mere
purposes of political aggrandizement ; wheth-
er it is not an effort on the part of individuals
to hold up one plank of the w^reck of a certain
established political platform ; w^hether it is
not to save a sinking party that has risen up
in this country, not for the purpose of elevat-
ing the character of the Union, or the happi-
ness of the people, but to aggrandize and
elevate a few individuals. Sir, said Mr.
Dawson, I am sorry, extremely sorry, to see
any man who would go into the country, and
throw a firebrand, as it were, into the midst of
the magazine, for the purpose of creating
alienation, and inciting one portion of the
country against another.

Mr. Dayton, of New Jersey, opposed the pro-
position offered by Mr. Seward, for the reason
that it opened an entirely new question to in-
crease the agitation, already sufficiently alarm-
ing, on these subjects. The public mind has
not been called to this question. Public senti-
ment has not been felt. The Senate, standing
here, would, of itself, take the initiative in a
new proceeding, w^hen its plain duty was to
calm the present excitement of the country.
I cannot but see, said Mr. Dayton, that the
adoption of this amendment would defeat the
very bill now before the Senate. The original
bill harmonizes and brings into action the kind
feelings of a large portion of this chamber —
brings to a common centre the good feeling of
the North and South. But adopt the amend-
ment of the Senator from New York, and you
destroy all.

Mr. WiNTHROP, of Massachusetts, opposed
the amendment, not because he thought it
destined to dissolve the Union, but because
he considered it a proposition of a crude and
hasty character, and calculated to embarrass
the action of individuals upon a question of
the deepest importance. He regretted that the
Senator from New York should have thought
proper to spring such a proposition upon them
without previous notice, and in this immediate
connexion.

" What is the proposition % It begins by a
proclamation of immediate emancipation to
every slave in the District of Columbia. But
what follows % 1 had almost said that it holds
out a false promise on its face. It says sla-
very shall instantly cease in the District of

Columbia! But does it cease even under the
amendment'? No, sir* not at all. The ques-
tion is to be put to a popular vote in the Dis-
trict. We are to have, under this amendment,
a grand election in this District- six months
hence, to decide in favor of emancipation or
against emancipation. Notice is to be given,
in the mean time, to all the slaves in the Dis-
trict, that their freedom or servitude depends
on the result of this election. If a majority of
the votes cast, shall be against emancipation,
slavery is to be prolonged and perpetuated.
In that event, too, the slave-trade, the suppres-
sion of which is proposed by this bill, wi!l re-
main as it now is ; for the honorable Senator
has moved his proposition as a substitute for
the whole bill. He has not proposed to leave
any part of this bill to accomplish the great
object of putting an end to the odious and ab-
horrent traffic which has so long brought re-
proach upon the American capital, in case his
own scheme should be voted down by the
people.

" Sir, I cannot but regard this as a very
crude and hasty proposition, in the first place.
And I cannot but regard it, in the next place,
in a most unseasonable and untimely proposi-
tion. I deeply regret that it has been brought
forward in connexion with this bill — under the
present circumstances of the country — at a
moment when the public mind is so greatly
agitated on questions of this sort, and at a mo-
ment, moreover, when we are endeavoring to
accomplish another object, which is perhaps
within our reach, and which has been so ear-
nestly desired by all who have the interests of
humanity at heart. When the abolition of
these accursed depots for carrying on the slave-
trade in the District of Columbia seems just
within our grasp, I must repeat, sir, that I do
most deeply deplore that the honorable Senator
from New York should embarrass and perhaps
defeat our action, by a proposition so indis-
creet, so ill-digested, and so impracticable
every w^ay as that which he has offered."

On the following day Mr. Seward desired
to withdraw his proposition, but objection be-
ing then made, the amendment after some
farther remarks by Messrs. Hamlin, Clay,
FooTE, and others, was put to the vote and
rejected. — Yeas, 5; nays, 45; as follows : —

Yeas — Messrs. Chase, Dodge of Wisconsinj
Hale, Seward and Upham.

Nays — Messrs. Atchison, Badger,Baldwin, Barn-
well, Bell, Benton, Berrien, Bright, Butler,Clay, Da-
vis, of Mass. ; Davis, oi Miss. ; Dayton, Dickinson,
Dodge, of Iowa ; Douglas, Downs, Ewing, Felch,
Fremont, Greene, Hamlin, Gwin, Houston, Hun-
ter, Jones, Mangum, Mason, Morton, Norris,
Pierce, Pratt, Rusk, Sebastian, Shields, Smith,
Soule, Spruance, Sturgeon, Turney, Underwood,
Wales, White omb, Winthrop, and Yulee.

432

Congressional Summary.

Oct.

The Slave-bill finally passed the Senate^
September 16th, in the following shape :

A BILL to suppress the Slave Trade in the
District of Columbia.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled^ That from and after
the first day of January next, it shall not be
lawful to bring into the District of Columbia
any slave w^hatever, for the purpose of being
sold, or for the purpose of being placed in
depot, to be subsequently transferred to any
State or place to be sold as merchandise.
And if any slave shall be brought in the said
District by its owner, or by the authority or
consent of its owner, contrary to the provi-
sions of this act, such slave shall thereupon
become liberated and free.

Sec. 2. And he it further enacted^ That it
shall and may be la^vful for each of the Cor-
porations of the cities of Washington and
Georgetown, from time to time, and as often
as may be necessary, to abate, break up, and
abolish any depot or place of confinement of
slaves brought into the said District as mer-
chandise, contrary to the provisions of this

act, by such appropriate means as may appear
to either of said Corporations expedient and
proper. And the same power is hereby vested
in the levy court of Washington county, if
any attempt shall be made within its jurisdic-
tional limits, to establish a depot or place of
confinement for slaves brought into the said
Districts as merchandise for sale contrary to
this act.

The vote was
follows :

yeas, 33; nays, 19, — as

YEAS — Messrs. Baldwin, Benton, Bright, Cass,
Chase, Clarke, Clay, Cooper,' Davis of Massachu-
setts, Dayton, Dickenson, Dodge of Wisconsin,
Dodge of Iowa, Douglas, Ewing, Felch, Fremont,
Greene, Gwin, Hale, Hamlin, Houston, Jones,
Norris, Seward, Shields, Spruance, Sturgeon, Un-
derwood, Wales, Walker, Whitcomb, and Win-
thro p — 33.

NAYES — Messrs. Atchison, Badger, Barnwell,
Bell, Berrien, Butler, Davis of Mississippi, Dawson,
Downs, Hunter, King, Mangum, Mason, Morton,
Pratt, Sebastian, Soule, Turney, and Yulee — 19.

On the following day, this bill passed the
House of Representatives, without amend-
ment, by a vote of 125 to 49.

1850.

Miscellany.

433

MISCELLANY.

Mail Steamers to the Coast of Africa. \
— We give the following digest of tlie Report
of the Committee on Naval Affairs, concerning
the establishment of a line of steamers from
the United States to the coast of Africa, with
the object of promoting the colonization of free
persons of color, of suppressing the African
slave trade, of carrying the mails, and of ex-
tending the commerce of the United States.

This proposition involves an extension of
that system, recently commenced by Congress,
creating a powerful steam navy, by means of
private enterprize and through the assistance
of Congress : to be used in time of peace for
objects partly public and partly private, and in
time of war to be called wholly into the ser-
vice of the Government. The necessity that
exists for such an extension can best be shown
by presenting the ends sought after by this
measure, and by a brief statement of the com-
parative extent of our present steam navy.

In the Report of Secretary Bancroft to the
Senate, on the 2d March, 1846, it was stated
that the steam navy of Great Britain amount-
ed to one hundred and ninety-nine vessels, of
all classes; that of France numbered fifty-
four 5 that of Russia, without the Caspian
fleet, thirty-two; while the steam navy of the
United States consisted of only six small ves-
sels, and one in process of building.

Since that time, Congress has provided for
the building of four war steamers, and for the
establishment of several lines of steamships
engaged in carrying the mails, consisting of
seventeen large vessels, suitable for war
purposes, and at all times liable to be taken
for the public service. Of these latter, nine
will run between New York and European
ports ; five between New York and Chagres ;
and three between Panama and San Fran-
cisco.

But this increase in our force has not kept
pace with that of other nations. The steam
navy of France consists of sixty-four steam
vessels of war, besides a reserved force of ten
steam frigates now ready, and six corvettes
and six smaller vessels nearly ready. The
French Government is also about establishing
lines of steamers to be employed in commerce
and for carrying the mails, but at all times
subject to public requisition.

VOL. VI. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

England, also, has added largely to her
steam navy by increasing her lines of mail
steamers. In the year 1839, that Government
resolved to turn the vast expenditures required
in naval armaments to the purposes of com-
merce. A contract was entered into with Mr.
Cunard and his associates, for the conveyance
of the mails from Liverpool, via Halifax, to
Boston, in five steamers of the first class, for
about $425,000 per annum. They were to be
built under the supervision of the Admiralty,
subject to inspection on being received into the
service, and capable in all respects of being
converted into ships of war, and of carrying
ordnance of the heaviest description. In 1846,
this contract was enlarged by adding four
steamers between Liverpool and New York,
and the compensation raised to $725,000 per
annum.

In 1840, a contract was made by the same
Government, at $1,200,000 per annum, for
fourteen steamers to carry the mails from
Southampton to the West Indies, the ports of
Mexico on the Gulf, and to New Orleans, Mo-
bile, Savannah, and Charleston. These ships
are to make twenty-four voyages a year, leav-
ing and returning to Southampton semi-month-
ly. Two more vessels have lately been contract-
ed for, to run between Bermuda and New York,

In 1840, a contract was entered into for
seven steamers, from England to the East
Indies and China, at $800,000 per annum.
This line passes from Southampton, via Gib-
raltar and Malta, to Alexandria in Egypt;
thence the route continues overland to Suez,
at the head of the Red Sea, whence the steam-
ers again start, touching at Aden, Bombay,
and at Point de Galle, in the island of Ceylon,
whence they proceed to Singapore and Hong
Kong. A branch line connected with this
runs from Point de Galle to Calcutta, touching
at Madras.

In 1846, a contract was made for a line of
British steamers, four in number, to run from
Valparaiso to Panama, touching at intermedi-
ate ports, and connecting overland, from Pa-
nama to Chagres, with the West India line.

In 1848, there were twelve more lines of

Government steamers running between Great

Britain and the Continent of Europe ; making,

a grand aggregate of one hundred and fifteen

434

Miscellany.

Oct.

ocean steamships fitted for war purposes. Re-
cently, the British Parliament have resolved to
extend the mail steamship system to Australia.

The Committee do not propose that our
Government should emulate this vast network
of steam navigation with which England has
encompassed the globe ; but they believe that
the recent increase of our territory, on the
Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, demands an
augmentation of our steam navy, either by di-
rect addition to the navy proper, or by the en-
couragement by the Government of these lines
of steam packets. The latter plan proposes
that the ships shall be built under the inspec-
tion of Government and at the expense of pri-
vate individuals, that they shall be command-
ed by officers in the navy, and be at all times
ready for the public service. The interests of
the contractors will lead them to adopt all im-
provements in machinery and in the means of
propulsion, and to keep their vessels in good
repair, and being commanded by a naval offi-
cer, each ship will carry a certain number of
midshipmen for watch officers, thus giving ac-
tive employment and practical improvement
to a considerable portion of the personnel of
the service, A corps of trained engineers
and firemen will be attached to each ship, who
no doubt, would generally remain with her
when the ship should be called into the public
service.

Some large steamships of this description,
the Committee believe it is very desirable to
possess for national exigencies. In this capa-
city, to carry fuel sufficient for long voyages,
and to transport large bodies of troops, and to
place them rapidly in a fresh and vigorous
condition at any point where they might be
required, such vessels would possess great ad-
vantages over small ships.

But the great and beneficent objects of this
measure are the opportunity it gives for the
removal of free persons of color from this
country to the coast of Africa, and the means
it presents for the suppression of the slave-
trade. The latter of these has been the sub-
ject of treaties by our Government with other
nations with whom we have engaged to main-
tain a large naval force on the coast of Africa,
to assist in suppressing this traffic • while the
emigration of the free blacks has long been
an object of great interest to both the free and
the slave-holding states. In no part of the
Union do they enjoy political or social equal-
ity, while in some of the slave-states they are
so much an object of distrust that manumis-
sion is discouraged, except on condition of
their removal. Stringent prohibitions have
been adopted, and unpleasant controversies
with free states thereby engendered. The
emigration of this entire population beyond
the limits of the country is the only effectual
mode of bringing these evils to an end.

The Committee believe that while the pro-
posed measure will conduce to extensive col-
onization, it presents the only eifectual mode
of extirpating the slave-trade. Its successful
operation, they consider, will render the Afri-
can squadron wholly unnecessary, and thus
reimburse a large portion of the expense, and
at the same tim.e better accomplishing the ob-
ject for which the squadron is maintained.
Colonization has succeeded, by means of the
influence of the Republic of Liberia, in sup-
pressing the slave-trade along a coast of
several hundred miles in length ] while the
combined squadrons of Europe and America
have been far less successful on other portions
of that unhappy shore. In 1847, no less than
84,356 slaves were exported from Africa to
Cuba and Brazil. In the opinion of the Com-
mittee, it is highly important to prevent the
further Africanizing of the American conti-
nents, and to effect this, the success which has
already crowned the infancy of Liberia, points
out the only effectual mode.

To show that the territory of Liberia is
eminently adapted to colored emigrants from
the United States, that the establishment of
this line of steamships will promote coloniza-
tion, that the slave-trade will be sustituted by
a valuable and legitimate commence, and that
Christianity and civilization will eventually
follow, the Committee present the following
facts . —

The Republic of Liberia extends about 400
miles along the coast, embracing the tract of
country between the parallels of 4*^ 21' and
7° North latitude. The first settlement was
made by free Negroes from the United States,
in the year 1820, under the auspices of the
American Colonization Society. The objects
of that society were, to raise the free blacks
of the country from their political and social
disadvantages : to spread civilization, morali-
ty, and true religion throughout Africa; to
destroy the slave-trade ; and to afford slave-
owners wishing to manumit their slaves, an
asylum for their reception.

The funds of this society have seldom ex-
ceeded $50,000 per annum ; but they have
purchased territory, have enabled nearly
7,000 free people of color to emigrate, and
have provided for the subsistence of such of
them as required it, for six months after their
arrival. In 1847 an independent government
was formed, which has been recognised by
France, England, and Prussia. Eighty thou-
sand natives have been civilized and become
citizens of the Republic. Their commerce is
flourishing ; they have purchased territory
from time to time of the natives and are gra-
dually extending themselves up to the British
settlement of Sierra Leone and down to the
Gold Coast; and they have suppressed the
slave-trade within their own borders and have

850.

Miscellany.

435

made treaties with, several tribes for the dis-
continuance of the traffic. Their interior set-
tlements run back to from ten to thirty miles
from the coast and can be enlarged at a mode-
rate amount in that direction. The land in
the vicinity of the ocean in Liberia is gener-
ally low and in some places marshy, but
further back becomes more elevated, and
within fifty miles of the coast becomes quite
mountainous. This back country is very
healthy and with increased emigration will
soon be occupied. But even on the coast the
emigrants enjoy better health than can be ob-
tained in some of our Western States, in their
first years of settlement.

Each emigrant receives a grant of five acres
of land, and can purchase as much as he
pleases at one dollar an acre. The people
are moral, well-conducted, and prosperous.
The value ,of their exports is at present
500,000 dollars per annum, and increases at
the rate of fifty per cent, annually.

There are upwards of 500,000 free blacks
in the United State?, and the annual increase
is about 70,000. Shch numbers as these, Li-
beria is at present incapable of providing im-
mediate employment and subsistence for, but
the Colonization Society has heretofore provid-
ed for its colonists for six months after their
arrival. The cost of such provision has
averaged thirty dollars a head ; in addition to
the cost of transportation.. This last item
will be greatly reduced by the proposed sys-
tem of mail steamers, and the funds of the
society, augmented probably twenty fold by
the impulse it thus receives will be almost
wholly available for the comfortable estab-
lishment of the emigrants in their new homes.
In addition to the increase of private subscrip-
tions in assistance of colonization, there is no
doubt that, if the government gives its high
sanction to the cause by the proposed line of
steam ships, the Legislatures of the different
States will turn their attention to the subject,
and make large appropriations. Already the
State of Maryland has laid out $200,000 in
this work, and the Legislature of Virginia has
lately voted $40,000 per annum for the same
purpose. These state subscriptions will
doubtless greatly increase, when the cause
of colonization is espoused by the General
Government.

It is estimated that, by the time the two
first ships are ready for sea, a large bo ly of
emigrants will be prepared t(; take passage in
them, and that for the next two years each
ship will take from 1000 to 1500 passengers
on each voyage, or from 8,000, to 12,000 in
each of those two years. To furnish each
family, wishing to devote themselves to agri-
cultural pursuits, with a suitable dwelling, a
piece of land of sufficient extent cleared and
planted, together with the necessary farming

implements, and a "stock of provisions, will
cost the society a sum equal to $30 or $40 for
each emigrant, allowing each family to con-
sist of five persons. Those families intending
to follow trading and mechanical pursuits,
will be attended with less expense, but the
average cost for the whole of the emigrants
may be estimated at $50 a head, including all
the expenses of transportation, — making a
total of from $400,000 to $600,000 per annum
for the first two years. As the colony in-
creases in population, and the interior becomes
settled, any number of emigrants will be
readily absorbed, as there will be a demand
for all kind of laborers, and mechanics, and
the expenses of providing for their means of
obtaining subsistence will be greatly dimin-
ished.

The Colonization Society will, as heretofore,
regulate the character of the emigration, and
keep up a due proportion between the sexes.
The Society also has power, reserved when it
ceded its territory to the Republic, to secure the
protection of the emigrants.

Prosperous colonies established on the coast
of Africa will, in the course of time, greatly
augment the commerce of this country. Brit-
ish commerce with that continent amounts
already to $25,000,000 per annum. The belief
is now confidently held in Great Britain that
an immense commerce may be opened by put-
ting an end to the slave trade, and stimulating
the natives to the arts of peace. There is
little doubt but that the proposed line of steam-
ers will open entirely new sources of trade.
The following particulars are worthy of
notice :

Palm Oil, from the nut of the palm tree, is
produced in the greatest abundance through-
out Western Af.'ica. The average import of
this production into Liverpool for some years
past is at least 15,000 tons, valued at $2,000,-
000 ; and the demand for it steadily increases.

Gold, washed by the natives from the sands
of the rivers, is found at various points of the
coast in the vicinity of Liberia. It is calcu-
lated that England has received from Africa
gold to the value of $200,000,000.

Ivory is obtained at all points, and is an
important staple of commerce.

Coffee, a quality superior to Java and Mo-
cha, can be cultivated in Liberia with great
ease, and to any extent.

Cam-wood, and other dye-woods, are found
in immense quantities, covering vast tracts of
country. '"'' fact, there is not a single pro-
duction of iiiv 2ast or West Indies which may
not be found in equal excellence in Western
Africa.

The soil is exceedingly fertile. Two crops
of corn, sweet potatoes, and many other vege-
tables, can be raised in a year. One acre of
land will produce three hundred dollars' worth

436

Miscellany.

Oct.

of Indigo. Half an acre may be made to
grow half a ton of arrow-root.

The above considerations place the advan-
tages of the proposed measure above all ques-
tion ; and its constitutionality, the Committee
think, cannot be reasonably doubted. The
Government has already a powerful steam
navy, giving incidental encouragement to great
commercial interests. In this instance, we
have the additional motive of the suppression
of the slave trade and the withdrawal of the
African squadron. We have the authority of
Mr, Jefferson, Chief Justice Marshall, and
Mr. Madison, that the United States have
power to establish colonies of free blacks
on the coast of Africa, and it is to be ob-
served that the first purchase in the colony
of Liberia was made by the General Govern-
ment.

This proposition involves no merely sec-
tional considerations. It interferes with neith-
er slavery nor emancipation, but is common,
in its usefulness, to both the North and the
South ; for the removal of free blacks is a
measure in which all sections and all interests
are believed to be equally concerned.

The Committee propose that the line consist
of three steamships, making monthly trips to
Liberia, and touching on their return at certain
points in Spain, Portugal, France, and Eng-
land, thus ; — one ship will leave New York
every three months, touching at Savannah for
freight and mails ; one will leave Baltimore
every three months, touching at Norfolk and
Charleston for passengers, freight, and mails;
and one will leave New Orleans every three
months, with liberty to touch at any of the
West India islands. On their return, they will
touch at Gibraltar, with the Mediterranean
mails; thence to Cadiz, or some other specified
port in Spain ; thence to Lisbon ; thence to
Erest; and thence to London — bringing mails
from all those points to the United States,

Each ship is not to be less than 4,000 tons
burden, and the cost of each not to exceed
$900,000; the Government to advance by in-
stalments two-thirds of the cost of construc-
tion, the advance to be made in five per cent,
stocks, payable at the end of thirty years, and
to be repaid by the contractors in equal annu-
al instalments, beginning and ending with the
service. The ships to be built under plans
approved by the Secretary of the Navy^ and
to be so constructed as to be convertible, at the
least possible expense, into war steamers of
the first class. Each steamer is to be com-
manded by an officer of the navy^ who, with
four passed midshipmen, as watch officers,
shall be accommodated in a manner suitable
to their rank, without charge to the Govern-
ment. The Secretary of the Navy, at all
times, to have the right to place on board of
each ship two guns of heavy ordnance; and

the men necessary to serve them, to be pro-
vided for by the contractors.

The contractors are required to carry on
each voyage, as many persons of color, not
exceeding 25,000 for each trip, as the Coloni-
nization Society may send ; the Society paying
in advance $10 for each emigrant over twelve
years of age, and $5 for each one under that
age ; these sums to include the transportation
of baggage, and the daily supply of sailor's
rations. The necessary agents of the Society
or Government to be conveyed free of cost.

Two of the ships are to be ready within
two and a half years, and the other within
three years after the execution of the contract.

In compensation for the stipulations of this
contract, which is to last fifteen years, the
Government is to pay ^40,000 for each and
every trip.

The expense of running these ships, the
Committee estimate as follows :
Interest on $2,700,000, (cost of

three ships,) at 6 per cent.
Wear and tear, and repairs, 10

per cent. . . .

Insurance 7 per cent.
Cost of running the ships, $50,-

000 per voyage, 12 voyages

per annum.

$162^000

270,000
189,000

600.000

Total annual expense, $1,221,000

PROFITS.

Estimating 1,500 passengers for

each voyage, and 12 voyages

per annum, we have 18,000

passengers. These SIO for

adults, and $5 for children,

may average a profit of $3

each, making - - $54,000

Government pay - - 480,000

$534,000

Balance'of Government pay and

and profit of emigrants, $687,000

This calculation leaves the contractors an
expense of $57,250 for each voyage, to be
covered by the contingent profits of commerce.
This the contractors whose memorial is now
before Congress, feel assured of, and the
committee do not doubt their confidence will be
rewarded to a considerable extent.

Junction of the Atlantic and Pacific —
(condensed from the Westminster Review.) —
Numberless signs denote that Central America
will be the theatre of some of the most re-
markable changes likely to be wrought by
advancing civilization, and the world is be-
coming alive to the fact. Statesmen, mer-
chants, navigators, colonizers, and students of
natural science; are at last awakened to its
future importance ; and a demand has arisen

1850.

Miscellany.

437

for books and maps giving more thorough and
general information concerning this remarka-
ble country.

Until now, notwithstanding its solemn
charm, the idea of a communication between
the Atlantic and Pacific has been treated only
as an interesting engineering problem. In
reality, its practicability has long since been
placed by the estimates of engineers beyond
all doubt. But the capitalist, when appealed
to by projectors, unconvinced as to whether
the project would pay, has always replied with
fears of its feasibility. From this has arisen
the popular prejudice on this subject. Men
of business were to be warmed into enthusiasm
by the prospects of a future per centage, and
not by sublime estimates of the influence of
the enterprize on the destinies of the world.
But with a demonstrable dividend before them,
every mechanical difficulty would disappear,
and the glories and the magnificence of the
enterprize would be instantly revealed.

This result — the pecuniary success of the
experiment — has been settled by the discovery
of the wealth of California, and, in a shorter
time than most persons are prepared to expect,
not only a communication, but a choice of
communications will be opened up. These
will be respectively at Panama and Nicaragua;
the former by railway and steamboat in the
first instance, and ultimately by railway en-
tirely ; the latter chiefly by steamboat in the
first instance, and ultimately by a complete
canal both for steamboats and sailing vessels.
The Panama line is to consist of a railroad
from Navy Bay on the Atlantic to Panama on
the Pacific, at an estimated cost of $5,000,000.
The portion of the line to be constructed first
is twenty-two miles of road reaching from
Panama to Gorgona at the head of navigation
on the Chagres river. This can be completed
for $1,000,000, and the shareholders will thus
be in the receipt of revenue while the remain-
der is being finished. The whole of the latter
amount has already been subscribed in New
York; the entire line has been surveyed, and
the grading of the distance from Panama to
Gorgona contracted for, at $400,000, which is
wdthin the original estimate. The grant to
the Company by the Republic of New Grena-
da, gives them an exclusive privilege for forty-
nine years, subject to a right of redemption
by the Republic at the end of twenty years
on payment of $5,000,000; at the end of
thirty years on payment of $4,000,000 ; and
at the end of forty years on payment of
$2,000,000. This privilege is to date from
the completion of the road, for which eight
years are allowed ; and it is accompanied by
a concession of exclusive harbor rights at the
ports on each side, and also of the necessary
land throughout the line, besides three hun-
dred thousand acres in perpetuity for the pur-

poses of colonization. The Company are to
be allowed to import every thing necessary
for the road and for the workmen engaged on
it, free of duty ; and are to be furnished by
the Government with the assistance of three
companies of sappers. The only obligation
imposed as to the character of the road is that
it shall be capable of transporting passengers
from one ocean to the other in the space of
twelve hours.

On this route, a line can be laid down, not
exceeding forty-six miles in length, with a
summit of less than three hundred feet above
the level of the sea, and with curvatures hav-
ing no where a radius of less than fifteen
hundred feet. Native workmen can be ob-
tained, whose training, though at first difficult,
is ultimately successful. The engineers, in
fact, bringing with them a large number of na-
tives, habituated to this species of labor, from
the state of New Granada. And, as the cli-
mate presents no obstacles, arrangements for
obtaining foreign labor will be made.*

The explorations of this survey have led to
the discovery of large groves of mahogany,
and rich mineral deposits, the knowledge of
which will be highly important to the Com-
pany in locating lands under their grant. The
island of Manyanilla is the terminus of the
railway on the Atlantic side, and the harbor is
described as perfectly accessible and safe in
all seasons and winds, and able to contain three
hundred sail.

The second line which may now be con-
sidered definitely arranged, is that of a ship
canal in connexion with the lakes of Nicara-
gua. By the contract made August 1849,
between the State of Nicaragua and the At-
lantic and Pacific Ship Canal Company of
New York, the canal is to be finished in
twelve years. The Company to pay the
State $10,000 for the ratification of the con-
tract; $10,000 more annually, till the com-
pletion of the work ; and to make a donation
of their stock to the amount of $20,000.
When completed, the State is to receive one
fifth of the net profits for twenty years, and

* We notice in a New Orleans paper of Aug.
1st., that a body of one hundred men had just left
that port for Navy Bay, being the advance guard
of laborers to commence operations on the rail-
road. Every thing in the way of material, tools,
supplies, etc., has gone forward, and it is expected
that a force of five hundred men will follow in a
few weeks. We understand that with a view to
facilitate travel and transportation, the route is to
be graded and a plank road laid lor the whole dis-
tance, which can be promptly completed and kept
in operation until the regular railroad is finished.
In a very short time the whole distance from ocean
to ocean can be travelled in comparatively a few
hours, and with greatly lessened expense. — Ed,
Whig Rev.

438

Miscellany.

Oct.

afterwards one quarter. It is also to have
ten per cent, on the profits of any minor line
of communication the Company might open
during the progress of the grand work. The
first payment of $10,000 has been made.

In return the privileges bestowed on the
Company are the exclusive right of construct-
ing the canal, and of inland steam navigation ;
grants likewise are to be made of eight sec-
tions of land on the banks of the canal, each
section to be six miles square.

In 1835; when the project of the Nicaragua
canal was first put forward in England, the
cost was estimated at £4,000,000. '"This esti-
mate, considered large at the time and ren-
dered still more so now, in consequence of the
depreciation of the value of capital and mate-
rials, will hardly be considered as under the
mark. Taking the business done on the
canal at 900,000 tons, and the toll then con-
templated being 10s. for European and 20s.
for United States vessels, the whole would
produce about £600,000, which; after leaving
two per cent, for maintenance and one per
cent, for sinking fund, would yield a return
of twelve per cent, on the capital.

These estimates are extremely vague ; — too
much reliance was placed on the change of
route to India ; and the proposed difference of
toll on American ships would never have been
tolerated. But since these calculations were
made, the traffic with South America, Aus-
tralia, and New Zealand has greatly in-
creased, and, above all, California and its
mines have been discovered.

While the Panama railway will take the
whole of the passengers for the western ports
of South America, the Nicaragua route by the
distance it saves, must command the entire
traffic with California. The increasing emigra-
tion to that country, the fact that the emi-
gration is a shifting one, flowing and return-
ing, the inexhaustible nature of the mines, the
consequent profits of labor and the certainty
that this colonization will continue until the
value of labor there is lowered, all serve to
prove the certainty of the successful operation
of this work. The growing importance of
Oregon must not be overlooked, nor the croAvd
of small steamers that will rapidly accumu-
late in the Pacific from the smoothness of its
waters and the abundance of the easily
worked coal of Vancouver's Island.

The distance from San Juan on the Atlantic,
by the river San Juan, to the lake of Nicara-
gua is one hundred and four miles ; from the
lake to the Pacific there are three different
routes, the best of which remains to be deter-
mined, though none of them present any great
natural difficulty. One runs from the South-
western point of the lake to the port of San
Juan del Sur, the extent of which would be
fifteen miles, with an elevation to be overcome.

in one part, of four hundred and fifty seven
feet. Another route which has been proposed
but not surveyed, is from the same part of the
lake to the port of Las Salinas, lying within
the boundary claimed by Costa Rica. This
is about the same length, and presents no
greater elevation than one of two hundred and
seventy feet. A third proposal is, to proceed
from the northern part of the lake by the river
Tipitipa, twenty miles in length to the smaller
lake called Lake Leon, and thence by a canal
of eleven miles, through a district which offers
no greater rise than fifty one feet, to the river
Zosta, which communicates at eighteen miles
distance with the port of Realejo. Should
the impulse received from California give
commerce a northward direction, this last
route would be undoubtedly the most availa-
ble one.

The certainty of these two routes of Pana-
ma and Nicaragua being speedily carried out
in a more or less perfect degree, brings before
the mind a glimpse of the great destinies of
Central America. A strip of country scarcely
one hundred and fifty miles in width, yet com-
manding the ocean intercourse with Europe
on one side and with Asia on the other, favor-
able to health, and abounding, at the same
time, with every natural product that can be
found distributed elsewhere between Scotland
and the tropics, containing besides two calm
yet deep and extensive lakes, that seem, as we
look upon them in the map, like huge natural
docks in the centre of the world, intended to
receive the riches of a universal commerce, —
and we are forced to find here the future seat
of a vast dominion.

Central America, no one can doubt, posses-
es all the essentials to attract a dense and
vigorous population. The researches of tra-
vellers show that it was once largely peopled
by an aboriginal race of a remarkable char-
acter; and the size of its principal towns and
its architectural remains, manifest compara-
tive prosperity under the old Spanish rule.
Leon, the principal city of Nicaragua was for-
merly very opulent, and contained 50,000 in-
habitants ; while now it has only one-third of
that number, and the principal part of the place
is in ruins. This is owing to incessant revolu-
tionary contests, invariably got up by a handful
of military vagabonds, who would be swept
away in the course of four and tw^enty hours,
if a hundred Englishmen or Americans were in
the district to stimulate the well-disposed to
confidence.

The health of Central America even now is
decidedly above the medium order ; and as the
country is opened, and means afforded to the
inhabitants to take advantage of its varieties
of climate, there is little doubt but that, m
spite of its tropical position, it will be more
than ordinarily salubrious

1850.

Miscellany.

439

In point of riches it is hard to decide which
of the different States has the greatest capa-
bilities. In the plain of Nicaragua the fields
are covered with grass, studded with noble
trees and herds of cattle. Cocoa, indigo, rice,
Indian corn, bananas and cotton are here pro-
duced, and mahogany, cedar and pine abound
in the forests. There are farms on which are
herds of from 10,000 to 40,000 head of cattle.
It is thought that with the same labor sugar
can be manufactured at one-fourth of its cost
in the West Indies. Mineral riches abound
in the mountains. As you leave the lakes
and descend the San Juan, each bank of the
river is covered with valuable wood of all
sizes and descriptions, and the land is of pro-
digious fertility.

Surrounding Nicaragua are the States of
Costa Rica, San Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras. In Costa Rica, as in Nicaragua,
the soil is singularly productive ; and all the
articles peculiar to intertropical regions are
grown in abundance, except cochineal, cotton,
and the vine, which "are liable to be destroyed
by the periodical rains. Coffee is the staple
export, and, as well as indigo, tobacco and co-
coa, which are also produced, is remarkable
for its quality. Woods, drugs, grain, fruits,
poultry, form part of the commerce of this
little republic. Mines of gold, copper, and
coal have been found, though at present neg-
lected. The population amounts to 100,000,
10,000 of whom are Indians. The trade is
carried on almost exclusively with England in
British bottoms; but the shipments taking
place on the Pacific side, the tedious route by
Cape Horn is a serious drawback. San Jose,
the capital, is 4,500 feet above the level of
the sea, and from this a cart-road of seventy-
two miles leads to the port of Punta Arenas.
Costa Rica is the only one of the republics of
Central America, that for any lengthened
period, has been free from anarchy, and the
result is that she is steadily advancing to
prosperity.

The State of Salvador is the smallest of the
five republics, but relatively the most popu-
lous, the number of her inhabitants being
280,000, and her natural resources and posi-
tion on the Pacific is admirable. She has,
however, been incessantly ravaged with inter-
nal discord, and the enterprize of her citizens
discouraged by the exorbitant contributions to
which men of wealth are subjected. The
chief production of San Salvador is indigo,
but she has also the highest capabilities for
tobacco, coffee, sugar, and cotton. Gold, and
rich silver mines, copper, lead, and iron ores,
are found in different parts, and would produce
abundantly with the encouragement a steady
Government would give to their working.

The State of Honduras has a population of
236,000, and possesses excellent capacities,

both in soil and climate, but is chiefly remark-
able as a mining district. It contains gold
and silver mines, long neglected, owing to the
ruin and insecurity occasioned by the constant
revolutions. Lead and copper, also, in vari-
ous combinations, as well as opals, emeralds,
asbestos, and cinnabar. An abundance of
timber and dye-woods is likewise "found, and
vast herds of almost profitless cattle range
over its wild lands.

Guatemala has a population of 600,000, and
nearly all the surface of the State is moun-
tainous. From its salubrity, extent of avail-
able lands, and quality of soil and climate, it
is peculiarly adapted for European immigra-
tion. Excellent maize, wheat, and rice, are
raised ; the tropical fruits and vegetables are
good, and in great variety ; while European
fruits and leguminous plants are equal to
those raised in higher latitudes.

Convention with Great Britain. — The
following is a carefully digested abstract,
prepared for this journal, of the articles of con-
vention between the United States of America
and Her Britannic Majesty :

The Nicaragua Treaty, as ratified by the Governments
of the United States and Great Britain was exchanged and
promulgated at Washington on the fourth of July, 1850.
This treaty provides for the establishment of a communi-
cation between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, by means
of a ship canal, to be constructed by way of the river San
Juan de Nicaragua, and either or both of the lakes of
Nicaragua or ^Ianagua, to any port or place on the Pa-
cific ocean :

Article I. of this treaty provides that the Governments
of the United States and Great Britain will, neither the
one nor the other, obtain or maintain exclusive control
over this canal ; that neither will occupy, fortify, colonise,
or assume dominion over any part of Nicaragua, Costa
Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America ;
and that neither Government will take advantage of any
alliance or influence that either may possess with any of
the states or territories through which the said canal may
pass, to acquire for the citizens or subjects of the one,
any privileges which shall not be oft'ered, on the same
terms, to the citizens or subjects of the other.

Article I[. provides that vessels of the United States or
Great Britain, traversing said canal, shall, in case of war,
be exempted from blockade, detention, or capture by
either of the belligerents: and this provision shall extend
to such a distance from the two ends of the said canal as
may hereafter be found expedient to establish.

Article III. provides that if any parties shall undertake
the construction of said canal witli the authority of the
local governments through whose territory it shall pass,
their property used for this object shall receive the pro-
tection, from violence or confiscation, of the Governments
of the United States and Great Britain.

Article IV. provides that both Governments shall use
their influence with the local Governments to further the
construction of this canal. And furthermore that they
shall use their good offices, whenever it may be most ex-
pedient, to procure tlie establishment of two free ports,
one at each end of this canal.

Article V. provides that, on the completion of the canal,
both parties shall gufirantee its protection from interrup-
tion or unjust confiscation, so that the capital invested shall
be secure, and the canal remain forever open and free,
and its neutrality secure. But this guarantee of security
and neutrality is conditional, and may be withdrawn by
both or either of the Governments, should the persons or
company controlling it make unfair discriminations in fa-
vor of the commerce of either of the contracting parties,
or make oppressive regulations concerning passengers,
vessels or merchaadise. Neither party shall, however,
withdraw such protection without six months notice to
the other.

440

Miscellany.

Oct

Article VI. provides that the contracting parties in this
convention engage to invite every State, with which either
holds friendly intercourse, to enter with ihena into these
stipulations. They also agi-ee to enter into treaty stipula-
tions with such of the Central American States as may be
deemed advisable, to carry out the more effectually the
design of this convention ; and to lend mutual assistance
in carrying out such treaties ; and should difficulties arise
between the local Governments as to right of property
over the territory through which said canal shall pass,
and such differences should in any way impede the con-
struction of the canal, the Governments of the United
States and Great Britain shall use their good offices to set-
tle such differences so as shall best promote the interests
of said canal.

Article VII. provides that, to save time in the com-
mencement of this work, the contracting parties shall give
their support and encouragement to such persons or com-
pany as shall first offer to undertake the same, with the
necessary capital, the consent of the local authorities, and
on such principles as shall agree with the spirit and in-
tention of this convention. And if any persons have al-
ready a centre ct with any of the local GovernmeRts, to
the stipulations of which neither of the contracting parties
shall have just cause of objection, and such persons have
expended time and money in preparation, they shall have
priority of claim, and shall be allowed a year from the
date of the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, for
concluding their arrangements, and pz'esenting evidence
of sufficient capital subscribed.

Article Vlll. provides that, the object of this convention
being not only to accomplish a particular purpose, but
also to establish a general principle, the Governments of
the United States and Great Britain agree to extend their
protection to any other practicable communications,
whether by canal or railway, between the Atlantic and
Pacific, and especially those now proposed to be estab-
lished by way of Tehuantepec and Panama. In granting,
however, their joint protection to such canals or railways
as are by this article specified, it is understood that the
parties constructing the same shall make no other charges
or conditions of traffic than the Governments of the Uni-
ted States and Great Britain shall consider equitable ; and
that the canal shall be open to the citizens and subjects
of every other State, which is willing to grant such pro-
tection as the aforesaid Governments engage to afford.

Assault upon Haynau, the Austrian
Butcher, in London. — Yesterday morning,
shortly before twelve o'clock, three foreigners,
one of whom wore long moustachios, present-
ed themselves at the brewery of Messrs. Bar-
clay & Co,, for the purpose of inspecting the
establishment. According to the regular prac-
tice of visiters, they were requested to sign
their names in a book in the office, after which
they crossed the yard with one of the clerks.
On inspecting the visiters' book, the clerk dis-
covered that one of the visiters was no other
than General Haynau, the late commander of
the Austrian forces during the Hungarian war.
It became known all over the brewery in less
than two minutes ; and before the general and
his companions had crossed the yard, nearly
all the laborers and draymen were out with
"brooms and dirt, shouting out, '• Dowm with
the Austrian butcher," and other epithets of
rather an alarming nature to the General. He
was soon covered with dirt, and, perceiving
some of the men about to attack him, nm into
the street to Bankside, followed by a large
mob, consisting of the brewer's men, coal
heavers, and others, armed with all sorts of
"weapons, with which they belabored the Gen-
eral. He ran, in a frantic manner, along
Bankside, until he came to the George public

house, when, forcing the doors open, he rush-
ed in, and proceeded up stairs into one of the
bed-rooms. The furious mob rushed in after
him, threatening to do for the "Austrian butch-
er," but fortunately for him, the house is very
old-fashioned, and contains a vast number of
doors, which were all forced open except that
of the room in w^hich the General was con-
cealed. The mob increased at that time to
several hundreds, and it was with great diffi-
culty that the police rescued him from their
hands, and got the General out of the house.
A police galley w^as at the wharf at the time,
into which he was taken, and rowed tow^ards
Somerset House, amidst the shouts and exe-
crations of the mob. — London Times.

There are few that will read this account of
well-administered Lynch law in England, w^ith-
out wishing well to the honest fellows that did
good service to the cause of humanity. Hay-
naa had carried out in Hungary the instruc-
tions of his vindictive Government. The
Austrians, w^hen they called upon Russia for
assistance, had been completely checked and
beaten back by the Hungarian forces. Both
the Government and its General had conse-
quently a private account of animosity to
settle w^ith this unfortunate people, and strictly
did his sanguinary nature exact it to the last
drop of blood. His career was watched with
shuddoring both in this country and in Europe.
Deeds were heard of that would shame a North
American Indian, for, even among savages,
women were spared public punishment and
torture.

But now thrust out of the presence of men,
and in disgrace with his own government who
have kicked aside their w^orthless tool, his fate
serves one good purpose, as a sign of the
times. Universal Peace Societies and the ex-
tinction of war, may be nothing, but the dream
or amusement of philanthropists ; but there is
nothing Utopian in the fact that mitigation of
the atrocities of war has kept uninterrupted
face with the progress of civilization. From
the Feegee cannibal vrho roasts and eats his
foe, and the red man, more humane, who
roasts without eating, up to the mxodern priso-
ner of war^ who goes at large on parole, there
has been a steady improvement in the treatment
of captives. The cruelties of Russia in Po-
land, and of Austria in Hungary, made doubt-
ful for a while the permanency, and even the
reality, of this improvement. Not a cabinet
Europe raised its voice agginst the barbari-
ans that filled with desolation the plains of
Western Europe, and repeated the dark days
of the infancy of its nations; making true a
second time the lament of the Sclavonian
poet, that its soil was "cut up by the tramp
of horses, fertilized by human blood, ai^d
white with bones,— where sorrow grew abun-
dantly."

1850.

Miscellany.

441

But courts and cabinets are no longer the
sole controllers of events. Humanity has at
last learnt the republican lesson of fighting its
own battles. From the unpremeditated nature
of the attack on General Haynau, the rapidity
with which a mob gathered when his presence
became know^n, and the little sympathy shewn
for the General by the British press, we have
reason to think that if Lord Palmerstone had
vigorously and peremptorily remonstrated
with the Austrian Government for its treat-
ment of the Hungarian insurgents, he would
have been upheld by the voice of the whole
nation. We have seen how his interference
saved Kossuth and his companions from their
clutches. And we see, from the present occa-
sion, how a still more generous course would
have given him a wider and more lasting po-
pularity than any sellish policy, however suc-
cessful, could have gained. Russia, however
strong for the future, is at present hardly able
to make good the bold and domineering atti-
tude she assumes ; for like all young coun-
tiies, she lacks the sinews of war — money.
Austria, always has been, and must be, a
weak and ill-cemented monarchy ; — and she
is now completely impoverished by her efforts
in suppressing the Hungarian insurrection.
Backed up by Russia, she is tyranical, as
weakness always is when resting on the
strength of others. But neither of these powers,
nor both of them, would dare to stand out
against the universal sentiment of the east of
Europe ; with revolutionary Germany be-
tween, eager to cast the sword into the
balance.

We may find something then, in the spirit
which prompted the coal-heavers and porters
of London, to drive out from among them such
a wretch as Haynau, which will teach a lesson
to tyrants, and give uneasiness even ,to Czar
Nicholas in the midst of his Tartar hordes.

The London Times endeavors to extenuate
the cruelties of the Austrians in Hungary, and
gives a list of the executions authorised by the
Hungarian leaders, and of the excesses of the
peasantry in the earlier days of the insurrec-

tion. The Times is the Government organ,
and winces benhalh the rebuke administered
by this movement of the London populace to
the lukewarmness of the Cabinet. For what
parallel is there beneath the first ill-directed
fury of an outraged people, bursting into re-
volution, and the organized and cold-blooded
malignancy of its conquerors '? The very fact
of revolution bears complete evidence of ty-
rannical rule, for nations never fight for theo-
ries. Despotic governments may create armies,
or a prosperous people may use the super-
abundance of its energies in war ; but a truly
national war, in which the whole population
is aroused, and the father, the son, and the
grandsire fight shoulder to shoulder, is never
seen but for dire cause. Before the old man
will leaee his rest, or the man of middle years
his ease, wrongs and insults must be piled
high around every individual. He must feel
the tyranny on his back, in his pocket, on his
table, and in the pale faces of his children.
Hope must forsake him, and death must wear
a friendly face to him, and retaliation against
the local instruments of his oppression will
ever be^his first thought.

But, were the crimes of the insurgents fifty
times as great, (and Vv^e notice in the list no
instance of the flogging of women,) it would
give no justification of the subsequent inhu-
man treatment by the Austrians of a subjugat-
ed country. To decimate a whole people for
the crimes of a small portion of it, is not
punishment, nor even revenge, but the blind
rage of a wild beast, which rends whatever
stands in its path. The fact is, the course of
the Austrians in Hungary is a feeble imitation
of the terrible policy of Russia in Poland. To
crush the life and heart out of the people by a
steady, unrelenting severity, to cut down all
who, by their talents, give promise of raising
their countrymen from their bondage, to spread
dismay and horror, and to check rebellion, by
making too sure the dreadful reward of fail'
ure, is a lesson of barbarous expediency that
Vienna haa learnt from St, Petersburg.

442

Critical Notices,

Oct.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

The Lorgnette ; or Studies of the Town by an
Opera-goer. Second edition, set off' with Dar-
ley's designs. New York : Printed for Stringer
& Townsend. 1850.

The author of this little work seems not only to
have been an opera-goer but to have gone every-
wliere ; and one ol the few faults we have to find
with his agreeable pages is, that he shows rather
too much J:nowledge of Paris and London. An
unexplained allusion to the Surrey Gardens or
Boivins in the Rue de la Paix is unbecoming in an
essay written for New York or Boston, and is
so much of a departure from the purity of the Ad-
disonian essay. The topics of this work are of
such circumstances and phases of life as fall under
the observation of a genteel travelled bachelor, liv-
ing at his leisure from lodging to lodging, and
dipping into various " sets" of society with a spirit
of criticism not severe or ill-natured, but some-
thing betwixt the man of the world blaze, and the
philosophic moralist degage, or ot no religion.

New York Ladies ; Fashionable people ; Lions ;
Modes of getting into Society ; the Opera ; Fa-
mily and Ancestors, and the various polished fol-
lies of the town pass in succession before the foci
of this gentleman's opera-glass ; and he comments
upon all easily, elegantly and sometimes humor-
ously and wittily. He is well read, one might
guess, in Theophrastus and La Bruyere, and has
a copy of Rabelais in his book-case — perhaps.
He is not unfamiliar with the classics, and is pos-
sibly an excellent French scholar, though to decide
upon this point with certainty would be as impos-
sible as to determine whether Addison was as well
read in Greek as in Bayle's Dictionary. We are
acquainted with but one writer, known to the pub-
lic, whose style in the least resembles that of the
author of the " Lorgnette" but there seems to be no
impossibility that two such authors should exist to-
gether in the Universe.

Mr. Lorgnette has handled critics with such
humor and delicacy and such an anticipative scorn,
we feel nervous of meddling with him. He has
not indeed abused us or our Journal, nor even
named us slightingly, a neglect for which, as
small author and critic, we feel bound to show
some little indignation, and do hereby formally
discover it, as a matter of course.

The Lorgnette is a book written for men of taste
and observation, and for ladies in good society,
and we discover nothing to bar its popularity
among polished and sensible people every where,
unless it be a dash of moralism which occasion-
iy makes its appearance and produces an odd sen-

sation such as one might feel at seeing Mr. Greeley
in an opera-box. We unwittingly gave our pro-
mise to the polite and sensible publisher to say
something good of his book before we had read it,
but after reading two-thirds of it in an evening,
with almost unqualified satisfaction, we confess
ourselves in a mood of thanks for not having been
obliged by a hasty promise to speak well of a work
which we do not like. The Lorgnette we do
like, both for its style and its intent ; and believe
that it will be as useful as a corrective and po-
lisher of republican manners and morals, as it is
agreeable for its ridicule of the follies and absur-
dities of the time.

Mr. Darley's illustrations, especially the one
which represents a literary lion, the King of beasts,
and prince of bores, writing autographs, are a
worthy and humorous accompaniment lor the
essays.

Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations.
With a sketch of their popular Poetry: By
Talvi, with a Preface by Edward Robinson,
Author of " Biblical Researches in Palestine.'*
New York : George G. Putnam. 1850,

The contents of this volume are sufficiently in-
dicated by its title. As we have by us, in manu-
script, an elaborate review of it, which will shortly
appear, it seems unnecessary for us to speak cri-
tically of it on the present occasion.

Five Years of a Hunter's Life in the Far Inte-
rior of South Africa : With Notices of the Na-
tive Tribes, and anecdotes of the chase of the
Lion, Elephant, Hippopotamus, Giraffe, Rhino-
ceros, &C. By RONALEYN GoRDON CuMMING,

Esq., ofAltyre: With Illustrations. Harper
& Brothers. New York : 1850.

This very extraordinary book has been quoted
without comment and apparently without suspi-
cion,— whatever comes from England being of
course above suspicion — by the most discriminating
prints of the day. From internal evidence chiefly
of a moral character, we judge it to have been
written in London, by some author of much less
skill and imagination than Dr. Mayo, the author
of Kaloola, and who was perhaps never out of
England. It is a narrative of most extraordinary
adventures conceivable. Bruce's Abyssynia is no-
thing to it, and for impudent composure and au-
dacity of narrative exceeds everything we have
ever seen, even from the pen of the redoubtable

1850.

Critical Notices.

443

John Bull himself. Had the author been a Tita n
or a Centuar and his weapons furnished him from
an armory of Dives or Genii, he could not have
accomplished greater wonders in the destruction
of lions, snakes and elephants. If the narrative of
this author be true, he is the Nimrod of Hunters,
if false, he is the Nimrod liars.

Lives of Eminent, Literary and Scientific Men
of America. By James Wynne, M. D. D.
Appleton & Co., New York. 1850.

A moderate octavo volume, containing lives of
Franklin, Edwards, Fulton, Marshall, Ritterhouse
and Whitney. A volume well suited for country
circulating libraries ; comprehensive and cheap.
The typography is elegant. We cannot pronounce
upon the execution of the work.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of theRomaa Empire.
With Milman's Notes.

The House of Harper <fe Brothers have now is-
sued the sixth volume of this magnificent and in-
imitable History. It is an elegant and satisfactory
library edition ; with a very full general index, and
by no means expensive.

Margaret Percival in America. A Tale. Edited
by a New England Minister. Being a sequel
to " Margaret Percival," a Tale, edited by Rev.
William Sewell. Boston: Phillips, Sampson,
& Co. 1850.

This seems to be a Protestant effort to turn the
tables upon an English Puseyite ; and defends the
liberty of the American churches.

The Recent Progress of Astronomy; especially in
the United States. By Eli as Loomis, Profes-
sor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, in
the University of New York. Harper & Broth-
ers: New York. 1850.

Professor Loomis is well known in the scientific
world of America, as one of our most accurate
and learned savans. It is a patriotic and credi-
table effort on the part of Prof. Loomis to show
the present state of Astronomical science in Ame-
rica, and what has been done by our own faithful
and ingenious Astronomers.

George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, King of
Albania.

This is a reproduction of the history of Scan-
derbeg, by Jaques Labardin, which was translat-
ed into English in 1596. Labardin's history, in the
present work, has been concentrated by rendering
the language more concise, and leaving out matters
unimportant to the progress of the story. The hero,
Scanderbeg, resisted, with a small army, twenty-
three years, the power of the Ottoman Empire,
under Amarath the Second, and his greater son.
It is considered to be a part of genuine history.

Elements of Natural Philosophy. By W. H. G.
Bartlett, L. L. D., Professor of Natural and
Experimental Philosophy, at West Point. Sec-
tion First — Mechanics. A. S. Barnes & Co.,
New York: H. W. Derby & Co., Cincinnati.
1850.

The present volume is the first of three, which
its author is preparing for academies and colleges ;
and embraces the subject of mechanics, — the
groundwork of Natural Philosophy. Everything
has been added, in its preparation, to ensure a
complete treatise of mechanics for college and li-
brary. It is a large octavo volume, printed in the
improved style of American books. The type
leaded, neat and clear ; the illustrations finely
drawn and simple.

Reminiscences of Congress. By Charles W;

March. New York : Baker &, Scribner. —

1850.

This work is, in fact, the history of the brilliant
Congressional career of Dauiel Webster, and his
friends and antagonists, during the days of nullifi-
cation. It is a work, in this country, unique in
character, and, of its kind, unequalled in execu-
tion, and may be regarded as one of the most
brilliant productions of the day. Every page of it
is interesting, and the reader must not suppose that
the extracts given in the daily prints on the first
appearance of this book, being read, serve either
to diminish its value or lessen its interest.

The Ichonographic Encyclopedia. Rudolph
Garigue. New York.
Another number of this inestimable work, which
we have already repeatedly and favorably noticed.

Dictionary of Mechanics and Engine Work.

This splendid work of the Appletons, has now
reached the letter G., and continues, thus far, to
maintain the unequalled elegance and value of its
first numbers. No expense is spared by the pub-
lishers on illustrations.

DisturnelVs Railroad, Steamboat, and Telegraph
Book. Being a Guide through the Northern,
Middle, and Eastern States and Canada. Giv-
ing also the great lines of Travel South and
West, and the Ocean Steam Packet Arrange-
ments. With Tables of Distances, Telegraph
Lines, and Charges. Lists of Hotels, &.c., &c.,
together with a Map of the United States and
Canada. J. Disturnell, 137 Broadway, and the
Booksellers generally.

The publisher of this indispensable little work
laid upon our table, a few days since, a new colored
Map of the United States, including all the Terri-
tories, with the boundaries of Utah, Texas, New
Mexico, and California, laid down tastefully and
accurately, as the boundaries have been lately fix-
ed by acts passed in Congress. This Colored Map
of Disturnell's is the only complete one extant of
our States and Territories.

444

Critical Notices.

Oct.

Shakspeare's Dramatic Plays. Boston : Phillips,
Samson & Co. 1850.

The twenty-third number of the Boston Shaks-
peare, with a splendid ideal Portrait of Queen
Margaret, in Henry Sixth.

History of Pendennis. By Thackeray. Harper
& Brothers : New York.

The sixth number of Thackeray's best novel,
which will be completed in seven numbers.

Domestic History of the American Revolution,

By Mrs. Ellet, author of " The Women of the
Revolution." New Yock: Baker & Scribner.
1850.

The object of this work is to exhibit the spirit
and character of the Revolutionary period, to por-
tray, as far as possible, in so brief a record, the
social and domestic condition of the times, and
the state of feeling among the people. It is a
book of Revolutionary anecdote, digested in the
order of History.

The Bible and Civil Government : In a course of
Lectures. By J. M. Mathews, D. D. New
York : Robert Carter & Brothers. 1850.

The author of this work, an accomplished and
dignified clergyman of New York, and sometime
Chancellor of the University in that city, has dis-
covered in its composition and style the same ele-
gance and urbanity that mark his manners and his
character. Of the importance of the work one
may judge by the subjects treated of: Civil govern-
ment among the Hebrews ; Influence of emigra-
tion on national character ; Education indispensa-
ble to civil freedom ; Agriculture auxiliary to civil
freedom. These lectures were delivered a year
since before such a dignified audience as can be
assembled only at the City of Washington. Dr.
Mathews was encouraged in attempting his work
by several distinguished statesmen who remark-
ed to him on the injurious tendency of the age,
which seeks to separate political and divine jus-
tice.

In the opening lecture the proposition is ad-
vanced, that not only is civil government the ordi-
nance of God, but that " the essential principles of
civil freedom carry the seal of his authority." In
communicating the great principles of government
to the Hebrews, through their prophets and wise
men, the Creator of the world communicated the
same to all his children ; not indeed in any
particular form, but in spirit only. Civil liberty is
founded in divine justice. " The principles of
stable and equitable government form one of the
most complicated of human sciences. None but
comprehensive and enlightened minds can fully un-
derstand them. The wise and great men who were
the fathers of our Republic found the application
of them long after they had been tried elsewhere,
to be a work which tasked their powers as states-
men to the utmost." From the darkness and the

barbarism of the Hebrew people, our author argues
that they must have come into the possession of
their political freedom through the peculiar favor
of God, communicated to them through his imme-
diate servants.

The author dwells, in his third lecture, upon the
happy and wise construction of the Hebrew Com-
monwealth, and of its favorable influence upon
surrounding heathen nations. He compares our
own people with them ; instances our enduring
strength and activity, our unity of sentiment, our
elastic, enterprising, spirit, our consciousness of the
great work in which we have been engaged ; and
indirectly inculcates the necessity of bearing stea-
dily in mind the grandeur of our destiny and the
real divineness of the principles which lie at the
foundations of our state.

The fourth lecture dwells upon the means of
education in the Hebrew commonwealth, and the
importance attached to their literature by the sa-
cred writers and rulers of the Hebrews. The He-
brews were, and have always been, since the found-
ation of their government, an educated people ; for
the most part highly and seriously educated. Our
author makes application to ourselves, ol much
that is found in Scripture touching this point.

The fifth lecture treats of agriculture as an aux-
iliary to civil freedom, and as a source of wealth;
the necessary foundation of national prosperity
and strength.

He describes the rich and careful agriculture of
the Hebrew people, from which they derived al-
most their entire wealth. It made their country
like a continued garden ; the very rocks being
covered with mould to produce vegetation ; and
the hills tilled to their highest summits. He speaks
of the care taken ofthe poor; of provison for poor
debtors ; of the " Exemption of the Homestead" as
illustrated by similar provisions in the Hebrew
laws. The general observations of our author, in
this lecture, on the right kind of public economy
and statesmanship, are given with a peculiar beau-
ty and clearness of style, which indeed marks the
entire work.

Billiards without a Master, illustrated by fifty-five
copper-plate engravings, &c. By Michael
Phelan. New York ; published by D. D. Wi-
nant, 71 Gold street. 1850.

Reader ! Billiard-playing reader, dost thou
know " Michael" — not the arch-angel, but " Mi-
chael" ; the illustrious " Michael" who has dis-
covered more knacks and ways of solving the
problem of the " resolution of forces" than any
man since the days of Archimedes ; who beats
Vauban hollow in giving circuitous motions to
projectiles ; who could teach Carnot the organizer,
to shoot round corners, and who, superior to any
statesman or warrior known to history or us,
when the balls are flying about him is never with-
out his cue ] Well, Michael has become an au-
thor— laid down his white stick for the nonce, and
pen in hand, proceeds with most artistic ease, to
knock about paper bullets of the brain, to " can-
non," or as he will have it, carrom his ideas on
yours, and the public's, if you or it have any, and

1850.

Critical Notices.

445

will pocket, we hope, many a literary ace thereby.
An author, has " Michael" become indeed, and an
author of no ordinary stamp. To him the whole
universe, the rolling of worlds, " the music of ihe
spheres," the fall of dynasties, the catastrophes of
politics, all is a " game of billiards." From his
infancy to this hour, his whole mind, and a mind
it is of singular clearness and grasp, his whole
soul, and a generous, good soul as ever was in the
world it is, have been concentrated on four ivory
balls and a white stick ; and they have won for
him, or he has won for them, immortality, celebri-
ty transcendent, wide as civilization and infinitely
more harmless. The immortality of the most ex-
quisite billiard player in this or any other continent.
Here, in the book before us, we have his expe-
riences. They are written in a clear, easy, fluent,
and unpretending style, admirably suited to his
purpose. As a scientific curiosity, the book is
matchless. You could not, until you read it, pos-
sibly fancy how a man could discover so many ex-
traordinary and out of the way modes of going di-
rect to a point. You may throw your hat or coat on
the table, build a wall of brick across it from cush-
ion to cushion, or even drive a Shetland pony and
carriage over it — he will circumvent the coat,
make his ball leap the wall to descend after the
fashion of Camot's vertical fire, and roll it through
and about, every foot of the pony with a single
blow, and with a supreme and easy contempt for
the difficulties which beset him. His plans and
modes of doing so are here laid down before us,
engraved and explained, so that the merest novice
can, by the aid of this work alone, attain in a very
short time, proficiency. In fact any man who will
venture hereafter to call himself a billiard player
without having read " Michael's" " Without a Mas-
ter," deserves to be laughed at in a billiard room,
and meet the scorn of a discerning public. We
welcome Mr. Phelan to the literary world, and
heartily commend his book to all our readers.

Three Years in California. By Rev. Walter
CoLTON, U. S. N., late Alcaide of Monterey,
New York : A. L, Barnes & Co, 1850. Illus-
trated.

To us, this is the most agreeable book on Cali-
fornia that we have yet seen. It conveys to our
minds at least, a better account of the great phe-
nomenon of the age, than any other, though we
must confess to a knowledge of but a few of them.
The work is in the form of a personal diary, com-
mencing before the declaration of war with Mex-
ico, or at least before it was known in California.
It gives a better idea of the country and the pre-
liminary operations to its acquisition than we have
elsewhere seen. The capacity of the soil, the man-
ners and customs of the inhabitants, &c., previous
to the grand discovery of the precious dross that
has absorbed all other considerations, are portray-
ed by Mr, Colton's lively pen in a most graphic
and agreeable manner. The book is gotten up in
a beautiful style and is illustrated by portraits of
the more distinguished of the enterprising men
who have given the new empire a start, as well as
admirably drawn and lively sketches of scenes and

incident's of a humorous kind. The book is well
worth possessing.

Auto-Biography of Leigh Hunt. 2 vols. 12mo.
New York : Harper & Brothers.

Lovers of literature and literary gossip will find
a rich treat in these two volumes. Hunt is the
connecting link between the literary men of the
present and the last generation, and there seems to
be nothing better adapted to his character of mind,
vivacious style, and somewhat egotistical habit of
thought, than just such a personal and literary his-
tory as the one before us. Readers not carried
away by the charm of his vivacity and unfailing
good-heartedness, will perceive a somewhat os-
tentatious benevolence of sentiment, and a too
ad-captandum method of insisting upon the theo-
logical dogma on which his intellect relies in sup-
port of his natural disposition. He will have nu-
merous readers who need not be warned, that the
great question has been otherwise settled.

Latter Day Pamphlets. Edited by Thomas Car-
LYLE. No. 8. Jesuitism. Boston : Phillips,
Sampson & Co.

This number of the Latter Day Pamphlets is a
violent attack upon Jesuitism in every shape ;
which our author defines as a kind of moral pru-
riency, more insatiable and more wicked than even
the grossest sensual desire, and which leads, by
an inevitable result, to every degree of hypocrisy
and falsehood ; — as a system, or rather, as vice lead-
ing to a system, which ends in the substitution of
the false for the true, and of slavery and baseness
for freedom and sincerity, in every part of life.
This pamphlet is marked by all the peculiarities
of the author's style, and notwithstanding great
brilliancy and power, wearies by the excess of
those peculiarities.

Unity of the Human Races Proved to he the Doc-
trine of Scripture, Reason, and Science. With
a Review of the present position and theory of
Professor Agassiz. By the Rev. Thomas Smith,
D. D. New York : George P. Putnam. 1850.

This work is claimed by those who have exam-
ined it, to be a successful vindication of the assumed
Scripture doctrine of the unity of the human race.
We commend it to our readers, as the representa-
tive of that side of the question which it is held
most important to defend. It is a small octavo
volume ; not expensive.

In arguing this question from the Scripture point
of view, it is necessary,

1. To prove that the Scriptures of the Old Tes-
tament affirm, clearly, and undeniably, and conclu-
sively, and with a view to the establishment of this
very doctrine, the unity of all races of men ; in
order to establish which it is necessary to show,
contrary to the opinion of many eminent Divines
and Rabbins, that the story of Adam and Evo is a
literal and not a parabolic narrative ; and that the
narrative of the Deluge is to be accepted, not as a
poem or song illustrating the early dealings of God

446

Critical Notices.

Oct.

with the human race, but as an exact and scientific
history, written by a Seer, inspired not only with
divine thought, but with a correct geological the-
ory. The difficulties in the way of such a demon-
stration are immense. What success its defenders
have hitherto met with, we leave our readers to de-
termine, after an examination of the work before us.
For our own part we will never admit, no, not for
an instant, that the eternal salvation of the human
race can be made to depend upon the skill of a
Hebrew grammarian.

Poems. By H. W. Parker. Auburn : N. Al-
den. 1850.

Several of Mr. Parker's poems, such as " The
vision of Shelly's Death," " The Shadow," and
that very beautiful piece, " The Loom of Life,"
having appeared in the American Whig Review,
it is not necessary for us to say, that we think they
will give pleasure to our readers. Criticism from
us, under the circumstances, would be unbecom-
ing.

The same volume contains several prose papers,
entitled " New Wonders of the Mammoth Cave,"
" An Under-Ground Railroad," " Von Blitzen's
Experiment," and others, with some of which our
readers are already familiar. As a tale writer and
a versifier Mr. Parker is equally successful. His
manner is elegant and pleasing, his versification,
and his prose, pure and harmonious. He is a wri-
ter, fanciful and sweet, and an amiable and kindly
spirit distinguishes his writings.

Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies
and North America. By Robert Baird, A.
M., Philadelphia : Lea & Blanchard, 1850.

This work contains important observations on
slavery and the slave trade in Cuba, and the Brit-
ish Werft Indies. To those who are interested in
that subject, that is to say, to every intelligent man
in the nation, this little book of Mr. Baird's con-
taining the information collected in it may be con-
sidered important.

Travels in Siberia, with excursions Northward,
down the Obi to the Folar Circle, and South-
ward to the Chinese Frontier. By Adolph
Erman. Translated from the German by W.
B. Cooley. In two volumes: Philadelphia:
Lea & Blanchard, 1850.

Mr. Erman, as a traveller, has been classed by
great authority with Humboldt himself. His ob-
servations are minute, and with all that form of
accuracy and care which distinguishes the works
of German Travellers. It is a book from which
to increase ones Geographical and anthropologic-
al knowledge. It is moreover abundantly inter-
esting in the narrative, and well stocked with
pleasing anecdotes.

Turkey and its Destiny ; the result of journeys
made in 1847 and 1848. By Charles McFar-
LANE, Esq., author of" Constantinople in 1828."
Two volumes octavo : Philadelphia : Lea &;
Blanchard, 1850.

_ A sketchy and descriptive book of travels, which
gives the personal impressions and feelings of the
author, during a long residence and constant inter-
course with the people in Turkey. There is no
attempt m these volumes at breadth of style ; eve-
rything is minutely related, and directly from the
narrow front view. It raises a train of foreign
and singular images, which pass before the eye
like the movement of a motley caravan. The
author endeavors to excite an immediate and per-
sonal interest to the persons, places, and things
which he describes ; and from a very superficial
exammation of the work, dipping here and there
into it, he seems to us to have succeeded in his at-
tempt.

The Illustrated Domestic Bible. By the Rev In-
GRAHAM CoBDEN, M. A., Ncw York : Samuel
Hueston, 139 Nassau st.

A magnificent quarto Bible, to be completed in
twenty-five numbers. Some of these illustrations
are the most useful of their kind that we have
ever seen. They are beautifully executed draw-
ings from the ancient monuments of Egypt and
Mesopotamia, representing the customs and the
manners of the people of antiquity. Others repre-
sent the scenery ol Asia, Arabia, and Egypt. —
Others are taken from Greek marbles, and all ex-
cellent and unexceptionable. It is an edition of
the Scripture which we can safely recommend,
for use in churches and in families.

Shakspeare's Dramatic Works. Philips, Sampson
& Co's, Illustrated edition.

We have several times called the attention of
our readers to this magnificent illustrated edition
of Shakspeare's works, The 20th and 21st nos.,
lie upon our table, and are in no way inferior to
those which have preceded them.

Appleton's Dictionary, of Mechanics, Engine
Works and Engineering.

D. Appleton and Company continue to issue
the successive number of their splendid and useful
publication. We have already given our sincere
opinion of its merits. We have received the 14th
and 15th numbers — Price 25 cts. a number.

Miscellanies. By William R. Williams. New
York : Edward H. Fletcher, 141 Nassau st.

Mr. Williams, a well known Baptist preacher
of New York, and for learning, grace and modesty
of character, one of the great ornaments of his
Church, has embodied in this volume several elab-
orate essays, of a religious and literary character.
The one entitled " The Conservative Principle in
our Literature," an address delivered before a lite-
rary society, has raised the author's reputation as

1850.

Critical Noti;es.

447

a writer and a scholar, to a very high rank among
men of his crder. Tiie style is elaborately beau-
tiful, a model in its kind ; corrected with the most
scrupulous care, and yet retaining great freedom
and even eloquence. It shows almost unlimited
learning, and a spirit aspiring and philanthropic,
yet chastened with a remarkable modesty and ear-
nestness. To those of our readers who are al-
ready familiar with the spoken discourses of this
author, the above criticism will seem an un-
necessary eulogy.

Mr. Dalton's Legatee — A Very Nice Woman.

By Mrs. Stone. New York : Stringer & Town-
send. 1850.

Although " Mr. Dalton's Legatee" properly be-
longs to a class of books for which we have no
particular affection— the fashionable novels — yet
it is one of the best of its kind. The plot is in-
tricate and interesting, and the characters amusing
and well sustained.

Stubbs Calendar, or the Fatal Boots. By W. M.
Thackeray. Illustrated by Cruickshank. New
York : Stringer & Tovvnsend.

A re-print of an old and amusing tale. The
illustrations are of course capital, and the book
beautifully got up.

" Europe Past and Present," a comprehensive
Manual of European Geography and History,
with separate descriptions and statistics of each
State, and a copious index. By Francis H.
Un&ewitter, L. L. D. New York : G. P.
Putnam. 1850.

This is, without exception, the most perfect and
useful book of reference that we have ever met
with in so small a compass. Every small State
is described, aud its history, form of government,
cities, products, &c, carefully noted. To the ed-
itors of our daily papers, who have been lately in-
troduced to a vast number of new names in Euro-
pean geography, this book must be of great value.

The promise held forth in the title page is fully
sustained in the volume ; and we may mention as
a proof of this, that the index contains over ten
thousand names. The " getting up" reflects much
credit upon the publisher.

The Rebels, or Boston before the Revolution. By
the author of " Hobomok." Boston : Phillips,
Sampson &. Co. 1850.

A pleasant book, introducing real characters,
and describing real events m Boston, during the
critical period which immediately proceeded our
Revolution.

Among the characters the noted humorist Dr.
Byles holds a prominent place, and is made the
organ of many good, and some extremely bad
witticisms, a portion of which tradition has handed

down to us as the product of the Doctor's quizzi-
cal brain.

Although devoid of any pretentions to plot, the
book is sufficiently amusing, and will repay the
time spent in perusal.

Norvel Hastings, or the Frigate in the Offing.
By a " Distinguished Novelist." Philadelphia :
A. Hart. 1850.

" Distinguished novelists" not being much in the
habit of hiding their lights under a bushel, we are
inclined to believe this a misprint, and that " dis-
tinguished," should read " extinguished." The
" distinguishing" mark of the book is an extreme
and all-pervading thinness in the characters, plot,
and volume itself. It is of the " Ingraham" va-
riety of the " yellow cover" species of light litera-
ture.

The Initials ; a story of modern life,
phia : A. Hart. 1850.

Philadel-

" Equal to Jane Eyre," says the publisher, upon
the topmost verge of the odious yellow paper cover,
which he has so inaptly imposed upon this ad-
mirable book — while between the two there can
exist no comparison. The healthy tone of the
" Initials," the delightful simplicity of many of the
characters, the extreme purity of sentiment, differ
as widely as may be, from the very dubious moral-
ity and unnatural excitement of " Jane Eyre."

In a short notice we cannot do justice to a book
so deserving as the one at present under our con-
sideration, and we can only heartily and honestly
commend it to all of our readers, and at the same
time advise the publisher to present it to the read-
ing world in a more fitting dress and appearance.

A Treatise on English Punctuation. Designed
for letter writers, authors, printers, and correctors
of the press ; with an Appendix containing hints
on proof reading, &c. By John Wilson. Bos-
ton : 21 School St. 1850.

The American and English Press have not hes-
itated to give its merited praise to this work. The
careless punctuation of American writers is a suf-
ficient proof that no such work as this has hitherto
been in popular use. It contains all the necessary
directions for self-taught writers and editors, a
very large class in this country, and is a book of
a kind absolutely necessary to be read by every
type-setter and proof-reader who intends to be a
master of his art.

Every person who intends publishing his own
productions, or those of others, should have Mr.
Wilson's book upon his writing-desk — unless he
is already to compose such a book for the use of
others. A great deal of very excellent writing is
spoiled by the want of proper punctuation, and
many a tolerable article, as we know by sad experi-
ence, has been entirely ruined by the ignorance of
the proof-reader.

448

Critical Notices.

Oct. 1850.

Rural Hours. By a Lady. New York: G. P.
Putnam. 1850.

It is seldom that any author has made a debut
before the American literary world under such ad-
vantages as Miss Cooper. The prestige of her
father's name, and the acceptance of the book in
England, combined, have attracted our unwonted,
but not our unmerited attention.

There can be no doubt but that, unaided by such
adventitious circumstances, great merit would have
ultimately gained for the work its present proud
position in public favor.

To those of our readers who may be so unfortu-
nate as not to have met with " Rural Hours," we
would say that, in plan and idea, it is similar to
" Howitt's Book of the Seasons," or Miss Marti-
neau's " Year at Ambleside," but, in our opinion,
superior to either.

We copy one of Miss Cooper's delightful cabinet
pictures :

" What a noble gift to man are the forests !
What a debt of gratitude and admiration we owe
for their utility and their beauty ! How pleasantly
the shadows of the wood fall upon our heads when
we turn from the glitter and the turmoil of the
world of man ! The winds of heaven seem to
linger amid these balmy branches, and the sunshine

falls like a blessing upon the green leaves ; the
wild breath of the forest, fragrant with bush and
berry, fans the brow with greatful freshness ; and
the beautiful wood-light, neither garish nor gloomy,
full of calm and peaceful influences, sheds repose
over the spirit. The view is limited, and the ob-
jects about us are uniform in character ; yet within
the bosom of the woods the mind scarcely lays
aside its daily bitterness, and opens to higher
thoughts, in silent consciousness that it stands
alone with the works of God. The humble rose
beneath our feet, the sweet flowers, the varied
shrubs, the great trees, and the sky gleaming above
in sacred blue, are each the handiwork of God.
They were all called into being by the will of the
Creator, as we now behold them, full of wisdom
and goodness. Every object here has a deeper
merit than our wonder can fathom ; each has a
beauty beyond our full perception ; the dullest
insect crawling about these roots lives by the power
of the Almighty ; and the discolored shreds of
last year's leaves wither away upon the lowly
herbs in a blessing of fertility. But it is the great
trees, stretching their arms above us in a thousand
forms of grace or strength, it is more especially
the trees which fill the mind with wonder and
praise."

i )

x^>

J ClieTiey:

(Z^y^<-<^^^t^^ ^ G>^-^-^ e-^^^ ■

THE

AMEEICAJY ¥HICt EEYIE¥.

No. XXXV.

FOR NOVEMBER, 1850.

TO THE POLITICAL READEK.

Our political friends will find in the pres-
ent number an article illustrating further the
policy of Great Britain, as developed by the
conduct of her agents in Central America.

In another article we have given a gener-
al view of her commercial policy, explaining,
in very simple language, and by popular
illustrations, some things supposed to be
peculiarly dark and difficult.

Our developments of British arrogance
and assumption have excited a violent jeal-
ousy in the minds of some persons, as we
discover by the vituperations of a certain, or
rather uncertain, portion of the public press.
We can only say that we shall suffer no
opportunity to escape us of laying correct
information before our readers, not only of
the public proceedings, but of public insults
and contempts politicly cast upon us by the
present British Ministry, miscalled " Whig,"
and their agents, employed or volunteer.

The present Ministry of Great Britain is
playing a very interesting part in the great
game of " Who is the strongest ? " with
all the powers of the earth. Political writ-
ers seem to be in doubt which of the five
powers, Russia, Prussia, Austria, France,
or England, ought to be considered the
strongest ; that is to say, the most dangerous
to the rest of the world. On our side of the
Atlantic, no question. Great Britain is
the most important and conspicuous power,
not only because of her immediate influence
here, and her proximity, but because she is

VOL. VI. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

hitherto our superior in the trade of nations,
and in the home production which maintains
that trade.

She has succeeded, through her literary
and political influence on this continent, in
breaking down our system of independent
industry, to the incalculable advantage of
her own home industry, both agricutural
and mechanical. Her importance to the
Southern States, as a buyer of cotton, has
given her an almost absolute control over
those States, who look to her, in the event
of a dissolution of the Union, as their sole
friend among the nations. That she has
encouraged in every way the contemplated
movement in the South, we have good evi-
dence. In place, however, of documentary
proofs, we will suggest to our readers a few
political considerations, such as may be sup-
posed to actuate a far-sighted British Minis-
try in the adoption of an imperial policy for
a long course of years.

1. The immediate effect of a dissolution
would be a temporary suspension of inter-
course between the Southern and Northern
States. Great Britain would make her
own terms with the latter, take their cot-
tons, and send her manufactures to Charles-
ton in exchange — a proceeding liable to
some shght interruptions, however, by the
navies of the North, whose amiable feehngB
towards GreatBritain would not be increased
by her officious interference in a " brothers*
quarrel."

440

To the Political Reader,

Nov.

2. War gradually growing up between
the North and South, there would follow,
during the firet year of our misery, slave in-
surrections and stampedes, interrupting the
production of cotton. In the course of a
year or two the South would be very gen-
erally in a state of confusion, and the negro
business would become quite unmanageable.
The experience of Great Britain is large in
that species of calamity. It would be a state
of things very favorable to the plans of uni-
versal abolition, which make an essential
member of the great free trade system.

3. The Northern States, driven to despair
by the desertion of the South, and the inter-
ruption of their own industry, would be ex-
asperated more and more. Every negro
who set foot beyond Mason and Dixon's
line, would then, of necessity, be protected by
the entire military power of the North.

4. Cotton would, of course, rise to an ex-
orbitant price, but Great Britain would be
only temporarily injured by that rise, as she
would have the monopoly of the manufac-
ture and of the trade, and could demand a
compensating price for cotton cloths.

5. The permanent rise of value in cotton
would immediately make possible the cul-
tivation of cotton by free labor, or by labor
supposed to be free, upon soil compre-
hended under the British Empire, the soil
of Mosquito, and of other parts said to be
of the British Empire, and of India and the
"West Indies. The cultivation of cotton
by free labor on British soil, is at present
kept down by American competition. In the
event of a dissolution, and consequent de-
struction of the slave system in the Southern
States, Great Britain would be able to use
cotton cultivated by her own serfs, parias,
free negroes, coolies, and paupers.

Instead of giving up the Canadas, Eng-
land is expending some four millions sterling
annually upon them, and proposes to spend
more in internal improvements. In the
event of a dissolution, and consequent de-
gtmcJtion of the slave power, and a tempo-

rary suspension of Northern industry, the
Canadas must rise into importance.

Instead of withdrawino- from this Con-
tment, and directing her attention upon her
own internal affairs. Great Britain is engaged
in seizing, by force and fraud, every foot of
territory not under our own immediate pro-
tection in the region south of Mexico and
bordering upon that feeble State. In the
event of dissolution, and the expected de-
struction of the slave system, and of the
American cotton manufacture, she will need
all the available territory in the world for the
cultivation of cotton upon a basis of her
own, which cannot be put into practice until
the slave power is destroyed.

Nothing is too large for the conception of
the present managers of the British Empire,
and nothing is too remote from truth to be
used by their defenders as a mask for their
policy. The British Empire never grew
more rapidly, or by more unscrupulous ac-
quisitions, than during the present age.

Our Southern friends will not suppose,
from the direct and naked style of the above
representation, that we have faith in the
ability of Great Britain to carry out her plan
of grand monopoly ; all that we ask of them
is to take an accurate survey of British pro-
ceedings, and then determine for themselves
whether all that she has done, and is doing
through her present Ministry, does not place
her in the attitude not only of a competitor
in the world's markets, but of an active
and dangerous rival, using every means in
her power to break up and change the pres-
ent system of this continent. If the Union
stands, and the American system is carried
out, with the necessary addition of vindicating
the honor and influence of the Republic on
this continent, we stand the equal of Great
Britain ; if we suffer her political managers
not only to sow dissension among ourselves,
but, in mere contempt of us, and in antici-
pation of our ruin, to seize, without remorse,
the territory of our repubhcan neighbors, we
remain her justly despised inferior and servant.

1850.

The Great Ship Canal Question^

441

THE GREAT SHIP CANAL QUESTION.

EN^GLAND AND COSTA RICA versus THE UNITED STATES AND NICARAGUA.

Recent events have directed public atten-
tion, in a marked manner, towards the central
parts of the American continent. The acqui-
sition of California by the United States, the
extraordinary mineral wealth which has been
discovered there, and the still more extra-
ordinary emigration which has taken place
in consequence, and which has already raised
California from a httle known and sparsely
populated province, to be a powerful and
rapidly growing State of the Confederacy,
have given an immediate importance to the
long talked-of project of opening a ship-canal
between the two oceans. And it is now very
well understood that the preliminary steps
to this great enterprise have been taken by
a Company of citizens of the United States,
styled the " American Atlantic and Pacific
Ship Canal Company." The only feasible
route for a work of the kind proposed, it is
generally if not universally conceded, is that
via the river San Juan and Lake Nicaragua,
to the Pacific Ocean. This Company has
secured a grant or charter from the Govern-
ment of Nicaragua, the only power compe-
tent to bestow it, for the construction of
the work, upon certain conditions, which are
very well known, and to which it is unneces-
sary to refer, further than to say that the
term is for 85 years from the completion of
the work. "When it is known that not less
than fourteen or fifteen contracts had pre-
viously been entered into for the same work,
all of which had been forfeited for non-com-
phance with their conditions, it can readily
be understood that the Nicaraguan Govern-
ment would not entertain any propositions
for a new arrangement, except under circum-
stances calculated to inspire confidence in the
parties applying, and under strong collateral
assurances of their good faith and ability. It
was not therefore, until an American Minister
was sent to Central America, invested with

plenary powers to treat, on behalf of the
United States, Avith the several Kepubhcs of
that country, Nicaragua included, and spe-
cially authorized to extend the guarantees of
his Government to any charter of a proper
character, which any Company of Ameiican
citizens might secure, for the construction of
the proposed work, — it was not until then,
that the Government of Nicaragua felt itself
justified in re-opening the matter. Under
these circumstances, however, it granted a
charter more liberal than any before conce-
ded, and which is the one to which we have
alluded.

There seems to exist some misapprehension
in the public mind of America, and much in
that of England, as to the motives which
actuated the American Government in taking
so active an interest in the matter of the pro-
posed canal. Some persons, through unpar-
donable ignorancf. or evil disposition, have
even gone so far as to say that our Minister
was not authorized in committing the United
States, in any manner, in respect to the
undertaking. The instructions under which
that gentleman acted have however recently
been published, in answer to a call of Con-
gress, and so fully \indicate the high princi-
ples and motives which governed the Admin-
istration of Gen. Taylor, in its relations with
this contemplated work, and so completely
exonerate the gentleman upon whom was
devolved the duty of carrying them into efiect,
that we cannot do better than to copy a few
passages from them, relating to this specific
point.

After reviewing in an able and unanswer-
able manner the British pretensions on the
Mosquito shore, and the encroachments ou
the territories of Nicaragua forcibly effected
under them, Mr. Clayton proceeds to say : —

"Against the aggressions on her territories,
Nicaragua has firmly struggled and protested

442

The Great Ship Canal Question.

Nov.

without ceasing ; and the feeling of her people may
be judged from the impassioned language of the
proclamation of her Supreme Director, of the 12th
of Nov., 1847. 'The moment,' says he, 'has ar-
rived for losing a country with ignominy, or for
sacrificing with honor the dearest treasures to
sustain it. As regards myself, if the power which
menaces sets aside justice, I am firmly resolved
to be entombed in the ruins of Nicaragua, rather
than survive her ruin.' The eloquent appeal of
the Minister of Nicaragua to this Government, is
evidence not less striking and impressive of the
disposition of an injured people to resist what they
believe to be injustice and oppression. Will other
nations interested in a free passage to and from
the Pacific, by the river San Juan and Lake Nica-
ragua, tamely allow that interest to be thwarted
by the pretensions of Great Britain ? As regards
the United States, the question may be confidently
answered in the negative.

" Having now," continues the Secretary of State,
"sufficiently apprised you of the views of the
Department in regard to the tirle to the Mosquito
Coast, I desire you to understand how important
it is deemed by the President, so to conduct all
our negotiations on the subject of the Nicaraguan
passage as not to involve this country in any entan-
gling alliances on the one hand, or any unnecessary
controversy on the other. We desire no monopoly
of the right of way for our commerce, and we can-
not submit to it if claimed for that of any other
nation. If we held and enjoyed such a monopoly,
it would entail upon us more bloody and expensive
wars than the struggle for Gibraltar has caused to
England and Spain. The same calamity would
infallibly be cast upon any other nation claiming
to exclude the commerce of the rest of the world. |
We only ask an equal right of passage for all |
nations on the same terms — a passage unincum- |
bered by oppressive restrictions, either from the \
local Government within whose sovereign hmits it '
may be effected, or from the proprietors of the |
canal when accomplished. To this end we are will-
ing to enter into treaty stipulations with the i
Government of Nicaragua, that both Governments
shall protect and defend the proprietors who may
succeed in cutting the canal and opening water
communication between the two oceans for our
commerce. Without such protection it is not be-
lieved this great enterprise would ever be success-
ful. Nicaragua is a feeble State, and capitalists,
proverbially a timid race, may apprehend from the
rapacity of great maritime powers the obstruction
and even the seizure of the canal. Similar appre-
hensions on their part, from revolutions in the local
government, from the oppressions and exactions of
temporary chieftains, and from causes not neces-
sary to be explained, may operate to retard a work
in regard to which it may be safely predicated,
that, when successfully accomplished, its benefits to
mankind will transcend those of any similar work
known in the history of the world. All these appre-
hensions may and will be removed by the solemn
pledge of protection given by the United States,
and especially when it is known that our object in
giving it is not to acquire for ourselves any exclu-
sive or partial advantages over other nations. Nica-
ragua will be at liberty to enter into the same treaty

stipulations with any other nation that may claim
to enjoy the same benefits, and will agree to be
bound by the same conditions. In desiring that
our citizens may obtain the charter or grant of the
right to make the canal, we do not mean to be
misunderstood. Our purpose in aiding American
citizens to obtain the grant is to encourage them in
a laudable effort ; relying as their own Government
does, more on their skill and enterprise than on
that of others. If they themselves prefer to unite
with their own the capital of foreigners, who may
desire to embark in the undertaking, this Govern-
ment will not object to that. We should naturally
be proud of such an achievement as an American
work ; but if European aid be necessary to accom-
plish it, why should we repudiate it, seeing that
our object is as honest as it is openly avowed,
to claim no peculiar privileges, no exclusive right,
no monopoly of commercial intercourse, but to see
that the work is dedicated to the benefit of man-
kind, to be used by all on the same terms with us,
and consecrated to the enjoyment and diffusion of
the unnumbered and inestimable blessings which
must flow from it to all the civilized world. You
will not want arguments to induce Nicaragua to
enter into such a treaty with us. The canal will
be productive of more benefit to her than any
other country of the same limits. With the aid of
the treaty it may — without such protection from
some power equal to our own it cannot — be accom-
plished. Let your negotiations with her be frank,
open, and unreserved as to all of our purposes.

" The same reasons for our interference must be
avowed to the capitalists who engage in ■h3 work.
Before you treat for their protection, look well to
their contract with Nicaragua. See that it is not
assignable to others ; that no exclusive privileges
are granted to any nation that shall agree to the
same treaty stipulations with Nicaragua ; that the
tolls to be demanded by the owners are not unrea-
sonable or oppressive ; that no power be reserved
to the proprietors of the canal or their successors
to extort at any time henceforth, or unjustly to
obstruct or embarrass the right of passage. This
will require all your vigilance and skill. If they
do not agree to grant us passage on reasonable and
proper terms, refuse our protection and counte-
nance to procure the contract from Nicaragua. If
a charter or grant of the right of way shall have
been incautiously or inconsiderately made, before
your arrival in the country, seek to have it properly
modified to answer the ends we have in view."

Such were the principles and motives
which induced and regulated the interference
of the United States in respect to the pro-
posed canal, and Mr. Squier, in his negotia-
tions, followed the letter and spirit of his
instructions, so far as it was possible to re-
duce them to practice. Upon this point
the treaty arranged by him with the Nicara-
guan Government, and which now awaits
the action of the United States Senate, is the
best evidence. The following article em-
braces the essential points of the treaty. It
will be observed that it secui'es for the United

1850.

The Great Ship Canal Question.

443

States every desirable privilege in her inter-
course, commercial or otherwise, with Nica-
ragua, and opens the way to intimate and
profitable relations with that important re-
gion. And yet the privileges secured to the
United States are in no wise exclusive ; the}^
will accrue to every other nation upon pre-
cisely the same conditions ; conditions to
which no nation except England can pos-
sibly object, and she only in the event of
insisting upon her preposterous pretensions
on what is called the Mosquito shore.

"article XXXV.

*' It is and has been stipulated, by and between
the high contracting parties —

" 1st. That the citizens, vessels, and merchan-
dise of the United States shall enjoy in all the
ports and harbors of Nicaragua, upon both
oceans, a total exemption from all port-charges,
tonnage or anchorage duties, or any other simi-
lar charges now existing, or which may hereafter
be established, in manner the same as if said
ports had been declared Free Ports, And it is
further stipulated that the right of way or tran- ;
sit across the territories of Nicaragua, by any j
route or upon any mode of communication at
present existing, or which may hereafter be con- j
structed, shall at all times be open and free to j
the Government and citizens of the United
States, for all lawful purposes whatever ; and no
tolls duties, or charges of any kind shall be im-
posed upon the transit in whole or part, by such
modes of communication, of vessels of war, or
other property belonging to the Government of
the United States, or on public mails sent under
the authority of the same, or upon persons in its
employ, nor upon citizens of the United States, nor
upon vessels belonging to them. And it is also stipu-
lated that all lawful produce, manufactures, mer-
chandise, or other property belonging to citizens of
the United States, passing from one ocean to the
other, in either direction, for the purpose of exporta-
tion to foreign countries, shall not be subject to any
import or export duties whatever ; or if citizens of
the United States, having introduced such produce,
manufactures or merchandise into the State of
Nicaragua for sale or exchange, shall, within
three years thereafter, determine to export the
same, they shall be entitled to drawback equal
to four fifths of the amount of duties paid upon
their importation.

" 2d. And inasmuch as a contract was entered
into on the twenty-seventh day of Ausrust, 1849,
between the Republic of Nicaragua and a com-
pany of citizens of the United States, styled
the 'American Atlantic and Pacific Ship Canal
Company,' and in order to secure the construc-
tion and permanence of the great work thereby
contemplated, both high contracting parties do
severally and jointly agree to protect and defend
the above-named Company, in the full and per-
fect enjoyment of said work, from its inception
to its completion, and after its completion, from
any acts of invasion, forfeiture, or violence, from

whatever quarter the same may proceed ; and
to give full effect to the stipulations here made,
and to secure for the benefit of mankind the un-
interrupted advantages of such communication
from sea to sea, the United States distinctly
recognizes the rights of sovereignty and property
which the State of Nicaragua possesses in and
over the line of said canal, and for the same rea-
son guarantees, positively and efficaciously, the
entire neutrality of the same, so long as it shall
remain under the control of citizens of the United
States, and so long as the United States shall
enjoy the privileges secured to them in the pre-
ceding section of this article.

" 3d. But if, by any contingency, the above-
named ' American Atlantic and Pacific Ship
Canal Company' shall fail to comply with the
terms of their contract with the State of Nicaragua,
all the rights and privileges which said contract
confers shall accrue to any company of citizens of the
United States which shall, within one year after
the official declaration of failure, undertake to
Comply with its provisions, so far as the same
j may at that time be applicable, provided the
I company thus assuming said contract shall first
! present to the President and Secretary of State of
the United States satisfactory assurances of their
, intention and ability to comply with the same ; of
[ which satisfactory assurances the signature of the
Secretary of State and the seal of the Department
shall be complete evidence.

" 4th. And it is also agreed, on the part of the
Republic of Nicaragua, that none of the rights,
privileges, and immunities guaranteed, and by the
preceding articles, but especially by the first sec-
tion of this article, conceded to the United States
and its citizens, shall accrue to any other nation,
or to its citizens, except such nation shall first enter
into the same treaty stipulations for the defense
and protection of the proposed great inter-oceanic
canal which have been entered into by the United
States, in terms the same with those embraced in
section 2d of this article."

To understand fully the provisions and
effects of this article, some portions of the
contract to which it refers, and on which it
is, to some degree, dependent, must be taken
in view. In accordance with his instructions,
Mr. Squier procured the insertion in the
contract of the following articles : —

"article XXXVI.

" It is expressly stipulated that the citizens,
vessels, products, and manufactures of all nations
shall be permitted to pass upon the proposed
canal through the territories of Nicaragua, sub-
ject to no other nor higher duties, charges, or
taxes than shall be imposed upon those of the
United States ; provided aJvjays, that such nations
shall first enter into the same treaty stipulations
and guarantees, respecting said canal, as may be
entered into between the State of Nicaragua and
the United States.

" ARTICLE XXXVII.

"It is finally stipulated that this contract, and
the rights and privileges which it confers, shal

1850.

The Great Skip Canal Question.

444

be held inalienably by the company herein
named, and that it shall never, in whole or part,
be transferred or assigned to any other com-
pany, nor become dependent upon or connected
with any other company, whatever may be the
objects of the same."

In respect to the rate of tolls, it was pro-
vided in Article XVIII. that " they shall be
fixed at the lovrest possible rate consistently
with the interests of the State and Com-
pany," and that they shall not be changed
at any time, except with six months' pre-
vious notice, both in Nicaragua and all the
principal sea-ports of the United States.

"These provisions," says Mr. Squier, in
his Despatch No. 4, published among the
documents before us, " include all the sug-
gestions made by the Department, with a
single exception, viz., the specific determina-
tion of the rates of toll or transit. This I
found impracticable, for reasons which must,
I think, be conclusive. In the first place, no
work at all corresponding either in extent
or chai-acter with the proposed canal exists
in the world, which might serve as a basis
to proceed upon. Secondly, the cost of the
work must be an important consideration in
fixing these rates ; and this without a care-
ful survey must be a matter upon which no
reflecting man would venture even a con-
jecture. Besides, whether the rates should
be on tonnage or otherwise, is a matter
which cannot now be determined. The
commissioners of the Com.pany and the
Government were alike in utter io^norance of
what these rates would or ou2:ht to be, and
of the basis upon which they should be
calculated. Under these circumstances I
thought it best to leave the matter entirely
open."

To these preliminary facts, which are
necessary to a proper understanding and
appreciation of what is to follow, we shall
only add the following paragraph, from the
Despatch of Mr. Squier just referred to, n
relation to the guarantee extended to the
canal by the provisions of his treaty : —

"The Government was at first extremely
anxious that this guarantee should be extended
over the entire territory of the State ; but to tliis
I replied, that such a step would be in contraven-
tion of tlie settled policy of the United States ;
that the protection extended to the Canal Com-
pany was a departure from this policy only war-
ranted by the admitted fiict, that without such
intervention, a work of immense importance not
only to our own interests, but to those of the
whole world, could not be constructed ; and that,

although we sympathized deeply with the Repub-
lic, and Were wiUing to exert ourselves in all prop-
er ways to preserve her integrity, sustain her
rights, and promote her interests, yet we could not
take a step which, if adopted as a precedent,
would be sure to involve us in inextricable difii-
culties. That the exclusion of foreign influences
from the affairs of this continent could be better
effected by the promotion of trade and commerce,
tlie cultivation of friendly relations, and the growth
of confidence between the several nations g\ ouped
upon it, than by a resort to the system of alliances,
protections, and counter-alliances which had made
Europe the theatre of dark intrigues and devas-
tating wars. Whether convinced by my argu-
ments or otherwise, the Government came early
into my views, with a good grace, and the terms
of the treaty were arranged accordingly."

The policy adopted by Gen. Taylor's
Administration, in respect to the proposed
canal, needs no \indication beyond that
which is furnished by the facts and pro-
ceedings which we have thus briefly pre-
sented. We come now to a consideration
of other collateral matters connected with
this great enterprise.

The question of the territorial limits of
Nicaragua is no longer one of exclusively
local interest, inasmuch as it connects itself
with the subject of inter-oceanic communi-
cation, and is consequently involved in the
relations which have been established be-
tween that Repubhc and the United States.
Until within a few years no one had the
hardihood to dispute the sovereignty of the
Republic of Nicaragua over the territories
embraced in the province of that name, un-
der the Spanish rule, nor to call in question
her right to make such disposition of those
territories as suited her own interests or
inclination. She occupied the whole of the
isthmus from one sea to the other, extended
her laws over the ports on either ocean,
made contracts and disposed of lands, — in
short, exercised all the rights of sovereignty
and property, without opposition or dispute.

No sooner however did the increasing
commerce of the Pacific direct attention
more particularly than before to the subject,
and the importance of improved means of
communication across the central parts of
the continent became more apparent, — no
sooner, in fact, did the matter begin to
assume a practical aspect, than the world
was astonished by pretensions set up to a
large and most important portion of the
territories of Nicaragua, on the part of
Great Britain, as the self-constituted " pro-

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446

The Great Ship Canal Question,

Kov.

lector " of an obscure and insignificant tribe
of savages, — without religion, laws, or written
language, without ci^alization, and destitute
of a single claim to be regarded as a sover-
eign people. Under these pretensions, and
by a significant conjuncture of time, at the
moment when it became certain that Cali-
fornia would fall into the possession of the
United States, Nicaragua, early in 1848,
was deprived of her only port on the Atlan-
tic by a British force uijder the command of
Capt. G. C. Loch of the British Navy. These
pretensions have been from time to time
extended, as shown by the accompanying
map, (which we republish for the sake of easy
reference,) so as to include, besides the port
of San Juan, two thirds of the river San
Juan, and nearly if not quite one half of the
territories of Nicaraofua.

When in 1847 Lord Palmerston first
gave an official form to these pretensions, it
was only claimed that the so-called Mos-
quito Kingdom, extended, on the south to the
river San Juan. But upon the representa-
tions of Mr. Chatfield, and subsequently of
Mr. Christy, British peripatetic agents, a
claim was set up to the whole coast below
that river, extending to the northern bound-
aries of New-Grenada. The suggestion
upon which the British Government acted
in making this extension is contained in one
of Mr. Chatfield's despatches, published by
the British Parhament among other docu-
ments on the subject, and is too significant
in its terms to be allowed to pass with-
out special notice. ^' Moreover,''^ he says,
" looking to the probable destinies of
these countries, considerable advantages
might accrue in after times, hy reserving
for settlement with Central America in
Costa Rica, the rights of Musquito beyond
the San Juan river ^ Mr. O'Leary, British
Minister to New-Grenada, also sua-ofested to
his Government " the extent and importance
of the coast situated between the San Juan
and Chiriqui Lagoon^,'' and added, " If the
Mosquitian pretensions could be maintained
to this extent, the Chiriqui Lagoon, which
affords good anchorage, would likewise form
a secure frontier." Whether regard for the
British or Mosquitian marine prompted
these allusions to good harbors and "safe
anchorages," or what were the " considerable
advantages," which were, according to Mr.
Chatfield, " to accrue in after times," it is
not undertaken to say.

Although the claim to the territory south
of the river San Juan was " put on record,"
to be called up if necessary, yet it has never
been insisted Upon for two reasons : 1st,
(and this is the least important, so far as the
British Government is concerned,) there is,
if possible, less foundation for it than for the
pretensions to the northward ot ' the river ;
and, 2d, it was found that Costa Rica might
be controlled just as easily as Mosquito, and
that a quasi protectorate over the former
was quite as effective and much more re-
spectable than an avowed one over the lat-
ter. So the " rights of Mosquito beyond
the San Juan " were quietly put in abeyance,
w^hile the requisite intrigues were set on
foot to obtain control in Costa Rica. It is
within our power, but not necessary to om*
present purpose, to expose the whole coui-se
of these intrigues, and to show the results
at which they aimed.

Suffice it to say, under influences which
need not be named, and for objects too ob-
vious to require to be indicated, the so-
called Republic of Costa Rica has within a
year or two put forward pretensions to a
large portion of the territories of Nicaragua,
including all that part lying to the south-
ward of the river San Juan and Lake Ni-
caragua, and comprehending a large part of
the waters of the lake, as also a joint, if not
an exclusive right to the na\-igation of the
river. A portion of this claim has a basis
just broad enough to admit of discussion ;
but the most important part, and that which
from circumstances is most interesting to the
United States, has not even the shadow of
a foundation. Had the scheme which was
set on foot soon after the seizure of San
Juan, and which at the period of Mr.
Squier's arrival in Central America was on
the eve of consummation, but which the
information which he communicated to the
Department of State had the effect to de-
feat, viz., of taking Costa Rica under Brit-
ish protection, a la Mosquito, — had this
scheme been perfected, these pretensi'ms
would have constituted another cause of
difference between the United States and
Great Britain, nearly as serious as that which
exists in respect to the Mosquito shore. But
as the matter now stands, England appears,
to adopt the language of the duello, only as
" thefriend^^ of Costa Rica, in her territorial
'squabbles. Her Minister in the United States
has disavowed any " protectorate" in the case,

1850.

The Great Ship Canal Question.

but he insists on the validity of the Costa
Rican pretensions, and is very pertinacious
that the United States should concur with
Great Britain in placing the disputed port
of San Juan under Costa Rican sovereignty.
'No^Y Costa Rica never pretended to sover-
eignty over San Juan, while England has all
along stouily maintained that it belonged
incontrovertibly to Mosquito ! The explan-
ation of all this is probably to be found
in the fact, that Costa Rica has granted to a
British company a charter for a canal from
San Juan, via the river San Juan and Lake
Nicaragua, to the Pacific ! This contract is
now brought forward in England under the
especial j^atronage of the British Govern-
ment, in opposition to that negotiated by
the American Company, and to which we
have already alluded. Its provisions have
not been made public ; but the English press,
following the lead of the Government, have
come forward in its support, and to the dis-
paragement of the American Company.
The Times, Post, News, Chronicle, Colonial
Magazine, etc., not to mention a number of
pamphlets on the subject, have given up to
it a considerable share of their respective
pages; and as these supporters represent
every shade of party, their concurrence is
worthy of remark, and indicates a prospective
spirited controversy between the American
and British Companies for the favor of capi-
tahsts. It may be that this rivalry will termi-
nate in a consolidation of interests, which
would clearly be the most sensible thing the
parties could decide upon. But if the work
is built, it matters little whether it is by one
company or another, so that it is made, as
it should be, free to the world, and placed
under the guarantee of all nations. Not
even our national sympathies incline us to
favor particularly either set of speculators.
We have only to deal with the question of
territorial rights, as between Nicaragua and
Costa Rica, — a question which has been
raised by the British Government in its quasi
protectorate over the latter State, by its
Minister here, and by the pubhc press of
England. In all their discussions of the
question of the canal, the territorial rights
of Nicaragua have been rudely denied, and
the conduct of the United States, in its quali-
fied recognition of them, abundantly vilified,
but, as we shall conclusively show, without
the slightest reason. In what we may say,
in presenting this territorial question in its

true light, we shall leave out of view the
Mosquito pretensions, which are ahke wicked
and absurd, and which can only be sustained
by the most unblushing mendacity.

The London Daily News of the 28 th of
September, in an article on this subject,
says :—

" It is Well known that certain American citi-
zens had obtained from the State of Nicarasfua a
contract for the construction of a water commu-
nication between the two oceans, the American
press having, about this time last year, been act-
ively agitated on their behalf; but it was not so
generally made pubUc that the neighboring State
of Costa Rica had likewise conceded rights and
privileges for that purpose to British subjects.
The claims of the latter, although not so clamor-
ously urged, were not the less entitled to justcoa-
sideration, and more especially so on the part of
the British Governtuent."

In a pamphlet entitled, " State of tfte
Great Ship Canal Question,^'' we find also
the following paragraph : —

"The territory of Nicaragua and Costa Rica
embraces, with Mosquito, the ground which is open
to be traversed by a ship canal; Nicaragua, as
reaching to the Gulf of Fonseca on the north, and
as possessing the harbors of Realejo and San Juan
del Sur in the Pacific, as well as including in its
territ(try the Lake of Managua ; further, likewise,
as possessing the northern bank of the Lake of
Nicaragua, as also that of the river San Juaii
down to the Machuca Rapids ; Costa Rica, as pos-
sessing the port of Salinas in the Pacific, and the
southern banks of both the Lake of Nicaragua and
the river San Juan to the sea ; Mosquito, as pos-
sessing the northern bank of the San Juan from
the Machuca Rapids to the port of that river, now
designated Grey Town. It is, therefore, obvious
that Nicaragua cannot alone dispose of' this chan-
nel of communication. * * * The State of
Nicaragua has the pretension to grant a right of
steam navigation to the New- York Company, in
the river San Juan and Lake of Nicaragua, ex-
clusive of all the world, for eighty -five years. It
was not within the competency of Nicaragua to
have given any such privilege," <fec. &c.

Such is the British statement of the case.
As ive understand it, having been on the
spot, and deriving our information from au-
thentic sources, the issue, as between Costa
Rica and Nicaragua, may^be stated thus :

Costa Rica claims WisX her northern boun-
dary extends from the mouth of the river
San Juan, through that stream to Lake Ni-
caragua, and through the lake in a direct
line to the mouth of the river Flor on the
Pacific — including the large and populated
district or department of Nicoya or Guana-
caste.

Nicaragua, upon the other hand, assets

448

The Great Ship Canal Question^

Kov.

that lier southern boundaries are the river
Salto de Nicoya or Alvarado, (emptying into
the Gulf of Nicoya,) and a Une extending
thence direct to a point on the Atlantic,
midway between the port of San Juan and
that of Matina, — that is to say, about thirty-
five miles south of the former port. She
however has been willing, as a means of
compromise, that the line should be deter-
mined as running to the lower mouth of the
San Juan, i. e. about fifteen miles below the
port. These hmits include, of course, the
department of Nicoya or Guanacaste.

Previously to the revolution of the Inde-
pendence of Central America, all the States
known under that designation were included
in the Viceroyalty or kingdom of Guate-
mala. By the act of independence, it was
understood that the various provinces, which
corresponded very nearly to the colonies of
om* own country, became distinct and sov-
reign States. They so declared themselves
in their fundamental laws, and as such they
elected a national Constituent Assembly,
and entered into a confederacy known as
the " Republic of Central America."

Each one of the old provinces comprised
large tracts of unsettled and unexplored
country. And as, under the rule of the
Viceroys, it was not essential that the
boundaries should, in these parts, be accu-
rately fixed, the provincial limits were, in
some cases, very vaguely defined. It being
possible, under these circumstances, that ter-
ritorial disputes might arise, provision was
made in Art. 7 of the Constitution of the
new Repubhc, that the limits of the States
should be fixed by a law of the General
Congress. This provision was intended to
authorize interference only when disputes
might arise ; the fundamental principle that
each State comprised, and of right, all the ter-
ritories which appertained to it as a prov-
ince or colony, being in no degree impair-
ed. It was a power conceded to the Ge-
neral Government, to be exercised for the
common good, and only in cases of neces-
sity.

To determine then the true boundaries of
Nicaragua and Costa Rica, it is only neces-
sary to ascertain their limits as provinces
under the kingdom, and as fixed in their fun-
damental laws. Here we are without diffi-
culty ; for upon this point we have abundant
evidence of a historical and other nature,
which will admit of no dispute. Says Juar-

ros, the accredited historian of the old king-
dom of Guatemala : —

" Costa Rica extends from the river Salto, which
separates it from Nicaragua, to the district of
Chiriqui, in the jurisdiction of Veraguas (New Gre-
nada) ; and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Its limit on the Atlantic is from the mouth of the
river San Juan to the little is^land called the Escudo
de Veraguas, and on the Pacific, from the mouth of
the river Alvarado, (i. e. Salto,) the boundary of the
province of Nicaragua, to the river Boruca, which
terminates the kingdom of Terra Firma,"' &c. (Ed.
1812, vol. i, p. 56.)

The river here called " Salto " is indis-
criminately known as the " Salto de Nicoya^*
or " Alvarado^^^ as is explained by the his-
torian here quoted, (vol. i. p. 47,) and is the
river which empties into the Gulf of Nicoya
at its head, more than one hundred miles
southward of Lake Nicaragua.

The same limits are again assigned to
Costa Rica by Juarros, on page 202 of vol. ii.,
upon the authority of a royal cedula, which
still exists, granted to Don Diego Ostieda
Chiiinos, the first Governor of Costa Rica.
In defining the territory of Nicaragua, the
same authority informs us that

" The Intendency of Nicaragua comprises Jive
departments, viz. : Leon, which is most important,
and Realejo, Subtiaba, Matagalpa, and Nicoya,
which are corregimientos, and are under the juris-
diction of the Intendant of the Province, Avho has
his deputies in each department." (Vol. i. p. 47.)

Nicoya, or as it is now sometimes called,
Guanacaste, lies to the southward of Lake
Nicaragua, between that and the Gulf of
Nicoya, and is included in the Anglo-Costa
Rican claim.

" This department," says Juarros, " is the most
southern of the province of Nicaragua, and ad-
joins Costa Rica. It extends along the coast of
the Pacific," <fec. (Vol i. p. 55.)

Alcedo, in his American Geographical Dic-
tionary, published in 1788, says of the de-
partment of Nicoya : —

" It adjoins Costa Rica, and is bounded on the
north by Lake Nicaragua, Ac. It has an extensive
coast, and is part of the province of Nicaragua,
the Governor of which names its officers."

But it is useless to multiply evidence upon
this point. That the department of Nicoya
pertained to Nicaragua, and that the entire
lake of Nicaragua and the river San Juan
were included in that province and State,
does not stand in need of proof. It was so
understood and admitted by Costa Rica her.

1850.

The Great Ship Canal Question.

449

self, in her primary Constitution of January
21, 1825, which, in Chapter 11. Art. 16, de-
clares : —

" The territory of the State extends from the
river Salto (de Nicoya), which divides it from Nic-
aragua, to the river Chiriqui, bounding the Repub-
lic of Colombia. Its limits on the Atlantic are
from the mouth of the river San Juan to the Escudo
de Veragua; and on the Pacific, from the mouth
of the river Alvarado (Salto) to that of Chiriqui
(Boruca)."

The boundaries were also so defined in
the Constitution of Nicaragua: indeed the
question seems to have been perfectly under-
stood upon both sides. Upon the independ-
ence, the department of Nicoya continued,
of course, with Nicaragua, and sent dele-
gates to her Constituent Assembly in 1825.
Such continued to be the state of the mat-
ter, without dispute or difference upon either
side, until a decree was issued by the Federal
Congress on the 9th of December, 1826, as
follows : —

" For the present, and tcntil the boundaries of the
several States shall he fixed, in accordance with
Art, 7 of the Constitution, the department of
Nicoya shall be separated from Nicaragua and
attached to Costa Rica."

No such arbitrary act as this, even in it
conditional form, was contemplated by the
Article of the Constitution, under cover of
which it was effected. The motives which
dictated it were probably a jealousy of the
power of Nicaragua on the part of the other
States, as also a desire to give more impor-
tance to Costa Rica, then numbering not
more than 50,000 inhabitants.

The State of Nicaragua, while obeying
the decree, nevertheless energetically remon-
strated against it, demanding its revocation,
and setting forth not only the right which
the State possessed to the territory in ques-
tion, but also the injustice of the separation
to the only parties properly interested.
The inhabitants of the district joined in the
remonstrance, protesting against the annex-
ation even as a temporary measure, and
even went to the length of refusing to take
the oath of allegiance to Costa Rica, on the
ground that the decree was provisional, and
unconstitutional. The Government of Costa
Rica itself, on the same grounds, prohibited
its officers from seUing the public lands of
the department, lest injury should result to
the purchasers upon its devolution to Nica-
ragua.

The Federal Congi-ess never proceeded

to define the limits of the States, and in
1838 the Repubhc was dissolved, both Costa
Rica and Nicaragua assenting to the disso-
lution. Up to that time, Nicoya had re-
mained attached to Costa Rica, in virtue of
the provisional decree of the Congress, it
being well understood, however, upon all
sides, that the aggregation was temporary.

The whole question, so far as this depart-
ment is concerned, might be closed here.
By the dissolution of the Republic, the
rights, territorial as all others, of the sev-
eral States reverted to them again in their
sovereign capacity. None of the provisional
acts of the Federal Congress could be longer
binding ; the temporary alienation of Nicoya
ceased, and it reverted to its true proprietor,
whose rights, at the most, had only been
suspended. This is a sound and impregnar
ble position for Nicaragua.

The following historical facts therefore,
while they can in no degree affect the ques-
tion of right here involved, are nevertheless
essential to the proper understanding of the
present condition of the relations of the two
States in respect to territory, and of the
exterior influences which have controlled
Costa Rica in setting up new and absurd
pretensions.

The Republic having ceased to exist, on
the 30th of April, 1838, Nicaragua called a
Convention for revising its Constitution, so
as to make it conform to the new posture of
affairs, and Costa Rica also proceeded to do
the same. Pending the meeting of the
Nicaragua Convention, a projet was pub-
lished, by the 2d Art. of which the an-
cient limits of the State were re-estabhshed,
including of course the department of Ni-
coya, in accordance with the desires of the
inhabitants of the department themselves.

The projet having reached Costa Rica,
the Government of that State at once sent
a commissioner to Nicaragua, Don F. M.
Oreamuno, for the purpose of obtaining a
modification of the proposed Article, and for
adjusting general limits. He proposed sev-
eral means for effecting the latter object, and
submitted a basis which, amongst other
things, asked of Nicaragua the acknowledg-
ment ad perpetuam of the annexation of
the department of Nicoya to Costa Rica.
Nicaragua refused the basis peremptorily, but
in deference to the wishes of Costa Rica,
added to the proposed Article the following
clause : —

450

The Great Ship Canal Question.

'Nov.

" The dividing line of the two States shall be
fixed by a law, which shall constitute part of the
Constitution."

This partial concession was made fi-om
motives of policy, and for the purpose of
avoiding any immediate differences between
the States, whose forces it was desired to
miite in opposition to Gen. Morazan, then
struggling with the aid of San Salvador to
restore the Central Authority. It was noth-
ing more than an expedient for getting rid,
for the moment, of the only question which
might ^embarrass the contemplated co-opera-
tion of the States in general affairs.

Meanwhile Morazan was driven out, and
the distractions attending the event were
such as to completely divert attention from
the pending question of limits. Nicaragua
became involved in a war with San Salva-
dor and Honduras, and Costa Rica was
racked by internal dissensions, w^hich ended
in the dictatorship of Carillo. Morazan,
however, after a period of exile, returned
with a few followers to Costa Rica, and de-
posed Carillo, being apparently sustained in
the movement by the whole population of
the State. This alarmed Nicaragua, with
which that State had previously acted
against Morazan, and which had w^aived the
question of Nicoya for the sole purpose of
securing the union against him. The Le-
gislative Chambers of the State therefore,
looking upon Costa Rica as recreant to her
obligations, and no further motive existing
to influence a reserve in the matter, enacted
a law in conformity with the Article of the
Constitution just quoted, and authorized
the Executive to take possession of the de-
partment in dispute. But as Costa Rica
soon after rose against Morazan, the cause
of ill-feehng between the two States was
removed, and the contemplated violent
restoration of Nicoya was not carried into
effect. Besides, Nicarafjua now besfan to
indulge hopes of effecting a consolidation
of the States, and was as anxious as before
to avoid any measures which might endan-
ger the project by ahenating Costa Rica.
She accordingly, in 1843, sent a commis-
sioner to Costa Rica, in order to effect an
amicable arrangement ; but as new influ-
ences were at work, his mission was without
any result, beyond a proposition, on the
part of Costa Rica, " to submit the question
anew to the consideration of the Legislative
bodies of the two States, with the object

that they should respectively designate the
terms upon which it should be arranged."

Nothing further was done for some
months, when correspondence on the sub-
ject w^as renewed by the two Governments,
in a very conciliatory spirit, and the Costa
Rican Constituent Assembly inserted in
the Constitution of the State the following
pro^dsion in respect to boundaries : —

"The boundaries between the State and ISTicara-
gua shall be fixed definitely when Costa Rica shall
be heard in the National Representation, or in de-
fault of that (i. e., the National Representation) the
question sliall be submitted to the judgment of one
or more of the States of the Republic."

Li the correspondence which at this time
took place between the two States, in re-
spect to the question, it is to be observed
that Costa Rica based her right to retain
Nicoya upon the ground that " it had re-
ceived it as a deposit from the Federal Gov-
ernment, and that it could not yield pos-
session of it, except at the order of the same
authority, without compromising its respon-
sibility as depositary." To this Nicaragua
replied, that " Costa Rica equally with her-
self had asserted the dissolution of the Con-
federacy, and in virtue thereof had resumed
her original rights as a sovereign and free
State ; that consequently Nicoya ought to
revert to Nicaragua as an original and inte-
gral part of her territory, and especially as
her rights could only be regarded as tempo-
rarily suspended by the Federal decree of
1825." It contended further, "that Costa
Rica having received the deposit of Nicoya,
her authority to hold it ceased with the
powers of the depositor, and that knowing
to whom it belonged, she was under every
obligation to return it to its original and
legitimate owner." It enforced its position
by the parallel of a minor, who might clearly
recover his estate upon arriving at lawful
age, even in case of the disappearance of the
administrator to whom it had been confided.
These points were made with all proper force
and fulness.

In the meantime movements towards a
new confederation were made, in which
Costa Rica interested herself, in common
with Nicaragua. But, unfortunately, they
w-ere interrupted by new disputes, originat-
ing in the intrigues of certain foreign agents,
whose malign influence had procured the
overthrow of the Republic, and who had fo-
mented many of the disorders which followed

1850.

Tlw Great Ship Canal Question.

451

These agents were particularly active in Cos-
ta Rica, with what result will be seen in the
sequel.

The question of Nicoya remained in statu
quo pending the war between Nicaragua,
Honduras, and San Salvador, in 1844-45.
At its close, the entire personelle^ and, it was
supposed, the general policy of Nicaragua
having changed, Costa Rica, deeming the
opportunity favorable, sent a commissioner to
Nicaragua to arrange, not only a treaty of
commerce and general relations, but also a
treaty of limits. Upon the part of Nicara-
gua two of its most eminent and moderate
men, Messrs. Zavala and Pineda, were ap-
pointed to meet this commission. They met
in the city of Masaya, on the 6th of December,
1846. The representative of Costa Rica ad-
hered tenaciously to the pretensions of that
State to Nicoya, but urged nothing in sup-
port of the claim except the decree of the
Federal Congress. The question of hmits
beyond that department now, for the first
time, came up, and was discussed. The re-
sults of the conferences of the commission-
ers were three treaties, or conventions, which
were concluded on the 12th and 14th of the
same month.

1. The first provided for the general rela-
tions of the States, and for the common de-
fense. It also provided for sustaining Nica-
ragua in case its Atlantic coast should be at-
tacked, (the Mosquito aff"air then, for the first
time, assuming importance,) and contained
certain stipulations looking towards the es-
tablishment of a general government.

2. The second provided for regulating the
navigation of the river San Juan, through
which Costa Rica found it more convenient
to conduct its foreign trade than through its
own ports. It stipulated that Costa Rica
should be allowed to carry on her commerce
through that river, by conforming to the laws
of Nicaragua. It fixed the transit duties
which her imports should pay at San Juan,
and made other necessary collateral provis-
ions. It also provided that Costa Rica
might establish a provisional Customs Agen-
cy or Registry, at a point on the Serapiqui
river called San Alfonso, between 20 and
30 miles above the confluence of that river
with the San Juan — i. e., from 20 to 30
miles to the southward of the San Juan.

3. The third treaty was in respect to lim-
its. As before said, the question of bounda-
ry through the uninhabited region between

Nicoya and the Atlantic now, for the first
time, came up. That it was understood by
the Costa Rican commissioners, that the right
of Nicaragua to the territory along the San
Juan, and at least 25 or 30 miles to the south-
ward, was undisputed, is e\ddent from the
provisions of the former treaties, and from
the fact that Costa Rica had always and
without complaint paid the transit and other
duties fixed by Nicaragua. But as the ques-
tion of boundary could not be determined
except by a settlement of the Nicoyan ques-
tion, nothing definite transpired. The treaty
provided "that the question of general
boundary by the San Juan should remain
undecided, until an arbitration should be ef-
fected ;" and meantime either party might
use the uninhabited district, for all useful
purposes, without hindrance from the other,
except for important reasons, upon giving the
second party proper notice of its intention
and purposes. In respect to Nicoya it was
agreed that the question should be submit-
ted to arbitrators, whose decision should be
final. These arbitrators were to consist of
the Government of Honduras on the part of
Nicaragua, and Guatemala on the part of
Costa Rica. The two might choose an im-
partial third, which might be, in their dis-
cretion, a foreign State. It also stipulated
that the territory in question should never
be alienated to any foreign power, and that
if, after the award of the arbitrators, the
State to which Nicoya might be declared to
pertain should alienate any part of the same
to any foreign power, it would thereby forfeit
the possession of the district, in favor of the
other party.

The Legislative Chambers of Nicaragua,
with the good faith which has characterized
all their relations with Costa Rica, and which
has never been reciprocated by the latter
State, at once ratified these treaties in due
form. Nothing however was heard of the
action of Costa Rica, and the Chambers, on
the eve of adjournment, in a liberal spirit,
passed a law extending the term fixed for the
ratifications to six months, and inserted a
provision in the act, authorizing the Govern-
ment to accept any proper modifications
which Costa Rica might propose. Nicara-
gua was anxious to arrange the difterences
with Costa Rica, even in this undecisive
manner, for the reason that it had been
drawn into a controversy with England in
respect to the Mosquito shore, and ^vished to

452

The Great Ship Canal Question.

Not.

be released from all otlier embarrassments
in order to meet the question more directly.
Costa Rica, however, which had now become
the theatre of the intrigues of Mr. Chatiield,
the British Consul General, took no action
whatever upon the treaty negotiated hy its
own fully empowered Commissioners, not-
withstanding the disposition evinced by Ni-
caragua to receive and favorably consider
any modification which it might suggest.
Already, there is reason to believe, induce-
ments were held out to her, by parties which
had no right to interfere in the matter, to
prevent her from settling the points at issue
with Nicaragua. The result Avill shortly be
seen.

Soon after these events a Diet was convoked
by several of the States to meet at Naca-
ome in Honduras. This Diet was called
with the concurrence of Costa Rica, and to
this, it was previously understood, any dis-
putes which might exist between any of the
States should be referred for settlement.
No delegates, however, appeared from Costa
Rica ! To the remonstrances of Nicaragua
evasive answers were given, and it soon be-
came ob\ious that the object of Costa Rica
was only to gain time, in order to profit
by the turn which the dispute between
Nicaragua and Great Britain might take.
Indeed, it is notorious that in this, as in most
other matters, the Government of that State
was wholly controlled by the British Consul
General. By his intrigues the attempt to
unite the several States upon a sounder ba-
sis than before, in which the most patriotic
men of Central America had been laboring
for years, was defeated. A new Federation
would have proved a formidable if not in-
surmountable obstacle to the success of Brit-
ish designs on the Mosquito shore.

In less than six months after the events
which we have recounted, a British force
seized upon San Juan. That event took
place upon the iVth of February, 1848, and
one week thereafter, upon the 24th of the
same month, and before the fact could be
known in Guatemala, Mr. Chatfield had con-
cluded the terms of a treaty ^vith Costa Rica,
by which that State was secured certain
rights in San Juan, besides being recognized
as an independent State, and placed under
virtual British protection. This fact was not
made known until the month of December
of last year, and fully explains the conduct
of Costa Rica at that time and subsequently.

Nicaragua now demanded that Costa
Rica, having virtually refused to submit the
question of Nicoya to the Diet, should
comply with the terms of the 25th Article of
her Constitution, already quoted, which pro-
vides that it should be submitted to the
arbitration of the other States. To this eva-
sive answers were given, and it was rendered
certain that Costa Rica, relying upon Brit-
ish support against her most powerful neigh-
bor, had no desire to settle the matter in
dispute. She, in fact, repudiated all of her
own propositions, and exhibited in her
duplicity a striking contrast to the frank and
conciliatory course of Nicaragua, — which
State, had it been so disposed, might any
day have taken possession of Nicoya, and
held it ao-ainst all the efforts of Costa Rica.
Upon the 28th of May following the
seizure of San Juan, and after a treaty or
arrangement had been concluded with Great
Britain, by which Costa Rica acquired the
right of transit through San Juan, this State
addressed a communication to the Govern-
ment of Nicaragua, announcing that it had
authorized the opening of a road through the
unsettled territory to the Serapiqui river.
It said that it did not suppose, since what
had transpired at San Juan, this could in
any way affect the rights of Nicaragua ; and
added that it should not enter into the ques-
tion of territorial right in the case, but
regard that as settled beyond appeal ! To
this insolent proceeding Nicaragua replied
with moderation and dignity. It said that
it was not disposed to obstruct any enter-
prise which might tend to the advantage of
Costa Rica, nor would it interpose any ob-
stacles to the proposed road through its ter-
ritories, provided that an arrangement should
previously be made concerning it. To this
end it was willing to receive any commis-
sioner which Costa Rica might accredit for
that purpose; but until such previous ar-
rangement was made, it advised against any
practical operations on the part of Costa
Rica. That State however proceeded, with-
out reply, in the construction of the road,
making such minor arrangements as it
thought convenient, with the British agents
at San Juan. Nicaragua thereupon sent a
formal protest against the infringement on its
territories, but the sole reply was a commu-
nication from the British agent in San Juan,
Mr. Christy, assigning new limits to the pre-
tended Mosquito kingdom, and extending

1850.

The Great Ship Canal Question.

453

them more than thirty miles above the Se-
rapiqui river, so as to cut off Nicaragua
from that stream, and relieve Costa Rica
from all further trouble ! Such has been
the course and tendency of British interfer-
ence in Central America !

In the autumn of 1848, Don Felipe Mo-
Hna was named Minister to England from
Costa Rica, and was also empowered to visit
Nicaragua, in reference to the question of
boundary. He anived in due time in Leon,
and the concihatory Government of Nicara-
gua went so far as to name a commissioner
to treat with him. It does not seem that
any real design of settling the question, on
the basis of previous understandings, was
entertained by Mr. Mohna ; and, as was to
be anticipated, no result was effected. The
propositions and counter propositions have
all been published by the Nicaraguan Govern-
ment. Costa Rica proposed, amongst other
things, to submit the question of Nicoya to
the decision of England, Belgium, Venezu-
ela, or Chili; to which Nicaragua replied
that the arbitration had already been sol-
emnly provided for, that the arbitrators had
been agreed upon, and that it was ready,
at any time, to comply with its stipulations.
The question of boundary, aside from Ni-
coya, Nicaragua expressed a willingness to
submit to arbitration, and proposed a refer-
ence to the United States. Costa Rica, nev-
ertheless, refused to comply with her agree-
ment in respect to Nicoya or Guanacaste,
without however assigning any reason for
her bad faith ; and her commissioner, instead
of yielding to the proposition to refer the
remaining questions of boundary to the
United States, proceeded to assert that the
northern boundary of Costa Rica was the
river San Juan, for a distance of about two
thirds of its length above its mouth, to the
Castillo Viejo, and thence in a right line to
the mouth of the river Flor on the Pacific !
It should be observed that the new territorial
limits of "Mosquito," as defined by Mr.
Consul Christy, extended to the rapids of
Machuca, but a few miles below the afore-
said castle ! This castle was then, and had
always been, garrisoned by a Nicaraguan
force, as was admitted, it will be observed,
by Mr. MoUna.

The Nicaragua Commissioner responded
to Mr. Molina by saying that Costa Rica
had always admitted the rights of Nicaragua
over the San Juan and its shores, and that

it could not now, with any show of consist-
ency, set up pretensions to that stream as a
boundary. Mr. MoHna rephed by suggest-
ing that if this stream were made the boun-
dary, Costa Rica would be willing to make
a compensation therefor. In fact, an ofiiar
of 1100,000 was made to the Nicaraguan
Government by the British Vice Consul, on
behalf of Costa Rica, to procure the extin-
guishment of its title to the south bank of
that river. These are important admissions.
But, as before said, the Commissioners
agreed upon nothing, and their conferences
ended by a formal protest on the part of
Nicaragua —

1. Against any occupation of the territory
in question, whether for roads conducting to
the Serapiqui, or for any other work by
which possession might be alleged on the
part of Costa Rica.

2. Against any use of the waters of the
Serapiqui or San Juan by giving them any
other than their natural couree, and against
any use of them for purposes of commerce,
except with the consent of Nicaragua — it
being understood that any appropriation of
them for the above purposes would be re-
garded as acts of violence, and as effected by
force of arms.

3. Against the detention of Nicoya, from
day to day ; against all acts of jurisdiction
over the people of the same, and against all
foreign intervention, whereby Costa Rica
may seek to dismember the State, or alien-
ate any portion of the old Federation.

To these protests Mr. Molina entered
counter protests, and thus the final attempt
at arrangement ended.

When Mr. Molina arrived in England,
Mr. Castillon, the representative of Nicara-
gua, proposed that a basis of agreement
should be determined upon, but Mr. Molina
made objection, on the score of Mr. Castil-
lon's powers ; yet expressed a willingness to
proceed with the business, provided he would
consent to he hound hy the decision of the
British Government ! Mr. Castillon, satis-
fied that Mohna was negotiating with Eng-
land for her support and protection, enclosed,
on the 27th of January, 1849, a copy of the
protests of the Nicaraguan Commissioner
(above quoted) to Lord Palmerston, with
the object, as expressed in his note, " to im-
pede whatever arrangement might be medi-
tated with Mr. Molina, which might affect,
in any manner, the rights of Nicaragua."

454

The Great Ship Canal Question.

Nov.

Wliat the relations which then existed be-
tween Costa Rica and Great Britain were,
may be inferred from the fact that when
Mr. Christy, the Anglo-Mosquitian agent,
advised the Eno-hsh Government that Nica-
ragna contemplated a war against Costa Rica,
Lord Palmerston sent Mr. Addington, Under
Secretary of State, to Mr. Castillon, to ask
explanations, and to make known to him
that the relations which existed between
England and Costa Rica were of such a na-
ture as not to permit the first to regard any
such proceeding with indifference.

Before proceeding further, and at the risk
of extending this article to a tiresome length,
we may sum up the facts and points thus
far developed and established, as follows.
In respect to Nicoya, or Guanacaste —

1. That it pertained incontestibly to the
Province of Nicarao-ua ; and that therefore
it subsequently pertained to the sovereign
State of Nicaraorua. As such, it elected
membei's to the Constituent Assembly of the
same.

2. That it was provisionally separated by
the Federal Congress from the State of Nica-
ragua and attached to Costa Rica, in oppo-
sition to the wishes of its inhabitants, and
under their protest and that of the State thus
dismembered.

3. That Costa Rica accepted it, not as an
integral part of its territories, but as a deposit.

4. That by the dissolution of the Federal
Government, assented to both by Nicaragua
and Costa Rica, it reverted, and of right, to
Nicaragua, — the claims of which State were
in no degree invalidated in consequence of
its having, from motives of policy, failed
decisively to re-assert them.

5. That Costa Rica, by her Constitution,
by the conventions of her authorized agents
and plenipotentiaries, and by the letters of
her Government, agreed to submit the ques-
tion of restitution to a Diet of all the States,
or to the adjudication of two of them.

6. That she has subsequently refused to
comply with her own stipulations, although
repeatedly urged to do so by Nicaragua, and
now asserts an unconditional territorial riofht
over the district of Nicoya !

In respect to the territory bordering, and
to the southward of the San Juan river and
Lake Nicaragua, it appears —

1. That it was included in the Province of
Nicaragua, and consequently falls within the
sovereignty of that State.

2. That this has been admitted by Costa
Rica herself in her Constitution, which only
claims a line of boundary extending from the
mouth of the river Salto to that of the San
Juan — within which is included no portion
of the latter river ; by the fact that for a
long period she paid transit duties to Nica-
ragua upon her imports passing through the
rivers and adjacent territories ; by the fact
that she has treated for that river and its
southern branches as the property of Nica-
ragua ; and by the further fact that, as late
as 1848, she offered $100,000 for an extin-
guishment of the Nicaragua title.

3. That the entire river San Juan has
always been occupied and controlled by
Nicaragua ; that San Juan was created a
port of entry by the King of Spain, under
the name of San Juan of Nicaragua^ and
placed by the same act under the control of
the Intendant of that province ; that for its
defense military stations, also under the
government of Nicaragua, were erected upon
both sides of the river, from its source to its
mouth ; that some of these still exist, and
are now, as always before, occupied by the
people and troops of Nicaragua; that the
Nicaraguans established and held a fort at
the mouth of the Serapiqui, until driven off
by the English as late as 1848 ; and finally
that the nearest point designated by any
official act of the Spanish Government, as
pertaining to Costa Rica, is the port of
Matina, jifty miles to the southward of the
San Juan.

It is therefore clear that Costa Rica has
not the shadow of a title to any portion of
the San Juan river, nor to either of its banks,
nor yet to any portion of the Lake of Nica-
ragua or its shores, nor to the department of
Nicoya ; and that any pretensions to territo-
rial sovereignty which she may set up are
false and indefensible, and can only be made
for unwarrantable purposes.

We come now to recent events. After
all that had transpired, as above re-
counted, and with a full consciousness of the
impropriety and utterly unjustifiable na-
ture of the proceeding, Mr. MoHna arranged
in England (whether with the co-operation
of the English Government, or otherwise, is
not known) a number of contracts for vari-
ous purposes, one of which was for a canal
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by way of
the river San Juan, Lake Nicaragua and the

1850.

The Great Ship Canal Question.

455

river Sapoa, to the Gulf of Salinas. He
went upon the assumption, it would seem,
that Costa Rica had a right to control the
territories and waters involved. He also
arranged the terms of a contract for im-
proving the navigation of the Serapiqui
river, — as if Costa Rica had absolute pro-
prietorship over that stream ! Also a scheme
of colonization on lands bordering the San
Juan and Lake Nicaragua, — as though Costa
Rica had an undisputed right to those ter-
ritories ! These contracts were made by
Mr. Molina as the representative of Costa
Rica, and it is fair to conclude, under powers
from his Government. They are founded on
assumptions involving the most sweej)ing
territorial pretensions, and such as it is very
clear would not be made against a more
powerful Republic of Nicaragua, except under
the assurance of support from other powers.
These proceedings exhibit the most fla-
grant and criminal disregard of tlie obliga-
tions which Costa Rica is under to Nicaragua
for her moderation and forbearance, and
would justify the latter State in a resort to
tlie ultimate redress of war. Costa Rica
seems to have anticipated such a result, and
therefore sought shelter behind the power of
England, — very reasonably concluding from
the operations of the latter on the Mosquito
shore, that should it be made to her interest
to sustain the pretensions of the former, it
would matter very little whether or not they
were founded in justice. Nor was England
long in perceiving that as quasi protector of
Costa Rica she would be likely to get a bet-
ter hold on the important isthmus south of
the San Juan, than she could well secure as
protector of his sable Majesty of Mosquito.
It would be going rather far, even for Eng-
land, to pretend that this fictitious sovereign
had a title to the continent from sea to sea,

and British designs would be but imperfectly
subserved unless she could control not only
one of the termini, but the whole line of
the only practicable canal across the conti-
nent. The sturdy Repubhcanism of Nica-
ragua was in the way : to have seized openly
upon her territories was a step too hkely to
attract the attention of the world, and pro-
voke the inquiry of nations. Costa Rica
was therefore incited to make pretension to
enough of her territory to cover the proposed
line of canal, under the assurance of direct
British protection. But the intervention of
the United States has rendered any direct
protection out of the question, and the origi-
nal design has been modified accordingly.
As we said at the outset, we are now assured
that there is no such protection ; yet it is
notorious that practically the relationship
amounts to the same thing. The so-called
Government of Costa Rica is under the en-
tire control of British agents ; Downing
street sustains there its stipendiary Flores,
who is de facto the Government, and as we
have seen by recently published intercepted
letters, an active co-laborer with Mr. Chat-
field. The affected fairness of Great Britain
in this matter is mere pretence. She will
sign as many treaties as may be presented
to her, so that they are pointless, and do not
affect the vital questions at issue ; and she
will flood the State department with diplo-
matic letters, as plausible as evasive, if thereby
she may deceive the American Government.
But the fact that she this day holds virtual
sovereignty over more than half of Central
America, comprehending nearly the whole
coast from Yucatan to New-Grenada, is not
to be disguised ; and it is one which is not
to be got over by constructive treaties, nor
by " having the honor to be " of Foreign
Ministers. We have had enough of both.

VOL. VI. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

456

What Constitutes Heal Freedom of Trade ?

Nov.

WHAT CONSTITUTES REAL FREEDOM OE TRADE ?

CHAPTER IV.

The corner-stone of the modern English 1
system is, as has before been stated, to be {
found in the following comparative view of
agriculture and manufactures : —

" So far, indeed, is it from being true that na-
ture does much for man in agriculture and nothing
in manufactures, that the fact is more nearly the
reverse. There are no limits to the bounty of
nature in manufactures ; but there are limits, and
those not very remote, to her bounty in agricul-
ture. The greatest possible amount of capital
might be expended in the construction of steam
engines, or of any other sort of machinery, and after
they had been multiplied indefinitely, the last
would be as powerful and efficient in producing
commodities and doing labor as the first. Such,
however, is not the case with the soil. Lands of the
first quality are speedily exhausted ; and it is im-
possible to apply capital indefinitely, even on the
best soils, without obtaining from it a constantly
diminishing rate of profit. The rent of the land-
lord is not, as Dr. Smith conceives it to be, the
recompense of the work of nature remaining, after
all that part of the product is deducted which can
be considered as the recompense of the working
man. But it is, as will be afterwards shown, the
excess of produce obtained from the best soils in
cultivation, over that which is obtained from the
worst — it is a consequence not of the increase, but
of the diminution of the productive power of the
labor employed in agriculture." (M'Culloch's
Principles, p. 166.)

Dr. Smith regarded labor, apphed to the
work of cultivation, as being that which tend-
ed most to facilitate the acquisition of the ne-
cessary conveniences and comforts of life. Mr.
M'Culloch regards labor so applied as being
that which least tends to produce that effect,
and here is to be found the difference in
the base of the two systems. How far the
latter one tends to the production of freedom
of trade we may now examine.

The two great commodities that are the
subjects of exchange are, as has been shown,
lahor and land. The system of Mr. M'Cul-
loch teaches, that with increase of popu-
lation there arises a necessity for cultivating

soils "of constantly increasing sterihty,"
with " diminution in the productive power of
the labor employed in agriculture," and that
with each step in the progress of diminution
the landowner takes an increased proportion
as rent, leaving necessarily a diminished
prop)ortioii of the diminished quantity to the
laborer, until at length the landholder must
be entitled to claim the whole, as is shown
in the table given in a former chapter,'^ with
a view to exhibit the working of Mr. Ricardo's
system.f

It is clear that with a diminished power
of production, resulting fi'om incre^ise of
population, the laborer must become less and
less able to determine with whom he will
exchange his labor, or what shall be its
price. It is also clear that as the soils in
cultivation become more and more sterile
men must separate more 'svidely from each
other, and that the power of voluntary as-
sociation must diminish^ while the power of
the landlord to compel men to associate for

* See the table of distribution at page 231.

t The extraordiuary difficulty attendant upon making any
two parts of this unnatural system correspond with each
other, will be seen from the following facts. Mr. M'Cul-
loch, following Mr. Ricardo, asserts that as the productive-
ness of labor decreases rent increases, and that the land-
owner who receives nothing when production is great,
receives much when it becomes small. It is obvious
that the laborer's proport'oM, according to the theory, is
a diminishivg one. The fact, however, is known to be the
reverse, and that in opposition to the theory, the laborer's
proportion is a constantly increasivg one, and this is ac-
count ed for on the plea of necessity, as will be seen by the
following extract : —

" It is plain that the decreasing productiveness of the
soils to which every improving society is obliged to resort,
will not, as was previously observed, merely lessen the
quantity of produce to be divided between profits and
wages, but will also increase the proportion of that produce
falling to the share of the laborer. It is quite impossible
to go on increasing the cost of raw produce, the principal
part of the subsistence of the laborer, by forcing good, or
taking inferior lands into cultivation, without increasing
wages." (M'Culloch, Principles, p. 486.)

We thus see that the same law which diminishes the
laborer's proportion also increases it. The smaller the quan-
tity obtained the larger is the proportion taken by the land-
lord, and the larger that which is/e/i for the laborer. Su£h
is the modern English political economy !

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

457

the purpose of working in the fields, or for
that of carrying arms and making war upon
their neighbors, must increase; and, therefore,
that trade in the greatest of all commodi-
ties, labor, must become less and less free
with each step in the growth of population.
Voluntary association is essential to the in-
crease in the productiveness of labor, and
with the diminution in the power to associate,
labor must become less productive of com-
modities to be exchanged. The power to
trade in commodities must, therefore, dimin-
ish with diminution in the power freely to
exchange labor, and such, according to the
theory, are the inevitable consequences of
increase in wealth and population.

With a population steadily increasing,
accompanied by a constantly diminishing
productiveness of labor, and a constantly
increasing power on the part of the landlord
to demand rent, the laborer must daily be-
come more and more a slave to the land-
owner, and a slave to his necessities, with
a daily approach to the state of things anti-
cipated by Mr. Mill, when " wages will be
reduced so low that a portion of the popu-
lation will regularly die from the consequences
of want."*

The " natural inclinations of man" lead
him to association, and especially to the
formation of that intimate association which
leads to increase of population ; and the ob-
ject of the Wealth of Nations is that of
proving that the more perfectly he is per-
mitted to act in accordance with those " in-
clinations" the greater will be the power to
produce and the power to trade. The ob-
ject of the modern school is that of showing
that indulgence of his " natural inclinations"
leads to diminished productiveness of labor,
diminished power to trade, poverty, wi'etch-
edness, and death.

By one of the recent writers of this
schoolf marriage is held to be " a luxury"
in which the poor have no right to indulge.
By another we are told that it is " an enjoy-
ment," and that the poor " have no right to
many till they have made provision for the
maintenance of the expected family ."|

Restraints on that species of commerce
which follows from that earliest of God's
commands, be fruitful and multiply^ —
that command, to obey which man is most

* Mill's Political Economy, p. 16.
t Thornton on Over-Population.
t Edinburgh Review, October, 1849.

prompted by his "natural inclinations," —
that command, obedience to which tends
most to bring into activity the best feelings
of his nature, — lie at the base of modern
Enghsh Pohtical Economy, which professes
to follow in the footsteps of Adam Smith, and
to belong to his free-trade school. To what
extent the views of late writers on this sub-
ject are carried, and how far they tend
towards promoting the freedom of man in
the indulgence of those " natural inclina-
tions" implanted in him by the Deity, and
for the ^visest and best of purposes, may be
seen by the following passage : —

"Every one has a right to hve. We
will suppose this granted," says Mr. Mill,
(Pol. Econ. i. 428.) "But no one has a
right to bring creatures into life to be sup-
ported by other people. Whoever means
to stand upon the first of these rights must
renounce all the pretensions to the last. If
a man cannot support even himself unless
others help him, those others are entitled to
say that they do not also undertake the sup-
port of all the offspring which it is physi-
cally possible for him to summon into the
world. Yet there are abundance of writers
and public speakers, including many of most
ostentatious pretensions to high feelings,
whose views of life are so truly brutish, that
they see hardship in preventing paupers
from breeding hereditary paupers in the
very workhouse itself ! Posterity will one
day ask, with astonishment, what sort of
people it could be among whom such
preachers could find proselytes.

" It is conceivable that the State might
guarantee employment at ample wages to
all who are born. But if it does this, it is
bound, in self-protection, and for the sake
of every purpose for which government
exists, to provide that no person shall be
born without its consent. If the ordinary
and natural motives to self-restraint are re-
moved, others must be substituted. Re-
strictions on marriage, at least equivalent
to those existing in sortie of the German
states, or severe penalties on those who have
children when unable to support them, would
then be indispensable. Society may feed
the necessitous, if it takes their multipli-
cation under its control ; or it may leave the
last to their discretion, if it abandons the
first to their own care. But it cannot take
half of the one course and half of the
other. Let it choose that which circumstances

468

What Constitutes Heal Freedom of Trade ?

Nov.

or tlie public sentiment render most ex-
pedient. But it cannot with impunity take
the feeding on itself, and leave the multi-
plying free."

It is thus denied that provision should be
made for the support of the poor, because
the behef that his family will be supported
tends to lead the poor laborer to seek com-
panionship in his misfortune by obtaining a
wife, and such conduct is held to be " a sin,"
the correction of which is to be found in
permitting parent and child to pay " the
penalty" by allowing them to starve. That
the reader may fully understand how far
the system tends towards the enfranchise-
ment of man, and the growth of power to
follow the bent of his natural and laudable
inclination towards association, the following
passage from the latest writer on the subject
is submitted for his perusal, and he is re-
quested particularly to note, first, that the
itahcs are the author's own ; and, second,
that while he disclaims any intention of
advising that the poor should be permitted
to starve to death, he does not disclaim his
belief that true policy would teach that they
should be left to suffer every "penalty"
short of " positive death" : —

" The second class is by far the most nu-
merous ; and it is in dealing with this class
that the radical error of our social philoso-
phy is most apparent and most injurious.
The idle, the dissolute, the dawdhng ; — the
Lish peasant, who will beg for a penny
rather than work for a shilling ; — the Irish
fisherman, who burns his boats for firewood,
and pawns his nets, instead of using them
to fish with ; — the agricultural laborer, who
waits listlessly in his hovel till work finds
him out, instead of dihgently setting out to
seek it, in every direction, for himself, — and
who remains a burden on his parish, when
manufacturing enterprise in the next town
is hampered and delayed for want of hands ;
— the Sheffield grinder, who being able to
earn a guinea a day, will only work two
days in the week, and drinks the other five ;
— the spinners and weavers in manufactur-
ing towns, who waste hundreds of thousands
of pounds in strikes for higher wages, which
always end in the impoverishment of both
themselves and their employers, and in
leaving numbers of them permanently un-
provided;— the unionists, who, like the
weavers of Norwich, the ship-builders and
sawyers of Dubhn, and the lace-makers of

Nottingham, have, by violence and unrea-
sonable demands, driven away trade from
their respective localities ; — and, finally, the
thousands who, in spite of exhortation, in
spite of the bitter warnings of experience,
persist in spending every Aveek the last
farthing of their earnings, as if prosperity,
and youth, and health could always last: —
all these are the laborious architects of their
own ill-fortune, — all these are destitute by
their own act, their own folly, their own
guilt. Those parents, again, who marry
with no means of bringing up a family, with
no provision for the future, no sure and
ample support even for the present ; — those
who (like a hand-loom weaver whom we
knew) bring up eleven children to an over-
stocked and expiring trade, which, even to
themselves, affords only insufficient earnings
and unsteady employment ; and those who
spend in wastefulness and drinking wages
which, carefully husbanded, might secure a
futm-e maintenance for their offspring ; —
these all bring into the world paupers, who
are destitute by their parents' culpability, —
and the sins of the father are visited upon
the children.

" Now, with regard to these classes, what-
ever aid the sentiments of Christian charity
may prompt us, as individuals, and in each
individual case, to administer, or however
it may be occasionally necessary for the
State to interpose for the actual salvation of
life^ it is important to pronounce distinctly
that, on no principle of social right or jus-
tice, have they any claim to share the earn-
ings or the savings of their more prudent,
more energetic, more self-denying fellow-
citizens. They have made for themselves
the hard bed they lie on. They have sinned
against the plainest laws of nature, and must
be left to the corrective which nature has ' in
that case made and provided ;' — a corrective
which is certain to operate in the end, if
only we do not step in to counteract it by
regulations dictated by plausible and par-
donable, but shallow and short-sighted
humanity. But let us not lose sight of the
indubitable truth, that if we stand between the
error and its consequence, we stand between
the evil and its cure,- — if we intercept the
penalty (where it does not amount to posi-
tive death) we perpetuate the sin."

Such are the doctrines of the " free-trade"
school of England, and they follow natural-
ly from those of Mr. Ricardo, and of Mr.

1850.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

459

M'Cullocli, the latter of whom teaches in op-
position to Dr. Smith, that so far is labor
apphed to agriculture from being the most
productive, we should err httle in saying that
it was that in which nature least aided his
efforts, because land was becoming daily
more and more sterile, while steam engines
and ships could now be built at least equal
in capacity with any that had preceded
them. Were the author of " The Wealth of
Nations" alive, he would indignantly dis-
claim all connection with a school which
taught that fi'eedom of commerce was to be
found in makino- of the induIo:ence of man's
most " natural inclination" a crime, " the
penalty" for which was to be any species of
bodily and mental torture and exhaustion,
short of "positive death." He could hold
no fellowship with such men.

Every act of association has, as we have
already said, commerce for its object. The
husband gives his care, his labors and their
products, for the maintenance of his wife
and for the improvement of her condition,
and the wife does the same by him. The
father aids the child in his youth, and the
child does the same by him in his age. The
people of the village associate for the making
of roads and the maintenance of churches
and schools, and the blacksmith, the carpen-
ter, the mason, and the laborer associate for
the building of the houses, the schools, the
chm'ches, and the market-houses ; and the
more rapid the increase of population the
gi'eater will be the power of association,
the more productive the labor, and the
greater the power to maintain commerce.
Mr. M'CuUoch teaches the reverse of all this.
He holds that to render labor productive,
men must abstain from the commerce of the
sexes, and that the more widely they separate
from each other, the more advantageously
will labor be employed, and the larger vnll
be the power to trade. The ship and the
wagon are in his estimation as produc-
tive as the plough and the harrow, be-
cause with him dispersion is the road to
wealth ; whereas Dr. Smith looked to con-
centration as the means of dispensing with
both ship and wagon, and thus rendering
more productive the labors of those who
followed the plough and drove the harrow.
Which of the two systems it is that tends
most to facilitate the power to exchange
labor for labor the reader may now decide.
Should he on full consideration arrive at the

conclusion that men who are far distant from
each other can combine their exertions more
readily than men who live near each other,
he will be fully qualified to enroll himself as
a member of the modern '"''free.-trade!'' school.
Should he, on the contrary, beheve that men
who are near each other combine their exer-
tions more readily than those who are dis-
tant, he will find himself fitted to enroll him-
self among the disciples of Adam Smith, who
taughtyrt'eJo7?i of commerce among men.

We may now look to see how the modern
British system tends to affect the trade in
the second great instrument of production,
land.

The great machine of production is the
land, and if the whole be monopohzed by a
single individual, or by a government, it is
obvious that in this there can be no trade
whatever. If owned by a few individuals
there can be little trade. If divided among
a large number of people, there will be fre-
quent exchanges, and consequently much
trade. The system of Adam Smith looked
to the division of land, and consequently to
the increase of trade in land. That of Mr.
M'Culloch is opposed to its division, and
consequently to any increase in the number
of exchang-es to be made of it.

With every increase of population, labor
is, according to his theory, less advantage-
ously apphed, and the landholder obtains
as rent a large proportion of the product,
enabling him, of course, not only to retain
his old possessions, but to add to them by
enclosing, or by purchasing, new ones. The
laborer obtains a smaller proportion of the
diminished quantity, and becomes, therefore,
from day to day less able to obtain food,
and consequently less and less able to pur-
chase land, or to retain the little patch that
he may have enclosed and cultivated. The
tendency of the system is therefore to dimi-
nution in the amount of commerce in land.

Such being the theory, we find Mr.
M'Culloch, as might naturally be expected,
an advocate of the system which tends to tie
up land by means of laws of primogeniture,
entails, and settlements, in regard to which
he says : —

" It has long been customary in this, as well as
in many other countries, when estates consist of
land, to leave them wholly or principally to the
eldest son, and to give to the younger sons and
daughters smaller portions in money. Many ob-
jections have been made to this custom, but
mostly, as it appears to me, without due consider-

What Constitutes ^eal Fnedor/i of Trade f

atioR. l^hat it has its inconveniences there is no
doubt, but they seem to be trifling compared with
the advantages which it exclusively possesses. It
.forces the younger sons to quit the home of their
father^ and makes them depend for success in life
on the fair exercise o^ their talents ; it helps to
prevent the splitting of landed property into too
Small portions; and stimulates the holders of
estates to endeavor to save a monied fortune ade-
quate for the outfit of the younger children, with-
out rendering them a burden on their senior. Its
influence in these and other respects is equally
powerful and salutary^ The sense ot inferiori-
ty as compared with others is, next to the pres-
sure of want, one of the most powerful incentives
to exertion^ It is not alwayes because a man is
poor that he is perseveringly industrious, econom^
ical, and inventive ; in m.any cases he is already
wealthy, and is merely wishing to place himself
in the samAC rank as others who have still larger
fortunes. The younger sons of our great landed
proprietors are particularly sensible to this stimu-
lus. Their relative inferiority in point of wealth,
and their desire to escape from this lower situa-
tion, and to attain to the same level as their elder
brothers, inspii'es them with an energy and vigor
they would not otherwise feel. But the advan-
tage of preserving large estates from being frit-
tered down by a scheme of equal division, is not
limited to its effects on the younger children of
their owners. It raises universally the standard
of competence, and gives new force to the springs
which set industry in motion. The manner of
living in great landlords is that in which every
one is ambitious of being able to indulge ; and
their habits of expense, though somewhat injurious
to themselves, act as powerful incentives to the
ingenuity and enterprise of other classes, who
:oe ver think their fortunes sufficiently ample, unless
they will enable them to emulate the splendor of
the richest landlords; so that the custom of
primogeniture seems to render all classes more
industrious, and to augment at the same time
the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment."
(Principles, p. 259.)

It seems scarcely to have occurred to Mr.
M'Gullocli that if the accumulation of land
in the hands of a few persons tended to
produce, in so great a degree, all these ad-
vantageous effects, th.e accumulation of the
whole in the hands of one person would
tend to produce them in a much greater
degree ; and that, therefore, tlie perfection of
his system of ownershijD of landed property
Would be found in India, where the govern-
ment is sole proprietor. Leaving, however,
for the present, the consideration of this,
subject, we may now look to see how far
the system tends to extend or to diminish
the power to exchange the products of land
for labor expended on the land itself, in
regard to which we are told that " the
Either cannot do many things advantageous
to himsehf and beneficial to the property,

without the consent of the soil, and the son
cannot niake a settlement on his marriage
without the consent of the father," and that
" cases do sometimes occur of father and
son driving hard bargains with each other.'"^
It is obvious from this that the system tends
to shut out h"om land the employment of
much labor that might beneficially be ap^
plied to its improvement, and that would
be so applied, were that system non-exist-
ent. Throughout Scotland an entailed
estate can be distinguished, we are told, by
the fact of its greatly inferior cultivation. f
The svstem tends, therefore, to diminish
the power of voluntary combination between
the laborer and the landowner, and to
diminish the amount of trade in both labof
and land.

To carry it cut, there exists a necessity foi"
incumberino; estates with settlements in
favor of wives, widows, younger sons, and
daughters, and the reader needs not to be told
that such incumbrances operate always as a
bar to the division, and roost generally to the
improvement of land. On this head we are told
that " There is a point of great and immedi^
ate importance on which we must say a few
words. We have seen that in settlem.ents
successive tenants for life have powers given
them to jointure v/ives, and to provide for
younger children, the latter being effected
by means of charges upon the inheritance*
The result, broadly stated, is, that the pres-
ent possessor has to bear the burdens im^
posed by his predecessors ; and this goes
on from generation to generation. The fee^^
simple is, consequently, never entirely free
from debt ; and there is a sort of running
partition of it between its possessors and
those in whose favor family provisions are
made. We are far from objecting to this, if
the proper relative proportion be main^-
tained. The great aim ought to be hot to
permit the inheritance to be too much
incumbered ; and. on the whole this object
has, in England, been steadily kept in view*
We must say with regret, however, that we
have detected a-lendency recently to violate
this wholesome principle. A practice is
creeping in by which the inheritance is
laden with larger fiunily provisions than it
can properly bear. The result is already
manifest in much uneasiness and embarrass-^

* Quarteily Review, July, 1848. Art. Entails
of Lands.

f North British Review.

1850,

What Constituies Meal Freedom of Trade

461

Inent. It is time to convey a warning to
landowners. This practice may not be a
general one as yet, but its extension cannot
be too energetically protested against, We
venture to think that it had its origin from the
follo^ving circumstance : — that — whereas the
jointures for widows, of course, expire with
their lives — the provisions for younger chil-
dren are made substantial charges on the
inheritance, and are not regarded in the
same light as are other incumbrances. Pro-
prietors do not, consequently, sufficiently
exert themselves to free their estates from
them ; and not only ai-e they permitted to
remain undischarged, but are frequently
made the subject of separate settlements,
Now such of our readers as attend to these
matters at all are aware that an Act was
passed in 1846, empowering the owners of
estates to borrow public money for a limited
amount to aid them in the drainage of land.
The land to be benefited is charged under
the Act with payment to the Crown, for
twenty-two years, of a rent-charge of 6/.
IQs. a year for lOOZ. advanced. The calcu-
lation was, that at the end of the term the
advances would be fully repaid, principal
and interest. This Act has been extensively
acted upon, and we must ask whether some,
if not all, of the burdens which are Usually
imposed on the inheritance in English set-
tlements, might not, with advantage, be
thrown into the shape of similar tenantable
rent-charges ? Mr. M'Culloch suggests this
with reference to Scotland — but why not
apply it also to England ? Our machinery
of trustees is complete — ready to our hand :
they might receive the rent-charges as they
arose, and invest them in proper security,
and they might be armed with the usual
powers for compelling payment. The ad-
vantages of such a plan appear obvious.
The present possessors would be niade to
feel more sensibly the necessity of not over-
loading their properties with incumbrances,
by having themselves to hquidate either the
whole or a portion of the principal as well
as the interest, in place of 'throwing the
Weight of such incumbrances on posterity —
and the inheritance would from time to time
be freed from preceding burdens while it
assumed others,''

We have here, in addition to all the old
modes of fettering land, a system of trusts
for its improvement, the necessary conse-
quence of which must be still greater diffi-

culty in every operation coXinected with
commerce in the great instrument of pro-^
duction, land.

In the days of Adam Smith about one
fifth of the surface of Scotland was supposed
to be entailed, and he saw the disadvantages
of the systetn to be so great that he de-
nounced the system as being " founded upon
the most absurd of all suppositions, the
supposition that every successive generation
of men have not an equal right to the earth
and all that it possesses ; but that the prop-^
erty of the present generation should be
retained and regulated according to the
fancy of those who died perhaps five hun-
di'ed years ago." Instead of changing the
system., and doing that which might tend
to the establishment of greater freedom oi
trade in land, the movement has been in a
contrary direction, and to such an extent
that one half of Scotland is now supposed
to be entailed ; and yet this is the system
advocated by Mr. M'Culloch, the follower
in the steps of Adam. Smith, as being the one
calculated " to render all classes more Indus-'
trious, and to augment at the same time the
mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment."
If it could, do this, it would be by facili-'
tating combination of action between the
laborer and the landowner for the improve^
ment of the land. How far it does so may
be judged from the following passage from
another of the disciples of the schools of
Messrs. Ricardo and Malthus, Mr. J. Stuart
Mill :—

" In Great Britain, the landed proprietor is not
unfrequently an improver. But it cannot be said
that he is generally so. And in the majority of
cases he gl'ants the liberty of cultivation on such
terms, as to prevent improvements from being"
made by any one else. In the southern parts of
the island, as there are usually no leases, perma--
nent improvements can scarcely be made except
by the landlord's capital ; accordingly the Souths
compared with the North of England, and with
the Lowlands of Scotland, is extremely backward
in agricultural improvement. The truth is, that
any very geiieral improvement of land by the'
landlords, is hardly compatible with a law or cus-'
torn of primogeniture. When the land goes
wholly to the heir, it generally goes to hi'm severed
from the pecuniai y resources V^'hich would enable
him to improve it, the personal property being"
absorbed by the provision for younger children,
and the laud itself often heavily burthened for the
same purpose. There is therefore but a smalt
proportion of landlords who have the means of
making expensive improvements, unless they do it
with borrowed money, and by adding to the mort-
l gages with ^hich in most cases the land was

462

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ?

!N'ov.

already burthened when they received it. But
the position of the owner of a deeply mortgaged
estate is so precarious ; economy is so unwelcome
to one whose apparent fortune greatly exceeds his
real means, and the vicissitudes of rent and price
which only trench upon the margin of his income,
are so formidable to one who can call little more
than that margin his own ; that it is no wonder if
few landlords find themselves in a condition to
make immediate sacrifices for the sake of future
profit. Were they ever so much inclined, those
alone can prudently do it, who have seriously stu-
died the principles of scientific agriculture ; and
great landlords have seldom seriously studied any-
thing. They might at least hold out inducements
to the farmers to do what they will not or cannot
do themselves ; but even in granting leases, it is
in England a general complaint that they tie up
their tenants by covenants grounded on the prac-
tices of an obsolete and exploded agriculture ; while
most of them, by withholding leases altogether,
and giving the farmer no guarantee of possession
beyond a single harvest, keep the land on a footing
little more favorable to improvement than m the
time of our barbarous ancestors,

immetata quibus jugera liberas

Fruges et Cererem ferunt,

Nee cultura placet longior annua.

"Landed property in England is thus veiy far
from completely fulfilling the conditions wliich
render its existence economically justifiable. But
if insufficiently reahzed even in England, in Ireland
those conditions are not complied with at all. With
individual exceptions, (some of them very honor-
able ones,) the owners of Irish estates do nothing
for the land but drain it of its produce. What has
been epigrammatically said in tlie discussions on
'peculiar burthens,' is literally true when apphed
to them ; that the greatest ' burthen on land ' is
the landlords. Returning nothing to the soil, they
consume its whole produce, minus the potatoes
strictly necessary to keep the inhabitants from
dying of famine ; and when they have any notion
of improvement, it consists in not leaving even
this pittance, but turning out the people, to beggary
if not to starvation. When landed property has
placed itself upon this footing, it ceases to be de-
fensible, and the time has come fur making some
new arrangement of the matter."

So great does Mr. Mill believe to be the
disadvantages of the system, that he holds
that the people have a right to discard the
landowners ; the claim of the latter to the
land being altogether " subordinate to the
general policy of the State." Widely differ-
ent is all this from the teachino's of Adam
Smith, who saw that improvement in the
condition of man, and perfect respect for all
the rights of property, went hand in hand
with each other. Security of property is
essential to the growth of commerce, and yet
the modern system of " free trade" is based
upon the doctrines of Mr. Ricardo, which
constitute the best defence of the modern

French ideas on the subject of the right to
property. The best text book in the world
for Red-republicanism, and for communism,
is that gentleman's " Principles of Politi-
cal Economy."

Being favorable to a continuance of the
system which tends to limit, and almost
altogether prevents, commerce in land, by
means of purchase and sale, Mr. M'Culloch,
as might naturally be expected, favors also
that mode of tenancy which tends most to
prevent combination of action between the
landowner and his smaller neighbor, who
would desire to cultivate his land, paying
rent for its use. He, therefore, informs us
that " the opinions of the great majority of
those who, from theh acquaintance Avith ag-
riculture, are best enabled to decide on such
matters, are exceedingly hostile to the small
farming system." He thinks that the oc-
cupants of small farms cannot " accumulate
capital," and therefore that it is not " super-
fluous to enforce the propriety of letting
land in preference to large farmers, even
although small tenants are willing to pay
higher rents than could be obtained from
the larger one." The more middle-7nen the
better. He prefers the ship and the wagon
to the plough and the loom — the merchant
and the sailor to the farmer and the planter
— and the large tenant, surrounded by hired
laborers who make their homes in distant
villages, to the small occupants of a dozen
acres each, who deal directly with the great
landowner, even although they obtain from
the land so much more that they can afford
to pay a higher rent. His views and those
of the school he represents, in regard to the
exchanges of labor and land, the great instru-
ments of all production, are diametrically
opposed to those of the author of the Wealtk
of Nations^ and therefore it is that they
find the ideas upon which his system rests
to be " fundamentally erroneous." Dr. Smith
looked to the division of land, the diversi-
fication of employment, and the combination
of action among men. His successors look
to the centralization of land, the territorial
division of labor, and the dispersion of men.
The former is based on the plough and the
loom, working in connection with each other.
The latter, on the ship and the wagon pass-
ing between the plough and the loom.

The steam-engine that grinds the grain is
deemed preferable to the great machine
which produces the grain, because, while the

1850.

What Constitutes Heal Freedom of Trade ?

463

soil is becoming daily more sterile, each
successive engine may be equal to the last ;
and, for the same reason, the wagon which
carries the grain to market, and the ship
which transports the cotton, are deemed to
be entitled to a preference over the earth
which produces both. If, however, the sup-
ply of grain be not maintained, we do not
need more engines, and if that of cotton be
diminished, we need fewer ships. To main-
tain the power of the land for the produc-
tion of either, it is necessary to return to
the land the refuse of its products ; and if
the policy of England tends to prevent such
return, the necessary consequence must be
that the farmers and planters of the world
must produce less grain and less cotton, and
that thus the effort to make the cultivation
of the land "merely subsidiary to foreign
commerce" by augmenting the number of
steam-engines and ships, must be that of
diminishing the power of foreign countries
to maintain trade, to take the j^lace of the
great domestic trade which is thus aban-
doned.

A steam-engine produces nothing. It
diminishes the labor required for converting
wool into cloth, or grain into flour ; for free-
ing mines from water ; or for transporting
wool, or grain, or coal. The gain from its
use is the wages of that labor, minus the
loss by deterioration of the machine. Labor
apphed to fashioning the earth produces
wages, plus the gain by improvement of the
machine. The more an engine can be made
to jield the worse it will become. The more
the earth can be made to yield the better
will it become. The man who neHects his
farm to employ himself and his engine m
the work of fashioning or exchanging the
products of other farms, obtains wages, minus
loss of capital. He who employs himself on
his own fann obtains wages, plus profits
resulting from the improvement of the farm,
to the extent that that improvement exceeds
the loss from the deterioration of the spades,
ploughs, engines, or other machinery that is
used.

To test the correctness of this view, we
submit two eases to the consideration of the
reader. A and B have each a horse and
cart, and a farm from which they can have
three hundred bushels of wheat, or its equi-
valent. An offer is made to give them each
that quantity, but the distance is so great
that the hauhng will occupy precisely the

same time as the raising would do. A
accepts, and B does not. A spends his
time, and that of his horse and cart, on the
road. B stays at home. When it rains,
A stops in the road-side tavern. B spends
the same day at home, repairing his house.
When A's horse feeds and rests, his master
has nothing to do. B grubs up an old
root, or repairs a fence. A's horse deposits
his manure in the road. That of B goes on
his farm. A's horse hauls every day, and
the service performed, nothing remains. B
opens a marl pit, and puts on his land ma-
nure for two or three years. At the end of
the year A's horse and cart are worn out,
while B's are almost as good as new. The
farm of A has deteriorated, while that of B
has greatly improved. Both have done the
same number of days' work, and both have
received the same compensation, yet A is
poorer and B richer than at first. Every
diminution in the quantity required of the
machinery of exchange tends to increase the
quantity of labor, both of body and mind,
that may be applied directly to production,
and labor so applied is rewarded not only
with an increased return, but with an in-
crease in the powers of the machine itself.
Such has been the case in all time past, and
such must it ever continue to be.

It is by this almost insensible contribution
of labor that land acquires value. The first
object of the poor cultivator of the thin soils
is to obtain food and clothing for himself
and his family. His leisure is given to the
work of improvement. At one place he cuts
a little drain, and at another he roots out a
stump. At one moment he cuts fuel for his
family, and thus clears his land ; and at an-
other digs a well to facilitate the watering
of his cattle, and thus keep his manure in
the stable yard. He knows that the machine
will feed him better the more perfectly he
fashions it, and that there is always place for
his time and his labor to be expended with
advantao;e to himself.

A piece of land that yields £100 per an-
num will sell for £3,000. A steam-engine
that will produce the same, will scarcely
command £1,000. Why should this differ-
ence exist ? It is because the buyer of the
first knows that it will pay him wages and
interest, plus the increase of its value by use.
The buyer of the other knows that it will'
give him wages and interest, minus the
diminution in its value by use. The one

464:

What Constitutes Meal Freedom of Trade f

ov*

takes three and a third per cent., plus the
difference : the other ten, minus the differ-
ence. The one buys a machine that im-
proves by use. The other, one that deteri-
orates mth use. The one is buying a
machine produced by the hibor of past
times, and to the creation of which has been
apphed all the spare time of a series of
generations ; and he gives for it one third or
one half of the labor that would be now
required to produce it in its present state,
were it reduced to its original one. That of
the other is bought at the actual price of the
labor that it has cost. The one is a ma-
chine upon which new capital and labor
may be expended with constantly increasing
return ; while upon the other no such ex-
penditm'e can be made. We have now
before us an account of recent operations
at Knowsley, where an expenditure of £7
IO5. per acre for draining, was rewarded by
an increase of 205. in rent, or more than
thirteen per cent. In another case, where
land had been abandoned as totally worth-
less, labor to the amount of 405. per acre
was attended vrith a gain of 10s. per acre to
the owner, and IO5. to the tenant, making-
fifty per cent, per annum : without taking
into consideration the o-ain to the laborer
in the increased facility of procuring the
necessaries of hfe. Lord Stanley, who fur-
nished this statement, said, and we are sure
most truly, that although he and his father
had for several yeare laid a miUion of tiles
per annum, they felt that as yet they had
only made a beginning.* We beheve that
they have, even yet, scarcely begun to think
upon the subject. They are only beginning
to wake up. We have also before us an
account of a field so completely worn out
that it produced, with manure, but five
himdi-ed weight of turnips, but which, by
being treated with sulphuric acid and bones,
was made to yield two hundred and eighty-
five hundred weight ; and another, which
gave to coal ashes and coal dust but eighty-
eight hundred weight, gave to the acid and
bones, two hundi'ed and fifty-one hundred
weight. Such profits are not to be found in
any other pursuit ; and yet England has
been wasting her energies on ships, colonies,
and commerce, ha\ing at her feet an in-
exhaustible magazine asking only to be
worked.

* Thirty years since, all the tiles laid in the United
Kingdom amounted to but seyenty-one millions per annum.

The improvement above described is re-
markable, only because concentrated within
a short space of time. Had the land de-
scribed by Lord Stanley been cultivated by
the owner, and had he felt that apiculture was
a science worthy of his attention, the diain-
age would have taken place gradually, and
the improvement would have been marked
by a gradual growth in the power to pay
better wages and more rent. We have be-
fore us a notice of land rented for nine hun-
di'ed pounds, at the close of a long lease at
one hundred and thirty pounds. During all
this time, its owner has had interest on hi&
capital, and at the close of the lease, his
capital has increased seven times. His in-
vestment was better than it would have been
in steam-engines at ten per cent,, because
his engineer paid him for the privilege of
building up his machine, whereas the
steam-engineer would have required to be
paid while wearing the machine out. Every-
body is content \A\h. small interest, and
sometimes with no interest, from land, where
population and wealth are rapidly growing,
because there capital is steadily augmenting
without effort. Such is the experience of
all men who own landed property where
population and wealth are permitted to in-
crease : for they will always increase if not
prevented by interferences like those which
have existed in England, and to a still greater
extent in France. The great pm'suit of man
is agriculture. There is none " in which so
many of the laws of nature must be consult^
ed and understood as in the cultivation of
the earth. Every change of the season,
every change even of the wind, every fall
of rain, must affect some of the manifold
operations of the farmer. In the im-
provement of our various domestic ani-
mals, some of the most abstruse principles
of physiology must be consulted. Is it to
be supposed that men thus called upon to
study, or to observe the laws of nature, and
labor in conjunction Avith its powers, require
less of the fight of the highest science than
the merchant or the manufacturer ?" It is
not. It is the science that requires the
greatest knowledge, and the one thoA pays
best for it; and yet England has driven
man, and wealth, and mind, into the less
profitable pursuits of fashioning and ex-
changing the products of other lands ; and
has expended thousands of millions on fleets
and armies to enable her to diive with

1850.

What Constitutes Meal Freedom of Trade ^

465

foreign nations llie poor trade, when her
own soil offered her the richer one that tends
to produce that increase of wealth and con-
centration of population which have in all
times and in all ages given the self-protective
power that requires neither fleets, nor armies,
nor tax- gatherers* In her efforts to force
this trade, she has driven the people of the
United States to extend themselves oVer Vast
tracts of inferior land when they might more
advantageously have concentrated themselves
on rich ones ; and she has thus delayed the
progress of civilization abroad and at home.
She has made it necessaiy for the people of
grain-groAving countries to rejoice in the de-
ficiencies of her harvests, as affording them
the outlet for surplus food that they could
not consume, and that was sometimes aban-
doned on the field, as not worth the cost of
harvesting ; instead of being enabled to re-
joice in the knowledge that others were likely
to be fed as abundantly as themselves : and
such is the necessary result of the policy ad-
vocated by the modern free-trade school of
England, which teaches the dispersion of
man in opposition to the concentration of
man, advocated, by the founder of the real
free-trade school, whose system has been
long repudiated by those v/ho profess to
hold him in reverence as the founder of the
school in which they have constituted them-
selves professors. They have yet to learn,
what their master well knew, that every
increase in the necessity for ships and wagons
lends to diminish the freedom of m.an, the
freedom of trade, and the power to maintain
trade. Their views are precisely those de-
scribed by him in the follo^ving paragraph :
" The inland or home trade, the 7110s t im-
portant of all, the trade in which an equal
capital affords the greatest profit and creates
the greatest employment to the people of
the country, was considered as subsidiary
only to foreign trade. It neither brought
money into the country, it was said, not
carried any out of it. The country, there-
fore, could never become richer or poorer by
means of it, except so far as its prosperity or
•decay might indirectly influence the state of
foreign trade."*

* How perfectly the views of some of the
American disciples of the modern English school
correspond with those denounced by Dr. Smith, may
be seen from the following passage which we take
from the Patent Ofiice Report, for 1848. The
commerce of the family is nothmg, nor is that of

Adam Smith cautioned his countrymen
against the then existing system as tending
" to produce an improper and dangerous
distribution of population at home, with
diminution in the w^ao-es of British labor
and the profits of British capital, and as tend-
ing at the same time to prevent the proper,
necessary, and natural distribution of employ-
ments abroad, and therefore as a "manifest
violation of the most sacred rights of man-
kind." He saw that the ship, the wagon,
the spindle and the loom — the machinery of
exchange and of conversion — were useful to
the extent that they enabled man to employ
more labor in the work of production, and
no further, and that their substitution for
machines of production tended to diminish
both the power to produce and the power to
maintain trade. The steam-en o-ine econo-
mizes the labor required for converting the
wheat into flour, and if that labor can be
applied to producing more wheat, or grass,
or Wool, or of any other of the commodities
useful to man, the substitution is advanta-
geous ; but if, by reason of restraints on the
owners of land, it cannot be so applied, the
engine is not only not useful, but positively
injurious. If it dispenses with the labor of
a hundred men, they are discharged to seek
other employment, and if it cannot be ob-
tained, they must nevertheless eat food, wear
clothes, and have shelter — even if it be the
poor-house. Instead of receiving these things
in return for labor, they must now receive

the neighborhood anything. It is the trivial
amount which enters into the general commerce
of the world that is to be alone regarded : —

" When we revert to first principles in political
economy, we think it must be admitted that the
surplus of any crop or commodity whick is sold by
the producer, and enters into the general cornmerce
of the world, is the only part of it which has, in
truth, so far as the accumulation of wealth by the
nation is concerned, any value. That portion of
his own, production which the farmer consumes in
his family or on his' farm is of no account or value
whatever in the general commerce of the world,
and has, in fact, no price. It is the surplus
wliich enters into commerce only that has
price ; and that only, strictly speakicg, it is of
importance to estimate. Therefore, to be precisely
correct, the tru^ rule would be to call the amount
of wheat consumed by the producer nothing, and
estiinate only the amount 7ohich he has to sell.'"

The most important portion of the domestic trade
adds nothing to the accumulation of wealth ! The
object of Br. Smith's work was the denunciation
of the idea that " England's Treasure" was to be
found in " Foreign Trade," and yet we have it here
repeated by one of hi^ disciples.

466

What Constitutes Heal Freedom of Trade ?

Nov.

them out of taxes paid for their support, and
at the hands of the parish beadle. Their
habits of industry and their self-respect are
thereby destroyed, while the condition of the
remainder of the community is in no way
improved, because the quantity of commodi-
ties to be consumed is not increased, nor is
the number of mouths to be fed diminished.
Nor is this all. While productive, under
these cu'cumstances, of no single advantage,
it is the cause of many and serious e\dls.
The discharge of this hundi'ed men tends to
render labor surplus, the consequence of
which is a reduction of wages all around,
which enables the engine proprietor to make
larger profits than betbre. The general pro-
ductiveness of labor is lessened — the state
of morals is deteriorated — the proportion of
the capitalist is increased, and the laborer
obtains a diminished 2^^'oportion of a dimin-
ished product, and with each and every step in
this direction there is diminished power to
maintain trade, as we shall have occasion to
show when we come to examine the actual
working of the system advocated by these
followers in the steps of Adam Smith, who
differ from him in every single idea. Were
he now here, he would unite with us in saying
that labor-saving machinery is an unmixed
good when the labor saved can be applied to
increasing the amount of production, because
it then tends towards the improvement and
equalization of the condition of both laborer
and capitalist : but when it cannot be so
applied, it is an unmixed evil, because it
tends to promote deterioration and inequahty
in the condition of both, enabhng the one to
monopolize land and hve in splendor, while
driving the other to seek a refuge in the
tavern and the poor-house.

The great machine is that of production —
the Earth. The small machines are those of
conversion and exchange, spindles, looms,
engines, and ships. In a natural state of
things, the savings of labor effected by the
latter are useful, because they increase the
quantity that may be given to the former ; but
when the former is monopolized to such an
extent that labor cannot find employment
upon it, then the only effect of the latter is
to give to individuals another monopoly, by
aid of which the monopoly of the earth may
be increased and extended. The thousand
small machines scattered throughout the
country, by aid of which their thousand
owners and a thousand laborers were ena-

bled to obtain moderate wages, are rendered
useless, and the same work is now done by
eight or ten steam-engines and a hundred
and fifty men, women, and children, occupy-
ing the lanes and the cellars of Manchester,
and aiding to swell the possessions of men
who amass fortunes, purchase land, and per-
haps obtain titles. With each step in this
direction, land accumulates in fewer hands,
voluntary combination diminishes, and with
it there is a diminution in the power of pro-
duction, diminished power on the part of the
laborer to control his own actions, and
diminished power to maintain trade.

The system is that of centralization, and
produces great activity near the heart, with
diminution of activity near the extremities ;
and this effect gradually extends itself
throughout the whole system, as will be seen
on an examination of the various parts of the
British Empire : the result of which will be
to show, that colony after colony has been
exhausted, w^hilst at home the little occupant
has been gradually sinking into the day-
laborer, and passing from that to the con-
dition of a pauper, living at the cost of
others, and losing all control over the dis-
posal of his own labor or its products.

With each step in his descent he becomes
more and more reckless. Hope leaves him.
The whip of the tax-gatherer is deemed ne-
cessary to animate him to exertion.* His
former habits of sobriety, care and economy
disappear, to be replaced by those of drunk-
enness and waste ; and thus it is that, with
the diminished productiveness of labor that
is necessarily consequent upon the adoption
of the modern " free-trade " system, there is
a steady deterioration of the moral as well
as the physical condition of man. The
habit of voluntary association before existing
now passes away, and day by day the pro-
ductive power still further diminishes, with
further diminution in the power to maintain
trade. We see, thus, that it is in the direc-
tion of centralization — in the direction indi-
cated to us by the modern system which
leads to the separation of the producer from

* " To the desire of rising in the world, implant-
ed in the breast of every individual, an increase of
taxation superadds the fear of being cast down to
a lower station, of being deprived of conveniences
and gratifications wliich habit has rendered all but
indispensable ; and the combined influence of the
two principles produces results that could not be
produced by the unassisted agency of either." —
M-Culloch.

1850.

What Constitutes Heal Freedom of Trade ?

467

the consumer of his products — in that which
tends to substitute the territorial for the local
di\^sion of labor — that we must look for
diminution in the freedom of man, and in the
power to maintain that commerce with his
fellow-man to which Adam Smith referred,
and for increased power over their fellow-men
on the part of those whose only idea of com-
merce is expressed in the sentence, " Buy in
the cheapest and sell in the dearest mar-
ket."

With diminution in the habit of associa-
tion, and mth increase in the tendency to-
wards dispersion, there is increased difficulty
in obtaining education, and deterioration
of intellectual condition follows in the train
of moral and physical deterioration, with
further diminution in the productive power,
and increased inequality among the various
portions of society. The love of peace passes
away to be replaced by turbulence and love
of discord, with a tendency to combination
for the commission of acts of \dolence, in-
creasing with every step of diminution in the
power of self-protection, and in the feeling of
independence and self-respect. Production
still further diminishes, and the difficulty of
accumulating capital to be used in aid of
fui'ther production increases, while the pro-
portion taken by the capitalist steadily in-
creases as its productiveness diminishes, and
that claimed by the government as steadily
increases, while the productiveness of taxes
diminishes, with increased difficulty in ob-
taining revenue. Increasing weakness on the
part of the laborer is followed by weakness
on that of the owners of capital, whether
employed in land or in trade, and that in
turn is followed by weakness on tne part of
the nation, until at length the whole is in-
volved in one common ruin, the natural
result of the adoption of the system of the
modern pohtico-economical school of Eng-
land, which teaches freedom of trade and
leads to the total destruction of the power
to maintain trade. Such is now the tenden-

cy, daily increasing, throughout the whole
British empire.

It is an order of things that is opposed to
" the natural inclination of man." It is the
creation of those purely "human institu-
tions " denounced by Smith as the causes of
the existence of the great cities of the earth,
built up out of the spoils of the cultivators
of the soil, and therefore it is that other na-
tions have been driven to measures of resist-
ance with a view to its annihilation and the
establishment of real freedom of trade.

The system described by Adam Smith,
and which he fondly desired to see estab-
lished among men, looked to the concentra-
tion of man and the extension of commerce
among men, resulting from the growth of
the power and the habit of voluntary asso-
ciation, whether for the purpose of peopling
the earth, increasing its products, or facilita-
ting the application of labor to the increase
of those products, their conversion into forms
that fit them for the use of man, or their
exchange among men. The nearer men
could live to their neighbor men, the greater,
as he saw, would be the commerce main-
tained among themselves, and the greater the
power to maintain commerce with distant
men.

The system reprobated by Adam Smith,
and which his successors fondly desire to see
established among men, looks to the disper-
sion of man, and the diminution of com-
merce among men and women — land-own-
ers and laborers — producers and consumers
— in the vain hope of building up a great
trade with distant men while destroying the
power to produce commodities in which to
trade.

The one looked to an increased amount
of trade, resulting from an increased power
to trade : the other desires to obtain the same
result by increasing the necessity for trade.
With the one the best form of society was
a true pyramid. With the other it is an
inverted one.

468

Memoranda^ Ethical^ Critical^ and Political.

I^ov.

MEMORANDA, ETHICAL, CRITICAL, AND POLITICAL.

We forget, in our judgments of others,
that virtue is a scale, and not a limit. From
social drinking to sottishness, and from a
white lie to mahgnant perjury, the degi'ees
are numberless. Our judgments of men are
consequently as incorrect as our estimates
of distances by the eye. In theoiy, the
moral law is more exact and absolute than
the pure mathematics ; but in its applica-
tions, of necessity, loose and vague. Very
good mathematicians, it is said, are rarely
good measurei^s or machinists.

II.

The hardest calumny to bear is the being
reviled by a contemptible enemy, for a ^-ice
which you feel is accidental to yom'self, na-
tive to him.

III.

A knave is disgi*aced by nature ; his be-
ing detected in villainy is an accident, and
changes nothing but opinion.

IV.

Though the advocate be a knave, the
cause may be just. Though the preacher
be no saint, his precepts may be divine.

Right of property, hke right of freedom,
seems to have its root in instinct. The
bird defends her nest, the dosf his kennel,
the man his homestead.

VI.

The fool is he who forgets his experience.

VII.

There are three superstitions — of Society,
of State, and of Church.

The first reveres Aristocracy.

The second reveres Power.

The third reveres Sanctimony.
There are also three Reverences.

The fii-st is the reverence for Great Men.

The second is the reverence for Law.

The third is the reverence for Truth.

VIII.

Only the honorable man can regain lost
honor. The knave cannot regain what he
never had. He can only operate on opin-
ion.

IX.

" The poorer classes " are those only who
must continue poor, from father to son.
AVith us, then, there are, in strictness, no
" poorer classes ;" the fathers are poor, but
the sons may be rich.

To attain general knowledge through ex-

I perience of things^ and high moral principles

; through experience of one's own passions in

deahno; vdih men, — is not that the best that

we can do for oui-selves as intelHgences ?

XI.

As the most sublime landscape is that
' which affects us least in the detail, and
j most powerfully in whole effect, so, perhaps,
the grandest character is the farthest re-
I moved from peculiarity and eccentricity.
i

XII.

None can \q>\q all ahke but the Universal
Father ; and he who has no country to be
jealous for, and no enemy to hate, is either
a god, a hypocrite, or a fool.

XIII.

Show me a true patriot, and I wiU show
you that he has both courage, true love, and
honor.

xiv.
Though each man has his singular de-
fects, there is an entire virtue in the nation.
/ am deficient, but my countrymen, together,
have all the virtues. My country has god-
hke valor, heroism, irresistible enterprise, and
a will that nothing can shake. How then
can I fail to revere my country ? The gi-eat
problem of government is to attain a full and
perfect representation of the national gran-
deur in public affairs.

1850.

Memoranda^ Ethical^ Critical, and Political.

469

XV.

When the General Government is fearful
and vacillating, it no longer represents the
virtue and courage of the country.

XVI.

Poetry and the legitimate drama repre-
sent the rebellion of the passions against
God, or against what the modern philoso-
phers call Reason, the image of God, and
the ancients. Fate, and the will of Jove, i. e.,
the supreme law of the uni\'erse.

XVII.

Corrupt poetry and the melodrama re-
present the triumph of the passions over
the supreme law, a triumph purely fictitious.

XVIII,

Great men have usually but one point of
grandeur, they illustrate but one law of the
universe, — as Will, Justice, Truth. When
men suppose that the entire image of God
appears in one human form, in its full
roundness and infinitude, they deify it.

XIX.

Moral power has light, {truth,), heat,
(love,) and power, the informing and trans-
forming ray. By this symbol (the sun-
beam) Egyptian theology indicated its first
or grand trinity.

XX.

It is said that republics are based upon
virtue. Would it not express the truth
more clearly to say that they are based upon
the mascuhne virtues : streng-th of individual
will, justice, (equality of man and man,) and
confidence, a certain consciousness of the
agreement of human and Divine intention, in
the aflairs of this world.

XXI.

If the above is true, the great Republic
will stand as long as its affairs are entrusted
by the people to men of great strength of
will and great justice and self-rehance.

XXII.

Thomas Carlyle has most bitterly insulted
and abused the people of America ; and
yet, for every virtue that he worships the
great Republic is a country of heroes. He
is a Balaam, who, upon the Ass of English
prejudice, prophecies for us against his will.

XXIII.

" There is great difficulty," writes Colonel

Trumbull to General Washington, before
Boston, " to support liberty, to exercise gov-
ernment, and maintain subordination, and
at the same time prevent the operation of
licentious and levelling principles, which
many very easily imbibe. " The pulse of
a New-England man beats high for liber-
ty ; his engagement in the service he thinks
purely voluntary ; therefore, when the term
of enlistment is out, he thinks himself not
holden without further engagement. This
was the case in the last war. I greatly fear
its operation among the soldiers of the other
colonies, as I am sensible this is the genius
and spirit of our people !" (Letter to Wash-
ington. Sparks, I. 164.)

XXIV.

Every man in business may make his own
affairs a school of justice, as effectually as
any magistrate. Business rests upon good
faith (credit) ; credit is the common bond
of all men, superior to all conditions, and to
all ranks and relationships. The system of
the universe is a system of credit, and there
are " days of grace " allowed for perturba-
tions.

XXV.

The acts of great men seem to be crea-
tive, as the hand of God is creative, only
through the performance of universal laws.

XXVI.

There are some things in which the wis-
dom of ages cannot instruct us, namely, the
form of our government, the profession we
should choose, and the friendships we should
form.

XXVII.

In order to be right we must go too far
and be a little wrong. The patriot must be
more than patriotic, — he must be hot and
prejudiced for his country ; and so, the
lover for his mistress, the parent for the
children.

XXVIII.

The days of the old thirteen colonies have
gone by ; we are now not only a nation but
an empire ; our thoughts, or policy, and our
national bearing should therefore be impe-
rial.

XXIX.

Can there be good men who are bad citi-
zens ? What if patriotism, warm, full and
proud, be an essential element of goodness ?
We live by our country, more truly than by

470

Dedication of Goethe's Faust.

Nov.

our parents; it goes with us and protects
us long after they have left us ; is not the
love of the universal country a sublimer
passion than that of child or parent ?

XXX.

If the above is true, then we distinguish

the good citizen from the had by a very
simple test. The good citizen carries the
laws, or rather those peculiar repubhcan
principles from which the laws originate, and
by which they are reformed, in his own
breast, and he instinctively illustrates them
in his hfe.

TRA^^SLATI0:N' of the dedication" of GOETHE'S FAUST.

Again ye come, ye visions fair, but fleeting,

Which in the early morning-tide of life
My earnest boyhood's troubled glances meeting,

Forced on my spirit a perpetual strife.
Shall I attempt to grasp your changeful seeming ?

Do I still feel my yearning heart inclined
Toward that too dear, but ah ! deceptive gleaming

Of phantom bliss more fickle than the wind ?

Ye press still on, and ye may hold dominion

Over my longing bosom, as ye hst,
Rising so lightly on angelic pinion

Out of the silver veil of cloud and mist :
The wizard breath that atmospheres your train
Brings to my heart my youthful years again.

Ye bring with you the thoughts of days Elysian,

And many dear beloved shades appear ;
While Hke an olden, half-expired tradition.

First love and friendship with them, faint, draw near :
The pangs renewed and tender plaints repeating,

The wandering, labyi'inthine course of hfe.
The dear loved names, whom fickle fortune, cheating,

Long time agone has ravished from the strife.

They hear me not, when I am sadly singing,
The souls to whom I sadly sung at first ;

The echo of that song no more is ringing.
The friendly throng is now, alas ! dispersed.

My sorrow, too, to stranger souls is chiming.
Even whose applause sickens my very heart ;

Aud aU who once looked proudly on my rhyming
Live (if they still live in this toihng mart)
Of the great whole a straying, scattered part.

Now seizes me an unaccustomed longing

After that pensive, solemn spirit-day ;
It waves even now in half-formed, shadowy thronging,

-^olian harp-like, o'er my lisping lay.
A tremor grasps me, and in tears dissolving,

I feel my austere heart from sternness flee,
What I have see I distantly revolving,

And what is lost becomes reahty.

1850,

Thomas Jefferson.

471

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

{^Concluded)

The attention of the President was now,
however, suddenly diverted from the do-
mestic affairs of the nation, to more impor-
tant matters relating to its intercom-se and
understanding with foreign governments.
While the trial of Burr was in active pro-
gress at Richmond, an excitement of a char-
acter far different and more intense was
raging at the neighboring city of Norfolk,
and ere long it had spread its contagious
fires from j\iaine to the Mississippi. It
seemed as thouo:h some latent torch of the
Revolution had recaught its expiring flames,
and was again on the point of kindling into
a patriotic blaze that defied all extinction
save in the blood of our ancient oppressor,
now turned into a haughty and insulting
enemy. The cause of such emphatic and
unanimous hostile demonstrations we shall
now proceed to narrate, as prefatory to the
most interesting epoch of the Jeffersonian
administration, and which cannot be justly
passed over in a review intended to reach
the whole of Jefferson's public life.

The 2 2d day of June, 1807, was signal-
ized by an act of aggression and outrage on
the rights and honor of the nation, which,
even at this distance of time, must excite a
feeling of anger and mortification in all
American bosoms. For some months pre-
viously to this date, a British squadron,
under command of Admiral Berkeley, had
been anchored near Norfolk, with the ex-
pressed intention of enforcing His Britannic
Majesty's recent proclamation, requiring all
subjects of Great Britain to be forcibly im-
pressed, wherever found on the high seas,
into British service. "With this view, a de-
mand had been made by the British Consul
at Norfolk on Commodore Barron of the
frigate Chesapeake, then lying at Norfolk,
for four seamen on board his vessel, claimed
as deserters from British ships. With the
advice and privity of the Cabinet at Wash-

VOL. VI. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

ington, Com. Barron peremptorily refused
to comply, assigning as a reason that he
had been cautious in making up his crew,
and that he had no deserters on board. He
then, in obedience to orders, put to sea on
his destination to the coast of Barbary, unfit
and unprepared, as yet, for sustaining an
action, and never dreaming that an attack
would be made on him by an armed enemy
Ijring ^vithin the jurisdiction of his own
government, and in the very eyes of the
whole American people. But such did, in-
deed, actually occur. The Chesapeake had
scarcely got out of Hampton Roads, and was
yet off Cape Henry, when the British vessel
Leopard, of fifty-four guns, detached itself
from the Admiral's squadi'on, and put to sea
in pursuit. The Chesapeake was soon over-
hauled, and the four sailors again formally de-
manded. The American commander again
refused, when the Leopard cleared for action,
and forthwith began a heavy fire on the
American frigate. Strange to say, the Chesa-
peake offered not the shghtest resistance ; but
after having stood under the fire of the Brit-
ish guns for near half an hour,* losing some
thirty men in killed and wounded, besides
sustaining heavy damage in her hull, the
frigate's colors were struck, and a message
was sent to the British commander that the
Chesapeake was his prize. An officer from
the Leopard came on board, mustered the
crew, and having seized the four sailors in
question, returned without offering the slight-
est apology. The Chesapeake was then re-
leased, and Commodore Barron, disabled
and humiliated, put back into Hampton
Roads.

The news of this transaction excited at
once the deepest sensation. Indignation
meetings were called, and resentful resolu-
tions passed in every town and city, from
Passamaquoddy Bay to the Gulf of Mexico ;
and the whole Union rose as one man to
31

472

Thomas Jefferson.

Nov.

demand the means of redi'ess at the hands
of the Executive. IN'or was the administra-
tion at all behind the spuit of the nation.
Jeffei*son acted with becoming promptitude,
and tm-ned the whole weight of his influence
on the popular side. A proclamation was
issued, setting forth succinctly and vividly
our causes of aggiievance at the hands of the
British Government, and peremptorily order
ing all armed vessels bearing commission
from that power, then within the harbors or
waters of the United States, to depart im-
mediately from the same ; also interdicting
the entrance of all harbors or watei's to all
vessels, of every description, commissioned
by the offending power. Warm responses
came in from every quarter. Federalists
and Democrats waived their party animosi-
ties, and rallied aroimd the administration.
The British ^linister resident was called
upon, but failing to give due satisfaction,
dispatches were forthwith sent across the
waters, and an ex]3lanation demanded at the
very doors of the royal palace.

But while this was yet pending, and the
American mind still festerino; and rankhno;
under the atrocious outrage, the British
Government rose to a still higher and more
insolent pitch of arrogance, and ordered that
even merchant vessels, trading peaceably
under the guarantee of mutual good under-
standing, should be stopped and searched
for British subjects. And, as if intending to
push matters to the extremity, and so far
fi'om pausing to redress giievances already
alleged, an order in council was adopted yet
more destructive to Ameiican commerce,
pretended as an answer to the recent decree
of the French Emperor. But we are antici-
23ating ; and in order to proceed intelhgibly
we must retrace, and, crossino- the Atlantic,
suiwey the condition of Europe.

The successes and bold schemes of Xapo-
leon were, at this time, the source of absorb-
ing interest to the civilized world. His
coronation as Emperor had been followed
immediately by the great battle of Auster-
litz, which had prostrated Austria at his
feet, and reduced the Czar of Russia to so
humiliating a condition as ended in the total
disruption of his con&aternity with the Ger-
manic powers. The battle of Jena, fought
in October of the succeeding year, demol-
ished Prussia, and placed her capital in the
conquerors hands. Elated with this impor-
tant victory, Xapoleon now meditated the

most gigantic and startling ideas ever put
forth. The whole continent of Europe was
now under his influence ; and the world be-
held the singular spectacle of a sohtary
island power, with a population of scarce
twenty millions, and protected by the ocean
alone, boldly struggling against a despotism
which looked, and seemed Ukely to attain,
to universal dominion. The orders in coun-
cil, adopted in the month of May pre%'ious,
had estabhshed what was derisively termed
a paper blockade along the entire coast of
France and Germany, fi'om Brest to the
mouth of the Elbe. As this order forbade
all commerce to neutrals, in defiance of in-
ternational law, and was aimed especially
against France, Xapoleon, seated in the royal
palace of Berhn, burning with resentment
against England, and filled with the idea of
conquering the sea by the land, indited and
promulged the famous decree of Xovember
21st — the fii'st of that series of measures af-
terwards known as his continental system.
It declared the British islands in a state of
blockade, and prohibited all commerce and
intercourse with them. But it is worthy of
remark, that Gen. Armstrong, our Minister
at Paris, was officiallv notified that the Ber-
lin decree was not to be enforced against
American commerce, which was still to be
governed by the rules of the treaty estab-
lished between France and the United
States. This significant exception aroused
the jealousy of England, and her ministry
were impeUed into a policy that closed all
avenues to a friendly adjustment of the diffi-
culties aheady existing between her Govern-
ment and oui"s. The orders in council,
adopted on the 11th of Xovember, 1807, as
retahatory of the Berlin decree, contained
provisions which bore intolerably hard on
American commerce. Among the most
odious of these, was that which condemned
aU neutral vessels which had not first paid
a transit duty in some English port before
proceeding on theh destinations ; thus bring-
ing the merchandise of neutrals within the
hmits of the Berhn decree, as also of that of
Milan, which soon followed, and in which
Xapoleon denationalized all vessels sailing
fi-om any English port, or which had submit-
ted to be searched.

From a calm consideration of these retal-
iatory documents, thus promulged by the
two great beUigerent powers, it is e^-ident
that had any American vessels put to sea

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

after December of 1807, or during the win-
ter and spring of 1808, they would inevi-
tably have been sacrificed ; — those bound to
France or her dependencies, to British, and
those bound for the British dominions, to
French cruisers. And this leads us, having
thus succinctly premised, to the considera-
tion of the great measure of Jefferson's
second administration. It will be under-
stood, of course, that we allude to the Em-
bargo,— a restrictive law of Congress, recom-
mended by the Executive, withdrawing the
whole American commerce from the ocean.
Now that the excitement and evil passions
of those eventful times have died away, or
been absorbed in other questions more in-
tensely interesting and momentous, we may
calmly review the causes and the justification
of this much abused measure. It must be
remembered that the last war with England
dates its origin to the disputes which began
in 1804. During this year, the Jay treaty
with England, effected in 1*794, under the
administration of Washington, and which
had bred serious dissensions at the time of
its adoption, between the friends and ene-
mies of the then Executive, had expired by
its own limitation. Jefferson had been one
of its earliest and most inveterate opponents,
had denounced it as crouching, submissive,
incomplete ; and now, in the day of his
power, refused the overtures of the British
ministry to renew it for the period of even
two years. In consequence of this refusal,
and in \dew of the serious inconveniences
arising from the absence of any international
compact, Mr. Monroe was dispatched to
England as an adjunct with Mr. Pinckney in
promoting satisfactory negotiations and ad-
justment. After many long conferences and
tedious correspondence, these commissioners
agreed on a treaty which contained satisfac-
tory clauses as concerned the rights of com-
merce, and of free trade, and of paper block-
ades— all prominent grounds of discordance.
But in regard to the all-engrossing subject
of impressment^ they had been enabled to
obtain only a sort of bond or certificate from
the British ministers, unengrafted on the
treaty, and scarcely dignified even with the
uncertain name of protocol, declaring that,
although his Britannic Majesty could not
disclaim or derogate from this right ^ yet that
instructions should be given to all British
commanders to be cautious^ in its exercise,
not to molest or injure the citizens of the

United States, and that prompt redress
should always be made in case injury was
sustained. The treaty, with this appendage
signed by the British negotiators, was con-
cluded in December, 1806. It was sent
over immediately to Mr. Erskine, the English
minister resident in the United States, and
by him submitted to Jefferson and his Cabi-
net. The omission of a special treaty stipu-
lation concerning impressment was deemed
a fatal error ; and taking the ground that
any succeeding ministry might, at pleasure,
withdraw the paper accompanying the
treaty, Jefferson, on his own responsibility,
and independent of any action on the part
of the Senate, then in session, sent it back as
rejected. We must believe that Jefferson's
interpretation of this paper (a stranger, any
way, to the diplomatic world) was correct ;
but at the same time we incline to the opinion
that, in view of the magnitude of the subjects
in issue, and of the momentous results in-
volved, it was his duty to have sought the
advice of the Senate, two thirds of which
body, and the President, constitute, under
our government, the only treaty-making
power.

The questions at issue, thus adjourned
and unadjusted, added to the fact that no
treaty existed between the two countries,
led to many other disputatious differences.
The treaty had scarcely been returned to the
negotiators in London, thus black-marked
by- the American Executive, before the of-
fensive proclamation of the British monarch,
already alluded to, was vddely promulged.
The affair of the Leopard and the Chesapeake
soon followed, and then came the orders in
Council, and the Berlin and Milan decrees,
all widening the breach betwixt our own
and the British Government, and throwing
us in a state of quasi hostility with France.
Under these circumstances only two courses
were left for the American Government to
adopt, viz., war Avith both the great beUiger-
ent powers, or an embargo. The fii'st of
these, in our then enfeebled state, would
have been a mad as well as a most ridiculous
course. Besides, no adequate cause for war
existed against France, who had actually
gone far to show herself our friend. The
history of the times proves, that however
severe the Berhn and Milan decrees may
have been in their effects on American com-
merce, they were yet allowable precaution-
ary and retahatory measures, the consequents

474

Thomas Jefferson.

Nov.

of England's atrocious and unparalleled con-
duct. AVith regard to us, England was the
only aggressive power ; and it was not until
our interests clashed directly with the pro-
%asions of the imperial decrees as they bore
against England, that France gave us the
least cause of complaint or offence. Then,
indeed, in the plenitude of his power, Napo-
leon committed outrages on America which
left us no alternative but unfriendliness.
But to have submitted, as Jefferson himself
justly argued, to pay England the tribute
on our commerce demanded by her orders
in council, would have been to aid her
in the war against France, and given
i&fapoleon just ground for declaring war
against the United States. The state of this
country, thus situated as to the two belliger-
ent powers, was therefore exceedingly em-
barrassing. It required the skill of an un-
shrinking, but a discerning and discrimina-
ting pilot, to steer clear of overwhelming diffi-
culties. That pilot was eminently fulfilled
in the person of Thomas Jefferson ; who,
with a sagacity that rarely failed him, adopt-
ed promptly the only remaining alternative
of an embargo.

On the 18th of December, 1807, accord-
ingly, Jefferson communicated the Berlin
decree, the correspondence betwixt Gen.
Armstrong and Champagny, the French
Minister, and the proclamation of George
the Third, to the two Houses of Congi-ess,
together with a message, as before intimated,
recommending such measures as he deemed
necessary for the protection of American com-
merce. The Embargo Act was immediately
introduced, carried through both Houses by
large and significant majorities, and took
effect on the 23d of the same month. It
had scarcely become a law, before it en-
countered the most factious, violent, and
well-directed opposition ever before exhib-
ited. The whole Federal press, from JN^ew-
Hampshire to Georgia, raised its hand to
beat it down, and thundered forth volleys
of abuse and vituperation. It was de-
nounced as oppressive, tyrannical, and
wicked ; as having been dictated by Napo-
leon ; as a sacrifice of the dearest interests
of the nation, and as unconstitutional. The
clamor which had assaulted the Alien and
Sedition Laws of 1798 was nothing to that
which now pom-ed its indignant torrents on
Congress and the Executive. The entire cor-
don of Eastern States were kindled into the

most appalling and intense excitement. The
columns and segments of mystic flame which
irradiated then* northern horizon, seemed to
glow with increased lustre, as if doubly re-
flected from the fires which burned and
roared beneath. The most monstrous and
improbable cause was assigned as the justi-
fication of this ferocious and ruthless oppo-
sition. The embargo was reprobated as a
measure intended to combine the South and
West for the ruin of the East. The more
that unprincipled demagogues and silly en-
thusiasts repeated the declaration, the more
fervently it was believed by honest people,
too mad or too ignorant to be pacified with
reason or truth. Ships were angrily pointed
to, rotting at the wharves of Boston and of
Newport. Idle, di'unken sailors, in reeling
hordes, clamored for employment, swearing
that they could exist only on the seas, and
that they were unfit for aught else but reef-
ing sails or manning halyards. Wharfin-
gers and shipbuilders united in a common
chorus of discontent. Merchants, from be-
hind their groaning counters, sent forth
grumbhng calls for relief; and seemed will-
ing to sell themselves, their piles of goods,
and their country to the common enemy,
could they only obtain release from the em-
bargo, and fill the hostile seas with their
commerce. At length, dark hints of med-
itated treason were whispered about, and
stunned the ears of Jefferson and his Cabi-
net. The crime which had just been
charged against Aaron Burr, and on the
mere suspicion of w^hich he had been placed
by an angry Government on a trial for his
life, was now openly advocated, and the op-
position prints teemed with threats of dis-
solving the Union. Then it was that Jef-
ferson's own bad teachings and mischievous
principles were hurled mercilessly at his
own government. The pernicious ultraisms
of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
of '98 rose scowlingly and warningly to
his vision, and would not " down " at any
" biddino-." He had condemned and rid-
iculed the means used by Washmgton to
suppress the Whiskey lusuiTCction in '94 ;
and it seemed now as though the " poisoned
chalice " had been " commended to his own
hps." He had defended and justified the
Shay Rebelhon of '87, declaring that " no
country could preserve its liberties unless its
rulers were warned from time to time that
the people preserved the power of resistance^

1850.

Thomas Jefferson,

475

and washed the tree of Kberty in the blood
of patriots and tyrants." That resistance
was now everywhere and undisguisedly
preached ; the peo'ple were invited to join in
a crusade against the rulers, and, in case of
a rupture, it seemed not unhkely that the
hlood of the first apostle of NulUfication and
Secession would be first oftered as a pro-
pitiatory sacrifice on the altars of dissolution.
So sure it is, that the evil counsels of selfish
and unrestrained ambition will recoil, in an
unexpected hour, and cover their propaga-
tor with confusion and dismay !

But notwithstanding this factious clamor
and insane opposition, a calm consideration
of the circumstances and situation of the
country, at the period in question, will lead
us to the conclusion that the embargo was
a wise, salutary, and prudent measure. It
was the only available or practicable remedy
against the withering policy of England and
France, then engaged in a war of extinction.
But at the same time it is not to be de-
nied that, as a measure of coercion to obtain
redress from foreign powers, and to be con-
tmued until such redress was obtained, it
certainly was a most severe, and, we may
add, bold experiment on the interests as
wtII as on the patience of an active and en-
terprising people. If, however, the embargo
had not been adopted ; if American vessels
had been suflfered, as of yore, to put forth
on the high seas, it as certainly is not to be
denied but what they would have been uni-
versally seized and confiscated. This would
have produced unprecedented bankruptcy.
Insurance offices and mercantile houses
would have been speedily engulfed in hope-
less ruin ; and scenes of calamity and dis-
tress, only equalled by the explosion of
Law's famous Mississippi bubble in the be-
ginning of the eighteenth centmy, would
have pervaded this Union from one extreme
to the other. The plunder of our ships and
the captivity of our seamen would have op-
erated to augment the resources of the bel-
ligerents, and enfeeble ourselves. We should
thus have suffered all the worst consequences
of war, without the chance of obtaining any
of its compensatory advantages. Under
these circumstances, it was evidently more
politic that our vessels should remain at our
wharves, the property of our merchants,
than that they should be carried to England
or France, the prey of pirates and of priva-
teers. Besides this, by unfettering Ameri-

can commerce at such a time, with the risk
of having our ships seized and ruthlessly
sequestered, we would have been pursuing
a course eminently calculated to multiply
the difficulties already existing as barriers to
a good understanding and amicable rela-
tions with the hostile powers over the water.
We should again, as in the case of the
Chesapeake with England, and of the Hori-
zon with France, have been reduced to the
mortification of negotiating for reparation in
vain. We should have been ultimately
goaded into a fierce war, after having been
defeated in oiu' endeavors to escape it, and
deprived of the most efficient means for its
prosecution.

The charge of French influence in con-
nection with the embargo was confidently
attributed to Jefterson at the time, and Fed-
eral writers continue to urge it to this day.
But the charge has never been adequately
proven, and cannot, we think, be at all sus-
tained. That Jefferson cordially despised
England and its Government we do not
doubt; nor does he anywhere attempt to
conceal his dislike. Nor do we doubt but
that his sympathies were in favor of France,
fr'om the beginning of the struggle in 1792,
to its melancholy close after the battle of
Waterloo in 1815. He retained, to his
dying hour, lively and cherished recollec-
tions of his residence in that country. He
had known and been intimately associated
with all her leadino; statesmen and warriors.
He had formed social attachments in the
hospitable circles of Paris that outlived ab-
sence and survived separation. He had
been domesticated in France during the
opening scenes of her eventful strife with
England, and while yet the memory of
British outrages during the struggle for
American independence was fresh and green.
He had, therefore, imbibed the double ha-
tred of American and of Frenchman against
British arrogance and British pretensions.
These feelings were rife within his bosom
when he came home from his mission, and
had been fanned and sedulously nurtured
throughout the whole eight years of Wash-
ington's administration. They were not
smothered in his subsequent fierce confficts
with the Federal party, and his arduous
competition for the Presidency with the
elder Adams. And now that he was at
last on that eminence which crowned his
towering ambition, and had been long the

476

Thomas Jefferson.

Xov.

goal of his ardent aspirations, it was not
likely that, as regarded the interesting atti-
tudes which marked the two great hostile
powers of Em-ope during his adnainistrative
career, he should forget his early preju-
dices against England, or his strong prepos-
sessions in favor of France. But we have
been unable to satisfy our minds that he
was actuated by undue influences in the
adoption of his foreign policy. The histoiy
of his whole official conduct in connection with
the Embargo, the N on-intercoui*se Act, and
his diplomatic dealings with the beUigerents,
shows that he acted as became an American
President, and hfts him triimaphantly above
all unworthy imputations. Throwing aside
aU other considerations, Jefferson was not a
man to bear being dictated to, even by
?^apoleon. He felt the influence and power
of his high official station, and showed that
he felt them. It was rather his weakness
to believe that he could coerce and dictate
to France, knowing, as he did, the deep
anxiety of Napoleon to enhst the United
States as his ally against England. And,
indeed, the French Emperor, even while
committing outrages on American vessels,
pleaded necessity as his apology ; and while
throwing the whole blame on the British
ministry, plied the American Executive with
artful and flatteiing laudations. With this
view, Xapoleon, unconsciously playing into
the hands of Jeffei-son's Federal opponents
at home, affected to consider the embargo
as a friendly interposition on behalf of the
American Government to aid his continental
system, — a system professedly de^■ised to
humble and weaken Enghsh ocean domin-
ion. In the saloons and reception-rooms of
the Tuilleries he made a show of boasting of
the United States as his ally, and constantly
and pubhcly assured Gen. Ai-mstrong, our
Minister, of his great respect and friendship
for the American people and then- Govern-
ment. " The Americans," said the French
IMinister, speaking for the Emperor, " a peo-
ple who involve their fortunes, their pros-
perity, and almost theh existence in com-
merce, have given the example of a great
and courageous sacrifice. They have pro-
hibited, by a general embargo, aU commerce
and nangation, rather than submit to that
tribute which the English impose. The
Emperor applauds the embargo as a wise
measure." (Pitkin's Statistics, p. 385.)
This speech was, of course, directly com-

mimicated to the President of the United
States, and speedily finding its way into the
newspapers, was seized upon and turned
against Jeffei*son and the embargo, as prima
facie evidence of a coUusion with the French
Emperor. There is every cause to believe,
as well from his own letter in answer to the
one communicating the above, as from other
chcumstances, that this commendation of
Napoleon was exceedingly grateful and pleas-
ant to Jefferson ; and there can be no doubt
that, in his public communications relative
to our foreign affau-s, he sought to inculpate
Enoiand far more than France. He reo;ard-
ed England as the first and principal ag-
gressor on the rights of America, while
France was reluctantly involved, and forced
to retaliate that she might preserve her
own integritv against the insidious and
ruthless policy of the British ministry. The
object of the President was, then, especially
in view of his imquestioned predilections, to
turn popular indignation mainly against the
fii-st power, and leave the conduct of the
French Government palhated by the unan-
swerable plea of stern necessity. It must,
therefore, have been deeply mortifjing to
Jefferson, when dispatches reached liim of
Napoleon's sudden change of mind in re-
gard to the operation of the Berlin and Lil-
ian decrees ; declaring that America should
be no longer exempted, that she should be
forced to become either his ally or his ene-

that there should be no neutrals in

the contest betwixt himself and the British ;
and that all vessels belonging to American
merchants then lying in the ports of France
should be condemned and confiscated. It
is said that this news had reached Jeffereon
in an authenticated form, anterior to the de-
Hvery of his embargo message ; and his en-
emies charge him with having wilfully kept
back this important paper (a letter from
Gen. Armstrong) solely with a ^iew to re-
lieve France from the storm of answer and
indignation which was gathering against
England. Jefterson has not explained this,
and his friends have been silent also. K he
had received such news, it was, undoubtedly,
his duty to have commimicated the same to
Congress along with the oftensive ordei*s in
council and the Berhn decree. It may have
been, and most probably was his motive, to
give Napoleon time to get over his passion
and retrace his steps before throwing him-
self irrevocably in opposition to his former

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

477

conciliatory policy. It was well known that
when Bonaparte heard of the last order in
council, and while preparing to fulminate
his Milan decree in retaliation, he had open-
ly said, " that he could not doubt but that
the United States would now immediately
declare war against England, and become
his associate." On learning that war had
not been declared. Napoleon became exas-
perated ; and although, for the reason that
he might better justify his outrages, he af-
terwards professed to be pleased with the
embargo, he resolved from that day to adopt
a policy that might, it was hoped, coerce the
Americans to become his allies. It will be
thus perceived that Napoleon shifted his
policy three times, and in very short inter-
vals. Jefferson may very naturally have
been embarrassed; but on learning that
Napoleon had ordered the confiscation of
American vessels, he forthwith communica-
ted the letter of Gen. Armstrong to Congress,
leaving them to take the proper retaliatory
course. The Embargo Act was well intend-
ed, and ought to have been made a power-
ful weapon in procurmg redress from Eng-
land. We give Jefierson all due credit for
recommending it in lieu of war, which was
not then practicable. But he was highly
culpable on account of his imbecility and
vacillation in enforcing it, even after having
been invested with the fullest powers by
Congress. Properly carried out, the embar-
go would have greatly incommoded the
English colonies in obtaining the necessaries
of life, and would have injured her trade
and naval power by withholding supplies
of raw material and stores. But it was
most flagitiously violated. The greatest
license was given to smugglers and contra-
band dealers ; and these made rapid and
unhallowed fortunes at the expense of the
honest and law-abiding citizens. Its delete-
rious effects were thus most severely felt at
home, and were impotent to conduce and
force the beneficial consequences from abroad
so confidently predicted. It failed in a great
measure to answer its main objects, and
failed as much in consequence of Jefferson's
imbecility and lethargy, as of the factious,
disorganizing, and Jacobinical clamors which
pealed in from the Eastern States. An im-
partial judgment must pronounce, therefore,
unfavorably as concerns the conduct of the
President in this instance. That conduct
would justify a very harsh sentence at the

hands of an independent disquisitor ; and
that sentence would be, that while Jefferson
was bold to originate, intolerant and obsti-
nate in the exercise of power when conscious
of being sustained, he was yet faint-hearted
and time-serving when assaulted by popu-
lar clamor and denunciation. It will be
readily conjectured that the embargo could
not stand long under such circumstances.
It was accordingly repealed on the first of
March, 1809. It was stamped in the dust
by Federal rancor, and consigned by its ene-
mies to unmerited infamy. And although
its action was countervailed by the imbecili-
ty of its friends and the opposition of its
enemies, its failure is attributed alone to its
intrinsic insufficiency and to its so-called in-
iquitous conception. It is even now pointed
to as one of the errors and weaknesses of
Jefferson's vicious administration. And yet
it was sanctioned by illustrious precedent — •
another proof that its failure in 1807 was
attributable to the bad conduct of its ene-
mies and to the bad management of its
friends. It had been authorized to a much
fuller extent in 1794, and was sanctioned as
a wise measure equally by Federalists and
Democrats. Washington had, in fact, been
empowered to lay an embargo whenever he
should think the public safety required it,
and to take what course he pleased to en-
force it. (Vide Olive Branch, pp. 138, 139,
140.) This discretionary power was con-
ferred, and this dictatorial privilege given, at
a time much less portentous and critical than
in 1807. And it answered its full purpose ;
because, thus empowered, it was known that
Washington was a man who would act^ if
occasion should require. He had shown
this in his whole public conduct, and quite
recently and effectively in forcibly suppress-
ing the Whiskey Insurrection. The embar-
go ceased, or was raised, on the first of
March. It was succeeded by an act declar-
ing non-intercourse with both the hostile
powers. England felt it severely ; and un-
der less exciting circumstances, or in the ab-
sence of other causes of difference than mere
commercial discordances, it would doubtless
have led to an amicable adjustment. As it
was, the Erskine arrangement came very
near succeeding. But Napoleon was exas-
perated on hearing of its passage beyond all
reasonable bounds, and vented his fury in
offensive reproaches and incoherent taunts
to the American Minister resident. At this

478

Thomas Jeffersim,

Kov.

time, however, ceased also Jefferson's offi-
cial connection with the government. He
retired from the Presidency on the fourth
day of March, 1809, and was succeeded by
Mr. Madison. It is not, therefore, legiti-
mately within the objects of this review to
pursue further a history of governmental
affairs. We pause on the verge of the war,
and must leave the interested reader to
search the pages of his histories for further
satisfaction, hoping that we have succeeded
in pointing out to him a proper clew to the
ehcitation of hitherto neglected branches.

After retiring from the Presidency, Mon-
ticello became the permanent residence of
Jefferson. He never afterwards appeared on
the stage of political action. His time was
quietly spent in superintending the business
of his farms, in the pursuit of Hterature and
science, and in familiar correspondence with
his numerous hiends. The Virginia Uni-
versity, however, soon became a pamper-
ed hobby ^ and enlisted liis ardent interest
and sympathy. He lived to see it flourish
under his fostering care ; and it yet con-
tinues to flourish, a noble monument of his
public spirit and laudable enterprise of char-
acter.

One other subject now began to engage
his reflections senously and deeply. It was
that of religion — the Christian rehgion. He
never thought it worth while seriously to
investigate the claims or merits of any other.
Compared with the religion of Christ, that
of the Jews or of Mahomet was, in his es-
timation, mere superstition or gross impos-
ture. At the same time, it is quite appa-
rent that he had studied closely both the
ancient and modern systems, with a view to
compare them with the religion of Jesus.
For many long years, in the midst of politi-
cal bustle as well as in the quiet of retire-
ment, did Jefferson devote his thouo-hts to
serious meditations and minute inquiries on
this important subject. The fourth volume
of his correspondence abounds with letters
on Christianity, and unfolds beyond any
question the religious opinions of its distin-
guished author. We hesitate not to say
that his inquiries ended with a firm and to-
tal disbehef in the divine inspiration of the
Bible. He argued an entire dissimilarity
between the God of the Old Testament and
the Supreme Being taught by Jesus ; view-
ing the first as an angry, a bloodthirsty,
and vindictive being — the last as merciful,

forbearing, just, and paternally inclined. He
denounces the doctrines of Moses, but ex-
tols those of Jesus. He looked on Jesus as
a man only — the most excellent and pure
that ever hved, but still no part or essence
of Divinity. The doctrine of the Trinity
was to him an incomprehensible and inex-
plicable mysticism — too refined, too incon-
sistent with the weakness of human under-
standing, and too subtle to have been incul-
cated by so plain and unsophisticated a
teacher as Jesus Christ. He admits that it is
more than probable that Jesus thought him-
self the subject of divine inspiration ; be-
cause it was a belief incident to his educa-
tion, and common among the Jews, that
men were often inspired by God. But he
denies that Jesus anywhere attempts to im-
pose himself on mankind as the Son of God.
The fom- Gospels were regarded by him as
inaccurate and exaggerated biographies of
some lofty-minded and splendid character,
whose conceptions were too towering for the
" feeble minds ' of his " grovelling " com-
panions. (See p. 326, vol. IV.) " We
find," he says in the letter referred to, " in
the writings of his biographers, matter of
two distinct descriptions. First, a ground-
work of vulgar ignorance, of things impos-
sible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, and fab-
rications. Intermixed with these, again, are
sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphor-
isms and precepts of the purest morality
and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of hu-
mility, innocence, and simplicity of man-
ners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly
ambition and honors, with an eloquence and
persuasiveness that have not been surpassed.
. . . Can we be at a loss in separating such
materials, and ascribing each to its genuine
author V In a letter to John Adams on
the same subject, found on page 240, vol-
ume fourth, our author says again : " The
Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines
of Jesus levelled to every understanding,
and too plain to need explanation, saw in
the mysticisms of Plato materials with which
they might build up an artificial system,
which might, from its indistinctness, admit
of everlasting controversy, give employment
to their order^ and introduce it to profit,
poioer Midi pre-eminence. The doctrines which
flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are
within the comprehension of a child; but
thousands of volumes have not yet explained
the Platonisms engrafted on them : and

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

479

for this obvious reason, that nonsense can
never be explained."

And again, the letter to Dr. Rush, found
in volume third, on page 506, holds this lan-
guage : " I am, indeed, opposed to the cor-
ruptions of Christianity, but not to the gen-
uine precepts of Jesus himself I am a
Christian in the only sense in which he wish-
ed any one to be ; sincerely attached to his
doctrines in preference to all others ; ascribing
to himself every human excellence, and be-
heving he never claimed any other T The last
extract we shall quote is found on page 349,
vol. fourth, in a letter to Dr. Waterhouse :
" Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached
always as pure as they came from his lips,
the whole civilized world would now have
been Chi*istian. I rejoice that in tliis bless-
ed country of free inquiry and belief, vfhich
has surrendered its creed and its conscience
to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doc-
trme of one only God is reviving ; and I
trust that there is not a young man now liv-
ing in the United States who will not die an
Unitarian. But much I fear, that when
this great truth shall be re-established, its
votaries will fall into the fatal error of fab-
ricatinrr formulas of creed and confessions
of faith, the engines which so soon destroyed
the rehgion of Jesus, and made of Chris-
tendom a mere Aceldama ; that they will
give up morals for mysteries^ and Jesus for
Plato."

These extracts fiilly confirm the analysis of
Jefferson's religious views we have given on
a preceding page, and leave no doubt of their
character or extent. He admired the mo-
rality of Christ's teachings, but denied the
divinity both of system and of teacher.
The apostles and their writings met with
no favor from Jefferson. He speaks of them
more than once " as a band of impostors^ of
whom Paul was the great Coryphaeus ;"
and Ave have abundant evidence to show
that he doubted not only the genuineness of
the l*entateueh and of the prophecies, but
of the whole writings of the Old Testa-
ment. Still we cannot consent that Jeffer-
son shall be ranked as an infidel, as most
of the orthodox world demand. He pro-
tests himself against such a sentence, and
we have been unable to detect such tenden-
cy in his wiitings. He admired and adopt-
ed Christianity as an inimitable and unsur-
passed system of morality, and inculcates
and defends its principles. But he examined

its merits and viewed its transcendent teach-
ings through the medium of reason and
plain common sense. Where these stopped,
and where the foggy empire of faith be-
gan, there he abruptly halted. His mind
was so constituted as neither to be terrified
by dogmas, nor seduced by imaginary beau-
ties, and illusive, speculative mental vagaries.
He regarded the tenets of Calvin with inef-
fable and undisguised abhorrence. The doc-
trine of one God, indivisible and indissolu-
ble, made into three parts, and these three
parts yet one only, — a Unity made Trinity
at pleasure, or to suit particular cases ; the
doctrine of moral necessity^ — the necessity
of the eternal perdition of one part for the
salvation of another part of mankind, and
for the perfect glory of God ; and the doc-
trines of the immaculate conception of the
Virgin, and of the mystical incarnation of
Jesus Christ, he had taught himself to re-
gard as mere fanciful theories of a selfish
priesthood, designed only to establish and
support an independent " order" of clergy.
A theory that announced as its basis incom-
prehensibility and infinitude, yet attem^^ting
to explain and elucidate acknowledged mys-
teries ; which claimed reason in defence, and
denounced it as unlawful in antagonists ;
which shuts out free inquiry, and seeks shel-
ter from human efforts within the untrodden
precincts of an inexplicable and undefinable
faith ; which proscribes doubt, interdicts ex-
amination, denounces as blasphemous the
exercise of judgment, and intrenches itself
in dogmatism and prejudice ; which claims
to be infalhble, yet teaches the consistency of
sectarianism, — such a theory and such reli-
gion were totally rejected by one accustomed
to such bold latitude of thought and severe
mental discipline as Thomas Jefferson. It
is no part of our task, nor is it our inclination,
to examine the correctness or the fallacy of
these views. But when reviewing so impor-
tant a subject, and the character of so distin-
guished a personage, we feel bound, in can-
dor, to give both the subject and the charac-
ter the full advantage of undisguised array.
Such were the private and well " digested"
religious opinions of Jefferson, and by such,
fairly set forth, he must be judged. It
would be unfair to expose him to censure,
while smothering the grounds of his behef
or disbelief And if, in the perusal of these
pages, any reader shall feel aggrieved on any
point of conscience by this expose of our

480

Thomas Jefferson.

Nov.

author's doubts and skepticisms, let him,
while preparing to grasp the vengeful dart,
pause and reflect, that many as good and
great, if not better and ^rm^er than Thomas
Jefferson, have been honestly perplexed by
like doubts, and mystified by like skepti-
cisms.

The volumes before us close with the cel-
ebrated " Ana." As a material part of the
memoirs of one of the leading representa-
tive men of America, it should not be
passed over lightly or inadvertently. We
view its character, contents, and objects as
forming quite a suspicious feature in the
public character of our distinguished sub-
ject. We shall not aver that it is unfau* or
unallowable to treasure what we may casu-
ally hear in the course of general conversa-
tion among distinguished personages, with
a view to profit by the same in making up
an estimate of character and principle. We
believe that free conversation is the surest
index to honestly conceived opinions. It
is the apposite and quick expression of
thoughts induced by reading, or by previ-
ous casual reflection — the more to be relied
on, inasmuch as it is usually unprompted
by cold calculation, and is unrestrained by
pohcy or timidity. But to note down table
talk at dinings, evening parties, and at cab-
inet consultations in difiicult, novel, and try-
ing times, as Jefferson has done in his Ana,
is not only culpable, but is violative of all
rules which govern free social and political
intercourse. During the administrations of
Washington, republicanism was in its infan-
cy, and the government in its chrysalis state.
The hopes of freemen were suspended on a
thread. The capacity of the people for self-
government was an untried experiment.
The best and the wisest were doubters ; and
among these was Washington himself
Hamilton was an open and professed skep-
tic, and did not scruple to declare, as his
firm opinion, that monarchy was the most
reliable form of government. Old John
Adams believed the same way, and even
James Madison indulged apprehensions.
But all of these had resolved that the ex-
periment should have a fair trial. Hamil-
ton was urgent and strenuous in his advo-
cacy of the pohcy, and joined with Madison
and Jay in producing a series of papers
remarkable for ability and power in support
of a popular form of government, and of the
Constitution. These papers were embodied

into a volume which has attained to a world-
wide celebrity under the name of the " Fed-
eralist." And yet it is principally to defame
Adams and Hamilton that Jefferson indited
the Ana, although every member of Washing- i
ton's administration came in for a full share '
of espionage. Indeed, if Jefferson is to be
regarded as a credible and an unbiased wit-
ness, the fathers of the government, except-
ing Madison and himself, must have been
the most corrupt and selfish cabal of politi-
cians that ever disgraced the history of any
country. He spares Washington, truly, but
in a manner not very complimentary to the
intellect of that illustrious and venerable
personage. He represents him as having,
indeed, a good heart, but a weak, vacillat-
ing head ; as being entirely under the influ-
ence of Federal advisers, and as indecisive
and wavering in time of action.

But it is altogether unfair to judge either
Hamilton or his associates by opinions ex-
pressed at the time in question, especially
on the subject of popular government. The
experiment, fairly tried under their auspices,
was incontestably proven and demonstrated ;
and, like all demonstrations, carried convic-
tion. Its proof was unquestionable. Wash-
ington modified his original views so far as
to admit its practicability, but died seriously
doubting its permanency. Hamilton's con-
duct evinced his satisfaction at the result, in
the undeviating support he gave to the
judicial and popular branches of the gov-
ernment. The election of Jefferson to the
Presidency, a few years afterward, showed
a general confidence in the success of the
scheme, and the acquiescence of the Feder-
alists, then one of the most formidable and
powerful parties that ever existed, was the
clearest evidence of the triumph of republi-
canism.

Under these circumstances, and being
cognizant of these facts, we can find no ex-
cuse for the author of the Ana in thus
noting down and publishing conversations
uttered at an unsettled and a trying period of
political affairs ; and when opinions, far
from being firmly fixed, were hastily formed,
according to the ever shifting complexion
of the experiment, and expressed less with
a view to convince or persuade, than to
elicit information. We confess to an in-
stinctive distrust of talk-gatherers. When
we find or hear of a politician mingling in
social circles, or among his adversaries

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

481

around the festive board, listening atten-
tively to conversation, while cautiously and
rarely giving utterance to his own opinions,
and then noting down or retailing the re-
sults of his observation, we feel an involun-
tary apprehension of mischief, and are
inclined strongly to suspect foul play. By
this rule we are constrained to judge Jeffer-
son in this instance. That he squared his
conduct, in after days, from the notes and
information thus suspiciously gleaned, is
quite evident both from his unrelenting jeal-
ousy of Hamilton, and from his remorseless
persecution of Aaron Burr.

In view of this, as well as of other cogent
reasons, it might have been supposed that a
relative, justly proud of his distinguished
ancestor's fame, would have spared the read-
ers of his book the mortification of perusing
these unpleasant revelations — the evidences
of an aspiring and a jealous mind, resorting
to a most questionable and unworthy espio-
nage in working out the overthrow of unwary
adversaries. But the candor of Mr. T.
J. Randolph was stern proof against all
prudential suggestions or delicate considera-
tions. A very natural and pardonable un-
willingness to reduce the profits of his work,
and to lop off the main value of his grand-
father's bequest, may also have had some
influence in scotching his candor against
the invitations of delicacy and prudence.
Nothing, however, is more certain than that
the publication of the Ana has operated to
detract largely from the private character of
Jefferson, and to tarnish his claims to fair
play and candid opposition in political war-
fare. We may, then, safely assert, that
while Mr. Randolph very prudently counted
the cost of suppression as weighed against
the profits of publication, the memory of his
illustrious and venerable ancestor has expi-
ated dearly the fruits of his speculation.

Our task is completed. We have now
little else to do than briefly to sum up the
prominent representative features in the
character of our distinguished subject, and
then to leave the merits of our review to the
impartial judgment of the reader.

The influences of Jefferson's character
have been sensibly impressed on the people
of this country from the dawn of the Revo-
lution to the present hour ; and they have
been, and continue to be, secondary alone
to those of Washington. Our conclusion
has been that his influence has produced

baneful and most deprecative effects on the
moral tone of our political world. His op-
position to all the essential features of the
Constitution, and to our present form of gov-
ernment, was deep-rooted, insidious, and
unceasing. His political and governmental
theories were eminently and dangerously
Jacobinical. Deeply tinctured with the
ascetic and disorganizing principles of the
French Revolution, he worshipped an ideal
of democracy that bordered on downright
Utopianism. On all points touching the
practicability or durability of popular gov-
ernments, he was almost fanatically radical
and ultra. He advocated the largest reser-
vations of power in favor of the people in
their collective capacity, and the most un-
limited right of suffi-age. He mistrusted
and denounced the well-guarded preroga-
tives of our federal Executive, and grumbled
at the least restraining exercise of even del-
egated power. And yet, during his own
Presidency, his practice afforded a most sin-
gular contrast to his theories, as we think
we have abundantly shown in the preceding
pages. No President was ever so peremp-
tory in demanding to be intrusted with
hazardous and questionable powers, and
none so arbitrary as regarded manifest in-
fractions of the Constitution. He openly
defied and overruled judicial authority ; sug-
gested to his Congress the enactment of
laws whose operation threatened a violent
severance of the Union ; demanded and ob-
tained a severe enforcing act ; invaded the
Treasury at will to aid his policy or to
gratify his caprices ; and boldly assumed a
stretch of executive power, without prece-
dent or parallel, by rejecting, at his single
discretion, a treaty that ought to have been
submitted to the Senate as required by the
Constitution, and especially Avhile that body
was in session.

As the founder and leader of the Demo-
cratic party, and the consequent promoter,
originally, of the fierce party dissensions
which have since distracted the country, we
are forced to pronounce the representative
example of Jefferson pernicious beyond com-
putation. We regard the influence and
progress of that party as eminently deleteri-
ous to the political welfare of the Union,
and as the incipient step and prime mover
towards a severance of the States — if, in-
deed, that calamity shall ever befall us.
Their disorganizing and pestilential teach-

482

Thomas Jefferson.

Nov.

ings began with tlie very dawn of tlie gov-
ernment. The democratic members of the
Convention which formed the Constitution
maintained, dming its session, an active cor-
respondence with Jefferson on each and
every element proposed as its basis. Their
cabals and caucuses were as frequent as the
meetina;s of the Convention. Their efforts
were directed to the adoption and introduc-
tion of Jacobinical features calculated to
countervail and to mar all that was prac-
tical, or that looked to durableness. Re-
garding society more as it ought to be, than
it is, or ever has been, or is ever likely to be ;
seduced by theories more plausible than
solid ; applying to a free elective govern-
ment, deriving all its powers and authori-
ties from the voice of the people, maxims
and precautions calculated for the meridian
of monarchy ; they turned all their views
and directed all their influence towards de-
preciating and weakening the Federal Gov-
ernment. Against this, as the Hydra-
headed monster of all their professed appre-
hensions, their combined batteries of talent
and of national influence were solely directed.
Had they prevailed, the General Government
would have been completely shorn of all its
efficiency ; and mankind would have been
treated with the singular spectacle of a pow-
erful and growing people, belonging in
classes to thirteen separate and independent
sovereignties, seeking a precarious union in
an instrument allied with anarchy and
founded in the grossest radicalism. But
v/hat they failed to obtain directly, they
have contrived and managed to effect indi-
rectly, v^dth almost perfect success. The his-
tory of the country has clearly shown that
the root of evil and the elements of destruc-
tion lie, not in the Federal Government, but
in perverted construction of the rights and
powers of the State Governments, and sup-
posed reservations to the people. To se-
cure the ascendency and popularity of this
doctrine, the Democratic leaders have fallen
on any and every species of party tactics, as
cases or circumstances warranted. They
have resorted, alternately, to a latitudinous
construction of the Federal Constitution, and
to a strict construction ; first, they have
contended for restriction, and then for un-
limited extension of federal power ; first
closing the door to all constitutional admis-
sion of foreign territory, and then abruptly
breaking down every barrier to acquisition

and conquest, and bringing in new States
formed out of territory reaching from the
tropic of Cancer to the fiftieth parallel of
north latitude, washed severally by the
waves of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
With Jesuitical unscrupulousness, they have
pursued their . ambitious ends, little regard-^
ful of the means used for the accomplish-
ment. Consistency has been reckoned a
virtue only so long as it accorded with ex-
pediency. Principle has been made the
handmaiden of policy. Party and power
have been the watchwords through all
phases of political or sectional differences,
and amono- all the strifes of ambitious and
aspiring rulers. And, as the crowning
point of their incongruous system, it may
be stated as a remarkable and an instructive
fact, that the Democratic party, while using
the whole enginery of political power to
hang Burr for suspected designs against the
Union, and while threatening the JS'ullifiers
with the cannon of the General Govern-
ment, has yet been the apologist for every
popular outbreak and revolutionary move-
ment, from the time of the Massachusetts
insurrection to the Dorr rebellion in Rhode
Island. The connection of Thomas Jeffer-
son with all these disorganizing principles
has been sufficiently explained in the fore-
going pages. We regard him as the mas-
ter-spirit of former mischievous inculcations,
and his influence as the main prompting*
cause of all succeeding political malversa-
tions of " the progressive Democracy." In
fact, and at the best, the impartial reviewer
is constrained to measure the public charac-
ter of Thomas Jefferson by a rule of selfish-
ness that shone conspicuous through his
whole political career, and which must ever
detract materially from his claims to grati-
tude and veneration as a statesman. And
while all unite in ascribing to him great
powers of mind, vast cultivation and infor-
mation, and much that elicits and merits
thankfulness in connection with our Revo-
lutionary history, his memory will be mainly
perpetuated, and his admirers must consent
mainly to hand him down, as the eldest
Patriarch of radical Democracy.

With all his budding honors in the polit-
ical world, Jefferson had been through Hfe,
in another and tenderer connection, a man
of afflictions and sorrows. Death had visited •
his family circle more than once. One by
one its loved members had been snatched

1850.

Thomas Jefferson.

483

away. While yet at the starting* point of
elevation, and while the halo of future hon-
ors gleamed but faintly in the distant politi-
cal horizon, he beheld the grave close over
all that had been aiffectionate and beautiful in
her who had blessed his youth with her
love, and made happy the earliest home of
his manhood. She left him two little
daughters, and the memory of her love ;
and these were the sole pledge and token of
their union. Her memory found its shrine
in the warmest affections of his heart, and
his love was never shared by another. The
daughters, under his paternal care, survived
the trials of youth, and grew to be accom-
plished and fascinating women. They mar-
ried ; and his home and fireside were left
cheerless. In a few yeai-s, the elder of the
two sickened and died, before the father had
even gi'own familiar with her absence. This
was in the meridian of his first Presidency ;
but the pomp, and circumstance, and splen-
dor of high office could not assuage the
anguish of a wounded heart. The blow fell
heavily and unexpectedly. Henceforth his
earthly affections were absorbed in the love
of his only remaining child and her chil-
dren. And while yet the chastening rod of
death was suspended, and he was bending
beneath its trying inflictions, and when the
ease and emolument of office were approxi-
mating to a close, a new source of anxiety
and of misfortune was sprung. Forty years
of his life, and more, had been abstracted
from his own and given to the affairs of the
country. As property possesses no self-pre-
ser\dng principle, that of Jefferson had suf-
fered seriously and alarmingly under such
long neglect. He left the Executive man-
sion deeply embarrassed, and returned to

Monticello heavily oppressed in mind and
circumstances. His books, his apparatus,
his literary and scientific pursuits were all
impotent to chase off these mortifying re-
flections, and the rich treasures of intellect-
ual research were soiled by a commixture
with the less welcome but necessary em-
ployment of lottery draughts and financial
calculations. The generous interposition of
Congress enabled him to keep his libraiy ;
and the forbearance and liberality of those
he owed, added to other matters, helped
him to avoid the sheriff's clutches. His
estate, however, was never relieved, and his
principal bequest to those he left behind
consisted of the papers which compose the
volumes we have just closed.

On the fourth of July, 1826, just fifty
years from the memorable day which had
witnessed the birth of American Independ-
ence, and simultaneously with that of John
Adams, the spirit of Jefferson took its flight
from earth. He died at Monticello, in the
arms of his surviving daughter, at the ripe
age of eighty-three years. His last conver-
sations showed that the waning faculties of
mind were busy with the long past eventful
scenes of his life. His thoughts wandered
from the strifes and unpleasant personal
collisions with old political friends which
had blurred the latter years of his public
career, and seemed to dwell amid the con-
secrated shades of Independence Hall, and
the stirring scenes of the Revolutionary era.
His last wish was " that he might be per-
mitted to inhale the refreshing breath of
another Fourth of July." And the wish
was granted.

J. B. C.
LoNGWOOD, Miss., Oct., 1850.

484

Public Life of Edward Everett.

Nov.

MEMOIR OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF EDWARD EVERETT.

[Our principal authorities in the preparation of the earlier part of the following sketch, are an article
in the National Portrait Gallery, vol. 4 ; a memoir in the New-England Magazine for September,
1883 ; and some shorter papers in different publications. For the later period of Mr. Everett's life,
we have rehed on other sources of information, which we believe to be authentic]

Edward Everett was born in Dorchester,
in ISTorfolli county, Massacbusetts, in April,
1794. The late Alexander Hill Everett,
our Minister to Spain in Mr. Adams's admin-
istration, was his elder brother. They de-
scend from one of the earliest settlei's of
Massachusetts Bay, who established himself
at Dedham, now the shire town of Norfolk
county, where the family still remains. Oli-
ver Everett, the father of Messrs. Alexander
and Edward Everett, was in his youth ap-
prenticed to a carpenter in Dedham. His
health failed, however, in this occupation,
and, after he had attained his majority, he
began to prepare himself for college. He
entered Harvard College in 17 7 5, at the age
of 23, He graduated in course, and, in
1782, was settled as the minister of the
ISTew South Church in Boston. Dr. Allen,
in his Biographical Dictionary, says of him,
that " after a ministry of ten years, and after
having acquired a high reputation for the
very extraordinary powers of his mind,
the state of his health induced him to ask
a dismission from his people in 1792."
The late President Kirkland was his imme-
diate successor in the New South Chm-ch.
After retiring from the ministry, Mr. Oliver
Everett settled upon a very small farm in
Dorchester. In the year 1799, he was ap-
pointed a Judge of the Common Pleas in
Norfolk county, which ofiQce he filled to
general satisfaction until his death in 1802.
The few persons who still remember him
speak with enthusiasm of his fine intellec-
tual abilities, giving him credit for an espe-
cial fondness for metaphysical study. He
left eight childi'en, of whom the subject of
this memoir is the fourth.

Dorchester, Mr. Edward Everett's bhth-

place, is immediately adjacent to Boston.
It is one of the oldest towns in Massachu-
setts, having received its name from the
early Puritan settlers in token of the love
which they bore Dorchester in England,
" the magazine of rebellion," and one of the
head-quarters in England of the Massachu-
setts Company.

Mr. Everett received the greater part of
his schooling at the public schools of Dor-
chester and Boston, to which town the fam-
ily removed after his father's death. In
Boston he also attended, for about a year, a
private school kept by the late Hon. Eze-
kiel Webster, (brother of Daniel Webster.)
He passed the two last terms of the year
preceding his entrance into College, at the
Academy at Exeter, New-Hampshire, of
which the late Dr. Benjamin Abbott was
the distinguished head-master. To the cir-
cumstances attendino; this school career fre-
quent allusions are made in Mr. Everett's
published addresses. An affectionate trib-
ute of gratitude to Dr. Abbot, which he
made at the "Exeter festival "in 1838, is
printed in the new edition of his addresses
lately published.*

Mr. Everett entered Harvard College in
1807, when he was a few months more than
thirteen yeai^ old. His distinguished broth-
er Alexander was a year younger when
he entered College in 1802. Each was the
youngest member of his class, and each left
College with its fii-st honors.

Only seventeen years old when he left
College, Mr. Everett seems to have been un-
decided as to his future profession. In one

* Everett's Orations and Speeches, vol. ii p,
281.

1850.

Public Life of Edward Everett.

485

of tlie biograpMcal notices referred to above,
it is said that his preference was for the
study of the law, but that he changed his
views at the instance and advice of Presi-
dent Kirkland, and of his family pastor, the
celebrated Mr. Buckminster, and turned his
thoughts to the study of divinity. He
pm-sued this study for two years at Cam-
bridge, where, during a part of that time,
he tilled the office of Latin tutor. In the
year 1813, when he was not yet twenty
yeai-s of age, he succeeded his friend Mr.
Buckminster in the Brattle street church
in Boston. The position is a very arduous
one. His labors in it were quite beyond his
years and his strength, and materially im-
paired his health. His discourses, delivered
here, earned for him, at that early age, the
reputation of hearty, earnest eloquence, and
gave birth to the expectations with which,
in after years, his efforts in other walks, as a
public speaker, were awaited. In addition
to the regular course of his professional du-
ties, he wrote at this time and published a
work of considerable compass, entitled, " A
Defence of Christianity." It was an an-
swer to a treatise of the late Mr. English,
who had revived the arguments of Collins
and other Deistical wiiters. Mr. Everett's
"Defence," although a juvenile perform-
ance, and probably below the present ad-
vanced standard of critical learning, an-
swered its purpose in its time. It was re-
garded as a successful effort. We remember
that it is quoted with respect, as the work
of an able writer, by as good a judge as Dr.
Kaye, the present learned Bishop of Lin-
coln. This is in his account of the writings
and opinions of Justin Martyr.'*

In 1814, a gentleman, since known to be
the late Samuel Ehot, Esq., a much respect-
ed and liberal merchant in Boston, estab-
lished, anonymously, a foundation at Cam-
bridge for a professorship of Greek Litera-
tui'e. Mr. Everett was invited to accept an
appointment as the first Professor on this
foundation. This proposal was rendered
more tempting by permission to \'isit Eu-
rope with a view to recruit his impaired
health. He was inducted into his profes-
sorship in the spring of 1815, and before he
had attained the age of twenty-one years.

* We have never seen this work, but we learn
the fact alluded to from the Christian Examiner,
vol. vii. p. 33Y.

Before commencing his duties at Cam-
bridge, Mr. Everett embarked at Boston for
Liverpool, in one of the first ships that sailed
after the peace, intending to repair imme-
diately to the continent of Europe. On
the arrival of the vessel at Liverpool, news
was received of Napoleon's escape from El-
ba. Mr. Everett was detained in London
till after the battle of Waterloo, and was
the near witness of the excitements pro-
duced by it. From London he went, by
the way of Holland, to Gottingen, the seat
of a University at that time the most fa-
mous in Germany. He remained there
more than two years to acquire the German
language, to ascertain the state of philo-
logical learning and the mode of instruc-
tion in the German Universities, and to
study those branches of ancient literature
appropriate to his professorship. During
this time, he employed his vacations in
travelling in Prussia, Saxony, and Holland.
These excursions gave him the opportunity
of forming the acquaintance of many of the
men of letters in those countries.

Having completed his residence at Got-
tingen, he passed the winter of 1817-18 in
Paris, devoted to the studies subsidiary to his
department, and especially to the acquisition
of the Romaic, as a preparation for a tour
in modern Greece. At this time he formed
the intimate acquaintance of Koray, whose
writings contributed so materially to the re-
generation of Greece. It was, no doubt,
from his intercourse with this eminent Gre-
cian patriot, that Mr. Everett derived a por-
tion of the interest afterwards manifested by
him in the fortunes of Greece, and the pro-
gress of her revolution. In the spring of
1818, he went from Paris to London, passed
a few weeks at Cambridge and Oxford, and
made the usual tour through Wales,' the
Lake country, and Scotland. While in
England, Mr. Everett made the acquaintance
and acquired the fi-iendship of some of the
most eminent men of the day ; among
others, of Scott, Byron, Jeffrey, Campbell,
Gifford, Lord Holland, Sir James Macintosh,
Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir Humphrey Davy,
and other persons of distinction in the po-
litical and literary world.

In the autumn of this year, (1818,) in
company with the late General Lyman of
Boston, he commenced an extensive tour in
the East of Europe. After visiting the most
interesting portions of the south of France,

486

Public lAfe of Edward Everett.

Nov.

Switzerland, and the nortli of Italy, they
divided the, winter and early spring between
Florence, Rome, and Naples. While in Italy,
Mr. Everett devoted himself assiduously to
the study of ancient art in its connection with
ancient literature. He had constant access
to the library of the Vatican, obtained for
him by Canova, whose acquaintance and
friendship he enjoyed. Toward the end of
March, 1819, the travellers started for
Greece ; passing through the lower part of
the kingdom of Naples, at that time al-
most a terra incognita^ and crossing from
Otranto to Corfu. The following animated
sketch of the approach of a traveller from
the West of Europe or from America to
Greece, which occurs in Mr. Everett's me-
moir of John Lowell, jr., the founder of the
Lowell Institute, is no doubt drawn from his
own recollections and experience : —

" When the traveller from Western Europe or
America finds himself sailing along the channel
which separates the Ionian Islands from the
shores of continental Greece, he feels himself, at
length, arrived in the bright clime of battle and
of song. In Italy and Sicily, he is still in the
modern and the Western World, although num-
berless memorials of the past remain, and a fore-
taste of Eastern costume and manners presents
itself. But he reahzes, with full consciousness, that
he is indeed on his pilgrimage, when his eyes rest
upon those gems of the deep, which the skill of
the Grecian minstrel has touched with a spark of
immortality ; when he can say to himself, as he
passes along, ' On this spot was unfolded the gor-
geous web of the Odyssey ; from that cliff Sappho
threw herself into the sea ; on my left hand lay the
gardens of Alcinous, — and the olive, and the grape,
and the orange still cover the soil ; before me rises
the embattled citadel which Virgil describes ; on
my right are the infamous Acroceraunian rocks
of Horace ; and within that blue, mountain bar-
rier, wliich bounds the horizon, were concealed the
mystic grove and oracle of Dodona — the cradle of
the mythology of Greece.' When to these re-
collections of antiquity are added the modern
Oriental features of the scene ; — the dress of the
Grecian peasant or boatman, seen as you coast
along the islands ; the report of the musket of the
Albanian, — half shepherd, half bandit, — as he tends
his flocks on the hill-sides of the mainland ; the
minaret, the crescent, and the cypress grove, which
mark the cities of the living, and the resting-place
of the dead ; you then feel yourself departed
from the language, the manners, and the faith of
Christendom, and fairly entered within the vesti-
bule of the mysterious East."

Mr. Everett crossed from Corfu to the
coast of Albania, and made a visit to Ya-
nina, its capital. He was furnished with

* Orations and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 401.

letters of introduction from Lord Byron to
Ali Pacha, and from Ignatius, the MetropoL
itan of Prevesa, to Muchtar Pacha, the old-
est son of the aged vizier and governor of
Yanina. These letters secured distinguished
civilities to Mr. Everett and his friend and
companion. After a few days passed at
Yanina, they crossed Mount Pindus into
Thessaly, visited Veh Pacha, second son of
Ali, at his residence at Turnavo, and having
examined Pharsalia and Thermopylae, cross-
ed the mountains, and passed by the way of
Delphi and Thebes to Athens. Having
spent two or three weeks at Athens, they
made the tour of the Morea, and recrossing
Parnassus into Thessaly, took passage from
the Gulf of Volo for the plain of Troy and
Constantinople. Off Mount Athos they en-
countered a storm in which their vessel
sprung a leak. They left her at the island
of Lemnos, and made the rest of the pas-
sage to the Troad in an open caique. Af-
ter passing the month of June in Constan-
tinople, they returned to the West of Europe
through Wallachia, Hungary, and Austria.

Mr. Everett returned to America in the
autumn of 1819, after an absence of four
and a half years. He entered at once with
diligence upon the duties of the professor-
ship at Cambridge. Soon after his return,
he was invited by a club of literary and sci-
entific gentlemen, who owned and edited the
North American Review, to become one of
their number, with a view to his assuming
the chief editorship of that journal. The
North American had been established for
some years at this time. It appeared once
in two months. But, though supported by
contributors of great learning and ability, it
had, as yet, acquired but a very limited cir-
culation. Under the auspices of its new
editor, the circulation was at once greatly
enlarged. A new series was commenced,
and so rapid was the increase of the demand
for it, that it became necessary to print a
second edition, and even a third of some of
the numbers. This was the first instance in
which a critical journal succeeded in estab-
lishing itself firmly in the United States.

The early fortunes of the North Ameri-
can Re\dew have a place in our literary his-
tory sufficiently important to justify us in
dwelling on some of these details. Mr.
Everett not only had the assistance of its
former editors and contributors, but of sev-
eral new ones, of whom we may mention

1850.

Public Life of Edward Everett.

487

his brother, Alexander H. Everett, and his
kinsmen, Messrs. William and Oliver Pea-
body. In 1824, the editorship passed into
the hands of Mr. Sparks, and afterwards,
successively, into those of Mr. A. H. Everett,
on his return from Spain, and Dr. Palfrey.
During all this period Mr. Edward Everett
continued a regular and frequent contribu-
tor.

From his first connection with it, he at-
tempted to give to it an American character
and spirit. He made it a special object to
defend the country against foreign tourists
and essayists. During his long residence
abroad, he had observed that writers of these
classes assailed American principles, while
they affected to assail American customs.
America was vilified under their pens, that
Republican institutions might be disparaged
and made contemptible. One of the ablest
of these writers, Capt. Marryatt, afterwards
substantially avowed this as the object of his
work on the United States ! The JSTorth
American Review, under Mr. Everett's
charge, distinctly met such attempts. In
his second number, he began a series of pa-
pers in systematic vindication of the coun-
try. This was in commenting on " Walsh's
Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain."
To this article one of the contributors to the
London New Monthly Magazine made a
flippant reply. The New Monthly was then
in its infancy, under the direction of the poet
Campbell. To this paper Mr. Everett re-
joined. At the close of the year, in the
preface prepared for the annual volume of
the New Monthly, Campbell alluded to his
rejoinder in the following liberal terms : —

" Under this plea, (the impossibihty of exacting
an entire conformity with the editor from a large
body of contributors,) the editor has no desire to
excuse himself for one article which has given of-
fense rather too justly on the other side of the
Atlantic. He inserted it without reflection, but
had observed its unfairness, and felt dissatisfied
with himself for having pubhshed it, long before
the fair and temperate reply which Mr. Everett
made to it had reached him."

Mr. Campbell himself then proceeded to
make a handsome defense of America and
Americans, against several of the charges
most frequently brought against them by
English writers, and concluded with this
observation : —

" If any ill-natured remarks should be made on
this apology, which the editor has offered the people
of the United States, he can promise his critics one
VOL. VI. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

advantage, that he will (in all probability) make no
reply to them. But the sober part of the British
community will scarcely require an excuse for his
having spoken thus respectfully of the Americans.
It was a duty particularly imposed upon him by the
candid manner of Mr. Everett's reply ; and it was
otherwise, as he felt in his heart, deservedly
claimed by a people eulogized by Burke and
Chatham ; by a land that brings such recollections
to the mind as the wisdom of Washington and
Franklin, and the heroism of Warren and Mont-
gomery."*

Our younger readers, who have never ex-
amined the old files of periodicals, and the
other volumes of the English press enough to
know its original tone, with regard to Amer-
ica and American institutions, can hardly
feel the force of the terms in which Camp-
bell thus made the amende honorable. Mr.
Everett, as we have said, followed up his ar-
ticle on Walsh's book by a series of others,
in the same strain. We cannot doubt that
this series has had its influence in bringing
about the altered tone which has, more and
more, up to our time, pervaded the com-
ments which foreign presses have made on
the United States.

The charge of the North American Re-
view, however, was but an accompaniment
of Mr. Everett's laborious regular duties as
Eliot Professor at Cambridge. He pre-
pared and delivered there a complete course
of lectures on the history of the Literature
of Greece, comprising an account of the life
and works of every Greek classic author
from the earliest period to the Byzantine
age. He delivered several shorter courses
also ; — two of which, on " Antiquities and
Ancient Art," were repeated before large pop-
ular audiences in Boston. Before this time,
Professors Peck, Gorham and Bigelow had
delivered popular scientific lectures in Bos-
ton ; but we believe Mr. Everett's were the
first of the class of purely literary lectures
ever delivered there, before large general
audiences. At this time. Professor Everett
published a translation of Buttmann's Small-
er Greek Grammar, and a Greek Reader on
the basis of Jacob's.

The political situation of Greece had al-
ways excited his deepest sympathies. " The
Restoration of Greece " was the subject of
his oration at Cambridge, in 1814, when he
took his second degree there. His visit to
Greece, where he personally witnessed the
oppressions of the Turkish Government,

* CampbeU's New Monthly, 1821 ; pref. p. xii,
32

488

Public Life of Edward Everett.

Nov*

greatly increased tliis early interest. In
1822, lie received in manuscript the Ap-
peal of the Messenian Senate of Calamata,
the first organized body of the Greek revo-
lution. Their Commissioners at Paris trans-
mitted it to him, and at their request he
translated it, and published it for the infor-
mation of our countrymen. It failed how-
ever at the time to attract much notice.

In October, 1823, Mr. Everett vn-ote an
article on the Greek Revolution, in the
North American Review, accompanied with
a complete translation of the Constitution of
Epidaurus. Great interest in the cause of
Greece was excited throughout the country
by this fervid appeal. Numerous meetings
were held, and considerable funds raised.
At the next session of Congress, Mr. Web-
ster took up the subject, and commended it
with all the power of his eloquence to the
sympathy and respect of the civilized world.
Two or three years later, the correspondence
of Mr. Everett with leading members of the
government of Greece, being communicated
to the late Matthew Carey, Esq., of Phila-
delphia, gave the impulse to the active and
efficient exertions of that warm-hearted phi-
lanthropist, and other American Philhelle-
nes, which resulted in the dispatch of sev-
eral cargoes of clothing and provisions for
the supply of the suffering Greeks.

In 1824, Mr. Everett dehvered the an-
nual oration at Cambridge, before the Phi
Beta Kappa Society. The occasion was
signalized by the attendance of Lafayette,
whose personal acquaintance Mr. Everett
had made a few years before at Paris. The
entire discourse was very favorably received ;
but the peroration — being an apostrophe to
Lafayette — touched a chord of sympathy
in an immense audience, already highly ex-
cited by the unusual circumstances of the
occasion. This was the first of a series of
Orations and Addresses, delivered by Mr.
Everett on public occasions of almost every
kind, during a quarter of a century. They
probably constitute that part of his literary
efforts by which he is best known to the
country, and have undoubtedly contributed
materially to elevate the standard for pro-
ductions of this class. They have lately
been collected in two volumes octavo, the
first of which is a re-impression of one
which was published in 1836, containing
the addresses which liad been delivered pre-
vious to that time.

Up to the year 1824, Mr. Everett had taken
no active interest in politics. In this year,
the late Mr. Fuller, who had represented the
Middlesex District in Congress for eight
years, declined a re-election. It was a time
of great political harmony ; the ancient po-
litical distinctions had almost wholly sunk
into oblivion. The young men of the dis-
trict (whose fathers had belonged to both
the former political parties) were desir-
ous of selecting a candidate who could be
supported on higher grounds than mere
party preference. Mr. Everett's articles in
the North American Review, above alluded
to, had evinced his acquaintance with the
great interests of the country ; and the ora-
tion delivered in the presence of Lafayette
had brought him prominently before the
public, just at the time when a nomination
was to be made. Under these circum-
stances, and without having been himself
previously consulted on the subject, his name
was brought forward at a volunteer Conven-
tion of the young men of the district. The
nomination was received with great favor
by the people of Middlesex, and he was
elected by a handsome majority over the
regular candidate.

Mr. Everett was thus brought into public
hfe as a member of Congress, without any
preliminary training in State politics. He
was re-elected four times successively, by
large majorities. He seems, as a member
of the House of Representatives, to have
taken a view of his duty, which we wish we
could impress on other members, young or
experienced. This was, in a word, to devote
himself mainly to the discharge of that part
of the public business which devolved on
him. He did not take the floor so often as
might have been expected (in those days
when it was not, as now, almost impossible
to take the floor) from one as much accus-
tomed as he was to public speaking, and as i
able as he to command the ear of the House, n
On reference, however, to the transactions of
the ten sessions for which he was a member,
it will be found that he took part in almost
every debate of importance. During his
whole service in Congress he was on the
Committee of Foreign Affairs. In the Twen-
tieth Congress he was appomted its Chair-
man, by Mr. Stevenson, then Speaker — act-
ing on the principle, that an Administration,
although in a minority in the House, is en-
titled to the chair of that Committee, as a

1850.

Public Life of Edward Everett.

489!

position of peculiar confidence. Mr. Ever-
ett was a member of the most important
Select Committees raised while he was in
Congress : such as that on the Indian re-
lations of the State of Georgia ; that on
the Apportionment Bill ; and that on the
Bank of the United States, (the Committee
which sat in Philadelphia in 1834.) He
drew the majority or the minority report in
all the instances where he thus served. He
formed, with the Hon. John Sergeant, of
Philadelphia, the minority of the celebrated
Retrenchment Committee in the Twentieth
Congress ; and he drew those portions of its
report which relate to the Departments of
State and of War. When he had just en-
tered Congress, he drew the report on the
mission to the Congress of Panama, the
leadinp; measure of the first session of the
Nineteenth Congress, though he was the
youngest member of the Committee. To-
gether with the late Henry R. Storrs, he led
the opposition to the Indian policy of Gen-
eral Jackson, (the removal of the Indians,
without their consent, from lands guaran-
teed to them by treaty,) and he rephed, on
that subject, to the speech of the Chairman
of the Committee on PubHc Lands. Mr.
Madison's celebrated letter on Nullification,
in 1830, was addressed to Mr. Everett, and
appended (with Mr. Madison's permission)
to an article on that subject by Mr. Everett.
This article appeared in the October number
of the North American Review for that
year. It will, w^e believe, be generally re-
membered, by those who have taken any
interest in that stormy time. The unsound-
ness of the doctrine of Nullification, which
had then been treated with all the gravity
of a distinct system, was completely exposed
in it ; and a singular novelty of illustra-
tion and great strength of argument called
attention to it, and gave force to it wherever
it was read. There is a speech of Mr. Ev-
erett's on the tariff policy, delivered at this
same period, to which no answer was ever
attempted. It demonstrates the fallacy of
one of Mr. Calhoun's favorite doctrines, —
that the duty on goods imported is paid,
not by the consumer, but by the Southern
planter, as a large producer of the exported
article given in exchange. Mr. Everett
shows that, admitting the principle that the
duty is paid by the producer of the article
given in exchange, still it is paid by the con-
sumer ; for he is, of necessity, the ultimate

producer of the article finally given in ex-
change, and therefore the payer of the
duty, even on the Southern statement of the
principle.

The last act of Mr. Everett as a member
of Congi'ess was the minority report of the
Committee of Foreign Affairs on the French
controversy in 1834-1835, and a speech on
the same subject in the House. Wc have
been told, on good authority, that the late
King of the French paid the highest com-
pliment to the liberal spirit evinced in this
report and speech, and to the knowledge of
the subject involved.

In the autumn of 1834, Mr. Everett had
announced his intention of retiring from
Congress. In the winter of 1835 he was
nominated as a candidate for Governor of
Massachusetts, and he was chosen in the au-
tumn of that year. The subjects of local
administration, in which he was most inter-
ested, are of so great general importance
that we should hardly hesitate to call to-
them the attention of the readers of this Re-
view, but that our limits warn us that we
must bring this sketch toward a close. We
content ourselves with saying, that, while he
was Governor, the Commonwealth gave its
liberal assistance to the Western Railroad;,
that the Board of Education was establish-
ed ; that a sound currency was preserved in
the State during the panic of 1837 ; that
the elaborate scientific surveys of the State
were prosecuted, and the Criminal Law Com-
mission appointed, all in a series of meas-
ures, which had his full concurrence anci
efficient support. It was while he was Gov-
ernor that the surplus revenue was distrib-
uted. In one of his recent speeches* we
find his narrative of a plan, not less magnifi-
cent than feasible, which he had formed for
the disposal of the share of this distribution
which fell to Massachusetts. He wished
that she would appropriate $1,000,000 to
pay her subscription to the Western Rail-
road. He would have had the remainder,
which was then estimated at more thau
$700,000, divided between the State's col-
leges, the common schools, and an astro-
nomical observatory. If such a disposition
had been made, Massachusetts would now
have a fund yielding a regular interest of
80,000 dollars. But other counsels pre-
vailed, and the surplus was divided among

* Second Speech in aid of the Colleges ; Ora-
tions and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 616.

490

Public Life of Edward Everett.

Nov.

the several towns, in the proportion of their
population.

Mr. Everett's efforts, however, for the
cause of education in Massachusetts, to
which in his public addresses he had often
lent his best aid, were not confined to this
unsuccessful plan. In his Annual Speech to
the Legislature of 1837, he earnestly called
their attention to the subject of the schools,
and among other things recommended the
establishment of a Board of Education.
About the same time, a very liberal dona-
tion was announced for the expenses of
Normal Schools, and of an active Secretary
of such a Board, — a donation made by the
late Mr. Edmund Dwight, — though, till his
death, his name was concealed. In the
course of the session the Board was estab-
lished, and Mr. Horace Mann named as its
first Se43retary. On this subject, we may
quote as our best authority the following
passage from an able article in the Christian
Examiner, on the subject of the Massachusetts
Board of Education. The article is by Hon.
Charles W. Upham, of Salem, a distinguish-
ed member of the Massachusetts Senate : —

" The Board of Education was organized in
\he Council Chamber, on the 29th of June, 1837.
The Governor was of course Chairman, and Hor-
ace Mann was elected, by ballot. Secretary.
The novelty of the movement, the immense ex-
tent, diversity, complexity, and minuteness of
the objects within its scope, the inadequacy of its
powers and means, the vague and exasjgerated
expectations of wonderful results, to be reached
at once, entertained by many of the most san-
guine andbu.-y friends of the cause, political jeal-
ousies, with the use made of them by intriguing
partizans, and, more than all, sectarian opposition,
embarrassed the Board exceedingly during the
earlier years of its operations, which were, be-
sides, years of peculiar financial difficulty in the
community at large. The value of the services
of Governor Everett, under these disadvantage-
ous and perplexing circumstances, cannot be over-
estimated. He wrote the several Annual Reports
of the Board, and, as Chairman of most of the
sub-committees, he also discharged a great amount
of labor, and bore the constant burden of respon-
sible care. His indefatigable fidelity, his con-
scientious and enlightened prudence, his extraor-
dinary discretion as a statesman, and his profound
enthusiasm in the cause, were what the crisis ab-
solutely needed. While justice to the Secretary
demands the tribute which we are about to ren-
der, it also requires us to acknowledge that no
other hand, perhaps, than that which then held
the helm of State, could have safely 'piloted the
little bark through the rough sea of jealousy and
opposition.' "*

^- Christian Examiner, Ifov., 1849, p. 397.

Mr. Everett held the ofiace of Governor
till 1840. At that period the political par-
ties of Massachusetts were very closely bal-
anced ; and, in the election of November,
1839, local questions connected with the
License and Militia Laws defeated his elec-
tion. Judge Morton, the Democratic can-
didate, succeeded by one vote, out of more
than a hundred thousand.

Thus relieved from public duty, Mr. Ever-
ett was led by domestic reasons to visit
Europe a second time. He sailed with his
family in June, 1840. They spent the
summer in Paris, and the following year in
Florence and its vicinity. We have under-
stood that the same reasons which dictated
this residence in a climate milder than that
of New-England, would have induced Mr.
Everett to pass another winter in Italy, but
political occurrences changed his destination.
In the spring of 1841, General Harrison
was elected President, and Mr. Webster be-
came Secretary of State. The ban under
which the Whig party had lain for a gen-
eration (with the brief exception of Mr.
Adams's administration) was thus raised,
and Mr. Everett's services and position as a
member of that party, and his intimate per-
sonal and political relations with Mr. Web-
ster,— relations of long standing, — led to the
expectation that he would be called to some
important duty under the new Administra-
tion.

Mr. Andrew Stevenson, the United
States Minister at London, had been re-
called, at his own request, on the change of
administration. The vacancy thus created
was, of course, one of the most important to
be filled. The Diplomatic service, under
our Government, cannot be said to stand on
a good footing. Under the leading Gov-
ernments of Europe that service is made a
distinct career. It is entered, or prepared
for in youth, by an appropriate course of
study, and then is pursued, through a reg-
ular gradation of subordinate posts. Under
the European system, also, a change of the
home administration does not directly affect
the positions of any of the diplomatic
agents, excepting the Ambassadors at two
or three leading courts. Paid Attaches,
Secretaries of Legation, Charges and Minis-
ters retain their oflSces and continue in the
regular routine. Liberal salaries enable
men without large private fortunes to devote
themselves to this branch of the pubhc ser-

1850.

Public Life of Edward Everett,

491

vice ; and a retiring pension, allowed to
those who stand highest in the list, prevents
the retired Minister from sinking into want.
In this way an efficient corps is kept up of
men well-read in the law of nations, and in
modern political history, conversant with
the principal modern languages, personally
acquainted with the characters of leading
men, and familiar with negotiation. It is
unnecessary to say how little of all this
exists in the United States. The want of
permanency in the career, the smallness of
the salaries, and the custom of regarding
foreign appointments simply as the reward
of jDartisan services, have their effect upon
our diplomacy. It is, under the circum-
stances, only matter of wonder that it is so
generally regarded as highly respectable.
This may partly be explained by the focts,
that, as the field of service is remote from
the pubhc eye, and the manner in which the
duty is performed is known only to the De-
partment of State, and but partially there, a
gi-eat degree of unfitness may exist on the
part of some of the foreign Ministers, and
be severely felt by those immediately con-
cerned, without becoming matter of notori-
ety.

There were few individuals, j)6i'l!iaps,
whose previous course of life had been bet-
ter adapted than Mr. Everett's to supply the
defects of regular diplomatic training. The
Elements of the Civil Law are studied in
the German Universities as a branch of
classical antiquities. Mr. Everett's resi-
dence of five or six years in Europe had
made him familiar with the principal con-
tinental languages, particularly with the
French, which, even in London, is the lan-
guage of diplomacy. His connection with
the Committee of Foreign Aifairs for the
ten years he was in Congress had led him
to study carefully the entire range of our
foreign relations. As Governor of Massa-
chusetts, he had, of course, mastered the
Boundary Question in its almost endless
details ; and this was the leading question
between Great Britain and the United States
at the time he w^as appointed Minister.

When the importance of the English
mission at all times is borne in mind, with
the critical state of the relations of the two
countries in 1841, and the magnitude and
difficulty of the tojjics to be discussed, the
appointment of Mr. Everett, who had been
for more than a twelvemonth absent from

the country, and taken no part in the strug-
gles of the election, must be considered as a
striking proof of the confidence of the Ad-
ministration in his discretion and ability.

He arrived in London, to enter upon the
duties of his mission, at the close of the
year 1841. Among the great questions to
which we allude, which were at that time
open between the two countries, were the
Northeastern Boundary, the affair of Mr.
McLeod, and the seizure of American ves-
sels on the coast of Africa. In the course
of a few months the affiiir of the Creole fol-
lowed, to which were soon added Oregon
and Texas. His position must have been
rendered more difficult by the frequent
changes which took place in the Department
at home. Between Mr. Webster, who re-
tired in the spring of 1843, and Mr. Bu-
chanan, who came in with Mr. Polk in 1845,
it was occupied successively by Messrs. Le-
gare, Upshur, and Calhoun. From all these
gentlemen, Mr. Everett received marks of
approbation and confidence.

At the time of his arrival in London, be-
sides the intrinsic difficulty of the questions
to which his attention was called, some em-
barrassment arose from antecedent occur-
rences. A change of administration had
taken place on both sides of the water. But
Lord Falmei-ston, in the last days of his
Secretaryship, had addressed an uncompro-
mising letter to Mr. Stevenson on the Afri-
can question ; and Mr. Stevenson on the
eve of his departure from London had writ-
ten to Lord Aberdeen in the same strain.*
In this way a legacy of trouble was left to
the new administrations on both sides.

By the institution of the special mission
of Lord Ashburton, the direct negotiations
between the two Governments were trans-
ferred to Washington. It appears however,
from documents that have from time to time
been communicated to Congress, that vari-
ous topics connected with all the subjects in
dispute were incidentally treated in the cor-
respondence of the American Minister at
London both with his own and the British
Government. Many elaborate notes to Lord
Aberdeen, and dispatches to the American
Secretary of State, have, in this way, come
before the public, forming however, we be-
lieve, but a small part of the documents of

* See the Introduction to the volume of Mr.
Webs' er's Diplomatic Papers, where these diiS-
culties are stated in detail.

492

Public Life of Edward Everett.

Nov.

botk classes prepared by Mr. Everett during
his mission. In consequence of ttie multi-
plication, in the lapse of time, of subjects of
piablic centrovei-sy, — the increase in the
number of private claims, — the extension of
commercial intercourse generally, often with
remote colonial possessions of the British
Government, where irregularities are likely
to occur under the provincial authorities, the
amount of business transacted at the Amer-
ican Legation fix)m 1841 to 1845, as we
have understood from the best authority,
was more than double that of any former
period of equal dm-ation.

Mr. Everett is, however, as may have been
«een by the reader of this sketch, a person of
assiduous habits of labor ; and he discharged
this greatly increased amount of pubHc busi-
ness, in such a w^y as to gain the entire
confidence of his Government. He received
striking proofs of this confidence. When, at
the end of the session of 1842-43, Congress
made an appropriation for a mission to
China, under circumstances which required
an immediate nomination to it, Mr. Everett
was appointed by the President and Senate,
for the purpose of opening diplomatic rela-
tions with that country and negotiating a
treaty of commerce. In the autumn of the
same year, he received full powers to nego-
tiate Vvith the British Government for the
final adjustment of the Oregon difficulty.
But that negotiation had just been trans-
ferred, at the instance of Great Britain, to
Washington. General Fox, as will be re-
membered, had been recalled, and Sir Kich-
ard Pakenham was appointed to conduct it
there*

The Congressional documents are the only
sources open to the public, from which may
be learned the nature of the subjects which
Mr. E. brought to a successful issue. Among
these were several claims for the seizure of
vessels on the coast of Africa, and large de-
mands of American citizens for duties levied
contrary to the commercial treaty between
the two countries. In reference to the latter,
Mr. E. obtained an acknowledgment of the
justice of the claims, and proposed the princi-
ple of offset on which they were, soon after
the close of his mission, liquidated and paid.
He obtained for our fishermen the right of
taking fish in the Bay of Fundy, which had
been a subject of irritation and controversy
between them and the Provincial authorities
for thirty years. He procm-ed, at different

times, the release from Van Diemen's Land
of fifty or sixty of the misguided Americans
who had embarked in the Canadian rebel-
lion of 1838. It will be remembered, how-
ever, as we have already observed, that a
small part only of his correspondence has
been brought before the public.

Immediately after the accession of Mr.
Polk to the Presidency, Mr. Everett was re-
called. He remained in London, however,
until the arrival of Mr. Louis McLane, his
successor.

He returned to Boston in the autumn of
1845. Shortly before that time. Harvard
University was left without a President, by
the resignation of the Hon. Josiah Quincy,
who had been at its head for sixteen years.
The friends of the institution united in press-
ing Mr. Everett to accept the nomination
which was offered him as Mr. Quincy's succes-
sor. He did so, in January, 1846, and was
formally inaugurated, April 30th of the same
year. He held his office there for three
years — an administration which has been, we
do not hesitate to say, of the highest value
to the College. His connection with the in-
stitution, either by residence near it, or by
official position, had been preserved in
some way almost constantly since he entered
it as a boy. His position as President was
doubtless made dear to him thus, by the
associations and affections of his life. He
devoted to his duties all the enthusiasm
which could arise from such associations, —
all his assiduous labor, — and the fruit of his
mature studies and experience. Of the re-
sult of such devotion we have not hesitated
to speak, although a matter of such recent
observation.

The friends of the College had every rea-
son to regret, therefore, on its account, that
the very burdensome details of his office so
wore upon Mr. Everett's health, as to com-
pel him to resign it after three years' ser-
\ice. The publication since that time of the
volumes we have spoken of, and the promise
of his treatise on the Law of Nations, induce
us to express a doubt whether that retire-
ment ought to be a matter of equal regret
to the friends of literature and science gener-

Since his resignation, Mr. Everett has lived
in Cambridge, retired from public duty,
devoted to the restoration of his health, and
to the calls of social life. A portion of his
time has been devoted to the prepai-ation of

1750,

Public Life of Edward Everett.

493

tke volumes of his speeches to which we
have alluded; — two volumes which, from
their character and subject, will take a per-
manent place in the literature of our time.
In the preface of that work he says, that he
contemplates also a " selection from his nu-
merous articles in the North American Re-
view ; from his speeches and reports in Con-
gress, and from his official papers and cor-
respondence. Nor am I wholly without
hope," he adds, " that I shall be able to ex-
ecute the more arduous project, to which I
have devoted a good deal of time for
many years, and toward which I have col-
le-ctcd ample materials, — that of a system-
atic treatise on the Law of Nations, more
especially in reference to those questions
which have been discussed between the
United States and Europe, since the peace
of 1783."

We see that we have trespassed upon our
limits. The detail of dates and facts wliich
we have given shows a somewhat singular
variety of public service to which Mr. Ever-
ett has been called, ever since what we may
call his boyhood. We can scarcely name a
person, not farther advanced in life, who,
without specially dazzling incidents of bril-
liant achievement, has passed through a
more varied or laborious career. Such a
career cannot be analyzed, nor the character
trained in it, in a sketch limited as this is.
And, while we have attempted simply to
place in order the more essential facts of
its course, we do not know how we could
better bring the narrative to a close, than

by the following extract from a speech of
Mr. Webster at an agricultural festival in
Massachusetts the past year : —

" Gentlemen, I am happy also to see here, I
may say, an early friend of my own, a distinguish-
ed citizen, himself a native of this county,— his an-
cestors, I believe, for generations native and resi-
dent here in Dedham, — I mean Governor Everett.
As he has of late not been frequently amongst us
on such occasions, I mrst take leave, notwithstand-
ing the repulsiveness of his own modesty, to say
that he is one who has gone through a long career
of eminent public service. We all remember him,
some of us personally — myself, certainly with
great interest, in his deliberations in the Congress
of the United States, to which he brought such a
degree of learning and ability and eloquence as few
equalled and none surpassed. He administered
afterwards satisfactorily to his fellow-citizens the
duties of the chair of the Commonwealth. He
then, to the great advantage of his country, went
abroad. He was deputed to represent liis Gov-
ernment at the most important Court of Europe,
and he carried thither many qualities, most of
them essential, and all of them ornamental and
useful, to fill that high station. He had educa-
tion and scholarship. He had a reputation at
home and abroad. More than all, he had an ac-
quaintance with the politics of the world — with
the law of his country and of nations — with the
history and policy of the countries of Europe.
And how well these qualities enabled him to re-
flect honor upon the literature and character of his
native land, not we only but all the country and
all the world know. He has performed tliis ca-
reer, gentlemen, and is yet at such a period of life
that I may venture something upon the character
and the privilege of my countrymen, when I pre-
dict that those who have known him long and
know him now — those who have seen him and see
him now — those who liave heard him and hear him
now, are very likely to think that his country has
demands upon him for future efforts in its service."

SONNETS TO FILL BLAKES.

NtJMBER THREE.

" ' Sonnets to fill blanks !' " reads a grave " subscriber,"
" All sonnets were for that sole purpose made ;
Blanks in young ladies' brains. Should / describe her,
I'd call the muse a ' blank filler' by trade,
A scribbler upon spaces left by nature ;
Filling them in with images fantastic ;
An incoherent, idle, dreamy creature,
Of soul too softi and character too plasiic,
For anything of use." Then with a sneer,
And scornful threat, Sir Reader jerks the leafj
And looking very politic and severe,
Turns to the " Miscellany" for relief,
And with a passion mixed of love and awe^
Hangs o'er the " bill" for Texas or Eutau.

494

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.

Nov.

USES AND ABUSES OF LYNCH LAW.

ARTICLE SECOND.

That circumstances may arise when noth-
ing less potent and immediate than the ap-
phcation of Lynch law can prevent wholesale
robbery and murder, was most conclusively
proved by the events which occurred in Mis-
sissippi after the capture and imprisonment of
Murrel, the " Land Pirate."

In order that our readers may properly
understand the very extraordinary state of
affairs that existed in the Valley of the Mis-
sissippi at the time, it is necessaiy for us to
give some account of the Phate, his plot,
and his capture ; for singular as it may seem,
we do not believe that one in ten of Northern
men have ever heard the name of Murrel, or
known anything of his conspiracy — a con-
spiracy which enrolled in its ranks almost
every villain in the Southwest, and aimed
■at no less a crisis than the total destruction
and ruin of the Southwestern States.

John A. Murrel was one of the worst
class of Western villains. After a career of
crime almost unparalleled, he conceived and
apparently almost carried into execution a
plan which, if perfected, would have plunged
the entire South and West into an al^yss of
misery and desolation.

Whether he would really have pushed his
designs to the extent he induced his ad-
herents to believe, is a matter of doubt ; for
although when a prisoner he was anxious
that they should make the attempt, it is
probable he might have confined the sphere
of action, or have deferred for a long time
the execution of his incredibly daring plot.

His idea, we believe, was to revolutionize
the entire South ; to cause the neofroes to
rise simultaneously, and, under the command
of his associates and himself, to lay wnste
city and country, to burn, rob, murder,
devastate and destroy.

His plans were deeply laid. To a few he
confided the extent of his design, and to
each of these he gave the authority to enlist
all the minor villains of their acquaintance.

The latter were termed Strikers, and used
but as tools — in fact, as the hands to do the
work of the conspiracy — while the Grand
Council, as head, controlled their motions.

They were sworn by the most horrible
oaths to secresy, and to the unhesitating
performance of all the commands of their
superiors. To violate their oath was certain
death.

In a short time Murrel had bound to-
gether in his chain the great mass of robbers
and minor villains in the West, but this did
not content him. For all the purposes of
mutual assistance in counterfeiting, robbery,
negro and horse stealing, the present con-
federacy might suffice, but it was necessary
for safety and the completion of his grand
design, that his band should include among
their members men of an entirely different
class — men of standing in society, and of
name in the world.

To accomphsh this, he established through-
out the entire South, or perhaps more par-
ticularly the portion that borders upon the
Mississippi river, a cordon of robber police, so
well drilled, so effective in their operations,
that Vidocq himself might have envied the
perfection of the arrangements. Every
crime not committed by one of the gang
was traced immediately to its author, and
the criminal was astounded on discovering
that deeds which he supposed none but his
God and himself to be cognizant of, were
known by numbers, whose mandate he must
obey implicitly and among whom he must
enroll his name, or be immediately exposed
to the world and to justice.

It is not, at this late hour, for us to learn
that petty crimes, or those of the first mag-
nitude, are not confined to the lower walks
of life. All, however, were fish that came to
Murrel's net ; the low gambler and the
rich villain were equally received with open
arms.

Not content with detecting crime, his

1850.

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.

495

victims weve seduced to commit it, and the
trap tlien sprung upon them.

In this manner, ere long, he numbered
men of all classes and grades, including
many persons of wealth, judges, lawyers,
clergymen, militia officers of high rank,
planteis, merchants, &c.*

* Lest tlie reader may think that we have
either been ourselves imposed upon or are seeking
to impose upon others, we here insert an extract
from a Galveston (Texas) paper, published within
the last twelve months. In our account of the
Murrel cotispiracy we have been particularly care-
ful to insert nothing of the truth of which we are
not positively certain ; many of the facts are from
personal knowledge, or from the knowledge of
those upon vhose word we place implicit con-
fidence. The following extract properly belongs
to a later part of this paper : —

From the Galveston News.
THE MURREL GANG IN WASHINGTON COUNTY.

The Texan Ranger, of the 10th instant, contains
the confession of A. G. Grigg, one of the gang of
thieves whom the citizens of Austin, Fayette, and
"Wasliington counties (where the operations have
been principally carried on) have determined on
exterminating, or otherwise stopping their infamous
carea*. This confession exhibits an organized and
systematic plan of procedure, as well calculated
to accomplish the nefarious ends of the band as to
escape the penalties of the law and justice in case
of detection.

The published names of those connected with
the gang, are : —

Rev. JSTathan Shook, of Crockett ; Judge Kel-
soe, or Kersaw, living somewhere on the Guada-
loupe river; Orland Snapp, Lewis Boren, Bill
Short, William Howitt, George Carmine, James
Cox, Nathaniel Greer, James McLaughlin, James
Crook, D. D. Ritchey, and a man named Agery.
The latter controlled a mint, located above Browns-
ville on the Rio Grande, but which none of the
others were made acquainted with, Agery sup-
plied his accomplices with the spurious coin for
fifty cents on the dollar, in good money, at the
Star Hotel in this city, which establishment,
according to Grigg's confession, he had rented,
and Bill Short was to be proprietor. Agery paid
two hundred dollars in good money for each negro
delivered to him, or four hundred dollars in spuri-
ous coin.

Passing counterfeit money, stealing negroes,
cattle, and other property, were the principal
branches of business followed by this extensive
association. A correspondent of the Ranger says,
the number of negroes stolen from the counties
named is very considerable. Two of the gang,
Short and McLaughlin, were tried for murder in
1848, but by means cf their associates on the Jury
got clear, and afterwards boasted that they had
followed one of the State's witnesses to take his
life for giving evidence against them, which it is
thought they succeeded in doing. The same cor-
respondent says, the gang is composed of ministers
of the gospel, merchants, lawyers, farmers, traders,

The great secrets of the confederacy were
confined to the leaders, known as the Grand
Council, and the Striker's only duty was to
obey the every command of his superior.

Members of the clan recognized each other
by certain signs, and the correspondence
between the leaders was conducted in a
cipher.

Perhaps the most singular circumstance
connected with the history of this aflair is,
that although the designs of Murrel must
have been known to some two hundred of
the superior villains, and the existence of the
plan to more than as many thousands ; yet
with so much fear did they regard the con-
federacy, or with so much faith did they
believe in the power, talent and management
of their leader, that it was through him, and
through him alone, that they were ultimately
betrayed.

The circumstances of the discovery of the
plot were these :

Murrel had owned a farm, or plantation,
for a number of years in Madison county,
Tennessee. Here his true character was for a
time unknown, but the frequent losses of
slaves and valuable hoi-ses by the neighbor-
ing planters induced them to regard him
with suspicion, which indeed his singular
and mysterious mode of life warranted them
in doing.

He was absent months at a time from his
home and wife without any apparent reason,
or ostensible business. His home was a
rendezvous for strangers of a suspicious
character ; persons were often seen to arrive
and depart at the dead hour of the night,
and in fact everything concurred to produce
the impression upon his neighbors, that
not only was he a dishonest and dangerous
character, but also a leader or a chief of
some unknown band of robbers, counter-
feiters, or murderers — perhaps all the three.

Suspicion led to a closer scrutiny, and
scrutiny to detection. A neighbor had lost
a number of slaves, and for several days
could find no trace of them. At length, the
overseer of his plantation discovering one of
the runaways creeping into his deserted
"quarter," at night, gave chase, and after
some trouble succeeded in capturing him.

and also that some editors of newspapers are
inculpated, as having aided by their advice and
support.

We are curious to know who the editors are.
and look anxiously for the full disclosures.

496

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.

Kov,

From him they obtained a knowledge of
the locale of the rendezvous, and the name
of the negro thief. As they had anticipated,
it was Mm-rel.

The testimony of a negro against a white
man, however, is invahd in Tennessee, and it
was necessary to detect the criminal them-
selves.

The negi'o was accordingly directed to
guide his master and a number of well-
armed men to the spot in silence, and then
rejoin his associates, being threatened with the
penalty of death if he should in any manner
betray the design of his captors.

The plot succeeded. Hardly had the
company been cautiously posted around the
negroes, when Murrel himself, bearing a
basket of provisions in his hand, made his
appearance, and immediately began to di-
vide the food among them.

After the party had seen and heard suf-
ficient for their purpose, they rushed upon
the villain, and secured him.

Taken entirely unawares, Murrel's cool-
ness did not in the least desert him ; on the
contrary, he turned upon the owner whom
he had robbed, and congratulated him upon
the recovery of his slaves, stating that he
had himself discovered them but a short
time before, and that he had beguiled them
with fair promises and kind treatment into
the belief that he was their friend, solely for
the purpose, however, of securing them for
him.

Despite his self-possession, however, he was
bound, and carried in triumph to the county
jail, where, in a day or two, he was bailed
for a heavy sum. The day of trial arrived,
and to the astonishment of every one, Murrel
delivered himself up. So dark appeared the
case, that the idea was universal that the
bail-bond would be forfeited, and the crimi-
nal seek safety in flight. They were doubly
mistaken. Murrel had employed skilful
counsel, and his own knowledge of criminal
law was not to be despised. It soon ap-
peared the count in the indictment charging
him with " negro steaHng " could not be sus-
tained, and he could only be convicted of
harboring the negroes.

A verdict was accordingly rendered against
him for this offense, mulcting him in a few
hundred dollars, and against this he con-
tended, appeahng to the " Supreme Court,"
upon the ground of the unconstitutionality
of the law against " negro harboring."

Failing in their attempt to inflict a severe
penalty by law, the citizens of Madison, or
at least many of them, determined upon
taking the affair in their own hands, and
accordingly organized a company with the
intention of " Lynching " him. Here again
were they out-generalled ; for, perfectly ap-
prised, through his spies, of their indentions,
he summoned his adherents around him and
prepared for a desperate resistance. Nor
was this all. The enemies' camp counted
among their number several of his spies,
who not only notified him of their every
movement, but spread discord among the
company, and finally leaving it in the pre-
tended fear of the consequences, induced the
others to abandon the design.

Murrel had conquered ; and now, feeling
himself almost invulnerable, determined
upon revenge, not dreaming that he was
now to cope with one his equal in coolness
and courage, and his superior in cunning.
Among the most obnoxious of Murrel's
neighbors was a Methodist minister of the
name of Henning. He had been active in
organizing the corps of Regulators, and had
used all his influence to persuade the planters
of Murrel's guilt and bad character, and
upon him the desperado determined to be
fully revenged. Henning had two fine and
valuable negroes, and Murrel, ^\nthout much
difficulty, persuaded them to run away. He
sent with them one of his " Strikers,'" whom
he furnished with fast horses, to enable
him, if hard pressed, to escape, but remained
himself at home, in order to evade suspi-

cion.

In this respect his precautions were use-
less ; for as soon as Henning missed his
slaves, he sent a quick-witted spy to watch
every step of the supposed thief, and to
obtain fi-om his wife, if possible, some in-
formation of his intended movements. In
the latter attempt the spy was successful,
and discovered that Murrel intended to leave
for the town of Randolph in a fortnight.
Henning consulted with his friends as to
what course it would be most advisable for
him to pursue ; but unfortunately, in this sad
world which we inhabit, no man can be sure
of a friend, as the worthy preacher soon
after found out to his cost.

The very man in whom he placed the
most confidence, and whom he first con-
sulted upon the subject, was a member of
the clan, and one of the Grand Council, and

1850.

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.

497

of course the information was conveyed to
Murrel with all possible speed.

The latter now had the double advantao:e
of knowing his adversary's game, while his
adversary supposed himself to be equally
wise. With his characteristic boldness, Mur-
rel addi'essed the following letter to Richard
Henning, a son of the old preacher : —

Denmark, January 23, 1835.

Sm, — I have b"en told that you accuse me of be-
ing concerned in stealing your own and your father's
negroes ; and I have been told also, that you have
thought proper to vapor about what you would
do with me if you could be sure of having me on
equal terms. I say 1 have been told these things ;
and I wish to reply, if they be true, that I can
whip you from the point of a dagger to the anchor
of a ship. But, sir, if I have been misinformed by
malicious persons, who wish to do you a discredit,
I trust you will receive this letter as a message of
friendship. I am about leaving for Randolph, and
shall be pleased to have your company on any
terms you may choose, or to satisfy you, if it is
necessary, that my intentions and business are
honest.

Y^ours, according to the truth or falsity of the
rumors, John A. Murrel.

Richard Henning.

At this critical time, Virgil A. Stewart, a
friend of Henning, appeared upon the field,
and the whole affair was laid before him.

No answer had been returned to MurreFs
letter, and he supposed that his object — to
prevent pursuit — had been attained.

Very different, however, were the inten-
tions of the Hennings and their friend. The
latter advised them to closely and carefully
slow-track Murrel, until they found what his
real destination was, and what the business
might be that led him there ; and, more-
over, volunteered to accompany Richard
Henning himself. His offer was accepted ; and
on the eve of the day when Murrel had in-
formed them of his design to leave, Stewart
started with the intention of riding a few
miles upon the road to the house of a friend,
where his companion was to join him at an
early hour next morning.

Morning came, but no Henning ; and
Stewart, after waiting impatiently three or
four hours, determined to proceed alone, and
almost unarmed. Whether he would have
done this had he known, as well as he after-
wards did, the character of the man whom
he was to encounter, is a matter of doubt ;
although it is certain that the pages of history
can show no gi'eater instance of the display of
presence of mind, energy, determination, and
courage, both moral and physical, than he

evinced in the successful pursuance of his
design.

Stewart had reached the first toll-gate
upon his road, and was in the act of inquir-
ing of the keeper if Murrel had passed dur-
ing the morning or last night, when the
person himself rode up. Stewart continued
his conversation with the keeper until Mur-
rel had ridden out of sight, and then being
satisfied with regard to his identity, mounted
his horse in pursuit. It had been his inten-
tion to have followed his man closely, and
yet to have kept out of his sight, but
accident prevented this. The day was cold,
and Stewart's horse, unperceived by his mas-
ter, quickening his pace, brought him within
sight of MuiTel. The latter was looking
round at him when Stewart first perceived
their propinquity ; and now, without checking
his pace, he rode up and entered into con-
versation.

Murrel was very inquisitive. Stewart in-
formed him that he was from the ChoctaAV
Purchase, travelling in quest of a valuable
horse which he thought must have strayed
in that direction.

To the inquiry, " if he knew a man of the
name of Murrel," Stewart returned so prompt
a negative, and endured the scrutiny of his
inquisitor's eye so unflinchingly, that Mur-
rel, who trusted implicitly in his judgment
of men by their looks, banished entirely
his first idea, that Stewart was a sleuth-
hound the Hennings had put upon his trail.

In some respects Murrel's judgment of
his antagonist was correct. He saw courage,
energy, and determination in his face at a
glance, resolved to sound him, and if possible
to enlist so valuable a recruit to serve under
his own black flag.

Stewart intentionally spoke in such a man-
ner as to give his new acquaintance an idea
that his morals were of the loosest, and in
fact said so much that Murrel, thinking he
was wasting his labor after all upon one who
was already a member, endeavored to draw
from him the secret sign of the confederacy.

Faihng in this, he set to work in earnest,
and commenced a recital of the exploits of
" this aforesaid Murrel " — speaking of him
always as of a third party. Murrel's weak
point was vanity, and Stewart's pretended
admiration of the villainous performances,
related with so much gout^ so won upon
him, that, completely deceived as to the
latter's character, during the first day's ride

'498

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.

Nov.

he expressed and really conceived a kind of
friendship for him, and exacted a promise
that he would accompany him as far as
Randolph, in the hope of obtaining some
information of the missing horse. A despe-
rate game truly did Stewart play ; but from
the beginning of their acquaintance he had
and kept the advantage.

The journey to Randolph occupied five
days, during which time Murrel, satisfied
that his first estimate of Stewart's character
was correct, opened all his plans to him, and
proposed to raise him immediately to a post
of honor if he would join the gang. Stew-
art consented.

At this time, the least suspicion upon
Murrel's part of his true character and in-
tentions, would have cost our modern Vidocq
his life ; and indeed he ran a very narrow
risk of discovery. He had assumed the name
of Hues, and unfortunately the route which
he and his companion were pursuing led
them to the village of Wesley, where they
were to pass the night, and where Stewart
v/as known to several residents. He fortu-
nately succeeded in escaping momentarily
from Murrel's vigilant eye, under pretence
that the services of a blacksmith were required
for his horse ; and during his temporary
absence met a gentleman of his acquaint-
ance to whom he confided his critical situa-
tion, and requested him to mount, as it were,
guard over the tavern, and if any person
who knew him should approach, to prevent
them calling him by any other than his
nomde guerre. His friend obeyed, and learn-
ing Stewart's determination to dare every-
thing, and to follow Murrel until he was
satisfied of his true designs, he provided him
with arms of defense, of which Stewart was
in great need.

Three times after this did Stewart com-
municate to persons upon the road something
of the character of his companion, and of the
desperate enterprise which he was pursuing.

The travellers at length reached the
Mississippi, opposite the mouth of Old River,
and crossed in a miserable canoe, during a
violent tempest — having left their horses
upon the eastern side. After landing upon the
Arkansas shore, they proceeded some distance
through a dense canebrake, crossed three
streams of water, and at length stood upon
the shores of a lake, in the centre of which
a Fmall island was seen.

This was the rendezvous of the Grand

Council, — a fitting place, truly, for a congress
of murderers ; — a spot shunned by man ;
unknown save by the wild beasts who chose
it for their home. The rattle-snake and moc-
casin, less venomous than the human tigers
who herded there, crawled under the primeval
and miasma-fed drapery that shrouded the
deadly cypress, the only tree that claimed
the soil for its own.

Upon the island, Stewart found a number
of the villains, and also the missing negroes
of Mr. Henning. The Grand Council, or
rather their representatives, had met to con-
coct plans for various nefarious enterprises,
and among them the wholesale robbery of
the negroes of Mr. Henderson, an absent
planter, by his overseer. Stewart, now reg-
ularly inducted into their plans, secrets,
and signs, being entirely satisfied with re-
gard to the plans of Murrel, became nat-
urally desirous to escape ; and under the
pretense of having left, by mistake, some
valuable papers at the house of a Mr. Erwin,
obtained leave of the chief to return there
upon the condition that he would await his
arrival before departing for home.

The Mr. Erwin to whose house Stewart
returned, was one to whom he had confided
something of his hazardous enterprise and
of Murrel's character. Besides Erwin, he
had also informed two other persons upon
the road, and all of them entered fully nito
his plan. One, a Mr. Haynes, promised, in
case of any emergency, or of his not return-
ing at the appointed time, to raise a com-
pany of fifty armed men at half an hour's
notice, and take the field to capture ^lurrel,
and such of his gang as he might find.

With Erwin, Murrel had contracted to
deliver three negToes at a certain price, and
Stewart had, before crossing the river,
arranged with his host to lead the pirate on
to the completion of the contract, and have
him arrested after the slaves had been re-
ceived and paid for.

We have thus far related the train of
events which led to Murrel's capture, tersely
and drily, in fact, epitomizing the testimony
in the case ; but before arriving at the crisis,
let us for a moment consider the peculiarly
dangerous and extraordinary position in
which Stewart was placed.

He had embarked upon the enterprise
with the sole intention of recovering the ne-
groes of his friend, and bringing the thief to
justice ; but in pui-suit of his design, had

1850.

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.'

499

raised the curtain of an arcanum of crime
as frightful as it was unexpected.

At first he probably supposed Murrel to
be vaporing with regard to his power, to
the number of his clan, and the horrid ex-
tent of his plans ; but when, as he proceeded
with the details of his plot, giving name
after name of persons well known in the
community, and many of them in offices of
power and trust, and when he exhibited to
him proof that he had already commenced
negotiations with some of the prominent
Abolitionists in the North, ^ to obtain their
countenance and assistance, he became con-
vinced of the frightful reahty of Murrel's
statements.*

* Murrel stated that, with great difficulty, he
had succeeded in opening a correspondence with
A CELEBRATED ENGLISH LECTURER
WHO WAS AT THAT TIME ADVOCATING
THE CAUSE OF ABOLITION IN THE
EASTERN STATES. We give a copy of a letter
said to have been received from him upon the
subject. The correspondence was conducted
through a special agent, being of a too imminently
dangerous character to be trusted to the mail : —

Boston, March 18th, 1834.
My Dear Sir,— Your favcr of the 4th has
come to hand, and its contents have been carefully
observed. I thmk you can count upon the aid
you demand with tolerable certainty by the time
you name. I approve of your arrangements, and
can perceive abundant justification for your views.
Could the blacks effect a general concert of action
against their tyrants, and let loose the arm of
destruction among them and their property, so
that the judgment of God might be visibly seen
and felt, it would reach the flinty heart of the
tyrant. We can do much at the East, by working
on the sympathy of the people; but when we
remonstrate with a Southern tyrant, he counts the
cost of his annual income, and haughtily hurls it
in our teeth, and tells us that the Old and New
Testaments both teach that slavery is right. We
must teach the tyrant in another way. His in-
terests must be affected before he will repent.
We can prepare the feelings of most of the
Northern and Eastern people for the final consum-
mation of the great work, by lecturing. Interest
is the great cement that binds the few Northerners
who are friendly to Southern tyrants ; and if their
cities, with all the merchandise in the country,
were destroyed, and their banks plundered of all
the specie, thousands of Eastern capitalists would
suffer great loss, and would henceforth consider a
slave countiy an unsafe place to make investments,
and thousands would leave tlie country. This
state of affairs would naturally diminish the value
of slave property, and disgust even tlie tyrant with
the policy of slavery, while the country would be
thus in a state of anarchy and poverty. Their
banking institutions and credit sunk into disrepute

The imminent peril which Stewart incurred
by this discovery cannot, we think, be prop-
erly appreciated by those who have spent
their lives in a densely-populated comitry,
one where a man is comparatively free from
the danger of assassination, and where such
a clue as Stewart now possessed Avould be
followed up by an active band of drilled
pohce, hied on by efficient magistrates, and
a powerful and independent press.

Imagine the situation of our hero, com-
pelled, if he would sustain the part of a trut^-
hearted, honest man, to enter the field of
battle alone, and single-handed, against a
host of known, and perhaps thousands of
secret enemies, to contend against them at
a sacrifice of money, time, probably reputa-
tion, and life itself, and all to preserve the
lives and fortunes of those who, he must
have known, would never appreciate the
sacrifice, and who would, and did, believe
that his knowledge was only derived from
his guilty connection with . the pirates, and
his betrayal of their plot but stimulated by
the hope of great reward.

Many men of passing honesty, situated as
he was, would, with the fear of death before
their eyes, have enrolled themselves in the de-
vilish ser\ice. Most men would have consult-
ed their safety in flight, and kept the frightful

with the commercial world, it would be an easy
matter to effect the total abolition of slavery.

Desperate causes require desperate remedies.

And suppose the blacks sliould refuse to serve
the tyrants any longer, what right would the Geo-
eral Government have to interfere with the
internal disputes of a State respecting her State
laws ? The blacks would not be rebelling against
the General Government, neither would they be
invaders — but Americans, and citizens of a State
refusing obedience to a State law and power
that are, before God, utterly null and void, being
an audacious usurpation of His Divine prerogative,
a daring infringement on the law of nature, and a
presumptuous transgression of the holy command
ments, which should be abrogated by the Chris-
tian world. Would not the General Government
have more right to interfere in behalf of the in-
jured and oppressed than that of the tyrants and
oppressors ? The United States' troops would
be finely employed in the Southern plantations,
forcing obedience to the unjust laws of a few
tyrants and man-stealers.

The Southerners are great men for State ri(/hts,
and in a case hke the above, we would give them
an opportunity to exercise their sovereign func-
tions. Make slavery unpopular among the people
of the United States, and Southern tyrants will
find a poor comforter in the-General Government.

* * * *

600

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.

Nov/

secret to themselves. Not one in a million
would have acted with the energy, fearless-
ness of life, and stern determination of
purpose, of Virgil Stewart.

To resume the thread of our narrative.
Upon arriving at Erwin's, Stewart informed
him, as far as he dared, of his momentous
discoveries, and warned him to observe
great caution in the conducting of his plot
for Murrel's capture.

On the next day Murrel arrived, and on
the succeeding^, left with Stewart for home.
They pursued the same road over which
they had already travelled, and parted near
the \illage of Wesley; Murrel hastening
home, and Stewart turning off upon a by-
road, until the former should have had suf-
ficient time to have passed through the
village, and then hastened to enter it, and
to \isit the person who had assisted him
when he had before passed through on his
eventful journey. On the next night he
arrived at Henning's house, and there he
related some part of his extraordinary ad-
ventures.

Before Stewart, fatigued and worn both
in body and mind as he was, had arisen,
Henning had summoned a number of his
neiofhbors to consult with them. But one
0})inion prevailed ; that it was necessary to
collect a sufficient force and arrest Murrel.
Stewart was somewhat indignant at Hen-
ning's proceedings, and remonstrated against
what he deemed a too precipitate course ;
but in vain. Murrel was arrested by an
officer ^vith a numerous posse of armed men,
on the same night. Even whi e upon the
route to the jail, some of his follower must
have succeeded in mixing with the guard,
for the bands which secured him were cut ;
a pistol was fired from a piece of woods at
Stewart, and the ball cut his bridle-rein in
two. As soon as Murrel was incarcerated,
Stewart and young Henning set out to
obtain testimony, and the villain himself
prepared, if possible, to defeat them. News
of his capture had been sent through the
entire clan, and they were all up and on the
move, as spiteful, determined, and ready for
mischief, as the distm'bed denizens of a
hornet's nest.

It is a miracle that Stewart escaped from
assassination. He was surrounded by un-
known dangers ; men whom he deemed his
friends — even two pei'sons in whose hands he
had intrusted his property, and with one of

whom he hved — proved afterwards to have
been of the number of the Land Pirates.

His every step was dogged; his house
was watched at night ; an attempt was made
to enter his room, and murder him in bed,
which was fi'ustrated by his watchfulness ;
for, discovering that there were persons
prowhng about his house, he remained at
the window, and shot a man as he was about
entering it. At last, an attempt was made
to poison him at the house where he boarded,
and from which he was saved by his ha\dng
most providentially discovered the true char-
acter and desio'ns of the host and hostess.

This discovery was in keeping with his
other wonderful adventures. He met one
of the gang who did not know him, and
suspecting who the man might be, tried
him with the robber-sign, and found his
suspicions verified. From him, Stewart
learned the intended rescue of Murrel ; his
plan to have him (Stewart) arrested for
counterfeiting, and the different preparations
for defense if brought to trial.*

* Tlie following papers were found upon Mur-
rel's person previous to his trial ; whether they
were the rough drafts of his scheme against
Stewart, or whether he had prepared them, but
had no opportunity to transmit them to the right
parties, we know not : —

CERTIFICATE.

This day personally appeared before us, (fee,
Jehu Barney, James Tucker, Tliomas Dai'k, Yf il-
ham Loyd, <fec., who being sworn in due form of
law, do depose and say that they were present,
and saw Stewart, of Yellow Busha, on the evening
of the first day of February last, in company with
John Murrel, at the house of Jehu Barney, over
the Mississippi river ; and that he, the said Stewart,
informed us that he was in pursuit of John Mur-
rel, for stealing two negro men from preacher
Henning, and liis son Richard, in Madison county,
near Denmark ; and that he had told Murrel his
name was Hues, and he wished us to call him Hues
in Mun'el's hearing. We also recollect to have
heard him, the said Stewart, say distinctly that he
was to get five hundred dollars for finding said
negroes arid causing said Murrel to he convicted
for stealing them. Said Stewart did not say who
was to give him this reward, but he stated that he
held the obhgation of several rich men for that
amount. ( Signed) .

The above is a copy given to me by one who
heard him make the admission therein contained
in your presence. You will therefore please send
me the names of all that will testify to these facts
in writing, and also send me the names of all and
every man that will certify these witnesses to be
men of truth. J. Murrel.

P. S. But above all things, arrest him (the said

1850.

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law.

501

Murrel escaped, fled, was finally traced
to Florence, Ala., recaptured and taken
back to Madison.

He did not then by any means despair,
and having engaged one of the most skil-
ful lawyers in the State, and himself pre-
pared a vast amount of suborned testimony,
he hoped to escape from justice and to fix
upon his enemy the brand of infamy. Here
again his calculations were overthrown in a
manner as startling to him and his friends
as it was unexpected. Stewart had taken
dovm the names of every one of the clan
whom Murrel had named to him upon
the journey. This he did while riding
by his side, wiiting them upon scraps of
paper, or if impossible then, at the next
time that he had an opportunity. When
upon the stajid he narrated, in a clear and
concise manner, the whole of his adventures,
and drew from his pocket the very scraps of
paper upon which were written the names
of the conspirators.

witness) for 'passing the six twenty dollar hills.
You will have to go out in Yellow Busha, Yellow
Busha county^ near the centre, for him. Un-
doubtedly this matter will be worth your attention,
for if it be one, or two, or three hundred dollars,
the gentleman to whom he passed (100) it, can
present it before a magistrate and take a judg-
ment for the amount, and his provision store, <fec.,
is worth that much money. I shall conclude with
a claim on you for your strictest attention; my
distressed wife will probably call on you, and if
she does, you may answer all her requests without
reserve. Yours, ifec, J. Muerel.

We subjoin the certificate of the Clerk of the
Court, concerning these papers : —

State of Tennessee, Madison County.

I, Henry W. McCorry, Clerk of the Circuit
Court of Madison county aforesaid, certify that
the foregoing is a true and perfect copy, in word
and letter, of the instrument of writing filed in my
office, and read in evidence against John A. Mur-
rel, upon his trial for negro-stealing, at the July
term of our said Court, 1834.

In testimony of which I have hereunto sub-
scribed my name and affixed my private seal,
(there being no public seal of office,) at my office
io Jackson, the 29th day of September, A. D. 1835.
[Sealed] H. W". McCoEEy.

There was a great confusion in Murrel's
camp. His witnesses walked, one by one,
quietly out of the Court-house, until all the
important ones were among the missing;
they were the very men whose names had
just been read.

Murrel's last hope fell to the ground ; he
was convicted of negro-stealing, and sen-
tenced to ten years' imprisonment in the
State Penitentiary.

Great was the consternation of the clan
at the incarceration of their leader, and at
the frustration of their bloody plot.

Many of the Grand Council, however,
did not abandon their design, trusting that
a story apparently so incredible as Stewart
had related would not be generally beheved
by the people of the Southwest, and also
relying on the number and great dissemi-
nation of the clan, whereby a thousand
tongues would be engaged in blackening
Stewart's character, and ridiculing his tale.
The latter, however, determined to persevere
in despite of difficulty, danger, and defama-
tion, and in February, 1835, pubhshed a
small pamphlet which contained an account
of his adventures, and an exposure of the plot.

The time for the general rising of the
negroes had been originally the 25 th of
December, 1835, which was selected as
the Christmas holiday, always a saturnalia
for the Southern negroes, and they might
assemble without suspicion. The attention
of the people, however, was completely
awakened, the belief in Stewart's story
general, and it was evident to even the
most sanguine of the conspirators that this
time must be abandoned.

Ruel Blake, who was the acknowledged
chief of the Mississippi squad, after consult-
ing with his brother villains, issued his
mandate that the time for action must be
accelerated, and fixed upon the 4th of July.
There is no doubt but that IMurrel himself
was advised of this change of plan, and that
he acquiesced in it.

P. P.

{To he continued.)

602

Twenty more Sonnets ;

Nov.

TWENTY MORE SONNETS ; WITH A PREFACE AND NOTES,

THE PREFACE.

The expectation believed to be generally
entertained by a large class of readers of the
Review, in consequence of a half promise at
the conclusion of an article entitled " Twenty
Sonnets, with a Preface and Notes," publish-
ed in the first number of the second volume,
(new series,) — Avhich half promise, or hint,
stated that " should the writer be found to
have contributed to the rational enjoyment
of his readers, it was not impossible but that
he might be encouraged to further efforts
thereafter," — has led to the collection and
digestion of a similar series of Poems, of an
equal number, and, it is hoped, not inferior
in point of quality. This series it is now the
writer's purpose to introduce to the attention
of the candid reader, through a few brief
proleptical observations.

Poetry has, in all ages of the world, been
held in high esteem among the most civihzed
and intelhgent races of mankind. In rude
and barbarous nations it forms the vehicle
in which the events of history, extraordinary
occurrences in the material universe, and the
achievements of heroes on the field of battle,
are transmitted down the highway of time.
As nations progress in refinement and
emerge from the darkness of the earlier peri-
ods. Poetry begins to be cultivated, along
with the other Fine Arts, and the Belles
Lettres^ for its capability of improving the
mind, by invigorating the intellectual powers
and enlarging the scope of the perceptive
faculties. Thus \ve find, that in every phase
of the progressive development of the human
species, this art, however much it may be
derided by some, and looked upon as a ne-
cessary evil by others, is always cultivated
with more or less ability and success by a
numerous portion of each generation.

In our own fortunate and happy country,
how numerous have been the aspirants for
success in Poetry ! Young as we still are

in point of time, compared with the nations
of the Old World, our periodical press bears
witness that the ambition for excellence in
this department of Aviiting is no less preva-
lent among the Upspringing than among
the Downtrodden millions. Could a full
bibliotheca be compiled of the names of all
who, since the era of the Declaration of om*
Independence, have essayed poetical excel-
lence, witli the titles of their productions, it
is probable the work would exceed in bulk
a volume of the quarto edition of Webster's
Dictionary of the English Language.

And particularly, as the wi'iter took occa-
sion to remark in the preface to the prece-
ding article, to which allusion has already
been made, has this tendency to poetical
composition manifested itself in the direction
of the Sonnet. The question here naturally
presents itself to the mind, Why should this
particular form, inasmuch as it is esteemed
one of the most difficult and ungrateful in
our tongue, have been so constantly, we
might almost say so universally, selected by
our youthful bards ? Why should the bud-
ding inspiration of our young geniuses be
cramped into a shape to which only a few
of our greatest mastere of ideas, emotions,
and words have been able to conform ?
Admitting the fact to be as stated, which
none can controvert, let us endeavor briefly
to offer a solution of these interroa:atories.

Two causes present themselves at once to
the writer's apprehension, either of which
separately, or both conjointly, must be
deemed to have been instrumental in pro-
ducing the admitted result.

1st. The constant disposition manifested
by our young writers, who contemplate being
poets, to produce sonnets, may have arisen
in a majority of cases from that natural and
pardonable vanity of youth which teaches it
to ape the dignity of manhood. Thus the

1850.

With a Preface and J^otes.

503

day on which the boy's lower extremities are
first invested with separate clothing, or even
anterior to that, the time when, with those
extremities inserted into the paternal galigas-
kins, the " parvus lulus," as Maro hath it,

" Sequiturque patrem non passibus aequis,"

is remembered as one of the happiest peri-
ods of existence. Why may not the great
proportion of sonnets be mainly or to a great
extent attributable to a corresponding ambi-
tion in our infant poets to assume the habil-
iments, and walk in the shoes, of the fathers
of the art ?

2dly. The constant predilection for son-
nets in preference to easier forms of verse,
manifested by our youthful poets, may have
arisen, wholly or in a measure, from there
being a constant demand with the public for
that particular kind of composition, creating
of necessity a corresponding constant supply.
This was the view taken of the matter by the
writer, in the preface referred to above, and
is still, after mature consideration, the one
which he is most inclined to favor. For
were it not that there existed such a demand,
the market would have long ago been over-
stocked with pieces of this description ; wri-
ters, too, however childishly enthusiastic in
their desire to imitate the strength of mature
cultivation, would have ceased to publish
what was received with neglect. Even those
amateurs who do not subsist by literary
labor, and only write from an irrepressible
desire of approbation, or as an agreeable
amusement (for, strange as it may appear,
there are such) — even those, it must be
opined, would have refrained from writing
what had not power to attract readers. Some,
it is true, are so obstinately blind that they
will go on writing and printing, looking for
their reward to a secret self-approbation, and
thus passing life in a pleasing dream ; pre-
ferring the flattering shadow to the candid
reality. But the proportion of such cannot
be deemed sufficient to account for the im-
mense annual production in the sonnet line,
though it may to a degree explain the aston-
ishing diversity apparent in the quality of
the manufactured article.

No ! The more the subject is subjected to
careful consideration, the more conclusively
does the conviction force itself upon the
mind that there has existed, and still does
exist, an active demand for " short poems of
fourteen lines, of which," to follow Dr. John-

VOL. VI. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

son's remarkably satisfactory definition, " the
rhymes are adjusted hy a particular rule.''''
The dictionary adds for our information : —
" It has not been used by any man of emi-
nence since Milton," — an assertion which,
however true it may have been two thirds of
a century ago, is one which few at the pres-
ent day will not coincide with the present
writer in considering much too broad to be
applied in our time without qualification.
This remark is made, however, without the
intention of suggesting any personal refer-
ence, either to the author of these ensuing
sonnets, or any of his contemporaries.

Indeed, the author of these is where it can
be of but little consequence to him whether
he was an eminent man or not. Much ques-
tion was made on the publication of the for-
mer series, (already three or four times alluded
to,) whether the present writer, whose duty
it then, as now, was to present those produc-
tions to the reader, with an appropriate in-
troductory and explanatory commentary,
were or were not the author of them. This
may have been a compliment to his powers
of assimilation and identification, which
enabled him to assume the mental character-
istics exhibited in wiitings of which he was
required to treat — or may have arisen from
certain ambiguities of expression into which
he, through his anxiety for condensation^ and
in the heat of composition, may have been
unwarily betrayed. However the mistake
may have arisen, it should be corrected, in
justice to an amiable man, as well as in \dn-
dication of the writer's integrity.

The author of these sonnets, the reader
wiU be pained to learn, is not living. It was
the writer's intention to have employed some
distinguished person to write his life, in the
style of biography in which the lives of
poets are usually written in costly editions
of their works. But as most of those com-
petent to such a task are engaged in illus-
trating bibhcal portraitures, he has been
obhged to perform it himself, according to
the best of his poor ability.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR OF THE

SONNETS.

Biography is a species of composition of
which the utihty cannot be questioned. Had
the writer the works at hand to refer to, he
believes he could show that it has been ably
discussed and defended by many of the bes;t
wiiters. Mr. Addison, if his memory servej
33

504

Twenty more Sonnets ;

Nov.

has demonstrated the value of biography
very clearly.

The lives of literary men and artists usu-
ally present less material for biography than
those of persons mingling actively in the
world, the chief incidents of them being only
like those which occurred in the family of
the Vicar of Wakefield — " migrations from
the blue bed to the brown."

As a general rule, also, with regard to
poets especially, whose hearts are exposed,
and who have much ado to preserve privacy
enough around themselves to retain their
integrity, it is well to let the departed have
the benefit of all the respectability they have
been able to maintain in life. What good
did it ever do the world to know that Cole-
ridge took opium, or that Lamb smoked ?
Opium-eating is a common vice, and for
smoking — children smoke in our midst.

As regards the subject of this memoir,
therefore, the writer knows much more than
it would be proper to communicate. He
was of a reserved dispos ition, and there
appears no sufficient reason why the world
should know any more of him now that he
is out of the way than he chose to let it
while he was here.

As respects the dates and incidents of his
life, the writer has not deemed them of suf-
ficient importance to inquire into, and en-
cumber these pages withal. The answer of
Viola to the Duke, in the "Twelfth Night,"
when he questions her concerning her ima-
ginary sister, gives all that is necessary to
be said of him in a single word :

Duke. And -what's her history ?
Viola. A blank, my lord.

He was born in in the year ,

lived in and died in , A. D. ,

in the -th year of his age. All that

remains or is known of him are several
pieces in verse, and a number of sonnets,
of which forty have now been collected and
presented to the public.

It was intended to have concluded this
account of him with an estimate of his char-
acter, and a parallel between him and Pope ;
but, on reflection, the writer has concluded
to place all that it seems necessary to have
said touching his peculiarities in the critical
and miscellaneous remarks to be interspersed
among the sonnets.

In the above piece of Model Biography,
ike writer has endeavored to conform to

what would appear the rules for writing the
lives of poets, deduced from a collation, or
rather a colature, of the mass of such writings
in our lano:uao:e. As an illustration of his
idea he will take two biographies that hap-
pen to lie within reach of his arm. " The
Life of Shakspeare, " by Mr. Rowe, beginneth :

" It seems to be a kind of respect due to
the memory of excellent men, especially of
those whom their wit and learning have made
famous, to deliver some account of themselves
as well as their works, to posterity. For this
reason, how fond do we see some people of
discovering any little personal story of the
great men of antiquity ! their families, the
common accidents of their lives, and even
their shape, make, and features, have been the
subject of critical inquiries. How trifling so-
ever this curiosity may seem to be, it is cer-
tainly very natural^'' &c., &c.

And yet Mr. Rowe's life is a very good
one, and written, as appears to the present
writer, in a delightful spirit of candor and
calmness, notwithstanding the non sequitur
with which the second sentence commences,
and the curious thinking in circles which
characterizes the whole of the opening para-
graph.

To an edition of " Cowper," the same
in a notice of which the critical judgment
of this Review was pronounced very decid-
edly, adverse to Harperian orthographical
alterations, a biography of that eminent poet
is prefixed, commencing thus :

" Among the alterations and improvements
{for they are not always convertible terms')
which the last century has introduced into our
literature, one of the most decided alterations,
and one of the greatest improvements also,
has been made in the department of biog-
raphy."

The profound meditativeness apparent in
this sentence, the nice distinction hit upon
in the parenthesis, and the vigor of the
whole expression, would suggest the inference
that the Rev. Thomas Dale, its author, had
found a model in a style which the present
wiiter had deemed peculiar to himself. But
those who attain great excellence in any art
must expect to behold themselves followed
by troops of imitators. The writer is con-
tent that others should adopt his mode of
winning the meed of approbation, provided
they permit him to remain in the quiet
enjoyment of his laurels. Of all the virtues

1850.

With a Preface and Notes.

505

a literary man should possess, none is more
important than that frame of mind which
renders him insensible to petty annoyances.
These preliminary observations cannot be
more appropriately concluded than by the
remark that, should they be longer protract-

ed, the intelligent reader might justly com-
plain that he was debarred from the pleasure
they had already led him to anticipate from
the sonnets. They are therefore terminated
with the present sentence.

THESONNETS.

" The object and indeed ambition of the present compiler has been to offer to the public a Body of English Poetet,
such as ought at once to satisfy individual curiosity and justify our national pride." IIazlitt.

" Walter was smooth, but Dryden taught to jme

The varying verse, the full resounding line." Pope.

" 'Tis not a pyramid of marble stone,
Though high as our ambit-i-on ;
'Tis not a tomb cut out in brass, which can
Give life to the ashes of a man,
But verses only :" Cowley.

" T have always been of opinion that virtue sinks deepest into the heart of man when it comes well recommended by
the powerful charms of poetry." Sir Richard Steele.

" An Open Place Thunder and Lightning. Enter three AVitches." Shakspeare.

As when from unknown depths in empty space,
Regions above the starry floor of heaven,
Beyond the Bear, the Bull, the Sisters seven,

Biela's comet, in his rapid race,

Touches at last the far crystalline sphere
Wherein like gem of chrysolite is set
Saturn or Ilerschel ; hardly seen as yet

Through Tuscan tube, and though the air be clear,

Maury or Pierce all night supinely lying.

No tail espy, nor aught but thin bright spot.
And none else care if aught they spy or not —

So when the Sonneteer, from heaven down flying ,

Dragging the Muses nine, the sky has cleft,

The learned may see he has " a few more left."

The design of this sonnet was apparently
to introduce to the reader the series of which
it forms the commencement. The poet's
comparison of himself to a comet, may seem
at first view less appropriate than it would
have been had he desired to present himself
as the author of a tale ; but when the re-
semblance occasioned by the great eccen-
tricity of the orbits of comets is considered,
its appositeness will be at once perceived.
As comets make their appearance in the
visible heavens only at long intervals, so, the
poet would say, it is with himself, who now
after two years' absence again appears in the
celestial region of song.

The '"crystaUine sphere" mentioned is
probably the same alluded to in the follow-
ing passage from Milton's " Paradise Lost :" —

*' They pass the planets seven, and pass the fix'd,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talk'd," &c.

The epithet " supinely " is used in con-
nection with the names of two of our most
distinguished observers, in consequence of
the position assumed by astronomers iji

making observations requiring careful and
protracted employment of the visual organs.
Respecting the phrase " a few more left,"
it is deemed sufficient to remark that it was
rendered popular in our principal cities, a
few years since, by an itinerant pedlar and
improviser of doggrel rhyme, who acquired
a brief notoriety as the " Razor-Strop Man."

II.

"The Poet's" soul is like the mighty ocean
Encompassing the spherical huge world,
Where windy Will and storm Endeavor hurled

Across its face, excite a dread commotion ;

Where sea-gull Thought and petrel Fancy fly.
And Headache's gloomy clouds obscure Hope's sun^
Especially when fair-day Dinner's done.

And monstrous whales of Vanity spout high,

And porpus Prudence rolls her glossy side.
And schools of alewive Education swim ;

And where, when Pay's resistless surges ride,
Then Labor, dreadful Unrest, fierce and grim.

Blowing odd words from Memory's nooks and crooks.

Throws tons of tea-weed on the Beach of Books !

There is a peculiar boldness of personifi-
cation manifested in the above, which is so
much at variance with our Bard's general
unornamented melody, that the conviction
forces itself upon the mind, either that this
was written by some other hand, or else that
it was an efibrt on the part of its author to
imitate the phraseology of another School.
As regards the first supposition, the present
writer can aver that there is no reason,
arising from chirographical dissimilarity or
any like circumstance, for believing it to have
had a different authorship from the rest;
moreover, he has made diligent search, re-
gardless of the labor required, through the
writings of that class of poets, chiefly trans-
cendental, of one of the pecuharities of whieli

S06

Twenty more Sonnets ;

Nov.

it is either an imitation or an example,
without having met with it, (and surely no
one capable of producing a work of such
fruitful fancy would he indifferent respecting
its paternity ;) he is therefore constrained to
the opinion that it is a genuine imitation —
whether intended as burlesque or serious, it
is difficult to decide, owing to the extrava-
gancies of the manner of wiiting upon which
it is modelled. The placing the first two
words, "The Poet," in quotation marks,
would however seem to indicate a direct
intention to ridicule some of our youthful
aspirants for poetic fame, who delight to don,
in imagination, the robes and garlands of
that ideal Personage, and according to their
conception of the character, to appear before
the public in verses which constitute a sort
of autobiographical record of the state of
their digestive organs.

III.

I hate your silly, quaint, affected rhymes,
Your transcendental, high fantastic stuff,
With antique words bedight. I've read enough,

Too much, in sooth, of these poetic mimes,

Who only care to make their pieces look

As if they'd cut them out of some old book ;

Who shine in borrowed plumage, and like clowns,
Go drest in party-colored verbs and nouns ;

Who style themselves each one " The Poet" — pah I
How more than full is this our world of gammon —
How much asparagus, how little salmon !

*' The Poet" — yes, 0 yes, why not ? ha ! ha!

Why, I (though I make no pretence that way)

Am more a poet than such apes as they.

In this, if the writer do not misapprehend
the poet, an intention may also be traced
similar to that which was observed to char-
acterize the preceding ; and it seems here
to be more undisguised, and expressed with
more seriousness of honest indignation.
Yet even in this so evidently satirical pro-
duction, observe how the acrimony and
severity of the censure is tempered by a per-
colating spirit of good nature ! " Bedight "
he uses, as will be perceived, as if to commit
the very fault he so warmly condemns, and
thus deprive his diatribe of its sting ! And
how beautifully does an innate modesty
peep through and qualify the conscious
pride of superiority in the parenthesis in the
penultimate line — " though I make no pre-
tence that way'''' — Can anything be finer
than this ?

The moral of this sonnet reminds us for-
cibly of some expressions put into the mouth
of one of the principal personages in Shak-
speare's play of " Love's Labor Lost." There is
certainl^^ a remarkable coincidence of senti-
ment : —

" Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical ; these summer-flies

Have blown me full of maggot ostentation :
I do forswear them."

IV.

Still, snowy winter reigns o'er aU the land,

The hght Avinds crackle through the leafless trees,
The air grows frosty clear, the warm brooks freeze,
On the bleak beaches drifts the dry white sand,
And awful dark the solemn sea-waves roar.
Now inland far, from many a farm house gray,
When silent evening hides the light of day.
The cheerful firelight gleams o'er pastures hoar.
Showing, perchance, some low-ceiled kitchen, where
The ancient chimney sings with merry sound,
While merrier faces its broad hearth surround —
There stands the old October pitcher, there
Great greenings roast and juicy pearmains red,
And monstrous yellow squashes hang o'erhead !

Rural scenes and objects have always held
a place among the admissible themes for
pictorial representation and poetical descrip-
tion, partly on account of their natural pic-
turesqueness, and also because the character
of the population in agricultural districts is
marked, in general, by a cheerful contented-
ness of disjDosition, the contemplation of which
is soothing to the mind. It is not an easy
matter, however, to depict, either by the use
of the pencil or pen, a scene which shall
possess perfect truth to nature, and yet in all
cases leave a pleasurable impression upon
the observer. But how unerring are the
perceptions of the eye of Genius, as mani-
fested in the above sonnet ! Had the picture
ended with the view of the farm-house from
a point of view requiring the beholder to
place himself in the winter evening outside,
it would have been too cold ; but the poet's
instinct guided him at once to the kitchen
fire, which by adding a genial warmth to the
scene, diffuses an air of comfort over the
whole, and renders it no less agreeable than
picturesque.

Alas ! it is to be feared that such scenes
are becoming every year more rare ! This
is an effect of the progress of society, foreseen
and foretold by the late author of the
" Pleasures of Hope :" —

" Come, bright improvement ! on the car of time.
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime ;
Thy handmaid arts shall every wild explore,
Trace every wave, and culture every shore.
On Erie's banks, where tigers steal along,
And the dread Indian chaunts a dismal song," &c.

The only tigers now found on the shores
of Erie are not native denizens of her forests,
but isolated specimens, born in cages or im-
ported from distant climes to gratify a laud-
able curiosity — such is their present rarity ;
and the copper hue of the aboriginal Indian
(no longer " dread ") is rapidly fading into
the fairness of the Saxon, GaUic and Celtic

1850.

With a Preface and Kotes.

507

races. What may not be anticipated from
the future, as long as " improvement " con-
tinues to be a pasi?enger in the same car
■with Time ? What, indeed !

Have yoti ne'er seen that poor crazed man -who tralka

Daily, in faded clothes, around our streets ?

He takes no heed of any whom he meets ;
Bnt evermore he waves his hand and talks,
Or seems to talk, for none can understand

What 'tis he says, or why he beckons so,

With outstretched arm, impatient, to and fro,
Now in entreaty, now in high command,

Addressing earnestly the ambient air :—
perchance he is a poet, one whose eye

Sees myriad living spirits hovering there,
In fancy's fields that our world overlie.

Where men are manly, maidens true as faifj
And he with them holds ever converse high.

This sonnet appears to the wiiter to re-
quire no comment. Such indi\dduals as the
one described may be met ^vith in the streets
of every populous city, and the supposition
that they are poets, though admissible, is
probably more fanciful than correct.

VI.

First take your steak— no, first I guess you buy
Your steak--then take it, pound it well ; then cut
It up in pieces small as— =thlmbles. But

(How these things perplex one 1 Really 1

Was never born to be a cook) before
The cutting, have some dough, riz dough, I mean,
And take a bowl well greased inside, but clean,

(Of course.) and line therewith, within and o'er.

Fill in with steak, pork, sav'ry herbs, and things
That make good gravy. Fit a plate on top,
Tie up in cloth and boil without a stop

Two hours. You'll have a beefsteak pudding kings

Might relish; Vic. I'm sure must love to eat.

You know Ruth Pinch ? She told me this receipt.

To those who object to the cultivation of
the muses on the ground that such cultiva-
tion is unproductive of any •pract'ical utility^
our poet has in the above offered an irref-
ragable reply. With a severe directness of
diction, and a perfect mastery of the dif-
ficulties of language inseparable from the
subject, he has shown here that the highest
skill may be applied to the decoration of
subjects admitting in themselves little adorn-
ment; and who shall say what were his
feelings while penning the above lines ? Who
shall describe the rapture which must have
suffused his cheek and throbbed in his
bosom as he finally overcame the perplexity
he confesses to have experienced in the in-
ception of his design ? Standing, as he did,
on the threshold of a new department of art —
a department combining the utmost boldness
with the extremest simplicity ; bending the
noblest powers to the service of a necessity
common to univei'sal humanity ; supplying,
in a word, a vaiiety of food for the body
dh'ectly, through an intellectual repast, the
richest, the most affecting, and the most

nourishing con'ceivable— can we suppose
that no consciousness of the dawn of his
coming immortality shed its rays into the
secret recesses of his spirit ?

VII.

Between the boughs of these rich-blooming trees,
Within yon orchard's grassy winding glades,
I caught but now a gUmpse of white-gowned maids-
See— =yonder where the gentle south-west breeze
Spreads wavy shadows o'er the sward, they're dancing^
Young country lads and girls with golden hair j
Many a heart is free and happy there,
Many an eye with life and love is glancing,
And hark — I can their silver voices hear.
Alas, I have no sympathy with gladness ;
Gay scenes like these but fill my sot^l with sadness,
For Wlien I feel how soon has come the sere
And yeli.ow leaf, how fate my life has curst —
0 God 1 it seems as though my heart would burst !

And who that passes fi"om the previous
sonnet to this, in which we have, almost as
visible as if depicted with the pencil, a dis-
tant view of a pic-nic party in summer, can
question the versatility of the genius which
produced them or hesitate to award it the
mead of tinrestricted approbation ? Truly,
in his choice of subjects, om- poet seems to
have adopted the motto of the ancient
classic poet : —

** Homo sum,') et nihil alienum a me humanum Pluto !"

What gave rise to the depression of
spirit which appears to manifest itself in the
above, or whether it were not wholly imagi-
nary, there would be httle profit in endea-
voring to ascertain. We all have our
troubles, and of those most likely to afflict
individuals of a contemplative and poetie
temperament, pecuniary difficulties are by
no means the least prominent.

vni.

WTiat signifies the life of man, an' tWeje

Na for the lasses 0 ? Not much, yet still
Two casea I'll in this smooth rhyme give, where

The love of lasses operated ill.
My old soft-hearted friend ! you know too late,

That marriage is a mirage, an illusion ;
Y'our lass, alas, turns out no pleasant mate.

You've found the fusion few shun a co?!fusion,<
And you, my croppy-headed boy, whom now

1 see, with cautious glance and footstep quick,
Approaching yonder barrel's bunghole— How

Mistaken you will be. Just smell your stick
Before you draw't across your face. Why, thar,

I told you so. 'Taint lasses ; it is tar !

There is here displayed an ingenuity of
construction which shows how well our poet
knew how to " build the lofty rime." The
most extraordinary forms of expression are
wrought into the very substance of the
whole, with an apparent ease that it is
sufficient to pronounce Httle short of miracu-
lous. And how Martin Luther, had he lived
in our time and among us, supposing his
taste to have been such as it was, would

508

Twenty more Sonnets ;

N'ov.

have admired this perfect mastery of the
common vernacular !

IX.

My fallen brother man, I read thee well ;
Thine ardent, loving soul, thy noble mind,
That would be strong, e'en yet, could'st thon but find

One resting place. Thou needest not me tell,

How, though benumbed with wine, thy heart still aches —
How thou would'st live a quiet sober life,
But hop'st for peace of home, for love of wife

Ho more. I understand — my pity wakes.

Alas, I cannot save thee! Far away,

Down the deep waters, thou art sinking fast,
Each aimless struggle feebler than the last ;

Tliy faC'^, though still upturned towards the day,

But sends to me the rigid look of death,

As, here above, I strive and gasp for breath.

Let US turn from the gloomy thoughts
inspired by the above to one in which the
poet presents himself not in the stern lan-
guage of the moralist, but in the fascinating
phrases of a far more agreeable personage : —

" Upon my word, ma'am, we can't put this lower j

But see'n it's you, we'll call it three and nine.
The goods I'll warrant good. No other store

Has got this kind of article but mine.
Three shillings ! Really now, we shouldn't make

A single cent at that, we shouldn't indeed —
If we sell under cost, why, we must break ;

Say three and thrip — it's just the thing you'll need —
Just heft it. There ! And then what colors ! See —

So apt for graceful forms — they'll never fade —
Ten yards, ma'am? — thanky — bill to Mr. B."

If competition be " the soul of trade,"
Then these smooth salesmen whom it nourishes
Must be the " hmbs and outward flourishes."

The admiration of at least one portion of
our race may be confidently challenged for
the above. Need it be mentioned that we
allude to the fair sex ? The writer appre-
hends it need not. The style of language,
no less than the topic of argument, are so
paljDable an imitation of that to which they
are accustomed, and which is so often capti-
vating to them, in their " daily walk and
conversation," that the above can never lack
admirers among the softer and more im-
pressible moiety of humanity. In very nearly
the words of a distinguished poet : —

" There is a pleasure in cheap damaged goods,
A rapture in the crowded store,"

which they only can appreciate.

XI.

What means this crowd ? I see — a poor old horse
Has fallen. Heavy shafts press on his side •,
To gain his feet again in vain he's tried,

And now he lies stretched out, a seeming corse.

His ftUjws in the team stand still and wait ;
They cannot help him ; they've enough to do
To keep their own smooth hoofs from slipping too.

The careless driver wishes, now too late.

He'd had his shoes attended to in time.

That tliis mischance might not have happened thus
To put him out, and raise up such a muss —

And then he swears in manly wrath sublime,

To pay his bekst for so untimely dropping.

He'll give him, when he's up, a mighty wapping !

Again we behold the bard directing his
energies to the inculcation of practical truth.
By this picture of an accident, of by no
means unfrequent occurrence in our streets,
he is to be understood as holding out for the
improvement of the reader the virtue of
prudence, by setting its opposite, the vice of
carelessness, in a ridiculous light. Moreover,
in making his carman lose his temper
through a misfortune which was the result
of his own want of forethought, have we not
an apt illustration of the consequences of a
single dereliction of duty extending into the
sphere of other duties of a widely different
character from those in regard to which this
orio;inal dereliction orig-inated !

The word " wapping," as here used, is not
to be found in "Webster," but as it is no worse
spelled than many which are, and as it is
necessary to the rhyme, it has been deemed
suitable to retain it.

XII.

I pity much our horses at their tasks,

When, harnessed in unwieldy drays, they bear
The weight and jar of crates of crockery ware.
Or bundled hay, or huge molasses casks;
And when there is an opportunity,
(As on the ferry boat on River East,
Where I have noticed many a patient beast
Standing 'neath sugar burden tremblingly.)
I pat their necks, and kind words to them speak;
As thus, I say, " Good fellow 1 keep up heart ;
Consider me your friend; I take your part;
There 1 never mind ; we'll met t again next week" —
They nod, and twist their ears, and move away,
Thinking 'bout nothing else lor half that day.

It is an old maxim, that an individual of
true benevolence is benevolent not only to
his own species but also to the brute crea-
tion. A line poet has remarked that he
would rather not cultivate the friendship of
any one who could wilhngly set foot upon a
worm i'the bud — so tender were his feel-
ings. Still, when one is engaged in reading
or in conversation of an interesting character,
it requires great self-restraint on suddenly
finding a voracious mosquito draining the
life-blood from his veins, not with uplifted
hand to crush the wretched insect into an
impal|)able powder.

XIII.

Through Greene street rumbling comes a butcher's waggon ;

Under it walks a bulldog, surly, grim.
Crop-eat ed, brass-collared, fierce as any dragon;

No prudent man would like to tackle him.
Glouring about him with his leaden eye«.

Another dog he spies, shaggy and black
But small, not more than two thirds his great size ;

At him he darts and throws him on the back — ,

" Call your dog off !" " No, let 'em fight it out,"

The butcher says. " Agreed," says black one's master,
" Peter, wake up there ! mind what you're about !"

He hears and starts, as steam starts, only faster.
When from the valve the engineer has let it, —
Hurrah ! It's good to see that big one get it I

1850.

With a Preface and Notes,

609

The condensation in this sonnet, which is
similar in spirit to the previous one, and
therefore requires no particular comment, is
particularly worthy of observation. There
is a wonderful display of poetic power and
stern dignity in the first quatrain, which
will be found rarely equalled by any passage
of no greater extent among the offspring of
the English muses.

XIV.

How still and fast the thickening snow-flakes fall 1

On distant thresholds hoar the stamping feet —
These last year's sights and sounds to me recall,

The memory of days when life was sweet.
Again I walk the woodland path, and see

The wintry mantle, light and seeming warm,
Enveloping tJie underwood — each tree

Soft whisp'ring in the gently sifting storm.
Again I hear the shrill unechoed cries

Of old companions; 0 where are they now ?
And when I close my sorrow-moistened eyes,

Expressions joyous pass, of face or brow
Long unremembered, through the darkened brain —
Would God that 1 might he a boy again !

Another fine instance of our poet's versa-
tihty of talent, and peculiar facihty in passing
from gaiety to gravity and from liveliness to
severity. One is at a loss to conceive where
a mind capable of such extreme oscillations
found its point of rest, or position in which
it could, with propriety, have been described
as " well balanced." Probably only in that
state of calm enjoyment which we experience
when the animal functions are fully developed
by Health and Exercise, and a sufficiency of
Worldly Goods and the various comforts
which flow from their possession, free us
from anxiety respecting the present, and
encourage the flattering anticipations of
Hope for the future. The Dignity of labo-
rious industrial occupation does not, with
some organizations, compensate for its Incon-
venience. With some delicate constitutions
(such as the present writer himself possesses)
the only point of absolute repose must be
looked for in perfect leisure, with the
o|M)ortunity for the cultivation of Elegant
Literature and the Fine Arts.

XV.

Some souls are like those gloomy forest trees

Where owls do hide, ihat dread the hght of day,
And some like lonesome oaks, that dare the breeze,

Where jealous cawing crows alight alway.
Some, fruit trees be, that near rich farm-yards stand.

Where pullets and fat capons roost at night —
Some, marten boxes, oory houses planned

For chatt'ring crowds that work men's ears despight.
But thou, my love, so fair, so good- so true,

So lovely sweet, so d:>ar — my life's sole joy —
Vntoe what image shall I liken ?/o?t,

What figure, what similitude employ ?
Thou art a bellfry.nigh to heaven's gate,
Where stockdoves brood, and tender turtles mate !

This is an exquisitely beautiful sonnet, and
worthy to rank with the noblest productions

of the Ehzabethan era. For sale by all the
booksellers except six.

XVI.

Give me to live in some old country town,
Where summer noons might sleep along a shore.
And far off rise the world-embracing floor

Of ocean blue, and cliffs and highlands brown,

With woodland patches in the vales between,
And orchards, fields, and dim-seen distant spires
And one bold point, where gleam the lighthouse fires,

Fill up the view. Where great ships might be seen.

With white sails calmly moving to and fro,
To all climes bound \ and where, on festive days,
Might faintly sound, through twilight's mellow haze,

The city's bells, and cannon echoing slow.

There would I live, removed from care and strife,

And wear away what's left of weary life.

There is a similarity here observable be-
tween the line —

" And orchards, fields, and dim-seen distant spires,"

and the following one from a poem of great
merit, of which the authorship has been
ascribed to Collins, entitled an " Ode to
Evening" —

" And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires;"

yet we cannot suppose a plagiarism to have
been intended, as the resemblance is so
close and obvious as to render it too easy of
detection. On the other hand, it is evident
that the author must have seen the " Ode to
Evening," the sounds being so nearly iden-
tical. Jiut perhaps the similarity should be
considered as rather owino; to a similar sus-
ceptibihty in the two writers. After all, it
is of no consequence either way.

The fines commencing with the fifth from
the close admit of alternate rhymes, thus : —

" To all climes bound,
And where, on festive days,
Might fiintly sound,
Through twilight's mellow haze,
The city's bells, and cannon echoing slow."

Whether this was intended by the writer
to give an effect imitative of the sound of
the distant and random gun, is a reasonable
subject of conjecture.

XVII.

In looking o'er thy records, old Bay State,
In good old Colony times, T found, they used
(A fact which me consid'rably amused)

To pay a tax in grain, to educate

" Poore schollers-'''' My benevolence was moved:
Oho, thought I, who knows but those kind laws
Have 'scaped the claw of lime, and still some clause

Rf^mains entire and yet might be improved

To that effect ? I'll make it public — yes —
I think I know of some 'twould benefit.
Some of that class who live among us yet ;

For instance, they who zealously profess

That science, next to pure astrology

The most profound of all — Phonography.

This is more remarkable for kindness of
intention than for elegance of construction.
Yet it is questionable if any of those wise
ones who would amend the orthography of

aio

Twenty more Sonnets ; with a Preface and J^otes.

ISTov.

the language ought to be esteemed within
the pale of education. If it were mere
Ignorance ? — but who shall disenchant those
who are 5pe//-bound by Conceit ?

XYIII.

*' With how sad steps, 0 moon, thou climb'st the skies,

How silently, and with how wan a face 1"
Why shin'st thou there, Unless to glad the eyes

Of us, whose nights thou light'st, this earthly face ?
Thou art our own, thou great green cheesy ball —

John Smith owns some of thee, and so does Jones,
Thompson, and Brown, and Green^^we own thee alll

Thy valleys deep, and high volcanic cones.
We onc« had all an eqUal right in thee,

But some have now acquired a larger share.
Last night thou saw'st, thou coUld'sfe not choose but Seej

The man with optic tube (the sky was fair)
In Broadway, selling his, sixpence a sight,
Thus turning thee to change at fullest night 1

For the information of ladies and persons
residing at a distance from the metropolis,
it should be stated that the quotation with
which the above commences is the opening
of a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney, who was
a contemporary of Spenser, A. D., about
1550 ; which is a good while ago.

A writer in one of the daily papers persists
in styling the " optic tube " above-mentioned,
a "glazed stove-'pi'per Personal observation
would soon satisfy any one as to the correct-
ness of this ; but for the present purpose,
perhaps it had better remain a telescope.

XIX.

In darkest nights, while stormily the wind
Rattles the eastern casement, then 'tis good
To stay within, and store up mental food ;

But when bright CvNTttiA smiles above, I find

Labor disgusting ; then away my quill ;
Writing or reading tires the jaded brain.
E'en gentle Will, he courts my eye in tain ;

I rather walk alone, and muse, until

I'm lost in memories of Love or Care,
Life's bitterness, the heart's inquietude ;
For then, beneath night's solemn solitude,

Comes gentle Sorrow, calming grim Despair,

And clings to one who thinks no shame to feel

Across his cheek her burning tear-drop steal,

The Cynthia to whom allusion is here
tiiade is the same who gives the title to one
of the dramatic compositions of Benjamin
Johnson, a writer of considerable celebrity in
his time ; there is a monument to his memory
in Westminster Abbey, in London, England.
This abbey was originally founded by Ed-

ward the Confessor. It is thought to be a
fine specimen of architecture.

We have now reached the last in number
of this series of writings. One of a different
cast from the preceding has been reserved
for this place by the wiiter, who could not
bring himself to part from his readers with
a sorrowful countenance. However it may
have been with the poet whom he has here
to the best of his poor abihty endeavored
to illustrate, it is by no means the " fruitful
river in the eye that can denote him truly "
on an occasion like the present. To a phi-
losophical mind there is a wide field of
enjoyment ever gushing forth out of the
common experiences of hfe ; and there is no
true wisdom in endeavoring to repress the
indulgence or taste for rational j)leasures.
No ! Far from us, and far from our friends,
be that frigid philosophy which can contem-
plate with indifference a scene hke the fol-
lowing, and which does not heartily respond
to the exclamation at the conclusion I

XX.

When vrinds, at eve, enrage the rainy sky,

And rivers run from every splashing spout,
And reeking omnibusses, crammed, go by,

And streaming newsboys at the corners shout,
And all ia heavy, dismal, dark and wet.

To reach at last, through many mishaps dire,
That parlor snug where tea for two is set,

And slippers dry stand by the welcome fire.
And then with her who made the tea to sit.

All care thrown by, as in a blissful trance,
And waste the night, while she doth stockings knit,

In reading some old picturesque romance,
Of castles, forests, ghosts and mysteries —
If this ain't comfort, I don't know what is 1

It was originally designed to offer some
further explanatory observations in this
place, but it has appeared to the writer, on
reflection, that his previous comments cover
the whole ground, and he therefore here
takes leave, with the simple expression of
the hope that his efforts to enlighten the
public mind in a most difficult department
of literature may be properly appreciated,
and his errors, if he has committed any,
(of which he is not conscious,) may be re-
garded with charitable indulgence.

1850.

The Bible and Civil Government.

511

THE BIBLE AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT.*

The ATork, wliose title we have placed at
the head of this article, contains a series of
five Lectures, delivered by the Rev. Dr.
Mathews in the Capitol, at Washington city,
during the winter of 1848. The Lectures
were given, we believe, on the invitation of
many distinguished members of both Houses
of the American Congress, and were largely
attended by the representative intelligence
and wisdom of the nation. They attracted
a large share of attention, and excited no
little interest, at the time of their delivery.
The desire was awakened in many minds to
see them in print ; and in compliance with
numerous solicitations from distinguished
sources, the learned and accomplished author
has at length committed them to the press.

For ourselves, we are glad that he has
done so. In the discussion of his general
theme, " The Connection between the Holy
Scriptures and the Science of Civil Govern-
ment," Dr. Mathews has opened up fields of
thought, argument, and illustration, hitherto
but little trodden by American scholars ;
fields, with which even our best legal, juri-
dical, and ecclesiastical minds are but little
familiar. The subject is one of the deepest
interest, and rich in lessons of practical wis-
dom, apphcable to our times and to all
times. Our author has treated it in a lucid,
able, and scholarlike manner. He has
brought to the composition of his discourses
a mind well stored, a memory full fraught,
a thorough comprehension of his subject, a
just and discriminating taste, and a heart in
full sympathy with the progress of liberal
principles and institutions. He holds a
warm, earnest, vigorous, and classical pen.
While the thoughts which he has embodied
in his work are weighty and solid, the style
in which he has clothed them is pure, |)ol-
ished, nervous and animated.

In his Litroductory Lecture, Dr. Mathews
announces as the subject of his entire discus-

sion, The Relation of the Bible to Ci\il Gov-
ernment ; and his great object is to inquire
how far the Scriptures go in revealing the
principles which enter into a just and wise
construction of civil authority. Turning to
the Law and the Testimony, he asks : " Is
government, simply as government, all that
we there find sanctioned as the ordinance of
God ? Do the Autocrat of Russia and the
Sultan of Turkey, inheriting thrones which
have been gained by violence and blood,
hold their power by a tenure as Scriptural as
that of the chief magistrates of these United
States, who have been raised to their office
by the choice of those whom they govern ?"
He thinks that the Bible answers these
questions in a manner that must gratify
every lover of human freedom and happi-
ness. He thinks, and we certainly concur
in the opinion, that, when nations had be-
gun to multiply on the earth, the Most High
revealed his will respecting the origin and
tenure of authority in a State. When he
delivered his people out of Egyjitian bond-
age, he forgot not their welfare as a nation,
while he guided their faith as a church. He
formed the Hebrews into a true common-
wealth, and gave them laws and institutions
embracing all the essential features of na-
tional freedom, or of a well-ordered republic.
This religious aspect of the subject greatly
enhances its claim upon om* attention. How
common an error it is, even in our day and
country, to suppose that liberty was cradled
in Greece, and that her sages were its
fathers. This error is taught to our youth
in the halls of learning, and proclaimed to
our people from the hails of legislation. Our
author holds a different doctrine. He be-
lieves that we must look beyond Athens or
Sparta for the origin of a blessing so deeply
interwoven wUli the welfare of man. He
believes that it was not the wisdom of
Greece, in the halls of the Acropolis, but

*The Bible and Civil Government. In a Course of Lectures. By J. M. Mathews, D. D. New-
York: Robert Carter <k Brothers. 1850. 12mo, pp. 268.

512

The Bible and Civil Government,

Kov.

tne wisdom of God, speaking from heaven,
through his servant Moses, which first taught
how the rights of a people should be asserted
and sustained. We heartily subscribe to
this view, and cordially tender our thanks to
Dr. Mathews for the distinct and emphatic
enunciation which he has made of it. We
trust that his book will go far towards cor-
recting; a mistake alike dishonorino- to reve-
lation and discreditable to our intelligence
as a nation. Liberty to the masses, political
and social equality, general competence and
contentment, physical comfort, ease of mind,
repose and opportunity for reflection, moral
and religious instruction to all men equally,
— these were the paramount objects of the
Hebrew Constitution, so far as its political
relations were concerned. These features
mark its kindred to our own, and set it
widely apart and distinct from all other
governments which existed with it and for
many ages after it. Nothing can be wider
of the truth than the idea, that it is in the
political forms and usages of the Grecian and
Roman commonwealths we are to seek the
origin and elements of our oyn\ republican
institutions. It is rather in that admirable
frame of government, given by the oracle of
Jehovah and established by the authority of
the Supreme Ruler of the Avorld, that we
shall find the type and model of our own
Constitution. Even the Declaration of Amer-
ican Independence, — that glorious charter
of human freedom, which first sent forth its
piercing tones from the State House in Phila-
delphia, and whose far-reaching reverbera-
tions have " troubled the thoughts " of many
a tyrant, and caused " his knees to smite one
against the other," — the Declaration of In-
dependence, we say, the pride of our own
country, the terror of despots, and the ani-
mating pledge of liberty to the oppressed of
every clime, was but an echo fi'om the deep
thunders of Mount Sinai.

The leading design of our author, in his
whole treatise, is to demonstrate the divine
orio;in of civil freedom. His Introductory
Lecture is chiefly taken up with showing-
how fitly it corresponds with the uniform
goodness of God, that He should gi\'e to the
world a distinct revelation of his will on this
subject. This point is treated very effec-
tively. "The commandment," says the
Psalmist, that is, the divine revelation, " is
exceeding broad." There is, as Dr. Ma-
thews truly observes, an expansive power

in the Bible, which reaches every want and
condition in life. It not only states great
principles in the simplest and most intelli-
gible forms ; but it also teaches how these
principles may be applied to the various
relations, domestic, social, and political,
which God has ordained for the well-being
of society.

Our author makes two points in his argu-
ment on the antecedent probability of a dis-
tinct revelation from heaven concerning civil
society and government. The first is, the
necessity of a well-adjusted civil constitution
to men's domestic enjoyments ; and the
second, the influence of freedom on those
higher faculties of man which reach beyond
his social pleasures. The first of these
points he illustrates by a graphic picture of
the manifold oppressions, under which not
the Israelites only, but all nations, were suf-
fering at the time of the exode ; the liberty,
the happiness, and even the lives of the
million being subject to the will of the one
man who happened to wear the crown, and
who, intoxicated mth irresponsible power,
ruled over men as over the beasts of the
field. The inference is, that it well became
Him, whose tender mercies are over all his
works, to show how the government of a
nation should be constituted so as most ef-
fectually to guard against such terrible evils.

In illustration of his second point. Dr.
Mathews goes into an elaborate and most
interesting historical survey of mankind,
which fully vindicates and verifies the senti-
ment, that

" 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume."

Palestine, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Genoa,
Venice, Holland, Switzerland, England, and
the United States are each referred to, and
dwelt upon, at less or greater length, in con-
firmation of this position. The result of his
intelligent survey is, that " civiHzed democ-
racy is the great moving power in human
aff"airs ; the source of the greatest efforts of
human genius ; the grand instrument of
human advancement. Its grand character
istic is energy, awakening the dormant
strength of milhons, drawing forth the
might that slumbers in the peasant's arm.
The greatest achievements of genius, the
noblest efforts of heroism, that have illustra-
ted the history of the species, have arisen
from the influence of this principle. Thence

1850.

The Bible and Civil Government.

513

the figlit of Marathon, and the glories of
Salamis ; the genius of Greece, and the con-
quests of Rome ; the heroism of Sempach,
and the devotion of Harlaem ; the paintings
of Raphael, and the poetry of Tasso ; the
energy that covered with a velvet carpet the
shores of the Alps, and the industry which
bridled the stormy seas of the German ocean.
Why are the shores of the Mediterranean
the scene to which the pilgrim from every
quarter of the globe journeys, to visit, at
once, the cradle of civilization, the birth-
place of arts, of arms, of philosophy, of po-
etry, and the scenes of their highest and
most glorious achievements ? Because free-
dom spread along its smiling shores ; be-
cause the ruins of Athens and Sparta, of
Rome and Carthage, of Tyre and Sp-acuse,
lie on its margin ; because civilization, ad-
vancing with the white sails which glittered
on its blue expanse, pierced, as if impelled
by central heat, through the dark and bar-
barous regions of the Celtic race Avho peopled
its shores. Republican Rome colonized the
world ; republican Greece spread the light of
civilization along the shores of the Mediter-
ranean. But Imperial Rome could never
maintain the number of its own provinces ;
and the Grecian Empire slumbered on with
a declining population for eleven hundred
years."

The conclusion which our author draws
from his very able argument is, that, since
freedom is thus interwoven with the happi-
ness and progress of our race, it is highly
probable that whatever is essential to its
establishment should be revealed in a volume
that " has the promise of the hfe that now
is," as well as of " that which is to come."
He who provides for the sparrows, and num-
bers even the hairs of our head, it can hardly
be supposed would fail to instruct mankind
as to the nature of institutions so deeply in-
v'olving their personal, social, and civil well-
beino*. After a hio'h-wrouo::ht and glowino-
picture of the energy, prosperity, and grow-
ing greatness of our Republic, Dr. Mathews
closes his Introductory Lecture with a solemn
warning against the danger of a spirit of
reckless presumption ; against the danger of
a spirit of pride and self-sufficiency ; and
against the danger of falling into forgetful-
ness of God, through the influence of a rapid
course of prosperity and development.

The subject of the second Lecture is, " Civil
Government as ordained in the Common-

wealth of the Hebrews." This subject our
author discusses in his usual luminous and
effective manner. He starts with the prin-
ciple, which has passed into a maxim, that
it is not so much men that make institutions,
as institutions that make men. Nations do
not rise from barbarism to civilization, with-
out some external agency to act upon them
above and beyond themselves. There is no
inherent and natural tendency in a barbarous
community to civilize itself, or in an unedu-
cated community to educate itself. What,
our author asks, was the condition of the
world, when Moses arose as the inspired
teacher and liberator of the Hebrews ? It
was a condition of the deepest ignorance,
bondage, and wretchedness. Nowhere had
the people any voice in the election of their
rulers, but they who exercised dominion
either acquired their power by the sword, or
inherited it from their ancestors. In either
case, it was wholly irresponsible and without
limitation. The nations moaned beneath
their tyranny, but it was the moan of despair.
And what increased the gloom and horror of
the picture was, that things were continually
waxing worse and worse. The tendency
was downward from age to age. By what
process, and through what agency, was the
current to be changed ? How was this sore
and universal evil to be remedied ? Gov-
ernment is one of the most comphcated and
difficult of the sciences. With all the lights
of experience embodied in history, nothing
so tasks the powers of man, nothing so often
baffles his wisdom, as the attempt to frame
a constitution of government, which shall
combine the restraints of law with the in-
dulgences of liberty, the welfare of the com-
munity with the freedom of the individual.
If, then, amid the universal gloom and
servitude, we see the Hebrews suddenly
emerging from the darkness, and organizing
themselves into a civil community, under
laws that secured to them all the blessiiia-s
of a true and well regulated political free-
dom and equality, the question aris:3 — How
came such a phenomenon to pa" > ? W^hence
had this people this wisdi a\ ? " Was it
from heaven, or of men C' The statesman,
the historian, and the philosopher will unite
in the answer, that the creation of such a
political system was as far beyond the wis-
dom of that age, as the creation of a
world was beyond its power. Nevertheless,
turning to the Book of the Law, we find

.14

The Bible and Civil Government,

Nov.

the Hebrews in possession of just siicli a
government ; a government securing equal-
ly the rights of all, high and low, rich and
])Oor, weak and strong ; and embodying all
the essential principles of civil freedom.
We find here, according to our author,

First, " government by representation, the
election of rulers by the ruled, the public
officers chosen by the public voice." Of so
much importance did the celebrated Cha-
teaubriand regard this principle, that he
classed it among " three or four discoveries
that have created another universe." Dr.
Mathews traces the origination of this great
principle up to the inspired legislation of
Moses. In this view, from an examination
of the subject by no means narrow or slight,
we fully coincide. The Reverend Doctor
goes into an elaborate and conclusive argu-
ment, in which, however, our limits forbid
us to follow him, to prove that the Jethro-
nian judges or prefects were elected by the
popular vote. He also contends that the
twelve spies, the thirty-six men to survey
and divide the land among the tribes, the
Judges who succeeded Moses in the chief
magistracy, and even the earlier kings, were
chosen to their respective offices by the
voice of the people, or of representatives
acting in their name. The conclusion to
which he comes, from his entire argument
on this point, is, that " the government was,
in every just sense, a government of the
people. The magistrate was chosen by the
suffrages of those among whom he was to
act ; and at the same time well-known in-
tegrity and competency were the only qu,ali-
iications required for any station, from the
lowest to the highest. Authority, whether
ordinary or extraordinary, emanated from
those on whose behalf it was to be employed.
After what forms elections may have
been conducted, how nearly or remotely
resembling those adopted in modern elective
governments, are inquiries of small moment.
They do not affect the position, that the
officer held his office from an acknowledo^ed
constituency, and that his constituents were
those over whom and among whom his au-
thority was exercised."

A second element of civil liberty, which,
according to our author, was incorporated
into the Hebrew Constitution, was that of
" a Judiciary providing for the prompt and
equal administration of justice between man
and man." Courts of various gi-ades were

established, from high courts of appeal down
to those ordained for every town. Care
was taken that, in suits and proceedings at
law, every man should have what was just
and equal, without going far to seek it,
without waiting long to obtain it, and with-
out paying an exorbitant price for it*
Dr. Mathews refers to such jurists and
scholars as Hale, Hooker, Blackstone,
eTones, Goguet, Grotius, Michaelis, Ames,
Marshall, Story, and Kent, as having ex-
pressed the opinion that " there is not a civil-
ized nation, of either ancient or modern
times, which has not borrowed from the laws
of Moses whatever is most essential to the
administration of justice between man and
man, or between nation and nation. The
rules of evidence in conducting trials, the
principles upon which verdicts should be
rendered both in civil and criminal cases,
together with the great institution of trial
by jury, are all found, in greater or less de-
velopment, in the statutes and ordinances
given by God to the Hebrews."

Another great principle referred to by
our author as embraced in the polity of the
Hebrew commonwealth, is that of a eon-
federation between the several tribes com-
posing the nation. This has been deemed
by able statesmen as of great importance to
the strength and stability of a republic, hav-
ing either an extensive territory or a nu-
merous population. The evils resulting
from the want of such a federative bond
are seen in the calamities of the Italian re-
publics. The benefits flowing from the
incorporation of this principle into a republi-
can frame of government, appear in the his-
tory of the United Netherlands, and still
more clearly in that of the United States
of America. It was a principle fully em-
bodied in the Hebrew Code. The Hebrew
people, in their national capacity, might,
with the strictest propriety, have l>een de-
nominated The United States of Israel.
There was a General Government, and there
were State Governments, precisely as among
us ; and the lines of dem.arkation between
the powers of each were well defined. The
central government had its own appropriate
sphere of action; and the provincial or
state governments had theirs also, within
which they were sovereign and independent.

Such, in the view of our author, were the
fundamental principles of Hebrew liberty :
viz., the election of the rulers by the ruled,

1850.

The Bible and Civil Government.

515

a judiciary wisely constructed for the speedy
and safe administration of justice, and a
union of the tribes under a confederation
adapted to be a safeguard against usurpa-
tion from within, and to afford protection
against invasion from without. And these
principles were embodied in a written Con-
stitution. This is an indispensable security
to liberty. " No nation can expect to pre-
serve its civil privileges, unless they are se-
cured and perpetuated in a record, which
both rulers and ruled can read, to which
both can refer, and which is binding on
both. Accordingly, it was enjoined on Josh-
ua, and on others who succeeded him in
authority, that they should observe to do
according to all that was written in the Book
of the Law. Had the enactments, promising
liberty, protection, and justice to the people,
been left to be handed down by oral tradition,
they would soon have become changed, as
the will of ambitious and designing rulers
might have dictated. But here they were
rendered stable and permanent in a code,
which might be called the Magna Charta of
the Hebrew State."

From his exposition of the Civil Govern-
ment of the Hebrews, Dr. Mathews derives
several highly important practical inferences.
It would be interesting and instructive to
accompany him through this part of the
discussion, but want of space forbids. To
one only of his valuable lessons can we for
a moment direct the reader's attention. It
is this : As civil liberty originated in revela-
tion, by revelation alone can it be sustained.
As there can be no divorce between light
and the sun, so can there be none between
freedom and the Bible. Burn the Bible,
and liberty perishes with it. Just in pro-
portion as it is known and reverenced in a
nation, in the same proportion will a rational
and regulated liberty, with its long and rich
train of blessings, prevail in it. Every-
where and at all times, this divine book has
been the efficient agency to build up, bless,
and humanize society ; to dignify and adorn
social life ; and to vindicate true liberty,
while restraining licentiousness.

In his third Lecture, our author considers
the " Influence of Emigration on National
Character." . This subject, itself a novel one.
Dr. Mathews discusses in a most original,
luminous, able, eloquent, and philosophical
manner. There is no part of his book
which, to our mmds, has a higher interest

than this ; none, certainly, marked by greater
breadth and vigor of thought, or a warmer
and more glowing style of composition. No
analysis that could be made of this admira-
ble paper would, or could, do anything hke
justice to it. There is not, as it seems to
us, a thought or a word too much or too
little. We will not attempt to sift out its
better portions. Indeed, it is impossible to
sift out the gold from a heap that contains
nothing but gold.

" General and Sound Education indispen-
sable to Civil Freedom," is the title of the
fourth Lecture. In the opening of the pre-
ceding Lecture, our author had observed, that
nations, like individuals, need time and train-
ing to prepare them for self-government.
Old associations are to be broken up, and
new ones formed. The popular mind must
become familiar with new thoughts, new
standards of right, new habits of action.
Upon this principle the Divine Being pro-
ceeded in introducing free institutions among
the Hebrews. The first means employed to
this end was the removal of the people to a
new country. This was treated at large in
the third Lecture. Our author now proceeds,
in his fourth discourse, to examine and illus-
trate another step in the work of prepara-
tion, viz., the provision made for the diffu-
sion of knowledge throughout all classes of
the people. He notices, under this head,
the very remarkable fact, that there has
hardly ever been another nation upon earth,
in which the people were so universally
taught to read. In proof of this, he refers to
the frequent appeals made by our Saviour
to the multitude : " Have ye not read Avhat
Moses saith V " Have ye not read in the
Scriptures ?" and the like ; and also to the
statement made by the evangelical historian
concerning the inscription placed by Pilate
over the head of our crucified Lord, that
" this title then read many of the Jews."
He infers the same thing, or rather he in-
fers the duty of parents to teach their chil-
dren to read, from the Mosaic statute, which
enjoined it upon every head of a family to
WRITE the laws on the posts of his house,
and on his gates. He refers to the testimo-
ny of Jewish writers, who allege, that " the
school was to be found in every district
throughout the nation, and under the care
of teachers who were honored alike for their
character and their station." Nor was it
left to parents, as our author thinks, to de-

616

The Bible and Civil Government.

Nov.

cide whetlier their cliildren should or should
not be suitably educated. It was a duty
which the law made obligatory upon them ;
and up to this point he believes, and so do
we, that wise legislation should go in every
commonwealth. There is nothing in such
a requirement which ought to be regarded
as unjust or unreasonable. "Apart from
the benefit which such laws insure to the
young themselves, every well-ordered State
should feel that, as it values public safety,
it must not permit its youth to grow up
within its own bosom in a condition of igno-
rance, that would render them incendiaries
and pests to all its best interests."

But schools for general education were
not the only seminaries of learning known
among the Hebrews. There were higher
institutions, under the title of " Schools of
the Prophets." These were institutions
where not theology alone was taught, but
other branches of knowledge also, which be-
longed to the learning of the times. These
schools were under the care of men of the
highest intellectual and moral worth. There
was also a cardinal feature in the Hebrew
polity in the higest degree favorable to the
increase and diffusion of knowledo-e. The
Levites were expressly set apart for the ser-
vice of rehgion and letters. They were by
birth obhged to devote themselves to the
sciences. Many of them, especially in the
reign of Solomon, reached a high elevation
in learning ; and their business was, not to
lock up, but diifuse their stores. There was
no monopoly of knowledge among the He-
brews. Intelligence was general in the de-
gree and of the kind adapted to the people
and the age.

Upon the whole, we are inclined to think,
that in no part of the Mosaic polity did the
wisdom of the lawgiver shine v/ith a clearer
lustre, than in his provisions for the instruc-
tion and training of the young. In full
harmony with the spirit of his provisions is
the beautiful prayer of David, that " our
sons may be as plants grown up in their
youth ; that our daughters may be as cor-
ner-stones, polished after the similitude of a
palace." These Mosaic provisions for the
difiusion of knowledge, as the reverend lec-
turer justly takes notice, have been sanctioned
by universal history, as inseparably inter-
woven with national prosperity. Our author
goes into an able and instructive historical sur-
vey of the subject to justify this remark. We

cannot follow him through the highly inter-
esting details of his argument, but we hope
that many of our readers will do so with a
pleasure equal to that which we experienced
in the perusal.

The concluding Lecture of the series, on
" Agriculture as an Auxihary to Civil Free-
dom," is not inferior to any of its predeces-
sors, either in the interest of the subject, or
the ability with which it is treated. Own-
ership in the soil, observes our author, (we
quote the substance, though not the ipsissi-
ma verba, of his remarks,) is essential to the
best cultivation of it. On this principle the
Hebrew agrarian law was founded. Small
proprietors, and the land worked by the own-
ers thereof, was the policy of the Hebrew
laws. The tendency of the code was to
make the people generally both owners and
cultivators of land, and to give importance
and honor to husbandry in the pubhc esti-
mation. The entire territory of the prom-
ised land was to be so divided among the
six hundred thousand free citizens, who con-
quered and took possession of it, that each
one should have a full property in an equal
part of it. And this estate was to descend
to his legal heirs by an indefeasible entail
in perpetual succession. The fee simple of
the soil could not be sold ; nor could any
alienation of a landed estate take place ex-
ceeding fifty years. This principle was fun-
damental to the Hebrew polity. It formed
a broad line of demarkation between them
and other nations, and was of the greatest
importance in promoting both pubhc and
private prosperity. A man's property in his
land could never be permanently alienated.
It might cease to be his for a term of years ;
but the year of Jubilee restored it to him,
free of all incumbrance. Nor indeed was
it necessary for him to wait till the Jubilee
to re-enter his alienated field, provided he
or his nearest of kin had the means to re-
deem it ; for the right of redemption re-
mained always in the proprietor.

The necessary efiect of such a system of
laws in reference to land and landed prop-
erty, was to make the Hebrews a nation of
farmers. The cultivation of the earth was
stimulated to the highest degree. The oc-
cupation of the husbandman was held to
be the most honorable pursuit of man, and
it became, as a natural consequence, the
most common. The most illustrious citizens
were fajmers, taking that word in a broad

1850.

The Bible and Civil Government.

517

and comprehensive sense. Saul, Da\'id,
Elisha, may be noted as examples ; and
of king Uzziah it is recorded, that " he loved
husbandry." The effect of agricultural life
upon the character and condition of the He-
brew people is known to every student of
Hebrew history. " It produced among the
people generally a bodily strength and ac-
tivity, and a power of endurance, that tend-
ed to render them equally formidable in
war, and successful in the labors of industry
during times of peace. It made their
whole country throughout like one continued
garden, — the very rocks, we are told, being
covered with mould to produce vegetation,
and the hills being tilled to their highest
summits. The land was thus enabled to
support a population, that might otherwise
seem incredible ; and at the same time it
furnished the means, not only for the active
exchange of commodities, which was usual
at their principal festivals, but for that ex-
tensive foreign commerce which, in the days
of Solomon, so enriched the nation that ' gold
was laid up as dust, and the gold of Ophir
as the stones of the brooks.' Nor was it
until a spirit of cupidity, pride, and luxury,
generated by the gains of commerce, had
brought into neglect the labors of the hus-
bandman, that the strono- arm of the nation
was palsied, and she fell a prey to her in-
vaders."

The agrarian laws of Moses were attended
with several striking economical advantages,
which our author proceeds to enumerate as
follows : —

1. They stripped poverty of its worst
evils. They soothed its bitterest sorrows
with the hope of better days. They softened,
if they did not remove, its keenest sense of
degradation. They kept the poor man's
heart whole. They preserved mthin him
the love of home. They nourished a love
of independence. Whatever else he had
lost, his land was always there, and no hu-
man power could deprive him of the title
to it.

2. They tended strongly to prevent the
accumulation of debt with its attendant
evils. Few would have any occasion to bor-
row, except as a measure of mere tempora-
ry relief under some sudden calamity, as the
loss of a crop, or a murrain among the cat-
tle. There was little inducement to lend,
since no man might, by the laws of Moses,
make profit out of a loan. And besides all

this, as an ultimate and complete relief from
the pressure of otherwise irremediable and
hopeless indebtedness, the Jubilee extin-
guished all debts.

3. The agrarian laws of Moses tended
also to produce and cherish among the peo-
ple a spirit of equality, and of sympathy one
with another. Under their operation there
could be, properly speaking, neither nobility
nor peasantry, neither lords nor serfs, but a
BROTHERHOOD of hardy yeomen, no one of
whom could become either very rich or very
poor, or could have anything in his external
circumstances to excite either the euNy or
the contempt of the others.

4. Agriculture strengthens the sentiment
of patriotism, the love of country. The
heart of the husbandman is bound to the
fields on which he bestows his labor, and
which respond to his industry by clothing
themselves in the beauties of spring and the
riches of summer and autumn. The fact, if
it be a fact, that his possessions have come
down to him through a long line of hon-
ored ancestors, will greatly strengthen the
attachment which he feels both to his home
and to his country.

5. The healthful sobriety of mind which
the scenes and occupations of country life
are fitted to beget and cherish, is the last of the
benefits enumerated by our author as flow-
ing from agricultural pursuits. " The con-
templation of scenes in which we 'look
through nature up to nature's God,' always
tends to impart a tone of moral health, and
to form a sohdity of character, which, espe-
cially in a nation enjoying the privilege of
self-government, are all-important as a bal-
ance to the turbulent fervor often generated
in our cities. It is in such an atmosphere
that the mind is most unclouded, and can
look beyond the things of a day. Nor
should it be forgotten, that amidst such
scenes and occupations every free nation has
found many of her greatest patriots and
statesmen."

Dr. Mathews closes his very agreeable and
useful volume with some most judicious, sea-
sonable, eloquent, and glowing reflections on
the privileges, responsibihties, dangers, and
destiny of our glorious Republic. It is im-
possible to condense such passages. We the
rather abstain from such an endeavor, as we
hope that most of our readers will have had
their interest so far awakened by the present
article, or will so far confide in our critical

618

British Policy Here and There :

Nov.

judgment, as to take our candid and earnest
recommendation to possess themselves of a
book, so solid in matter, so elevated in its
moral tone, so vigorous and classical in its

style, so replete witli the best learning, so
genial in sentiment, and so v^arm in its
sympathies with the progress of enlightened
and conservative republicanism.

BEITISH POLICY HERE AND THERE: "FREE TRADE."

" For the falsity of speech rests on a far deeper falsity. False speech, as is inevitable when men long
practise it, falsifies all things ; the very thoughts, or fountains of speech and action, become false.
Ere long, by the appointed curse of Heaven, a man's intellect ceases to be capable of distinguishing
truth, when he permits himself to deal in speaking or acting what is false. Watch well the tongue,
for out of it are the issues of Life !" (Thomas Carlyle on Jesuitism, Latter-day Pamphlets, No. VIII.)

You may have remarked, good reader,
that anything which an Englishman thinks
particularly suited to his interests, and wish-
es you to believe particularly suited to yours,
he generally calls " free" — and further, you
may have remarked, that you are generally
simple enough to believe him — that is, to
take the term he gives you without having
in your mind any fixed meaning whatever
attached to it, and then to invent for it and
apply to it a meaning of your own, which may
be the meaning he originally had for it, or one
very different from, if not directly opposed
to his. He discovers the reality and invents
a taking name for it ; you take the name
and assume an unreahty as its meaning, and
continue to practise the reality he originally
falsified by name, and you have further falsi-
fied by m?'s-conception of his meaning and
the act you do in consequence. This is not
merely a dialectic sleight of hand — it be-
comes in course of time, and by continued
misconception, a fact, part and parcel of
yourself, part and parcel of your theory of
right and wrong ; even of your ideal of the
universe, — you measure all things by it as a
standard, and too often relinquish even your
own palpable interests, smother even your
most conscientious scruples, when this is
thrust under your nose.

The science of so bamboozling men in
the quietest and most enduring manner is
known in dialectics as sophistry ; in morals
as Jesuitism ; in government, commerce,
trade, and all things pertaining to national
or social existence, as " British Policy."

Sophistry and Jesuitism need from us here
no examples — or, if they did, we have neither
time nor occasion to give them. But the third
division of this science of mendacity, which
indeed includes and works in the two former,
lies more immediately and more necessitously
in our path. We shall illustrate it by a few
examples, showing in the simplest manner
we can the wondrous power attained by this
deliberate abuse of words, by this science of
downright and unequivocal lying ; how it
has grown up into a reality called the Brit-
ish Empire ; how the people of the world
contribute to its success, and among the
contributors the American nation, with the
riches of its soil and the marrow of its chil-
dren.

Englishmen — (and here let us, once for
all, remark, we use that term not invidiously
to the English people, but to denote only
those classes actuated by the Anglican spirit
or policy, excepting therefrom the recusant
Chartist and Repubhcan, and all that vast
mass of mere British animalism which is
passive in the hands of its " legitimate su-
periors")— Englishmen, we say, tell you that
their country is the " representative of Lih~
eralism;'''' and hereupon Europeans generally,
and not a few enlightened Americans,* at-
tach to the managing persons in that country
the idea of "hberalism." Now we shall
add, in the hope that this essay may fall

* Inter aliafi, vide the opening passages of an
otherwise exceedingly able and true article on
" The Danish Question," in the September num-
ber of this Review

1850.

Free Trade.

619

into tlie hands of some "unlearned reader,
that " hberahsm" means, if indeed it mean
anything, " freedom-ism" ; and if " ism "
mean anything, we are to understand by
the above phrase that England is " the rep-
resentative" of the love and worship of
freedom, and the propagator of free princi-
ples among all men, and especially among
all European men, and those in other con-
tinents of the world brought out of the
night of barbarism into coUision with her
greatness. We are further to understand
thereby, that she is, besides all that, liberal;
not alone free in herself, and permitting just
freedom to others, but giving to all, over and
above their just demands, of her own re-
sources and property with a free and gener-
ous hand. Such being the general behef
carefully inculcated by herself, and assented
to by even enlightened Americans, who can
wonder if the people of un-common-schooled
and un-newspapered nationality, of Sicily,
Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary,
and Schleswig-Holstein, look up to her for
support, for advice, for encouragement in
their rightful efforts, for protection in their
unmerited reverses? Who can wonder if
by that one word " liberahsm" she has estab-
lished throughout Europe, an influence in
the hearts of the people, that is, in the very
soul of the democratic vitality of the present
and coming world, unattainable by any other
nation, class, or government, by any other
idea or reality ; for hers is the only one which
assumes the virtues of a saviour, possessing
at the same time, in the superstitions of the
unfortunate, the power of a god ?

Yet in the range of dove-tailed falsehoods,
which constitute the ideal of which the Brit-
ish empire is the embodiment, this of " hber-
ahsm" is the most brazen and the most humi-
hating. That it has proved a trap, and a
fore-intentioned trap, to every people who
have had the misfortune to fall into it, we
need only refer to three recent events ; the fall
of Rome and Lombardy, the fate of Kossuth,
and the betrayal of the Duchies. But in
its very nature it is baseness. Worse than
despotism a thousand times is this idea of
" liberalism." It presumes a submission to
known wrong by the people, in whose name it
is promulgated, beyond all measure degrad-
ing. The Russian Czar boldly sways by
the right of the strong hand, and the will of
Heaven ; acknowledges no liberty or rights
in his subjects, but assumes openly that his

VOL. VI. NO. V, NEW SERIES.

lawful mission is to " govern " them. Here is
no hypocrisy — here is open, bold tyranny,
but no sneaking. English governing powers,
on the other hand, acknowledge liberty and
rights in the people subject to them ; but,
having stolen the rights and the liberty, seized
them some time or other by the strong hand
if you will, they affect now to be " liberal,"
claim even the virtue of generosity in doling
them, little by little, back to their right owners.
Truly it is a fine thing to be liberal of one's
own ; but then to be liberal of what is other
people's — that is not only to be a thief but
a spendthrift thief; and to pretend liberality
of that which is the property or right of
others, when the intention of the holder is
to keep all to himself, that is a double hypo-
crisy, so tortuous in mendacity that it is hard
to get for it a name, unless we call it, lying
in false pretence. Even to their own country-
men the English ruling classes give nothing
they can avoid, and that only by way of
purchasing worse servitude. Their " liberal-
ism" to other nations consists in this, that
they will take all they can, and give the donors
their countenance, nothing more. Ah ! we
had forgotten, sometimes more — as to Greece
"liberty" and an English tool for king — to
Belgium ditto, ditto — to Portugal ditto, in
return for the wine factories of Oporto — -to
Sicily ditto, for the sulphur mines of ^]tna —
and so on. " Liberal" people these English !
It seems childish to explain at such length
that the Enghsh phrase " liberalism " is a
profound and unmitigated falsehood. But
on such falsehoods is a whole empire built
and a whole world swayed. Everything is
" free" in England — -the press is " free" too —
" free ;" and here is another remarkable in-
stance of the manner in which words are
used in " Her Majesty's service." The Ameri-
can, for instance, is a free press ; subject to
no penalties except for crimes such as a
man may commit without a press, as slan-
der, libel on personal character, or the like.
But in England a man with a press can com-
mit Climes none other can. God in his
mercy forgot to enumerate in the Sinai edi-
tion of the old code, "the crimes of the
printer," not seeing, we presume, that, " to
give the devil his due," the poor fellow could
commit many more than therein enumera-
ted. Enghsh law, however, has seen and
supplied the deficiency. It invents new
crimes under old names in this way : If a
writer in its " free press" presumes to wTite
34

520

British Policy Here and There :

Nov.

on a certain trutli which is disagreeable,
and which, hy the laws which thereto-
fore kept in terror that "free press," was
perfectly admissible, and it is desirable to
get rid of that truthful writer, English
governing persons lay their heads together,
and, having decreed that they are in danger,
say, " Let us not interfere with the freedom
of the press — oh ! no ; but let us make the
writing of this truth, so dangerous to us,
bigamy, or simony, or larceny ; and de-
grade the writer with the punishment of a
bigamist, simonist, or thief." And accord-
ingly to write the truth "becomes" larceny,
to obey God becomes an abomination in the
eyes of men and the theory of the Consti-
tution, by a stroke of " law" ; and men are
transported for it. And so of " freedom of
trial by jnry," that is, power to kill a man by
freely packing a jury ; and " freedom of elec-
tion," where nobody has a vote ; and all
other English " freedoms" — stupendous Jes-
uitisms, hiding each under its sanctified face
and fair free name, an astutely organized and
deliberately infamous tyranny.

And yet stupid and trite as all these ex-
planations seem, Ave are still given to at-
tach the fact of freedom to evervthino: new
or old, to which the Englishman gives the
name. He pretends to that which he has
not ; we give him the credit he so unscru-
pulously asks ; and not only that, but fur-
ther, we endeavor to put his " freedom" in
immediate practice on ourselves, as he in-
tended. Thus among the many " free" things
by which the Government and richer classes
of England bamboozle the world and gorge
themselves, is that commercial heaven of
supposed equality, presumed reciprocal jus-
tice, and imaginary eternal right, they call
" free trade ;" which, with the fervent hope
that our readers will, from the examples of
wordy abuse, Jesuitism, and British policy,
we have already given them, be cautious in
the use of phrases of British manufacture,
and endeavor to attain for themselves the
true meaning of the words they use, and to
represent in just sounds their own real
thoughts, we shall now proceed to explain.

To a man who measures greatness by the
bale, even to one who has seen New- York,
the lower portion of Liverpool presents
a spectacle beyond all measure sublime.
Warehouses piled up on warehouses, till their
upper stories seem to overtop the highest

masts of the fleets before them ; docks end-
less, walled round, in which, each with its
appropriate location and number, lie the
commercial navies of the world ; wharves
sinking with the load of raw produce, wheat,
cotton, corn, leather, live-stock, dead-stock,
not yet gorged into the warehouses, and of
wares and merchandise, and "Christianity"
not yet disgorged from them ; pulleys run-
ning, ropes creaking, derricks swinging
about ; mates yelhng to lusty seamen, sea-
men groaning at their lusty toil ; majestic
heavy horses dragging the contents of ware-
houses; burly drivers with lean legs and
wooden brogues working along at a shng trot ;
Irish porters upheaving Atlantean bales ;
"emancipated and disenthralled" negroes
struggling under the weight of burthens —
it is a sight to gladden the soul of the bale-
worshipper. Here are indeed collected the
products of the world — un wrought iron from
Sweden, wool from Ireland and Australia,
silk and cotton from the Indies and the
United States ; wheat, flour, corn, maize,
dead pigs and live pigs, everything eatable
from an ox to a cabbage head, manufactur-
able from the raw produce fit for a nigger
baby's cotton pocket-handkerchief, to the
gold of Siberia or the Sacramento, the sil-
ver of a Mandarin's zone, or the gemmed
eye of a Hindoo god, with which to form
and grace the tiaras and the diadems of
royalty — the edible gathered together from
the States, from Poland, from Asia Minor,
from Ireland ; the manufacturable from Chi-
na, Hindostan, Cashmere, Persia, North and
South America, Africa, Oceanica, and the scat-
tered islands of the main — wines from Xeres,
Oporto, Champagne, and the Rhine, may-
hap from Italy too, fine old Falernian, brand-
ed on every barrel with its " consule Plan-
co" — spices from the Southern Seas, teas
from China, opium from India, luxuries from
everywhere — but nothing, not an ounce
weight from England ! No, not a particle
of that universal produce of the world which
is piled up into these warehouses, or dis-
gorged from them, has been grown in Eng-
land. The tea has come hitherward from
the farthest East to get itself drank ; the
wines have congregated from Europe, even
from the Httle island of Madeira, all under
the influence of " free trade," and of their
own accord, to look after mouths in Britain ;
the food cereal and animal of the globe has
gathered itself here to get itself worked into

1850.

Free Trade.

521

human flesh and horse flesh, and goods, dry
and soft, and hardware — the products of all
earth have been coming into this port, to get
something done with themselves.

Crossing the hills to ]\Ianchester, you see
a city peopled by chimneys — hundreds of
thousands of men and women and children
toiling night and day the year round, wheels
working, looms going : b^it here, too, not a
particle of that upon which they work has
been grown in England ; not a particle of
that on which they exist while working has
been grown in England ; and not a particle,
we may say, of that upon which their labor
is expended is to remain in England.

As we have written of Liverpool, so might
we describe London, and every other port —
as we have written of Manchester, so might
we describe Yorkshire, Leeds, Sheffield, Bir-
mingham, and every other " manufacturing
district." They eat, and drink, and live on
the produce of others.

But surely the soil of England produces
something ; hmited as it is it gives some
wealth. Well, behold it ; magnificent de-
mesnes, ^venues long drawn out in exquisite
perspective, gorgeous palaces scattered here
and there through the woodland ; fields, too,
occasionally tilled, setting off" the landscape,
but by no means sufficient to raise food for
one tenth or one hundredth of the popula-
tion round the docks, or round the factories.
And why should these fields be put to such
a use ? These pasture lands and tilled ground
do not belong to the English people — they
have been decreed to a different owner —
for they belong to one of those governing
classes who only are supposed to have rights
and property, called the landed aristocracy,
and the sacred use of this " sacred soil of
Britain " is to raise rent for them.

Everywhere else there is an aristocracy of
something. Railway scrip, bank stock,
money, selling, transferring, and re-selling ;
all are managed by aristocrats, and found
very productive. The worship of God there,
too, is entirely managed by aristocrats, and
found uncommonly productive, and very re-
viving.

And throughout the throng, high over the
din of cities, rising above the factory chim-
neys, above the warehouses, following you
even by stealth into the distant fields, rises the
cry of " Free trade." Stop the fat merchant
running to the custom or the counting house,
and ask him what drives him — he roars at

you, " Free trade." Stop any other man,
merchant, manufacturer, banker, importer,
exporter, or commission agent, and ask him
the same, and he answers too, "Free
trade." It seems the salutatory prayer of a
new religion, as Pax vobiscum was of the
old.

Now suppose we stop the whole of them
in their career, and wait till we find out
what really to the Englishman this sponta-
neous shibboleth, or divine ovatory prayer of
" Free trade," means.

His country, you see, is a huge warehouse
groaning beneath the weight of merchan-
dise, made, finished, and needing nothing to
be done with it except for somebody to take
it away — with cotton spun into cloth, iron
wrought into knives, sabres, and steam en-
gines ; into everything from a needle to an
anchor ; from a tin whistle to a Britannia tu-
bal bridge ; with fabrics, wares, and fabricated
commodities of all kinds — but with no raw
material with which to fabricate more, unless
you or some other foreign nation bring it to
him, and take away some of his surplus
" goods " in exchange ; no food to eat while
he is fabricating more, unless you or some
other foreign nation bring it to him, and take
away likewise " goods." In such a state he
therefore, of course, offers every inducement
to you to come in with your yslw produce —
every possible inducement to you to lighten
his load of " goods," and, by way of exchange,
feed him. And therefore, by his cry of
" Free trade," one of his principal induce-
ments to you, you are to understand this,
and nothing else : " Come into my shop and
buy — here are heaps of cloths I cannot eat ;
iron utensils in mountains I cannot drink,
unless I were the Wizard of the North, who
swallows carving knives and gets quite hila-
rious with the sparkling draught : but here
I am, loaded with wealth which is useless to
me ; here am I, the Midas of civilization, im-
mersed to the chin in a river of ' wealth,'
the very w^ater of which, when I stoop to
drink of it, is ' hardware,' or cloth, or ' fancy
articles !' Oh, I starve, I die ! Bring in your
corn, and take my cloth ; your wines, and take
my cutlery ; your ' eighteen-pound-ten,' O
simple youth of the Vicar of Wakefield,
and take my ' gross of spectacles with sha-
green cases !' "

The Englishman's notion of " free trade"
is something more. " Bring me your cotton
and your wool," it means ; " I have ' hands'

622

British Policy Here and There :

N'ov.

up there at Manchester, thousands of them,
who have no raw cotton, no raw wool to
spin, and who cannot hve save by spinning-
cotton, or, which is the same, whom I cannot
afford to let live otherwise than by spinning-
cotton ; and who, if , I do not get cotton for
them to spin, will either enter upon the land
by force — sacred to the uses of growing rent —
or eat me ; and therefore, good gentlemen
from South Carolina and Ohio, pity the sor-
rows of a poor old Englishman, and bring me
your cotton and your wool, and something
to eat meanwhile, and I ^vill spin the former
for you, and when I have kept my ' hands '
going, and kept their clutches off the land,
and off myself, and fed them, and paid my-
self, and provided for my large family — you
can get back a little if you bring more pro-
duce to set me going a second time !"

The Enfylishman's " free trade" means, in
fact and simple truth, that his trade is to
make free with you whoever you are, and
your productions whatever they may be, and
live and enrich himself and keep his people
from eating him, by transforming your wealth
into something else which is therefore his ;
transforming: Carolinian cotton and Ohio
wheat into a compound known as " dry
goods ;" putting in a lady's pocket handker-
chief and taking out a pair of live rabbits ;
and permitting you to admire the operation
on paying the expenses — boiling, in fact,
your pudding in his hat, and giving you a
bit to show you he has done it ; and so like
any other necromancer or charlatan, he lives
on the gullibility of the public by means of
his " black art " of " free trade," and with
loud-sounding noise and much elegance and
luxury.

" But stay, Mr. "Writer," says a worthy
democrat and devotee of Anglican civiliza-
tion near us ; " Free trade means mpre than
that. England, that great country which
ever takes the first step in the path of hu-
man progress, and is the foremost in sacri-
ficing itself at the altar of liberalism, has
shown, by its late amended tariff, an exam-
ple to the world of true ' free trade ;' it has
removed all taxes and impositions on the
import of corn, and one of our Western
growers can now bring his crop into the
markets of England, with as httle expense,
excepting additional carriage and loss by
the way, as into Boston or New- York — is
not that ' free trade V " Not a bit of it. Sir.
You can transfer your money from your

pocket to mine with perfect ease — I will ac-
cejot it, nay, I will thank you, as I want the
money ; but, if you are fool enough to make
the transfer — is that free trade ? The fact is,
your corn and other produce needed by Eng-
lishmen, were not coming into their granaries
fast enough ; certain annoying villains about
the shop door, called landed aristocrats, used
to exact a tax off the customers to the great
shop ; and so the shop-owners turned out
with their clerks and workmen, and drove
the villains off, — and that is the whole story.

Such a great example of " true free
trade " is no new thing in this country ; only,
stupid beings that we are, we do not know it
when it happens. Mr. Barnum took the Cas-
tle Garden lately to exhibit Jenny Lind ; he
had seven thousand tickets to sell, and ad-
vertised them for sale by auction on the
spot. The proprietors of the Garden hav-
ing agreed to admit the audience to the per-
formance, but not havino; ao-reed to admit
the purchasers to the auction, le\aed a tax
of a shilling on each individual, before they
would give him permission to enter and
leave his money behind him. It was clearly
Mr. Barnum's interest to get rid of this tax
on his customers ; it kept out many, and
made all who entered irascible. But the
proprietors of the shop-ground wanted their
rent, and took this means of getting it, by
legal extortion on Mr. Barnum's customers
and to Mr. Barnum's loss. Accordingly,
that very wise gentleman exhibited himself
to his customers, assured them in the bland-
est manner it was none of his fault — that it
was his anxious desire to let in every one
who wished to purchase, without charging
them anything for the privilege of merely
buying his goods — that he would, upon his
honor, rather pay the tax out of his own
pocket, and that he would pay it ; and ac-
cordingly he did pay it, and bought off the
landlords and cleared his shop door; and
immediately sent out his bell-men in all di-
rections to say that everybody who pleased
could now come in and buy his tickets with-
out hiring special leave to do so ; and the
more the better.

Now when Mr. Barnum did that, he ex-
actly went through the manoeuvre executed
by the makers of the present English tariff;
he " repealed his corn laws," to wit — took as
noble a step in the progress of civilization,
made as great a sacrifice to the principle of
" free trade," as ever did the English ; he

1850.

Free Trade,

623

actually took an offensive duty off an article
loved by all shopmen at any price, and known
as " good customers ;" got thereby more and
better pleased customers into his shop, sold
his superabundant ticket merchandise, took
the money, and put it in his pocket for Mrs.
Barnum ; and by this plain essay in personal
political economy, he is making a fortune.
But in doing so, he, not being an English-
man, did not attempt to make it be believed
he was making any sacrifice to his custom-
ers, or giving them any advantage of trade
whatever ; or that he was " free" or " liberal"
in any way, except in taking their money.
Nay, he did not, even Ae, the Jupiter Tonans
of humbug, the American " nephelegerata
Zeus," the puff-collecting, cheer-exciting
Jove, did not, like the English, exclaim with
sublime resignation that he " was sacrificing
his personal interests at the altar of free
trade — maintaining his avowed and recog-
nized status as the representative of liberal-
ism !" We would have roared at him, either
for his bitter v/it or his extravagant folly, if
he did. But when the British shopmen,
thi'ough the late Peel, the present Russell,
or the ubiquitous Cobden, pretend to the
same gorgeous virtues, and utter the same
hypocritical exclamations, we believe them,
we give them a hipdiurrah, and award them,
for their downright lying, " immortahty ;"
nay, we bring our wealth in loads to their
shop, and actually go away with the belief we
have been gainers, because they did not
charge us extra for depriving us of it I"^

* Mr. Carey, a name to which both the last and
the present generations owe much, and to which
future generations will owe infinitely more, has al-
ready investigated this subject with the acuteness
of a profound analyst, and elucidated it in a sin-
gularly exact nomenclature. The present writer,
not presuming to tread in the footsteps of a man
who has made such gigantic strides into a science
hitherto to most persons occult, and known even
dimly but to few, but having, from personal obser-
vation, (brought home to him by stubborn facts and
events productive of no ordinary economic crises,)
acquired a matter-of-fact knowledge of much
scientifically inves igated by Mr. Carey, has ven-
tured, in a plain and simple manner, to treat of a
question involving the commerce of the world, and
the fate for good or ill of American democracy.
Not therefore desiring the rank of an economist,
nor aiming in the least at a nomenclature singu-
larly expressive to those who have studied it, in-
comprehensible to those who have not, he desires
to be understood as endeavoring to simplify the
comprehension of old truths, rather than to discover
new ones, and writing not for the philosophic

The "great English movement in free
trade," as far as corn goes, was therefore
simply to admit more easily the customers
most needed. Peter Funk in Broadway,
selling gold watches, has men stationed out-
side to help his customers in, to all but drag
them in : great " free trader," is Peter Funk !
And so of cotton, and all other raw produce
which the English people have not, and
which they want to transform from other
people's produce into their manufacture^ upon
which they wish to employ their hands and
enrich themselves. Any man who comes
with the wherewithal to enrich them, is sub-
ject to no tax, — 'why should he ? Would
it not be outrageous folly in a shopkeeper to
run a bar across his own door to keep out
his best customers, those upon whom he
lives and thrives ? Would not Mr. Barnum
be worthy of exhibition in his own Museum,
as the most insane man that ever had his
senses, if, with his 7,000 tickets to sell, and no
mone}^ in the house to pay his orchestra, or
his rent, or his assistants, or keep up his
Queen of Song, he closed and bolted his

world, but for the general American reader. Hith-
erto, unfortunately, the discussion of every eco-
nomic question, however simple, has been ap-
proached by philosophic dissertations of profound
depth, and conducted in a vocabulary perfectly
frightful to the unsophisticated farme?" or artisan,
whose interests you are debating. The question
as to who should eat A's dinner, Avhether A or B,
and if B eat it, whether A would be the loser of
tlie same ; is made the aim of a battery of words
and authorities it would take a Western wheat-
grower or a Pittsburg puddler the term of his
natural life to understand. The economist, himself
endeavoring to evade pedantry, but habituated
to the use of a phraseology which is to him as glib
as a mother tongue, and which he cannot throw off,
is in such a case in a position similar to Uncle
Toby's, when he advanced redoubts, threw up bas-
tions, sank mines, disposed lunettes, glaciers, and
galleries, and arranged the paraphernalia of a tre-
mendous war, to get at Widow Wadmun's covered
way. The aim of the present writer is to place
plain truths in their plainest light ; and if he can
succeed in this he is content to abandon for ever
all claim to the dignity of a philosopher.

The learned, or those who desire to learn the
rationale of the economic views of which the
present essay can only be taken to contain a few
isolated examples, will find the entire subject dis-
cussed in a clear, logical, and profound manner by
Mr. Carey in his "Past, Present, and Future;" a
book to which the present writer wishes once for
all to express his deep indebtedness. It has be-
come the text book of a new school, and to speak
furth(r in its praise would be superfluous; and
might be effi-ontery.

524

British Policy Here and There :

Nov.

doors, and kept out everybody ? And we,
profoundly acute Americans that we are,
cheer and huzza and laud the Eno^lish, and
ail but worship their grand " liberahsm,"
their unspeakable devotion to the interests
of humanity, and their personal sacrifices to
the progress of civilization, because they do
not do, simply, that — close their doors, keep
everybody out, and starve ! Whether their
" free trade " is free both ways, whether ad-
mitting into their market the sellers of that
which they want, (and the greater compe-
tition in selling to them, the cheaper will
they buy,) and admitting also the purchasers
of that they have, and desire of all things to
get rid of, (and the greater competition in
buying from them, the dearer they can sell ;)
whether, admitting all these, their "free
trade " admits also behind its counters other
sellers of that which they have, other buy-
ers of that which they have not, we shall
presently inquire.

Meantime the question arises, Is not their
trade, such as we have so far described it ;
presuming that they came honestly by
their wares, presuming no compulsion on
any to buy from them or sell to them — that
is, presuming no thieving or organic steal-
ing ; — is not it a, fair trade ?

Certainly it is, undoubtedly it is, — -for
ihem^ — perfectly fair. Every man, and
every nation, has a perfect right to set up
shop for the whole world if he or it likes,
and barter his or its acquisitions, whatever
they may be, for his or its wants, whatever
they may be, and succeed if he or it can, or
go to the devil if he or it pleases. But then
it is right for a stranger, before becoming a
customer in this world-wide shop, to consider
whether it is for his interest that the shop
should succeed — or^o to the devil.

Let us suppose a great store, such as w^e
have described England, filled with merchan-
dise of all kinds ; elegant cloths ; fine cottons
of the handsomest pattern ; shoes ready made,
and of all shapes and sizes ; beautiful pen-
knives ; Britannia metal spectacles with
shagreen cases ; everything, in fact, saleable
as manufactures; but no food — not even
sufficient in the house for a dinner for the
keeper of the store and his family — no money
to pay rent, (which his landlord, cunning
villain that he is, will not take out in
spectacles and shagreen cases,) no money
to pay his bishop, whom he keeps for

his own use, and whose feeling towards
saleable optics is equally refractory ; no
money for several people of the same kind.
Over the shop door is the name, "Mr.
JohannBool;" "Civilization" and "Human
Progress " glare at you in big letters from
his window ; " Free Trade " hangs on flags
from the house-top, and is roared by a lean,
sunk-eyed, big-boned Irish bellman, and an
emaciated, yellow Hindoo, with a tatterde-
malion caftan and a broken gong, at the door.
The same sounds are screamingly re-echoed
by a family of ragged, wretched looking
creatures, at one corner, supposed to belong
to the bellman ; and at the other corner by
a family equally wretched, but yellower and
more lifeless-looking, in " dress" equally rag-
ged, but more tawdry, supposed to belong to
the gong-beater. In the door stands Mr. Jo-
hannBool himself ; red-faced; portly-bellied;
rubbing alternately the back of either hand
with the palm of the other ; and displaying
a look which, to the mahgnant, miffht seem of
fat contentment, but was evidently intended
to be that of a quiet resignation in a good
cause which costs him nothing. In that
store he has everything but his dinner and
customers, and he, poor man ! is looking out
for both.

Opposite to him is the quiet cottage of a
worthy cobbler, who, besides knowing his
trade, has a small garden producing cab-
bages and stuff sufficient for his family.
He can make shoes if he likes, and has
made great numbers of pairs of shoes for the
villagers, before Mr. Johann Bool took the
store opposite ; but now, getting lazy, he
determines not ; and needing a pair of shoes
for his own feet, he takes a different way of
coming at them besides making them ; and
bringing several baskets full of his best cab-
bages, carrots, &c., to the store over the
way, where everything is so cheap, where
there is such shouting about " fair play " and
" free trade," he there barters so much of the
home-grown food of his family, for a wretch-
ed pair of shoes ; and then, returning home
to his wife and children, he seats him down on
his nether end, and keeps admiring the shoes
one while, and digging garden stuff" with them
for another while, till they are fairly worn.
His wife wants shoes too, and his family
generally want shoes, and he, being still lazy,
and with a high, chivalrous, "democratic"
feeling against in-door employment, repeats
the same operation of transfer of stock in

1850.

Free Trade,

525

cabbages and garden stuff to the polite and
agreeable Joliann, who has all the while as-
sured him there is nothing like " free trade ;"
bringing home, ever and always, ready-
made shoes for his wife and children, which
they keep admiring too, they were so cheap,
and bought from so civil and respectable a
man ; until winter comes on, and neither
shoes nor cabbages are left.

Now let us tot up the profit and loss be-
tween the "fi-ee-traders." The garden-owning
shoemaker has eaten up both shoes and
vegetables, and has nothing left, and is
nothing the richer. Mr. Johann Bool has
had excellent dinners and fresh vegetables
every day, and has any quantity of shoes
ready for sale still on hand ; and the Irish
bellman and Hindoo gong-beater, and
their emaciated families at the corners, paid
with vegetable offal from his house, roar
away " free trade " as loudly as ever. He
has got so far rich — the cabbage-growing
shoemaker has got so far poor ; the latter
has no resource left to keep out of the pit
of nakedness and starvation, but to take
to making shoes " at last," or growing more
cabbages for himself and Johann.

" What a fool ! what an ass !" you ex-
claim. Not at all, my dear friend. Do not
be in such a tremendously passionate hurry ;
let us say. What an American !

Bnt no ; we have imagined the garden of
the shoemaker too finite. Let us imagine
it as large as you please, his wealth out of
it is hmited to the area which he tills, and
his power of culture in cabbages may be as
infinite as you please. Whence the differ-
ence ? Is a man who has played the fool, none
the less a fool, because he has money laid by,
on which he can afford longer to play the
fool ? Can a man who is rich never be robbed ?
And if robbed at all, what difference, in
theory, makes the amount ? The argument
as to a cobbler's cabbage-head is equally
good or bad for a continent's corn. Grant
the cobbler's produce illimitable, and his
idleness constant, he must overdraw his
bank in cabbages at last. He has had other
things to get besides shoes, clothes of wool, of
cotton and flax, and fabrics more costly ; neces-
sities and luxuries, as many as may suit the
requirements in the ai'guro.ent. Suppose,
by exchanging his " raw produce," he is
able to procure everything he needs from
the universal store of Mr. Johann Bool, that

is, if Mr. Bool pleases to take the surplus
cabbages ; well then, he has everything he
needs for the present, and must take to
making shoes or growing more cabbages
to live on in future. It comes to the
same thing. Nay, even supposing, if
you like, that he has surplus cabbages
after all, that makes no difference to any
but the wise Johann. His actual wants
satisfied, the suiylus cabbages may rot, and
hence the cabbage-growing shoemaker hur-
ries in with his cabbages, giving more and
more of them to Mr. Johann, at any value ;
better sell them at a loss than have them
rotting. And thus, the greater the produc-
tion in cabbages of the shoemaker's garden,
the greater are Mr. Bool's gains — the cheaper
he purchases vegetables for self and family. It
is Johann's interest that the shoemaker should
raise the larger crop, and the shoemaker, hav-
ing but one market for his produce, Johann's,
findino; that he can do no more than raise
a yearly crop, to be yearly lost or eaten, or
exchanged with Johann, neglects all his fine
old notions of good farming, wanders over
his farm, tilling the land easiest tilled, grow-
ing here carrots for Johann, here cabbages
for Johann, here onions and asparagus for
Johann, measuring his labor and his toil by
Johann's palate and Johann's shop. Johann
has in soul entered his farm, and effectively
taken possession thereof, chalking out what
plots shall be tilled, what not — how much
must of necessity be tilled for his wants —
how much may or may not. Johann, with
his bellman and gong-driver and starving
families, having first seduced the shoemaker
from his work, now rules him absolutely,
body and soul ; rules him and his I

" What an unfortunate and distressed
tradesman 1 what a truly miserable and de-
graded idiot to leave off his natural toil,
and take to growing stuff for Johann, is this
unhappy cabbage-growing shoemaker," you
exclaim.

Be civil in your terms. Sir ; the shoemaker,
I would have you to know, is a free citizen, on
his own fi'ee land — a good " democrat " too,
rearing of his own free will what cabbages
he pleases, selling them to whom he pleases,
digging with Johann's shoes or without Jo-
hann's shoes for whom he pleases, and to
please himself.

" A democrat ! the idiot," you answer ;
" why, he feeds, keeps up, and works for a vile
aristocrat in Johann ; and willingly subjects

526

British Policy Here and There :

Nov.

himself to a servitude as perfect by ' econo-
my ' as ever any has been by arms, or law.
Democrat ! the idiot, — I had as soon walk
round and round in a mill, with a blind over
my eyes, a turning of a crank, and imagine
myself a free citizen, and not, truly, a horse."

"Sir," hiding our wrath, we patiently
answer, " you must be mistaken ; the worthy
shoemaker we have described is really and
truly a 'democrat,' of the most approved
character, and, like the advertising house-
maids, with any amount of the most unex-
ceptionable city references. You must be
cautious in your phrases ; he is an American,
and pursues this course in obedience to
the known laws of ' free trade,' (British cur-
rency.)"

AVe shall reserve for the present the re-
ply of our intermittent communicator : it
seemed something like " Free trade be
damned !" and a perfect avalanche of blas-
phemies.

But what seems most to astonish our in-
termittent communicator is, that our worthy
friend the shoemaker should for so lono- sub-
mit to this cabbage-growing " theory of life,"
without an attempt some time or other to
relieve himself from it, either by fighting
Johann, or taking to his handicraft again
of making shoes. Either is quite possible —
as even a perversely idle shoemaker has his
hands and strong sympathies in the world ;
but as to fighting Johann, that is mere mad-
ness. What could the garden-growing shoe-
maker gain by even whipping Johann ?
Leave to make shoes ! that he has al-
ready, fight or not fight ; and then by
fighting Johann, so admirable a system foi*
insuring " peace " is this " free trade," he
loses, primo^ a market for his cabbages ;
secundo^ he incurs vast expense and loses
still more cabbages by the fortune of war
and by rotting ; tertio^ he stands in need of
shoes and cannot supply the want ; quarto^
if he fail in conquering Johann, he may be
compelled to pay more cabbages for the " ex-
penses of the war," and incur other punish-
ment for his rashness ; and, if he gain the vic-
tory, all he can do with it is, to begin again
at his old trade of making shoes for self and
family, which he might never have left ofl:"
unless he pleased, and which he might have
resumed at any time without fighting. So
that, provided Johann has food enough
stored up, or can get the loan of it any-
where else, the state of war between Johann

and the cabbage-growing shoemaker is just
this — by a war the shoemaker loses his
market, wants shoes, incurs vast expense in
cabbages, with the hope of gaining nothing
and losing all, — Johann in the event of vic-
tory gains anything he wants ; of defeat,
loses nothing.

To such a deep perdition does the econo-
my of Johann's " free trade " reduce his vic-
tims. And accordingly the worthy shoe-
maker, being a good " democrat," and given
to lip bravado a little, makes the best of a bad
bargain, says he is all for peace with Johann,
that anything else " will not do," and con-
tinues a victim, "not allowing any one to in-
terfere in his concerns," and " having every
right to do what he likes with his own !" At
the same time that, if a neighbor has a back
garden, which just lies into our worthy cob-
bler's, he pitches into him directly, and flogs
him till he roars again, while Johann, with
some protestations as to the injured man's
harmlessness and rights — Johann having had
an eye on these same rights and the garden
himself — does not, however, very strenuously
interfere, knowing, if he did, he must lose one
trade for a little ; and if he do not — the
arable garden of the shoemaker is increased
for him !

" Good God, Sir — you speak of the great
Mexican war !" breaks in our intermittent
friend — " surely, surely, the nation who con-
quered there are not so slavish to a superior
power as to be its hewers of wood and its
drawers of water, boastingly and persist-
ently ; and at the same time so merciless to
a poor inferior."

You will forgive us. Sir, we are compelled
to answer ; your temper exceeds discretion.
We are, you will recollect, in America, and
speaking of trade.

By his trade, then, the worthy shoemaker
may fitfully attempt to renew his fortunes ;
for, as we have said, he is not alone in the
world ; and, before Mr. Johann Bool estab-
lished his store, the worthy man used to
make shoes for all the villagers. But his
trade exists no longer. He might as well
never have been a tradesman, never have
practised his trade in that village, for all he
can do with it now. Once he entered Mr.
Johann's store, he left his trade behind him
at the threshold. He ceased to be an inde-
pendent workman from that hour, and be-
came, will he, nill he, a cabbage-grower for
ever. The wheel-wright, the carpenter, the

1850.

Free Trade.

521

smith, the loom-weaver, the corn-grower,
and the rest of his neighbors to whom he
formerly supplied, or might have supplied
shoes, in return for their produce or their
handicraft, have followed him to the store of
Mr. Johann for their shoes, too ; have indeed
been compelled to go there, since the worthy
cobbler would make shoes for no one, not
even himself; and once they entered his
shop, Mr. Johann has found inducements for
them to return. His shoes on sale are done
up to suit the eye, are cheaper too, can be
brought down to any price. Then there is so
much cry of " Free trade," and so much will-
ingness to suit a customer, the villagers too
have followed the bent of the lord of the un-
used awl and productive cabbage garden.
Mr. Johann has established with them many
complicated relations in buying and selling,
and they cannot leave off to suit the wants
or fantasies of the regretful cobbler. Johann
has sold pots and pans, and iron Avorks of all
kinds to this man and that, and ruined the
trade of the village smith ; furniture and
boxes to t'other man, and ruined the trade of
the village carpenter ; he has shoved out
everybody, and walked into everybody. All
the shoemaker's neighbors have sunk to his
level and become produce growers, tributa-
ries to Mr. Johann, holding their farms for
his use, selecting the spots of ground most
suitable to his market, the crops most delec-
table to his palate, the quantities most nearly
calculated to fill the variable vacua of his
maw. The whole village for miles about
has become tributary to him : he clothes
everybody with such covering as he can af-
ford to give them ; decks them in cottons,
or tawdry ribbons, or dull comatose vel-
vets, as he pleases. From having originally
been in need of actual food and of a single
customer, he has now become lord and
manager of all. Every man, laying aside
his trade, now struggles for the privilege of
supplying Johann. Instead of suing for
customers, he now threatens to punish the
refractory by not living on him, by allowing
his produce to rot, and leaving him naked of
shoes and clothes. He plays off the avarice
of one man, against the independent feeling,
or the regretful industry of another. The
once happy village becomes an assemblage
of warring, but independent, serfs ; and
should any attempt be made to unite, Jo-
hann threatens the whole with " disunion !"
The little houses, once so full of thrift, have

become dirty, tawdry, and disorderly — the
farms m half tilled, and that half badly —
everybody does as he pleases, without caring
for anybody else ; and Johann and " Free
Trade " have become lords of all. He is
alone rich and independent — all else is poor
and slavish.

Now imagine — we must beg pardon of
our intermittent colloquist for stopping his
mouth yet a little — now imagine the shoe-
maker and his friends, by laziness or other
cause interfering, to be hindered from carry-
ing with their own hands their produce to
Johann's store, or their purchases back.
The worthy cobbler, for instance, employs a
boy of Johann's to bring to the store his
cabbages, and back the shoes, and pays
the boy for each journey a cabbage-head.
There is established " commerce " — and
commerce, as the little boy's trade of go-be-
tween, between the lazy shoemaker and Jo-
hann, is called — being one of the great and
most interesting desiderata of the age and
of civilization — advances with a stupendous
rapidity. Everybody employs the little
urchin go-between — he is eternally running
hither and thither for his cabbage-head per
journey or other fee ; and it seems really so
entertaining and delightful to enrich him,
that the inhabitants of the village, taking
their start note from Mr. Johann, seem to
think that everything is much bettered and
''ameliorated" by being carried to and fro via
the errand-boy ; that nothing is good with-
out being carried to and fro via the pot-boy,
and the little pot-boy paid for the carriage —
that in fact the great object of their society
and life, is to provide matters for the little
boy to carry here and there, via the store of
Johann ; to keep him eternally going, via
Bool's door. Johann, in euphoneous accents,
has assured the villagers that supporting and
enriching his pot-boy is "the advancement
of commerce," sometimes he adds of " en-
hghtenecl commerce," (as if there can be
much enhghtenment in paying a little boy to
carry onions and cabbages to a grocer's,) and
the villagers believe him : he assures them
further, that this " enlightened commerce,"
or method of supporting his pot-boy, and of
course further enriching himself, is a part
also of the " civilization" and " free trade,"
printed in his windows and roared by the bell-
man and the gong-driver ; and they, very
properly in this instance, beheve him too —
for they are now satisfied that this " civiliza-

628

British Policy Here and There /

Nor.

tion" and " free trade," witli the addition of
" enlightened commerce," must really be a
very valuable set of articles, though they
cannot exactly comprehend why — inasmuch
as the last has made the cabbage-heads, and
all other produce disappear twice as fast as
before. So very good and blessed are they,
that they have ruined the whole village !

Now let the street before Mr. Johann's
house become a wide ocean ; lej: the pot-boy
become legions of pot-boys, go-betweens and
captains and crews of go-betweens, endless
and innumerable, with carts and carters,
wagons on road and rail, with ships of
steam-power and sail, less capable of being
numbered than the bright atoms floating in
the azure main of night — and then the un-
fortunate shoemaker, the miserable village,
with its people, and its industry, and its pro-
duce dependent on the will of a foreign
huxter, and of the "free trade" machina-
tions of a restless pot-boy ; growing food not
for the mouths of its own children, but the
palate or the greed of a distant trader ; waiting
before it can clothe itself with a rag on the
winds and waves, on the inconstant heaven
and the vagaries of a go-between ; absolutely
servile and patient; not daring to make
even for itself one cloth, still less daring to
wage an useless war on the vampire in
whose fangs its heart-blood is squeezed out
on the world ; divided and at war with itself
for the privilege of pandering to the markets
of a hated superior, becomes

We fear to proceed — our intermittent
communicator stands aghast and speechless.
His head sinks low upon his chest, and he
utters in a long, deep, groaning wail of woe,
" America, my country I"

Ht % % % % %

Of a truth we have not been luxuriating
in a fable. The cobbler and his neighbors
are not "allegories on the banks of the
Nile," but melancholy realities on the banks
of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the
Mississippi. Nay, we have barely touched
upon the worst features of the reality. In
a land new as this, whose virgin soil has
hardly yet had time, anywhere, to lose its
luxuriant freshness, and the vigor of a long
and peaceful adolescence beneath the pro-
tecting umbrage of the fertilizing forest;
whose entire population are not too nu-
merous to be supported in plenty, and even
splendor, upon the well-directed wealth of its
smallest State — in a land where coal and

iron inimitably abound, wherein every raw
produce fit for manufacture is spontaneous
or capable of easy naturalization; wherein
every species of human food bursts in teeming
plenty from the earth, every luxurious fruit
of every zone grows wild, — in such a land is
it not a strange and unnatural paradox, con-
sequent on some extreme national folly, or
perverse ill deed of men, that there the
wages of the laborer should be often below
the standard of old and worn-out empires^
and seldom above it ; taken even coiTelatively
with the abundance of sustenance, not for
him — that there, too, the laborer shou^ld be
found wanderino' on the streets and hiojh-
ways, without food and without shelter, a
beggar and an outcast ? Is it not strange
that in this land, started in its career of em-
pire upon a basis of equality, upon whose
fields there is no embargo of feudality, upon
whose rivers no superior right of water-way
forbidding the presence of a mill-wheel — is
it not strange, we say, that after some sixty
years of national freedom to do or be idle, half
its population should now be found landless,
without a spot of earth to call their own^
and yet that they and the whole population
should be indebted for its clothing and its
luxuries to a foreigner 1 Is it not strange
that on this water-way and that, you find a
mill in ruins, or a factory tenantless and
silent, while even the richest soils of her
oldest States have been abandoned for the
distant fields of prairies, or the mountain
slope ? Ask, Why are these things ? There
can be but one answer, " Free trade" and Eng-
land. Daily and hourly the hand of Eng-
land drives men back from the soil of New-
York and the elder States, to the forests of
the W est ; blows the roofs ofi:' factories ;
smothers the new-lit furnace ; banishes, dissi-
pates, coerces, as firmly, surely, and nakedly
as if it acted through red-coats and police.
Even with our boundless wealth, thus have
mendicancy, want, prostitution, thieving,
overtaken us. Young as we are, we suffer all
the ills of an obese and spendthrift monarchy.
Our hells vie with Parisian ; our " distressed
needle-women" are as numerous and as
wretched as those of London, and our in-
stances of infanticide, before and after birth,
are, taken in connection with our inimitable
resources, and our hmited population, almost
as numerous as those of the Chinese, or the
votaries of the Egyptian Saturn. Why are
these things — why is it that our laborers are

1850.

Free Trade,

529

sinking to the level of those of Europe ? Be-
cause " free trade " with England has made
us tributary to her — because our labor is not
motive save to her will — because, with all
our "liberty," we are not independent.
You may dig out the boulders of gold from
about the heart of old mother Terra — it
matters not — while " free trade'' (British cur-
rency) continues ; while this country is but
a sieve to England ; while wealth is to pass
by the face of the laborer and the unfortu-
nate here, to feed laborers in a distant land ;
while the plentiful year brings no food to our
workman, while the riches of the rich bring no
labor to him, you may become an inordi-
nately wealth-producing nation, but are in re-
ality but the Yxohox 'province of another. That
other drags away your food and scatters it
upon the wide ocean ; piles it in its granaries
and manures with it its fields — but you,
less grateful than the senseless tree which
gives back to the soil that nourishes it, nu-
triment in return, give to your soil no return,
no sign to God or man that you are grate-
ful for the fulness of the land, or that you
desire to reproduce its abundance. What
then can you exj)ect, but that as the absen-
tee mouths cry for more, more should be
given them — that according to a foreign will,
not yours, a foreign law, a foreign appetite,
not yours, your country should be regulated,
tilled and labored ? What can you expect
but a nomadic sociality, a vagabond, and
sort of Bedouin existence ; that to suit the
markets of a foreigner, or in obedience to
his intention, mills should be dashed into
ruins, factories made roofless ; that rich
lands should be made tenantless, and the
assiduous tiller driven ever and ever farther
back into the newer and cheaper prairie ?
Then come of necessity, into the deserted
hamlets, infamy, penury, and crime, as
surely as the beasts and unclean birds of
the desert find their best homes amid the
ruined cities of men ; then of necessity come
idle labor, " unfortunate females," " distressed
needle-women," infanticide, hells, and that
social perdition which yaAvns under the
thrones and the castles of England. Grow-
ers of food for export you may become to
any extent, producers of gold, realizers of
Golconda dreams for others, but rich you
can never be, nor happy, nor fixed ; builders
of mighty cities, owners of vast domains, to
perish utterly, leaving not a trace, like that
race which in some anterior age preceded

you in the passing occupancy of this continent,
and left in the silent cities of Central Amer-
ica but the awe-inspiring mementoes of its
death. That nation must utterly perish from
the face of the earth which uses its freedom
to make itself a beggar, and expends its
wealth in building itself a tomb.

The incipient drunkard laughs at the notion
of reform. lie tells you drink does lihn no
harm — that he never felt it hurt his constitu-
tion— that when he does feel it hurtful he will
" pull up." You turn away in pity or con-
tempt ; knowing ^vell that when it shall come
to that pass with him, when his constitution
shall have fairly given out and become
bankrupt, wiien he shall have felt his vice
hurtful, that then, if he wait to that, he is a
lost and a doomed man. While his natural
energies endure against an unnatural prac-
tice, he feels no hurt, and has a recuperative
power ; but when before repeated draughts
the energies have fallen, there has fallen
with them, too, all power of recovery. He
has become for hfe a sot — the iron will has
sunk to the effeminacy and the maudlin tears
of a child, and the man, timid and silent,
passes away like a shadow from the earth,
regretful that he ever existed, and cursing
even the freedom and the advantages which
he so criminally abused to his ruin. So of
the spendthrift, who flings a^vay money be-
cause he can afford it, who keeps no count
because he has a treasure at his banker's.
He finds there is a limit to that too, when
he has squandered it, and left himself a beg-
gar, even as the cobbler found a limit to
his cabbages. The sot and the prodigal we
pity or we despise. For these indi\dduals we
have sympathies or disgust to overflowing.
We make them household lessons for our
children, introduce them in tragedy and melo-
drama for the terror of the young, and the
improvement even of the old ; nay, we pay
Barnum day after day for exhibiting one
of them to " the working classes."

But we are blind to similar ^ices and
follies in thirty millions, wdien these milUons.
are ourselves. Day after day, and hour
after hour, we hear ii said, laughingly, " The
Republic will last our day ;" " we can afford
this English free trade ;" " it never has
hurt our constitution ;" " when it shall hurt
us we will pull up." Wherein do ye dif-
fer from the sot and the prodigal ? Is the
\ice the less, because, to practise it, you have

530

British Policy Here and There :

Kov. .

not one moutli and one pair of hands only, but
thirty milhons of mouths and thirty miUions
of pairs of hands ? Is your prodigahty less
wrong than the spendthrift's, because he flings
away but a thousand or two, you a hundred
milhons ? Depend upon it, your millions
too have a limit. Not a grain of corn, not
a blossom of cotton can you afford to lose.
It was given to you in exuberant plenty not to
be cast away, but beneficently administered ;
not to support old tyrannies, but to reproduce
new freedom ; not to help to enslave an old
continent, and make a desert of a new one,
but to liberate the old, and eternalize the
Heaven-sent freedom of the new.

But our intermittent friend will have it
that America is a great — the greatest coun-
try ; that in the first seventy years of her
freedom she has risen from a neglected
colony to the rank A 1 in nations. Be it
so. During that time too the wheelbarrow
and old go-cart have grown in magnitude
and power to the dimensions and force of a
locomotive, with its train of carriages steam-
ing along from twenty to fifty miles an
hour. Small thanks to the old wheel-
barrow, or the go-cart ! During that time
the lazy old lubberly merchantman, which
took three months to cross the Atlantic,
has grown into leviathan steamships,
twisting and dashing through the waters
like things of monstrous life, at any velocity
they please. Small thanks to the old
merchant hulk or its owners ! During that
time too, the little boy, who used to be
paid an obolus for running with messages
from village end to village end, has become
seated in his office, as an operator of the
telegraph, speeding his messages from pole
to pole, from zenith to nadir, fleeter than
God can make the world turn. And though
the little go-boy may become very proud,
and consider himself a great fellow on his
new stool, who thanks him for the change ?
Is his new position anything but the eftect
of a superior power, discovering and fash-
ioning the telegraph, and raising him like a
puppet to his stool ? During the same-
seventy years, the ancient boor, whose engi-
neering art in manufactures consisted of
throwing a shuttle from hand to hand, or
sitting beside a water sluice, watching the
water running into a mill-wheel, now letting
it on, now turning it off*, by shpping up and
down a board, has become the director of a

huge machinery, with boilers, cylinders, pis-
tons, cranks, and endless wheels, rolling out
at a single stroke the work of a thousand
looms, or crushing into the dust, fit for food,
the produce of a thousand granaries. And
who considers thanks for that due to the poor
boor ? During the same time, Caxton's
hand-press has increased in size, and strength,
and accuracy, and has changed its name to
" Hoe's double-cylinder patent steam print-
ing press and folding machine." And who
fancies that the germ of growth lay in the
old hand-press, or that the manipulation of
the old printer, who owned it, produced
Hoe's machinery ? During that time, too,
feudality has been uprooted in central Europe ;
new ideas have been born to the world,
new hopes and new impulses to men. Who
gives to Madame Dubarry, or Louis the Well-
beloved, or the pare aux cerfs^ the honor of
causing or originating these things ? Dur-
ing these seventy years the whole world
has moved more than it ever did in a thou-
sand years before ; and in that grand era
of advancing manhood, the American na-
tion, leaping into its new-won liberty ; with
its hand newly loosed from bonds, with its
young heart bursting for action, with re-
sources yet untouched, and unprecedented
for magnificence; has "doubled its population
every twenty years," and grown more food
than any other nation under the sun, and
wasted it every atom. During that time it
has begotten mouths for itself to an incon-
ceivable extent. It has raised food for the
whole world, made its country a stock farm
for every old and lazy empire, made its
luckiest children the stewards of a foreigner,
and the wearers of a foreign livery, and
driven the rest back, and ever back, to the
wilderness, " to extend the area of freedom,"
and become thereon the stewards of the for-
eigner's stock farm aforesaid. But, from the
hour of its freedom to this, it has not in-
creased its nationality by a tittle, not solidified
its national hfe by an atom, not attempted
by any means to eradicate the provincial
habitudes remaining even after the acquisi-
tion of liberty, but has, increasing in its growth
and power of national manhood, increased,
too, in the habitudes of its former provincial
servilities. Before the war of independence,
the Virginian converted his tobacco into
clothing, by freighting it in a ship and dis-
patching it round from his right hand to his
left, via Liverpool. The New-Yorker or

1850.

Free Trade.

531

New-Englander converted liis corn into
clothing, by the same process, via Liver-
pool. The South Carolinian changed his
raw cotton into cotton wove, by the same
transmarine alchemy, via Liverpool. To
this hour, when a AVestern man wishes to
give his Virginian or Carolinian brother corn
for tobacco or cotton, he has, too, to send it
off via Liverpool, and there exchange. Bos-
ton, New-York and New-Orleans are but
the depots of Liverpool. What need, then,
is there for the English to use against the
American nation the force or the naked
perfidy it uses against Ireland and India ?
What need to subject it to the bright steel, or
bring against it the boom of the noble can-
non ? To a nation which uses its " freedom "
to enslave itself, why should not every " free-
dom " be accorded ? 'I o a nation which
swallows the cant of " free trade," and, in-
stant, rushes to its ruin, what need to say
more than " free trade ?" May not an Eng-
Hshman truly say, it is mad policy for him
to use us as a rival, when we are the blind-
est, and patientest, and most extravagant of
his supporters.* In the years of the War of

* See (if any one with eyes, and his optic nerves
all right, cannot see the fact otherwise) an , article
in a late " London Morning Herald " extracted into
the October number of " Hunt's Merchant's Mag-
azine," and entitled " The United States, England's
Best Customer," — Mr, Johann Bool and the poor
Bhoemaker, to wit ! The " Morning Herald " is
the stupidest London newspaper we wot of; and
yet it sees it. Its facts are never new, its statis-
tics seldom right, and its parody on Anglo-Saxon
occasionally readable ; and yet in the article re-
ferred to, these very plain sentences occur : —

" The Americans are, therefore, our best foreign
customers, individually, if we may so speak, [you
have our full permission, old Croaker;] but they
are, also, by far our best customers regnrding them
as a nation. * * *. " [Here follow statistics,
showing by how many millions the Americans
have really, in 1848, proved themselves fools; the
accuracy of which the ghost of poor Shoiidan,
who studied " compound division " to enable him to
overthrow Pitt when Chancellor of the Exchequer,
may determine ; — we need not just now, for the
article concludes in this fashion :]****

" Taking the amount of their [to wit, the Ameri-
can] consumption of 1841, [to wit, the small scale
of American folly ten years ago, before the tariff
of '46 by five years, and before the coming of Sir
Henry Bulwer, British politician and saviour of
our iron trade, by many more,] namely, £9,500,000,
we still find the States consuming less than a
quarter of our exports, while we consume more
than two thirds of the whole of theirs in the same
year, amounting to more than £27,000,000 ster-
ling ;" to wit, $134,000,000 sterling (of our money).
That is to gay, throwing off little fractions — as go-

Independence, and of 1812, when England
did treat this nation as a rival, no Ameri-
can food was grown for British mouths.
No American, unless he were a smuggler,
dishonored his back by wearing a British
livery, because he could not. In those years,
the balance of trade between the nations lay
thus : the British side, debtor, a sound whip-
ping; the American side, credit, victory.
And manufactures at home grew and flour-
ished with the national glory and the na-
tional prowess. Now, in this peaceful year
of 1850, we shall have given the British na-
tion a hundred milhon dollars' worth of food
and raw produce. We shall have received
from it, primo^ rags ; secundo^ mendicancy ;
tertio^ the position of the worthy shoemaker
towards Mr. Johann Bool. Freedom, na-
tional growth, and splendor, and that won-
drous and blind exaltation of our own
prowess we have, have made in seventy yeai"S
out of the vahant combating colony, which,
in the days of plain-spoken and justice-
loving, upright men, fought to the death
against this commercial superiority of Eng-
land, this vile system of " economic " plun-
der, have made out of such a colony a hun-
dred milHon of times a more productive
province to its former masters. And thus
for seventy years we have been living —
building ships, reclaiming prairie, tilling
the soil of America, to bring to England
seventy hundred millions, more or less, of
the marrow of her soil, and the sweat of her
children ; to take back in return rags to the
unfortunate growers, cotton kerchiefs and
gowns, sixteen-bladed pen-knives, and se\'en-
ty hundred milhons, if you will, real plated
iron spectacles and bran-new shagreen cases.

Before closing this section of the subject
it may be well to see what other nations
without any of our advantages, and with
innumerable disadvantages of their own,
have done from time to time in the firet
periods of their liberty.

For a hundred years the little country of
the Netherlands, a mere cast-off swamp of

ahead, " clever" fellows like us must, with an old
friend who has treated us to a harbor full of tea,
and a scalping revolution afterwards, ought— for
every dollar's worth of the "manufactures" they
send us, we, videlicet the cute Yankees, give them iu
payment three dollars' worth ! Neither the boast-
ing of " the Morning Twaddle," nor the space of a
note is sufiicient, however, to do justice to these
statistics.

682

British Policy Here and There :

Nov.

Europe, or deposit of her arterial sewerage,
straggled against the tyranny and the plun-
der of the then omnipotent, the feudal, and
the despotic Spain. Her trade had been
banned, her commerce taxed, her industry
ruined. In the reign of the Spanish Philip
she arose from her mud into liberty, and
within that hundred years of her labor she
established not only freedom, but manufac-
tures ; not only nominal, but material inde-
pendence. Her history since then is on
the hp of every lover of freedom, of every
admirer of sturdy industry. Though ridden
down by every cavalry of Europe, though
scuttled and sunk a dozen times or so, it
" made no difference" ; she arose to the sur-
face again with her gear all standing, and her
flag more honored, and still preserves her
integrity, and feeds and clothes herself; and,
should the world around her tumble into
chaos, can do so still.

That was the work of her first seventy
years of freedom ; without steam, railroads,
telegraphs, or the like ; and, she may thank
the God who watches over her mud-holes,
without British influences of " free trade " or
American folly to fall beneath them.

There was a time, too, when England
scorned " free trade," as she would the
seductive phrases of a swindler. In the
reign of the Eighth Henry ; he who came
after the humiliation of the feudal barons,
to humiliate, in his rough and sinful way, a
very sinful and debased Church, and raise
up one still more debasing and himself, — in
his reign, England stood in relation to Hol-
land and the Netherlands, precisely as Amer-
ica now stands in relation to England. The
markets of London, we are told, were filled
" with iron, lumber, and leather, ready
manufactured ; and nails, locks, baskets,
cupboards, stools, tables, chests, girdles,
saddles, and painted cloths " — the chronicler
does not add, Dutch metal spectacles and
shagreen cases ; but as Don Juan said, with
reference to some small matters of a difter-
ent character, "we may suppose them."
The English, exactly, grew food for the
Dutch, and the Dutch ate it — wool for the
Dutch, and the Dutch wove it — leather for
the Dutch, and the Dutch made out of it
knights' saddles, the casing of armor, capar-
isons, (fee. &c. But the English did not
make use of transition from old tyrannies to
an order, in their opinion, more free and
agreeable, to increase their farming for the

Dutch, their wool for the Dutch, or their
leather for the Dutch. On the contrary,
the chronicler tells how a certain Dr. Bell,
who seems really to have been a very earnest
and honest new hght in his way, preached
against the foreign " free traders" to his coun-
trymen, from the pulpit, and from the text,
" The heavens to the Lord in heaven, but
the earth to the cliildren of men ;" (as con-
tra-distinguished, we presume, to the children
of Holland ;) showing how, " as birds defend
their nests, so ought Englishmen to cherish
and maintain themselves, and to hurt and
grieve aliens for respect of their common-
wealth ;" (as contra-distinguished, we pre-
sume, from the practice, still general, of citi-
zens not cherishing or maintaining them-
selves, but hurting and grieving their com-
monwealth for respect of aliens.) And the
Eno;hsh did not call Doctor Bell a " Whio* "
for that same excellent sermon, but, on the
contrary, took it to heart and put it in prac-
tice ; and so, within the first eighty years
after the " dawn of the Reformation," after
the release of the English mind from feudal-
ity in Church and State to despotism, a
then modified form of liberty, the Dutch
" free-traders" were driven back to their
native mud, British industry was established,
and the foundation of that imperial system
laid, which, however since loaded with a
superstructure of avarice and crime, has sup-
ported and supports an empire the most
stupendous in size, the most magnificent in
wealth, and the most abominable in the
means taken to increase and strengthen it, of
any known to the " children of men."

Such was the use made by their first sev-
enty years of liberty by the Avise Dutch, and
the once sturdy and now politic English.

And now, with its seventy years, its
wondrous opportunities, its resources, its
common weal untrammelled by an Enghsh
Henry or a State Church, by an upstart
nobility or a Court of prostitutes ; untram-
melled, too, by the debris of an old social
tyranny, by the mendicancy and misery left
behind it by the feudality under which Eng-
land labored ; with its ^^rgin soil, its popu-
lation fresh and vigorous ; with no opponent
to swathe or cripple its young arms, with
the world open to it, the world haihng and
welcoming it, — what has America done in
the way of founding a nation ; in the way of
" fostering and maintaining itself"? Nothing,
absolutely nothing. After giving away to

1850.

Free Trade.

533

all the world, ^vitll a maniacal prodigality, for
seventy years, — freedom, j^eace, "religion,"
and " free trade," have brought its citizens to
this astounding position in the nations, that,
if a blight sequent on natural causes or
other, should, during this or any previous
year, have killed off or rendered useless their
crops, leaving only sufficient to feed their
population from hand to mouth for that
season, one half of that population must have
starved that their food might have provided
clothes for the remainder, or all would have
had to go naked ; the native market in fig-
shaped leaves would have experienced " an
unusual prosperity," and American gentle-
men— we say nothing of the ladies — would
be compelled to appear in public or private
parties in the full dress costume of father
Adam. The wealth produced by the pre-
vious seventy years has been eaten or worn,
or now lies up, treasured in the warehouses of
Liverpool, and called " dry goods" and " cut-
lery,"— our cotton and our food have created
these — are really these and nothing else ; but
they are not ours now ; " via Liverpool" has
impounded them. We must, besides ha\dng
grown them, and furnished food — that is,
wages — to transform them, further release
them from their impoundage by paying for
our own food and our own cotton, with more
food and more cotton ; and not having these
now to spare above our own wants, we must
even appear in the costume formerly fashion-
able in Eden ; and some " upper ten " gen-
tlemen, who never before dressed in any-
thing native, may further attest their for-
mer respectabihty by flourishing about, on
state occasions, the remnants of British
cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, or wearing, by
Way of extravagant ornament, Brummagem
Britannia metal spectacles with shagreen
cases.

It was against this "balance of trade,"
which left untold wealth in England and
nothing in America, all the plunder on
one side, all the dependency and servihty
on the other, that the Americans of the last
age fi.rst took up arms. In 1760 the thir-
teen States, repressed under a foreign mo-
nopoly in commerce and navigation, without
any manufacturing power, and subject to
every species of galling and indirect tax,
yielded by such compulsion a market to Eng-
land of thirty millions of dollars. Now, as we
said, under simjjle British " free trade" alone,
Americans of this age,by the use of their free-

dom, and their independence, and their star-
spangled banner, and all that, yield to the
same British a yearly market of one hundred
milhons. In 1766 the citizens of New-
York, seeing in its nakedness the terrible
plunder of England, formed an association
for the " making of linens and woollens ; of
spades, scythes, and other irons ; of paper-
hangings, &c." And British chronicler
Craig tells us that such was the sturdy sense
of right and love of being independent in
Americans then, that " these efi:brts of the
manufacturing and mercantile community
were supported by the people at large ; the
productions of American industry were
bought with avidity ; it became the fashion
among all classes to appear dressed in the
cloth of the country ; and it is related that
the general zeal for promoting the native
woollen manufacture gave rise to a resolu-
tion against eating lamb, or buying meat
Irom any butcher who should kill lambs !"
Nice worshippers of the glorious principles
of " free trade," these — pretty subjects for
British "civilization" — great adorers of Man-
chester Christianity, must indeed have been
these superstitious f jols who fancied to pro-
pitiate the God of nations by abstinence from
infant sheep, even as ridiculously as the
Catholic seeks favor with the Thunderer by
bolting herrings ! No doubt, no doubt they
sinned wofully against the gospel according
to Malthus, the good Sir Robert, and Mr.
Johann Bool — did not know their own in-
terests, opposed civilization and human
progress, and were, in short, veritable fools
in comparison to us^ double-distilled patent
democrats. But then these lamb-abstaining
fools by such means established human lib-
erty first upon the earth, gave us, as the re-
sult of their folly, American freedom and
national independence ; did, in fact and
truth, by long abstinence from lamb and
cottons, by sore trial and suffering — did the
only noble and heroic deed yet recorded of
the American nation, — they acquired for
themselves, and bequeathed to their poster-
ity, an enfranchised world, gave to their
children wealth, happiness, food, clothes, and
peace — in one word, liberty. And had
they eaten the lambs and exported the
wool, grown the corn and sent it ofl:', the cot-
ton and sent it off", raised the iron and sent
it off, and continued sensible " free-traders,"
as we would no doubt have done ; we would
be now as they were once, slaves, without a

534

British Folic]/ Here and There :

Kov.

ship upon tlie ocean ; without a flag above
our heads to which we could look up with
anything but hate ; without the privilege of
utterance or of law ; without the right to
grow or wear, save as their " free trade "
masters listed ; without even the right to ex-
ist. And we, ungrateful but really very
wise contemners of our fathers' virtues,
with our bumps of benevolence largely de-
veloped, and explained to us by Mr. Fowler,
with our humanitarian principles in full
swing — and receiving remarkable commen-
dation from England, as compared with our
gallant predecessors — have accepted the
glorious legacy they left us, and showed oui-
estimation of it and them — by turning round
on the means by which they acquired it,
and by which they knew it was alone to be
preserved, and smashing them. It is just as
if our friend, the cobbler, having emancipated
himself from the yoke of Mr. Johann, and
re-established his original trade of making
shoes for self, family, and neighbors, should,
after experiencing one term of servitude and
one term of liberty, abrogate his liberty
afresh, and return, like a dog, to his vomit.
We have turned, in our " free trade " haste,
on the little factories the great men of the
past age left us, as the nuclei of American
empire and independent nationality, and
broken them into fragments. We have
scorned their divine abstinence, and returned
to the avaricious gluttony from which they
arose to war for the freedom and the lives
of their children. We have killed the lamb,
and sent away the wool !

This system of home manufacture, pro-
tected by common consent and sustained by
a popular loyalty to the American flag, by
abstinence, by severe trial for a little, is one
which requires, in those who practise it, some
high impulse — like that for self-preserva-
tion— great endurance, great self-sacrifice,
and, indeed, all great virtues ; and propor-
tionate to the difficulties which beset it, are
its effects as a system of war upon an enemy.
It has ever humbled England more than
arms; as in 1776 and 1812. It produced,
even for the limited time during which it
was sustained, throughout America a na-
tional sentiment and a national honor.
And, in abandoning it, we not only forsook
the prime seed and fairest fruit of liberty,
but threw our weight from the protection of
freedom to the support of oppression, and
passed, in an instant, from the position of a

new-born nation, combating like a chivalrous
champion for the rights of all men, into that
of the selfish supporter, for our own avaricious
ends, of an oligarchy against whose tyranny
we had the first rebelled, which had proved
itself, during the war, insensible alike to jus-
tice or mere hmnanity, and which we had,
for our own behoof, flung back upon the
world. We are well aware of the causes
which produced this step ; of the impossi-
bility, by mere political means, of preventing
its adoption ; but it is not for us here to enter
into the discussion of the partisan wars of a past
generation. It may be permissable in a Repub-
lican of the present day to desire the great-
ness of America, without being a Federalist ;
to desire the downfall of that thrice-accursed
oligarchy of Britain, which the Americans of
the last age brought to its knee for the
world, and raised it to its feet again against
the world, without being antagonistic to
State rights. The present writer takes leave
to disown, beforehand, either imputation.
But it is a subject of bitter regret to all men
who view America otherwise than through
the eyes of a partisan stmnp-orator or bal-
lot-box politician, that while both the wars
of 1776 and 1812 gave rise to those com-
binations against a common danger — com-
binations effected by public will and a loy-
alty in all to each other, and not by any
political upholstery — which best insure a
stable, happy, and indefeasible nationality ;
that both wars, resulting in victory, did not
eternalize the good they called into action,
but effaced it ; did not result, too, in pro-
longing, enlarging, and solidifying these
combinations, but in utterly eradicating
them, and flinging the American nation
back again into the same position it occupied
prior to them. As a colony or a nation, in
peace or war, the American people have
never ceased to feel the Biitish policy of di-
viding them into hostile camps, playing fast
or loose with either alternately, and so ruhng
all. It is a policy so very old and so very vul-
gar that one would think modern men would
feel ashamed at being its victims. As Mr.
Johann Bool punished a refractory cabbage-
grower by refusing to live on him, so has
England, from time immemorial, dealt with,
and intimidated its refractory colonies on
this continent. And the inevitable result of
freedom here was but to increase her power,
unless estopped by a sturdy loyalty and a
national will. Thus, when the War of Inde-

1850.

Free Trade.

535

pendeuce resulted in placing thirteen young
Kepublics on an equality, putting them
down side by side on Freedom's course ; their
eyes straining to the goal ; they started, each
endeavoring to outspeed and master the rest.
And so, casting about for every available
support which could tend to magnify its
power or increase its importance, each in its
turn sought aid in foreign alliances, and fell
in turn into the hands and under the sway
of Britain. The cotton grower of the far
South, the tobacco grower of the mid sea-
board, the food grower of the N^orth, having
formerly traded with Britain, and knowing
the vast temporary weight which would be
accorded to the most favored by their for-
mer master, fell successively into the trap.
The old empire, beaten in war, was a perfect
master in the science of Machiavel ; and,
practising it, she re-established that relation
of producer and consumer which exists to
this hour, by which she takes the cotton of
the Carolinian, and the tobacco of the Old
Dominion, and the corn of the North, —
takes all three^ patronizes and governs the
producers of all three, — and plays them
against each other when it suits her, tossing
the pea of " British market " from thimble
to thimble in a rig, to the perfect wonder of
the gazing greenhorn, and her own most
hilarious proiit !

But in accepting this position, the Amer-
ican nation not only made away with its
birth-right, not only gave its dinner for an old
coat, but acted falsely to humanity. We
have been accustomed to say, " America has
advanced human liberty by her example" —
a cheap outlay, to say the best of it, and one
for which human liberty would not give a
straw, if it were negatived by a larger and
more practical outlay in support of tyrants.
Now we propose to show, by way of general
moral upon this article, that the hundreds
of millions of produce which America has
for seventy years handed over to England,
have been not only prodigally wasted, so
far as the mere material profit and loss of
this nation go, but actually expended in sup-
port of an infamous tyranny against other
nations, which she would not endure herself.
The notion that because we have preserved
"peace," we have preserved towards the
nations of Europe a status of neutrality, is
mere moonshine. We have never been
neutral towards the nations of Europe ; ex-
cept, indeed, when we have been at war on our

VOL. VI. NO. V. NEW SERIES.

own soil with one of them.* In the seventy
years, minus two, of peace which have ensued
since colonial days, our sturdiest support has
been given in material wealth of our own
creatino- to the eternal enemies of the hu-
man race.

We shall explain this seemingly unknown
truth.

In the eighth decade of the last century,
(1771-1780) the empire subject to the
British oligarchy extended over Britain, and
under a constitutional veil, over Ireland, over
all America, and the West Indies not Span-
ish or French, and over a portion of South-
ern India — we omit the outposts of Gibral-
tar and the Cape, and the then unimportant
islands of the main. Their subjects may
then as now be divided into three classes.
1st. The races and peoples, politically or by
conquest, subject to them : as the natives of
Ireland, the people of England, the races of
India. 2d. The inhabitants of new coun-
tries subject in the relation of colonists to
the mother country : as the people of the
thirteen colonies, the Canadians, the plant-
ers of Jamaica, &c. And 3dly. Those sub-
ject to them through arrangements, called
commercial or economic: as for instance,
the nations of all Europe, (excepting Hol-
land and the Low Countries,) France, Ger-
many, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, &c. ;
the nations of Asia — Persia, Hindostan — of
Northern Africa, of Southern America. We
are to add to these the peoples and nations
subject to them through the bribery or ter-
ror of their kings, and who subsequently
figured in the Indian wars as " protected"
puppets, or in the Holy Alliance as the reci-
pients of the English " national debt " — or
subsidized tools.

The " government " of this empire was
very unequivocal ; it consisted of plunder-
ing unscrupulously on all sides, and repres-
sing all resistance by brute force — of send-
ing out the tax-gatherer, and at his back a
bayonet.

The people of England were kept at work
with the spade, or in the factory — everything

■^ A " Bull" no doubt ; therefore very laughable ;
but as true as eggs are eggs — unless they are
hatched meanwhile — for all that. In self defence,
the present writer must say, that any mouth can
let a pun ; but he assures the readers of the Amer-
ican Review, that it takes a genius to make a bull,
or, to understand one. Therefore, ye who don't
understand the above— -[we forbear the conclusion
of our eccentric contributor.]
35

536

BHtish Policy Here and There :

Nov.

tliey produced, over and above what actually
was requisite to feed them, passed to the
King in taxes, to the aristocracy in rent, to
the plutocracy in profits ; and more if needful.
The people of Ireland were entirely agri-
cultural, and for their special government a
special aristocracy was pro\dded. The mer-
cantile community of Ireland was entirely
limited to those who passed goods and lux-
uries from the British ships (none other
were admitted) to the aristocracy ; passing-
back in payment the people's food, and raw
produce.

The " colonies," that is, the " thirteen,"
now U. S., and all foreign countries, were
subjected in trading with England to the
same monopoly of British ships. The colo-
nies, too, were agricultural — the mercantile
community there the same as in Ireland.
Taxes were le\T.ed on heads and ffoods —
" eighteen pence in the pound sterling" — on
English goods imported, on professions, offi-
ces, and trades, " half-a-crown (60 cents) in
the pound sterling" — and any amount of
extra taxes when needed by the exchequer
of the oligarchy in England.

The European nations were subjected to
duties on the import of British goods, or
other goods from British ports — by subsi-
dies, intrigues, and " friendly relations," or,
in short, bribes^ to their several rulers, a per-
fect monopoly was maintained.

The nations of India, or such of them as
were then conquered, were under the influ-
ence of a peculiar "free-trade" system, of
which and its results we shall hereafter speak.
Thus was established over the world an
immense system of organized plunder ; the
British oligarchies sat in the centre and
expended the proceeds.

The people of the " thirteen colonies" were
the first to take measures to alleviate in some
sort these consequences to themselves. They
established mutual associative factories of
cloth, and iron, (fee, for their own protection,
as we have mentioned, and even proceeded to
inquire into the foreign right of taxing them^
and into their capacity not to pay. But as
the colonies had to be kept up to their former
taxative standard, what was taken off by
their home manufacture must be laid on in
imported luxury ; and as the requirements of
a spendthrift individual or an aristocratic
class are always on the increase, new taxes,
of a more outrageous character than any,
were demanded to be paid.

What followed needs no recital here. The
thhteen colonies took up arms ; ended for
themselves the nominal sway of the British
Imperial system ; established the right to tax
themselves, and the acknowledged right to
consume or not consume British manufac-
tures. This was held to be " Liberty," and,
so far as it goes, no doubt is.

But there the national exploits of the
new nation ended. Ireland in the mean-
while, fired by her example, had also taken
up arms, and proved to America an ally and
an useful one. The Irish, the English peo-
ple, and the Americans then precisely stood
towards the British oligarchy, as the Vien-
nese, the Italians, and the Hungarians stood
towards the oligarchy of Austria, during the
late European contest. They were the com-
mon victims of a common oppressor, and
were bound alike by human wisdom and
eternal justice to stand by one another.
America conquered for herself; and there-
upon, as before the war, gave her produce
to keep up the oppressor of the rest. The
British aristocracy, to compensate for the
loss of the American taxes, proceeded to
work harder the English people, to tax
them the more ; to break down any barriers,
constitutional or national, offered by Ireland
to a " closer connection ;" to extend their do-
minions in India, and to render firmer the
thinly covered tyranny they exercised over
the internal affairs of Spain, Portugal, France,
Italy, and Germany. By a series of years
of astute tyranny the Enghsh succeeded in
finally dividing Ireland and breaking down
every barrier which opposed their taxes —
they conquered her in a rebelhon accompa-
nied by cruelties as terrific and as beastly as
those for which some stupid brewers recently
flogged an Austrian in London ; utterly anni-
hilated her revi\'ing manufactures, assumed
the direction of her food, and reduced her
to the state we even now see, varying between
hopeless famine, and as hopeless insurrection.
And during the time this horrible tragedy
was enacting the Americans were contribut-
ing to the riches of England ^vith their cot-
ton, their corn, their wool ; buying from their
foe cottons and cloths, and hardware, stained
with a friendly nation's blood, and bought
from an enemy in the very act of a friendly
nation's murder. Nay, the very Hessian
troops which were employed to burn Amer-
ican towns, torture American men, and rape
American women, were similarly employed

1850.

Free Trade.

5S1

to do their work on Ireland ; and America
gave corn to feed them in the act, gave cot-
ton and wool to enable their employers to
clothe them and pay them, in the act. Thus
began the financial relations of America and
Ireland.

America became, in fact, to England
much more productive by her freedom than
ever she had been before* — produced and
gave to her more cotton, more wool, more
raw produce of every kind, bought more nu-
merous and more costly fabrics and imple-
ments of her manufacture — helped her to
clothe her armies 'more and better, to feed
them more and better, to direct them against
any point pleasing to their officers with greater
efficiency, to send provisions and clothing
after them to a greater amount and with
greater certainty, to raise larger fleets and
clothe and feed her navies more surely —
helped, in fact, in the most strenuous man-
ner to rebuild the empire she had overthrown,
raised up again against the liberties of the
world her own enemy for her own profit. The
only difference between America enslaved and
America free was this: the colony cost England
heavy sums for necessary coercion, for invol-
untary commerce — the nation cost her noth-
ing for coercion, but voluntarily supphed the
increased requirements of her commerce — offi-
ciously assuring her, all the while, that her late
victorious but now most peaceable colony, had
determined not to interfere with her tyranny
in the slightest respect ! " Advancing the
cause of human liberty by our example," —
and the cause of inhuman tyranny — with
what have ye advanced that ?

But now, too, another class of the sub-
jects of the British oligarchy rose against
England — the nations of Europe whose com-
merce she enthralled ; and the first, the same
France from whose King she had purchased
certain rights of plundering his people for
certain sums to keep up his royal brothel, —
having flung off" the ideas and systems which
oppressed her, endeavored, too, to throw out,
and keep out her manufactures. Napoleon
himself threw his genius, his pen, and his
sword into the Continental League against the
perfidious shirts of Nessus machinated in
Manchester. He roused the people of France,
of Germany, of Italy against them. He deter
mined, at the cannon mouth, to resist " cot-

* Vide that note from the London Morning He-
rald.

tons," sword in hand to defeat conquest by
" cutlery." He even made peace with Russia,
and threw himself upon the neck of the
Emperor Paul to beseech him to join in this
crusade — and the Russian consented. But
Paul was, for that same adhesion, murdered.
The wars against this infamous and blas-
phemous French revolution, which would
not acknowledge the right divine of Lan-
cashire to make breeches for the world, or
bow before the sacred divinity in Manches-
ter gowns and kerchiefs, were renewed — the
royal parties to the Continental League were
successively subsidized and bought oft"; the
people taxed anew, conscribed, and dragged
into the battle field ; the red cotton pocket-
handkerchief waved once more over subju-
gated Paris, and the eternal enemy of Brit-
ish manufactures lay chained to a rock in
St. Helena ! England having put down one
combination of her customers against her
shop, even as Mr. Johann Bool might, with like
means, have brought the refractory cobbler
and his neighbors to their senses ; started
afresh with furnaces in full blast, fabricating
new chains for men, weaving new webs of
trade " Christianity," and orthodox " com-
merce," with new requirements to fulfil in
her mission and her treasury ; new debts
about her neck which she must make the
world pay ; with an enslaved Europe laying
crushed and broken around her, and a vic-
torious army and a victorious navy at her
back with which to renew under the bright-
est auspices her nefarious designs.

And during this time, while Europe stood
up in arms to throve oft" the commercial ty-
ranny vvhich made her nations, in truth, but
the tributaries of a remorseless monopolist,
what did the same America, which had
lately pledged her life against this monopo-
list herself ? She supphed the monopoly,
kept its mills going, its furnaces going, its
spinning-jennies going, its trade and com-
merce going. She brought her cotton to the
Englishman's mill, and said, " Spin this, and
put down the rightful league formed by the
Emperor for the salvation of Europe." She
brought her wool to the Englishman's loom
and said," Weave this, suborn the aUiesof the
Emperor, and restore aiistocratic tyranny and
your own monopoly to Europe." She brought
her food to the aristocrat's door, and said,
" Let not your armies or navies want ; here is
everything in abundance, go forth and con-
quer." And lest this should not be enough,

538

British Policy Here and There : Free Trade.

Nov.

slie went into the Englisliman's shop, and
bought his goods, his " dry," " soft," and
" hardware" Christianity, and sent him on his
way rejoicing to an Irish rebelhon, a sack of
Paris, a Holy Alhance, or an Indian massa-
cre. What could the unhappy people of Eu-
rope and their Continental League do against
a nation which, with its own astute tyranny,
unscrupulous crime, and vast resources, had
besides the corn fields, the cotton lands, the
tobacco ground, and all the markets and
riches of America at its back ? " Advanc-
ing human liberty by their example," quotha !
Would to God the American people had
brouo'ht out their armies to fi(2:ht the battles
of the public criminal, and kept to them-
selves the solid, material " sinews of w^ar "
they poured into his coffers !

During two years indeed of this time,
while England was almost at peace, the
American nation and the British oligarchy
were not on " the most amicable terms," and
the sinews of war did not pour in as usual.
But new wars impending, the aristocracy of
England took the soft side of their dear
" Transatlantic cousins," as they call them,
and again the wealth of America poured
into the treasuries and the land of England.
Ever since it has unceasingly done so ; and
that we may fully understand to what end and
with what effect, we shall here briefly review
the relation existing between the British oli-
garchy and a few of the people and races
subject to them. We have said in the
opening part of this article that " free trade"
means, in English phrase, to lay hold of
every man and nation the oligarchy can,
and use its wealth, and produce, and indus-
try as they please. We have already shown
that when force was thouo;ht needful or use-
ful towards America, force was used ; but that
jabber and cant are now much more effec-
tive instruments as against this country.
We shall presently show " free trade " in
full play, accompanied by force — men beaten
with stripes, whipped with whips, driven
before the point of the bayonet to produce
certain commodities as laid down by the

English system of " free trade !" And here
let us remark again, that the immensity of
the resources of America, her, as we fancy,
inexhaustible produce, is no argument for
submitting to its plunder or waste. If she is
actually losing a hundred millions' Avorth of
raw produce per annum, minus the labor
expended in transforming part of it into
British manufactures and so returned to her,
it is no justification of the exorbitant waste
to say that her people have another hun-
dred millions, or a hundred times that again,
at the back of it. If they go on from year
to year wasting, and increasing in their
waste, a limit must come some time, and
that is — want. We would not permit the
smallest exorbitant charge in our highest
official — why, then, limiting him to twenty-
five thousand, should we pay to the Queen of
England and her courtiers a hundred mill-
ions ? If we feel an internal avidity to
waste or destroy these one hundred milhons,
why not throw them into the sea ? Why
not, as in duty bound, waste them in a man-
ner not directly injurious to others ? Why
expend them, if we can do without them,
in maintaining an odious and abominable
tyi-anny, from which we have no advantage,
which is positively ruinous to us politically,
beyond what it is commercially ? For, should
any war break out between the British na-
tion and this continent, what navies would
be brought against our ports and shipping
but those we have helped to tactual and
clothe ? What armies would be flung upon
our coasts but those formed of the British
surplus mechanics we have helped to keep
in subjection to their oligarchy — but the
Irish peasants we have aided to enthrall,
plunder, and subjugate ?

Here, however, for the present, we must
close. To do justice to this subject, we
would require as much space as that we
have aheady occupied ; and that we may not
too far encroach upon our readers' attention,
we shall content ourselves with this axiom :
"The nation which is justest to itself is
justest to the world."

1850.

Pacific Railroad,

539

PACIFIC RAILROAD.

THE SENATE COMMITTEE'S REPORT IN FAVOR OP WHITNEY'S PLAN.

The clear and judicious Report of tlie
Senate's Committee, in favor of the plan of
Mr. Asa Whitney, for the construction of a
railroad, without cost to the Government,
from the upper shore of Lake Michigan to
the Pacific, will doubtless have the effect to
convince all parties (except those who have
projects of their own to offer) that the plan
of Mr. Whitney is not only the best offered,
as regards feasibihty, but that it is the freest
from constitutional objections. Indeed it
has been found impossible to raise any, the
least objection on that score, and it is con-
sequently impossible to make it a party
measure. It would be fortunate for the
nation, could every national undertaking be
placed upon as sound and safe a basis as the
one offered by the Committee, namely^ upon
the basis of individual responsibility.

Although we are entirely convinced that
the General Government has a right to ap-
propriate the public moneys to purposes of
internal improvement, when it is understood
that private enterprise is insufficient to ac-
complish the ends in view, we are yet satis-
fied that it is unwise and impolitic to extend
the aid of Government toward enterprises
which can be accomplished without such
aid. Every railroad and steamboat, every
public conveyance, every means of intercom-
munication, is intended for the use of the
entire nation ; but it is impolitic and mis-
chievous for the General Government to in-
terfere in the affairs of steamboat and rail-
road proprietors ; for the simple reason, that
they are better managed by individuals.

The magnitude of the plan advocated by
the Senate's Committee does not affect the
ar2:ument in the case before us. It is be-
lieved by the Committee that the Pacific
Railroad can be built, without risking a dol-
lar of the public money. If the Committee
are right in that behet^ it is a point of con-

stitutional necessity that this work should
be undertaken, if at all, upon their plan. If
an hundred millions is to be expended on
public works, it can be rightfully appropri-
ated to such only as cannot be constructed
either by single States or by individuals.
The rivers and harbors of the North and
West require to be opened and made safe
for Western commerce : the General Gov-
ernment alone has power to improve them.
Expenditure upon these works will be sanc-
tioned by the people only because private
companies cannot and will not undertake
them. Their necessity is their sole excuse.

The great majority of those who have ex-
amined Mr. Whitney's plan have pronounced
in favor of it, not only because of its freedom
from constitutional objections, but because it
will require less time in the execution, and
cost less than any other. The bill, which
will be laid before Congress at the coming
session, is so framed as to close up every
avenue to fraud and peculation. Its pro-
visions are simple and stringent.

A strip of land, sixty miles in width,
reaching from Lake Michigan to the Pacific,
is to be set aside by the Government, and
the command of its resources, its timber, its
water power, and its iron mines given to the
person who is to build the road : mortgaged,
however, and in the event of failure to re-
turn into the hands of Government ; except-
ing only such portions as may have been
already sold and occupied by settlers.

This strip will be divided into sections of
ten miles. On the completion of the first
ten miles of road, the purchaser will be al-
lowed to sell one half of the lands, or a strip
five miles in width, the other half being held
in reserve by the Government.

The entii-e cost of the road will have to
be defrayed out of the 23roceeds of the sales
of this half, and a second section of ten

640

Whitney'' s Plan for a Pacific Railroad.

Nov.

miles will be immediately undertaken, and
its cost defrayed by the sales of one half of
another ten mile strip, aided by any surplus
of funds accruing over and above expenses,
by the former sales.

The whole work can be carried forward,
after the opening of the first ten mile sec-
tion, with great rapidity. The progress of
the road will insure rapid sales, and a rapid
rise may be expected in the value of the
lands of the entire route.

If, however, contrary to all expectation,
after passing through the good lands, and
after completing a ten mile section of road,
the builder of the road shall show that the sale
of one half the land (the alternate five mile
sections) did not yield a sufficiency of funds
for the construction of a good road, as much
of the remaining five mile sections reserved
by Government as may be necessary to
cover the deficit, shall be oifered for sale,
&c., &c.

In several articles, during the past two
years, we have advocated the plan for a Pa-
cific Railroad, lately adopted by the Senate's
Committee, and we are happy to perceive
that the public mind is very generally im-
pressed in its favor. The opposition to it
has been slight and ineffectual. A few poli-
ticians on both sides have endeavored, more
industriously than wisely, to give the pro-
ject a party character. Others have opposed
it because it seemed to confer too much
power upon a single person, — an argument
against every enterprise of the kind, wheth-
er undertaken by an agent of the Govern-
ment or by an individual. It has also been
objected, that the projector of the plan may
possibly accumulate a fortune by its success ;
which is as much as saying that it ought not
to succeed if undertaken. That a vast num-
ber of jobbers and speculators would be en-
riched by the work, were it undertaken by
the Government, is quite certain. It seems
therefore that we are bound to secure this
immense benefit to the nation and to the
entire world, by agents who are to receive
no return for the risk they incur, or the ex-
penditure of years of time and labor in its
accomplishment ! Should the projector
realize a considerable fortune, by the success
of the work, at the end of twenty years, the
benefit to the nation will by that time have
exceeded hundreds of millions ; not only by
the commercial movement which would take

place across the continent, after the comple-
tion of the road, but by the settlement of
several millions of acres of land, and a vast
increase of our AVestern population.

In the very able and lucid Report of Mr.
Bright, the Chairman of the Committee, we
find expressed the most unqualified approba-
tion of the plan of Mr. Whitney. Among all
the plans submitted to them, they are
obliged to pronounce in its favor, without
qualification, and they conclude that it
" ought to he adojytedP

" Your Committee have been aided in the
examination of this subject by the very fa-
vorable and full reports of different Com-
mittees of both Houses of each Congress for
the last five years, and of the Legislatures
of some eighteen States, decidedly and ex-
pressly recommending the adoption of this
plan over all others ; and the unanimity
\vitli which said resolutions were adopted in
both branches of the different Legislatures
is, as your Committee believe, without a
parallel. Public meetings throughout the
country, in our populous cities, have been
equally decided and unanimous in express-
ing the same favor for this plan ; and even
since the two Conventions held last fall —
the one at St. Louis and the other at Mem-
phis— public meetings, numerously and most
respectably attended, have been held at
Cincinnati, at Louisville, at Indianapolis, at
Dayton, at Columbus, and at Zanesville,
at all of which resolutions were almost unan-
imously adopted in favor of this plan, and
declaring it the only one capable of being
carried out ; and your Committee believe,
from the frequent expressions of the public
press, and from other sources, that the
opinion of the country is almost universally
concentrated on this plan.''"'

" The bill proposes that a belt of territory
sixty miles wide, — that is, thirty miles on
each side of the road, — with its eastern base
on Lake Michigan and its western on the
Pacific, comprehending about 78,000,000
of acres, shall be sold and appropriated to
this object, to be accounted for by Mr
Whitney at the national treasury, at ten
cents per acre, good, bad, and indifferent, —
amounting to nearly $8,000,000.

"When it is considered that tens and
scores of millions of acres of the public do-
main are now being, and about to be given
away, for various objects, and that some of
our leading statesmen are proposing to give

1850.

Whitney'' s Plan for a Pacific Railroad,

541

all the public lands away, with some pros -
pect of success ; and when, moreover, it is
considered that only a httle more than one
third of the belt proposed to be set apart for
this road is good and saleable land, it must
be seen there is little chance or probabihty
that the Government will ever get as much
for this territory as by selling it for this road
at ten cents per acre. Consequently the
road, built on this plan, will itself be a cap-
ital of immense and incalculable value, and
so much positive gain to the nation, which,
as your Committee will endeavor to show,
could in no other way be realized."

The capital to be employed for the con-
struction of the work is to be realized solely
by the rise in value of the lands, following
upon the sales and settlements of the first
portions, as the work advances.

" The capital to build the road with is to
be created by the increased value which the
building of the road mil impart to the lands
thus set apart, and through which the road
is to pass ; and, when created and thus in-
vested, the bill provides that the use of the
road shall be a positive and perpetual gra-
tuity to trade and commerce, with no other
tax for transport of passengers and merchan-
dise than such tolls as may be necessary to
keep the road and its apparatus in working
order — which tolls are to be determined on
and regulated by Congress.

" Here, as your Committee think will be
seen, are two great and peculiar principles
of this plan, which, as the Committee be-
lieve, are not only fundamental, but vital to
the great object in view : —

" 1. The capital is created — a positive
creation — not borrowed. If it were bor-
rowed, or drawn from other sources, as all
other plans contemplate, it would be neces-
sary to impose tolls for dividends to satisfy
the interest; and then the great end in
view would be sacrificed. The end pro-
posed is to draw trade and commerce on
this line, by means of cheap transport be-
tween the great East and the great West of
the United States, between the United States
and Asia, and between Europe and Asia.
But if tolls should be required to meet the
interest on the cost of the road, this end
could not be accomplished, and the enter-
prise would be a stupendous failure. But
on the plan proposed, with tolls sufficient
only for expenses of operation and necessary
repairs, it is believed that a passenger may

be taken over the whole line of the road,
2,030 miles, for $20 ; a bushel of corn for 25
cents ; a barrel of flour for |1 ; a ton weight
of merchandise for |10 ; and one ton meas-
urement of teas (a half ton weight) for |5.
At these rates, can it be doubted that the
corn of the Mississippi Valley may be put
down in China for 40 cents transit per
bushel, — worth there, as your Committee
are informed, from 75 cents to $1.25 for
60 pounds weight, — leaving an average of
from 30 to 35 cents a bushel to the pro-
ducer, and, as the Committee are also in-
formed, with an unlimited demand ? And
so of agricultural products, and of every
other species of merchandise, going to and
fro between the Atlantic and Pacific ports
of the United States, between the IMissis-
sippi Valley and Asia, between our eastern
coast and Asia, and between Europe and
Asia, — in a word, between a population of
250,000,000 in Europe, across our hosom^
and 500,000,000 in Asia; as also between
ourselves and all Asia.

" But double these rates of transport, —
as would ine\itably be the case were the
road built on any other plan of means,
always requiring tolls sufficient, in addition
to the expenses of operation and repairs, to
meet the interest on the cost of the work, —
and the whole of this immense and vastly
extended commerce would be for ever pre-
vented from springing into being ; and the
comparatively small amount now carried on
between us and Asia, and between Europe
and Asia, would be found to follow its old
routes. Your Committee are therefore of
opinion that this road can never be built
and sustained except by capital created by
itself as by the plan proposed, and that it
would be doomed to failure, even if it should
be attempted, on the credit of the Govern-
ment, as the people would never submit to
perpetual taxation for the interest on its
cost.

" Your Committee are of oj^inion that the
cheap transport to be obtained by the plan
proposed involves the only principle on which
this road can be made a successful enter-
prise ; and it is all the more satisfactory, as
it will not cost the Government and people
of the United States a single dollar."

If this road were to be built by Govern-
ment it would cost, by Col. Abert's estimate,
one hundred and twenty-seven millions and
a half. By Mr. Whitney's plan, say the

642

Whitney'' s Plan for a Pacific Railroad.

!N"ov.

Senate Committee, its cost will be only
sixty millions. Government is to receive
eight millions for tlie land, to be paid out
of the sales as the work advances, making
the entire cost $68,000,000, which mil be
covered by an average of 8 7 -J cents per
acre for the entire tract.

" The chief reliance must be on the first
eight hundred miles, which constitute, with
little exception, the good and saleable lands.
From what is known of the effect of railroads
and canals on the value of lands and other
property bordering upon them, the Commit-
tee think it safe to conclude that such a road
will add great value to the land through
which it passes ; and whether it will be suffi-
cient for the purpose, is the risk of the party
undertaking it.

" Your Committee believe that the build-
ing of the road will undoubtedly create facili-
ties for settlement on its line for at least the
eight hundred miles of good lands, and cause
a demand for them to an available amount of
means equal to any possible judicious apph-
cation of means to the construction of the
work ; and the reserved half of lands, as
hereinafter provided for, daily increasing in
value, would certainly be a sure source of
capital for an equal or greater distance be-
yond the good and through the poor lands,
a part of which latter would no doubt be
made available for settlement by means of
the road.

" Your Committee think it would be very
difficult, and enormously expensive, if not
impossible, to construct such a road through
a now entire ^vilderness, on any plan of
means, unless settlement can keep pace with
the work ; and that this plan, as it connects
the sale and settlement of the lands with
the work itself, is not only the only sure plan
of means, but by it the work will advance
as rapidly, or more so, than on any other
plan. Besides, these lands, with this great
highway through their centre, could not, in
the opinion of the Committee, fail to com-
mand any amount of money required for the
progress of the work, as their daily increas-
ing value would render them the most safe
and most profitable investment for money."

It is impossible to give the details of the
plan in a more condensed and lucid shape
than is exhibited in this able Report : —

" The security of the interests and rights
of the public is to be considered. The bill
provides that the first eight hundred miles

of good land shall be divided into sections
of five miles each — that is, five miles by
sixty; and that, after Mr. Whitney shall
have built his first ten miles of road, and
after it shall have been accepted by the
Government commissioner appointed for the
purpose, as being in all things a fulfilment
of Mr. Whitney's engagements, and not till
then, he shall be entitled to sell the first
section of five miles by sixty, as well as he
can, to reimburse himself for his expendi-
tures on the first ten miles of road aheady
completed and accepted ; and so on, in the
same manner and on the same conditions,
for every successive ten miles of the first
eight hundred, leaving every alternate sec-
tion of five miles by sixty untouched, with
all its increased value created by the road,
as public security for carrying on the work
to the Pacific. Thus, when the road shall
have been completed through this eight
hundred miles of good land, the Govern-
ment will hold, as security for the extension
and final completion of the work, the road
itself, all its machinery, four hundred miles
by sixty of these good lands untouched and
raised to a high value by this pubhc work,
too;ether with the entire remainder of the
belt to the Pacific.

" The bill also provides that the titles of the
lands sold by Mr. Whitney shall be given to
the actual purchasers by the Government,
and not by him, and that all remainders
unsold shall be disposed of at public auction
at the end of ten years after the road shall
have been completed on each ten-mile sec-
tion— that is, the unsold parts of Mr. Whit-
ney's sections of five miles by sixty ; and
this, to prevent the reservation of lands for
speculation. From the end of this first
eight hundred miles to the Pacific, where
the lands are poor and unavailable, the bill
provides that Mr. Whitney shall proceed as
follows, to wit : that, at the end of eveiy
ten miles of road completed and accepted
as before, he shall be entitled to sell the
whole section of ten miles by sixty, to reim-
burse himself, as far as the sales will go, for
his expenditures on that ten miles of road ;
and for any deficit, he shall be entitled to go
back and sell at public auction to the high-
est bidder, in lots of forty to one hundred
and sixty acres, as much of the reserved
untouched lands on the first eight hundred
miles as this deficit may require ; and so on,
and in the same manner, for every succeed-

1850.

Whitney'' s Plan for a Pacific Railroad.

543

ing ten miles to the Pacific, selling the lands
of each ten-mile section after the road shall
have been completed and accepted, and go-
ing back to sell the reserved lands only
when and so far as there may be a deficit,
as before ; and all this, under the super-
vision and authority of the Government com-
missioner, whose duty it shall be to see to
the fulfilment of the terms of the bill.

" If, at any stage of this work, Mr. Whit-
ney shall fail on his part, the bill provides
that all his rights shall be forfeited to the
Government, and that the road, so far as
completed, with all its machinery, shall be-
long to the Government ; and Congress may
sell or dispose of it as may be deemed meet,
for the benefit of the nation ; and all the
unsold and reserved lands would revert and
belong to the nation, the same as if this act
had never been made a law. And if Mr.
Whitney should die, his successors would be
under the same obligations, and liable to the
same penalties, on the same conditions. The
bill also provides that, when the road is
completed to the Pacific, with its machinery
in operation, to the satisfaction of Congress,
so that the Government can in no way be
made liable for the expenses of its opera-
tion and repairs, then whatever, if any^
surplus lands may remain unsold, shall be
sold for the account and benefit of Mr.
Whitney ; and whatever surplus money may
remain, after paying all charges against said
road, shall be his, as a reward or compen-
sation for this work, and the road and its
machinery shall be considered as belonging
to the nation. Although the bill provides
that the title thereto shall vest in Mr. Whit-
ney, still Congress retains the power to fix
and regulate the tolls for both passengers
and merchandise, so that no more shall be
earned than barely sufficient for the expen-
ses of operation and repairs, and the United
States mails are to be transported free.
Congress will hold the power to give the
management of the road to any other party
at any time when Mr. Whitney may fail to
operate it as the wants of the people re-
quire. Thus it is clear to your Committee
that Mr. Whitney's only chance of gain
from the enterprise is in the hope of making
the lands, by building the road through
them, produce him a sum exceeding what
will have been his actual outlay for the con-
struction of the road, its machinery, and
the 18,000,000, or the ten cents per acre,

which he is to pay into the treasury of the
United States for the entire belt of lands."

" Your Committee beheve, as informed by
Mr. Whitney, that available lands, with tim-
ber, other material, and with facilities for
the work, do not exist, and cannot be had
on any other route, so as to justify the com-
mencement of the work with any possible
hope of success, and that he would not
attempt it on any other route. There is no
plan before your Committee in competition
or conflicting with Mr. Whitney's that does
not depend, either directly or indirectly, on
the public treasury, or on government credit,
for means.

" Moreover, your Committee belie veit will
be found, by actual measurement, that the
route proposed by Mr. Whitney is the most
direct and shortest for commerce from all
our Atlantic cities to the Pacific, by the
South Pass, (probably the only feasible
route,) and around the globe — which is the
great end in \dew. It is shorter, for exam-
ple, from Baltimore to the great South Pass,
by more than 300 miles, than by way of St.
Louis ; and the eastern terminus, or the
crossing of the Mississippi river, reckoning
on other connecting lines of railroad exist-
ing and projected, is nearer to Mobile by
300 miles than to New- York, and 500 miles
nearer to Mobile than to Boston ; and, as
appears to your Committee, it would be more
fair and more equal for all our Atlantic
ports than a more southern route ; and,
amongst the several routes proposed, this
appears to be the only one by which a line
of railroad can be extended from our Atlan-
tic ports to the Pacific vnthout being broken
by rivers or waters which cannot be bridged —
a most imperative necessity for such a high-
way of commerce across this continent, as
it is a well-known fact that transhipments
and commissions often amount to as much
or more than the transport.

" This plan, as your Committee believe,
would rescue the whole subject from sec-
tional and party strifes, and from all liabili-
ties of being employed as a corrupt and
corrupting engine of party or of executive
patronage, or as a stockjobbing machine :
there being no stock and no dividends, it
could never go into Wall street or into the
money markets of Europe ; and as to party
or executive patronage, the only agent of
the Government which the proposed law
requires or authorizes is the commissioner

644

Whitney'' s Plan for a Pacific Railroad.

Nov.

to be appointed to see that the different en-
actments of the bill are carried out.

" Assuming, as is already shown, and as
your Committee think will be found to be
the fact, that no other plan is feasible, your
Committee consider that the most foi'cible
of all reasons for adopting Mr. Whitney's
plan is, that its execution will effect a com-
plete revolution in the routes of commerce ;
that it will bring the great bulk of the trade
of the world on this line, and make our
country the great focus of the commercial
transactions of all nations — making the
heart of our country the centre of the world,
its banking-house, and its great exchange.

" Distance, time, and cost of transport, are
the controlling laws of trade. By measur-
ing a globe, it will be seen that on the par-
allel proposed for this road is the shortest
line between our Atlantic ports and Asia,
and the shortest line between Europe and
Asia across our continent ; and it is worthy
of remark, that this belt around embraces,
and that this route would accommodate,
nearly the entire population of the globe —
that is, the enterprising and industrious part."

It is computed by engineers that a road
with 1,000,000 tons of business may earn
fair dividends, at a cost of $50,000 the
mile, on a charge for transportation of one
cent a ton. Accepting these estimates, the
Committee declare that the cost of transpor-
tation between Europe and Asia, would be
less by this road than by ships, going about
Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope.

It is also ascertained that the construction
of a ship canal crossing the Isthmus of Pan-
ama would not interfere with the business
that might pass over this road. From New-
York to China by Panama is 13,000 miles,
with every allowance for ■v\ands and currents.
By the Cape of Good Hope it is 14,255
miles, say the Committee. From New- York
to the mouth of Columbia river by steamers
and the Isthmus is 6,000 miles, and requires
thirty-five days of travel. By the railroad
it will be less than half the distance, (2,961
miles,) and require five to eight days' travel !
an immense saving of labor, time, and cost,
which would insure the preference of the
railroad above all other routes.

The annual aggregate of imports and ex-
ports between* Europe and Asia is said to be
in value about $250,000,000. The whole
of this immense commerce would be drawn
from its present route, and sent across the

North American continent ; a result of which
the political and commercial consequences
exceed imagination. This vast commerce is
now carried on by foreign shipping, chiefly
British ; if it passed over the North Ameri-
can continent, our own merchants would
become the carriers of it. Our own com-
mercial and naval power would increase in
proportion as that of Great Britain dimin-
ished.

From the terminus of the railroad on
the Pacific coast, a short and easy commu-
nication would be opened, a result of infinite
importance to the gold countries and to the
great State of Oregon that is to be, and
that could not fail to give those countries a
commercial importance surpassing that of
any other part of this continent.

The Committee do not hesitate to urge
the adoption of Mr. Whitney's plan : —

" Will we sell these lands, as proposed by
the bill, for a sum exceeding, as your Com-
mittee believe, that which the Government
can expect to receive for the same tract in
any other manner, and with such other re-
strictions and conditions as shall guarantee
to the nation the execution and accom-
plishment of this great highway for na-
tions without the outlay of one dollar by
the nation, without one penny of tax or
burden upon the people, and no tolls except
sufficient only for the expenses of repairs
and operation, binding our Atlantic and
Pacific possessions together, and making the
commercial world tributary to us ?

" Or will we decide against this great work,
promising these vast and important results —
abandon them all — let our Pacific posses-
sions separate and form an independent
nation, controlhng, as they will, the immense
fisheries and commerce of the vast Pacific,
with the commerce of Japan, China, and all
Asia ? Will we decide that the lands, which
can now be applied to and effect the accom-
plishment of this stupendous and truly na-
tional work, shall be wasted away for party
political capital and other purposes, whereby
the nation can never receive any direct ben-
efit— when, too, the objects urged by those
who wish to dispose of the lands to settlers
without pay would be more immediately
effected in the accomplishment of this work,
because its construction would give employ-
ment to settlers, and create the means to
pay for their lands, and place them a hun-
dred fold better off than to have the lands

1850.

Whitney'' s Plan for a Pacijic Railroad.

645

free of cost without the road, which is the
only means by which their products could
reach the markets, so as to yield a return
for their labor ?

" Your Committee cannot hesitate in form-
ing a decision upon this subject, not doubt-
ing that those who examine it will be im-
pressed with the same views, and form the
same conclusions as your Committee have
done. Therefore, your committee recom-
mend the adoption by Congress of the bill
proposed, and urge its immediate adoption.
The various plans and bills now before Con-
gress for disposing of very large amounts of
the public domain, together with the con-
stant demand for actual settlement, particu-
larly at the first part or commencement of
the proposed route, are rendering the exe-
cution of this plan more and more difficult
every day ; and your Committee believe the
time must soon arrive when these lands on
the first part of the route, so desirable for
immediate available means, and possessing
timber, materials, and facilities for coramenc-
ino; and carrying; on the work into the
wilderness, will be so far disposed of for
other purposes as to render the accomplish-
ment of this work doubtful, or impossible.
And to wait for further surveys and explora-
tions, as has been proposed by some, would,
in the opinion of your Committee, be the
defeat and abandonment of this plan for
ever ; and, besides, the authorization of sur-
veys for a railroad to the Pacific would justly
be considered by the people as sanctioning
the commencement of a Government work,
which your Committee cannot recommend,
nor would it be sanctioned by the people,
as your Committee beheve : neither do your
Committee think it at all necessary, nor does
this plan require, to delay the adoption of
this bill for further surveys. The rivers
have been examined by Mr. Whitney him-
self, to ascertain at what points they can be
bridged. From the lake to his point on the
Mississippi, it is well known that there are
no difficulties on his route ; from the Missis-
sippi to his point on the Missouri, his route
is without obstacles ; and thence to the
South Pass, it is well known that impedi-
ments do not exist. While these three sec-
tions are being constructed, the route thence
to the Pacific can be explored, surveyed, and
fixed upon.

" The route from the lake to the South
Pass, as your Committee are informed, has

no parallel for feasibility on the face of the
globe ; and from the South Pass to the Pa-
cific, the explorations of Colonel Fremont
and others, as well as the immense emigra-
tion to Oregon and California, abundantly
certify that it is feasible. Besides, the
streams, which wend their way all from the
South Pass to the Columbia and the Pacific,
indicate a favorable route, it being a well-
known fact that there are no very great falls
or rapids in the streams emptying into the
Columbia ; and that river has cut its way
and made a route through the mountains lo
the ocean."

We cannot sufficiently commend to the
attention of our readers that excellent fea-
ture of the plan recommended by the Sen-
ate's Committee, that there will be no new
offices created by it, to be filled by the favor
of the Executive. There can be no jobbing
nor corruption. The American principle,
that nothing that can be accomplished by
private enterprise should be attempted by
the General Government. The cost of such
a road, undertaken upon a Government sur-
vey, itself to consume many years and sev-
eral millions in the preparation, would con-
sume the amount of the entire reve-

nues of the nation for several

years.

and

compel the Government to contract an im-
mense debt, and finally to institute a system
of direct taxes. An army of applicants for
office under the great Railroad adminis-
tration— which would constitute a separate
Bureau, or Department — would beset the
doors of the Cabinet. The work would
drag on heavily, perhaps for ages, and its
completion be postponed to the utmost limit
by those who were receiving salaries for
superintending its construction.

Under the plan recommended by the
Committee, on the contrary, every induce-
ment is held out to the contractor, Mr. Whit-
ney, to finish it with the greatest expedi-
tion, since the value of the lands upon which
it is commenced, in the region between the
Lakes Superior and Michigan, will be in-
creased as the road lengthens out over the
wilderness, and creates new settlements upon
its line.

With every year that passes, the difficulty
of constructing such a road is increased.
The great timber region south of Lake Su-
perior is the only tract of country that can
now be depended on to furnish the materi-
als of the road. The timber on this tract

546

Miscellany.

Nor,

is being cutaway annually in vast quantities,
"by companies who appropriate it without
leave from Government. A grant of the
lands for this gi'eat national enterprise will
convert the property of the nation to its
right use, and put an end to these depreda-
tions.

It has been suggested that Government
ought to undertake a regular survey of the
various routes from the Atlantic to the Pa-
cific, before proceeding to the grant of lands.
This would only cause a delay of the work
for five or six years longer, by the end of
which time the timber would have been in
great part cut away from the region between
Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, upon
which it will be necessary to construct the
road. The survey would be, for other rea-

sons, wholly unnecessaiy. The route has
been thoroughly examined already, wherever
examination was necessary. A survey of
the prairies for such a purpose would be of
about as much service as a survey of the
ocean between New- York and Liverpool.
Five years of delay, an idle expenditure of
several miUions, and the final defeat of the
entire undertaking, would be the almost
certain consequences of such a survey. It
will be proposed by the enemies of the
project, as a political manoeuvi'e to stop pro-
ceedings. A vast number of unemployed
engineers and others would find it a good
job for several years, and the stigma of Gov-
ernment patronage will have been irretriev-
ably fixed upon the work. The enemies of
the plan will of course vote for the survey.

MISCELLANY.

We the give following account from the
London Times of the chief events in the life
of Louis Philippe ; — -

Louis Philippe was born in Paris, on the 6th of
October, 1773, and was the eldest son of Philippe
Joseph, Duke of Orleans, (known to the world by
the soubriquet of " Philippe Egalite,") and of Marie,
the daughter of the Duke de Penthievre. Trained
by careful and benevolent parents, the youth of the
future King was marked by many acts of benevo-
lence, bespeaking high character, sufficient to call
forth the high commendation of the celebrated
Madame de Genhs, whose wise and judicious train-
ing was well calculated to develop any latent good
qualities in the minds of those under her charge.
The diary of the Duke de Chartres shows that he
was not altogether exempt from revolutionary
doctrines, and these ideas were far from being dis-
couraged by liis connection with the Jacobin Club.
In 1791 the young Dulce, who had previously re-
ceived the appointment of Colonel in the 14th
Regiment of Dragoons, assumed the command of
that corps, and almost the first act of his authority
was the saving of two clergymen from the fury of
the mob, consequent upon their refusal, in common
with many others, to take the oath required by the
Constitution. Much personal courage was on this
occasion displayed by the Duke de Chartres, and
equal tact in guiding the feelings of an enraged
mob. A similar amount of courage was shown
by him in saving from drowning a M. de Siret, of
» < n.e, Sub-fingineer in the Office of Roads

and Bridges, and a civic crown was presented io
him by the municipal body of that town.

In August, 1791, the Duke de Chartres quitted
Vendome with his regiment, bound for Valenci-
ennes, in April, 1792, war being declared against
Austria, the Duke made his first campaign. He
fought at Yalmy at the head of the troops confided
to him by Kellermaim, on the 20th of September,
1792, and afterwards on the 6th of November,
under Dumouriez, at Jemappes, During the period
in which the Duke de Chartres was engaged in the
military operations the revolution was hastening
to its crisis. The decree of banishment against the
Bourbon Capet race, so soon afterward repealed,
seems to have alarmed the mmd of the Duke,
who earnestly besought his father to seek an asy-
lum on a foreign shore, urging the unhappiness of
his having to sit as a judge of Louis XVI. The
Duke of Orleans paid no attention to these remon-
strances, and finding that his persuasions were to
no avail, the Duke de Chartres returned to his post
in the army. The execution of the Duke of Orleans
soon afterward verified the melancholy anticipa-
tions of his son. He was put to death on the 21st
of January, 1793. Exactly seven months after the
death of his father the Duke de Chartres and
General Dumouriez were summoned before the
Committee of Public Safety, and, knowing the
sanguinary nature of that tribunal, both instantly
fled toward the frontiers. In spite of the eager
pursuit which was commenced, they both escaped
into the Belgian Ketherlands, then in the posses-
sion of Austria. The Austrian authorities invited

1850.

Miscellany.

him to enter their service, but, honorably refusing
to take up arms against his country, he retiied
into private life, going as a traveller to Aix-la-
Chapelle and Coblentz toward Switzerland, having
at the same time but slender funds, and being
hourly beset with dangers. Adelaide, Mademoi-
selle d'Orleans, fled into the country with her pre-
ceptress, Madame de Genlis, met her brother at
Schaffhausen, and accompanied him to Zurich.
The younger sons of the Duke of Orleans were,
after a confinement of three years, liberated on a
promise of proceeding to the United Sta,tes.

On his arrival in the town of Zurich, the Duke
de Chartres found the French emigrants unfavora-
bly disposed towards the house of Orleans, and the
magistrates of the canton dreaded to afford refuge
to the fugitives, fearing the vengeance of France.
Quitting, therefore, as quietly as possible, the town
of Zurich, they proceeded to Zug, where they hired
a small house. Being quickly discovered, they
obtained, by the intercession of M. de Montesquiou,
admission into the convent of St. Claire, near Baum-
garten. The Duke de Chartres proceeded through
the different countries of Europe, by no means
well jDrovided with means, and mainly indebted
to his own tact and abilities for the means of sub-
sistence.

After visiting Basle, where he sold his horses,
he proceeded through Switzerland, accompanied
by his attached servant Baudoin. The means of
the unhappy traveller daily decreased, and it was
literally a question whether the young Duke should
labor for his daily bread, when a letter from M.
de Montesquiou informed him that he had pro-
cured for him the situation of teacher in the Acad-
emy of Reichenau — a village in the south-eastern
portion of S witzerland. Travelling to that locality
he was examined as to his proficiency, and ulti-
mately appointed, although less than twenty years
of age. He here assumed the name of Chambaud
Latour, and here, for the first time, he learned the
fate of his father.

In consequence of some agitation in the G-risons,
Mademoiselle d'Orleans quitted her retreat at
Baumgarten, and retired to the protection of her
aunt, the Princess of Conti, in Hungary, At the
same time de Montesquiou offered the Duke de
Chartres an asylum in his own house at Baumgar-
ten, where he remained under the name of Corby,
until the end of 1794, when, in consequence of his
retreat being discovered, he quitted the place.

The fugitive now attempted to go to America,
and, resolving to embark at Hamburg, he arrived
in that city in the beginning of 1795. In conse-
quence of his funds failing him, he abandoned his
project. Being provided with a letter of credit
on a banker at Copenhagen, he travelled on foot
through Norway and Sweden, reaching the North
Cape in August, 1795. Here he remained for a
short time, returning to Tornea, going thence to
Abo and traversing Finland, but avoiding Russia
from a fear of the Empress Catherine. After com-
pleting his travels through Norway and Sweden,
and having been recognized at Stockholm, ha
left, travelling under an assumed name.

Negotiations were now opened on the part of
the Directory, who had in vain attempted to dis-
cover the place of the young Prince's exile, to in-

duce him to go to the United States, promising, in
the event of his compliance, that the condition
of the Duchess d'Orleans should be ameliorated,
and that his younger brothers should be permitted
to join him. Through the agency of M. West-
ford, of Hamburg, this letter was conveyed to the
Duke, who at once accepted the terms offered, and
sailed from the mouth of the Elbe in the American,
taking with him his servant Baudoin, He depart-
ed on the 24th of September, 1797, and arrived in
Philadelphia after a passage of twenty-seven days.
In November following the young Prince was
joined by his two brothers, after a stormy passage
from Marseilles, and the three brothers remained
at Philadelphia during the winter. They after-
wards visited. Mount Vernon, where they became
intimate with Gen. Washington, and they soon af-
terwards travelled through the western country,
and after a long and fatiguing journey returned to
Philadelphia ; proceeding afterwards to New-Or-
leans, and subsequently by an English ship to
Havana. The disrespect of the Spanish authori-
ties soon compelled them to depart, and they pro-
ceeded to the Bahama Islands, where they were
treated with much kindness by the Duke of Kent,
who, however, did not feel authorized to give
them a passage to England in a British frigate.
They accordingly embarked for New- York, and
thence sailed to England in a private vessel, ar-
riving at Falmouth in February, 1800. After
proceeding to London they took up their residence
at Twickenham, where for some time they enjoyed
comparative quiet, being treated with distinction
by all classes of society. Here, however, their
tranquillity was not undisturbed ; for, hearing that
the Duchess d'Orleans was detained in Spain, they
solicited and obtained from the English Govern-
ment permission to travel to Minorca in an English
frigate. The disturbed state of Spain at that time
prevented the accomplishment of their object, and
after a harassing journey the three brothers re-
turned to Twickenham. Their time was now princi-
pally passed in study, and no event of any impor-
tance disturbed their retreat until the death of the
Duke de Montpensier, on the 18th of May, 1807.
Tlie Prince was interred in Westminster Abbey.
The health of the Count Beaujolias soon after-
wards began to decline in the same manner as that
of his brother. He was ordered to visit a warmer
climate, and accordingly proceeded to Malta,
where he died in 1808, He was buried in the
Clmrch of St. John de Valletta.

The Duke of Orleans now quitted Malta, and
went to Messina, in Sicily, accepting an invitation
from King Ferdinand. During his residence at
Palermo he gained the affections of the Princess
Amelia, and. with the consent of the King and the
Duchess of Orleans, he was married to her in 1809
No event of any material importance marked the
life of the young couple until the year 1814, when it
was announced in Palermo that Napoleon had abdi-
cated the throne, and that t}">e restoration of the
Bourbon family was about to take place. The
Dnke sailed immediately, and arrived in Paris on
the 18th of May, where, in a short time, he was in
the enjoyment of the honors to which he was so
well entitled. The return of Napoleon, in 1815,
soon disturbed his tranquillity ; and having sent

548

Miseellany.

Nov.

his family to England, he proceeded, in obedience
to the command of Louis XVIII., to take the com-
mand of the army of the north. He remained in
this situation until the 24th of March, 1815, when
he resigned his command to the Duke of Treviso,
and retired to Twickenham. On the return of
Louis, after the hundred days — in obedience to
the ordinance issued, requiring all the Princes of
the blood to take their seats in the Chamber of
Peers — the Duke returned to France, in 1815;
and, by his liberal sentiments, rendered himself so
little agreeable to the Administration that he re-
turned to England, where he remained until 1827.
In that year he returned to France, where he re-
mained in private life until the Revolution of 1830.

It is needless now to detail the events of this
terrible period, which terminated in the placing of
Louis Philippe on the throne of France, and the
subsequent history of his reign. These are so
well known and so fresh in the minds of the pub-
lic as to need no recapitulation.

The body was deposited in the leaden coffin to
contain the remains. The whole of the family,
with the Abbe Guille, <fec., were present, and the
coffin was hermetically sealed. This coffin was
placed in one covered with crimson satin. There
appears to be some doubt as to the place of inter-
ment, but it is still thought St. George's Cathedral,
in anticipation of its ultimate destination, being in
the royal vault at Paris.

Peace Congress. — This assemblage com-
menced business at Frankfort, on Thursday,
August 22d. The majority of the members
were English and Americans. French and
German representatives of the cause were
also present. Among those attending the
meeting were Elihu Burritt, the learned
blacksmith, Mr. Cobden, M. P., Emile Gi-
rardin, and George Copway, the Ojibway
Chief, all of whom addressed the meeting
in favor of universal peace. General Hay-
nau was present during part of the sitting.
Resolutions were agreed to condemnatory
of the practice of war, in favor of deciding
international disputes by arbitration, urging
the necessity of national disarmament, dis-
approving of loans for defraying war expen-
ses, declaring the principle of non-interven-
tion and the sole right of every State to
regulate its own affairs, and recommending
the convocation of a Congress of represen-
tatives of various States, with a view to the
formation of a code of international law.

A resolution was also carried against du-
elling, or "private war." Emile Girardin,
who, in a duel arising from political rivalry,
had killed his antagonist, spoke in condem-
nation of this practice. The next meeting
of the Association is to be in London, a year
hence.

Submarine Telegraph.— This great
achievement of science, the establishment of
a communication by electric telegraph be-
tween France and England, has at length

been successfully accomplished. Thirty-
miles of wire, encased in a strong coating of
gutta percha, and buried in the bottom of
the channel by means of leaden weights,
have been laid between Dover and the con-
tinent. The wire was one tenth of an
inch in thickness, and its weight was five
tons. It was coiled in close folds, around a
drum between the paddle wheels of a steamer.
The distance between Dover and the near-
est point on the French coast is twenty-one
miles, so that nine miles were allowed for
the slackening of the wire. The vessel
moved ahead slowly, and as the wire was
paid out the men, at every sixteenth of a
mile, were busily engaged in riveting on to
the wire square leaden clamps or weights of
iron, 14 to 24 pounds, which had the effect of
sinking the wire in the bottom of the sea,
which on the English coast commences at a
depth of 30 feet, and goes on varying from
that to 100 and 180 feet, which latter, or
thirty fathoms, is the greatest depth. The
whole of the casting out and sinking was
accomplished with great precision and suc-
cess. The only conjectured difficulties on
the route was at a point in mid-channel called
the Ridge, between which and another ine-
quality called the Varne, both well known
and dreaded by navigators, there is a deep
submarine valley, surrounded by shifting
sands, the one being 17 miles in length and
the other 12 ; and in their vortex, not unlike
the voracious one of the Goodwin Sands,
ships encounter danger, lose their anchors^
and drift, and strolling nets of fishermen are
frequently lost. Over this, however, the
wire was successfully submerged below the
reach, it is believed, of either ships' anchors,
sea animals, or fishing nets. After a week's
successful operation, a breakage was found
to have taken place, from the cessation of
telegraphic communication. By raising the
wire at intervals, it was found that it had
been cut where it entered into a leaden con-
ductor, which ran out two hundred yards
from the French shore, for the sake of pro-
tecting the wire from the surf. The leaden
tube proved of too soft a texture to with-
stand the oscillation of the sea, and had be-
come detached from the wire, leaving it ex-
posed to the action of the waves upon this
rough coast. For the present leaden tube,
a tube of iron is to be substituted, the present
apparatus being too fragile to be permanently
answerable. The wire is to be removed to
a point nearer Calais, where, from sound-
ings, it has been ascertained there are no
rocks, and where the contour of the coast is
favorable. The experiment, so far as it has
gone, is perfectly successful, proving the
possibility of the gutta percha wire resisting
the action of the salt water, of the fact of

1850.

Miscellany.

549

its being a perfectwater-proof insulator, and
that the weights on the wire are sufficient
to prevent its being drifted away by the cur-
rents. It is intended to keep in readiness
twenty or thirty lines of wire, so as to have
a constant reserve in the event of an acci-
dent.

Another Repulse of the Danes. — Ad-
vices from Hamburg state that on the 12th
the Holstein army made a forward movement
with the intention of attacking the fortified
bridge across the Schlye at Missunde. The
Danes were driven from their unfortified
positions at Reckon dorff and other points
into their intrenchments. They cannonaded
the Holsteiners for about an hour, but with-
out effect, when firing ceased, and they be-
gan to retire. The Danes afterwards re-
placed the bridge which they had previously
removed, and crossed over with the intention
of harassing the retreat of the Holsteiners,
but found them so strong as to render it
unadvisable to press them closely. General
"Willisen took possession of Reckendorff and
established his head-quarters at that town in
the afternoon, but was subsequently forced
to retire, owing to the near proximity of the
Danish ships. The army bivouacked at
night at points somewhat in advance of their
previous position, and on the following day
the Danes still declined to give them battle.
They re-occupied the positions which they
held previous to the advance, and up to the
14th, no further movement has been made.
The Holsteiners lost about 130, and the
Danes about 170 men. In General Willisen's
proclamation he says: "We have offered
them battle in the open field, under the most
favorable circumstances for them. We have
destroyed all their field works on the east by
Rekernford, Holm and Hornmolfeldt, and
their camp at Kackendorff, and thus proved
that they are not so fully masters of Schles-
wig as they give themselves out to be."

English Jews. — The admission o^ Baron
Rothschild into the House of Commons has
been affirmed by a large majority. The
oaths of supremacy and allegiance were taken
by him in the Jewish form, agreeably with
a resolution of the House. But in taking
the oath of abjuration, on coming to the words,
"upon the true faith of a Christian," he re-
fused to repeat them, considering them not
binding on his conscience. Admission as a
member was consequently refused him.
Lord John Russell has since brought for-
ward the two following resolutions :

" 1. That the Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild
is not entitled to vote in this House (Parliament)
or to sit in this House, during any debate, until he

shall take the oath of abjuration in the form pre-
scribed by law.

" 2. That this House will, at fhe earliest op-
portunity in the next Session of Parliament, take
into its serious consideration the form of the oath
of abjuration, with a view to relievo her Majesty's
subjects profes.<ing the JcAvish religion."

Russia. — The war in the Caucasus still
continues. By the last accounts, the Rus-
sian troops had suffered a disastrous defeat
by the Circassians. Protected by distance
and mountain fastnesses, and their indomita-
ble love of freedom, this fine people struggle
with more success than the unfortunate
Hungarians against the encroachments of
despotism.

All the troops cantonned in the southern
provinces of Russia have received orders to
be collected into one army, for the purpose
of being reviewed previous to the com-
mencement of winter, and it is positively
announced that the Emperor and his three
eldest sons will come to Kiew, to Odessa, to
Sebastopol, and to Bessarabia. The agents
of the government spread this report for the
purpose of exciting the national and religious
enthusiasm of the people. At no former
period has Russia made svch formidable mili-
tary preparations as she is making at the
present 7noment. The government gives it to
be understood that it is preparing for a guerre
sainte in favor of Sclavism and the orthodox
religion. Notwithstanding all this, the
Emperor is far from being satisfied. His
sons, the state of France and of Poland dis-
quiet him. It is said that he regards with
great apprehension the indolence of his eldest
son and the ambition of his second, and he
contemplates with horror the revolutionary
spirit prevalent in Poland.

Pay of English Officials. — The Com-
mittee appointed by the House of Commons
to inquire into the salaries of public func-
tionaries, recommend a reduction of the
salaries of all official servants holding their
appointments at the pleasure of the Ci'own,
of judicial officers or judges of all ranks from
the Lord ChanceHor downwards, and in the
diplomatic service. The Ministerial salaries
the Committee bears lightly on, considering
them not extravagantly paid for the duties
demanded of them. They propose no change
in the salaries of the Premier, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, the three Secretaries of
State, and the first Lord of the Admiralty ;
but in those of the junior Lords of the
Treasury and of the Admiralty — merely
ornamental offices — they recommend reduc-
tion. They also would abolish the office of
Lord Privy Seal. In the judicial depart-
ment, the Committee show greater severity,

550

Miscellany.

Nov. 1850.

and propose to reduce the income of the
Lord Chancellor by forty per cent., and the
other judges in proportion. In the diplo-
matic service they recommend to change
the present embassies with France and
Turkey into first class missions ; and in place
of the various missions now sent to the petty
sovereignties of the Germanic Confederation,
to substitute a single mission at some central
point. Generally, they consider that no
diplomatic salary should exceed c£5,000 per
annum, exclusive of a residence. They also
propose that the salaries of the whole diplo-
matic service should be revised with refer-
ence to this maximum, and the relative
importance of the various missions.

Sardinia and the Holy See. — The
Church has been taking a step in the king-
dom of Sardinia, reminding us more of its
palmy days in the middle ages, than of the
temporal feebleness to which the nineteenth
century has brought it. A law had been
passed by the Legislature of Sardinia, abol-
ishing the special privileges of the clergy in
that country, and putting their civil rights
on a level with those of other citizens. The
priesthood was of course highly scandalized
and indignant at such a measure. The
Count of Santa Rosa, one of the offending
ministry, being afterwards on his death-bed,
and desiring to receive the last rites of his
faith, was denied these privileges by the
Bishop Franzoni, unless he would publicly
renounce and disapprove of the obnoxious
law. This he unqualifiedly refused, and
was suffered in consequence to expire
without the benefit of extreme unction. The
ordinary burial rites were also refused by
the prelate.

This outrage excited the greatest indig-
nation among the people, and at last the
popular impulse proceeded to such a height
that the military force was employed to pro-
tect the persons and dwellings of the priests.
The Government immediately took vigorous
steps in punishment of this despotic act of
the bishop. The Convent of the friars, who
had been the instruments .of Franzoni, and
its income of 32,000f., were sequestered,
and the fathers themselves forced to give
place to secular priests. Papers were
seized, among which were some compromis-
ing Franzoni as a conspirator against the
Government, and a criminal action is to be
instituted against him, independently of any
religious question. A Council of Cardinals
was held at Rome thereupon, and violent
retaliatory measures were proposed against
Sardinia. Excommunication of the King
was threatened, — his subjects were to be
absolved from their oath of allegiance, and
the kingdom laid under an interdict.

The French Government has since offered
mediation between the two powers.

Sublime Porte. — Amin Bey, the first
Turkish ambassador to this country, arrived
at New- York on the morning of the 13th of
September, in the U. S. store-ship Erie,
from Constantinople. The following day he
was waited upon by the Mayor, and tendered
the hospitalities of the city.

M. de Lamartine has left France to take
possession of his property near Smyrna,
given to him by the Sultan. His estate is de-
scribed as of great fertility; and with slight
outlay, capable of being rendered extremely
valuable. It contains within its limits a
number of villages, and a fall of water sixty
or eighty feet high. The soil is a rich allu-
vium.

Louis Napoleon. — The French Presi-
dent's tour through France has thus far been
far from auspicious. In some districts he
has been met with a show of enthusiasm, but
in others his reception has been cold, and in
many places even attended with insult. At
Besancon he was jostled in a ball-room,
while the officers of his staff were compelled
to draw their swords in his defence, and the
room to be cleared at the point of the bay-
onet. In his progress through the provinces
he was sometimes greeted with cries of
" Vive Napoleon," but oftener with " Vive la
Republique." All arts were resorted to for
gaining popularity. Money was profusely
distributed. The ribbon of the Legion of
Honor was scattered right and left. Five
hundred hacked and tottering survivors of
the veterans of the empire were paraded.
But it produced little effect.

How different is all this from the respect
that even an unpopular first magistrate
would meet with on this side of the Atlantic !
In France, when the deference exacted by
authority is refused, there is no bulwark to
supply its place; while in the United States
the individual is always merged in respect
for the people from whom the authority
springs.

A great naval review took place at Cher-
bourg, where President Bonaparte reviewed
the French fleet. The British yacht clubs
were present with thirty yachts, and exe-
cuted some beautiful manoeuvres to the de-
light of the French. The finest fleet ever
sent to sea by France was present on the
occasion. About 50,000 persons assembled
to witness the sights . The President visited
all the ships and the public works, and was
received at each place with a salute of artil-
lery. On his departure from the scene,
two thousand pieces of cannon were fired
simultaneously.

I'-iCWlaelple^ Me?.^

OT INIDIANA.

THE

AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW.

No. XXXVI.

FOR DECEMBER, 1850.

POLITICAL PEEFACE.

Our existence as a nation began with the
Union of the thirteen colonies in the war
of the Revolution. Sectional jealousies were
subdued by the one sentiment of opposition
to a foreign power. The opposition of those
times was excited by forms of oppression,
varied in feature, but alike in purpose. The
people of the thirteen colonies were denied
both liberty of industry and hberty of self-
taxation ; and to recover these rights, they
were driven into a war of revolution. By
commercial regulations, their manufactures
were discouraged and suppressed. It was
the policy of the mother country to convert
America into a colonial farm and kitchen
garden, for the benefit of her own opera-
tives, and capitalists who were then enga-
ging in a more profitable species of industry.
If Great Britain wished to embark in any
kind of trade, the colonies were forbidden to
interfere with it. If a manufacture was befrun
in the mother country, it was directly or
indirectly suppressed in America. The
colonies were suffered to make only such
ordinary articles as might be necessary to
their subsistence.

VOL. VI. NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

Because Great Britain could not produce
cotton, sugar, and rice for herself, it was
deemed proper to intrust their production to
the colonies, and a system of negi'o slavery
was forced upon them, to be sustained as long
as it might be good and profitable for the
mother country, or consistent with her ideas
of philanthropy, and then to be forcibly put
down ; the interests and opinions of the
colonists being as little respected in the one
as in the other act of arbitrary power.

Commerce is not merely " King " in these
days, — he is even priest, king, and philan-
thrope, a kind of " incidental protectionist,"
an accidental saint, and an involuntary hero,
who letteth Exeter Hall know what the
House of Commons intendeth to do.

In those days there existed a class of per-
sons in the colonies called Tories, of whom
a great number were hung by the good peo-
ple of the colonies, on the charge of treach-
ery and want of patriotism. These unfortu-
nates were found guilty of favoring the
tribute; that is to say, they favored every
means that might be used to rob the colonists

of their taxes and their industry. In these
36

552

Political Preface.

Dec.

days there is a similar class, of whom it is
affirmed by minute historians, that they are
the immediate descendants of the others, but
who, by a curious perversion of words, have
got the name of " Free Traders ;" more cor-
rectly, friends of unprotected trade ^ or of
•" the tribute.^'' By opening an unprotected
trade with one class of citizens, King Com-
merce has succeeded in quietly crushing
another class, against whom he cherishes an
ancient grudge and a modern hatred ; and
thus, at no loss or cost to himself, he carries
on a brilliant and successful war against his
enemies ; a kind of warfare congenial to
him, and which it is his cue to make eternal.

The legislation of unprotected trade forced
upon us by the agents and bhnd tools of
King Commerce in these days, is not only
similar in character and aim to his old sys-
tem used against his young rivals, the colo-
nies, but indeed far more profitable. It
governs us by art, when we could not be
governed by force. It suppresses our in-
dustry by art and words, and the show of
profitable business. It carries elections in
America, as they are carried in England, by
a bribe.

Kino- Commerce is too keen and Ccilcula-

ting a sovereign to make open war upon his
tributaries, when he can subdue them and
enrich himself by " an offer to trade on
liberal terms." While, in all his news-
papers at home, he depreciates and reviles
them, heaping up endless contempt and
scorn ; while his ablest writers and most
" hberal " philosophers flirt a pen steeped in
gall and wormwood, embittered by the
jealousy of ages, he adroitly touches the
very weakness which he derides, and makes
a fair income out of a people whose " vul-
garity, cupidity, and cunning," are his by-
word and his jest. He plays upon them
like an instrument, to the tune of millions
this year, and more the next, — or rather,
he plays and they dance, while his dog steals
their meat.

King Commerce is the great experiment-

upon er nations, whom he tortures and
cajoles, as of old he did the Jews, for their
gold and their produce. He is a great
philosopher, after the method of Lord Bacon,
and relies upon information. His House of
Commons examines witnesses and weighs
evidence, whether, in the event of w^ar with
the United States, it might not be conven-
ient to let loose an army of negroes upon
our southern shores to excite slave insurrec-
tions.

He sends his spies to examine our ships
of war, and report to the Admiralty upon
their condition, and to procure charts of all
our harbors and sea-side ports, with plans of
their subterranean approaches, to be used in
the event of a war.

His popular historian offers to his humane
consideration a very new, villainous, and
bloody method of attack, to be used against us
in case Avar be declared on either side ; our
cities alono; the entire line of the Atlantic to
be simultaneously bombarded and destroyed
by a stupendous naval armament ; which
humane advice, should it ever be followed,
would as certainly lead to the final death
and destruction of King Commerce, and the
suspension of his hterary aids from a high
tree, as there are millions of strong and
eager arms in America^ and millions of bold
hearts to urge them.

His great newspaper, that true friend and
representative of King Commerce, deals out
to its readers occasional diatribes against
the insolent customer, who will not always
agree to buy what King Commerce v/ishes
to sell. It represents to the world that the
model Republic is growing very fast — in
fact frightfully fast, and must be well
watched, and the " balance of power looked
to." It speculates on the event of war, and in-
timates that " the thing must be looked to" ;
in fact, " those mongrels on the other side,"
argues King Commerce, " do not buy
half enough of my goods. The dogs are try-
ino; to make their own clothes, but I will see
them before they shall do it. Luckily,"

1850.

Political Pre/ace.

558

says he, turning to his Prime Adviser, with
a sneer, " these poor creatures do not know
their own interests well enough to keep
united : for, if they hold together, they will
soon shut out my goods and make their own
clothes, and turn me and my trade into
ridicule before the world. The sooner they
break up the better, for then I shall have
a divided force to meet, and with the two
halves of the ' Empire of Freedom' — ha !
ha ! — I can make a stupendous game, play-
ing off the Northern home-industry fools
against the Southern slavery hot-heads."

King Commerce, thereupon, dispatches
his envoys and his lecturers, to go amongst
his country customers, scattering fury and
dissension in the form of philanthropy.

For these and sundry other immoral pro-
ceedings, in Europe, in India, in China, in
Ireland, and in his own country, a dreadful
reckoning is one day to be made with King
Commerce. His department of extra-pure
philanthropy at Exeter Hall, and his office
for universal interference in Downing street ;
his modern literature, of which the heart
and pith is contempt, and whose best point
is a spurn at the refractory vulgarians who
will not buy what he chooses to sell ; his
extensive inquiries into the military capacities
of his neighbors ; all these traits deserve a
good turn from Providence, and will doubt-
less meet it.

Meanwhile, let not our readers think that
we have not a distinct point in view in
laying the above truths before their eyes.
The American people are not too simple
to learn the arts of war, commercial or san-
guinary, from their neighbors. If we are
attacked with arms, we must without delay
attack and crush with arms. If the subtler
arts of diplomacy are used to gain a foot-
hold near us, and cut us off from our natu-
ral allies and dependencies, we must drive
out the intruder by threats or violence.
But if the attack is more insidious still, with
the unseen and invincible weapons of legis-
lation, of theory, and of opinion, we must

wrest the weapon away, and turn it against
the face of the adversary, and do this with
as settled a determination to protect our-
selves, and to crush our injurers, as would
inspire us in the heat of a sanguinary con-
flict. If the laborers of America wish to
know why they are impoverished, let
them look at their foreign rivals, the great
teachers of free trade, and the laugh-
ing emjoloyers of a Democracy whom they
have advised and persuaded to gi'ow tur-
nips. If the Southern slaveholders wish to
know whence comes this irresistible furor of
destructive philanthropy that keeps their
souls in terror, let them turn their eyes
eastward over the Atlantic ; — it comes from
Exeter Hall. If the patriot wishes to know
why the Union is in danger, it is because
foreigners labor to persuade the people that
the North ought to destroy the South, and
the South that it can do without the North ;
in order that foreign dealej's may profit by
the animosity of both.

The people of America are surely mad,
that they do not see through the thin veil
of pretence that covers the real purpose of
all this. With our steamships surpassing
all others in speed and power, we shall
soon have the superiority of the seas ;
what do we now need, (to seize upon
our lawful inheritance, the trade of the
world,) but a sufficient protection to our
poor and suffering industry ? We may
become trudgers, carriers and turnip-growers
for England; we may convey the manu-
factured wealth of Birmingham acioss the
continent to China ; but we shall thus be-
come carriers only, and have not secured
the three kinds of j)rofit which must be
combined to create national wealth.

We shall have an imperfect agriculture,
and for a little time a commerce ; but unless
we add the only means of national wealth
vouchsafed to men by Providence, the wealth
of creative industry, our railroads and our
steamship stocks must slip out of our hands
and become the property of others, and the

554

An Exile's Greeting to America.

Dec*

interest and profits of public works will go to
England, and we shall toil, as to a great ex-
tent we now do, in the service of contemp-
tuous absentees.

By her Hterature of "free trade," and
her hterature of Abolition, English Whig-
gery has well nigh crushed its mortal
€nemy and namesake in America. But the
Whig Party with us is but a name^ in such a

controversy : it is the Nation, and not a party,
that is injured. Let us forget party hence-
forth, and as we are about to make common
cause for the safety of the Union, for the
integrity of the sovereignties, and for the
advancement of our internal commerce, let
us also make common cause against the
o-reatest curse of all, a forei^, British-
made legislation.

AN EXILE'S GREETING TO AMERICA.

BY WM. E. ROBINSON.

Hail ! briglitest banner that floats on the gale !
Flag of the country of Washington, hail !
Red are thy stripes with the blood of the brave ;
Bright are thy stars as the sun on the wave ;
Wrapt in thy folds are the hopes of the free :
Banner of "Washington ! blessings on thee !

Mountain-top^ mingle the sky with their snow ;
Prairies are green with rich verdure below ;
Rivers, as broad as the sea in their pride,
Border thy empires, but do not divide ;
Niagara's voice far out-anthems the sea :
Laud of sublimity ! blessings on thee !

Light of the world ! in thy glory sublime.
When thou didst burst on the pathway of time,
Millions from darkness and bondage awoke ;
Music was born when first Liberty spoke ;
Millions to come yet shall join in the glee :

Land of the pilgrim's hope ! blessings on thee !

Empires may perish, and monarchies fail ;
Kingdoms and thrones in tliy glory grow pale :
Thou shalt live on, and thy people shall own
Loyalty's sweet where the heart is the throne.
Union and freedom thy heritage be,

Country of Washington ! Blessings on thee !

York, Nov, Uih, 1850.

X85a

Plain Words for the North.

555

PLAIN WORDS FOR THE NORTH.

We have fallen upon times of profound
and startling interest. In our day the crisis
of trial to our free government has ap-
proached imminently near. In the minds
of those wise and great men who planned
our government no little apprehension
seems to have mingled with the hope
which they felt of success. It could not
have been otherwise. They were men of
deep experience, well knowing the weak-
ness of man's nature, and the errors of
his judgment. They perceived that calm as
was the outer surface of the young Repub-
lic, within its bosom slept the germs of
future strife. True, that in the Constitution
which they gave were embodied guarantees,
if observed, amply strong enough to in-
sure its perpetuity. But they well knew
that sectional jealousies, partisan spirit, and
selfish ambition would soon seek to gratify
their objects by avoiding those guarantees ;
and they foresaw that the irruption once
begun, its power must overflow the bulwark
they had erected. Those anticipations have
proven but too well grounded. Effort after
effort has been made to set aside the Con-
stitution, because it was too stringent a bridle
upon selfish prejudice and ambition. But
its inherent strength, grounded upon the
good sense and sound principle of our
people, has so far repelled triumphantly
such insidious assaults. In our time these
assaults have been directed from a position
pecuharly dangerous. The fervor of reli-
gious zeal, the ardor of philanthropy, have
been artfully enlisted in a most unholy
crusade against the citadel of our confi-
dence. To meet a band of enemies bat-
tling for wrong under the banner of right
has been difficult. In the early ages of
Islamism, vain Avere the strongest walls,
the bravest soldiers of the East, when con-
tendino; with the hosts of errino; enthusiasts,
who deemed that in foUowino; the banner
of Caled and Amrou, they fought foi* the
true cause of God. Fanaticism and error,
honest but dangrerous, have existed on the

subject of slavery ever since the foundatious
of our government, — error not confined to
one section or one side of the question^
Where these exist, the material is ready
for the hand of the selfish and design-
ing. In themselves aiming at the rights
they are the ready tools of the most egre-
gious wrong. The Redeemer was cruci-
fied by the hands of men who waited for
the coming of the true Messiah ; and in
later times the ashes of a heretic have been
deemed an acceptable offering to the God
of Peace and Love. The effects of the
same spirit have nearly been felt in the
destruction of our liberties. It is useless to
disguise that the existence of our Union has
been by recent events greatly endangered.
It is folly to deny that a few more sessions
of Congi ess like the last, and the Repubhc^
freighted with earth's most glorious hopes,
is for ever lost. The arena of public events
has disclosed this state of danger. We have
seen those bodies composed of the represen-
tatives of the Church, wherein discord and
fear, we should think, could find no room,
torn asunder by the operation of this cause.
We have seen the two great parties, ce-
mented by strong bonds, riven into frag-
ments by the detonation of this bomb.
We have seen the Congress of the United
States spending month after montli in the
most vituperative and inflammatory debate
upon this all-absorbing theme. We have
witnessed public meetings composed of Nor-
thern men, of those who pride themselves
upon adherence to law and order, advocating
theft, arson, and murder. Omens grave and
serious, these. But there are others, to
Northern men almost unknown, which to
Southern hearts are even more alarming.
They are to be found in the condition of
Southern feeling upon this subject. But a
few years ago not a man in the South dared
to avow himself in favor of Disunion. It
was looked upon as the synonyme of trea-
chery, and no man dared to avow it. Now,
how different is the fact. South Carolina

550

Plain Words for the North»

Dec.

is not only ready, but anxious for the con-
flict. Her people almost unanimously look
upon the Union as a tyranny, whose yoke
they would gladly throw off. Her children
turn with brow and word of defiance to
those whom they consider their oppressors.
Mississippi and Alabama partake of the
same feeling:. In others of the Southern
States there prevails less bitterness and more
calmness. But in all is the conviction fixed
and fastened, that Disunion, aye, even war,
is to be preferred to the horrible conse-
quences of an interference with slavery
among them. Georgia has called a Conven-
tion of her people. The action of that body
was not difficult to foresee. They will not dis-
solve this Union, although many of her sons
openly avow that thus only can her wrongs
be redressed. She will remain in the con-
federacy, with the hope of obtaining there-
under her riofhts. But she well knows that
but a step or two more taken, and she must
defend those rights at all hazards. She will
forgive, if possible, forget, the past. But
she warns those who have attacked her
privileges, that in defence of them we will
band together to resist any encroachments.
She presents to them the simple alterna-
tive, " We will have our rights in this
Union, or out of it. You must elect which
you prefer." But we, and we only, who have
lived amongst her people, who w^ere born and
reared upon her soil, know how great has
been the struggle in the minds of her sons
between an almost superstitious veneration
for this Union, and bitter sense of wrong and
injury. None else can know how stern is
the determination of her people that these
wrongs and injuries must cease now and
for ever ; — cease, quietly and voluntarily if
possible, but if not, then terminate in the
night of violence and bloodshed. This is
the feehng general, nay, unanimous in the
South. The further progress of this article
will show on what this feeling is grounded,
and how it is met. But enouo'h is said to
show, that some step must be taken to bring
this most dangerous question to an issue, —
that by some means this feeling must be
calmed, or the end of our Repubhc is not far
distant.

In a government where sectional interests
and feelings may come into conflict, the sole
security for permanence and peace is to be
found in a Constitution whose provisions are
inviolable. In framing ours, it was easily

perceived upon what subject would occur the
most bitter conflicts of prejudice and pas-
sion. Nor was it difficult to foresee, that
although sanctions might easily be devised
which would deprive this question of all its
mischievous dread, yet no security could be
had that those guarantees could be main-
tained. Every State, before entering into that
compact, stood in a position of independence.
Ere yielding that independence, it was only
proper that provision should be made to
protect the interests of those which would
inevitably be the weaker in that confed-
eracy. In a portion of those independent
States a peculiar and most important insti-
tution had grown up. It had entwined its
tendrils around every interest of the country
where it existed, — had become essential
to its prosperity. With the foundation
of the institution the ancestors of those
now warmest to denounce it were identified.
Southrons saw that its abolition, nay, even
its modification by other hands than their
own, might plunge them into all the hor-
rors of a new and more terrible "servile
While cognizant of all this, they

war.

could see the vast interest which posterity
might have in this matter ; how the North
would grow daily in numerical superiority
over the South ; how slaves would become
in process of time the chief source of the
wealth of their descendants, and how com-
plex and important would be their relations
to society. They also saw how the seeds of
fanaticism would grow, how sectional jeal-
ousy would increase, how these germs
would ripen into animosity. No wonder
that they trembled at the prospect — that
they demanded protection. Fortunately
they had to do with statesmen of enlarged
and salutary views. Those Northern men
who at that day represented their States
could not only perceive how reasonable it
was that slavery at the South should be
guaranteed in the new goA-ernment, but also
its immense advantages to their own con-
stituency. Intent upon the formation of a
great empire, which should embody the
principles for which they had fought, they
were not willing to yield so great a destiny
to the demand of a false and baseless phi-
lanthropy. They well knew that those who
lived under the institution were not respon-
sible for its foundation ; and they saw that
its roots were so deeply imbedded, that to
tear it away must bring the hfe-blood from

1850.

Plain Words for the North.

657

tlie heart of the new confederacy. They
acted wisely, and embodied in the Constitu-
tion all that the South could ask. But two
Constitutional provisions are necessary to
secure Southern rights upon this important
question,— ^Ae recognition of slavery ivhere
the people choose it, and the remedy for fugi-
tive slaves. By the first, foreign interference
is prevented, and the whole control and
direction of the subject left where it belongs,
in the hands of those who only are qualified
to understand and to direct it. By the
other, is avoided a series of border intestine
broils, with which the existence of a Union
would have soon become incompatible. We
hold that the Constitution of the Union
does recognize slavery where it exists. But
with the progress of time a spirit has arisen
and grown strong, which refuses to make
this recognition. True, no effort has as
yet been made to attack this principle by
abolishing slavery in our midst ; but every
nerve has been strained to exclude slavery
from territories which are the common prop-
erty of both North and South. Men have
allowed the plain dictates of reason to be
clouded and obscured by the flimsiest soph-
istry. A large portion of our States have
adopted and allow slavery. The entire
country becomes possessed of new territory,
to the acquisition of which these slave States
contribute mainly. The South admits the
right of this new territory to choose for itself
whether slavery shall or shall not exist
there. But the North insists, that while the
territory was partly acquired by Southern
men, is partly owned by Southern men, that
they shall be excluded from its soil, — that
they shall not carry their property into their
own land — land which is theirs by the
right of purchase. Thus it is rendered, if
these views are carried out, simply impos-
sible for any new State representing the
Southern interest ever to come into the
Union. The equilibrium which alone can
preserve the Constitution is utterly de-
stroyed. And to do this, flagrant violations
of theqjlainest rules of right and wrong are
committed. It is said, " You may become
the inhabitant of this territory ; nay, it is
yours, we cannot forbid it ; but your property
must be left behind." Amounting in effect
to the declaration. You may pay out your
money to buy land, you may pour out your
blood to conquer it, but it is ours ; and
over it shall be extended only our peculiar

customs, our industry, our population : yours
have no part nor lot in the matter. Men who
would tamely submit to so palpable a usur-
pation, to so great a wrong, were unworthy
to be freemen. Yet such was the famous
" Wilmot Proviso." Nor was the course of
the North in regard to the provision for the
recapture of fugitive slaves less open to ob-
jection. Without this provision no Cimstitu-
tion could ever have been formed. Without
it now every reasonable Southern man would
acquiesce in the necessity of Disunion. We
consented, for the sake of our great object,
to accept a Constitutional guarantee. Of
this Northern men have been well aware ;
yet the conduct of many of them has been
a series of efforts to avoid fulfilling a plain,
simple provision of the Constitution. Until
the last session, Cono;ress has allowed this
provision to remain jjractically a dead letter.
But even the few efforts which have been
made to carry into effect its object have
met resistance. Legislatures have passed
laws with the avowed intention of prevent-
ing the execution of this clause of the Con-
stitution, where exery member had taken
upon his conscience an oath to defend and
carry out that Constitution. Judicial offi-
cers have forgotten the supreme law of the
land, and been carried away by the rush of
prejudices. Again in this impo.tant matter
was the South outrao-ed, her ri^'hts denied
her.

During the last session of Congress it be-
came evident that no further inroads upon
the constitutional rights of the South could
be permitted. Then, when the Union was
endangered, statesmen of enlarged senti-
ments came forward to preserve it. The
history of that struggle need not be written.
It is fresh in the mnids of all. Suffice it to
say, that the Patriotism of the countiy ral-
lied against its Radicalism. The conflict was
severe : for ao-ainst the Constitution were
leagued the enthusiasts of the North and
the ultras of the South. But thei'e is some-
times a principle of strength in governments
as in men, which is only developed by cir-
cumstances of dano-er and trial. So in our
government has been found to exist a te-
nacity heretofore sufficient to resist all forces
striviijo; to draw it asunder. Our citizens
are thinking, reflecting men, and they have
seen the disadvantages which are inevitable
upon a dissolution of the Union. A major-
ity of them have therefore always ralhed to

558

Plain Words for the I^orth,

Dec.

its support. So now, after every effort to
warp and pervert its principles, the Consti-
tution prevailed. The Congress acknowl-
edged both the great sanctions which are
essential to cement together the Union. It
admitted, in the Utah and New-Mexico
bills, that it had not the right to exclude
slaves from territory common to the whole
country, but that its adoption or prohibition
depended solely upon the will of the people ;
and it provided a stringent and effective
law for the recapture of fugitive slaves. The
action of Congress in both these particulars
was based on true principle — a determina-
tion to abide by the Constitution. The
question now simply is. Will this action be
sustained ? For the South we answer un-
hesitatingly. Yes ! There are doubtless
many amongst us who demand more than
they have obtained. The misfortune is also
that they have asked more than they had
any right to expect. Various motives have
uro'ed on these men of ultra sentiments.
Some have been animated by a spirit of re-
sentment against the North, which we con-
ceive to be unjust, unless that section of the
Union sustains what we hope is but a small
and unthinking portion of their population.
Others have deemed that a separation would
advance the interests of the South ; while
others have but striv^en to produce a com-
motion, in the hope that they would be
thrown to the surface in the ao^itation which
must ensue. These men have claimed more
than the South obtained by the legislation
of the last Congress. Having failed to se-
cure it, they now strive to make that legis-
lation the signal for resistance. Such, we
think, is not the sentiment of a majority of
the Southern people. The most moderate
indeed deem the admission of California to
have been irregular, and are pained at much
that preceded that admission. But they look
upon those irregularities as not affecting the
great question which arises upon her appli-
cation, viz., the right of the people of a State
to decide for themselves as to the existence
of slavery amongst them. A great majority
of the Southern people are satisfied that the
people of California do not wish slavery.
They contend that they have a right to the
institution wherever the municipal law sanc-
tions it. This they hold to be their right
under the Constitution. The inference is
irresistible that the same right of choice is
preserved to others, and that slavery shall

not go into territories where the inhabitants
desire to exclude it. They therefore submit
to the admission of California, notwithstand-
ing the irregularities attending it, because
they think that substantially the intent of
the people was carried out. And this great
test they are willing to abide by, whether it
works w^oe or weal. But with other parts
of the legislation of Congress we have better
reason to be satisfied. Comprehending a
surrender of the Wilmot Proviso, and an
energetic law for the recovery of fugitive
slaves, it includes all that is necessary to se-
cure the rights of the South. But will the
North abide by this just and equitable ter-
mination of the matter ? Will she be con-
tent with the advantages which she will
necessarily enjoy in the natural course of
events ; or will she open this wise and just
settlement, and introduce again into the
national councils the demons of distraction
and terror ?

Much of the evil that has threatened has
arisen, not from actual assaults upon the
vested privileges of the South, but from at-
tacks upon the feelings of her people. As a
whole, no people are more sensitive than
those of the South, more quick to resent in-
sult and injury. They are placed in a most
peculiar position. Born long after slavery
had become rooted in their country, they
have no option but to sustain it. Even
those most anxious to abolish it advance nc
feasible mode of accomplishing their end.
The Southern man well knows it to be utterly
impracticable. He sees its many advantages,
and he only can feel its pecuhar importance
to himself. Yet he is doomed to see attack
after attack made upon this institution by
men who understand nothing whatever of its
nature, and who are ignorant of, or indiffer-
ent to, the terrible consequences which may
follow the intermeddling with its existence.
He must be content to hear every term of
reproach lavished upon him, as a human
taskmaster, by those whose forefathers estab-
lished the slave trade for gain, and who
themselves gladly draw their wealth from
the pockets of the much abused slave-owner.
Nay, he sees publications filled with on-
slaughts the most ungenerous, and often
untrue, upon his whole community. South-
ern men were fast becoming tired of vitu-
peration, often obviously hypocritical, and
always unjust and impertinent. This it was
and is yet — this spirit of indignation — which

1850.

Plain Words for the North,

559

more than aught else endangers the Union.
Men cannot and ought not to remain calmly
indifferent while others seek to deprive
them of their rights, and to awake in their
midst a spirit which may prove fatal to
all they hold most dear. The passage of
the Compromise Bills acted like balm upon
the wounded feelings of the South. The
action of Northern men was essential to
procure the success of those measures ;
and the purest and ablest amongst them
came manfully forward to sustain Southern
rights. By their assistance those rights
were obtained. To a o-reat extent the irri-
tation in Southern minds has subsided. The
Southern heart has warmed towards Web-
ster, and Cass, and Dickinson, and Elliott.
We have felt at leno-th that those who seek
to destroy us are but a faction, and that
we beheve neither numerous nor reputable,
amongst our Northern brethren. Shall this
state of feeling continue ? The North must
decide. It were idle to deny that the com-
promises of the last session will not remain
unattacked in either section of the Union.
But at the South, as we have indicated, they
will be sustained. At the North the issue
must mainly be fought. The vituperation
and howling of enthusiasts we are prepared
to expect, but we are beginning to learn
how little must their ravings be considered
as an exponent of true public feeling at the
North.

The question is. Will the North remain
content with the so-called Compromise Bills,
or will her people persist in attempts to vio-
late the Constitution ? The issue must
be fought north of the Potomac. And upon
its result depends the existence of the Union.
Already have the destroyers, defeated but
not discouraged, raised the banner of revolt.
The South regards them but little, con-
fiding in the patiiotism of the North to de-
prive these madmen of the power to do evil.
But if this hope shall prove fallacious ; if
again a Northern party shall attempt to
make the Government the arbiter of the ex-
istence of slavery, and to use their numerical
power to exclude it, or shall endeavor to
throw obstacles in the way of the slave-
owner seeking to recover the fugitive, the
knell of this Republic will have struck. It
is time this matter should be comprehended.
The people at the North have now a fair,
clear field for the contest. It is not ours to
interfere. Themselves must decide whether

they prefer Disunion to a confederacy with
slave States. They have before them every
aid to arrive at a decision. But that de-
cision must be made, and will in all proba-
bility be final. If a majority of the people
of the North shall see fit to deny us the
privileges ^vith which we came into the
Union, it will remain for us to seek our
rights in independence. But ere we are
forced to this alternative, it were well for
Northern men to refliect on the path before
them. The justice and propriety of sla-
very we do not intend to discuss. But it
is, to one intimately acquainted with its
workings, surprising to see the glaring mis-
representations which are common in regard
to the slave. But we do not conceive the
question which Northern men have to argue
with themselves just nov/ is as to the moral-
ity or propriety of slavery. If they do not
wish it amongst themselves, we do not
desire it should exist there. They are
welcome to exclude it, and welcome to all
the satisfaction to which its exclusion may
entitle them. Most clearly if it exists not
amongst them, they are not responsible for
its grievous sin. The question is, whether
it behooves them to sacrifice the Union in a
crusade against what they are pleased to
consider an abomination amono-st their
neighbors. The first view of the matter
which strikes the mind of every sensible
man Avho thinks at all upon the subject, is
the utter hopelessness of the task. It matters
not who is responsible for the inti-oduction
of slavery ; practically its continuation is, as
the entire South believe, inevitable. It is iden-
tified with the pecuniary, social, and personal
interests of the South. But even were it not
so, yet no feasible plan for its abolition has
ever been offered. All suggestions for its
present extinction terminate in anarchy and
blood. With the terrible certainty that its
abolition must terminate in the most fearful
danger to themselves and all whom they
love and cherish, can it be doubted that the
men of the South will resist, even to the
last extremity, any and all interference with
this their peculiar institution? The same
spirit which fought at King's Mountaiuj
which struggled with Marion in the swamps
of San tee, which conquered at San Jacinto
and Chapultepec, will disdain submission.
It is worse than idle then to pereist in
striving to accomplish an impossibility.
The fearful risk which threatens our country,

560

Plain Words for the North.

Dec.

the dangers which are so apparent, are all to
be incurred in the prosecution of a purpose
utterly and hopelessly unfeasible. And for
this is to be perilled the existence of the
Constitution — the hopes of freemen. " Alas !"
may we not exclaim, " what inexplicable
madness !"

Our Union is but the symbol of Consti-
tutional freedom. Like all symbols which
are sanctified by time-hallowed memories,
it is dear in itself. The South will be the
last to forget the sacred recollections which
are entwined alike around the hearts of the
inhabitants of every portion of this wide
country. Nor are her children insensible
to the still more vast and general blessings
which that Union dispenses to all mankind.
Well do they love hberty, and well do they
know that the hopes of its wisest votaries
throughout the earth are centred on the
success of our Republic. Deeply indeed
would we mourn over the failure of the
experiment which embodies the noblest
principle. But it can never be presumed
that the cause of freedom would be advanced
by the yielding of one section of the Union
to the tyranny of another. The eagle which
at the head of the legions of Publicola was
the banner of Roman liberty, floated before
the army which crossed the Rubicon. The
cross which Paul and Peter preached as the
sign of meekness, humility and love, became
the eidolon of Dominican persecution. It
is not impossible that the stars and stripes
may likewise be desecrated. The Union,
without a living, vital Constitution, is but a
vain and empty name. Nay, more, it is but
:a body powerless for good, strong for evil.

Its destruction is inevitable unless the ori-
ginal guarantees are respected and main-
tained. Of its consequences to the cause of
human freedom, of the frightful intestine wars
which must follow, of the hatred which T\dll
be sown between brethren, of the terrible
effects of a people combating against enemies
abroad and a race in bondage at home, it
is not our purpose to speak. These thoughts
must have occurred often to the mind of every
man who is not blinded by the most narrow
bigotry. But tli^re are two views of the
disasters attendant upon a dissolution, which
it behooves Northern men well to think upon.
In the first place, let them reflect, it will
most seriously interfere with their pecuniary
interests. Men of wisdom and experience at
the :South have sometimes doubted whether

a dissolution of th's Union would not be an
advantage. But of its efiect upon the pecu-
niary atfairs of the North there can be no
doubt. Let the South be stirred to a pitch of
animosity sufficient to cause a dissolution ; let
Northern manufactures, Northern shipping,
be put upon the same footing with those of
France and England, and what would be
the result ? Can they sustain the burden ?
Those who are most interested well know
not. But let not Northern men be deceived.
Those amongst them famihar with the details
of business, well know that we, the Southern
States, with every power to become inde-
pendent, have been content to share with the
North our abundance, to contribute to her
wealth and strength. But let us be driven
to separate ; let us be forced to withdraw our
household gods from a Union no longer ex-
isting for our protection ; let Northern men
occupy the position of open, avowed ene-
mies ; — they will be looked upon with hatred
and aversion. They will in vain look to us for
support. We will be separated as widely, as
eft'ectively to all practical purposes, as though
between us flowed a gulf of fire " measure-
less to man." No Northern man can fail to
see the result of such a state of things ;
to be incurred, too, for the accomplishment
of an object demonstrably Utopian. It
seems impossible that the shrewd, sagacious
men of the North, seeing and understand-
ing the result, can be compelled to submit
to what will prove ruinous to them through
the violence of fanatic zeal. The struo-g-le
is for them. But again : The eftbrts of
Northern men to interfere with, slavery are
unfortunate for their unhappy beneficiaries.
If we are let alone, it will be our j)ride
and our pleasure to increase the benefits and
diminish the disadvantages of their situa-
tion ; but if we are to be summoned, by
those whose object and endeavor it is to
poison the minds of those whose opportunities
for evil are necessarily so fearful, to destroy
our main dependence, nay, perchance to en-
danger our lives, most severely will these ill-
judged efforts react upon the condition of the
slave. He has been to us an object of attach-
ment and sympathy. We have sustained
and protected him, and in sickness and old
age have extended to him every comfort.
Nay, many of us have found amongst these
humble beings friends whose devotion shames
that of otheis far above them. Happy and
contented, he has passed through life.

1850.

Hon. Caleb B. Smith.

561

throwing upon his master the entire load of
Ufe's cares and sorrows, desiring in his own
condition no change. But if into these
minds brooding and most dangerous
thouo;hts are to be instilled ; if a domestic
traitor is to be implanted in every family ; if
we are to guard alike against the subtraction
of this most valuable source of subsistence,
and the dangers of their own passions, so
savage when roused, we shall be compelled
to introduce into cur polity elements never
before known, — to watch stringently, to re-
strict closely, to punish severely. The kind
familiarity of the master will be gone, and
in its place will be substituted the suspicious
eye and stern hand of caution and severity.
This is the change which is to be produced
by the machinations of those who claim to
be the peculiar friends of the slave, — men
whom nothing will con\ince of the madness
of their career, save a Union rent into frag-

ments amidst the wild waves of a bloody
convulsion. Alas ! that in this ao-e such
fanaticism should not be met by the united
execrations of every patriot — nay, of every
philosopher.

With this matter we of the South have
but little more to do. Some of us are, as
has been already said, ready for the utmost.
Others, we fondly believe a majority, are
willing to forget the wrongs of the past and
to hope for the future. But let the North
refuse to abide by our rights, and the cry,
which will go up from the hearts of the
whole Southern people, will be, " Let us go
out from among them." Meanwhile the
battle rages at the North. The din of the
conflict is borne to our ears. How it will end
we may not know. We can but offer up
heart-ft It prayers for the success of those
who battle for the Union and the Constitu-
tion. Georgia.

HON. CALEB B. SMITH.

In this number of the Review we pre-
sent our readers with a portrait of Hon.
Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana.

Mr. Smith was born in Boston, Mass.,
on the 16th of April, 1808. Six years
afterwards his parents emigrated to Cin-
cinnati, Ohio, where his father still resides,
his mother being dead. At an early age he
commenced his studies at the Cincinnati
College, and completed them at Miami
University, Oxford, Ohio.

Selecting the profession of the law as the
most congenial with his feeling-s, he com-
menced its study at Cincinnati, in the spring
of 1827. In the fail of that year, having
visited Connersville, Indiana, he determined
to pursue his legal studies in that village,
under the direction of O. H. Smith, Esq.,
afterwards a Senator in Congress from In-
diana. The law in Indiana does not re-
quire that the student shall study any
specified time before adm'ssion to the bar.
Licenses are granted on examination by the
Court, as to the legal attainments and qual-
ifications of the applicant. Such was Mr.
Smith's appHcation to his books, and such

his ability to master any subject to v/hich he
devotes himself, that he was admitted to the
bar in the fall of 1828. He determined to
pursue his profession in Connersville, and im-
mediately opened an office for that purpose.
The Presidential campaign of 1828 was,
from the nature of the matters brought into
it by the opposition to Mr. Adams's adminis-
iration, one of great excitement. A coali-
tion had been formed to prostrate it, •' though
as pure as the angels," and the most un-
scrupulous means were resorted to for that
purpose. Mr. Smith was a warm friend to
the administration, and entered heartily into
its defense. On the dny of the election Gen.
McCarty, a gentleman of some distinction,
and possessing considerable ability as a
public speaker, addressed the j^eople at the
polls, in Connersville, in favor of the election
of General Jackson. At that time Fayette
county (of which Connersville is the seat of
justice) was strongly Democratic. Mr. Smith,
although not twenty-one years old, was
called on to reply to General McCaity's
speech, which he d'd with great cflftct,
evincing, at that early day, the possession of

562

Hon. Caleb B. Smith.

Dec.

a remarkable ability as a ready and eloquent
debater.

In 1831 he became a candidate for the
Legislature, but was defeated by the party
organization which followed the election of
Gen. Jackson to the Presidency. In 1832 he
established the " Indiana Sentinel," a Whig-
paper, at Connersville, which he edited
until after the Presidential election of that
year. After that event he devoted himself
to the practice of his profession, with great
success. At this time, as a jury advocate,
he had few equals in the State. Having a
partiality for political hfe, he was early pre-
vailed on to become a candidate for the
Legislature in 1833. After a warm can-
vass, during which his ability to sustain
himself as a popular orator was fully tested,
he was elected by a considerable majority.
His constituents were so well pleased with
his services that they re-elected him the en-
suing year.

The policy of the General Government
having developed itself as opposed to inter-
nal improvements, the people of the several
States were urged to embark in them as
the only means of developing their re-
sources. In the spring of 1835, by appoint-
ment of Gov. Noah Noble, (one of Indiana's
best public men, now deceased,) Mr. Smith
visited AVashington City to prevail on the
War Department to detail Col. Stansbury
and a corps of engineers to determine the
feasibily of making certain improvements
within the State. He was successful, and
several serveys were made in consequence of
his mission.

In 1835 he was again returned to the
Legislature, and was elected Speaker on
the first ballot. In this position he soon
acquired the reputation of being one of the
best officers that had yet presided over the
dehberations of either branch of the Le^ns-
lature. At the close of the session, the
" Indiana State Journal " thus spoke of the
manner in which the duties of the station
had been discharged by liim : —

"It would not be proper to let the present oc-
casion pass to say that C. B. Smith, Esq., late
Speaker of the House of Representatives, during
the important and exciting session which has
just closed, discharged the arduous and complicated
duties of the chair in a manner which met with
the unqualified appiobation of all, whether mem-
bers or spectators, who witnessed the proceeding,-
of the Legislature. Without in; ending any dis
paragement to the gentlemen who have preceded

him as presiding officers of the popular branch of
the General Assembly, no one has ever discharged
the duties of the chair with more promptitude,
impartiality, or ability, and there has never been
a session during w)iich so much important business
has been transacted in so short a period."

He was again elected to the Legislature
in 1836, and re-elected Speaker without op-
position. In May, 1837, he was appointed
a member of the Board of Fund Com-
missioners by Governor Noble, and was re-
appointed in 1838 by Governor Wallace,
with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The duties of this responsible office were
discharged by him until January, 1839,
when he resigned.

As an Elector on the AVhig ticket in 1840,
he addressed the people in a considerable
portion of the State. He was elected to
the Legislature the same year, and was
made Chairman of the Committee on Canals
— a position of prominence at that time, in
consequence of the system of national im-
provements then in progress in Indiana.

The Whig Congressional Convention in
his district selected him as their candidate
for Congress in the spring of 1841. General
McCarty had, by this time, become a Whig,
and came out as an independent candidate,
which secured the election of Andrew Ken-
nedy, Esq., a radical Democrat. In 1843 he
was again nominated for Congress by a Whig
Convention, and, having a fair field, was
elected. His first speech in Congress was
made in favor of excludino; the members of
Congress elected by general ticket in New-
Hampshire, Georgia, Mississippi, and Mis-
souri, in violation of the apportionment law.
At the same session he addressed the House
in opposition to the memoiial of the Demo-
cratic members of the Legislature of Rhode
Island, disking the interference of the General
Government to sustain Dorr and his fol-
lowers against the State authorities. From
this speech we copy the following para-
graphs, as showing the positions he assumed
in the debate : —

"In monarchical governments it is an estab-
lished principle ' that the king can do no wrong.'
In this country we have a class of politicians who
apply this principle to the people. They are pro-
fuse in their professions of attachment to the
people— they descant, with glowing eloquence,
upon their ' natural rights,'' upon their virtues,
power and intelligence, and upon the right of the
majority to do whatever they may desire, at all
times, and under all circumstances. The dema-
gogue, who aspires to popular favor, may imagine

1850.

Hon, Caleb B. Smith.

563

that his cheap professions of attachment to pop-
ular rights will supply the place of merit, and
serve as a passport to promotion ; but the ex-
perience of all history assures us that none are so
ready todisre gard and trample upon the rights of
the people, as those who are most profuse in their
professions of regard for them.

" I have as much confi lence in the virtue and
patriotism of the people as any gentleman upon
this floor ; and I will go as far to protect them
in the enjoyment of all their rights, as he who
goes farthest. I do not, however, consider that
I should be entitled to any additional credit for
my attachment to popular rights, by making it
a theme of constant declamation. The maxim,
* Vox populi,vox Dei,' is one to which I cannot sub
scribe. I do not believe that the voice of the
people is the voice of God. The attachment of
the American people to their Government and its
institutions is undoubted. Their conduct is prompt-
ed by patriotic motives. They have no other
wish in connection with political matters, than
that our Government may be perpetuated, and
honestly and fairly administered. But the sin-
cerity of any man may be well called in question,
who will contend that whatever a majority may
do, must, of necessity, be right. The aggregate of
I he community, like individuals, may form erro-
neous opinions — they may be swayed by sudden
and exciting impulses — they may be influenced
by their pa-^sions, or deluded by the arts of the
unprini ipled demagogue, to a course temporarily
destructive (if their own interests, although their
patriotism ana natural good sense will ultimately
lead them to correct conclusions.

" Our Government is based upon the principle,
that all political power emanates from the people.
Those who exercii^e the powers of government
are but their representatives, and are responsible
to them for the manner in which those powers are
exercised. The author of the Declaration of In-
dependence has enumerated in that instrument,
as the natural and unalienable rights of the
people, ' life, liberty, and the pursicit of happine/^s.
That to secure these rights, governments are in-
stituted amo7ig men, deriving their just jiowers from
the consent of the governed! The authors of our
Declaration of Independence supposed that the
Government derived its just powers from ' the
consent of the governed,' but the ' Democratic
Members ' of the Legislature of Rhode Island,
who have thrust their crude notions of ' Democ-
racy' upon this House, through this memorial,
more sagacious than the founders of th • Govern-
ment, have made the important discovery that
the consent of a 'majority ' of the governed is
alone sufficieut to the organization of any form of
government. * * * *

" I recognize and admit, in its fullest sense, the
right and authority of a majority of the people
of the United States, or of any one of the
States, to control the enactment of laws, and
to change and modify their Constitution or form of
government, whenever they may desire to do so,
in a legal and constitutional manner. The Con-
stitution of the United States points out the means
by which it may be amended. The Constitutions
of the several States contain similar provisions.

These governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the whole people. The provisions
which regulate the mode of amendment are of
equal validity with any other provision; and it
follows as a necessary consequence, that even a
majority of the people have not the right to
amend in any other manner than the one pointed
out in the Constitution.

" It was certainly supposed, when our Consti-
tution was framed, that the provision for its
amendment would be binding upon the people ;
else why take the trouble to insert it ? It remained
for modern ' Democrats ' to make the important
discovery, that the Constitution is but an abstract
declaration, which may at any time be disre-
garded or swept away by a mere expression of the
will of a majority of the people in their popular
assemblies."

During this session an eflfort was made to
repeal the Tariff of 1842, and annex Texas
by joint resokition to the United States.
Against both these propositions Mr. Smith
addressed the House.

In 1845 he was unanimously nominated
for re-election, and was returned by a vote
of over 1,G00 majority. During the Con-
gress for which he was elected he partici-
pated in the debates on the Oregon, the
Sub-Treasury, and the Mexican War ques-
tions. His views on these measures were
in accordance with those entertained by the
great majority of the Whig party. How
well did the sequel establish the truth of the
prediction made in the following extract
from one of his speeches against the Mexi-
can war : —

" I have endeavored to show the manner in which
this war was commenced, and the causes which
led to it. The question now becomes important :
For what purpose and with what view was it
commenced ? This is a question to which the
people will yet demand an answer from those who
administer the Government. The friends of the
administration disclaim any intention of dismem-
bering or conquering Mexico. I would not wish
to judge the administration uncharitably, and yet
lam forced to the belief that the war has been
commenced with the deliberate design of acquiring
California, and perhaps other provinces of Mexico.
The President professes a willingness to make a
treaty of peace with Mexico, as soon as she mani-
fe ts a willingness to treat. At the same time, the
ground is assumed by the friends of the President
that, when we do make peace, Mexico must pay the
expenses of the war The expenses of the war
will very shortly reach forty or fifty millions of
dollars, and if it is protracted much longer they
will greatly exceed that amount. How is Mexico
to pay this sum ? That she cannot pay it in
money is perfectly clear. When the war shall be
ended, California and other northern provinces will
be in the possession of our armies. If she cannot
pay the money, our Government will demand a

564

Tiventy Sonnets of a Season.

Dec.

cession of her territory as an equivalent, and the
possession wi I beretained by force until she shall
agree bv treaty to cede it. Thus will the Govern-
ment, while disclaimini^ all intention of conquest,
become po?c^essed of some of the best provinces of
Mexico, by coercing her into a, sunender of tliem.
I ask gentlemen to mark the result, and see if it
does not justify the prediction I make."

At the close of the term for whicli he had
been elected, he was assailed with much
violence for his opposition to the war. He
was again placed before the people of his
disti'ict, by the general consent of the Whig-
party, as their candidate for Congress, and
was again re-elected by a large majority.
At the commencement of the Thirtieth
Congress he was presented, by his friends,
to the consideration of a caucus of Whig-
members as a candidate for Speaker. Mr.
Winthrop was nominated over him by a
majority of fifteen votes, and was afterwards
elected by the House.

Mr. Smith never made a speech in Con-
gress that he did not convince those who

heard him that he understood the subject
discussed, and his manner of delivery was
always such as to command the attention
of the members. Indeed, he has ever been
regarded as one of the most accomplished
and eloquent debaters in the Congress of
which he was a member.

At the close of the term for which he had
been elected. Gen. Taylor invited him to
accept a seat on the Board of Commission-
ers to adjust the claims against Mexico, which
place he now holds.

The subject of this brief sketch is yet
comparatively a young man, and being pos-
sessed of talents of a high order, and of in-
domitable energy and perseverance, may yet
be called on to fill still higher positions
under our Government. Should he be, his
faithfulness, and the ability with which he
has performed the duties of the trusts all
ready committed to him, are a safe guarantee
that any additional honors conferred will
not be imj)roperly bestowed.

TWENTY SONNETS OF A SEASON,

Dear Mr. Editor — I see your friend
Is writing sonnets just to " fill the blanks ;"

And his success emboldens me to send

The pickings from a diary I penned
The season past ; and please accept my thanks

If you will print them as a single batch,
Though six in daily journals have appeared.

My brain-farm has a small poetic patch —
A " Poet's Corn-er," where the corn (long eared
No doubt) of epics will in time be reared ;

Meanwhile I cultivate, where'er a snatch
Of sunlight falls before the corn is sheared,

A crop of pumpkin-sonnets, heavy, fine,

And round, and strung upon a slender vine.

II.
BUDS. 1.

The skies have wept a rain of sudden green.

And every crocus shows its baby-fist.
'TIS joy to walk — on yonder bridge to lean.

Beneath the elms that redden, April-kissed,
And there to watch the sunny rippling brook

Along its bed of leopard colors run ;
And further on, within a rocky nook,

Where marble steps of ice defy the sim,
To climb a cliflf, and see the twinkling lake,

Far as the shores of hazy violet stand,
Its changeful stripes of green and purple take,

While clouds above, with many a pearly hand,
Shame home-retreating Winter, as they fly
In silence northward through the smiling sky.

III.

BUDS. 2.
But few the tender lines that Spring had traced

Within the season's opened volume, when
Again returned the Winter, angry-faced.

And, driving fast his snowy-plumaged pen,
A week of postscript wrote in bitter haste,
And all the Spring had said, with storms erased.

To-day he fled ; and I will walk again
And read the earth. No joy is in the grass ;

The mournful elms still lift their naked arms
For dew, and o'er the broken tinted glass

Of sunset waters, penitently wanns

The north wind, fleeing, with a child's alarms,
From leagues of purple woods that seem afar
Like halted armies in the smoke of war.

IV.
WAVES. 1.

A silver-shining lake is ours to-day,

Where fairy artists of the frolic breeze
Their viewless gravers ply in happy play.

And carve a wreath of rippling images.
As here and there in single breaths they stray,

And chase and frost the surface as they please.
In silence warm I he hills and waters lie,

Until a distant rifle sharply rings ;
The startled water-fowl arise and fly,
And echoes, far from shore to shore, reply.

'Tis silence yet, until the steamer brings
A noise and foam that into stillness die ;

Thus, iron Will in Truth would leave a track,

But soon the Heaven is calmly mirrored back.

1850.

Twenty Sonnets of a Season.

165

WAVES. 2.
Is this the placid lake of early morn ? —

A smiling sleeper waked to frantic life,
A basking serpent roused to hissing scorn,

A heaven uprisen to far-resounding strife ?
The leaping surges into plumes are torn,

And each is brandishing a shining knife.
While booms the sweeping battery of the winds.

With interludes of trumpet, gong, and fife :
And all the shore with steed-like stamping grinds.

And. head o'er head the roaring billows come
To war and die. 'Tis like the world of minds,

Where higher than the rest leap upward some,
And all, with mocking gleams of sunny laughter,
Dash on and die, like all before and after.

VI.
WAVES. 3.

And yet mount up ! still up ! my buoyant soul ;

'Tis thine to feel the drawings of the stars.
And rise still higher ; and as the billows roll.

Yet all the water stands within its bars,
And moves sublimely as a perfect whole ^
In deepest currents onward to its goal :

So stand within thy place, and feel the Age
Come pulsing deeply through thy purest heart,

And let it lift thee up to high presage
Of happier times. A wave — perform thy part ;

And as I stand beside the water's edge,
And treasure flowing forms for love of Art,

So God shall wait upon the brighter shore,

And count thee when He counts His spirits o'er.

VII.
WALKS. 1.

My lonely walk, to-day, along the shore.

But quickens life to feel its suffering keen ;
The joyous air inflames my soul the more ;

The cedars, sunset-lit, and golden-green,
And dreaming lake, but tell me o'er and o'er

How sweet and calm my life with thee had been ;
And as, through smoky clouds, the sinking sun

Expands and glows with dying agony,
So swells and burns my heart, O dearest one.

As if to breaking with my thoughts of thee —
So sinks at last as if its sands were run.
The sun is half-'-et now — till life is done,

The blood-red image shall a symbol be

That Love's inverted cup has passed from me.

VIII.
WALKS. 2.
Your message came — its burning sympathy

A moment lit the climbing star of hope,
And then your unwithdrawn and firm decree

Struck down the star, in swiftly blazing slope.
To quench its fire within the fearful sea

Of deepest, darkest nothingness. Such speech
Is wild, but so was I, and could not bear

The sight of books or men — so on the beach
I wandered far ; but every object there

Revived my woe ; the splendors of the Spring
Recalled my first love and its long despair ;

The helpless waves still driven on to fling
Them down and die — oh, thus I die, and then
Recoil and cast me at your feet again.

IX.

WALKS. 3.
This shaded road has tlirice been grandly arched

With summer glories since I trod it first ;
And many silent joys with me have marched

Since then ; but now a storm of grief has burst,

As if to blast a life by naught accurst.
As hot my veins, my heart and eyes as parched

As field and tree and all this dusty thn-st
Of summer. Wronged and wounded, I could pray

To dash aside the cup of bitter gall,
And plunge in yonder lake and pass away

To worlds where no elusive love shall call.
And man of man shall be no more the prey.

How vain the thought ! I might have died last night-

O God, how sweet is life— the sun how bright !

DAYS. 1.

A day of days !— of all the motley year,
'T is like the loveliest face you chance to meet,

The clearest star that burns in evening's sphere,
The only eyes to you most heavenly-sweet.
The only thought you cherish as complete.

So pure the blood-warm air, so fresh and near
The utmost distance, and so infinite

Your seeming strength, that you would fain extend
A giant arm abroad in huge delight,
And bury gi.uit fingers in the bright.

The cool, soft woods that round the valley bend ;

It is a day to feel that we transcend
All space and time in being and in power,
And live a thousand lives in every hour.

xr.
DAYS. 2.

Another perfect day !— in vain we try
To toil or rest in plodding life's routine ;

All labors, books, by turn we seek and fly.
And, pendulous our many plans between,

Our feet still lead us out beneath the sky :
The sky !— ah, never thus was sky serene.
And never grass and trees so sweetly green,

And never lake so blue — oh, vivid blue.
And living green, of Truth and Youth the symbols !

O man, come forth, thy youth and truth renew !
Come forth with song, and shout, and laughter's tim-
brels ;

The sky, the earth, the streams are calling you
To give this day to field, and lake, and wood,
In praise to God and for your spirit's good !

XII.
A WEEK.

A week of June's serenest, purest weather—
A tide of summer's freshest, fullest splendor ;

A sea of song, and leaf, and bloom, and feather !
Whate'er of beauty mornings clear and tender,
And golden eves and dewy nights, engender,

Has met in one bewildering bliss together-
Delicious fragrance, foliage deep and massy,

Unfolding roses, silver locust-flowers,
And darkling silences of waters glassy ;

Expanding crescents, loving stars and nightly showers,
Rich shades and golden lights in vistas grassy ;

And sweetest twitterings through all the hours,
And opal clouds that float in slumber bland,
And distances that soften into fairy-land.

566

Twenty Sonnets of a Season.

Dee.

xin.
GREENWOOD.

Oh, not with Death, ye lovely Greenwood shades,

That floated on my floating outer eye,

Beheld yet unbeheld, so heedlessly
I strolled with her about the dewy glades.

Where, deaf and blind, the dead in beauty lie,
Their woes forgotten like the dream that fades

At morn — oh, not with Death, in memory.
Are ye for ever blended, but with Life-
Life from the genile hand that thrilled me through.
Life from the voice with love and music rife.

Life ^rom the eyes that shone as lakes of dew —

A larger, more abimdant life I drew,
Till, raised the sense of change and death above,
I grew immortal in the strength of Love.

XIV.

COMMENCEMENT.
I tread again where trod my student feet,

But all is shorn of Memory's mellow light ;
The college halls, the public square, the street,
How dull and literal ! A few I greet

Of those who met my former daily sight,
And others — shadows of the dead — 1 meet.

And I — I lose myself in selves that were ;
Am ready now, a Fresh, to shrink with fear,
And now, a Sophomore, to laugh and jeer,

And now, a Senior, I could weep for her
Who was my light and haunting music here,

Yet, as another now, not half so dear.

Ah, sad, confused, I will no longer stay.

But, from so many selves, away — away !

XV.
TEMPLE STREET.
By day, soft clouded in a twilight gloom,

And letting sunlight through its arches pour,
The street is like a lofty banquet-room,
And every simny leaf a golden bloom.

And sunny spots upon the level floor,

As if with tiger-robes 'twere covered o'er.
By night, the gas-lights, half in 'oliage hid,

Seem birds of flame that stir their silver wings,
And sing in concert with the katydid.

It is a leafy palace fit for kings
To meet their thousand lords in festivals —
A " Temple " with its wreathed and pillared walls —

A street that slowly grew a Mammoth Cave,

Stalagmited with trunks from floor to nave.

XVI.
LILY POND.

The moon, to night, has half put off her bonnet.
And I, to-day, again have passed your place,

Since we beheld the Lily Pond, and on it.

Sailing, I promised you a fitting sonnet ;
And not till every lovely scene and face

That in the mirrored depth of Memory sleep.
The brushing wings of Time shall all efface,

Would I refuse my careless vow to keep.

That lakelet, bowered so in foliage deep.
And winding far in fulness calm and sweet.
Revealing still some fresh and wild retreat —
In thee its imaged truth and beauty meet ; —

So full and calm thy placid form and mind,

So new revealings still in thee we find.

XVII.
THE SOUND.

Madly as chain-shot from a cannon sent,

The dusty cars from town to hamlet fly,
And all their speed is to the landscape lent ;

The groves, in dances whirling, hurry by,
And ancient, steep-roofed houses, eloquent
Of olden times, and orchards tempest bent,

And rocks as changeless as New-England creeds.
While here and there the roaring bridges pass

Where arms and fingers of the sea in weeds
Are wreathed. Beyond, a sail-flecked sea of glass,
The Sound is seen across a wide morass ;

Thus, borne along by Life's impetuous steeds,
We have at times a glimpse of that far sea
Where spirits ever float on wings of Purity.

xvni.

THE STATE FAIR.

Successive states of chaos passed away.

And many living systems came and went,
Before the fruits and flowers that here, to-day,
Beneath the tents are heaped in rich array.
Were born ; and many centuries were spent
In rude attempt and vain experiment.
Before the bright machines, in this display,

W^ere so perfected ; and a mighty tide
Of human life must slowly come and go —
Like this of fifty thousand souls that flow
In crowded currents through the portals wide
Of hall and tent, and fill the field beside—
Like these must act a part and pass away,
Before the world will see the Perfect Day.

XIX.

FROSTS. 1.

Last Winter joyed to feel the warmth and light
Of new-born Love ; the gay and girlish Spring

Discovered, caught and kissed the smiling sprite,
And Summer fanned him with her golden wing,
And Autumn brought his fruits, an offering

To please the child ; when suddenly a hush
Fell on his bounding joy— a silent sorrow

Paled his bright lip, and on his cheek a flush

Glowed like the frosty autumn's fever-blush.
His faie will be decided on the morrow—
So laugh, to-day, poor Soul, no trouble borrow ;

And if he dies, thy lingering hope to crush.
Go, weep, all winter long, upon his grave,
While snow and wind around thee madly rave.

FROSTS. 2.

Yes, laugh ! — it is a fair October day,

And promises another moonlit night.
Thy love has seen its glory fade away
From rainbow beauty into colors gray.

Yet wondering to find itself so bright

And beautiful, while blight succeeded blight.
Yes, laugh, laugh, laugh !— another frost will kiU

The last live leaves of purple, red and gold,
And then will come November, dull and chill.
With leaden skies, and north winds keen and shrill,

And through thy heart will strike the bitter cold.

But now— it is a pleasant day ; behold.
The Sun is writing Summer's epitaph.
And thy own love's— so laugh, laugh, laugh !

H. W. P.

1850.

Unity of the Human Race,

667

UNITY OF THE HUMAN EACE.

AjS" EXAMmATION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SYSTEMS OF LINN^US, VIRET„

AND OTHERS.

This is recently come to be a leading
subject of philosophical discussion. It had
long indeed been observed that humanity
is the proper study of man. It might have
been added, that it has been effectually the
criterion of every other. Yet, with all this
implicit efficacy and inculcated importance,
the human mind would seem to have ex-
hausted the entire circle of sjoeculation, be-
fore directing its investigation to that hu-
manity itself, which is at once the agent and
the object of all science. The omission has
been lamented or satirized as a perversity.
That, however, it was really natural and
necessary, and even rational, it will be emi-
nently to the purpose of the present essay
to premise.

A curious, and no doubt the true explana-
tion has been suggested in an article which
we have been lately looking through in one
of the Reviews. It occurred in a too par-
tial notice of the poor and preposterous
compilation just manufactured by Dr.
Hawkes from the so much mystified and
mutilated " Monuments of Egypt." The
reviewer is accounting for the phenomenon,
(which his author can but echo,) that
among the relics of painting and sculpture
daily disinterred from the ruins of the pri-
meval cities as well of Asia as Egypt, the
specimens of vegetable and the lower ani-
mal figures are numerous, always accurately
and often elegantly executed, while the
human figure scarce occurs at all, at least
in full representation, and then in a state
of extremely disproportionate imperfection.
The cause assigned is the greater complex-
ity of the latter subject. Man, in fact, is the
topmost term on the scale of organized life ;
and the difficulty of representing any object
whatever is uniformly in a direct ratio to
the degree of its complication. But as with

VOL. YI. NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

the artistic execution, so with the scientific
conception. Accordingly, we find the
Greeks had, alone of all antiquity, attained
to both achievements in the subject of man.
But it was still man in his individuality,
physical or moral, or at most in the political
combination called a State. It is not un-
reasonable, then, and above all not irregular,
that the human mind should have compassed
only some twenty centuries later the enor-
mously higher complication of collective
humanity, whether in the simpler form of a
single species, or as a system of races.

Be that as it may, the fact is evident that
the scientific study of humanity, from being
for a century back the theme of a few spec-
ulative philosophei*s, is become at last a
topic of general and even popular interest.
It has been remarked as a peculiarity of the
late European revolutions, that they were
propagated by divisions of race. Such a
feature is in fact an evidence that this great
idea of the age is at work not merely in the
scientific, but even in the practical and po-
litical world. The very destination of the
movement implies the concurrence of both
operations ; the principle which is to be the
organizer of future societies must be prepar-
atively the disturber or destroyer of the
present. But the agitation in either sphere
is mainly confined to the people of Europe.
Though there does not perhaps exist a com-
munity whose interest is so vital as our own
in the scientific settlement of the distinction
of races, yet we are obhged and ashamed
to own that the principles of this grand
question seem little canvassed and less
comprehended by either our reading or
writing public. Witness the " sensation,'*
which is reported to have been produced,
on occasion of the late scientific Con-
vention at Charleston, in an assemblage of
37

568

Unity of the Human Race.

Dec.

even our philosopliers, by tlie intimation of
Professor Agassiz that he believed in a plu-
rahty of species. Not that there is not here
too a Hvely and growing curiosity upon the
subject. But it is, as yet, we fear, of a sort
no more elevated or serious, than that in-
flamed, for example, by the so-called musical
triumphs or the advent of Jenny Lind.
The English newspapei*s keep puffing the
one, the English Reviews still discussing
the other. It is therefore fashionable to
talk of either, according to the company.
But from talking on a substantial subject
people are often brought to thinking, if
they be furnished the means of connect-
ing and comprehending the scraps of
knowledge picked up from the usually frag-
mentary and incompetent sources alluded
to. To supply the American public with
some materials of this description on this
interesting theme, is the aim of the follow-
ing pages. We shall attempt to present a
complete, though necessarily summary sur-
vey of the entire ground, not only in its
present condition, but in the principal stages
of the progressive exploration. To combine
the interest of narrative v/ith the instructive-
ness of dissertation, our sketch will take the
form of a succinct and serial analysis, —
characterizing, of course, more fully the great
cardinal theories, whether as they super-
seded one another or still subsist in com-
petition, and interspei^ing slighter notices of
such of their respective followers as have
contributed any secondary modifications.
The result should thus embrace, in concise
and consecutive outline, at once the bibliogra-
phy, the history, and the science of Anthro-
pology, as far as the investigation has hitherto
proceeded. It will depend upon the resid-
ual space whether the writer's own views
upon the question, in either its actual or
ultimate merits, ^vill be considered worth
subjoining.

The earliest essay on the subject appeared,
we think, towards the close of the seven-
teenth century. It was published in the
Journal des Savants^ a celebrated French
periodical, and the progenitor or pioneer of
this modern species of hterature. The pub-
lication was anonymous, as usual in those
days of more solid writers and select readers,
when the merits of the contribution were a
better passport to perusal than the popular
notoriety or professional title of the author.
But ixnfortuDiitely the name has in this case

remained unknown ; for want, no doubt, of
one of those convenient newspaper friends
who, now-a-days, are found to pry into the
blushing privacy of every scribbler, lest his
identity should be lost to the history of
genius. The real loss of the name in ques-
tion is only retrieved by the intimation, pre-
fixed to the article, that it was by a celebrated
traveller. And this pursuit is in fact dis-
closed in the point of \dew of the production,
which is itself sufficiently characterized in
the title. This ran : A new division of the
earthy according to the different species or
races of men who inhabit it. Here we per-
ceive the purview was geographical rather
than anthropological. The di\dsion of the
earth was the professed object, the diversity
of races the instrument. The reverse, how-
ever, was the real import of the new-born
idea. The tendency was to a classification
of the varieties of mankind. But the earth
was made, as usual in the infancy of all the
physical sciences, the concrete and clumsy
unit of the distribution. This however was
a necessary step towards the degree of
abstractive power capable of conceiving an
intrinsic and independent type.

The type was soon after announced by
Linnceus, who first placed the human or-
ganization at the head of the animal king-
dom, as the most complex, and thus the
criterion, of the whole series. On the vari-
eties of the type itself of man (with which
alone we are here concerned) the views of this
great classifier were naturally still crude and
fluctuating; his system received frequent
modifications at his own hands, and is long
entirely rejected by the learned. It is requi-
site, however, to our historical purpose to
present at least the skeleton. It will also
gratify the curiosity of such as can profit no
deeper from its uncouthness. Taking it as
left in the last hfetime edition of his works,
the classification of Linnseus divides the or-
der man into two species, namely, the ration-
al man (homo sapiens) and the Troglodyte.
The former species comprises six varieties :
the Wild man, (homo ferus,) the American,
the European, the Asiatic, the African, the
Monstrous. The second species, or Troglo-
dyte, consists of what the author terms Ho-
mo nocturnus. Homo sylvestris, and other
varieties which we need not pursue, as by
these Linnaeus seems to have meant the
Chimpanse, Ourang-outang, and adjacent
species of the ape tribe, which are all now

1850.

Unity of the Human Race,

569

excluded by the foremost naturalists from
the genus Man. To this arrangement, all
rude as it manifestly is, the author added
little beyond a description of the series, — a
description, too, quite memorable in regard
to the Troglodyte species. He did not dis-
cuss the reason, the theory of the diversity.
As we have said, he supplied the classifica-
tion with its legitimate type ; this is the
creditable contribution of Linnaeus to the
science of man. The principle, belonging
a? it does to a deeper analysis, had in con-
sequence to wait a later or riper inquirer.

This inquirer presently arose in the illus-
trious Buffon, the first great systematizer of
natural science since Aristotle. The system
of Buffon reposed upon a universal grada-
tion of species throughout all organic life,
and of which man was but a single, though
the supreme term, the scientific type. His
principle or explanation of the diversity was
still no better than to refer it to the direct
creation of nature. As we shall have to
draw a critical inference from one or both of
these propositions, it will be proper to verify
their accuracy in the author's own elegant
expression. We translate from the first
and the fundamental chapter of his Complete
Works : —

" The primary truth which results from a serious
investigation of nature is a truth perhaps humili-
ating to man : it is, that he must be ranked in the
general category of animals, to whom he bears a
resemblance in all that is material in his composi-
tion ; and even their instinct will appear to him
perhaps more sure than his reason, and their indus-
try more admirable than his arts. Surveying in
the next place, successively and in order, the dif-
ferent objects which enter into the constitution of
the universe, and placing his own species at the
head of all created beings, he will see with as-
tonishment that we may descend, by degrees al-
mo.'it insensible, from the most perfect of living
creatures to the most shapeless mass of matter,
from the most highly organized of animals to the
most inert of minerals. He will recognize Uiat
these shades of diversity are the great production
of nature. He wi'l find them pervade not only
the magnitudes and forms, but also the movements,
the reproductions, the successions of every species."

Here then we are distinctly told, and not
merely of the organic but the entire uni-
verse, that it is composed of a gradation
almost insensible of species, and that these
diversities are directly and primordially the
"work of nature." Yet it is a curious
instance of the mental progress which we
endeavor to signaHze that the author gives a

contrary account of the internal varieties of
the human species. For these are held by
BufFon to be accidental and superinduced.
It is true, he does not admit them expressly
as entering into his series of specific degi-ees.
But do they not abundantly come within
his description of " almost insensible " ? It
would be absurd, in fact, to call the differ-
ence between a fully developed European
and the ourang-outang a scarcely perceptible
shade. The gi-adation would even be broadly
discernible still after interposing the Hot-
tentot of South Africa, the Botecudo of Bra-
zil, and the Cannibal of Polynesia. Nay,
the distance thus divided would leave a
demarkation on either side not less distinct
than those presented between several of his
acknowledged species, for example, between
the fox, the dog of certain varieties, and the
wolf Buffon, then, in admitting expressly
an original gradation among such as the
latter animals, must have recognized it im-
pliedly in the like diversities of mankind.
He was probably forced into the ostensible
evasion or inconsistency by the Biblical
prejudice, which was strong in those days in
his country, and suspicious of his pursuits.

But it is instructively illustrative of the
providential order of nature to note, that this
absurd prejudice and logical inconsistency
should be the unconscious occasion of forc-
ing him into the true direction, if not quite
the path, of progression in the science of
man. For such was the effect of diverting
him from the negative or nugatory theory
of the primordial creation of species, to de-
vise a special and spontaneous explanation
of the gradations within the human family.
This will be exemplified in the sequel.
Meanwhile it is no less characteristic of the
zigzag march of the speculative faculty, that
this special theory of Buffon was a sort of
compound of its two predecessors. With
Linnaeus, he held the human species not
only to form the organic type of the animal
kingdom, but also to contain within itself a
number of varieties. And to account for
these diversities he had recourse, on the other
hand, to a distribution of the earth not un-
hke the division which was the main object
of our periodical anthropologist. Buffon, it
is well known, referred the physiological di-
versity of mankind to climate, including, no
doubt, in the term, as did the ancients whom
he often followed, the generally relative ad-
juncts of soil, water, and vegetable produc*

570

Unity of the Human Race.

Dec.

tions. To prove this agency, he laid off the
inhabited globe into parallels of latitude, and
endeavored to show a constant conformity
between the people and the parallel. The
idea was new and grand, and the writer no
less fresh and fascinatino;. Throuo;h the
superficial plausibility of the one, and the
majestic eloquence of the other, — aided also,
no doubt, by the contemporary application
of it to morals and to politics by Chardin
and Montesquieu,^the theory took captive
the general assent of entire Europe, and
dazzled even the learned for a moment.
But a few philosophers were not long in
detecting its weak points ; and, having col-
lected their faculties and facts, commenced
a fatal attack. They had no difficulty in
showing that the alleged conformity, whether
in color or configuration, of the several vari-
eties of the human species to their geograph-
ical positions was not only frequently inter-
rupted, but often completely interverted.
They pointed out instances, or at least ap-
proximations, of the type assigned to the
t]*opics, as occurring as well in the temper-
ate and even the polar zones. They re-
ferred especially to the American continent,
extending through almost every climate, and
exhibitino- in its inhabitants from one ex-
tremity to the other, and amid considerable
gradations of barbarism, the same type and
even tint ; the only difference, if any, being
that the most northern tribes of all presented
a darker shade of color and a more negro-
ish tendency of feature than the inhabitants
of Quito under the line. Yet so difficult is
the subversion of an error once popularized,
that the climatory theory retains, as we
shall after see, some adherents among natu-
ralists of a secondary class to this day. But
the single unity of the sun's influence, which
suited the infancy of anthropology, as the
analogous notion of a special providence
does the infancy of morals and theology, has
been long disowned, at least in its exclusive
pretensions, by the scientific progress of the
subject.

It was remarked, however, as having
proved conducive to this progress in the first
instance, by departing from the general idea
of the primordial production of species, and
referring the differences among mankind
alone to the operation of accidental and de-
rivative causes. The psychological procedure
was this. If it be true, as it undeniably is,
that the differences of the latter class are no

less marked, at least between the extremes,
than those which were held to constitute the
specific types of the rest of the creation,
considered in a certain order ; if this parity
of divergence, we say, was necessai'ily ad-
mitted, and the fact was explained in man
by the influence of climate, it was natural to
ask why the same agency should not apply
to the whole series. But before proceeding
to the application it was requisite to assign
the particular order or series upon which it
was essentially hinged. This was the task
allotted to the next of the great naturalists,
and consisted, hke that which made, we
have seen, the greatness of all the others, in
advancing the human intellect by merely a
single remove to each, and this not in a di-
rect but in a zigzag progression, aided more-
over by the successive reactions of opposite
extremes of error.

The step in question was supplied by one
of the most curious and keen-eyed of the
speculative tribe. Bonnet, the Genevese
naturahst, first proposed a scale of the whole
natural gradation, of which Linnjeus has
suggested the type, and Buffon propounded
a theory. The sketch was accordingly
named. The Idea of a Scale of Natural Be-
ings. The execution betrayed the usual
imperfections of a first essay. The arrange-
ment of subordinate details was frequently
erroneous or fanciful. The graduation of
the principal orders has, however, been with
few exceptions retained, and we therefore
recite the successive designations. They
are : Man, Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Ser-
pents, Shell-fish, Insects, Plants, Stones.
Under the order Man, this author arranged
the ourang-outang and ape ; a specimen of
affiliation which will probably satisfy our
readers as to the general defectiveness im-
puted to the system. At the same time, it
was sufficiently perfect for its historical part in
the development of the science. It presents
a universal, if not quite exact, concatenation
of the physical world; in which the several
orders of beings were shown to glide into
one another successively, with scarce a wider
difference between the two connecting links
than divides any adjacent terms throughout
the family series. To gratify the judgment
or curiosity of the reader, we add the con-
terminous or transition species between the
several orders. They are : between the first
and second, the ape and the flying squirrel;
between the second and third, the ostrich

1850.

Unity of the Human Race.

5V1

and the water-fowl ; between the third and
fourth, the flying-fish and the creeping-fish ;
between the fourth and fifth, the water-snake
and the slug ; between the fifth and sixth,
the snail and the tape-worm ; between the
sixth and seventh, the maggot and the hut-
terfly ; between the seventh and eighth, the
sensitive-plant and the lichens ; between
the eighth, in fine, and ninth order, the
slate and the crystal. Now between the
two species composing each of these pairs,
the reLition, it will be seen, is obvious and
intimate. For example, the flying squirrel,
while in virtue of its general structure it
passes into the four-footed order of animals,
yet holds still to the ape species by its loco-
motion on the hind legs ; and the ape, on
the other hand, while holding, as one may
say, by its hands to the division of man, yet
droops in the lower varieties from a quadru-
mane into a quadru-j9^c?e. Again : the fly-
ing-fish belongs, by its manner of progres-
sion, to the order of birds, which it therefore
properly terminates ; but at the same time
it introduces quite as properly the genus of
fishes, to which it also appertains by its fig-
ure and organization. And so of the sev-
eral others. In fact, the sole difference be-
tween these transitive cases and the regular
steps of the series seems this : that the
former are the periodic points at which the
oscillatory predominance between organ and
function, which constitutes the whole grada-
tion, alternates from the one into the other
criterion in traversing the exterior media of
water, earth, or air. Here, then, was pre-
cisely the preparation requisite for extending
Buftbn's theory of climate, &c., from the di-
versities of the human species along the en-
tire scale of beings. And the man to seize
the opportunity soon presented himself, of
course.

This man was at once the most solid and
original thinker of his age ; the contempo-
rary, the countryman, and the rival of the
great Cuvier. More accomplished than
Bonnet in the principles of natural science,
not only through the intermediate advance
of the subject, but also through a larger en-
dowment of analytic power, he was more-
over, in pursuing and in publishing his re-
searches, less courtly and compromising than
Buffbn. He was, in short, what a philoso-
pher should always be, — a man of confi-
dence in himself, in truth, in God, and in
nothing else.

Contemplating the two premises, then, —
namely, the continuous series of Bonnet and
the climatic theory applied by Bufibn to the
varieties of the human section, — Lamarck
must at once have seen, that to generalize
this modifying cause, he must lengthen
enormously the time, and determine explicit-
ly the manner, of its diversifying operation.
The limited variations of the human spe-
cies may have been produced within the few
thousand years of the vulgar chronology.
But the widest divergence from man to man,
or even from man to monkey, is inconsider-
able when compared with that, for instance,
from man to bird or man to tree. Either
then the times must be proportional, or the
causes must be difterent. But the hypothe-
sis, the theory was that the cause has been
the same. And with respect to time, it
was obvious, in the first place, that the
established notion of it had been formed on
the supposed duration of the human species.
But why may not the monkey have inhab-
ited the earth for ages before man ? Why not
the bird before the monkey ? Why not the
tree anterior to the bird, and so backwards ?
Instead of being the origin of the chain, why
may not man have been the latest link, and
his diversities be transition steps to ulterior
forms of being ? There was not one reason
against the supposition. On the contrary,
it was sanctioned by reason, and even by
revelation. The Bible itself recorded the
anteriority and order indicated, in its account
of the six days' creation ; and these days
have been found of late, by theologians, so
elastic as to be expansible to any requisite
amplitude of epoch. The notion too of the
continued transformation of man mio-ht well
be argued as having been " typified " in the
doctrine of his regeneration. However, upon
this assumption, the infinite series of beings
would find itself extended backwards over a
commensurate infinity of time, and the prin-
ciple of climatic agency be opened a range
of explanation, only short of the creation of
mere matter.

At any previous period, perhaps, a con-
ception of this awful grandeur would have
stamped the originator as a metaphysical
enthusiast. But fortunately the age in
question was supplied with a singular means
of making the opinion sufficiently serious to
stigmatize Lamai'ck with the appellative of
Atheist. It was the moment of the wonder-
ful revelations of geology. Cuvier, by his

5Y2

Unity of the Human Race.

Dec.

mao-nificent discoveries in animal and veo-e-
table paleontology, was establishing induc-
tively the doctrine of Lamarck, which he
had the pride, and perhaps the pohcy, to
combat notwithstanding. In short, the va-
rious organic remains, so far as then or since
brought to light, were found to succeed
each other cumulatively through the several
strata, in an order substantially conformable
to the assigned classification. N^o trace of
man or even the monkey appeared before
reaching the present surface of the earth.
Here was a triumphant proof at least of the
successive origin of the different forms called
species. But did it also prove the identity,
and above all the spontaneity, that is to say,
the self-operating character of the cause ? \
The sagacity of Lamarck could not fail to !
discern that there was somethino- to be here i
supplied, and that it was to be sought in a !
deeper rationale of the series than the super- i
ficial conditions of form and habit which
were sufficient for the sketch of the Swiss
naturalist. The result was the exposition of
the great law of organic development, which
has been plagiarized with such startling
effect in the Vestiges of Creation^ and re- ;
mained undetected till the other day by !
British criticism, not to say our o^vn. As
this is the most important feature of the
theory of Lamarck, and is long received as
the grand basis of natural history wherever
the subject is studied philosophically, it will
be requisite to present it in direct and more
detailed analysis.

The object was to unite into one and the
same system the entire series of organic ex-
istences. Commencino^ at the head with !
man, and passing down from the vertebrate '
to the invertebrate animals, and from ani-
mals in general to the vegetable kingdom,
Lamarck was able to trace certain funda-
mental hues of resemblance alono- the en-
tire gradation, though in diminishing de-
grees. The principal were, among the
animals, the various systems essential to
life^ such as the nervous system, the respi-
ratory system, and the circulation of the
blood. Among vegetables, it was the sev-
eral parts essential to reproduction^ and by
which this order passed upwards into the
animal.

If, taking together the organs of intelli-
gence, respiration, and circulation as they
are found in the type species man, we de-
scend along the series step by step to the

lowest animals, the essential portions of
these several systems are observed to un-
dergo a progressive decomposition and sim-
plification. Thus the nerves form in ani-
mals of the highest order an extremely
sensitive and voluminous centre in the brain.
Then, in proportion as we descend to ani-
mals of the lower grades, the volume and
convolutions of the brain are modified and
diminished, and its hemispheres utterly dis-
appear. Proceeding onward, the spinal mar-
row undergoes a series of similar changes,
until at last it completely vanishes in the
molluscs, Crustacea, and the rest. In the
organs of respiration the same progression
is no less striking. The higher classes of
animals breathe by lungs, but this contri-
vance ceases in the reptile species. Not,
however, that the cessation is abrupt ; there
are no sudden breaks in the workmanship
of nature, and the theory that admitted
such would be certainly defective. In fact,
the lung is found in several varieties of rep-
tile to be gradually attenuated into the
lowest degree of organic simplicity, and
then in others it is absent entirely in youth,
when it is substituted by gills. This new
organ is thenceforth found to be the breathing
apparatus of the succeeding classes, until in
turn it is similarly supplanted by the still
simpler contrivance of the trachea or wind-
pipe. Here, it is worth remarking, we see
the transmutation of organ evolve itself be-
tween two periods in the lifetime of the
individual animal ; just as the transition
above noted, between the several generic
orders, is operated between two aspects —
the formal and locomotive — in the organi-
zation of an indi\idual species. Another
instance is the presence of a separate inter-
maxillary bone in the human foetus, the
subsequent disappearance or consolidation
of which is held to constitute the principal
anatomical distinction between man and the
ape. The circulation of the blood, we find,
presents the same transition, its apparatus
undergoes the same progressive simplifica-
tion, and exhibits in the process an invariable
correlation with, and thus a cumulative proof
of, the continuous transformation evinced by
the' two preceding systems.

The order is quite analogous in the veg-
etable world. By comparing the organs of
fructification, we trace a diminishing com-
plexity, whether of shape or combniation,
from species to species throughout the

1850.

Unity of the Human Race.

b1^

series. Not only this, but tlie more funda-
mental of both the generative and vital
organs are found to underlie, so to say, and
unify these two great orders themselves.
For example, the tracheal rings, the last
respiratory organ in animals, remain in un-
folded, unformed simphcity in the leaves of
the tree. In short, the animal (as the an-
cients even felt by a sort of instinct) is the
plant inverted ; that is to say, turned inside
out, or rather outside in, for the latter is
the true order of the metamorphosis. The
result was that Lamarck, by this grandest
effort of human analysis, disclosed the fun
damental unity of all organic being. He
gave conclusiveness to the inductive evidence
of the geological series, by precluding the
supposition of accidental coincidence, and
demonstrating an identity of causation.
This demonstration indeed depended still
upon the necessity of succession. But was
not this evinced by the universal fact, that
the organic system of each species presup-
poses that of all the preceding, so effectually
as to be itself but a cono-eries of the sim-
pier forms in more or less expanded or ru-
dimentary proportions? Thus in man, at
the head of the scale, we find the respira-
tory apparatus accumulate the several or-
gans of trachea, gills, and lungs ; the latter
of course predominating as proper to this
species, and the other forms retreating into
the condition of mere appendages. In the
order of their arrangement, a lively fancy
might also trace the introverted course above
alluded to, of the plant into the animal, the
glottis being supposed a remnant of the
leaf stage of the lung. So the same su-
preme species combines the nervous system,
at once as it knots itself into ganglia in the
invertebrate animals, as it converges into the
spinal chord in the inferior vertebi'ates, and
as it centres and convolves into the brain.

Having thus established the universal
unity of the series analytically, Lamarck re-
versed the principle into the synthetic order,
being that which nature must have followed
in the process we call creation. This pro-
cess he then exhibited in the act, as it were,
of operation. He showed how all organic ex-
istences, from mosses up to man, must have
resulted from the progressive evolution of
one primordial germ, and under the contin-
uous modification of circumstances. Under
the word circumstances the reader will re-
cognize the climatic theory. It has only

been enlarged to meet the profounder explo-
ration of the phenomena, and here includes
(as the etymology of the term happily de-
notes) the entire ambient medium in which
the organism lives and moves and has its be-
ing. Respecting the action of this formative
agency, the author himself explains : — " It is
not the organs, that is to say the nature and
form of the parts of the body of an animal^
Avhich give occasion to its particular habits
and faculties ; but it is on the contrary its
habits, its mode of living, and the circum-
stances in which were placed the individuals
that gave it birth, — it is these which, together
with the element of time^ have constituted
the form of the body, the number and state
of the organs, in fine, the faculties with
which the animal is endued." Such is a
slight and very imperfect sketch of the cel-
ebrated system of Lamarck.

The doctrine is singular and somewhat
shocking, undoubtedly. And yet the scien-
tific amphtude of its basis remains unshaken
to this hour. Vainly did Cuvier, in his long
controversy with the author, urge the objec-
tion, so often echoed since, that no new
species are found in the present day, or
have appeared within the human era. The
answers are several and sufficient. First, and
chiefly, that this era, or rather its historical
or traditional reach, should probably reckon
for but a moment in the eternal years of
nature. Secondly, that in those years the
production of new species is proved by geo-
logical experience to have repeatedly oc-
curred, and that no reason can be assig^ned
why the same event should not happen again
under similar conditions of causation as well
as time. Thirdly, that the determining
cause on the former occasions appearing to
have been those great catastrophes which
altered of a sudden the general state of the
globe, we are not authorized by the expe-
rience alluded to, to look for the effect, as
the cause has not recurred, within the
memory of history. Fourthly, that the fact
itself is, after all, not certain : we do not
know what is now passing in the great
laboratories of earth and ocean ; we do not
know what may have passed within the
current epoch, even on the dry surface of the
globe, of which the primeval wildernesses
have remained utterly unpierced by the eye
of observation till within a few years. But
lastly, the objection is probably untrue in
even its most limited terms ; for among the

514:

Unity of the Unman Race.

Dec.

vegetables and animals with which we are
best and longest acquainted, there have been
produced confessedly a multitude of vari-
eties^ and between a variety and a species
no distinction of principle has been yet
assigned that does not involve the fallacy of
a vicious circle, and thus imply the neces-
sity of a higher premise. We do not give
these as the replies of Lamarck himself,
which the reader will find much better worth
convsulting. Still they suffice to draw a line
of circumvallation around the theory which
it does not appear easy to enter. And as
to the intrinsic improbability, let the reflect-
ing only consider, in the first place, the
inimitable supply of time, and then the rate
and resources of divergence in a principle
supposed to propagate itself from constantly
progressive centres of diversity. Were criti-
cism the object, we however would venture
to add, that Lamarck seems to have erred in
gi\ing too exclusive a part to the agency of
circumstances^ even as his antagonists, by the
contrary excess, incline to attribute the whole
efficacy to organization. The truth would
probably, as usual, be found in the middle,
that is to say, in the mutual action and re-
action of organ and medium.

But our business is not strictly with the
scientific truth of this famous theory, but
rather with its historical bearino- on the sub-
ject of anthropology. In this respect the
foregoing analysis leaves us two of the most
cardinal results. The one is, the complete
reduction of all the diversities not merely of
man, but of animals in general, and even
vegetables, to a single species. The other is,
that the strict consistency with which this
starthno' amalo-amation had been deduced,
as above indicated, from the principle of
climate or circumstances, must have passed
for a reductio ad ahsurdum of that theory.
The consequence was that the next advance
must recommence at the head of the scale,
and seek to determine in the special section
of man a more deep or definite principle
both of classification and explanation. The
criterion^ being of a nature physically posi-
tive and logically pre\^ous, would of course
precede the consideration of the cause., and
would prove sufficient to engross, according
to a preceding observation, the lifetime and
laboi-s of the indi\idual discoverer.

This individual was in the present in-
stance the Dutch anatomist. Camper, and
his discovery, the celebrated principle of the

facial angle. The accession of this impor-
tant contribution to the science of man may
be noted also as affording a striking example
of a great truth, which it has been the chief
purpose, in tracing thus nicely the sequence
of these several systems, to illustrate ; it is,
that though the action of the human mind
be free or be fluctuating in each individual,
yet its main movement in the collective
body — of which men of genius are the nat-
ural organs — is always necessarily invariable,
and always deviously progressive. Thus
Camper was not lookmg for a principle of
classification in quality either of anthropolo-
gist or general philosopher. Though a
somewhat speculative physiologist, his pres-
ent object was but artistic. He sought to
account for the connection of our idea of
human beauty with certain configurations of
the head. This purpose is attested by the
very title of his book, which announced, as
the result of his physiognomical observations,
" A New Method of Delineating all sorts of
Heads with the utmost exactness." Nor was
this a trick of the more recent stamp to
inveigle popular attention. But whatever
was the design of Camper, the real effect of
his ingenious discovery was to furnish the
new criterion required by the anthropologists.
In fact, besides the observed conformity
between the grades of beauty and the forms
of head, the author also showed that the
degree of intelligence ranged exactly in
proportion ; and this not only in the human
subject, but likewise in the lower animals.
Here, then, was a scale composed of three
parallel and correlative gradations, mutually
corrective and corroborative of each other,
and multiplying in a vast ratio its classifica-
tory amphtude and assurance. But what
above all would enhance its value for grad-
uating the comphcated diversities of man-
kind, was the faculty of reducing its demar-
kations to mathematical precision by the
facial angle. This contrivance will be best
described in the author's own words : —

" The best criterion (says he) for distinguishing
the differences among mankind is furnished by the
facial angle formed by two straight lines, the one
drawn horizontally from the meatus auditorius to
the most prominent part of the upper jaw-bone,
and the other elevated from this latter point to the
most prominent part of the forehead. The angle
produced by the opening of these two lines en-
ables us not only to establish a distinction between
the skulls of the several species of animals, but
also to trace the gradation in this respect among

1850.

Unity of the Human Race.

575

the varieties of mankind. It would seem that
nature has adopted a uniform measure for the
■classification of all organized beings, and has com-
bined on the same scale all the various degrees
■which distinguieh the lower races from the most
beautiful Thus it will be found that the heads of
birds display the smallest angle, and that in pro-
portion as we ascend to animals of the highest
order the facial angle widens more and more.
There is a species of ape, whose head gives an
angle of fortj-two degrees ; another, which ap-
pears to approach the nearest the human species,
whose head forms exactly an angle of fifty de-
grees. After this comes the head of an African
negro, which, like the Kalmuck, gives an angle of
seventy ; while the angle presented by the head
of a European is ordinarily eighty degrees. By
adding ten degrees more we reach a point of re-
markable beauty. But if we would reach the
character of sublime majesty which is so striking
in some of the master-pieces of ancient sculpture,
as in the head of the Belvidere Apollo, and m the
Medusa of Sicocles, the angle must be expanded
to not less than a hundred degrees."

And more particularly he remarks after-
wards : —

" As soon as I possessed myself of the head of
a negro and that of a Kalmuck, I hastened to com-
pare both with the head of a European, joining
also that of an ape. This comparative examina-
tion 1 d to my discovery of the difference which is
to be found between the physiognomies of the dif-
ferent races of mankind, and the relative conform-
ity of the head of the negro to that of an ape. Accu-
rately sketching some of those faces in a horizontal
line, I drew the facial lines given by the angles of
each. By inclining the vertical line forward, I had
a head of the antique mould ; by dropping it back-
ward, I had the head of a negro. If I lowered it
farther, the result was the head of an ape ; a far-
ther inclination still produced the head of a dog ;
and then in fine that of a woodcock. Here was
the fundamental ground of my structure."

This structure is, however, not without
several, some of them serious, flaws. We
may stop to note one or two of the princi-
pal. For example, the general position that
beauty is correlative to the angular elevation
of the forehead is manifestly erroneous. It
would only be true at best w\\X\ reference to
the type of each species. A forehead of the
negro span would be deformity in a dog ;
and even that of the pointer variety of dog,
in 'a greyhound. So with the varieties of
the human species, according to the specta-
tor. A negress or an Indian squaw would,
no doubt, prefer a flat-head or a long-snout
visage to the face of an Antinoiis or an
Apollo. Indeed we doubt that the principle
holds within even the same variety. Would

we ourselves regard the compact and knob-
shaped " cropper" of an athlete less beauti-
ful in the wearer than the elongated head
and towering brow of the philosopher set
upon the same shoulders ? Does the crite-
rion hold in respect to even that sex which
passes for the seat and synonyme of the
highest beauty ? We do not hesitate to
answer for our part, that an erect forehead
in woman is a deformity to our sesthetical
nerves^ however it may commend itself to
our phrenological sentiments. It is a deduc-
tion we have frequently to make from the
comeliness of our own countrywomen,
whether in them the result of nature or of
art. But a somewhat better authority than
our individual taste, is the practice of those
very ancients, who, while they idealized intel-
lectual beauty in the male head by an angle
of ninety to a hundred degrees, yet always
drew the female forehead as no broader per-
haps than a negro's. I^or would Diana, or
Minerva herself, the goddess of intellect, be
found to prove exceptions, had we any speci-
mens remaining from the great masters of
the art. As to Venus, we have a living and
lo\dng and low-hrowed witness in the statue
that, for ages, " enchants the world " through
stone. Byron in fine — no mean connois-
seur, at least in the living subjects — makes
accordingly the ideal forehead of his Haidee
" fair and lo^v^ In short, it is a matter of
easy verification that a steep forehead in
woman is rarely found accompanied by a
well developed figure, and cannot therefore
be the type and test of beauty. The con-
clusion is that the principle of Camper
would demand a qualification almost as ex-
tensive as the rule itself, and leaves in fact
the criterion of beauty not a whit less inde-
finite than it had been in the hands of Plato
and his metaphysical followers. Its eflScacy
lay alone in the combination we have pointed
out, where it might co-operate as a collateral
means, or even as a specious incentive to re-
commence the investigation of man. And
the moral is, we repeat, that this was the
psychological destination, however uncon-
sciously to himself, of the speculations of
the author.

Another signal defect in the theory of
Camper concerns the facial angle itself. The
author's measurement was erroneous, not in
the result merely, which would be less im-
portant, but also in point of principle. He
took no account of the variation of ratio

516

Unity of the Human Race.

Dec.

between the young and the mature skull in
the different species. He is even charged
with the grosser oversight of comparing the
ourang-outang in youth with the adult state
of the human cranium, and of thus unfairly-
reducing the intermediate gradation within
the range of a specific identity. The most
zealous champion of this complaint, we be-
lieve, is Professor Owen, who presses the
facial angle of the full-grown Troglodyte and
ourang down to thirty-five and thirty degrees
respectively. But the worthy Professor, who
seems to dread the proximity of an ape with
something of the alarmed vanity which ex-
acerbates an Irish laborer against his negro
fellow drudges — the Professor, we say, is here
at variance with other and higher authorities
than Camper, among whom it will suffice
to mention the names of Soemerring and
Cuvier. We add, from the latter naturalist,
his scale of the facial angle as far as it re-
gards the human species and the higher
varieties of ape : —

The European infant,

do. adult, -
do. decrepit, -

The negro adult, -

The Ourang-outang, young,
do. do. adult,

The Marmoset,

The Talapin monkey, -

Here the ourang, we see, had been con-
sidered also in the adult state, and rendered
still an angle over double that obtained by
Mr. Owen. It is equally visible that the
transition from man to the ape is made con-
siderably more close, more gradual, in the
table of Cuvier than even in the computa-
tion of Camper. In fact, the difference
between the negro and the ourang, both
adult, is only five degrees, while between the
former and the full-grown European it
mounts as high as fifteen degrees. If there-
fore the negro be admitted to the same
species with the European, it is not easy to
see how the ape can be excluded from the
same species Avith the negro. We are not,
however, to be understood in this matter as
urging an opinion of our own. We would
merely aid the general reader to judge the
opinion of Professor Owen, who seems des-
perately determined to be odd, if he cannot
be original.

*Le(;ons d'Anatonaie Comparee, 8o.le9on, Osteo-
logie de la Tete.

90 degrees

((

" &Q

The real objection to Camper is also ex-
hibited in the preceding scale. The facial
angle of the European infant exceeds, we
see, the adult by five degrees, whereas the
decrease between the same states in the
ourang-outang is only two degrees. To
neglect this disproportion was an error in
the system in question, not merely of detail,
but also we repeat of principle ; and a prin-
ciple which is profoundly confirmatory of
the preceding theory of Lamarck. For this
progressive divergency in the adult implies
a correlative convergency in the infant types,
and thus an ultimate identity, a universal
unity, of species. A more equitable excep-
tion, however, would perhaps be, in conclu-
sion, that the larger relative size of the angle
in the youth of all animals, does not well
comport with its alleged correspondence to
the quantity of intellectual power. We
say more equitable ; for, as we have shown,
the mission of Camper consisted in furnish-
ing a means, not of explaining, but merely of
classifying the diversities of mankind. And
accordingly, his system, while it seems imprac-
ticable beyond this sphere, will be found, if
applied to only the larger aggregates called
races, to constitute an eligible criterion. It
was for his scientific successor to bring up
the doctrine of cause, on this special basis of
humanity, to the same preparatory point of
perfection.

This was the distinguished part of Blu-
menhach, who is quite accordingly consid-
ered, for the double cause suggested, the
founder of the science of Anthropology. The
signification is, that he was the first to
theorize expressly and exclusively upon the
human section of the organic scale ; the lower
divisions having been successively eliminated
by the preceding hypotheses. For it is
thus that individuals are said, absurdly
enough, to have created this or that science,
when they merely chanced to represent a
climacteric in its career. As to the theory of
Blumenbach, its leading character was pre-
determined by his position in recommencing
at the head of the scale. There were only
three methods of conceiving his subject. He
might either commence at the point of in-
tersection and with the Ti'oglodyte ; but
then he fell into the principle of Lamarck,
with all its unpopular consequences. Or,
instead of admitting the diversities of man to
be developments of circumstance, he might
regard them as direct creations of Provi-

1850.

Unity of the Human Race.

511

dence ; but this had been already rejected
by even BufFon himself, although such was
his notion respecting the origin of species in
general. Or, declining both the inductive
and analytic points of view, Blumenbach had
a last and fresher resort in the synthetic
order. Accordingly, he began with the best
developed diversity of the species, and de-
duced the others, by degradation, from this
perfect and primordial type. This determi-
nation, then, was not the less morally neces-
sary, that it might plausibly incur a sus-
picion of prudential policy, seeing its queer
conformity with the dogmas of theology.
Be the motive what it may, however, the
concurrence may be safely taken as another
item towards accounting for the pre-eminent
success of a system preposterously unscien-
tific in its very foundation.

But this was practically extenuated by
the sound distribution and admirable char-
acterization of its divisions. These have
been too trivialized by our phrenological
horn-books to need repetition in this place.
Who has not heard of the Caucasian,
Ethiopian, Mongolian, Malayan, and Ame-
rican races? Races, we may remark, is
not the designation adopted by the author
himself, but variety, — a distinction which^
however, he does not very precisely define.
On these famous varieties, then, so familar
by name and color to our readers, we shall
dwell no longer than merely state the suc-
cessive order in which, according to Blumen-
bach, the latter four degenerated from the
Caucasian form, assumed to be the type of
the species : —

Caucasian — white.

Malay— swarthy.
American — red.

■J Ethiopian— black
•j Mongolian — ^yellow.

It would be easy, we think, to improve
this arrangement, even on the superficial
ground of color. But it would be idle,
when probably the whole scheme ought to
be re-adjusted, or even reversed. We pass
to the more essential point of the author's
theory of the " degradation."

Blumenbach has gone, duly, something
deeper than his predecessor Buflfon. In-
deed, he has penetrated half way to La-
marck. For he holds the power of external
circumstances to originate new varieties of
the human, as in other animal species, and
even in vegetables. But the effect he in-
sists upon attributing to a certain entity, or
" occult quality,'''' supposed to reside in the
organization itself, and which Las subse-
quently become so famous under the name
of Hisus formativus. This rather German
idea reminds us (we speak it with all rev-
erence) of the "sufficient grace" of the
Jesuits, which never failed to become " effi-
cacious" as soon as the work was done by
other and the natural means. This organic
nucleus, too, can, it seems, produce its
physical renovations only with the co-opera-
tion of a certain accidental combination of
circumstances. May it not, then, be the
circumstances that constitute the cause?
This would appear the more probable, seeing
that no new varieties are allowed to have

been formed since the physical influences of
nature have ceased to exhibit their pri-
meval vicissitudes, or been counteracted in
the case of man by the arts of civilization.
Whereas it would be hard to explain this
cessation on the theory of Blumenbach ; for
if the "nisus formativus" be the cause,
and the condition of its operation be acci-
dental, how, it may be wondered, can it
have remained quiescent since the forma-
tion of the five varieties of the author ? In
short, the resort to accident, in order to
evade the necessary, and normal, and ma-
terial causation of Lamarck, runs quite
counter to his own principle of the per-
manency of types; for how could they be
permanent, how could they be called types,
if, indeed, at the mercy of accidental condi-
tions capable of bending the formative
" nisus " to their own wild will ? Besides^
accident, in any case, can explain nothing ;
it is a negation of all principle, and there-
I fore applicable to the most opposite ; a mere
metaphysical subterfuge or " faux-fuyant,"
whereby men conceal their ignorance from
others, and even from themselves. But it
served in this case, as usual, to form a con-
venient transition to a more solid, if not
still a strictly scientific, theory. Before,
however, pursuing the subject to this next
_ grand stage, there are one or two interiiie«

51Q

Unity of the Human Race.

Dec.

diate names of the subordinate order, whom
the reader may expect some mention of in
our historical series.

We almost hide our Anglo-Saxon face for
shame in having to own that, amid this gal-
axy of illustrious naturalists, not only French,
but also German, Swedish, and even Dutch,
the contribution of England should be only
two wi'iters of this expletive class, and who
can be introduced at all but as the footman
and the drudge of Blumenbach. It will be
readily understood we mean Lawrence and
Pritchard, the one the itinerant propagator of
the German theory, the other the laborious
collector of e\ddence for its support. It is
due, however, to the former to add, that
though he continued to teach in his lectures

both the specific unity of mankind and the
" degradation " principle of its varieties, yet
he came, it is said, to hold in private a dif-
ferent opinion, and to consider these diver-
sities too deep to be well accounted for by
the alleged theory, either as presented by
Blumenbach himself, or as modified and
illustrated by Pritchard. As to the latter,
his modification consisted, quite character-
istically, in abandoning the accidental element
of the master, and thus gravitating back
towards the spontaneous causation, whether
of the circumstances of Lamarck or of the
climate of Buffon. With more detail than the
latter, and also with the advantages of the
intermediate progress of the science, the at-
tempt of Pritchard was to specify the mode of
operation of the same exterior and collective
cause. His means were a collection, not of
principles, but of analogies, many of them
arbitrary, most of them inconclusive. His
immense pile of facts is of permanent value.
The aspiration and the industry of his life
merit all praise. But the theory for which
he labored is already among the things that
were. It will suffice to show the reader
how it has been walked through^ in the
following passage, which we translate from
its great sujDplanter in the career of the
science : —

" It has been urged that the difference of color
in different races of men was chiefly owing to the
influence of climate and of the sun. Although it
cannot be denied that the latter does much to-
wards browning and darkening the complexion, the
condition proper to each human variety has not
been duly examined in this respect. If the Kaffir
owes the darkness of his skin but to the burning
sun of Africa, why does he not whiten in Europe ?
Why are his children begotten here with a negress

as light-tinted as himself? The Dutch colonists
who inhabit for three centuries back the regions
of the Cape of Good Hope, and live in the manner
of the Hottentots, but without mixing with them
by intermarriage, have preserved the primitive
character of their figure, and the fair tint of their
complexion. The latter is merely tanned ; but it
becomes quite white by keeping out of the sun.
Adamson mentions some fair-skinned Mohamme-
dans resident for ages in the interior of Africa, in
the midst of black natives, and who yet retained
all their original whiteness. The central parts of
the island of Madagascar are inhabited by a swarthy
race ; the negro color is met with in only certain
districts, and along the rivers of this island which
front the eastern coast of Africa. We have the
testimony of a multitude of travellers that Euro-
peans residing in the torrid zone become tanned ;
but short of crossing with the negroes they never
become black. Moreover, we find negro or Papuan
populations in temperate climates, and white or
swarthy nations the tenants of the torrid zone.
For example. Van Diemen's Land is almost as
cold as Ireland, and yet is inhabited by a race
of blacks. The Molucca islands are situated di-
rectly under the torrid zone, and are peopled by
Malays of a light olive tint. At Malabar, at the
Coromandel coast, at the peninsula of Malacca,
the heat and hght are more powerful than in
the south of New-Holland, or at the Cape of Good
Hope ; and yet the inhabitants of the former
regions are swarthy, and those of the latter,
negroes. We are assured by the testimony of va-
rious travellers, Hedkins, Bruce, Adamson, (fee,
that there exist communities of white people in
the heart of the most scorching part of Africa.
So, too, do various animals remain white under
the fine. The negro transported to America re-
tains his color, even after several unmixed genera-
tions. If climate has such influence upon color,
why do the Parsees (the ancient fire-worshippers
of Persia) maintain their fair complexion amidst
the dusky races of India for such a multitude of
ages ? Why is the Hungarian more swarthy than
the Swiss, who dwell in the same parallel ? We
find places in South America as hot as certam
districts of Africa ; and yet the former have never
produced but a copper-colored race, and the latter
are peopled with negroes. The Moorish women,
not exposed to the sun, are as fair as those of Italy
and the south of France ; and the Polish ladies are
as dark as the Spanish. But what is to be tliought
of the pretended influence of heat and light upon
color, when we find the Laplanders, the Samoiedes,
the Kamstchatkans as dark-skinned as the Arabs,
Hindoos, Malabarians, and Malays ? The Swedes
and Icelanders are much nearer the south than
the Laplanders ; and yet they are a great deal
fairer. The Peruvian and Carib, placed cont'gu-
ous to the hne, are not darker than the Patagonian
or the Iroquois. The yeUow and hideous Nogars
are the neighbors of the fair-skinned beauties of
Georgia, Circassia, and Mingrelia ; and the merely
tanned Abyssinians are surrounded by soot-black
negroes. The Siberian is brown, while the Euro-
pean, much more southward, is white.

" Survey the earth throughout all its parallels,
from the pole to the equator, you will not find a

1850.

Unity of the Human Race,

579

single constant relation between the degrees of heat
or light and the colors of the several races of
mankind. For, according to the opinion of those
■who ascribe blackness solely to the light or the
heat of climates, it would be necessary that the
polar regions were peopled with men of extreme
whiteness, that temperate climes were inhabited
by people more or less swarthy, and the torrid
zone was everywhere covered with negroes ; a
consequence which is contrary to experience in a
thousand localities. If we observe the shade of
the skin grow gradually deeper from Sweden to
Gibraltar, it is only in the same race of men ; but
the progression is quite otherwise in other parts of
the earth, because the stocks are different."

Not merely does this crowd of contradic-
tory instances utterly negative the pretended
inductions of Pritchard, but also the theory
intimated in the concluding passage con-
verts the body of his facts to support the
contrary hypothesis. For by limiting the
influence of climate in the variation of color
to a modification of tint in the same stock
or race, the more divergent of the observed
differences were left to be accounted for only
by the supposition of an original diversity
of type. But this supposition, in connection
with the well-known fact of universal migra-
tion, explains quite obviously the mixture of
the fundamental colors in similar climates, and
in even the same country, from which Pritch-
ard infers preposterously a primitive unity of
type. In fine, the inference, besides being
contrary to fact, involves, moreover, a petitio
principii. The argument of Pritchard is
this : The difference between the darkest
Asiatic nations and the fairest Europeans is
so ^vide that they could well be referred
to the same origin, only because we can find
no more rational explanaiimi of the known
facts. Rather a precarious basis, we may
remark, upon which to rest a theory, and
accordingly knocked away by tne really
" rational " solution just cited. " But there
is (he proceeds) an observation which renders
our hypothesis extremely probable, namely,
that within the same nation we may distin-
guish differences quite analogous to those
existing between the most remote nations."
Here, we see, lurks the assumption that all the
inhabitants of the same country or nation are
generally of the same race, notwithstanding
their varieties of complexion ; and again,
the " analogy " by which this assumed iden-
tity is extended to distant nations, allow-
ing for a divergence in hue proportioned to
the distance in space, slips in, we see, a

second assumption, affirmative of the causa-
tion of chmate. But these were precisely the
two points to be proved. So that Pritchard,
in this probably last effort to uphold the hy-
pothesis of a single species, and a variation
by climate, only alleges for his principal argu-
ment a repetition of the question, and for
his theoretical explanation, the exaggeration
of a vulgar error.

The author cited pursues the refutation
more triumphantly still, through the other
and deeper features of human diversity, such
as the configuration of the skull, the physi-
ognomy, the general frame, &c. But we
have, for brevity, selected purposely the
particular of color, as being the most modi-
fiable of all, and therefore the most fatal,
because most favorable test of the system.
In overthrowing it root and branch — the
foundation of Blumenbach as well as the
facing of Pritchard — this formidable antago-
nist was, as the reader has probably antici-
pated, the destined successor to the throne of
Anthropology.

ViREY is in fact the next of the great origi-
nators in this science. He is also the latest, if
not the greatest ; and yet his work* is little
known, we think, in this country. For
these various reasons our concise analysis
should be as complete and characteristic as
possible.

In the cultivator of science there is, per-
haps, no surer sign of a true vocation than
the power of seizing upon the solid and
salient merits of his predecessors. To be
absolutely original is to be absurd or insane.
Accordingly Virey, with his advantage of
position or instinct of genius, seems to have
selected, from the foregoing long succession
of theories, precisely the two principles to
which alone, it will be remembered, we
were able to yield a scientific approval, how-
ever valuable may have been all in the prep-
paration of the subject. These points are
the facial angle of Camper, and the evo-
lution idea of Lamarck. The former, how-
ever, was adopted by Virey, we douht not,
mainly for its mathematical precision, and
less as a physical principle than as a logical
convenience. Of the doctrine of Lamarck,
too, he has taken but the grand foundation
of fact, the theory being not essential to the

* Histoire Naturelle du Genre Humain. Paris.
2 vols. 8vo.

580

Unity of the Human Race.

Dec.

inductive purpose of Ms history. This lie
commences in the following terms : —

*' Beginning with the fishes and ascending to the
reptile classes, then from viviparous quadrupeds
up to man, we shall observe a manifest gradation
of enlargement in the spino-cerebral nervous sys-
tem. The intelhgence of animals increases in the
same proportion, in general ; [the reader will here
mark the judicious qualification, of which we
ventured to criticise the omission in Camper ;] so
that we reach the grade of man by shades almost
successive, as may be easily noted in passing from
the dog to the ape, to the ourang-outang, from the
latter to the Hottentot negro, and thence to the
white man, to the European, the most industrious
and intelligent."

From the equable gradation it seems to
follow necessarily, that if there be a differ-
ence of species between any two of the
former terms, a hke distinction must be
owned as well to exist between the Troo*-
lodyte negro and the European. Virey ac-
cordingly accepts the consequence, and upon
it does not hesitate to lay the broad basis of
his system, — broad, we say, in the relative
sense of embracing implicitly all the other
and intermediate varieties. And this course
evinces also a master in scientific method,
which prescribes that complex subjects be
seized at first by the opposite extremes, — it
being much easier to trace the Hnks when
we hold the chain by both ends, than if de-
pendent upon the indefinite direction of one
extremity.

"Assuredly," says Yirey, "if the naturalists
saw two insects or two quadrupeds as uniformly
different in their exterior forms and permanent

colors as are the white man and the negro, they
would not hesitate to erect them into two different
species. We could offer a thousand examples of
animals or plants, which are classed in different
species according to characters much less marked,
such as the wolf and the dog, the hare and the
rabbit, the sparrow and the chaflBnch, &lc. -s^ * *
Mankind, then, in its totahty, should be divided
into tv:o distinct species ; and these are partitioned
into several races or principal stocks, and next into
fumihes,

" Th& first species is characterized physically by
a fair complexion, or only olive or bronze, but never
black ; hair straight and long ; a facial angle ex-
panding to eighty five or ninety degrees ; a very
erect stature. It has the use of written laws ; its
moral characteristics are, an intelligence superior to
that of all other species, a condition of civilization
more or less advanced, a degree of skill and in-
dustry beyond the other races, and ordinarily
courage, and love of tnie glory. This species is
separated into four principal stocks, which are sub-
divided into seven families. The Malay forms
the conterminous variety of the negro type,

"The second species is distinguished from the
preceding by a complexion soot-colored, or quite
black, never white or bronze, (cases of disease ex-
cepted ;) by black hair more or less woolly, alwaya
crisp and short ; by protuberant lips ; by k facial
angle expanding from seventyfve to eighty degrees
at most ; by a position of the body somewhat ob-
lique, a slip- shod and laggard gait, knees protrud-
ing laterally, and the natural habit of nudity. In
the moral aspect this species is characterized by a
limited understanding, a civilization always imper-
fect, by less of true courage, industry, capacity,
than the other species. It is also more addicted
to the pleasures of sense than to the moral affec-
tions, and approximates more to the brute. It is
divided into two races, which are separable each
into two families."

The aggregate of these general dinsions
of mankind is exhibited by the author in
the following diagram : —

MANKmD,

1st Species,
Facial angle 85 degrees.

1st Race — white.

2d Race — yellow.

Arabic — Indian.

Celtic and Caucasian.

Chinese,

Kalmuck — Mongolian.

Laplan d — Ostiac,

2d Species.
Facial angle 75 to
decrees.

8d Race — copper-colored, American or Carib.
4th Race— c?eep brown. Malayan or Polynesian.

5th Race— 6Zac^. -^ ^t
t / JSegro.

j ethRACE-

-hlacJcish

< Hottentot.

\ Papu

an.

Such is a very summary sketch of the
great work which seems to hold at present
the principal place in the progress of anthro-
pology. Its merits, in a strictly and definitely
scientific sense, we should hardly allow our-
selves to criticise under the fairest circum-
stances of time and space. Nor happily is

it requisite to the main purpose of the article,
except in reference to the two points in
which each successive theory was to be, so to
say, adjusted to its historical place in the series.
The single remark we venture to indulge will,
then, be protected by this exigence, in its
application to the former point or pole of the

1850.

Unity of the Human Race.

581

system in question. In the lineal predeces-
sor of this system we saw that the white
or " Caucasian variety " was ranked, by Blu-
menbach, as the type and original of the
whole species. It was quite natural then
that Virey should have retained to it this
priority, or, at most, reduced it to a chronolo-
gical parallelism ; all in establishmg a second
centre of creation. This transitional neces-
sity is his ample excuse for what we cannot
but think a lingering inversion of the scien-
tific order of arrano-ement. For whether
the theory of a plurality of species, or only
of varieties, be preferred, the classification
should alike, we think, commence with the
negro. It was thus, apparently, that nature
commenced, or rather proceeded, and science
should follow nature. We doubt not the
day approaches, when the Hottentot negro
will be recognized by naturalists as either
the eldest issue of the house, or an issue of
the elder house of humanity. The conjec-
ture could already be rendered probable
were this the place. To the great funda-
mental argument supplied by the organic
gradation of Lamarck, and of Virey him-
self, we may here add a single induction,
di'awn as before from the more variable, and
so more valid criterion of color. It is a well-
known fact that in all animals the color is
constant in the natural state ; and that by
transportation into different circumstances it
undergoes in all a change, proportionate to
the divergence, and especially to the artifi-
cialness of the new condition. The effect is
most familiar in the case of domestication,
where the artificial complication of influences
renders the phenomena of color so fluctuat-
ing. But the observ^ation is equally certain,
in a suitable degree, of the untamable spe-
cies when transferred to remote climates.
And it may possibly be extended to even the
vegetable kingdom, under circumstances of
either or both descriptions. Now what we
are concerned with here is, that the tendency
of the variation is uniformly /row a darker
to a lighter shade, that is to say, from the
absence of all colors to the commixture of
all. In truth, this line of the progression
has its sufficient reason in some of the most
general laws of the physical world. But
these we need not here discuss, as the fact
itself is sufficient to argue, in the human
species, the antecedence of the negro type.
But if the contrary order is left to clog the
classification of Virey in the rear, the error

will be compensated if we pass to the other
and foremost historical pole of the system.
Here we find, for the first time, the system-
atic recognition of a second species, that is
to say, of two separate creations in the family
of mankind. The advance of this doctrine
is, not that the opinion is yet proved to be
true, but that it puts itself upon positive or
inductive ground, and repudiates all precon-
ceived hypotheses. And once upon this even
plain of rational observation, the subject of
anthropology may be expected, by the next
great stage, to take a fixed though not a
final place among the rest of the jDhysical
sciences.

Here, however, there must, as usual, arise
some intermediate systems, and of a char-
acter above the mere imitator, though not
properly original. For example, there were
men who, unlike Lawrence, Pritchard, &c.,
freely discussed and modified the five " varie-
ties " of Blumenbach, in bringing the sub-
ject by due gradation to the revolution just
described. Such were, principally, Dumeril,
(Zoologie Analitique,) who varied the num-
ber to six, and Cuvier, [Regne Animal,) who
reduced it to three varieties. In like manner
we find this class of elaborators or modificators
already at work upon Virey's system of a
plurality of species. To bring our historical
indications completely up to the present mo-
ment, it will be fit to exemplify the most au-
thoritative of these secondary systems. We
confine ourselves to two of the principal,
and must resort for them, almost of course,
to the same classic land of science.

Desmoulins, one of the first physiolo-
gists of the age, divides mankind into
eleven species, which he denominates as
follows : 1st, Celto-Scythic Arabs ; 2d,
Mongolians ; 3d, Ethiopians ; 4th, Euro-
(East) Africans ; 5th, Austro- (South) Afri-
cans ; 6th, Malays, or Oceanics ; Yth, Pa-
puas ; 8th, Oceanic Negroes; 9th, Austra-
lians ; 10th, Columbians ; 11th, Americans.
(Hist. Naturelle des Races Humains.)
Though this distribution be urged by the au-
thor with great power and much plausibility,
we cannot think it good for much more than
the transitive office already assigned it.

The other system is that of Bery de
Saint Vincent, a military officer, but, like
most officers in the French service, a man of
science, if not also a philosopher. The divi-
sion of this naturalist is what the uninitiated
would call wilder still, consisting as it does

582

Unity of the Human Race.

Dee.

of fifteen species. They are : 1st, tlie Ta-
phetic ; 2d, the Arabic ; 3d, tlie Hindoo ;
4th, the Scythian ; 5 th, the Ostiac ; 6 th,
the Hyperborean ; 7th, the Neptunian ; 8th,
the Austrahan ; 9th, the Columbian ; 10th,
the American ; 1 1th, the Patagonian ; 1 2th,
the Ethiopian; 13th, the Kaffir; 14th, the
Melanian ; 15th, the Hottentot. Fifteen
species of men ! fifteen distinct and primi-
tive centres of human origination. For
such is the unhesitating import ; not races,
or tribes, or varieties, — terms of which we
"vvill conclude with endeavoring to fix the
distinctions. This doctrine of fifteen crea-
tions, the reader perceives, is not quite
orthodox. And yet the author takes the
trouble to reconcile it with the Bible, which
he pretends to be the tradition of only one
of these species, and which he designates as
the Adamite race. M. de St Vincent, how-
ever, besides high closet qualifications, has a
title additional to the confidence of the in-
quirer. He has spent twenty years of his
fife in philosophical peregrinations all over
the globe. We must not, therefore, omit
to cite, upon one or two capital points of the
discussion, the opinion of a man, who, as it
were, has thus applied his five senses, as well
as his intellect, to the subject in all its prac-
tical reality and variety. And first, concern-
ing the theory of climate, he says in his
article on man in the Dictionnaire Classique
d'Histoire Naturelle : —

" Climate does very little ; it is organization that
controls throughout. To prove that the negro and
the white man derive their difference from that of
the climates in which they live, it would be neces-
sary to show that the lineage of either had changed,
without crossing, from white to black or from black
to white, after having been transported from the
north to the south, or from the south to the north.
But the thing has never taken place, although
writers obstinate in their narrow views have often
made the assertion ; it is even impossible. These
writers, by an abuse of the axiom that color is not
a specific character, affect not to know that there
is however a case in which colors, when they are
constant, furnish a sufficient characteristic, [the
case in which we have ourselves, the reader may
remember, referred to it, more than once, as not
merely " sufficient,"' but paramount.] It has been
remarked in particular on the coast of Angola, as
well as at St, Thomas, under the line and in the
Gulf of Guinea, that the Portuguese, settled for now
about three centuries under a firmament of fire,
are become scarce darker than the common com-
plexion of the Iberian peninsula, and continue
pure whites, so far as the race has not been crossed.
Under the same burning equator, which traverses,
in the old world, tlie country of the Ethiopians

and ebony-hued Papuas, no negroes have been
found on the American continent. The natives of
this other earth seem, on the contrary, to be whiter
as they approach to the equinoctial line; and the
proof that the black complexion is not caused alooe
by the heat of these intertropical regions is this —
that the Laplanders and Greenlanders, born be-
neathan icy sky, have the skin darker than the
Malays, inhabiting the liottest district of the globe.
The tribes, among these hyperboreans, who verge
the nearest toward the poles, are found to blackers
almost into negroes."

The other particular, concerning which;
we would appeal to the immense observation
of this writer, relates to the regular grada-
tion alleged by the theory of development
to exist between the human species and the
ape. On this point M. Bery De Saint Vin-
cent, speaking from experience, informs us,
that " of all the species of mankind, [allud-
ing to their large plurality in his own sys-
tem,] the Hottentot species, which is the
grade adjacent to the ourang-oiitang in
j)oint of physical, approximates it still more
nearly by the inferiority of the intellectual
faculties : in fact, the Hottentots are so
brutish, so lazy, and so stupid, that they have
been found not worth reducing to slavery.
They can scarce perform an act of reason-
ing, and their idiom, as barren as their ideas^
is no more than a sort of clucking, and bears
scarce any resemblance to the human voice.'*

This writer has also some curious reflec-
tions upon another question of great im-
portance, but which we have not had occa-
sion hitherto to broach in this article, be-
cause it belongs in fact to the conclusion,
not merely of the article, but even of the
science. There is, then, a doubly sufficient
reason, namely, the prematurity of the dis-
cussion and the want of space, why we can
here do but submit it, with the authoritative
comment of Saint Vincent, to the sober
meditation of our readers. " We think it
proper," says the author, "to remark that if
the intellectual eminence of a few gifted men,
descended from the Taphetic species, ap-
pears to merit for this division the primary
rank, yet nine tenths of the individuals who
compose it are not, however, a great deal
superior to the Hottentots in the develop--
ment of their i^ason. V^e do not therefore
pretend to assign any definite precedence
[among his fifteen species]. Who, besides,
would dare to elevate any one species above
the others, or to declare any one incapable
of emerging from the state of brutes !"

Here, it will be noted, is a quite compli-

1850.

Unity of the Human Race.

583

mentaiy comparison of the so much, but no
doubt ^e/Z-lauded " Caucasian race," in the
vast majority of its numbers, with the " cluck-
ing" troglodyte inca])able of an operation of
reason ! The juxtaposition may not indeed
be very consistent in a writer whom we just
saw affirm the doctrine of a successive gra-
dation of organization and intellect. Nor
does the renouncement of a scale of dignity
among his numerous species evince a very
settled conception of the exigencies of science ;
unless it was perhaps a silly peace oftering
to theological prejudice. In either case,
however, the confusion would but exactly
comport with the anarchical state of the
subject in its transition to a new system, of
which we have ranged the w^ork of Saint
Vincent as the most forward representative.
And as the error would thus be attributable
to the place, so the inconsistency would be-
long to the person of the author. But let
the points in question — namely, the non-
existence of a principle of precedence be-
tween the several races, and the equality of
the mass of whites in point of reasoning
impotence to the negro — let these bold as-
sertions, we say, be considered in themselves.
If we mistake not, they are both pregnant
with the materials of thought, and go to the
inmost core of the subject of civilization as
wtU as anthropology — of the artificial as
well as the natural history of mankind. The
purpose of our few remarks will be to sig-
nalize, not to solve, the difficulties.

In approximating to the Hottentot the
great majority of the Caucasian race, the
author before us is careful to specify the
point of comparison, namely, the develop-
ment of the reasoning faculty. Upon the
import of the phrase, then, will turn the
merits of his position. He cannot, in the
first place, be supposed to mean that the
every-day operations of a European me-
chanic or even day-laborer do not involve a
greatly higher amount of reasoning. He
would only distinguish that the mental pro-
cess is not performed by these operatives,
but had been the work of the comparatively
few thinkers of the race. The multitude, he
would doubtless argue, do little more than
apply the results^ and under the influence
of habit or association. But there is here
no more ratiocination than in the building
of the beaver or the bee. It is instinct alike
in both cases. It is therefore, a fortiori^ as
alien to the act of reasoning as the instinct

VOL. VI. NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

of the Hottentot. The sole diflference is
reduced to this, that the European's instinct
is set, by civilization, to a larger range of
action ; that he is born into a more complex
system, the contrivance of men of genius,
where, by the multiplied points of contact,
he is forced to play a part more various, but
not the less in obedience still to mere me-
chanical laws. The question stated thus
assumes, it will be seen, a quite debatable
aspect. Is it true, then, that " nine tenths"
of the people of Europe and of America are
" little aboA'e the Hottentot in reasoning
power," as thus defined ? The reader should,
before answering with an indignant negative,
weigh one or two fundamental and indubit-
able facts. It is such a fact that the stock
of knowledge, even of those called intelligent
and educated men, is composed for the most
part of unconnected, incoherent, and often
contradicting propositions, — a circumstance
which proves conclusively that it has neither
been acquired by the exercise, nor submitted
to the revision, of reason, and only rests
upon the material basis of a miscellaneous
experience. Another and perhaps more
decisive fact is, that when taken beyond this
firm and familiar ground of experience, they
fall into the credulity of childhood. Wit-
ness in all parts of this country the number
of merchants and other callings, of a class
of intelligence to have calculated themselves
into large fortunes, who yet have been gulled
over and over by a Miller, a Maffit, a Mat-
thias, to sell their hard-earned accumulations,
and give the proceeds, not to the poor, but
to the prophet, break up or abandon their
families, and prepare their " ascension petti-
coats " for the approaching day of dissolu-
tion. Not merely such as these, but men of
even a profession which may be said to bd
directly founded upon reasoning and incre-
dulity ; — one of the most distinguished law-
yers of the Union has once been seen, by
the writer, in tears, on returning from a
" revival " harangue which painted, it seems,
hell-fire in such terrible colors as he had
never thought on, he avowed contritely,
until then, though some fifty years old.
The explanation is that he and the others
were carried beyond the range of their respec-
tive routines, — were transported from the
court and the counting-room into an ideal or
unknown world, where, being not only with-
out general principles to determine the bear-
ings of the new questions, but without th^
38

684

Unity of the Human Race.

Dec.

reasoning power to extend to tliem the ordi-
nary rules of judgment, they were left as
absolutely at the mercy of the ranting
rhetorician, as would a congTegation of Tro-
glodytes or a nursery of children be at that
of the imaginative historian of Jack the
Giant-killer. Hence also the clumsy and
reiterated humbugs of "Rochester knock-
ings," " Stratford tappings," &c. <fec., which
are gravely discussed in our most intelligent
newspapers. The same example and ex-
planation might be extended from things
sacred, where the " pious fraud " may be
thought useful, to things very profane, where
it is confessedly pernicious ; we allude to the
peculiar prevalence of all sorts of quackery
among our too exclusively practical people.
Not, however, that the multitude in Europe,
who would laugh such mountebanks to
scorn, or leave them to starve, are to be con-
cluded more capable than the x\merican
people of the reasoning process in question.
Their advantage or safety lies in obeying an
aristocracy of reason ; whereas here we claim
the privilege of having all our individual
opinions upon every subject. The conse-
quence is that, since our real competency is
commonly confined to the sphere of routine,
and the quack is always sure to come with
something extraordinary^ he entraps us by
the tacit appeal to the omniscience of our
own pretension, under risk of being found
ignorant or uninquiring. So that this fail-
ing, referred by foreigners to a lower state
of civilization, has really a noble origin. It
is the tax we pay for thinking, or at least
for thinking that we think, for ourselves.
And if it be proverbial that he who is his
own lawyer has a fool for his client, it is no
less true perhaps that he who went to the
other extreme of resigning his own vigilance
to the lawyer would have a rogue for his
advocate.

Be that as it may, we should, for our own
part, hesitate still to question the power of
absti'act reasoning: in the Caucasian race of
even the lower classes, notwithstanding the
above and other unfavorable appearances.
But our democratic faith is somewhat shaken
on turning for a more decisive manifestation
of the faculty to the received teachers of
those classes, as found in even the great
Anglo-Saxon family itself. Examine, for
instance, our newspapers and periodicals,
with nine tenths of the less ephemeral pub-
lications of the day, and you will rarely if

ever meet a page or paragraph of strictly
original reasoning or reflection. Or if the
attempt be occasionally made to bridge
across a brace of common-places, the middle
terms will be more or less supphed from
personal preconceptions, — influences as irre-
sistible to the infant reason of the civilized
man, as they are known, of old, to be to the
fickle, because feeble attention of the savage.
And as with the written so a fortiori with
the oral productions designed to instruct or
convince a people who claim to reason them-
selves. But all this is so familiar that it
passes unnoticed hke the air. To place it
in adequate contrast, then, the reflecting
reader should first peruse a few set speeches
of the chief living politicians of England or
this country, and then turn to the pages of
Lord Bacon or Aristotle. We dare eno;ao;e
that he will find the difference, in all that
characterizes the reasoning process, quite as
wide as any he can well conceive between a
Hottentot Troglodyte and a Euroj^ean phi-
losopher. Nay, the transition would proba-
bly appear as if from the shallow prattle and
official tricks of a parrot to the reasoning
amplitude and energy of a god. But this
is something more than the assertion of M.
Bery de Saint Vincent. We cannot, then,
for our own part, take the responsibihty of
contradicting him upon this point.

His second proposition — relative to the
general criterion — seems equally susceptible
of plausible argument. For how (to take
an example a good deal agitated of late)
should we determine the point of precedence
between the Celtic and the Saxon races?
The question is, what shall be the principle,
the criterion ? If it be physical force^ in
subduing both the earth and its inhabitants,
then the Teutonic race is decidedly the su-
perior. But there are writers who insist
that this is only the superiority of the brute.
They allege that the Celtic race, though
everywhere vanquished, has been everywhere
the civilizer of the conquerors, from the
polished and artistic Ionian and rude and
warUke Dorian of ancient Greece, down to
the gay and philosophic Gaul and the ener-
getic and piratical Norman of modern
France. They further urge that the great-
est poets, orators, and philosophers of his-
tory, and in the greatest number, have been
produced by the Celtic race, and that the
greatest scientific thinkers belong to its
remnant at this day, — of which, in fact, the

1850.

Unity of the Human Race.

585

foregoing pages furnish a singular illustra-
tion in the large proportion of Frenchmen we
saw leading promoters of the science. And
having premised these and other statements
which are undoubtedly true, the advocates
of this side bid defiance to their antao-onists
to go now and raise matter above spirit,
muscle above mind, and rank the tiger that
can devour the possessor of an immortal
soul as, on this account, the superior ani-
mal ! We take neither part in this grave
debate. Our present purpose was merely to
show, or rather to set the reader to reflect,
how much there was to say on both sides,
and that the perplexity of Saint Vincent
was not, after all, so irrational. This con-
clusion will be considerably fortified, the
difliculty will be largely augmented, if the
comparison from only two terms be extended
severally to the entire aggregate of " races,"
" varieties," or " species," of which we have
now completed the historical analysis. This
is the remaining task of the science of An-
thropology. Ours is to add, as promised,
the technical definition of these several
terms.

We are first to remind the reader that
the definitions in question are, some or all
of them, as various as the writers, or at least
the systems ; and secondly, that, as a gen-
eral thing, all definitions must be imperfect
while the corresponding science remains
incomplete. They can only be more or less
perfected (not perfect) meanwhile. Under
these circumstances it will best comport
with the expository function to which we
have hitherto confined this article, to submit
a selection of the most recent or authentic
acceptations. Taken from the principal
among the authors above surveyed, they
will furnish also a closing and supplemen-
tary key to their distinctive S3^stems.

Buftbn defines a species^ the succession of
individuals who reproduce themselves per-
petually, or, more explicitly by negation, as
follows : When animals, presenting essen-
tial differences, do not generate by copula-
tion, or only produce a mongrel which in
itself is improlific, such as the horse and the
ass that beget the mule — those animals are
of separate species. Here we see why Buf-
fon must have held, as we saw he did,
entire mankind to compose but the same
species ; for its remotest diversities will pro-
create downward indefinitely.

To this, which was also the definition of

Blumenbach, the trait of resemblance has
been added by Cuvier, who defines a species
to be — " A collection of individuals descend-
ing one from another, or from common pa-
rents, and stocks that bear to them as close
resemblance as they bear to each otherP
This is followed by Pritchard too ; who, like
his more illustrious predecessors, held, ac-
cordingly, to the unity of the human spe-
cies.

But it has been severally overthrown by
both Virey and Desmouhns, who contradi-'t
it with a multitude of phenomena from
natural history. Their own substitute is
expressed substantially in the following
terms of the latter : " A species is known by
the permanence of the type under contrary
influences." Such would be the persistence
of color or configuration under opposite con-
ditions of climate, of which we have had
occasion to cite so many instances. Ac-
cordingly, Virey and Desmoulins were led
to the divisions respectively of two and eleven
species.

By these writers we see the attribute of
reproduction^ as a test of species, is left to
drop away from the definition, and resem-
blance made the sole criterion under the
collective designation of type. And we
think, with good reason ; as far at least as
regards the exclusive position assigned the
former by the preceding naturalists. The
rejection was amply warranted by even the
facts adduced by those who made it. But
there was an objection still more fatal or
more conclusive, which both Virey and Des-
moulins appear to have overlooked. It is
that the definition (as we have perhaps al-
ready remarked in this paper) is founded
upon a fallacy — is chargeable with assuming
its own test. For when told that indefinite
reproduction is the criterion of species, it is
natural to ask for the proof. But to this
no better answer has been provided or re-
turned than that of Moliere's mountebank,
namely, a repetition of the assertion. At the
same time, we do not think resemblance —
though putting itself undoubtedly on the
positive ground of observation — should be
erected into a like position of exclusiveness.
The full and final definition will probably
embrace them both, in the fight of some
larger principle to be yet explored or ap-
plied.

As the term species has been always the
cardinal point upon which the others were

586

Unity of the Human Race,

Dec.

made to turn in tlie different systems, it will
not be necessary to dwell directly upon the
words race and variety. By those writers
who hold the theory of a specific unity, the
terms have both been employed either in-
differently, as by Blumenbach, to denote the
more fundamental " degenerations," or dis-
tinctively, as by most of his followers, to desig-
nate different grades of the divergence, — the
permane7it being held to constitute race^ and
the transient named varieties. On the other
hand, the class of systems proceeding on a
plurality of species and the criterion of type^
seem to verge upon a like confusion of the
term race with their species, and apply the
word variety to the minor diversities, which
they allow to be produceable by chmate and
circumstances.

There is still another member of this log-
ical hierarchy which has not been mentioned
jet, though the progenitor of all : we mean
the term yenus^ or kind. This will constitute
a class apart with those who hold the plu-
rality of species ; and accordingly we saw
the division of Virey made to spring from
the term man-kind. The uni-specific theo-
ries, on the other hand, incur a confusion
not unl'ke the preceding; for the species
man beino; here considered co-extensive with
the kind^ the things are distinguishable only
hy the ideal circumstance of being viewed
under opposite relations.

In this state of general fluctuation, and all
things well weighed, we venture to present
the following determinations, as at once the
most sohd and serial permissible perhaps in
the actual condition of the science. We
would, then, include —

Under the term genus, the aggregate of
the species connected with each other by
certain common characteristics, such as the
negro and the European;

Under the name species, the aggregate of
races which may be referred, at least hypo-
thetically, to a single primitive couple, or to
the same centre of creation : such are the
Kaffir and Hottentot in the black division,
and the Celtic and Saxon races in the white ;

Under the name race, the aggregate of
varieties which belong to the same line : as
the English and Dutch are varieties of the

Teutonic, and the Irish and Welsh of the
Celtic line ;

Under the name variety, the aggregate of
individuals born with all the same charac-
teristics, but essentially variable by circum-
stances : such are the provincial pecuharities
observable in each of the countries named,
and perhaps also in the moral order, the
professional pecuharities described by Pope
with his usual felicity of discrimination and
verse.'*

In fine, the diversity of species may be
conceived to originate in a chronological
difference; the diversity of race in a geo-
graphical one ; the diversity of variety in a
social ; even as the diversity of genus, in
those solar differences of temperature at-
tested by the infallible record of geology.

But why not tell us all this at the begin-
ning ? cries some semi-scientific reader, who
has read that writers should all begin by
defining their terms. Our answer is, that
we might have then been talking Greek to
our querist ; whereas he is now possessed of
the same materials for comprehending those
definitions, both in their acceptation and
appropriateness, that we have had access to
ourselves. In truth, however, we gave no
thought to the matter one way or the other.
We took up and pursued the subject in the
historical order of its exploration. Not
bhndly, however, in obedience to a certain
succession of great names ; but because it
was, necessarily, the order of nature. Now
this guidance of nature always takes the
form of analysis ; and the end of this method
is the establishment of definitions. And if
the critic will not take our humble word,
backed by an accidental example, for this
matter, we can only refer him to the author-
ity of Pascal,! or the more familiar endorse-
ment of the precept by Burke. J;

* Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire;
The next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar.
John struts a soldier, open, hold and brave ;
"Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceedins; knave.
Is he a Churchman ^ then he kfond of power ;
A Quaker ? sly ; a Presbyterian ? sour, &0.
f De I'Esprit Geometrique.
I Pref. Sublime and Beautiful.

1850.

Union or Disunion.

581

THE TRUE ISSUE BETWEEN PARTIES IN THE SOUTH: UNION

OR DISUNION.*

This article appeared in a pamphlet form, last month, in Columbus, Mississippi. It belongs, however,
to tlie nation, and is properly addressed to both North and South. It is the production of a well
known and powerful pen, and represents the feeling and opinion of Unionists in the South.

A CRISIS has been readied in our national
affairs when it becomes us all, fellow-citizens,
to reflect. The crisis is not, as heretofore,
illusory and unreal, or confined merely within
the narrow limits of party contrivances.
The least sagacious may see that danger is
imminent, and that the impulsiveness of
some, the bad influence of others, and the
selfish ambition of 7nany^ have wrought the
public mind to a degree of excitement
that bodes dire and permanent mischief to
the integrity of the government. It is not
to be concealed that the issue so long and so
earnestly deprecated by Washington and
other fathers of the Republic, is about to
be joined. That issue is, Union or Dis-
union. No subtlety of argument or
speech, no specious array of words, no
ingenious or metaphysical terms can longer
cover the designs of those who are promulg-
ing the pernicious doctrine of resistance
to the constitutional acts of Congress, or,
what is worse, abetting schemes and move-
ments, which look, in their consequences, to
nothing less than actual secession and disso-
lution of the Union. Mark the word, fel-
low-citizens. I do not mention secession
without premeditation ; nor do I charge it,
as yet, on any class of persons hereabouts.
I affix the odium to their schemes, and shall
endeavor to explain the grounds of the
charge more fully as we progress with the
subject.

It is the purpose of these papers to re-
view calmly and succinctly the doctrines set
up by those who advocate resistance to the

laws of Congress, recently passed, which
admit California as a State of the Union,
and which embrace the whole series of bills
reported by the Senate Committee of Thir-
teen, of which Henry Clay was chairman;
better known as the Compromise or Adjust-
ment Bills. I purpose to review the whole
grounds of what is termed the list of South-
ern grievances. I shall examine the various
constitutional questions that have been raised,
and the exposition of which has been de-
pended on as the reason for extreme resorts.
I shall inquire into the necessity for the pro-
posed convocation of the Legislature by
Governor Quitman and also of the re-as-
semblage of the Nashville Convention ; and,
lastly, 1 shall invite your attention to the
remedies proposed by the advocates of re-
sistance, viz. : secession, or dissolution of the
United States, and the formation of a South-
ern Confederacy.

To accomplish fully this design, it is ne-
cessary to enter into some preliminary
details of history, intimately connected with
the subject, and which may not, therefore,
prove unprofitable. It may serve, and is
designed to show, the vicious tendency of
party, and the countless evils which have
flowed from the policy of the last adminis-
tration.

The dangers which now threaten the
peace of the Union date their origin from
the dark period of the Texan annexation.
No matter what may be our obligations and
relations with Texas now, it is undeniable
that her introduction as a member of the

* Union or Disunion ; being a Review of the alleged causes of aggression at the recent action of
Congress, together with some views concerning the proposed Southern Convention ; and an examination
of His Excellency's late Proclamation, as also of the doctrine of Secession. Addressed to the People
of Mississippi. By a Southron. Columbus, Mississippi. 1850.

588

Union or Disunion.

Dec.

United States has brought ahoiit the pres-
ent dissatisfactions and distractions. Pre-
viously to 1845, parties had been divided
mainly on internal questions, which the lapse
of a few years would have settled peaceably
and with satisfaction. The United States
Bank had fallen beneath the ponderous arm
of Andrew Jackson, and its advocates, after
a manful struggle, had submitted quietly to
its overthrow. Internal improvements had
ceased to be a ground of d.fference, because
the States had taken them in hand separately.
The manifold and exaggerated evils which
had been charged on the Protective System
had been averted (if, indeed, they had ever
existed) by the pacificatory influences of the
Compromise Bill of 1883 ; and their partial
revival in 1842 had been effectually checked
by the law of 1846. Meanwhile, however,
a new cause of difference had been surrep-
titiously introduced by the expiring admin-
istration of John Tyler. The recent devel-
opments made by this last-named personage
and the Hon. Samuel Houston, leave no
question as to the fraudulence which marked
the incipiency of the annexation project ;
the depth and consummate artifice of which,
in connection with the fabled alliance be-
tween England and Texas, seem to have
inveigled the strong perceptive powers of
Mr. Calhoun himself. At least, he was
called in to consummate the plan, and,
although it was, on the part of Tyler, a last
effort at popularity, and on the part of Hous-
ton a last chance of escape from Mexican
re-conquest, it is certain that his object was
to guard, by its speedy annexation to the
Union, an interest to which he was devoted,
and which he believed Avas assailable by Eng-
land from that exposed quarter. The name
and influence of Calhoun gave, thus, very
high respectability to a project which might
otherwise, under the auspices of Houston or
Tyler, have fallen into speedy and meritori-
ous disrepute. But the respectability throvm
around it by Mr. Calhoun, though probably
well intended by him, resulted most disas-
trously. No sooner was it made known
that the distinguished Carolinian had as-
serted the claims of Texas, than the Demo-
cratic party, chagrined by their defeat in
1840, seized adroitly on the question, wrested
it from the feeble grasp of John Tyler, and,
under the pale and sicklied light of the
" Lone Star," succeeded in their efforts for
the Presidency. Mr. Polk was elected,

Texas hastily and inconsiderately annexed ;
and it is a remarkable, and not uninstructive
fact, that just as the ancient party warfare
had expired, the Democratic party simulta-
neously introduced a fire-brand of conten-
tion, which, it is feared, will yet prove the
entering wedge to a dissolution of the Union,
Scarcely had Texas been annexed, before, in
consequence, the war ^vith Mexico ensued.
It was pei'sisted in until California, New-
Mexico, and Texas were all brought into the
Union, and in despite of the warning voice
of many who had at first advocated the
annexation of the latter ; not beheving that
it would result in war and extensive conquest.
California and New-Mexico thus becoming
the property of the United States, there
was revived, as a natural consequence, the
exciting issue which had previously grown
out of the purchase of Louisiana, and which,
in 1819, had well nigh caused a disruption
of the government. This issue, of course,
was the extension or restriction of the
slavery interest. For weal or for woe, there-
fore, the last administration is justly charge-
able with the dangers and the evils which
now, if not checked, so imminently j9or/mc?
a bloody and devastating civil war. Its ad-
vocates should not shrink from the respon-
sibility ; else, having now seen and felt the
disasters of their hasty policy, let them come
forward, and aid to rescue the Union.

It will not be denied that the circum-
stances of the admission of California into the
Union, with her present Constitution, were
such as to engender much and serious jeal-
ousy on the part of the South. Her bound-
aries were too large and extended by more
than half; and the Convention which
framed her Constitution was gotten up with
a haste and informality that argued a pre-
determined hostility to the peculiar Southern
institution. But it is equally undeniable
that the people of California possess the
right, in a conventional capacity, to exclude
slaveiy from their midst ; and the exclusion
having been made, it was a very serious ques-
tion whether moi-e mischief would not have
ensued from the attempt to undo the act, in
the face of our settled principles of popular
right, than any which is hkely to follow
from a recognition of her claims. It is also
a very delicate point to assume that Con-
gress has the right to impose, under such
circumstances, any other than its sole con-

1850.

Union or Disunion.

689

stitutional restriction on the terms of admis-
sion, which is a republican form of govern-
ment. Such power has ever been strenu-
ously denied by Southern statesmen, and the
contrary assertion by the North in the case
of Missouri in 1819, was then the great
cause of contention and aggravation. The
irregularities which marked the formation of
the California Constitution were no legiti-
mate bar to her admission, although certainly
an objection. Precedent has settled that
point against the advocates of resistance.
Not to mention the recent cases of Michigan
and of Texas, histoiy has preserved the
action of Congress on two memorable occa-
sions, directly analogous. At the session of
1802 the Territory comprising the present
State of Ohio made application for admis-
sion into the Union. The application was
referred to a Committee of the Senate, of
which the celebrated Mr. Giles was chair-
man ; and on the fourth day of March suc-
ceeding, it was reported, that although the
requisitions of the law had not been strictly
complied with in the formation of the Con-
stitution, and the prescribed number of in-
habitants nearly twenty thousand short, yet
that it comported " with the general interest
of the confederacy" to admit said State of
Ohio into the Union, " on the same footing
with the original States, in all respects what-
soever." (Amer. State Papei-s. Mis. vol. 1st,
page 326.) It is worthy of remark that
the term, " general interest of the confede-
racy," covers the whole ground of admis-
sion, and evinces, in a striking manner, the
proclivity of the past generation of states-
men to submerge all factional issues in the
common weal of the Union.

The principle of non-intervention was more
clearly settled still at the session of 1808,
on an application of the people inhabiting
the Indiana Territory to establish a separate
government west of the river Wabash. The
Committee, in this instance, reported that,
" being convinced it was the wish of a large
majority of the citizens of said Territory
that such separation should take place, deem
it always wise and just policy to grant to
every portion of the people of the Union
that form of government which is the object
of their wishes^ when not incompatible with
the Constitution of the United States."
(Amer. State Papers. Mis. vol. 1st, page
946.)

So much as concerns tho admission of

Cahfornia at the recent session of Congress,
and which some few discontented spirits,
North and South, but mainly at the South,
propose to resist at every extremity. The
facts of the case only have been intended to
be given. With the Congressional speeches,
and other evidences touchino- its merits, so
extensively distributed among the people,
it is not deemed necessary to burthen this
treatise with lengthy detail.

With regard to the bill proposing an
adjustment of pending difficulties with the
State of Texas, it is only necessary to say,
that the whole subject is now before those
most deeply interested, and who alone are
to be the judges of their right to accept or
reject the proposition of Congress. If the
people of Texas shall prove to be incapable
of ascertaining their interests and immuni-
ties as citizens of the republic, it will then
be full time, but not until such is fairly
proven, for their wise neighbors to assume
their administration and direction. It may
be as well to add, that this is the view taken
of this bill by both the Texan Senators,
concurred with by the Hon. John M, Ber-
rien, of Georgia, and the Hon. Jere Clemens,
of Alabama. Their opinions are herewith
subjoined : —

*' I^othing more has been done than to submit a
proposition to Texas to settle a question of bound-
ary, admitted on all hands to be full of difficulty.
It is at her option to accept or reject the offer. Ji
will not do to argue that the amonni of money will
bias vrif.iirly the action of her Legislature. Put
the question to any Aiabamian — ask him if he
thinks our State would sell her poorest county for
all the treasures of the Union, and he would treat
it as an insult. Are we to assume that we are bet-
ter than others, or that Texas will accept what we
would spurn ? I was wilhng to trust Texas with
the care of her own honor. I was willing also to
trust to her own knowlerige of her rights." — Clem-
en's letter of Angust ^Qth.

" My reasons for voting for the bill to adjust the
Texas boundary are as follows : —

1st As evincing a disposition to reconciliation
which strengthens our cause.

2d. Because Texas, as a sovereign State, was the
party entitled to decide the question of disposing
of her own territory. If any State had interfered
in our (the Georgia) cession of 1802,1 should have
considered it an intrusion.

3d. Because the territory to be ceded would
become part of New-Mexico, and free from the
Proviso.

4th. Principally because relieving Texas from
her debt it would develop her energies ; and I con-
sider a strong slaveholding State in that quarter as
. of incalculable importance, in itself, and necessarily

590

Union or Disunion,

Dec.

leading to the formation of others ."^^ Berrien's Ma-
con letter.

The third in the series of what is called
the ao'OTessive or anti-Southern measures of
Congress, is the bill erecting Territorial
Governments for the Territories of New-
Mexico and Utah. These bills, respectively,
contain the follo^^in2: section : —

"^e it further enacted, That when admit-
ted as a State, the said territory, or any
portion of the same, shall be received into
the Union with or without slavery, as their
Constitution may prescribe at the time of
their admission."

This clause, were there no ulterior objects
in the view of those who now so busy them-
selves in promulging the doctrine of se-
cession, or its equivalent, the principle of
sedition, would, it might reasonably be infer-
red, have proven perfectly satisfactory to the
entire South. There is, at least, no restric-
tion as concerns slavery, and it is assuming
what might not be safe for the South,
to contend for its direct estabhshment by
Congress in those Territories. If the influ-
ence of Texas shall be what Judge Berrien,
in the latter clause above quoted, predicts it
may be, there is almost a certainty that new
slaveholding States may yet be formed out
of this identical Territory. It is the mere
cant of disunion to stickle on the point of
non-protection by Congress to slave property
in those Tenitories. The Constitution of
the United States is now extended over those
Territories. The Constitution expressly
recognizes the institution of slavery ; but it
has been left for the local authorities always
to regulate the municipal and police fea-
tures. The doctrine of non-interference
with slavery by Congress has been too long
and too sedulously claimed by the South to
stickle now on this point. It is taught in the
celebrated Southern Address penned by Mr.
Calhoun ; and it is remarkable that this
great statesman and friend of slavery never,
in any speech or address, contends for what
many now deem so very essential to South-
ern interests — ^iz. : protection hy Congress
for slave property in the Territories.

The bill most objected to by factious sec-
tionahsts in connection with the late Con-
gressional measures of harmony and pacifi-
cation, is that which abolishes the indiscrim-
inate slave trade in the District of Colum-
bia. It is pretended that this is not only

aggressive on the rights of the South, but
is palpably contrary to the Federal Consti-
tution— so much so as to warrant hostilities
to the Government on the part of the South-
ern States. Now if it can be shown that
this bill is conformable to the terms of the
Maryland deed of cession and to the Consti-
tution of the United States, the last objec-
t'on of course falls to the ground, and, as a
necessary consequence, the first is removed;
for it cannot be rationally contended that the
South could be aggrieved by any course of
action on the part of Congress which is
proven to be in accordance wdth these two
instruments.

The pohtical situation of the District, in
\iew of the strong popular features of our
government, is certainly anomalous. As
apphed within its limits, the nature of the
government undergoes an entire change,
and presents a new face. Sovereign power,
unchecked and undefined in the original
compacts, is lodged elsewhere than in the
people. An assembly, composed of persons
fi-om all other portions of the Confederacy,
is its sole owner and supreme arbiter. Tax-
ation and representation are here emphati-
cally disalhed. One can be imposed without
the recoo'nition or voice of the other ; and

• • • T

the gi'eat principle which gave birth to
American Independence, and which has built
up one of the most powerful empires under
the sun, is thus signally repudiated and dis-
regarded in a neutral territory set apart, in
the very heart of the nation, for the resi-
dence of the supreme powers. Before pro-
gressing with this branch of the subject,
however, I have thought it would be better,
my fellow-citizens, to place before you the
Maryland deed of cession, conveying this
District to Congress, and which, now that
the portion of its original hmits belonging
to Yiro-inia has been retroceded to that State,
is the only deed to which it becomes neces-
sary to refer. Side by side with this deed,
I shall place that clause of the Federal Con-
stitution which accepts the same, and pre-
scribes the powers of Congi*ess over the Dis-
trict hmits : —

" Be it enacted hy the General Assembly of the
State of Maryland, That all that part of the said
territory called Columbia, which lies within the
limits of this State, shaU be, and the same is here-
by acknowledged to he, for ever ceded and relin-
quished to the Covrrress and Government of the
United States, in full and conclusive right and excLu-

1860.

Union or Disunion.

591

sivejurisdictiov, as well of soil as of persons residing,
or to reside thereon." — Deed from Maryland.

" Congress shall have power to exercise exclvnve
jurisdi'- ion in all cases whatsoever, over such district
(not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession
of particular States, and by the acceptance of Con-
gress become the seat of government of the United
States." — Const., art. \st, section 8th.

The only proviso affixed to this deed, is,
" tliat no rifj-ht shall be vested in the United
States as to soil owned by individuals other-
wise than the same might be transferred by
such individuals." The deed, any candid
reasoner must admit, is full and absolute,
while the language of the Constitution is so
explicit as to amount, literally, to an un-
qualitied, sweeping clause. They both are
so framed as to convey as large j)Owers as it
is possible to conceive that language can
possibly convey. The deed parts with
Maryland's right to the District "/or ever ;"
the " acceptance " in the Constitution carries
along with it, as the most biased and fastidi-
ous stickler v/ill concede, " exclusive juris-
diction in all cases whatsoever.''''

It will be seen, moreover, that the Con-
gress is a party to this deed in more ways
than one. It is a party independently., be-
cause the cession is made to the Congress
and Government of the United States. It
is also a party by virtue of its co-ordinate
connection with the government of the
United States.

Congress is thus armed with double powers,
and as to the ceded District may be said to be
sovereign, except as concerns pre-existing
rights^ which no cession could transfer, and
no Constitution, or acceptance of such cession,
wrest from the people. I pause to say that
among the pre-existing rights is that to
hold slaves., and that Congress can have no
power, consequently, to abolish slavery in
the District, without the previously expressed
assent of the people thereof. The power to
abolish is not the function of a legislative
body, deriving its power from instruments
less ancient than the institution proposed to
be abolished. It is a power which can be-
long only to those who own slaves, wherever
found living under our present Federal Con-
stitution.

But Congress being clothed with absolute
power., and with exclusive jurisdiction over
the District, must needs possess supreme
legislative powers, from which there can be
no appeal to the States, and with which the
last have no right to interfere. It cannot

be denied that the slave traffic is legitimately
the subject of legislation. The traffic is
carried on under the law. The right of the
master to the slave as property is older than
the law, and can no more be assailed by
the law than could the right to bequeath
or inherit, or the right of self-defense,
or the freedom of conscience ; all of which
are of none the less effect because partly
unwritten and undefined. The traffic has
always and everywhere been reckoned as
among the municipal or pohce features of
slavery. It has been so considered by every
government, ancient and modern, under
which slavery has existed. That of Rome,
which gave to the master even the powder of
life and limb over his slave, always claimed
to regulate the slave traffic; but it never
claimed to destroy, by simple legislative ma-
jority, the relation between master and slave.
Greece, as a government, was anxious to
rid the country of the Helot slavery long
before the body of the people were either
prepared for, or willing to, such riddance.
The government, therefore, claimed only
the right of all governments, to abridge,
and finally to prohibit the indiscriminate
traffic in the beings who were enslaved ;
but it da]-ed not, even in that early age, to
infringe theright of property by abruptly
destroying the relation between master and
slave. Russia, although a simple despotism,
where all legislative power even is lodged
with the Czar, would not venture, by a per-
emptory ukase, to abolish serfdom within its
imperial limits ; yet the slave traffic is not
only effectually regulated, but is so far pro-
hibited as that serfs go along with the land
on which they were born, and thus they are
termed slaves of soil. The rash and un-
warranted abolition of serfdom, even by the
sceptred Autocrat of all the Russias, would
kindle a flame of resentment that would
quickly spread from the Don to the Vistula.
In abolishing the traffic, which was an exer-
cise of power conformable both to justice and
to custom, not the slightest opposition was
encountered.

Under our government of sovereign
States and limited powers, this power is not
dormant. All power, of whatever descrip-
tion, must reside somewhere. There are
powers which belong to the body of the
people, to the States in their separate ca-
pacity and in constitutional convention, and
to Cono-ress. We have assumed that the

592

Union or Disunion.

Dec-

will of the people is alone the arbiter of
slavery as an institution, and they alone
may abolish slavery, whether in the States
or in the District. The regulation of the
slave trade is a matter of legislation, both in
the States and in the District. As to the
States, their own Legislatures may and do
exercise this power. Within the District,
the Congress is absolute, and unquestionably
possesses a similar power. Nor have ihd
States any right to object, or any ground of
aggrievance, unless they are aggrieved by
the terms of the Constitution. Cong-ress
has exercised this power recently by break-
ing up slave depots and markets within the
District, by prohibiting the introduction of
slaves within the District for purposes of
traffic or sale, and by declaring such slaves
to be free in all such cases. How shall we
go about resisting, in a constitutional and
peaoful way I mean, the exercise of an
unquestionably existing power by a body
" absolute " by the deed of cession within
the ceded limits, and declared to possess
^''exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatso-
ever,'''' by the very Constitution under which
our government exists, "over such District
as may, by cession of particular States, and
the acceptance of Congress, become the seat
of government of the United States " ? The
evil, if evil there be, must be traced to the
terms of the original cession, and not charged
against the body acting under that cession ;
must be imputed to the Constitution, and
not to the body which exercises a power
conferred by that Constitution. But more
of this anon.

I have thus, fellow-citizens of the State of
Mississippi, gone through with a brief but
concise summary of all those measures of
Congress which have been denounced as in-
tending mischief on the Southern institu-
tion, and against which it is proposed, in
some quarters, to direct the artillery of pub-
lic indignation, if not of Southern chivalry.
I have said nothing about the fugitive slave
bill, because it seems to be generally satis-
factory. But I purpose, in this number, to
call your attention to the remedies intended,
or by some agitated, to cure these alleged
evils, and the modes of resistance so boldly
promulged by the disaffected. This was
the more immediate object of this essay, than
discussion of the merits of the bills, at which
I have but glanced.

These remedies are, I regret to say, all of
a violent character ; the resistance proposed
looks alone to disorganization and dismem-
berment of the Union. The ultra doctrines
of the South Carolina Ordinance, so signally
buried in 1833 by the Proclamation of Gen-
eral Jackson, have been disentombed, and
are held forth as the nucleus around which
discontent and sedition may rally. There
is, I fear, this great difference between the
period of their inglorious sepulture, and their
resurrection in this day. Then, their per-
nicious influences were mainly confined to
South Carolina ; now, their baneful exhala-
tions are far more widely disseminated. The
day may be near at hand when an Andrew
Jackson might prove a blessing to the in-
tegrity of the Republic.

It is proposed to call a Convention of the
Southern States ; and to aid this project,
doubtless, our belligerent Governor has con-
voked the Legislature for the eighteenth day
of next month. The objects which such
Convention is intended to subserve cannot
be of a very peaceful tendency, if we are to
judge by the Proclamations of His Excel-
lency and the Governor of Georgia, the only
authentic evidences of a design to resist the
Government, so far given to the world. If
the objects of the Convention be peaceful, I
for one see no use in its assemblage. It is,
under any circumstances, a questionable re-
sort, and certainly a dangerous mode of col-
lecting pubhc sentiment. It is not only a
dangerous, but very unreliable mode, where
such wide and fundamental, differences of
opinion exist, as surely do exist among the
Southern people at this time. A Conven-
tion can only answer a good purpose when
there is a great coincidence of opinion and
unity of sentiment as to the aggressions of the
General Government. When I go into the
advocacy of a Convention which is to dehb-
erate concerning alleged grievances from
Congress, I must be prepared for revolution.
I must be convinced that there has been not
only deep and serious innovation on South-
ern rights, but a palpable and dangerous
violation of the Constitution. If I feel that
there has been nothing of either of these, I
prefer to seek a remedy through the ballot-
box, or by remonstrance, or in some way
authorized by the Constitution. K the ad-
vocates of a Southern Convention design to
direct its action against the laws of the land,
or the Government of the United States, I

1850.

Union or Disunion.

593

oppose such Convention entirely. If it is
intended, as some wish us to believe, to de-
liberate concerning pros23ective or anticipated
grievances, concerning the mere " shadow of
coming events," or for adopting an ultima-
tum against merely fancied wrongs, supposed
to be intended by the North, I must still say
I cannot concur in the policy. " Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof ;" especially
when that evil is only suspected, when it
exists only in the imaginations of those who
seem to dehght in discord, and who hold
pertinaciously to the dogma, that " no good
can come out of Nazareth." I am of those who
see no adequate cause for assembling a Con-
vention to resist what has been done ; and I
assuredly am not so enlightened as to the
future, that I shall advocate preparation
against mere phantom encroachments. I
am not haunted by any distempered visions.
I see no " grinning horrors " in the unrobed
future of the Republic, as it stands. If my
fancy ever wanders into the dreamy future,
I am always greeted by smiling visions of
the brightness, and glory, and greatness of
the Union — beamino-with the mild radiance
of its original purity, and gathering increased
lustre as it sw^eeps onward to its high and
holy destiny. Sometimes, I confess, the
gorgeous hues of the picture are momentarily
darkened by the ghastly intrusions of spec-
tred fanatics, or of Gorgon-like agitators,
such as emanate from Tammany Hall or
Nashville Conventions; but ere long the
brightness reappears — famihar faces, like
those of Washington and Franklin, peer
forth from the transient obscurity, and the
" black spirits," frowned into nothingness,
vanish as mists from before the rising sun.

A Convention, fellow-citizens, whose mem-
bers are composed of citizens of particular
States only, elected without the " consent of
Congress," and which looks to the formation
of any agreement or compact among them-
selves, is an unconstitutional and a seditious
assemblage. The late Nashville Convention
assembled without the consent of Congress,
expressly to form some agreement among
the Southern States. Its address was di-
rected alone to the people of the Southern
States, and its action was submitted alone
to Southern States. It is now proposed to
sanction a re-assemblage of this Convention,
or to call into being another looking to the
same objects. It is useless for the advocates
of a Convention to attempt a disguise of

their objects. If their object was peaceful
deliberation merely, they would resort to a
peaceful, constitutional method of delibera-
tion. Their design is to attempt to unite
the South in some scheme of res stance
against the recent laws of Congress. The
pretext to dehberate with a view to future
aggressions, is too senseless and too shallow-
to dupe even the least sagacious.

Now, fellow-citizens, if we are alaw-abiding
people, let us look well to our sworn duty,
which is to support the Constitution. Let
us see what that Constitution says, and act
accordingly. If, on the contrary, we are
ripe for anarchy and revolution, let us face
the matter, and so declare. The Constitu-
tion declares, in the tenth section of its first
article, that " no State shall enter into any
treaty, alliance^ or confederation ^ This
language is clearly unmistakable, and as-
serts a prohibition on the separate States
against uniting in any confederation. But
there is still a more direct inhibition ao;ainst
assemblages convened for the purposes
above stated. The followino; clause declares
expHcitly, that " no State shall, without the
consent of Congress^ enter into any agree-
ment or compact with another State, or with
SL foreign power."

If words have any meaning, fellow-citi-
zens, that meaning is apparent in the above
clauses of the Federal Constitution, I con-
strue them to assert that any body convened
on the basis and in the manner of the late
Nashville Convention, or which may be
convened, at any time, Avithout the consent
of Congress, for any purpose of resistance or
deliberation hostile to the action of Con-
gress, is an unconstitutional assemblage. If
the objects of the Convention were those of
remonstrance, then the people, or their dele-
gates, might peacefully and legally assem-
ble. But a Convention, formed of citizens
of different States, and which advises a
course of action on the part of those States
inimical to the government, or hostile to
the laws of the land, comes within the pro-
hibition of the Constitution. For these rea-
sons I have said that when I shall advocate
a Convention to be thus formed, and that
shall be intended to band the South against
the action of Congress, I shall be prepared
for revolution. Of course, the people have
a right, when the majority so decide, to rev:-
olutionize and form a new governmentr.;;
and when the present government fails, of

694

Union or Disunion.

Dec.

its intents and purposes, and wlien all con
stitutional remedies shall have been ex-
hausted in attempting to obtain proper re-
dress against palpable aggressions, no one
will deny that then will be the time to choose
between evils, and to count the value of the
Union. But when the ship springs a leak,
it is faint-hearted and treacherous to desert
until all the pumps have been thoroughly
tried and exhausted. Let me say, by way
of illustration, that if, in defiance of all that
has occurred, and of law and justice, Con-
gress should assume to abolish the institu-
tion of slavery in the District, and shall pass
a law to abolish the slave trade mthin, or as
between the slaveholding States, the infrac-
tion will then be sufficiently palpable and
violent, in my judgment, to warrant \aolent
remedies and harsh resorts. But disunion,
even then, would be a useless remedy ; for
thereby we lose not only the poAver to en-
force proper redress, but we lose everything.
Secession and dissolution are the very worst
of all evils, as I shall presently demonstrate.
We let slip the advantages we now hold
over our enemies, by resorting to a disrup-
tion of the government. It is just what
they wish, and are attempting to drive us
into. So long as the Constitution lasts, our
rights as regards slavery, being recognized
therein, are safe, and our opponents are
obliged to abide and submit. If they vio-
late the Constitution by p^ilpable aggression,
why should we be made the sufferers ? If
we break up the Union, the Constitution
falls, the government is destroyed, our ene-
mies are released from all obligations, while
we are thus cast loose from the only bond
that links us with the ci\ilized and enho;ht-
ened w^orld. We thus lose every advantage
and gain no compensation. We weaken
our cause by shearing it of its great arm of
strength. If the Constitution is violated by
them, they are the disunionists, and they
should be stigmatized as such. If there is
to be a collision, let us of the South at least
be in the right. If the majority of Congress
should \aolate the Constitution as I have
suggested, let us wait to see if the bod2/ of
the JN'orth upholds and endorses the violation
and aggression. Let us see if their constitu-
ents sanction their treachery. This, in my
opinion, is by no means probable. The
gi'eat States of New- York and Pennsylvania
are bound to us by the golden cords of self-
interest. Their principal wealth, and the

' greatness of their two mammoth emporiums,
are derived from traffic with the South. The
New-England States are w^orth nothing to
them in comparison with the Southern
States. Cut them off from the Southern
trade, and they are well aware that they
must diminish ruinously. The severance of
the Union, and the consequent anarchy and
disruption of trade, would bankrupt the
cities of New- York and Philadelphia, and
every cotton merchant w^ould become insol-
vent. Three months of hostilities between
the States would shock their business in a
manner that ten years of peace could not
repair. The body of the people, therefore,
kno\\ang these things, — and they are too sa-
gacious not to know them, — would be far
from countenancing a course of action by
Congress that would lead to disunion.
They would make common cause with the
South ; the offending Congress w^ould be
displaced at the term's end, these two States
will have been gained on the side of the
Union, and the Constitution and govern-
ment have been saved.

But suppose that, immediately on the
heels of the aggression, w^e appeal only to a
Convention of Southern States. Do we not
rashly and unnecessarily jeopard the dear-
est of causes by closing the doors to all
other States ? We lose everything without
even attempting to gain anything. We
lose the protecting influence of the great
bond of Union, without even opening a
door for its salvation.

Such, fellow-citizens, is the course of con-
duct, and its consequences, advised by the
advocates of the Convention, and by the dis-
ciples of Mr. Rhett, and their seditious co-
adjutors in Mississippi. I, for one, repudiate
any such doctrine, and abjure all such tutel-
age. I desire to matriculate at some other
than the fountain of South CaroKna Rhett-
oric.

But can a Convention of Southern States
be gotten up which will fairly and truly
reflect and represent public sentiment at the
South? I think not. In the first place,
the party distinctions of Whig and Demo-
crat are by no means obliterated. It is true
that a slight coalescence has been formed
among a few. Some of the Whigs, tempt-
ed by ambition perhaps, or betrayed by ar-
dent temperaments into an over-wrought
zeal, or misled by erroneous calculations,
have been incautious enough to join the

1850.

Union or Disunion.

595

seditious wing of the great Democratic
party. But the body of the Whig party
remain firm to their integrity, and have
openly repudiated all such leaders. Some
Democrats have united with them in the
vain attemjDt to form a par excellence South-
ern party ; but the body of the Democrats
are by no means committed to an ultra
platform. They adhere to party and to
party men, and refuse any direct coalition
on what is termed the Southern question.
They are, it is true, more equally divided on
the Union and Disunion question, than are
the Whigs ; and, perhaps, as some of their
leaders claim, the majority is for resistance.
But the issue has not been fairly joined and
put ; and, as yet, they manifest every desire
to cohere as a party, on the ancient and
popular principle, that " a bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush." When their
hot-headed leaders approach them on the
subject of a coalition, the answer, if we may
judge by actions, has always been in the
language of Scripture : "Go thy way ; at a
more convenient season" we will join you.
At the same time, the body of the Whigs,
in every instance where a coalition has been
attempted, have protested against their ab-
sorption, and consequent extinction as a
conservative, national party. With a con-
servative and genuine Whig administration,
which, so far, has stood true to Southern
rights, because true to the Constitution, and
which, relying on the cheerful support of its
friends in both sections, is endeavoring to
impress conservative and national Whig
principles on the Government, and to illus-
trate their beautiful influence — the Whigs
seem unwilling to surrender their tried
friends, ere yet they have offended. Nor
do they seem at all inclined to the belief that
they will offend. Millard Fillmore and
Daniel Webster were never so popular at
the South as now, and their friends evince
every reliance in their administration.

Parties, then, are still jealous, still dis-
united, and there is little prospect of a coali-
tion. An effort therefore to elect delegates
to a Southern Convention would most likely
take a party turn, and become a party mat-
ter. This would beget bad blood at the
South, let success perch on whichever side
it might ; the moral, or, to speak more
properly, the sectional influence of the Con-
vention would be completely baffled, and
the result would be lamentable divisions and

enmities among Southern friends. This, my
fellow-citizens, is of itself a sufficient argu-
ment with me to oppose all attempts at the
Southern Convention.

But this is not all. I fear that, after as-
sembling, such Convention would rather be
found lending itself to the manufacture of
public sentiment, than conforming to the
will of those they would be said to repre-
sent. That will could not now be ascertained.
The advocates of the Convention are either
unwilling or afi^aid to avow their objects, or
to meet the issue of Union or Disunion — of
resistance or obedience to the laws of the
country. They could not sustain, before the
people, an effort to call a Convention merely
to deliberate, or to adopt an ultimatum
against aggressions not yet committed. The
people will claim the privilege of deliberating,
and then send delegates from their midst to
act. You cannot get the Conventionists to
join the issue of war or peace, resistance or
non-resistance, by their proposed Conven-
tion. Their addresses, their resolutions,
even their speeches in primary assemblies,
all point to resistance, and cover a settled
purpose of dissolution. But they disclaim
violence, and repudiate disunion, where the
naked issue is made. A Convention there-
fore is impracticable, and would not reflect
truly and entirely public sentiment. The
question of a Convention may then be thus
resolved : If intended only to deliberate, it is
not their province ; if to adopt an ultimatum
against airy aggressions, it is unnecessary ; if
to decide the issue of resistance or obedience,
or of Union or Disunion, no such issue will
have been made, and the South is not
united.

I shall devote this section, fellow-citizens,
to a review of the position in which we have
been placed, as a State, by the recent extra-
ordinary Proclamation of His Excellency,
convoking our Legislature in extra session.
I shall begin with a review of that most
singular document itself.

At the close of a long, tedious, and ex-
citino; session of Cone-ress, when the whole
country was looking to that calm in the po-
litical world ever so welcome after the storm,
and when the nation had just begun to con-
gratulate itself on the happy adjustment
of the vexed issues, this State is suddenly
called upon to sit in judgment on the action
of Congress, and invited to become a leader

696

Union or Disunion,

Dec

in resisting the laws of the land. His Ex-
cellency's Proclamation certainly threatens
resistance, if it means anything at all ; else,
we must regard its issue as one of those
pompous demonstrations for w^hich om-
sapient Governor has become so famous.

His Excellency sets out with what logi-
cians term a petit io princiini. He assumes a
fact which never existed, and begs a conclu-
sion against which, I verily believe, every
sane man in Mississippi would most solemnly
protest. Unwilling to convoke the Legisla-
ture on his own admitted responsibility, the
Governor assumes that he has been invited
to do so by the people of the State, because
a few county meetings have been held ; at
which, let me say, resolutions have been
passed as various and different in their
meaning as it is possible to conceive. The
State and Central Conventions, even, part
company on vital points ; while, in the
counties, both compromise and resistance
measures have been passed. It is w^orthy
of remark, however, that at none of these
meetings has His Excellency been invited, in
any event, to convene the Legislature in
extra session. The fact, as concerns the
invitation intimated in the first paragraph
of the Proclamation, is altogether assumed.

Li the second paragi-aph, His Excellency,
seemingly not satisfied with Executive func-
tions, assumes to constitute himself the
judge as to when the rights of the people
have been assailed ; and that without giving
the people ordinary grace time in which to
make up their opinions. Does His Excel-
lency know that there is, at least, great
diversity of opinion among the " citizens of
slaveholding States " concerning the amount
of aggression contained in the " recent acts of
Congress " ? Is he ignorant of the fact that
a large, if not the largest, number of his
own fellows-citizens are unaw^are that any
"advantages and benefits of the Federal
Union have been denied to them " ? Out
of the twenty-five or thirty papers published
in the State, how many acknowledge the
assumptions of the Executive Proclamation ?
How many sustain the action of Congress
as concerns the adjustment bills ? Does
His Excellency assume that the whole press
is ready to rally around the doctrines set
forth in his Pronunciamento ? Take the
strongest slaveholding counties of the State,
and are the planters all agreed that they are
" insulted and aggrieved " by the " recent acts

of Congress " ? Is there no opposition to
resistance and to secession in the great coun-
ties of Adams, and Warren, and Hinds, and
Marshall, and Monroe, and Lowndes, not to
name many others ? Are the members of
the Mississippi Legislature — are the Southern
members in Congress united in the opinion
that the South has been aggrieved by the
action of Congress to the point of resistance ?
And, in \Tiew of all this, how can His Excel-
lency presume to judge that " the people of
Mississippi, in common with the citizens of
a/Zthe slaveholding States," should feel " that
the benefits and advantages of the Federal
Union have been denied to them " ?

Now it is barely possible that His Excel-
lency is inflated with the idea that, by thus
snapping judgment on public opinion, to-
gether with the great weight of ][n% personal
influence, he will rally all dissentient ele-
ments, even though two thirds of the people
should now disagree ^vith him. As strange
hallucinations have floated throuo-h his
mind, if all tales be true. At least, if he
shall be deceived in his calculations, it will
not be the first time that his zeal has dis-
tanced his discretion — if, indeed, the latter
virtue form any part of his mental structure.

The third section of the Proclamation
presents a tangible issue, and unfolds, to
some extent, the objects of the extraordinary
convocation. His Excellency denounces the
bill to abolish the slave traffic in the District
of Columbia, as " aggressive" on the rights of
the South, and as " threatening " the entire
dissolution and " overthrow " of the South-
ern institution. Among other things let out
in this paragraph, too, we find that His
Excellency has convoked the Legislature to
guard against contingencies^ or, in other
words, to fight against a shadow ; there
being, as he says, " no reasonable hope that
the aggi-essions upon rights of the people of
the slaveholdino* States will ceased Mac-
beth, we are told, saw bloody daggers in the
air, — " false creations, proceeding from the
heat-oppressed brain;" and Don Quixote,
thinking that he beheld an army of giants
in a parcel of zvindmills, determined, for the
honor of chivalry, to make a gallant charge.
If His Excellency had studied, or would
study now, the philosophy of example, he
might be able to make here a profitable ap-
plication. There is far more meaning than
one might suppose in that wise and respect-
able aphorism of ''acting for grandeur''

1850.

Union or Disunion.

597

Now is it true that the rights of the pe-
cuhar institution of the South are endangered
by the passage of the bill to abolish the
slave traffic in the District ? Understanding
His Excellency so to declare, I take the lib-
erty to join issue with him on the point. I
have already shown that Congress must
possess the requisite power to do thus much,
both by the terms of the Maryland cession
and by the Federal Constitution. Our
cherished institution would hang, indeed, on
a slender thread, if this be an " aggression ;"
and were it not more effectually protected
from the dominion of the Federal Legisla-
ture, I should be loath to admit that it
could be thus assaulted. I should, in such
event, seriously distrust the strength of my
cause. Nothino; that Conarress can do as
concei-ns the District, although it may be
illegal and despotic, can weaken the rights
of the sovereign States. If the Congress is
supreme within the District, it is made
so by a voluntary cession from a sovereign
8tate, and by the supreme law of the land.
The States are separate, and, in many re-
spects, independent powers. The District is
not independent in any respect. Its inhab-
itants, as I have already intimated, are iso-
lated as concerns their relations with the
different States, or sovei-eign communities,
which form the United States. They have
no voice either in the election of the Pi-esi-
dent or of the Congress which govern them.
They are, in fact, passive subjects. There is
no sort of analogy between the District and
the States. For instance, the State Legis-
latures are not arbitrary or irresponsible
bodies. As regards the District, Congress
is both arbitrary and irresponsible. This is
a vital difference. How then can the slave-
holding States be assaulted by this bill,
especially as it infringes no natural right ?

I would be obliged if His Excellency will
condescend to inform us how or in what
manner he will find authority to resist this
act of Congress, applying, as it does, alone
to the Hmits of its " exclusive jurisdiction " ?
How will he prevent or oppose its operation ?
How will he found a plausible pretext for
hostile action ? He cannot make a call on
this State or 2iXiY of the States to engage in
such resistance ; for they would be estopped
for want of authority to interfere in a matter
which both the Constitution and the law
have placed beyond their reach or control.
No ri^ht of any State, no clause of the Con-

stitution has been infringed upon or violated.
Congress has acted entirely within its con-
stitutional, undisputed sphere. He cannot
appeal to the General Government; for,
besides being the offending party, — if it be
oftense, — that can only move by terms of the
law, and that law has not been infracted. He
cannot, planted behind the cannon of Missis-
sippi, or in the exuberance of conscious mili-
tary genius, attempt to bully or threaten ;
because Congress can at once silence him by
shoAving the warrants for its authority, and
by challenging him to show Cause for re-
sisting a law confined, in its operation, with-
in the acknowledged limits of its " exclusive
jurisdiction." There is even danger that he
will be met with a plea of his once darling
doctrine of non-intervention. How then
will he proceed with his clearly threatened
resistance, in the absence of all authority or
pretext ? The glories of Chapultepec will
not carry him through mere Quixotic adven-
tures. The greenest laurels may fade in a
fruitless or fantastic contest ; and the doughti-
est hero, by engaging in empty onslaughts,
may be plucked of " all the budding hon-
ors " that adorn his crest. His Excellency
will pardon me, I trust, if I suggest to him,
with all kindness and respect, that it would
be well, while being emulous to imitate a
Charles the Twelfth or the Great Frederic,
to guard against adopting the errantries of a
mere flighty Furioso.

The Constitution of our State, fellow-citi-
zens, empowers the Governor to convoke
the Legislature only " in cases of emergency."
His Excellency may deem the present an
" emergency," such as is contemplated by the
Constitution ; but I do not believe that you
will, on reflection, concur in such opinion.
The State is in no danger. No invasion of
her territory is threatened from any quarter.
Her citizens are at peace among themselves,
and with the world. There has not been
even an indignation meeting. And yet the
Legislature is convoked in extraordinary
session. Now what law is to be passed ?
The Legislature, as you know, is restricted,
in its active sense, to the making of laws.
Its action is confined to its stated duties, as
recited in the Constitution. I cannot find
among; those duties that which looks to a
resistance of the laws of Congress. It is not
authorized to abet His Excellency's schemes
of resistance, as intimated in his recent
Proclamation ; nor can it pledge the State

598

Union or Disunion,

Dec.

to any hostile action. This is a principle
claimed by the People.

Now if His Excellency had assumed to
call a Convention of the people to deliberate
on the recent action of Congress, and if that
Convention had decided that such action of
Congress ought to be resisted by the State,
the true issue would then have been joined.
The question would then have been between
the State and the General Government on
the naked, defined issue of revolutionary
right. In such event, and in such event
only, would His Excellency have been au-
thorized to convene the Legislature ; and
the latter body would then know what to
do. As it is now, the issue is between
John Anthony Quitman and the Congress
and Government of the United States. It
is very doubtful, in my mind, whether the
Legislature, w^hen met, will be at all envious
to share his responsibility, or to thrust itself
forward as a party in a contest of such gen-
uine Quixotism. His Excellency will be
left to play his hand alone.

In the preceding sections, fellow-citizens,
I have forborne to amphfy. I have left
much to your own reflection, and preferred
to do so. I have mainly endeavored to
mark out the true issues, believing you to
be fully capable of filhng up the detail of
aro;ument, and of follo's\ino; the same to its
just and leg-itimate conclusion. My only
remaining task now is to examine, briefly
but minutely, the other proposed remedy of
S3cession — a remedy which I shall endeavor
to dissect of its countless enormities and
mischiefs, and to demonstrate to be worse
than the alleged disease. I am happy to
find, however, that this course is suggested
by very few — is disavowed by many even of
the most disafifected, and is dreaded by
nearly all.

Has a State of this Union the constitu-
tional right to secede " without the consent
of Congress," or the other States? This
question unfolds and opens the whole issue.
I shall argue it in a somewhat novel point
of view, and invoke your unbiased attention.
It will be for you to say, after going candidly
through with the argument, whether I sus-
tain my premises.

Let me ask first, however, what is the
nature of our bond of union? Is it the
creature of the State Governments, or the
people of the States united ? Is it an agree-

ment merely, a league between the different
States, a copartnership of separate and dis-
tinct Governments, or a regularly " ordained
and estabhshed Constitution^'^ the declared
supreme law of the entire confederacy ? If
I understand history, fellow-citizens, it surely
is none of the three first ; and if the instru-
ment, or the bond, does not litter a lie on
its very face, and in its every feature and pro-
vision, it is unquestionably and undeniably
the last. Its very birth and origin show
that I am correct in point of fact. The old
confederation was, indeed, a league — a mere
compact between the diflferent States. Un-
der that the General Government was, in
very truth, a mere creature of the State
Governments. It could not move nor act
without their consent. It could not lay or
collect taxes and duties, nor form treaties,
nor declare war, nor make peace, without the
consent of the State Governments. It was
im})ecile and inefficient, a mockery and a
nullity, and was soon found to be so. A
Convention was called to re^^se and re-adapt
its deficiencies. That Convention met in
1787, in Philadelphia; and their first resolu-
tion declared that a " national government
ought to be established, consisting of a su-
preme Legislature, Judiciary and Executive."
Afterwards, this resolution was so altered
that, instead of '"'■ national,''^ it was termed
the "government of the United States,"
which Avas the name and style of the con-
federacy. The present government was
framed and sent out for ratification, not by
the States or the State Legislatures, but by
the people of the States in Convention assem-
bled. It depended for adoption on consent
and agreement ; but the moment that it
was adopted, its declarations were fairly con-
firmed. These declarations are not of a
league or compact between the States, but of
a " Constitution of the people of the United
States." The language of the preamble is
not to agree or stipulate^ but to " ordain and
establish." It declares itself to be, together
with the " laws and treaties made in pursu-
ance thereof, the supreme law of the land."
And, as if to give unmistakable emphasis
to this declaration, it adds, " anything in the
Constitution or laws of any State to the con-
trary notwithstanding." (Art. 6th.) This
Constitution can lay and collect taxes, impose
duties, make treaties, declare war, and con-
clude peace, independently of the consent of
the States. It even lays injunctions on the

1850.

Union or Disunion.

599

State Governments, does not receive such
from them. It tells tliera they " shall not "
make treaties, form alliances or confedera-
tions, coin money, pass any bill impairing
the obligation of contracts, engage in any
war, enter into compact with another State
or with a foreign power, keep any regular
troops, maintain any navies. (Art. 1st, sec-
tion 10th.) This surely is not the language
of a creature^ a mere agent of the various
State Governments ! Washington tells us
" that it is utterly impracticable, in the Fed-
eral Government of these States, to secure
all the rights of independent sovereignty to
each, and yet provide for the safety and in-
terest of all." (Letter to Congress on the
Constitution.) In his Farewell Address he
speaks of the " unity of government which
constitutes us one people^^'' and of our indis-
soluble community of interest as one nation.

Mr. Madison, the highest authority, in his
letter to the editor of the North American
Review, speaks of the Constitution of the
United States " as constituting the people
thereof one people for certain purposes," and
as an instrument which cannot be altered or
annulled at the will of the States individually.
The fifteenth number of the Federahst, the
acknowledged authoritative commentary on
and exposition of the Constitution, penned by
Mr. Madison, speaks of " sovereignty in the
Union, and complete independence in the
States, as utterly repugnant and irreconcila-
ble." But I have a more pertinent, if not a
higher authority still. Mr. Calhoun, in his
celebrated letter to Governor Hamilton, uses
this significant language : " In the execution
of the delegated powers, the Union is no
longer regarded in reference to its parts^ but
as forming one great community^ to be gov-
erned by a common ivilV

I cannot pause, fellow-citizens, to multiply
authorities. I have adduced sufficient both
from the Constitution itself, and from the
legacies of its expounders and fathers, to
show to you the grounds of my opinion that
it is not a mere league or compact between
the States, but the supreme law of the land ;
and that, too, independently of State consti-
tutions or State laws. These are facts of
history. I tell them to you honestly and
truthfully. If they are unwelcome they are
none the less true ; and I cannot be held
responsible for taking the Constitution for
that which I know it to be. And I may
here add, en passant^ such being the history

VOL. VI. NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

and interpretation of the Constitution, the
doctrine of secession finds but little consti-
tutional sustenance.

But I may be pointed to the Virginia
Resolutions of 1798, passed to denounce the
odious Alien and Sedition laws of the Ad-
ams administration. Being penned by Mr.
Madison, I cheerfully defer to their authority
as he interprets them — not as NuUifiers and
Secessionists interpret them. Ihey are held
by these last to assert the complete inde-
pendence of the States of the General Gov-
ernment, and as covering the right of seces-
sion by the States at their own option. If
this be their meaning, I reject them as dan-
gerous and Jacobinical. But do they really
look to the right of secession, or to the
resistance of the laws of Congress by hostile
States ? I confess that they wear such ap-
pearance, and would seem to contemplate
such end. But the drawer of them protests
against such interpretation, and the endors-
ers of them, at the period of their promul-
gation, deny and disclaim any such infer-
ences. Mr. Madison, in the letter above
referred to, speaking of the interpretation
thus put on his resolution, says : " It may
often happen that erroneous constructions,
not anticipated^ may not be sufficiently
guarded against in the language used."
And again he says : " That the Legislature
could not have intended to sanction such
doctrine, (viz., nullification and secession,) is
to be inferred from the debate in the House
of Delegates, and from the address of the
two Houses to their constituents." Mr.
Monroe, then Governor of Virginia, in his
message relating to these resolutions, and
referring; to the action of the Leo'islature on
passing them, says, " they looked to a change
in pubhc ojnnion, Avhich ought to be free ;
not to measures of violence, discord and
disunion, which they (the people and Leg-
islature) abhor." The mover of the resolu-
tions himself declares, " The appeal is to
pubhc opinion ; if that is against us, we
micst yield.'''' And in later yeai's, a distin-
guished disciple of the Virginia school of
politics declared in the United States Senate,
when alluding to these resolutions, "The
whole object of the proceedings was, by the
peaceful force of public opinion, to obtain a
speedy repeal of the acts in question, not to
oppose or arrest their execution while they
remained unrepealed." (Speech of Hon.
Wm. C. Rives, in 1833.) And as evidence
39

600

Union or Disunion.

Dec.

in support of this interpretation, I may here
add, that even while the resolutions were
yet before the people of Virginia, denounc-
inof the laws of Cono-ress as " unconstitu-
tlonal and dangerous^'' the Sedition Act was
cruelly enforced against a popular favorite,
and protege of Mr. Jefferson, in their very
capital, and by one of the most brutal and
despotic judges that has ever disgraced the
ermine since the days of Jeffreys. (State
Trials, case of Callendar, page 688.) So
much, then, for these resolutions ; and being
thus interpreted, I willingly receive them as
high authority.

But I propose to examine this principle
of secession still more minutely, and to meas-
ure it by the terms of the Constitution. I
must say, in all sincerity, that it seems to
me to be an absurd proposition, to contend
that a solemn bond of government and of
union, deliberately formed, should contain, as
one of its essential features, an element of
its own destruction and dissolution. A Con-
stitution designed and framed, among other
purposes, to destroy itself, and dissolve the
Union which was the prime object of its
ordination and establishment, could have
been formed by none but madmen or Uto-
pians, and could never have received the
solemn adoption of an intelligent and saga-
cious people. Suppose a State could secede
from the Union at its own time, and by its
own option ! To what would it subject the
rest of the States, but to the despotism of a
fraction, more intolerable and arrogant than
any oligarchy that ever existed. Well may
Mr. Madison exclaim, as in the letter above
referred to, " that nothing can better demon-
strate the inadmissibility of such a doctrine,
than that it puts it in the power of the small-
est fraction to give the law and even the
Constitution to the remaining States ;" each
claiming, as he says, " an equal right to ex-
pound it, and to insist on the exposition."
Such a bedlam of discord would never be-
fore have existed to curse a nation, if such
had been the end of the present Constitu-
tion, and the design of those who framed it.
Greatly would I have preferred a re-estab-
lishment of the old Articles of Confedera-
tion, to such a Constitution as these secession-
ists would have ours to be.

I know it is contended that certain States,
as Virginia, New- York, and Rhode Island,
claimed and reserved the right of seceding,
at their own pleasure, in their several ratifi-

cations. I do not so read or understand the
record. They would not have been admitted
with any such baneful and disorganizing
reservation, but Avould have been kept out,
and treated as aliens, as they deserved. A
pretty government would it be, Avhere a
meagre minority of the people could claim
the supremacy of dictators to the majority.
I would prefer, vastly, the sway of a Czar
or a Sultan ; because, under either of the
last, we might, at least, have peace and per-
manence— not an Italy of the middle ages,
cut up by pai'ties of Guelphs and Ghibellines.
Such a government, fellow-citizens, as seces-
sionists w^ould force on you, was never de-
signed by a Convention over which Wash-
ington presided, and in which Madison, and
Jay, and Hamilton were principal actors.

But did these States make any such
reservation ? Let us go to the record, and
take it by its plain, common-sense, usually
received meaning. I find in the Virginia
form of ratification, that the delegates decided
that they " do, in the name, and on behalf
of the people of Virginia^ declare and make
known that the powers granted under the
Constitution, being derived from the people
of the United States, may be resumed by
them whensoever the same shall be perverted
to their injury or oppression." There is no
sophisticating this declaration. The " people
of Virginia " declare that " the powers
granted under the Constitution are derived
from the people of the United States.''^ That
is clear. Virginia, then, does not claim su-
premacy, or even individuality, except in so
far as her people assent to the Constitution.
These powers, "when perverted," may be
'■''resumed^'' not by the people of Virginia
alone, but by the "people of the United
States." That is clear also. But further
on they declare that they (the delegates)
"do ratify the Constitution," not on the
condition, but " with a hope of amendments."
This language needs no explanation. It is
the language of unqualified assent. It is
language which looks to anything else than
the right of States to secede when they
please from the Union. (Elliott's Deb., vol.
2d, p. 476.) But New-York presents a more
direct refutation of this doctrine. I find
their form of ratification to read thus : " That
the Constitution under consideration ought
to be ratified by this Convention, upon con-
dition nevertheless," &c. ; among which con-
ditions, I may say, there is not one which

1850,

Union or Disunion.

601

includes secession. Indeed, on the day fol-
lowing, a delegate moved to strike out the
words " ui^on condition,'''' and insert, " in full
confidence ;" and the motion prevailed.
But, as if to clinch the whole, a Mr. Lansing
did move, when the final question was put,
to adopt a resolution, " that there should be
reserved to the State of New- York a right
to withdi'aw from the Union, after a certain
number of years, unless the amendments
proposed should be previously submitted to
a general Convention." The motion was
promptly and largely defeated. This, fel-
low-citizens, would not seem to contemplate
secession. (EUiott's Debates, vol. l,p. 357.)

Can a State then secede ? I can think
of but one way, by which, under the Con-
stitution, this can be done, and that is by
"consent of Congress." Even this is not
very clear, but it is, I think, fairly debata-
ble. In reflecting on the subject, and inves-
tigating its merits, I was arrested by the
following language, found in the latter clause
of the tenth section of the first article of the
Constitution : " No State shall, without the
consent of Congress, lay any duty of ton-
nage, keep troops or ships of war in time
of peace, enter into any agreement or com-
j)act with another State, or with a foreign
power, ^'' &c. I have been unable to find any
contemporaneous explanation or elucidation
of this latter member of the clause. In-
deed, Mr. Justice Story, in his admirable
Commentaries on the Constitution, remarks
as concerns this expression : " What precise
distinction is here intended to be taken be-
tween treaties, agreements and compacts, is
nowhere explained ; and has never, as yet,
been the subject of any exact judicial or
other examination." (Com., p. 512.)

If, however, a State, by consent of Con-
gress, may lay a "duty of tonnage," the
same power, by the same construction, and
mider like consent, may form a " compact
with a foreign powerT This certainly im-
plies a separation of that State from the
United States Government, in some shape ;
for by the Constitution, the President and
two thirds of the Senate alone can form a
compact or treaty with foreign powers. This,
fellow-citizens, is the only cloak which I can
find in the Constitution to cover the doctrine
of secession. It is very remote, and imphed
at the best. It is a bone, however, at which
its advocates may gnaw, with entire safety
to the country and the Union. If it covers

their doctrine, it at least carries along a pre-
vious condition which would be fatal to their
theory. It demands a subserviency to the
will of the great aggrieving power, which
is " Congress." They may make the most
of it.

I have other questions to submit, and I
have done. What would be the situation of a
seceded State, in the presence of a powerful
and overshadowing empire like that of the
United States, — admitting, that is, that a
State may peaceably secede ? Why, in the
first place, such State would be an ahen, a
foreign power, having no sympathy or inter-
est with the other States, and no claims
upon them. Would such State be freer or
more independent, thus dissevered ? Would
she be allowed to exercise a single attribute
or privilege of sovereignty, when we chose
to interfere ? And would we not interfere
if she formed any alHance with a foreign
power, prejudicial to our interests, or that
might be dangerous to our liberties ? She
would, in fact, be a mere miserable depend-
ency, constantly watched and suspected by
an all-powerful neighbor, hable, at any time,
to be overrun and subdued, or blockaded
and invested on all sides, so that she could
not move. An interior State, like Arkansas,
for instance, which has not even an outlet or
seaport of her own, Avould be especially
ruined in case of secession. If the seceding
State, as is more likely, was South Carolina,
a squadron of United States cruisers would
never be out of sight of Charleston harbor.
It most hkely would be so ordered that no
vessel could enter that port without first
being searched by a man-of-war boat. The
very thought of such disruption is repul-
sive— the picture absolutely humiliating.
But a vState beino; once severed from the
protection of the Constitution must look out
against unpleasing consequences. She is
then under that law only, which makes the
weaker power the very creature of the greater.
May such spectacle never disgrace our shores !

This brings me to the close of my task.
I have thought that I see enough of danger
in the dissemination of certain doctrines
from high and influential sources, to author-
ize this intrusion. This, at least, is my
apology, if I shall encounter uncharitable
criticism or rebuke. The good and whole-
some doctrine of true State rights has, in
my opinion, been perverted to subserve un-
lawful ends. I have been raised to venerate

602

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

Dec.

the true State rights doctrine, but not those
which lead to disruption, and unconstitu-
tional resistance of the laws of the General
Government. It is still my pride to claim
affinity with that enlightened school of politi-
cians ; but when they so torture the teach-
ings of the early fathers as to ally with dis-
unionists and secessionists, under a counter-
feit of theu' ancient sacred banner, I part
company ^dth them. I believe that it is
right to inculcate the doctrine of State sov-
ereignty as assumed by Madison, and to
guard against the tendencies to consolida-
tion. I confess, however, that I see but little
danger of the last. I never felt such dan-
ger, except during the iron dominion of
Gen. Jackson. Such danger is more to be
feared in connection ^vith resolute and over-
popular men, the pampered pets of a pow-
erful party, than in any imdue tendencies of
the government.

In conclusion, fellow-citizens, I am unable
to see anything so ominous in the present
aspect of our national affairs, as will author-
ize us to go about banding and marshalling
the States for a crusade ao-ainst the action of
the General Government, — especially under
the lead of such Hotspurs as I perceive to
be at the head of the resistance forces. I
am a Southerner by birth and education — a
Southerner in pride of land, and in feeling — a
Southerner in interest, and by every tie Avhich
can bind mortal man to his native clime ;
and I shall abide the destinies of the South,
But I venerate the Federal Constitution. /
love the Union. I love the first for its be-
neficent protecting influence and power ; I
love the last for its proud and glorious asso-
ciation with all that is dear to an American
heart.

A Southron.

October, 1850.

THE GENIUS AND WAITINGS OF WASHINGTON IRYING.*

Nothing, certainly, is further from our
intention, than a premeditated design to
subject, or endeavor to subject, the distin-
guished author whose name heads this
article, to those ordinary critical inflictions
which seem to be associated, by general
understanding, with the name and with
the pri\dleges of a reviewer. His works
belong to a class, and to a period in the
history of American literature, which must
ever shield them from harsh or uncandid
scrutiny. They possess a charmed panoply
that forbids rash or unseemly familiarity,
and that represses the least suggestions
of ungenerous critical animadversion. His
beautiful touches of sentiment, and of ex-
quisite humor, have so linked themselves
with cherished associations of early intellec-
tual enjoyment, or mth scenes of quiet
domestic happiness, as to preclude any but
sensations of unalloyed agreeableness when
scanning the pages now under consideration.
They have cheered the fireside of the peas-
ant, and enlivened the saloons of the

wealthy. They have brightened houi-s of
gloom and of depression, and relieved often-
times the more austere and less inviting
studies which make up literary tasks, and
which form the pathway to mental accom-
plishment. They lend increased interest to
the hilarious social circle, and revivify the
fading spirits of the invalid. Life, under
the delightful sensations they inspire, seems
to be less alloyed with sordid impulses,
and reality less stern and burdensome. In-
deed, we are constrained to say, even at
the risk of being thought paradoxical, that
there is a something in the style and tone
of this elegant writer, a magical diffusion
of buoyancy - imparted by his works, that
smooths the frown of misfortune, softens the
anguish of affliction, fights up the sombre
moments of despair, and makes one almost
laugh at the ill success which follows his
most toihome eflforts after the good things of
this world. We confess to the very greatest
admiration of this happy art and enviable
peculiarity of Mr. Irving's wi'itings. We

* Irving's Works. New edition, revised. New- York: G-. P. Putnam, 1850.

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603

consider the attainment of such the ultima
Thule of authorship. It evinces adeption
in a 2^hilosophy of very rare, because of its
very difficult inculcation. Of all the great
writers whose works have come under our
observation, we can think of only two who
will bear comparison with ]\Ir. Irving in this
respect — and they are the very greatest —
'sdz., Lawrence Sterne and Sir Walter Scott.
All who have read Tristram Shandy feel less
disposed to weep than to smile at the pov-
erty and disappointments of poor Yorick ;
while the crosses and mishaps which befell
Uncle Toby, not to name the famous wound
in his groin received at the siege of Namur,
beget the most incessant and irresistible
merriment. We cannot, it is true, feel
pleasure, in its proper sense, in contemplating
the fact that so good a creature as Yorick
should have been poor and dependent ; but,
under other and more propitious circum-
stances, Yorick would not have been the
Yorick that he was ; and thus, a misplaced
notion of consistency on the part of the
author mio-lit have lost to the world one
of the most exquisite creations of genius
that adorns Eno-Ush literature. ISTor does
tlie reader ever associate misery with the
poverty of Yorick. - The good sense and
waggish mirth which attend this fine char-
acter whenever brought out to act his part in
that inimitable melo-drama, serve to impress
a highly valuable lesson of contentment and
moral adaptibility. All visions of distress
vanish, and we follow with a smile the eccen-
tric parson in his parochial wanderings, and
to his forlorn manse ; we fancy him exor-
c'sing want wiih jests, combating melan-
choly with wit, bantering the future with
agreeable references to the past ; and, at
last, we bid him farewell in the act of quiz-
zing while death stands just at his bedside.
And indeed, so artistically has Sterne por-
trayed the closing scene, and so eminently
has he succeeded in impressing the philoso-
phy disguised in the waggeries of this
unsurpassed character, that even while
Eugenius is sobbing his adieu, we are not
quite certain whether Yorick is laughing or
repining at the world's selfishness and his
own crushed ambition.

We shall not pause to instance or particu-
larize from the Waverley novels. Every vol-
ume of them abounds with striking illustra-
tions of the idea wc are endeavoring to
convc}- to the reader's mind in connection

with the writings of Mr. Irving — viz., that
philosophy which directs itself to a healthful
accommodation to the mishaps and vicissi-
tudes of life. We shall barely say that the
piquancy and lieroism of Die Vernon, under
very severe trials, aftbrd a most tasteful ex-
emphfication of Sir Walter's admirable pow-
ers of moulding his reader's mind, through
the influence of character, so as to meet the
adversities or the prosperities of the world
with a like equable temper. Equanimity
under all circumstances is a prominent feature
in all his delineations of character ; and the
principal charm of his novels consists in the
uniform good humor he manages to inter-
sperse throughout the entire development
and progress of his story.

But an interest more distinctive and fasci-
nating, though in fact quite nearly alhed
with that agreeable peculiarity to which we
have just adverted, belongs to the writings
of this model American author. We feel,
while engaged in reading them, as though
we could live long years in short moments
of hfe, while we sympathize with his truth-
ful character^. They are not gay creatures
of the element, nor mere sentimental de-
lineations. They derive not their charm
from the ephemeral and delusive portrait-
ures of f^uicy. His beauteous pen delights
to wander among domestic scenes, and to
dwell with the congenial famiharities of
daily habitude. He withdraw^s his readers
from imaginary realms, and introduces them
to ordinary life. But the transition is never
abrupt, ne^er unwelcome. He works with
the skill of a master, and strews the descent
with every tempting allurement that genius
can invent or taste desire. Under his magi-
cal guidance, we discern in things which be-
fore appeared indifferent sources of the full-
est delight and the most intense interest.
The healthful breathings of the common air
seem instinct with unspeakable rapture. The
most ordinary habits which link one season
of hfe with another, become the prompters
of thouo'hts and remembrances which have
long lain dormant in unawakened recesses of
the heart. He brings to mind, oftentimes by
a single stroke, scenes and sweet recollections
of childhood's hours, and pictures them with
a vividness that translates us in a moment to
that blissful period ; and the world again
looks brightly as of old, and life seems to
?^m:]e, av.d the f::ture, d'^r.llird with r.ll \\v.-
vwclco'.iie thoughts of ihj present, beams

(504

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

Dec

once more witli those illusory and briglit-
faced phantasmagoria that had so charmed
and invited our youth. And then we feel
capable of a more contented and sensitive
life than we have ever before dreamed of,
and delight to linger on pages which thus
rekindle the flame of long-forgotten sources
of pleasure.

The nicest scrutiny will fail to detect the
least inclination to a misanthropic cast of
mind in any of this elegant author's writings.
The social \irtues present to him a more
grateful and congenial scope than the
fiercer passions which more often tempt the
descriptive adventurings of gifted writei-s.
Mr. Irving would shrink from subjects that
call for dark pictures of human nature, and
abjures contact with those startling scenes
which alone drew forth the fall powers of
Byron. He does not seek for the sublime
in the mere intensity of burning passion, or
for sources of enjoyment in those feverish
gratifications which some would teach us to
believe the only felicities worthy of high
and impassioned souls. But, like Sir Wal-
ter Scott, he writes everywhere with a
keen and healthful relish, as Talfourd
would say, for all the good things of this
life ; constantly refreshing us, where we least
expected it, with a deep sense of that pleas-
ure which is spread through the earth, " to
be caught in stray gifts by whoever will find,"
and brightens all things with the spirit of
gladness. His pen is always linked with
vhtue, and they travel arm-in-arm through
every page of his works. He has evidentl}^
never aimed at or practised that refined art
which glosses over illicit indulgences, yet
with characteristic felicity of temperament
he never glides into austere denunciation of
wrathful Puritanism Avhen glancing at the
weaknesses or frailties of human nature.
The admirable sketch of " the Stout Gentle-
man " exhibits most tastefully his manner of
allusion to those little peccadilloes that so
often cross our prosy journey through the
labyrinthal mazes of society. He meets
them with clearly implied discountenance,
but rather burlesques and jokes than quar-
rels. Indeed, we can truly say of Mr. Ir\ing
as a writer, that, as often and dehghtfully
as we have roamed throuo-h his works, we
have never yet caught him in a bad humor.
To associate a frown with any of his produc-
tions, would be, in our humble judgment, to
shear them of their most attractive and their

rarest charm. We somehow, in turning his
pages, always imagine the benevolent and
rather jocund face of the writer to be
lighted up with a roguish, significant smile,
indicative both of healthful mental recrea-
tion and enjoyment, and of a pleasing anti-
cipation of successfully imparting to his
future readei-s his own happy and enviable
good-humor.

The absence of complicated style and
pomposity of words or sentences is another
striking peculiarity of this author. His lan-
guage is the most simple, and his style
charmingly easy. A child may read and
understand, and yet not detect the admirable
artistic skill discernible to matm-er eyes,
which speaks forth at every period and semi-
colon. If we may venture such a liberty,
Ave would suggest that there is, perhaps, too
much of the 'pruning -knife ^ or rather of the
smoothing-plane^ to be met with in gliding
through the succession of melodious sen-
tences which mark all his productions. And
yet his skill is so nice, and his accomplish-
ment so perfect, that in the enthrallment of
sense excited by his magic beauties, we find
it difficult to trace the point where natural-
ness ends and art begins. Mr. Ir\ing, as a
wiiter, forcibly reminds us of Mr. Maci-eady
as an actor and a reader of Shakspeare. The
rare taste and extreme fastidiousness of this
distinguished player have enabled him, by
deep study and long practice, to hide all traces
of his art by the bewitching graces of an aftec-
tation so perfected and refined as to impart
a delightful oblivion of everything but the
amazing accomplishment of the artist. We
must leave our critical readers, who have
heard and who have read these eminent lit-
terateurs, to decide which of the two has
attained to the highest peifection. Our de-
cided preference for Mr. Irving's '■'' occupa-
tion,^'' as well, perhaps, as our American
predilections, might incline us too readily to
award the palm to our distinguished subject.

We find, on glancing at Carey & Hart's
edition of the late Lord Jeffrey's Miscella-
nies, that we are not without the aid of very
high authority for this single effort at criti-
cism in connection with the writino-s of this
elegant author. In his notice of Brace-
bridge Hall, the great Scotch reviewer in-
dulges the following apt and eloquent re-
marks : —

" The great charm and peculiarity of this work
consists now, as on former occasions, in the singu-

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The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

005

lar sweetness of the composition, and the mildness
of the sentiments— sickhed over perhaps a little,
now and then, with that cloying heaviness into
which unvaried sweetness is too apt to subside. The
rhythm and melody of the sentences is certainly
excessive ; as it not only gives an air of manner-
ism from its uniformity, but raises too strong an
impression of the labor that must have been be-
stowed, and the importance which must have been
attached to that which is, after all, but a second-
ary attribute to good writing. It is very ill-
natured in us, however, to object to what has given
us so much pleasure ; for we happen to be very in-
tense and sensitive admirers of those soft harmo-
nies of studied speech in which this author is so apt
to indulge ; and have cauglit ourselves, oftener than
we shall confess, neglecting his excellent matter, to
lap ourselves in the liquid music of his periods,
and letting ourselves float passively down the mel-
low falls and windings of his soft-foioing sen-
tences, with a delight not inferior to that which
we derive from fine versification^

The sincerity of this admission, thus ital-
icized, is abundantly proved, not only because
it silences even the lenient criticism of the
first part of the paragraph, but because it
happens to be, if we are any judges, the
most beautiful and eloquent sentence ever
penned by the critic himself — at least so far
as the published form of his Miscellanies
warrants. The sentiment is that of an ardent
admii-er, not of a cold reviewer ; and we may
say that, after an agreeable perusal of his
Lordship's works, we concluded that, of all
productions which ever passed the scrutiny
of his slashing criticism, those belonging to
Washington Irving were his chief favorites.

We do not hesitate to confess to the same
weakness — if weakness it be — which his
Lordship has so artlessly admitted in the
sentence just quoted. We plead guilty to
being charmed with the finished elegances
of Irving's style, and to being fascinated with
the mellifluous diction and siren-toned har-
mony of his polished sentences. It is only
after delight has been again and again
satiated, and after admiration has been ex-
hausted, that we can get our consent to turn
back, after having wandered captive through
scores of his glowing pages, and recall our
enthralled senses for the less welcome task
of even friendly criticism. And yet, we
wish it distinctly understood, we have no
fault to find. If Irving had written less
sweetly, he would never have attained to
the laureateshlp of American literature, — a
position to which universal suffi-age has long
since assigned him. We certainly should
not have so loved to linger over the enchant-

ing flow of his legends, and sketches, and
tales. In aU these, to a mind gifted with
appreciative and truly refined tastes, there
dwells a mellow influence that calls up
countless floating reminiscences of early
classic gleanings. The majestic imagery of
Virgil is sometimes forcibly recalled as we
follow this delightful guide through the
storied precincts of the Alhambra, or among
the startling and fascinating superstitions
of Moorish life. At other times, while
tracing his peregrinations among the hills
and valleys of Spain, we find our fancy
wandering back to the school-room or to the
college halls, and again following Horace on
his journey to Brundusium ; or else bask-
ing amid the flowers of Rome's fragrant
gardens, or mixing with the classic revelry —
the song — the recitation — the poetical efful-
gences of a Roman banquet. Then again
we are agreeably reminded of JuvenaFs
pungent wit and racy lampoonings, while
laughing over the " Art of Bookmaking," or
the characteristics of burly "John Bull."
We live again amid the heroic inspirations
of Livy's pictured page, or the glowing
chapters of the " Viri Romse," as we read of
the noble fortitude and daring achievements
of "Philip of Pokanoket." The Conquest
of Granada suggests lively recollections of
the breathing portaitures and exciting scenes
and angry conflicts of Sallust's Jugurthine
War, or the fabled battles and sieges which
belong to early Roman history.

We have no heart to find fault w^th
writings that come to us thus freshened with
the charms of early association, and that
teem with such illimitable harvests and
priceless treasures of intellectual wealth and
enjoyment. But we may venture to adduce
and transcribe a specimen of that pecuhar
and charming blemish of style that belongs
to Mr. Irving as a writer, to which we have
objected as too monotonously sweet, and
which Lord Jeffi'ey so leniently condemns
while he so candidly admires. We know
not that his Lordship alluded to any particu-
lar passage ; we shall offer one which in our
own opinion eminently justifies the criticism
of " excessive rhythm and melody," and the
" labor and importance " of which his Lord-
ship deems to be rather too much a primary
consideration with the author. At the same
time, we must admonish our reader that
tempting seductions will beset the path of
his judgment, and melody as entrancing as

606

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

Dec.

that of tlie spheres will assail his ears, to
silence the promptings of criticism. He
shall decide whether the admonition be too
highly associated. We quote from the
opening pages of the Sketch Book, contain-
ing the author's " Account of Himself." In
speaking of his early rambling habits, and
fondness for the gorgeous scenery of his
native country, Mr. Irving there says : — " I
visited parts of my own country ; and had
I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I
should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere
its gratification; for on no country have
the charms of nature been more prodigally
lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of
liquid silver; her mountains, with their
bright aerial tints ; her valleys, teeming with
wild fertihty; her tremendous cataracts,
thundering in their solitudes; her bound-
less plains, waving with spontaneous ver-
dure ; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in
solemn silence to the ocean ; her trackless
forests, where vegetation puts forth all its
magnificence ; her skies, kindling ^^dth the
magic of summer clouds and glorious sun-
shine ; — no, never need an American look
beyond his own country for the sublime and
beautiful of natural scenery."

This short extract certainly presents a
most formidable array of measured rhythm
and of graded melody, and abounds, if we
may so say, with dactyles, spondees, and all
the nice prosodial paraphernalia that soften
and attune hexameter versification. The
commas, and semicolons, and dashes form
only so many spaces between a succession
of ravishino; musical cadences that voice
imagination, and lull into forgetfulness all
critical whisperings of untasteful " excess."
When reviemng books which, like these,
abound with paragraphs and pages alike
harmoniously toned, we cease to wonder that
Lord Jeffrey should smother his critical acu-
men, to " lap himself in the liquid music of
periods, and float down the mellow falls and
windings of soft-flowing sentences." But
yet we are told that the most accomplished
musical composers, after sensualizing through
an enchanting continuity of melodious bars
and staves, find it necessary to relieve the
ear, now and then, by a harsh and grating
discord. This is done that harmony may
not cloy, and that the effect of music may
be heightened by agreeable contrast. Hence
Lord Jeffrey, fi.nding that his favorite author
is unav^'akyued to iliis sole auxiliary of liis

art, characterizes the writings of ]\fr. Irving
as being "sicklied over with that cloying
heaviness into which unvaried sweetness is
so apt to subside." If it be a blemish, how-
ever, it is a blemish that very few who
"have music in their souls," or who are
pleased with " concord of sweet sounds,"
will be disposed to quarrel with or to cen-
sure. The chieftain of the modern critical
band yields to the Circean influence, and it
will, at least, be advisable for all subordi-
nates to steer clear of the enchanted shores.
As for ourselves, we have only made Lord
Jeffrey's remark the text of our own sug-
gestions, and have auned less at criticism
than at amphfication and explanation.

The "writings of Mr. Ir\'ing show a pre-
dominance of the humorous over the tragical
cast of mind. We should infer that he was
less fond of the buskin than of the sock ;
would like Falstaft' better than Kino- Lear ;
and would some rather laugh through the
graphic pages of Rob Roy or Guy Manner-
ing, than to dwell amidst the groves of
Ravenswood or the shaded recesses of Cum-
nor Hall. He seems to be himself only in
the character of his Diedrich Knickerbocker,
and only at home when nestlins: amon"" the
old-fashioned Dutch families of his native
Hudson. Critics have said that the genius
of Sir Walter Scott shone the most resplen-
dent while his foot was on the heather, or
while dealing with Scottish character. It
certainly was so to a ver}^ great extent ; but
the splendid imagery and gorgeous pictur-
ings of Ivanhoe a^id Kenilwcrth showed
that his creative powers were bounded by
no localities. And in ajjplying a similar
remark to Mr. Irving, we do not at all
mean to say that his genius is fettered
among the Alpine fastnesses or majestic
windings of the lordly Hudson ; for while
we must reverentially class the sage rehcts
of Mynheer Knickerbocker as the most ex-
cellent of his writings, the quaint humors of
Bracebridge Hall, the classic pages of the
Alhambra, the splendid descriptions of the
Conquest of Granada, and the tasteful por-
traitures of his Tales of a Traveller, evince a
versatility of talent that silences contradic-
tion.

When personating the old Dutch chron-
icler, Mr. Irving always draws on the sock
and the comic mask. Not once is his \-isage
darkened by a tale of sorrow, or his good
humor disturbed by a scene of niiseiy or

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607

suffering. He even deals with grave sub-
jects as if lie intended to pursue the laugh-
ing philosophy of Democritus, and discard
for ever that of the sterner school. The
History of New- York is, in our judgment, a
work of unsurpassed merit as a specimen of
unvarying, untiring humor. Its exceeding
chasteness, too, and the classic purity of dic-
tion which embellishes every page, commend
it to all classes of readers. Most of the
comic or humorous writers are so broad and
undisguisedly vulgar as utterly to repel any
but general readers. Swift and Sterne and
Smollet are all eminently liable to this ob-
jection, whatever be their consummate tal-
ents and skill as writers. But anybody, of
any profession, or of either sex, may read
the humorous works of Washington Irving,
without fear of offense to the dignity and
gravity of the one, or to the modesty and
refinement of the other. Divines and schol-
ars ; men of erudition and men of science ;
literary characters and eminent authors,
have all alike found dehght in reading the
History of New- York, by Diedrich Knicker-
bocker ; and, more than that, have found
instruction. The author of Waverley used
to lino-er for long; hours over its mirth-
inspiring pages, convulsed with laughter ;
and has been heard to declare that he con-
sidered it an antidote to all species of blue-
devils. And who has ever read the story of
Rip Van Winkle without arising from its
perusal in a better humor with himself, his
family, his neighbors, his country, and with
the world ? It has passed that ordeal which
is the surest token of success and of general
favor, — the provincializing the story as a
tamihar proverb or figure of speech. And
no wonder. It is all American. Its ^vild-
ness and its humor are entirely our own.
We look not to foreign cKmes, as is too
often the case v/ith most familiar and popu-
lar legends, for its foundations. The scene
of the hapless hero's residence, and of his
famous mountain adventure, looms forth
above the broad Hudson, cresting boldly its
majestic western horizon, and may be viewed
daily by the thousands who traverse its ro-
mantic waters. We will venture the asser-
tion, that whoever turns his eye to catch a
passing glimpse of the Kaatskill mountains, as
their empurpled summits print their outhnes
on a clear evening sky, indulges a smile, un-
consciously perhaps, in memory of Rip, his
doo; Wolf, and his shrewish but tliriflv d.iiTie.

But, leaving the Highlands, let us descend
the smooth current fifty miles or so ; and as
we glide into the broad and noble expanse
of the Tappan Zee, where " the old Dutch
navigators were wont prudently to shorten
sail, and implore the protection of St.
Nicholas," and coursing the vision along the
succession of " spacious coves " which here
" indent the eastern shore," search for " the
bosom " of the one in which " lies the small
market tow^n or rural port, which by some is
called Greensburg, but which is more gen-
erally and properly known by the name of
Tarrytown." What medley of agreeable
associations is that which thrills the breast ?
Fancy has carried us away to the social fire-
side where first we opened the Sketch Book
to read of Brom Bones and of Ichabod
Crane. We can, indeed, scarcely trust our-
selves to speak of the Legend of Sleepy
Hollow. The thoughts to which it gives
rise belong to an era of cliildhood to which
we are especially partial, viz., those listless
hours whiled away beneath the quiet, unos-
tentatious roof of the old country school-
house. We doubt not but that its perusal
affects others in a like manner. Where the
mind first opened, where the fancy first
quickened, where hope first fluttered, and
where ambition first sparkled before the
mind's vision, there are gathered the most
cherished associations of after life. And in
this country of ours, where the sovereign is
found as well in the ragged, bare-headed
urchin that gathers his scrap of learning
tVom itinerant pedagogues, as in the starchy
inmates of colleges and universities, it is a
fact well authenticated that genuine country
schools have been the nurseiies of the most
exalted intellects that have shed renown on
our history. It is therefore that this sketch
has ever been so highly prized in literary
circles, as well as because of its rare idio-
matic chasteness and purity of style.

We are free to confess that we have long
regarded this sketch as Mr. Irving's chf
cfoeuvre. Among all its finished compeei"s,
if we may thus speak, it stands, in our
judgment at least, inimitable and unrivalled
as regards any or all of the various excel-
lences which make up the sum total of a
master-piece. Its simple, uri defiled Saxon
elegance of language, the beautiful intona-
tion of short paragraphs, the melody of the
smooth-flowing sentences, the tasteful touches
of refined sentiment, the chaste cbuUiticns

608

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

Dec.

of liumor and of satire, the choice specimens
of descriptive eloquence, and the delightful
train of associations evoked bv its lovely
pictures of quiet domestic hfe, constitute an
entirety of rare and unequalled excellences
that must long uphold the Legend of Sleepy
Hollow as one of the most cherished hterary
heirlooms of the coimtry. Every page pos-
sesses its separate charm. Every one forms
the first link in a lono- chain of ao;reeable
reminiscences. Like the dweUing-place of
our infancy rensited in manhood, as Macau-
lay has said in one of his dehghtful essays ;
like the song of our countiy heard in a for-
eign land, they produce upon us an effect
wholly independent of their intrinsic value.
One transpoiis us back to a remote period,
of history — a period ever welcome and grate-
ful, be.ause it belongs to an era of patriotic
associations as well in legendary as in revolu-
tionary interest. Another page places be-
fore us lively pictures of the scenes and
manners of a past day — the quiet and sim-
plicity of rural life, and the listless inculca-
tions of a superstitious age and population. X
third calls up all the dear remembrances of
happy childhood — the school-house, the reci-
tation, the play-time, and the merry hohday.
A fourth brino-s to mind the dim, floatino;
impressions of the nui-sery days, and the
bright firesides of our infant hfe, — the tale-
telling hours of poor Cock Robin and of
Little Red Riding-hood; or, peradventure,
more appalhng stories of Jack 0' the Lantern,
of AYhip-poor-Will, of dough-faces, and of
winding sheets. In fact, there is no period
of our existence but what may find some
spot of genial sunshine in these charming
pages. We cannot forbear to ask the read-
er's indulgence while we extract what we
consider a few of the choicest culhno-s, both
m proof of our thoughts and sugo-estions,
and as e\'idence of the author's beautiful
taste, liis rare accomphshment as a writer,
and of his fehcitous temperament.

The fii-st shall be his description of the
Hollow itself, — a description that at once
absorbs attention and captivates fancy, while
it calls to mind some distant strain of mel-
ody that occasionally steals over the soul to
awake some lono; silent chord : —

" Not far from the village, perhaps about two i
mile?, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land,
among high hills, which is one of the quietest
places in the whole world. A small brook glides
through it, with just mui-mur enough to lull one to

repose ; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or
tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound
that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.
.... From the listless repose of the place, and
the peculiar character of the inhabitants, who are
descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this
sequestered glen has lung been known by the
name of Sleepy Hollow, and its ru-tic lads are
called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the
neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influ-
ence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade
the very atmosphere. Some say that the place
vi^as bewitched by a high German Doctor, during
the early days of the settlement ; others that an
old Indian chief, the prophet or vfizard of hia
tribe, held hispow-wows there befnre the country
was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson.
Certain it is, the place still continues under the
sway of some witching power, that holds a spell
over the minds of the good people, causing them
to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to
all kinds of marvellous beliefe ; are subject to
trances and visions; and frequently see strange
sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The
whole neighborhood abounds with local tales,
haunted spots, and twilight superstitions ; stars
shoot and meteors ghire across the valley oftener
than m any other part of the country ; and the
nightmare, with her "whole nine-fold, seems to
make it the favorite scene of her gambols."

The next extract contains an account, in
the author's raciest style of satire and rich
humor, of the hero of the Legend and his
tenement, interspersed \dX\i characteristic
strokes of sentiment that impress none the
less because of their seemingly burlesque
features : —

" In this by -place of nature, there abode, at a
remote period of American history, that is to say,
some thirty years since, a worthy wight, of the
name of Ichabod Crane, who sojoiu-ned, or, as he
expressed it, " tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the
purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity.
.... The cognomen of Crane was not inappli-
cable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly
lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs,
hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet
that might have served for shovels, and his whole
frame most loosely hung together. His head was
small, and flat at the top, with huge ears, large
green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that
it looked hke a weather-cock perched upon his
spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew.
To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a
windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering
about him, one might have mistaken him for the
genius of femine descending upon the earth, or
some scarecrow eloped from a corn-field. His
school-house was a low building of one large
room, rudely constructed of logs, the windows
partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of
old copy-books. ... It stood in a rather lonely
but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody
hill, with a brook running close by, and a formida-

1850.

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving,

609

ble birch tree growing at one end of it. From
hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning
over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy
summer's day, like the hum of a bee-hive, inter-
rupted now and then by the authoritative voice of
the master, in the tone of menace or command, or,
peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch,
as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery
path of knowledge

" When school-hours were over, he was even
the companion and playmate of the larger boys,
and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of
the smaller ones home, who happened to have
pretty sisters, or good housewives for mothers,
noted for the comforts of the cupboard

" Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was,
to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch
wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row
of apples roasting and spluttering along the
hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of
ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted
brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses,
and particularly of the headless horseman, or Gal-
loping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes

called him But it there was a pleasure

in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chim-
ney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy
glow from the crackling wood-fire, and where, of
course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was
dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent
walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shad-
ows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly
glare of a snowy night ! With what wistful look
did he eye every trembling ray of light streammg
across the waste fields from some distant window !
How often was he appalled by some shrub covered
with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset
his very path! How often did he shrink, with
curdling awe, at the sound of his own footsteps on
the frosty crust beneath his feet, and dread to
look over his shoulder lest he should behold some
uncouth being tramping close behind him ! And
how often was he thrown into complete dismay by
some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the
idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of
his nightly scourings. . . . All these, however,
were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the
mind that walk in darkness ; and though he had
seen many spectres in his time, and been more
than once beset by Satan in divers shapes in his
lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to
all these evils ; and he would have passed a pleas-
ant life of it in despite of the Devil and all his
works, if his path had not been crossed by a being
that causes more perplexity to mortal man than
ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches
put together, and that was — a woman."

We shall give next a page of that fine
descriptive excellence in the every-day walks
of life, a specimen of that nice observation
and healthful jollity so characteristic of this
popular author. It is the description of an
old Dutch farmer and his household ; and
we may as well add, that it is suspected that
Mr. Irving's present beautiful residence is

the original of that here given as the one
inhabited by old Baltus : —

" Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a
thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He
seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his
thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm ;
but within those everything was snug, happy, and
well-conditioned. He was 'satisfied with his
wealth, but not p'oud of it, and piqued himself
upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style
in which he lived. His stronghold was situated
on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green,
sheltered, fertile nooks, in which the Dutch farmers
are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread
its broad branches over it, at the foot of which
bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest
water, in a little well formed of a barrel ; and
then stole sparkhng away through the grass to a
neighboring brook, that bubbled along among
alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farm-
house was a vast barn, that might have served
for a church, every window and crevice of which
seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the
farm ; the flail was busily resounding within it
from morning till night; swallows and martins
skimmed twittering about the eaves, and rows of
pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watch-
ing the weather, some with their heads under their
wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swell-
ing, and cooing, and bowing about their dames,
were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek,
unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and
abundance of their pens, whence sallied forth now
and then troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the
air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were
riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole
fleets of ducks ; regiments of turkeys were gob-
bling through the farm-yard, and guinea fowls
fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives,
with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the
barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern
of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman,
clapping his burnished wings, and crowing in the
pride and gladness of his heart — sometimes tear-
ing up the earth with his feet, and then generously
calling his ever-hungry family of wives and chil-
dren to enjoy the rich morsel which he had dis-
covered."

We have reserved the most beautiful for
the last of these excerpts. It is one of those
melodious exuberances of the beautiful and
the graphic over which the reader so delights
to hnger. The very selection of the season
is tasteful, and makes the description more
loveable. It indicates, too, in a striking
manner, that keen rehsh of the substantial
of life which we have elsewhere noticed as a
pecuharity of Mr. Irving's works, and teaches,
as does, indeed, the paragraph last quoted,
the healthful flavor of a contented mind : —

" It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day ;
the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore

610

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

Dec.

that rich and golden livery which we always as-
sociate with the idea of abundance. The forests
had put on their sober brown and yellow, while
some trees of the tender kind had been nipped
by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple,
and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began
to make their appearance high in the air; the
bark of the squirrel might be lieard from the
groves of beech and hickory nuts, and the pensive
whistle of the qutfil at intervals from the neigh-
boring stubble field The small birds

were taking their farewell banquets. In the ful-
ness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and
frolicking, from bush to bush, and tree to tree, ca-
pricious from the very profusion and variety around
them. There was the honest cock-robin, the fa-
vorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud
querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds
flying in sable clouds; and the golden- winded
woodpecker, with his crimson crest, his broad black
gorget, and splendid plumage ; and the cedar
bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail,
and its little montero cap of feathers ; and the
blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue
coat and white under-clothes, screaming and chat-
tering, nodding, and bobbing, and bowing, pretend-
ing to be on good terms with every songster of

the grove

" As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye,
ever open to every symptom of culinary abund-
ance, ranged with delight over the treasures of
jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast stores
of apples, some hanging in oppressive opulence
on the trees, some gathered into basket^ and bar-
rels for the market, others heaped up in rich piles
for the cider-press. Further on he beheld great
fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping
from their leafy coverts, and holding out the prom-
ise of cakes and hasty-pudding ; and the yellow
pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their
fair round bellies to the sun, and givmg ample
promise of the most luxurious of pies ; and anon
he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields, breathing
the odor of the bee hive, and as he beheld them,
soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty
slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey
or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand

of Katrina Van Tassel Thus feeding his

mind with many sweet thoughts and 'sugared
suppositions,' Ichabod journeyed along the sides
of a range of hills which look out upon some of
the goodliest scenes of the Hudson. The sun
gradually wheeled his broad disc down into the
west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay
motionless and glassy, excepting that liere and
there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged
the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few
amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath
of air to move them. The horizon of a fine golden
tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green,
and from that into the deep blue of the mid-
heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody
crests of the precipices that overhung some parts
of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray
and purple of their rocky sides."

Vv"c Iiave dwelt on tliis bGaiitlful and
finished bketeli, and we meant to dwell on

it. We trust that by this time we have
succeeded in placing before our readers apt
enough specimens to impress our sugges-
tions as to the style and character of Mr.
Irving's leading works. Since the days of
Addison no writer has penned as many
pages of pure, unadulterated, and unaffected
Saxon, embodying so much of the really
elegant and so much of the humorous, is as
to be found in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
We may go further, and frMikly own that
we admire much more Mr. Ir\dng's raciness
than Addison's exquisiteness. Despite the
transcendent composition and sparkling ele-
gance of the Spectator, we nevertheless
must be untasteful enough to confess that
we sometimes grow weary of its refined
sentiment and lengthened disquisitions.
Will Honeycomb is not always easy, or in-
teUigible either ; and, with all his rich flow
of high comedy, never does he appear before
us in the sober habiliments of downright
every-day hfe. But we never grow weary
of the Sketch Book or of Bracebridge Hall ;
and Mynheer Diedrich Knickerbocker always
comes to us in genuine homespun garments.
It does not require a high degree of mental
cultivation and training to get at and enjoy
his meaning. His great forte is adaptabil-
ity ; and his boldest flights may be com-
passed by ordinary minds.

As a mere narrative, Dolph Heyliger is
superior both to Rip Van Winkle and to the
Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It is, as usual,
sprinkled throughout with a great deal that
is quaint, and ^\ith much that is humorous ;
but its leading associations are those that
are wont to be connected with goblins, and
spectres, and haunted ruins, and the whole
familiar tribe of Raw Heads and Bloody
Bones. It is one of those fine stories that
children delight, yet tremble, to read by a
feeble lamp or a flickering fire-light. And
yet it abounds with brilliancy of imagina-
tion, and with power and splendor of de-
scription. It unfolds the beauties of local
scenery, and presents successive glowing pic-
tures of the gorgeous and majestic coast of the
Hudson. As illustrative of this, we shall ven-
ture to give one short extract, and but one.
It is the scene which opens to Dolph's ^dsion
just after he had embarked on the sloop he
had seen in his dreams, commanded by the
old lame, one-eyed captain : —

" In the second dav of the vo^'age, they came

1850.

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

611

to the Highlands. It was the latter part of a
calm, sultry day, that they floated gently with
the tide between these stern mountains. . . . Dolph
gazed about him in mute delight and wonder at
these scenes of nature's magnificence. To the
left the Dunderberg reared its woody precipices,
height over height, forest over forest, away into
the deep summer sky. To the right strutted
forth the bold promontory of Anthony's Nose,
with a solitary eagle wheeling about it; while
beyond, mountain succeeded to mountain, until
they peemed to lock their arms together, and con-
fine this mighty river in their embraces. There
was a feeling of quiet luxury in gazing at the
broad, green bosoms here and there scooped out
among the precipices ; or at woodlands high in
air, nodding over the edge of some beetling bluff,
and their foliage all transparent in the yellow
sunshine."

We must now bid a respectful adieu to
honest Diedrich and his good humor. The
companionship of the jolly, entertaining old
gentleman is not tiresome, but we must not
spoil his character by letting him, in our
hands, become exclusive. We leave him to
find a quiet, snug corner in the heart of
every admirer of Mr. Irving — which he
richly deserves.

One of the most lovely passages that oc-
cur in all the works of Mr. Irving is found
in the opening pages of the second volume
of his Sketch Book, beginning with Christ-
mas and the stage coach, and ending with
the Christmas dinner and festivities of Brace-
bridge Hall. We never suffer a twelve-
month to pass without at least reading once
these dehghtful sketches. They were evi-
dently penned with a view to endeavor to
re\dvify the fading influences of this golden
festival, so dear to all who own genuine,
heart-deep sentiment. They lift us from
the present, with its anxious cares, and
its endless toils, and carry us back to the
shining hours of childhood, when life was
yet in its infancy, and before contact with
the noon had blighted the illusions of its
dawn. If happy and prosperous, reading
them makes even the future look brighter
and more inviting. If afflicted or distressed,
they beguile of unwelcome anticipations,
and garnish the path of hfe to come with
shadowy associations of that which is past.

" Of all the old festivals," says Mr. Irving,
*' that of Christmas awakens the strongest and
most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of
solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our
conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hal-
lowed and elevated enjoyment .... It is a beau-

tiful arrangement, also, derived from days of yore,
that ^this festival, which commemorates the an-
nouncement of the religion of peace and love, has
been made the season for gathering together of
family connections, and drawmg closer again those
bands of kindred hearts, which the cares and
pleasures and sorrows of the world are continu-
ally operating to cast loose ; of calling back the
children of a family who have launched forth in
life, and wandered widely asunder, once more to
assemble about the paternal hearth, thatrallying-
place of the affections, there to grow young and
loving again among the endearing mementoes of
childhood."

We love to read and to dwell on pas-
sages and sentiments hke these. They steal
to the soul like the soft music of briixhter
and purer spheres, and come over the affec-
tions as the voices of mystic spiritual com-
munion with other and better days. Deeply
is it to be lamented that these chastening
influences, which so link the present Avith
the past, are gradually dwindling and de-
clining before the refinement or the utihta-
rianism of the age. Most of the glorious
old holiday customs have disappeared;
others are fast disappearing beneath modern
encroachments. " There is," as Mr. Irving
justly says, " more of dissipation, and less of
enjoyment. Pleasure has expanded into a
broader, but a shallower stream ; and has
forsaken many of those deep and quiet
channels where it flowed sweetly through
the calm bosom of domestic hfe. Society
has acquired a more enlightened and elegant
tone ; but it has lost many of its strong*
local pecuharities, its home-bred feelings, its
honest fireside dehghts."

We next follow Mr. Crayon in his merry
coach-ride through festal throngs, and beam-
ing faces, and smiling evidences of a Christ-
mas approach in England ; and then comes
the lovely adventure of the little returning
school-boys, their meeting with the old fam-
ily servant, and Bantam, and Carlo, and
their arrival at home. "I looked after
them," says our author, " with a feeling in
which I do not know whether pleasure or
melancholy predominated; for I was re-
minded of those days when, hke them, I
had neither known care nor sorrow, and a
holiday was the summit of earthly felicity."
Then we are introduced to Mr. Frank Brace-
bridge at the inn kitchen ; the chaise drives
up, and the two friends set out on their cold
moonhght ride for the jolly old Hall. The
crusted ground beneath, the snow-spangled
forests around, the chilhng air of a clear

612

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

Dec.

December niglit, are all impotent to dispel
the warmth which glows in their hearts, as
thouo-hts of the festive morrow kindle and
gladden within. They wind along through
the venerable park and sheeted lawn,
" which here and there sparkled as the
moonbeams caught a frosty crystal ;" the
blaze of the " yule clog," streaming merrily
through the skeleton shadows of ancient
trees, gnarled by winter's cold touch, hghts
them to the portals of the old family man-
sion, and the soimd of miisic and jolly laugh-
ter tells them that the time-honored festival
has begun. The " Squire " welcomes them
with old-fashioned cordiality — the Christmas
tapers are lighted — the supper-table groans
beneath the weio:ht of Christmas dainties ;
and then open those charming scenes of
domestic life and domestic enjoyment which
illumine the soul with the reflected influence
of the happy season and of the beaming
faces around, and make amends for long-
years of suflering in one short, sweet gala
moment of oblinousness. The antiquated
manners and disposition of the old Squire,
the social pecifliarities of his old family ser-
vants, and the whims and oddities of Mas-
ter Simon, now successively assail the risible
faculties, and lay bare whole sluices to
amusement and good cheer. The mirth of
the chimney-corner — the wild wassail of the
servants' hall — the jovial tale-tellings — the
inspiring dance — the sparkling ale cups, all
speak the voice of cheerfulness, and seem to
say, in the words of Master Simon's song :

" Now Christmas is come,

Let us beat up the drum,
And call all our neighbors together ;

And when they appear,

Let us make them such cheer
As will keep out the wind and the weather. "

We could linger most agreeably among
such lovely scenes, and thus detain our read-
ers for many, many pages. Besides their
beauty and exterior embellishments, they
afford salutary lessons of healthful moral
and intellectual exercitation. Their Avinninof

• • • ^

and n'resistible impressiveness outweighs
tomes of tedious and long-spun treatises.
They address their influences to the heart,
and are unconsciously, yet welcomely, stereo-
typed while being read. They pursue no
circuitous track of reachinjr their destina-
tion through dry channels of logical persua-
siveness,— battering the mind to touch the

affections and direct sentiment through the
medium of mere duty, — calling in the aid of
long professional and prosy lecturings to
wake into life feelino^ that are instinct to
the better part of our nature ; — they work up
directly from the parent fountain, and dif-
fuse their purifying and softening influences
in the very moment that the master's hand
sweeps the chords he has attuned.

It should not, however, be rashly inferred,
from Avhat we have been saying, that the
genius of Mr. Irving runs only in the comic
line, or that his writings are barren of all
oblations to the shrine of the tragic muse.
His lyre does not, it is true, send forth those
sad wailings that intone Mackenzie's harp,
and loves not so much to associate its melody
with the willow ; but its music oftentimes
penetrates and "unseals the fountain of
tears." But it is a luxury, a rehef, to weep
as IrWng can make his reader weep. The
bosom, after its fulness has been discharged,
is not oppressed with those gloomy, mourn-
ful, depressing sensations that follow us from
poor Harley's grave in the Man of Feehng ;
nor are we haunted for whole days by the
spectral visions and heart-heavy emotions
that belonor to the sad denouement of the
Bride of Lammeraioor. The heart is gently
opened by the touch of sentiment, the tear
drops softly over the apt reflection, and then
the vent is closed by the beauty of the part-
ing thought. A lovely calm succeeds to the
flow of gushing emotions, and we leave the
grave softened to its lonely horrors, and as-
sociate its repose with all that is tender and
interesting, rather than with the hollow
silence and decay of death. We shall
ao'ain turn to the Sketch Book to find illus-
trative passages. We select first from the
closing lines of " Rural Funerals," presup-
posing that our reader is familiar with the
sketch : —

" There is a voice from the tomb sweeter than
song. There is a remembrance of the dead to
which we turn even from the charms of the living.
Oh the grave ! the grave ! It buries every error —
covers every defect— extinguishes every resent-
ment ! From its peaceful bosom spring none but
fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can
look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and
not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever
have warred with the poor handful of earth that
lies mouldering beneath him?

" But the grave of those we loved — what a place
for meditation ! There it is that we call up in
long review the whole history of virtue and gen-

1850.

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

613

tleness, and tlie thousand endearments lavished
upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse
of intimacy — there it is that we dwell upon the
tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the
parting scene. The bed of death, with all its sti-
fled griefs— its noiseless attendance— its mute,
watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of ex
piriug love ! The feeble, fluttering, thrilling — oh !
how thrilling ! — pressure of the hand ! The faint,
faltermg accents, struggling in death to give one
more assurance of affection ! The last fond look
of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the
threshold of existence !

" Ay, go to the grave of buried love, and medi-
tate ! There settle the account with thy conscience
for every past benefit unrequited— every past en-
dearment unregarded, of that departed being who
«an never — never— never return to be soothed by
thy contrition !

" Then weave thy chaplet of flowers, and strew
the beauiies of nature about the grave; console
thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with these tender,
yet futile tributes of regret ; but take warning by
the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over
the dead, and henceforth be more faithful and affec-
tionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living."

We shall next trespass on the concluding
paragraphs of the " Pride of the Village,"
found in the same series : —

" It was a wintry evening ; the trees were strip-
ped of their foliage ; the church-yard looked naked
and mournful, and the wind rustled coldly through
the dry grass. Evergreens, however, had been
planted about the grave of the village favorite,
and osiers were bent over it to keep the turf unin-
jured The church door was open, and I stepped

in. There hung the chaplet of flowers and the
gloves, as on the day of the funeral ; the flowers
were withered, it is true, but care seemed to have
been taken that no dust should soil their whiteness.
I have seen many monuments, where art has ex-
hausted its powers to awaken the sympathy of
the spectator, but I have met with none that
epoke more touchingly to my heart, than this sim-
ple but delicate memento of departed innocence."

The last we shall give is rather a sublime
touch of the tragic than the sentimental. It
is conceived in the genuine Shaksperian spirit.
The forlorn image of Ophelia flits before the
vision as we read, and the dramatic point
might even have challenged the powers of
Mrs. Siddons. We allude to the passage in
the sketch of the " Broken Heart," where,
after rehearsing the story of the young Irish
girl — her love, disappointment and sorrow —
the writer boldly but beautifully essays the
following delicate venture : —

" The person who told me her story had seen
her at a masquerade. There can be no exhibition
of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful

than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wan
dering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all
around is gay — to see it dressed out in the trap-
pings of mirth, and looking so wan and wo-
begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor
heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow.
After strolling through the splendid rooms and
giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she
sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and
looking about for some time with a vacant air, that
showed her insensibility to the garish scene, she
began, with the capriciousness of a sickly heart to
warble a plaintive air. She had an exquisite voice ;
but on this occasion it was so simple, so touching,
it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that
she drew a crowd mute and silent around her, and
melted every one into tears."

» ■
The best story of Mr. Irving's by far, we

think, is the Student of Salamanca, found in
the latter end of the first volume of his
Bracebridge Hall. His stories of the Al-
hambra, or Tales of a Traveller, may, per-
haps, furnish specimens some prettier and
more vivacious ; but none exhibit such bold
traces of the genuine tale-writer, in all par-
ticulars, as that we have mentioned. It i^
free from the only unpleasing and unsuccess-
ful feature in our author's writings — that is,
his marvellous awkwardness in managing
love scenes. The intercourse of the " gallant
Captain " and his " fair Julia " is so exceed-
ingl}^ stiff and so ill-contrived, that we would
have been better pleased if both characters
had been eschewed from the otherwise de-
lightful account of the Bracebridge family ;
and we are halfway inchned to believe the
author when, in the Legend of Sleepy Hol-
low, he frankly says, " I profess not to know
how women's hearts are wooed and won.
To me they have always been matters of
riddle and admiration." Add to this con-
fession the fact that Mr. Irving has been,
through his now long life, an incurable bach-
ellor, and we may find some clew to this one
defect, not in his writings, but in his tastes.

The Student of Salamanca, however, is
not liable to this objection, and contains pas-
sages here and there which would argue
that our author, though " grown old without
the benefit of experiences^'' as a lover, has
yet, by some means, scented the delicious
exhalations of a draught he has steadily re-
fused to taste. " Let those who would keep
two youthful hearts asunder," he now says,
" beware of music. Oh ! this leaning over
chairs, and conning the same music book,
and entwining of voices, and melting away
in harmonies ! — the German waltz is nothing

614

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

Dec.

to it." Tliis, we respectfullT suggest, is not
the language of ignorance as to '' how wo-
men's hearts are wooed and won." Bulwer
himself could have done no better — and, in
fact, Ernest Maltravei^ is made to fall in
love with Alice just in this wav. No one
who has read that beautiful tale of love can
forget the charming musical employments
which first rustled the Httle blind dignity,
and beguiled the sweet hours passed at the
dear little cottage. And who knows, may
we not venture playfully to ask, but that Mr.
Crayon may have indulged some mischief
in his day : AYe therefore hke the Student
of Salamanca; and although Lord Jeffrey
dashes cold water on it as beino; '' too lonof,"
and as '' dealing' rather laro-elv in the com-
mon-places of romantic ad^■enture," we must
still pronounce it to be, on this, as well as on
other accounts, the most finished, well sus-
tained, and iuterestino- of Mr. Irvino-s stones.

We waive all notice of our author's more
extended and labored works. They do not
come within the purposes of this article ;
and, whatever be their merits as grave pro-
ductions of histoiy, we are persuaded that
the Life of Columbus, of Mahomet, and the
Astoria, will never be so welcomed to the
shelves of private and select libraries, as the
Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall, Knicker-
bocker, the stories of the Alhambra, and the
whole charming kindred series.

The writings of Mr. Ir-sing have, perhaps,
been more extensively sold and more o-ener-
ally read than those of any other American
author. He is certainly the most popular
and the most venerated American author.
Many reasons might be given to explain this
preference. Since the time when his favored
productions were fii-st issued, a new genera-
tion of readers has taken the place of that
which was contemporaneous ^\-ith their issue.
They are intimately identified with recollec-
tions of the nm-seiy and of early school-
days. Most of us can remember to have
seen parents, and relatives, and family fidends,
long since gathered to their final resting-
places, laugh heartily over the pages of
Knickerbockers chi'onicles of New- York,
and enhven many a social winter evening
circle by reading Rip Van TN'inkle. -Slanv,
now heads of famihes, look back lonirin^ly
and pleasurably to the time when they fii-st
read the Legend of Sleepy Hollow ; and
how, in the merriment of yoitthful ardor,
they mkchievously nicknamed their famihar

old schoolmastei"s Ichabod Crane ; or how,
in the exuberance of excited fancy, they ca-
reered about on httle dare-devil ponies in
the characters of Brom Bones and his ranti-
pole, ratthng gang. These buoyant recol-
lections, and the long years intervening fi'om
their original issue, have, in a manner, con-
secrated his works. But a more substantial
reason than even any associated with this
golden period of hfe, which has contributed
to establish their popularity, is found in the
fact that Mr. L'^ing has long justly been
considered the chief representative of Amer-
ican hterature. For more than a quarter of
a centmy he has, in this respect, been the
pride and the support of the nation. To
offset the bright array of famed writers in
England, — writer distinguished not alone
for the matter of their productions, but for
the classic elegance, and chaste simplicity,
and Saxon purity of their style, — we have
been forced to resort alone to the name of
L.'A-ing. When the journalists of England
and Scotland point us to the names of Byron,
or Moore, or Scott, or Wordsworth, their
lauded heroes of veree, and challenge a com-
parison ^ith America, we are forced to sub
mit, and quietly endure the taunt. They
spread their arms over the brilhant series of
Waverley novels, and boast undisputed su-
premacy in the achievements of romance ;
we can oppose the single name of Cooper,
but, in such company, we nevertheless do so
^vith a degree of quite allowable diffidence ;
for, though justly proud of such works as
the Spy, the Mohicans, the Pilot, and the
Water- Witch, we are obhged to confess a
total eclipse when essaying to compare them
with Guy Mannering, with Ivanhoe, witli
Kenilworth, or with Old Mortality. We
have, to be candid and honest, no writer of
poetiy that can at all approximate an equal-
ity with even second rate poets in England ;
for no one ^vill pretend that America has
produced a Southey, a Cowjjcr, a Collins,
or a Young, and all these have been ranked
as second rate in comparison with some we
have elsewhere named. In fact America
has been barren, lamentably barren, in this
respect. Joel Barlow gained more praise
than any other American writer of poetry
ever has gained since, and yet the Columbian
has waned into almost utter oblirion. Some,
it is true, have written quite prettily, and
others quite sphitedly ; but, if we except
Mr, Longfellow, it is very improbable, wd

1850.

The Genius and Writings of Washington Irving.

think, that any of the present tribe will long
outlive their own day and generation. This
last-named gentleman (if he will allow us to
prophesy of him) has, indeed, cast before
him the shadow of coming renown in the
world of poetry, and, if his life shall be
spared, we confidently look forward, we are
obhged to say, to a period of poetical re-
generation and redemption through his
efforts. We have it in mind to express
ourselves on this very interesting subject
somewhat more concisely and lengthily, in
the course of the coming year, in review of
the works of some one among those dubbed
poets by magazine editors and weekly hterary
journals. For the present we must cease,
and begging pardon for the digression, return
to our subject.

It may be true, also, that the Waverley
novels stand on an unreachable and over-
shadowing eminence in the line of romance
writing. But when we are pointed to Ad-
dison as an exquisite writer, and to Mac-
kenzie as the most refined of sentimentalists,
or to Sterne and Swift as the first of humor-
ists, we can hold up our heads and accept
the challenge. The Spectator contains no
passages remarkable for classical eleganc3
that cannot be mated in the Sketch Book
or in Bracebridge Hall. Even Lord Jef-
frey, with all his Anglican prepossessions,
goes so far as to say, in citing an extract
from the last work, that :t " is not an alto-
gether unsuccessful imiL-bion of the inimita-
ble diction and colloquial graces of Addi-
son." Nor have we been able to find purer
or more refined sentiment in The Man of
Feehng, The Man of The World, or Juha De
Roubigne, than can be pointed out from
portions of the same works of the American
author. Tristram Shandy and Gulliver deal
in broader wit and coarser humor, but we
find little difficulty in laughing through the
history of Mynheer Diedrich, or at the old-
fashioned whims of the Squire, and Master
Simon, and Lady Lillicraft. In no manner,
nor in any particular, do we seek to shun
comparison in the case of Mr. Irving. And
when, as late even as year before last, we
find Lord Jeffi-ey, with the whole endless
pile of late literary productions on both
sides of the Atlantic before him, and at his
command, pronouncing him " the most
amiable and elegant of American authors,"
we safely conclude that he might pass mus-
ter at any assembly beat of English writers.

VOL. VI, NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

The great secret of Mr. Irving's unrivalled
popularity \^dll be found to consist, we think,
in the pleasing national associations belong-
ing to his works. He has imparted to the
Hudson and its vicinity a romantic and
storied interest not less strong than that
which the genius of Sir Walter Scott has
thrown over Scotland, or than that with
which the writings of Goethe and Schiller
have invested Germany. Tliere is scarcely
a scene that adorns its noble banks that has
not been garnished with the charm of his
magic pen. His chronicles and tales are as
familiar to the backwoods hunter as to the
polished litterateur of towns and cities.
They are read and treasured alike by the
humble cottager and the haughty million-
aire. They may be found in the squalid
dens of Five Points, as well as in the sump-
tuous palaces of Fifth Avenue. Preachers
and sportsmen are equally delighted to read
them. They possess, in fact, every element
of popularity, and have received the hom-
age of all classes, professions, and occupa-
tions. Everybody who reads at all tries to
procure a copy of them. Nobody reads
them without becomino- a friend and an ad-
mirer of the amiable author.

We have, therefore, felt much pleased to
notice the late cheap and very adaptable
edition got up by Mr. Putnam, a specimen
of which has formed the basis of this re-
view. The typography is excellent. We
rarely meet with execution as neat and
workmanlike, particularly in editions in-
tended for such indiscriminate circulation.
We feel assured that the masses of readers,
especially in the South and Southwest, will
feel under obhgation for his enterprise, and
that obligation will be very vastly heightened
from the fact that this new issue has received
the revisory touch and superintendence of
the venerated and illustrious author.

Mr. Irving is now in the ripe and mellow
autumn of quite a long life. His age is ripe
with honors fairly and nobly earned. He
has filled a much larger space in the world's
eye than any other of the hterary men of
America. He is as great a favorite in Eng-
land as he is in the United States, while he
has lived to see his works pass through suc-
cessive editions in France, and Germany,
and Spain. He has long since attained an
eminence of renown that lifts him above the
impressions or the influences of laudation
and flattery, and that enables him to look
40

616

Russian Ambition.

Dec.

alike complacently on criticism and on ad-
mii-ation. Snugly nestled in one of those
beautiful and picturesque nooks of the
"lordly river," so intimately associated with
his genius, and in the very lap of scenes
rendered famous in story by the magic of
Ms pen, the waning horn's of his latter hfe

ghde quietly on, leaving to him that seren-
ity of thought which surveys T\dth calmness
the brilHancy of the past, and eyes undaz-
zled the visions of that golden effulgence
which will halo his posthumous fame.

J. B. c.
LoxGwooD, Miss., 1850.

EUSSIAN AMBITION.*

Throughout the range of Enghsh htera-
ture we know of no work which assumes to
give a compendious review of its history ;
which assumes to trace the progress of the
English language from any historic hmit, on
the hither or thither side of Druidical days,
through the rule of the Heptarchy, through
Saxon revolutions, Danish inroads, Norman
conquests, through the fusion and confusion
of idioms and dialects, the barbarism of
monkish times, and the diseases of later
days consequent on mimicry of continental
song, tale, history, and mannerism, which
form together that heterogeneous medium
of converse generally known as " the Anglo-
Saxon tongue." D'Alembert and the En-
cyclopaedists certainly made a fair and bold
attempt to lay the foundations of such a work
for France, — to reduce the literature of their
country to a well-arranged, well-jointed, and
compendious whole. In the present gener-
ation some desultory efforts have been made
to follow up the superstructure ; but the
result has been such as we might expect, if an
architect of modern castellated cottages at-
tempted to rebuild the broken arches of a
Gothic ruin. Nor in Germany do we believe
any such attempt has been carried beyond
design — if we except the noble history of
the literature of the nineteenth century,
which is contained in the opening volumes
of Schlosser's work ; although, by way of
apology, it is right to remember that German
literature is too modern in creation, wants
those abundant resources in deep antiquity

possessed by the lands of the Briton and the
Gaul, and which are needful to give to a na-
tional literary history the true ideas of extent
and grandeur. German philologists, laborious
as they all are in research, broad, grasj)ing,
and strikingly novel as many of them are in
conception, seem to have devoted themselves
with much more vio;or and with the rarest
success to the literature and history of lands
neighboring, or of nations forgotten. Nie-
buhr has raked up from the ruins of a buried
empire fragments of vitality and beauty.
Heeren in Greek history, a hundred others
in the Greek tongue, have furnished to the
world proofs that genius can conquer even
time. Thus too Gesenius, the friend, and,
we believe, the relative of the author of the
work before us, searched through the tombs
of Judea, till he found for himself immortal-
ity, and for the children of the scattered
race forgotten memories. To the more
modern idioms of continental Europe, dating
far back however in the barbaric times of
the Hun and the Visigoth, other Germans,
scarcely less celebrated, certainly not less
laborious and original, have devoted their
genius and their lives. To them in their
several departments, and scarcely at all to
men of Slavic birth, we owe the vast body
of materials which, together with her own
researches, have been compressed into the
present volume by its distinguished author-
ess, under the name of Talvi.

Were the author not covered with that
sanctity which the critic, possessing even a

* Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Naxioks, with a Sketch of
their Popular Poetry. By Talvl With a Preface, by Edward Robinsox, D.D. LL.D., author of
'■' Biblical Researches in Palestine," (fee. New-York: George P. Putnam, 155 Broadway. 1850.

1850.

Russian Ambition.

617

modicum of gallantry, is bound to respect,
we sliould say of the work before us that its
publication is an honor to the American
press, and a sign of rarest promise for
American literature. The production of a
foreigner, whose native tongue is foreign
too, its style of English is devoid of manner-
ism, unpretending, concise, and easy. If it
never rises into eloquence, it never sinks into
commonplace or wanders into verbosity ; the
reader is struck with this from the beginning,
and the purity and exactness of Talvi's Eng-
lish, about which nothing is said, are pretty
solvent securities that Talvi's Slavonic, and
Talvi's Russian, are founded upon at least an
equal knowledge and an equal critical per-
ception of the idioms whose history and
peculiarities form the subject of her present
work. We believe there are few women in
history, since Lady Jane Grey wrote Greek
verses, of whom even half so much can be
said. If we add that the pretentious chit-
chat, the " pohte literature " farrago, the
display of shallowness and vanity, which
make your mere Blue-Stocking the burr and
torture of hterary life, are utterly wanting
tliroughout the present volume, we have
pointed to some characteristics of Talvi
which alone entitle her in her pecuhar
sphere to the position of one of the noblest
authoresses of our modern time. In fact,
we know but two women at present living
to compete with her.

Yet this book has its faults, arising mainly
from the limited space possessed by the au-
thor, a space by no means commensurate
with her gigantic design. Were the etymo-
logical part more diffuse, the work, with the
addition of tabular and other mechanical
arrangements, might easily become a singu-
larly critical grammar of the Slavic tongues.
Were the historic portions more lengthy,
more replete with detail, more profound, and
more connected, the work, with less super-
ficial criticism and more extended extracts,
would become a first-rate literary history.
As it is, it will be prized by various readers,
for various reasons. The grammarian, disre-
garding altogether its historic fragments^ will
regard it as a rare commentary on Slavic
grammar; and, on the other hand, the stu-
dent of literary history will find in it innu-
merable small facts, collected and arranged
to his hand, to which patience and the pen
can give in enterprises of a wider range any
extent of ampUtude. To both indeed it will

be a valuable repository ; but to neither a
text.

From these considerations a third, and
the main ftuilt, follows. Published in a
land where the English tongue is spoken,
where but few know even the rudiments of
a single Slavic idiom, and almost none are
at all read in Slavic literature; intended
moreover as a medium by which what critics
call " the general reader" (a character who is
never supposed to know anything but his
prayers, and sometimes, it must be said, not
even so much,) can become acquainted
with the peculiarities of those swarming
tongues of mid-Europe, which have been
hitherto closed to all the world beside ; it is
to the said " general reader," excepting in a
few intelligible pages here and there on Slavic
history or manners, a mass of the unpro-
nounceablest proper names we have met
lately, collected together in due order and
upon the best authority, displaying the pro-
found erudition of the wnter, but to the
" general reader " displaying the profoundest
mist. Certainly, if it were not the first duty
of an author to make his work intelligible to
those for whose perusal he intends it, we
could find for Talvi much to extenuate, and
not a little wholly to excuse. But the origi-
nal conception of the book before us con-
ceived too that confusion to the reader, which
must necessarily, unless with minds the most
concentrative and rapid, on subjects homo-
geneous, and sequent in detail as the facts
in a narrative, be the characteristic of a work
which assumes to compress Homer into a
nutshell, to take a readable review of the
literary history of a score of nations, within
a wide-lined octavo volume of four hundred
pages, printed in the neatest bourgeois type
of Mr. Putnam's elegant estabhshment.
Talvi has failed in doing this, because the
unaided hand of man could not do it, and
because steam travelling has not y et been
applied to thought. Even in the best and
happiest portion of the volume, that which
contains those exquisite specimens of Slavic
bardic poetry, of which we shall presently
give some examples, the authoress, with the
taste of an artist, but with the hot haste too
of a compiler limited to time, has shown
only so much as to make us the more ad-
mire the poetic beauties we cannot see. Of
the bardic portions of the work alone, given
in greater extension and variety, ^vith the
versified translations of Dr. Bowiing and

618

Russian Ambition,

Dec.

other contributors to Eno;lisli mag-azines, and
accompanied w\.\h. essays on manners and
traditions, of Avhich we have in the present
volume such graceful examples, a work might
have been formed, less erudite no doubt, less
profound, less prized mayhap by the Sla\ic
scholar, but certainlj^ more dehcious to the
reader, more productive to the publisher, and
a thousand times more calculated to effect
the objects of Tahi, a 23opular study among
English readers of the literature and poetry
of the Slavic race.

Absolutely, however, to supply the " gen-
eral reader" with such a desideratum, to
frame a literary history which through the
medium of his vernacular "will make him
familiar or even remotely acquainted with a
foreign hterature, is impossible. To the stu-
dent of a language, be it to him native or
foreign, to him who has journeyed over the
fields of thouD'ht to which the lauQ-uao-e is
the high road, to him who is about to jour-
ney over them, a hterary history of the whole,
a chart by which he may know whither
his reading tends, what he has read, what
he has yet to read, what, unless he read, he
cannot consider himself an adept in that lit-
eratm*e ; such a chart, to such a man, would
be of inestimable value. But neither to
Slavic literature nor to the literature of Hon-
olulu is there a royal road for the ignorant,
or the inert. A literary history, in the hands
of a man ignorant of the literature or of the
language, is positively useless — may even be-
come mischievous. One of Murray's " Guide-
Books to the Rhine" would, you would
say, be useless and also harmless in the
hands of a cockney who has never migrated
beyond the brick regions of his nativity ; but
if the same cockney, ha\dng assiduously
thumbed the Guide-Book, should presume
in society to dole out by retail Murray's
ideas of the Fatherland as his own, should
become, on the chppings of a London catch-
penny factory, a make-believe traveller and
a stay-at-home He, you would say the
Guide-Book, however useful for actual trav-
ellers, was to him at all events an unmiti-
gated evil. So of all literary histories of the
kind before us, — they can be useful only to
him acquainted ^^^-th the literature. The
mischief, however, is barred in the present
instance ; for not even the imaginative cock-
ney vagrant aforesaid could, on the contents
of the work before us, make the most stupid
dinner party beheve that he knew an atom

of the subject of w^hich it treats. Be this a
nrtue or a defect, it is nevertheless true.
Tahi has written a work for the scholar ;
and, entirely involved as her thoughts and
habits of mind seem to be in philological
details, in etymological characteristics, in the
mechanical oddities by which these strange
and wondrous nations of the Slavi have
managed to make of one language as many
various dialects, alj^habets, and enunciative
mechanisms as they are in themselves dis-
tinct tribes, she has amassed into her book a
store of dilettantisms, but not a grain of ex-
panded thought. In our judgment, a hter-
ary history should be more than this, — it
should be a history of mind as well as mat-
ter, of ideas as well as w^ords. Not alone of
ultimate and penultimate syllables should
it speak, of affix, prefix, suffix letters ; but of
the dawn and growth of genius, of the birth,
progress, and vicissitudes through the vary-
ing ages of that national soul of which the
literatm'e of a nation, or a race, is always the
embodiment, whether it be a bundle of pop-
ular song's, such as we may suppose to be
the melodious discords enjoyed by the en-
lightened brethren of Mr. Daniel Tucker the
elder, in the sandy Republic of Liberia, or an
accumulated store of philosophy, gTandeur,
and beauty, as noble and eternal as that of
Greece. In the rolling of worlds and the
sundering of ages, stone walls, whether they
form a hovel or a temple, are crushed into
dust ; but the one thing eternal is the hte-
rature, is the temple of ideas, is that into
which the sequent generations of a people
have infused their soul. It is this soul which
becomes to after ages and men the represent-
ative of the races or the kingdoms which lie
buried in the eternal past ; and to trace it from
age to age, through national greatness and
national imbecihty, is the true business of the
literary historian. This portion of her work
Tahi has entirely omitted, perhaps intention-
ally forborne. To us however it is the one
thing which makes any hterary history of
more value than a grammar of words ; the
one thing which separates Lindley Murray
on labial mechanism ^\dth guttural accom-
paniments, from any work wherein is dis-
played or recorded the development of hu-
man genius, be it the plays of Shakspeare
or the biography of Jean Paul.

Of the Slavic race especially ; of that race
which for some two thousand years has lain
amid the snows and forests of Eastern Eui'ope

1850.

RuLsian Ambition.

619

neglected and unprized, till suddenly a Mos-
cow burning, or a Magyar-land baited to
death, displays them to us in all the gran-
deur and ferocity of the swarming hordes
which desolated Imperial Rome — which we of
a larger civilization will not stoop to regard
till a Napoleon, flying with his armies troop
on troop in ruins, warns wondering Europe
that in the North are tribes, rude, bar-
barous and inflexible, which if care be not
taken will overwhelm and subjugate it ; of
this race, we say, the literature, if it be at all
a matter of interest, if it be worth Avriting a
book about, or reading a book upon, is inter-
esting for far more than its grammatical
flexions. If it have a literature, the general
reader, having learned his prayers in Eng-
lish and acquired some small taste for phi-
losophy, will inquire. What character has this
people stamped upon its works ; are its songs
savage and barbarous ; tell they of the omi-
nous death the invader flying from its soil fore-
told to Europe ; are they evidences that the
Slavi are really the abandoned of the Creator
to Nio-ht and Nemesis ; or has even the rude
Ru-ss, the v.'ild Croat, the stealthy Kozak,
have even these aflTections of the heart, im-
pulses of nature's nobility, bright imaginings
and mirthful music with which to commune
in echoes with the forest, and make the
watchlire of the tired soldier a scene of peace
and joy ? Of such matters, of the vicissi-
tudes and various fates which gave the pe-
culiar impress of the nation's soul to its
literature, of the manner in which the litera-
ture grew, of what it is, of what it may be,
and not of their fashion of declining* nouns
or using the definite article, will the reader
inquire. And though our means are scant,
our resources very poor and limited indeed,
we shall endeavor to set forth in as condensed
a manner as possible the reasons why all
Slavic literature is to men of this generation
of intense interest, and why the selections of
bardic poetry given by Talvi are even of
greater value to us of the Western World
than the subjects of which they immediately
treat, their limited quantity, or their heretical
dress would lead the superficial at first sight
to imao;ine.

It seems to be one lav/ of humanity upon
the earth that to every nation is given a
stated period for its history. We might
even mark the era of a race's greatness, or
an empire's sway, by calling it its historic
period. B'^'fore that dawned it was night —

returning night forbade it longer to shine.
Thus civilization and barbarism, the one
recording the voice of ages, the other silence
only, succeei': each oiher in every race and
land as inevitably, and probably at jjeriods as
definitive, as the sun gives or withholds his
light to earth. Till Rome became great its
history was a shepherd's song, or an idolater's
myth ; and when its day of greatness had
drawn to a close, no trace longer remained
of its high and puissant nobles, of it^ steel-
ribbed legions, of its aristoci acy of mind, by
which the subsequent world can trace the
merging steps of its children back again into
barbaric oblivion. Rome was, and ceased
to be — we know no more. Where Rome
stood, there were ruins ; " long-bearded" bar-
barians, after wandering for some five hun-
dred years by the Vistula and the Danube,
had settled over Northern and Central
Italy, and were proceeding to found those
Longo-Bardic or Lombardic republics which,
in subsequent ages, attained the glory by
commerce Rome disdained to purchase save
with her blood. But these self-styled " dog-
headed men," '•' drinkers of the blood of the
battle -field," were but the vanguard of tribes
and nations more vast, and if possible, more
savage. On the opposite side of the Illy-
rian sea, in the old Roman provinces of lUy-
ricum, Noricum, Dacia, Pannonia, from the
Danube banks even to the -^gean and
the Euxine, and thence far north into the
wildernesses unknown to Rome, and which we
have since included in the names Poland,
Russia, Bohemia, Lithuania ; in fact, over
all Europe from the Adriatic to the confines
of the ancient Persian Empire, lay the
various tribes of one race herding together
in wildest savagery and brigandage, so un-
couth and untutored that they do not appear
till later days to have possessed among
themselves even a generic or distinctive
name. There, in that illimitable region, has
that race whose units are millions lived fi'om
fhat hour to this, the terror and the bul-
wark, the victims and the conquerors of the
Roman and Byzantine Emph-es ; the vagrant
sons of the great European desert for ages
unrevealed, save as the first defenses against
a Moslem invasion, as the instruments of some
remorseless massacre, or the victims of a
wholesale slaughter equally remorseless.
Sections of them, from varying epoch to
epoch, have risen into national independence,
and republican and imperial splendor ; and

620

Russian Ambition.

Dec.

even tlien they are known to us by names
not generic, but local or accidental, while in
the palmiest days of one tribe or family, the
names of others have passed into the more
cultivated and less figurative tongues of
AVestern Christendom, as household w^ords
with which to frighten children and disgust
even men ; as synonymous in the over- heated
imagination of Mediaeval Europe with all
that is mean, ruthless, terrific, or brutal.
Even in the days of Justinian, their name
w^as a name of awe, against which he vainly
raised the fortifications of the Danube. Gr( ed
for Roman wealth or a Roman pro\^nce, and
a frozen stream, sufficed to bring a hundred
tribes clad in shields, and mounted naked
on the light horses of their region, swoop-
ing dovvU upon the empire, and driving
the Roman citizen back in affi*ight to the
very walls of Byzantium. The invaders
settled down in the provinces with a grim
humor. Their cruelty in later days became
a theme for goblin-loving nurses. To this
hour our nursery tales speak of the Ougres,
a Bulgarian tribe, as monsters of ferocious
aspect, tusked and talonned, devourers of
the flesh of men. The very name of Bul-
garian or Bolgorian (dwellers on the mag-
nificent Bolga, or as we say Volga) is now
in most of the languages which partly
owe their origin to barbaric dialects of
the Latin tongue, as for instance in the
English and Fi-ench, a name used to desig-
nate the perpetrator of a vice abhorrent
to manhood and known to Jewish ages by
the history of Sodom. And yet again, such
are the changing fortunes of men, such the
chance origin of words the most familiar,
the generic name of the northern enemies
of Rome, of those whose warfare, naked, on
foot, with bows, poisoned arrows, nnd a long-
rope, drew strains of terror from the Byzan-
tine historians, — the name of that people
whose ambuscades, "lying under water,
drawing breath through hollow canes," and
rising with savage yells from the morass and
the lake, struck dismay into many an impe-
rial legion, — the name of that race Belisa-
rius himself could resist but not subjugate, —
even their name became, in later days, and
is to this hour, synonymous with the lowest
political and social abasement. After the
fall of the Roman Empire, the German and
Gothic tribes, already learned in the rudi-
ments of " civihzed commerce," made inroad
on inroad into the regions of the Danube

and the Volga, canying off their scores of
captives to be sold into bondage in Western
Europe. These captives were one and all
of the nations of the Sla\i ; in the markets
of the West the purchasers of men and
women appraised a " Slave," even as more
modern men trade in the children of Africa ;
and since then, the Western nations of
Europe have given to the man so mir-erable
that he does not own himself, the name,
in pity or contempt, generic of the Pohsh
republic and the Russian empire — slave.

From such facts — peering through our
hterature, and breaking from us in every
chance conversation — we can discern the esti-
mate formed some centuries back of this
gigantic race. And it is but in later years,
but when by exploits in war in 1815 and
1848 they have forced themselves in terror
upon Em-ope, that the more notorious races
of the West condescended to remember their
existence. In our own days the name of
Croat is synonymous, to the poor " general
reader," with a ferocious brigand ; the name
Kozak, or Cossack, symbolizes to his mental
perception a human cat. To speak of
Croatic literature, of Kozak history, w^ould
j)rovoke boisterous deiision in the best reg-
ulated family of " general readers ;" to
confess a sympathy with the Sclavonian
hordes of the frontier, to speak of the chil-
dren of the Don and the Ukraine as avenging
instruments of eternal justice on the in-
famous aristocracy of Poland, w^ould draw
upon our heads the charge of lunacy or
of monomaniacal iiostility to "liberty and
republicanism." Yet these children of the
Slavic mother have, during tw^o thousand
year's, been subjected to cruelties unexampled,
have been the first \ictims of every Turkish,
Tatar, or Mongolian invasion, have stood in
the van of Europe, and rolled back to the
Bosphorus again and again the human tides
of Asia ; or if the latter did make good a
footing, the Slavi alone were the suffer-
ers. Nor during all this period, from the
first dawn of even a rude civilization after
the dismemberment of Rome, have the
Slavic race ever been without some noble
type of national power, some distinct and
not inglorious nationality. Fixed on the
confines of the most powerful empires of the
early ages of Christianity, and subject to
every turmoil of the mediaeval days, they
have held their grip firmly on the soil, like
native rocks, and preserved throughout, their

1850.

Russian Ambition.

621

names, their traditions, their language,
and their songs. The Latin priests of Ger-
many, the Greek priests of the Eastern
Empire in vain essayed to reduce them
under the Latin hturgy, or the Greek tongue.
The former they utterly resisted ; the latter
they followed in worship, preserving as the
medium of their orisons the Slavic language.
Up to the time of Basil IL, the Bulgarian
preserved his kingdom and his national
existence. When the Roman Empire fell
before the Moslem, and the Greek Christ
gave way before the children of the Pro-
phet, the south-eastern Slavi for a time
preserved their independence, and to this
hour have guarded their language, their
religion, and the tradition of their imperial
destiny. Even in later days the Slavic Re-
public of Ragusa is celebrated for literature
and refinement. When Duke Arpad led
his Magyar bands from the sea of Azov, he
overran Hungary, and fixed himself there,
indeed, upon the necks of the Slovacks ; but
his conquest, ever a military one, has re-
sulted in our day in a terrific resurrec-
tion, of which we have only seen the terrible
beginning. Even then, and after, the Slavi
of Poland reared up a proud and colossal
republic of which the Ukraine was the penal
colony, the "Siberia," — a republic which held
the sway of half Europe, which struck terror
into Stamboul, and indulged Vienna with
an existence, — a republic whose arms under
Sobieski were felt in every part of the
mediseval world from Asia to Sweden, from
the Rhine to the heart of modern Russia.
And when Poland yielded up her hfe by
the Vistula river, under Suwarrow's sword,
it was only to a more colossal type of Slavic
power ; that type of Slavic nationality about
which the sister nations, from the Kozak
and the Servian subject of the Turk, to the
peasant on the confines of Germany, are
gathering fast and thick, threatening Avith
an overwhelming doom all Europe. Bol-
garia, Ragusa, Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, —
here is a race not of emperors but of
empires, sequent through the ages of Chris-
tianity, with which no race Teutonic or other
can boast a rivalry ; they are the continuous
embodiments of the Slavic soul, ever re-
newing its nationality with increased gran-
deur and magnificence, until through a line
of ancestral States, each in its day illus-
trious, they come down to us in our day
after the lapse of two hundred ages repre-

sented by the gigantic empire of " all the
Russias."

In any period of the world a picture so
grand as this must be to the student of
history, or to him who seeks from the past
to gather some narrow insight into the
future, a subject of intense interest, and it
might be of admiration. But in our age
the picture is living and real, pregnant with
turmoil and woe to the weaker realms of an
effeminate civilization, hanging like a doom
which they cannot avert and fear to provoke
over the nations of Europe, and not without
material consequences even to the republics
of America. The genealogy of nations has
hitherto been a study for the antiquary,
harmless to all, interesting to the ethnolo-
gist alone. Now, however, we are about to
see it play its part in political revolutions —
we are to see the memories of a common
ancestry prove stronger than the material
bonds of existing government, than the
popular habitudes consequent on ages of
obedience to antagonistic rulers and antago-
nistic laws. We are about to see an attempt
made to set at naught the history of some
thousand years, and to bring again "into
one fold, under one shepherd," in an order
less possible to be annihilated, more trench-
ant to destroy, the multitudinous swarms
whose forefathers beset the Roman world,
and who now are scattered among the
four empires of the East. It will please some to
regard " Panslavism," and " German Unity "
as bugaboos, as ideal phantasms, impossible
to be realized. But be the result what it
may, it is undeniable that the present Rus-
sian Government has conceived the idea of
uniting all the Slavic races under the
sceptre of the Tzar ; it is undeniable, in fact
it is openly avowed, that the ancient di'eam
of the Slavi, the conquest of Constantinople,
is now one of the " pivotal " points of Rus-
sian policy. It is equally undeniable, for
we have seen it within the last two years,
that already the designs of the Tzar have
been successful throughout the Slavic do-
minions of Austria, and the Slavic popula-
tions of Turkey."^' We presume no politician
any longer looks for the Austrian empire on

* Written prior to the recent declaration of
Russia respective to the dismemberment of Prussia.
Of the success of these plans at present we give
no opinion, our object being rather to exhibit the
gigantic intentions of the Tzar.

622

Russian Ambition.

Dec

tlie map of Europe. The Hungarian war
ended not alone in tlie defeat of Kossuth
and his brave compatriots, but in the utter
pohtical annihilation of the Magyar aris-
tocracy, the former Austrian garrison in
Hungary, and its dependencies. These
gone or politically dead, the Sladc races
are Russian. Jeilachich, Ban of Croatia and
the southern frontier, nominally an Austrian
official, is now really the Vice Regent of the
Tzar. Moldavia and Vrallachia, inhabited
bv Slaves nominally belonoino; to the Turkish
empire, are in the actual militaiy occupation
of Russia. Serbia, inhabited bv the Sla\ic
Serbs, is avowedly disloyal to the Porte,

7 ^ ^ 7

and waits but to throw itself into the arms
of its Russian sister. AVliile, on the other
hand, we wait, mail after mail, to hear the
result of that insurrection in the present
Turkish produce, and former Slavic kingdom
of Bulo-aria which has notoriously been ex-
cited by Russian emissaries of Panslavism.
Half of Turkey, and the northern half, is
therefore already Russian. Austria no lono;er
exists, at all events, east of the Theiss or
south of the Danube. Croatia is the fore-
most champion of Sla^^c unity, the foremost
advocate for the fusion of all Sla^'ic idioms
into a common tongue, hating ahke the
German and the Magyar. Bohemia is all
Sla\^c — Moravia, Galhcia, the satne. Add
to this that there is no lono;er in Poland or
in Hungaiy, an aristocracy who care or
dare to stand between the imperial sword
and the nationalities it is about to gi'asp,
and we may safely conclude that the dream
of the Russian dynasty is half fulfilled, that
the road is clear from Moscow to the Bos-
phorus,*

We should estimate the probable conse-
quences of this vast revolution, or its immi-
nence, but poorly, if we did not tak<;' into con-
sideration, too-ether with the proL»;ress already
made, the pecuhar characteristics of Russian
pohcy, the enormous vitality, energy, and
growth of Musconte life, and the character,
habitudes and vastness of the Slavic race,
which the Cabinet of St. Petei-sburg has
already raised against existing Etirope. The
actual areal growth of the dominions of the
Tzar, and the nimierical increase of his
actual subjects, including the Slavic races

* It is now furthej: proposed to add to the
Russian dominions the Prussian provinces of
Silesia ; these are largely Slavic.

subject to him in Europe, and the Tatar,
Persian, Georgian, and other races conquered
or annexed to his empire in Asia — the people
of Sla-sic origin now nominally subject to
Turkey, Austria, Prussia, but more closely
knit by affection or fanaticism to the ortho-
dox Emperor, than they ever can be to
their present government, and who soon
must be avowedly his subjects — these are
main items not to be omitted. A recent
British writer, on this subject, gives the fol-
lowing as " the population of the Russian
empire at different epochs :" —

At the accession of Peter L, in 1689, 15,000,000

Catherine II., in 1762, 25,000,000

At her death in 1796, 36.000,000

At the death of Alexander in 1S25, 58,000,000

This huge increase of actual heads of sub-
jects, without will save that of " the White
Tzar," has been principally acquired by
conquest. Since the death of Alexander no
great acquisition of new territory has been
made except in the direction of the Caspian
and the Pereian Gulf ; but we should per-
haps be below instead of above the mark,
if we set down the population of the Rus-
sian empire, in this present year of 1850, at
fi'om sixty-five to seventy miUions of men.

The same writer continues, going over
the map of Europe, and tracing thereon the
progress of Russian sway : " The acquisitions
of Russia, from Sweden, are greater than
what remains of that kingdom. Her ac-
quisitions from Poland are nearly equal to
the Austrian empire. Her acquisitions from
Turkey in Europe are of greater extent than
the Prussian dominions, exclusive of the
Rhenish provinces. Her acquisitions from
Turkey in Asia ai-e nearly equal in dimension
to the whole of the smaller States of Germany.
Her acquisitions from Persia are equal in
extent to England. Her acquisitions from

Tartary have an area not inferior to that of

•J

Turkey in Europe, Greece, Italy and Spain ;
and the acquisitions she has made, within
the last eighty years ^ are equal in extent
and importance to the whole empire she
had in Europe before that time. The Rus-
sian frontier has been advanced towards

Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Vienna,

and Paris, about - - - - 700 miles.

Towards Constantinople - - 500 "
Stockholm - - - 630 "

" Teheran, [and therefore to-
wards British India] - 120O "

1850.

Russian Ambition,

623

" In these calculations," adds the writer,
" we have taken no notice of that indefinite
advance which has been made by Russian
influence in Asia. This is in perpetual in-
crease ; every day its emissaries are mul-
tiplied, insomuch that it may almost be said
that its revenues are chiefly employed in
paving the way to Oriental conquest."

This enormous increase of Russian power
expands into huger dimensions, and we
become more fully alive to its future neces-
sary expansion, by recollecting for an in-
stant how short a time it is since there
was no Russia, since there existed among
the snow-clad and inhospitable forests of the
north no empire, but a horde of grim-
visaged, fur-clad barbarians, unknown to all
but the luckless or belated wanderer. The
rule of the world, its territorial and material
sway, are now divided among three nations :
The United States, Great Britain, and Rus-
sia. Something less than three hundred
years ago, two of these had not yet emerged
into mundane existence, and the birth of
Northern America and Russia may be said
to be almost contemporary. The discovery
of this continent led to many voyages on
various pretexts, or rather on one standing
purpose — the discovery of a northwest pas-
sage to the East ; and in one of these, one
Chancellor, having parted from his commo-
dore, Willoughby, who perished, after drift-
ing about in the icy seas for nearly a year,
opened one fine morning on a great bay, into
which, espying a fisher boat, he boldly en-
tered. The astonished voyagers, after much
inquiry, found themselves in the recently
acquired dominions of Russia, or, as it was
then called, Muscovy, and under the rule of
Tzar Ivan Vassiliwich, the Terrible. Chan-
cellor visited the court of the Tzar, kept a
journal, and returned to Europe, bearing
news to London merchants of a great land
of hides, tallow, iron, ice, and reddish beards.
Thence was opened that commercial exist-
ence for Muscovy which her rulers, even
while employed in war and conquest, have
never ceased to foster. But even a full cen-
tury after, how little of the northern empire
was known to England or Englishmen, we
may gather from that strange " Historic of
Moscovia," compiled seemingly for his own
information by the best informed and per-
haps the ablest European statesman of his
day, John Milton. Not fifty years before
Chancellor's hap-hazard ariival, the first Tzar

had existed by favor of the Emperor Maxi-
milian . To his Polish and Lithuanian neigh-
bors he was alone known, and by them as
a suborned enemy, of the reiver kind. A
rude magnificence, heavy with uncut gems,
cloth of weighty gold, and diadems and
etiquette equally ponderous, contributed to
the embellishment of the court and the
wonder of the seaman. The tenitory of the
Tzar was hmited to the frozen north, im-
mense and snow-clad ; and the number of
the subjects of Ivan, the nucleus of that
grand Slavic empire of our day, may have
been from four to eight millions. The im-
agination of the Tzar knew nothing outside
of his civilized icebergs but a barbarous
Europe, excepting a powerful prince, called
Emperor of Germany, who had raised his
predecessor Basil to a position of imperial
grandeur. And when Elizabeth of England
sent an ambassador to the court of Moscow,
the rude Ivan, with the same spirit as an
Avar chieftain might have exhibited to an
emissary of Justinian, threatened " to throw
him out of doors." Sithence the frozen
court has grown to a gigantic empire, cover-
ing throughout the two elder continents of
the world a space larger than Europe, — sway-
ing and bending to its smallest will some
seventy millions of men ; making and un-
making kings and kingdoms ; raising up and
hurling dynasties out of doors, with more
ease than Ivan the Terrible would have
footed the ambassador of Elizabeth.

It would be a childish error to suppose
that the establishment of a power materially
so gigantic, and in its results so imperial, is
owing to brute force alone, to the capacity
of an individual, or to the fortuitous acci-
dents of time. Russia has had the good
or ill fortune to be ruled by Tzars and Tzar-
inas of iron will, grasping ambition, and ma-
jestic intellect, — by Peter, by Catherine, by
Alexander ; by fools, too, as Paul. But
that which beyond the intellect of the first
drove Russia forward in the vanguard of
power, kept her in the days of Paul from
retrograding into imbecihty, — that which
has, in despite of the accidents of time, and
the chains of ice which held the Russian to
his native north, driven him down into the
heart of Europe, cleaving off the elder em-
pires nation after nation more venerable
and more illustrious, is a consistent and ex-
tremely astute " policy," or more properly,
the machinery of a conspiracy which never

624

Russian Ambition.

Dec.

dies, by which the acts of Tzar and
Tzarina are governed, which guides the
Emperor in his closet and in his council, reg-
ulates the brute force of the meanest soldier
in the battle-field, directs the energies and
utterance of agents, male and female, in the
saloons of Paris and the palaces of England,
as well as those of the poorest spy or mean-
est emissary on the Caucasus, in northern
Hindostan, and even within the walls of
China, — a conspiracy which has all the vast-
ness, the intense fanaticism, the astute selec-
tion of agents, the silence, the secresy, the
unscrupulosity we attach, truly or not, to
Jesuitism, combined with resources of which
a part, and but a small part, are Siberian
golden mines, palaces piled high with mouldy
wealth, and the means of making good by
war, generalship, and myi-iad armies, what-
ever designs may be from time to time suffi-
ciently matured by propagandism, and may
be considered most ripe for reahzation.
Higher than the Tzar himself, Tzaring it
over the White Tzar, electing him, ordering
him, guiding him, changing and restoring
his ministers at will, slaying them, slaying
even him, even as they slew Paul with his son
Alexander's hand, and then slew Alexander,
his work being consummated, — this Russian
policy, this terrific conspiracy, more fearful
and a thousand times more vast than that
of the assassins, appalls and subjugates the
world. Who its directoi-s are is known to
few, all of them perhaps to none, some only
to any, but one or two to us, and that by
mere report. For some centuries it has ex-
isted, receiving at regular intervals reports
of deeds done and deeds doable from its
hydra-headed agents, stowing them away in
archives, and putting them into action at
the very nick and crack of time. The dis-
memberment of Poland is, throughout the
history of the world, an exploit unexampled
for astute statesmanship, persistent vigor,
and ruthless ferocity. It was conceived in
peace and amity, consistently matured in
friendship and in war, and realized in a
slauo;hter which has tauo-ht the modern world
that the story of Tamerlane is not a fright-
ful fable, but a sanguinary truth. In our
own day we see the dismemberment of Aus-
tria cai-ried on step by step, even as was
cloven to pieces the empire of the Jagellos ;
and the instinct fear of the Turk, combined
with Bolgarian and Servian insurrections,
Moldavian occupations, and Shumla jails of

hospitality, may teach us how that empire
too merely hangs together, waiting for the
Northern thunder-word which is to roll it
into dissolution. Nor are the objects of the
conspiracy confined merely to the acquisition
of immediate territory. We have seen dur-
ing the last two years that Nicholas is as
actively hostile to republican ideas in Ger-
many, Paris, or Italy, as Alexander was
against the existence of Napoleon the Em-
peror or the King of the Lombards ; that
in fact the Vice Regent of the Greek God on
earth presumes openly to dictate thoughts
to Europe. And it is a fact now acknowl-
edged among the most skeptical of English
politicians, among men of a very different
stamp from the shiveiy-shakery school of
philosopher Urquhart, that since Prince Nas-
sau Sieger presented his report to Catherine
on the conquest of Hindostan, a plan im-
mense in conception, but perfect in detail, has
been steadfastly pursued through toward and
untoward circumstances, to subjugate the
Caucasus, annihilate Persia, mount the spi-
ral tops of the Hindoo Kush, and by way of
Kashmere and the Punjab carry the eagles
of Russia to the banks of the Indus and the
very walls of Bengal ; a plot known well to
the English, but which they cannot stay,
and dare not prematurely provoke ; one, too,
which must in time be successful if European
strategy, combined with barbaric fierceness
and Asiatic cunning, the ingredients of a
Russian's soul, be superior to the mere kill
and plunder system, by which the Leaden
Hall street East India Company have man-
aged to establish an empire in the East, and
acquire the rooted hostility of its inhabi-
tants.

Necessary to the perfection of these gi-
gantic designs, and to a certain extent pre-
liminary to them, is that other one, not at
first sight so vast, but really more astound-
ing, of gathering together under one com-
mon head the scattered families of the
Slavic race. Their numbers and the space
they cover may be estimated from the fact
that from the Adriatic, or, as we may call it,
the Mediterranean itself, to the regions of bien-
nial day, the one tongue is spoken, the same
traditions are related in story, the same songs
cheer the firesides and nerve the children
to ambitions of war and heroic deed ; the
one religion, we might say too, guides their
steps on earth, metes out for them the paths
of right and wrong, and promises to tl:

1850.

Russian Ambition,

625

faithful, fertile pasturage, bounding steeds,
and nomadic bliss among the endless steppes
of the Slavic Heaven. Million by milhon
they speak the one Slavic, various in idiom,
identical in fact ; hate the Turk, the German,
the Magyar, the Polish and Gallician aristo-
crat of the ancien regime ; fear God, and adore
the Tzar according to the Greek Catholic
Church. To his immediate subjects the
ruler of Russia is not only Emperor and
King, but High Priest, Pope, Vice Regent of
the Lord God on earth. In the temples of
Novogorod, Moscow, St. Petersburg, there
is a sanctuary reserved for him, and him
alone, walled in with costly pillars and
walls of massive marble, more ambitious
and more rich than the Jews of old dedi-
cated to the keeping of the covenant.
Wherever a temple is in his dominions,
there is his appointed sanctuaiy hidden
from the eyes of the vulgar, within which,
with the ubiquity given by more western
nations to their God only, he is supposed to
be. In him is centered all religious and
pohtical power ; he kills or lets live on the
earth, makes and unmakes priests and
bishops, resolves religious doubts, creates
religious dogmas, punishes with iron hand
the skeptic, the Latin, and the infidel, and
looses or binds the sins of men in heaven.
He addresses his subjects, even in wrath, as
his children whom he sends to doom, and
they yield him even in their sufferings the
worship of a God. The priest bows to the
sanctuary which may or may not hold him,
ere he presumes to address his liturgic invo-
cations to the Creator, and the people bend
the knee before it ere they raise their souls
to Heaven. JSTor is this visible head of the
Russian Church a mere formula, a monarchic
hoax, like that of the Church of England, in
which no man is ever imagined to believe;
nor yet like that of the Western or Roman
Catholic Church, a nerveless and vacuous im-
becihty, without faith in its subjects or reason
in its acts. The head of the Russian Church,
the Tzar as Pope, is the one high priest on
earth in whom there is faith, an undying,
unyielding, and, taken in the mass, an in-
convertible faith. The Latin Church, once
mistress of the world, having pinned its
existence to the robes of kings, has been
dragged down with them to the pit wherein
welter the effete superstitions of mankind.
The Russian Church, on the other hand, hav-
ing trusted itself with the fate of the resur-

gent, ignorant, and colossal democracy which
it rules, rises with them, spreads with them,
strengthens them, and is strengthened by
them. Of all the hierarchies worked out by
the hand and genius of men from the gos-
pel of the Saviour, this alone remains with
vitality and power. The wondrous religious
and political rule which the Tzar derives
from the joint possession of supreme spiritual
and temporal authority, may be estimated
from two anecdotes, said in good faith to
have occurred. When the Asiatic cholera
last swept over Europe and America, it was
rumored in St. Petersburg that the afflicted
were being poisoned by the doctors. A
violent popular commotion ensued. The
Tzar appeared, had the most violent arrested,
(since when, as Yankee Hill, were the poor
fellow living, would say, " they have never
written to their fi'iends,") — and addressing
" his children," told them to go home quietly,
that he would take care of the cholera. The
commotion ended. Again, during the in-
surrection of 1825, a young officer of high
family, and much beloved, addressing the
soldiers of his regiment, called on them to
cheer for a Repubhc. Having done so lus-
tily, one old sergeant stepped forward, and,
delivering the military salute, said, " he and
his brethren would cheer for anything his
excellence, the officer, ordered, as in duty
bound, but he mshed for self and fellows to
know what a Repubhc was ?" The officer
thereon delivered himself of a very excellent
oration on human rights, and the glory of
Republicanism. " And who will be Tzar in
that new Repubhc ?" questioned the spokes-
man. "Tzar," answcr.^^d the officer; 'there
will be no Tzar !" " Then please your ex-,
cellence," answered the astonished sergeant
with a serious wag of the head, "it will
never do for Russia." Such is the unpre-
cedented power the Emperor of the Russ
possesses, not alone over the bodies, but the
souls and ideas of the Sla\i.

Outside of his dominions there are, as we
have said, other tribes of Slavi, as numerous
and as trustful, who absolutely envy the
lot of their Russian brethren, and who be-
lieve in a Russian invasion with the same
hopeful faith as the Jews of the age of
Abraham trusted in the coming of a Mes-
siah. To set down in order the exact num-
ber of these, scattered throughout four dif-
ferent kingdoms as they are, is not at
present within our reach. But trusting to

626

Russian Ambition.

Dec

Talvi's enumeration, -which is anything hut
complete, we find the Sla\dc population suf-
ficiently numerous. We condense the cata-
logue in the book before us. The author,
judging by the test of language, not of
modern locality, has divided the Slavi into
two branches, the Eastern and AVestern
Stems. We shall follow her guidance, but
the reader will remember that the tribes in
Turkey are even more intimately related by
affection with the Russian Slavi than many
enumerated here : —

talvi's enumeration of the slavi.

A. Eastern Stem.
I. Russian Branch.

1. Russians, almost purely Slavic, 38,400,000

2. Russniaks, or Ruthenians, (in Malo-

Russia, Southern Poland, Gallicia,
Red Russia, the Bukovina, North-
eastern Hungary, and partly in
Wallachia and Moldavia — includ-
ing also Kozaks— above - 13,000,000

11. lllyrico-Servian Branch.

1. Illy rico- Servians proper, called Ras-

cians or Raitzi, in five subdivisions.

a. In Servia, (Turkish,) -

1,000,000

In Hungary, (Austrian,)

400,000

b. Bosnians, - - - - -

500,000

c. Montenegrins, (Albanians,)

60,000

d. Sclavonians, (Austrian,) -

500,000

e. Dalmatians, (Austrian,)

500,000

2. Croatians, (Austrian,) with Croats in

Hungary and Turkey,

800,000

3. Slovenzi,or Vindez, (Styriaand Hun-

gary,) over - - - .

1,000,000

III. Bulgarian Branch.

Under Turkey, - - - .

3,500,000

In South Russia, - . . .

80,000

In Hungary,

7,000

Total Eastern Stem, 56,497,000

B. Western Stem.
I. Czekho-Slovakian Branch.

1 , Bohemiams and Moravians, (Czekhes,)
(Austrian, and partly Prussian,)
about 4,550,000

2- Slovaks, (Hungary,) from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000

II. Polish, or LecTcian Branch.

In Poland, Silesia, Ac, - - - 10,000,000

III. Sorabian- Vendish Branch.

Jn Lusatia and Brandenburg, - - 2,000,000

Total Western Stem,
Total Eastern Stem,

19,550,000
56,497,000

Grand total of the Slavi, 76,047,000

Amassing thus together a population of
76,000,000 in Europe, some already under
the sceptre of Russia, and the rest of whoml
the Tzar contemplates as future subjects.
The vast majority, it is needless to add, are
members of the Greek Church ; some, as in
Hungary, Protestant, some Roman Catholic,
and a few Mahometan. Less than half of
the whole are at present Russian in fact and
feeling; the remainder are for the greater
part Russian or Slavic in feeling, if not in
fact.*

It is this gigantic and wide-spread race,
which, by the revolutions of time ; by claim-
ants of the "-right divine" to own bodies
and souls found growing within certain
limits ; by parchment proxies of the eternal i
will, bearing the impress of Potemkin, Tal- *
leyrand, Castlereagh ; by that monarchic con- i
spiracy against Europe, called in later days
the Holy Alliance, has been distributed
throughout some half dozen distinct, and
for the most part antagonistic governments,
that the Tzar is ambitious to brino; in a con-
sohdated mass under his sceptre. The mere
statist, by the aid of a good map, an indif-
ferent pair of compasses, and any common
work on geography, can estimate the propor-
tionate relation which the Russian empire,
thus enlarged in area and population, will
bear to the other empires of Europe, and to
this one of America. And if the same
person be a tolerable proficient in " Simple
Proportion," he can further estimate the
consequent increase in the " available re-
sources" for new Russian armies — that is,
the number of additional human bodies fit
to play at give and take with ball and sabre.
Without entering into the details, it is suf-
ficient for us to know that with half the

" To the above enumeration, more fully given
in Talvi's work, the author adds : " There is no
doubt, that besides the races here enumerated,
there are Slavic tribes scattered through Ger-
many, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia,
nay, through the whole of Turkey. Thus, for in-
stance, the Tchaconic dialect, spoken in the east-
ern part of ancient Sparta, and unintelligible to
the other Greeks, has been proved by one of the
most distinguished philologists (Kopitar) to have
been of Slavic origin," Farther, we add, the
modern Greeks are the descendants of a semi-
Greek and semi-Slavic ancestry, and the influence
of Russia among the nihabitants of the classic
land, is no secret to Admiral Sir William Par-
ker, the Jew Pacifico, or the man who telegraphed
" the Pirasus " from Halifax to the New- York
newspapers lately, as " the Picayune."

1850.

Russian Ambition.

627

number, that is, with his own Slavic subjects
of Russia, the Tzar has managed to conquer
and hold together an empire, to which that
of Rome or Assyria was but a patch of
earth. Actual numbers, however, form only
a part, and a small part of Russian power.
The subjects of the Tzar are animated by a
faith in him, in presence of which death,
misery, annihilation, even the uncertain
eternity to come, are as nothing. Physi-
cally, the peasant of Russia is equal in
strength to the peasant of any other land.
In a bodily hardihood, acquired amid plains
of snow, he excels other Europeans, and
with the training of a soldier, and any kind
of decent and not obese food, he takes his
stand on the field of battle, a machine,
will-less, sturdy, perfect in its kind, inferior
only in enthusiastic esprit-du-corps to the less
bulky and more volatile children of France,
or to the Irish soldier in English ranks.
Morally, the Russian nation is capable of a
more patient persistence of design, of more
endurance in defeat, of more immense
sacrifices to the idea of nationality, than any
with which we are acquainted. An Eng-
lishman, when he remembers that no in-
vader of his island, from Wilham the Con-
queror to Wilham Dutch, ever had to fight
more than a single battle ere Britain lay
subjugated at his feet, can estimate the en-
durance exhibited by Russia during the
invasion by Napoleon ; and even the mod-
ern Revolutionist, remembering^ the scenes
at the recent bombardment of Rome, can
estimate and be just to the heroism of that
sacrifice which gave Moscow to the flames
rather than permit it to become the shelter
of an enemy. Of this population, so
formed, generation by generation is inured
to military service ; from every land of
Europe are picked out the men most dis-
tinguished for strategic learning and soldier-
ship, to become teachers of war in colleges
exceeding in number and imperial profuse-
ness the military institutes of more renowned
lands. Whole nations or tribes of the Slavi
are reared in the saddle of the light-dragoon.
The Kozaks of the Ukraine and the Don,
whose birth may be dated, not from " seeing
the light," but seeing the backs of their
horses' ears, form a semi-nomadic army of
guerilla cavalry, knowing no God but the
Tzar, no law on earth but their Hetman's
will, and ready at a moment's warning to
mount and ride troop on troop, from the

banks of their native river into tlie heart of
Europe. There, in the presence of the
enemy, no confusion takes place among
these banded tribes. All, held in the hand
of a military chief, are worked with the
precision of a machine. Nay, the Polish
officer in the Russian service exhibits the
emulative spirit of a private, and wishes to
show the enemies of his country, even when
fighting their battles, how superior to the
ponderous frames of the Imperial Guard
is the aristocratic chivalry of his ancient
republic.

Nor are the Slavic nations and tribes
still nominally under Austrian and Turkish
dominion a whit inferior to their brethren
of the North. The Albanians and Monte-
negrins are, as a race, unconquerable, who to
this hour preserve a species of pristine clan-
ship against all the forces of the Porte.
Their daring, we might say their knight-
errant, or, if you will, brigand spirit, is pro-
verbial. The chivalry of the Bohemians,
their high cultivation and soldier soul, are as
well known to Austrian generals, as their fan-
tastic and picturesque costume to the carpet
hero of the London fancy ball, or Parisian
masquerade. But the most military popula-
tion in Europe, perhaps of the world, are the
Croats and Sclavonians of the frontier. For-
merly the dependents of Hungary, exposed
on the one hand to the outrages of the
Magyar aristocracy, and on the other to the
raids of Turkey, miserable, helpless, and
despised, it occurred to an Irish soldier,
Lacy, driven into exile by the Williamite
conquest of his country, and then a marshal
in the service of Austria, that of them could
be organized a military barrier, unexampled
in stability and hardihood, against Moslem in-
vasion. To him is mainly owing that soldier
soul, at once organized and ruthless, which in
late years subjugated the German people in
Vienna, and hung upon the Hungarian army
of freedom with a ferocity and persistence
equally insensible to defeat in misfortune, or
mercy in success. Add to these the notori-
ous Slavic spirit which actuated the peas-
ants of Austrian Galhcia, when in 1846 with
scythe blades they hewed in pieces the ranks
of their insurgent aristocracy ; and the gal-
lant bearing and soldiership of the thoroughly
Slavic Polish nation nominally under Aus-
tria ; and we may arrive at the truth imaged
in the mind of the French orator when he
uttered that remarkable sentence : " No, the

628

Hussian Ambition.

Dec.

nationality of Poland has not perished yet ;
if it had, we should find the Polish people
marching million by milhon to the walls of
Paris in Russian ranks, to avenge itself on
migrateful Europe."

How imminent this consummation may
now be, we may conclude from the fact
that there is now in Poland, even in War-
saw, a young and growing party who look
to Panslavism as a destiny, and to a perfect
and complete amalgamation with Russia as
the best thing possible for theh country.
Throuo'hout all the other Slavic tribes and
nations, numbering as we have seen some
seventy milhons of men, the Tzar has as-
siduously sj)read similar doctrines. Speak-
ing in the various dialects of the common
tongue, he promises them by his thousands
of agents, in secret or openly, imperial
grandeur and imperial rule ; he speaks to
them as a father to his children, as a brother
and as a friend to brothers and friends ; tells
them how the Slavic race has been rent
asunder, and trodden down piecemeal by
the Europe he despises, and holds forth
to them under his direction a brotherhood
in language, religion, and nationality, and a
reward of majestic power and merciless
vengeance, dear to the hopeful hearts of a
race long subjugated and dismembered.
Every faith, every superstition, every tradi-
tion, every sympathy of the Slavic soul is
worked into his ser\ice. Secret propagan-
dism, pulpit and tribunitial eloquence, the
ties of kindred, tongue, a common mis-
fortune, a common redress, gifts of gold,
jewels, arms, and munitions of war, all are
united to this end. When this idea of
Panslavism originated is known only to
those who have access to the secret archives
of St. Petereburg. But the gigantic steps
with which it has already advanced may be
known to any who will take the trouble of ex-
amining into facts ; and its probable results
may be estimated by those fixmihar with
the progress of ideas of political splendor,
among a semi-cultivated, a superstitious, yet
a warlike and ambitious people.

One main engine for the furtherance of
this scheme has been the revival of Slavic
literature ; and the reader curious in details
on this subject, taken correlatively with the
general political idea, will find much in
Talvi's book to interest, and not a httle to
astonish him. Our Bible Societies will think
it queer, that these remarkable institutions

of propagandism are as old among the
Slavi as Cyril and Methodius. The high-
toned Protestant writer who fancies him-
self the very perfection of the development
of Christianity and free-will, growing out of
these later ages of mental enlargement, will
we fear suffer a depression in spirits, when
he is informed that older and infinitely
nobler than the Protestantism of England,
is the Protestantism of the northwestern
Slavi, whom he regards as barbaric. And,
indeed, to the poor " general reader " the
idea of a Croatic love-ditty, or a Kozak
serenade, must be as startling as that of
a sentimental lyric by harmoniously scream-
ing and deheately amorous vultures, or of an
elephantine sylph-like pas-de-deux. Yet to
the man of large intellect and fine affections,
it will appear quite just and possible, that
even the Croat and the Kozak should
have their loves and hatreds, their ideals
of noble deed and heroic suffering, their
traditions of wrong done their forefathers,
their dreams of a mighty, and to them a
just vengeance, their sympathies of home,
and wife, and native land, and their hea-
ven of thought wherein the mundane soul
reposes for an hour. And, in truth, if any-
thing were needed to redeem the Slavic
race from the biased hate and one-sided
prejudice we usually entertain for them, it
is the exquisite and heartfelt music which
flows throughout their poetry. In this, as
in some other characteristics, they partake
more of the nature of the Celt than of
any other ethnological type. These fierce
frontier men are reared to music fi'om their
infancy ; the hfe of a son of the Ukraine
is a wild and bounding war-song, his death
a hei-oic elegy. Of their lighter songs,
which this warrior land, with haughty man-
hood, denominates " female songs," as fit
only for women, or boys in pupilage, we are
not here to speak. Talvi gives us a few,
which, from the smooth and genial dress
they have received in her hands, we wish
were twice as numerous, Nor of the grand
Rhapsodia, which must be unsurpassed if we
may credit the report of those who have
heard them, since Homer sang the glories
of his native Gi^ece, or the Kymric bards
of the Welsh mountains foretold the return
of Merhn — of these bursts of unpremeditated
and musical eloquence, it is not in our
power to give a specimen. However, among
examples of Slavic poetry in the book be-

1850.

Russian Ambition.

629

fore us, there are a few bardic songs, perhaps
equally well adapted to display the peculiar
characteristics of the people. Popular poe-
try, the creations of a primitive and not
over-cultivated muse, we take to be the
purest embodiments of the nation's spirit —
the simplest and best exemplars by which
to know the habits, temper, and ideas of a
race. The national characteristics of the
Slavi, — calm, deep-voiced melody, a natural
but not boastful contempt for suffering,
danger, or death, a peculiar Asiatic idea of
destiny and obedience, joined to a fierce
heroism and relentless hate, — these will
be found throughout the following songs.
We select one or two illustrative of some of
the peculiarities of Slavic character upon
which we have already enlarged.

We have spoken of the relation formerly
existing between the Kozak of the Ukraine
and the Polish Republic. We subjoin an
" elegy " or lament, of singular power and
most uncivilized deportment. Artistically the
reader will note the melodious sorrow or
emphatic effect produced by the repetition
of the themes the declaiming bard deems
most impressive or heart-stirring. This habit
of repetition, not exactly a chorus or refrain^
but with much of its peculiar effect, is quite
general throughout all Slavic poetry, and
gives the charm we find in old English or
Scotch songs, and in many of Be ranger
and Burns, to the love-ditties, and " female
songs " especially, of the Slavi.

ON THE MURDER OF YESSAUL TSKURAl.*

0 eagle, young gray eagle,
Tshurai, thou youth so brave,

In thine own land, the Pole,
The Pole dug thee thy grave !

The Pole dug thee thy grave,

For thee and thy Hetman ;
They killed the two young heroes,

Stephen — the valiant Pan.

O eagle, young gray eagle,
Thy brethren are eagles too ;

The old ones and the young ones.
Their custom well they knew !

The old ones and the young ones,

They are all brave like thee.
An oath they all did take,

Avenged shalt thou be !

* Yessaul is the name of that officer among the Kozaks,
who stands immediately under the Hetman. The ballad
refers to an incident which happened before 1648. It is
from Sreznevski's Starina Zaporoshnoya, i, e. History of
the Zaporoguehn Kozaks, Kharkof, 1837.

The old ones and the young ones,
In council grave they meet ;

They sit on coal-black steeds,
On steeds so brave and fleet.

On steeds so brave and fleet

They are flying, eagle-like ;
In Polish towns and castles

Like lightning they will strike.

Of steel they carry lances.
Lances so sharp and strong ;

With points as sharp as needles,
With hooks so sharp and long.

Of steel they carry sabres,

Two-edged, blunted never:
To bring the Pole perdition

For ever and for ever !

The following ballad displays in pretty
fair and intelligible language the relations
between the Russian Slavi and their Moslem
neighbors. We should mention that the
term " white " applied to the Tzar (Peter L)
is the figurative Slavic adjective for anything
great and good, resplendent as it were. Azof
was besieged in 1(395 : —

THE STORMING OF AZOF.

The poor soldiers have no rest,

Neither night nor day !
Late at evening the word was given

To the soldiers gay ;
All night long their weapons cleaning.

Were the soldiers good.
Ready in the morning dawn.

All in ranks they stood.

Not a golden trumpet is it.

That now sounds so clear ;
Nor the silver flute's tone is it,

That thou now dost hear.
'Tis the great white Tzar who speaketh,

'Tis our father dear :
Come, my princes, my Boyars,

Noble.^, great and small !
Now consider and invent

Good advice, ye all !
How the soonest, how the quickest,

Fort Azof may fall ?

The Boyars, they stood in silence, —

And our father dear,
He again began to speak,

In his eye a tear :
Come, my children, good dragoons,

And my soldiers all.
Now consider and invent

Brave advice, ye all !
How the soonest, how the quickest,

Fort Azof may fall?

Like a humming swarm of bees,
So the soldiers spake.
With one voice they spake:
" Father, dear, great Tzar !
Fall it must ! and all our lives
Thereon we gladly stake."

630

Russian Ambition.

Dec. ,

Set already -^as the moon,

l^early past the night ;

To the storming on they marched,

With the morning light ;

To the fort with bulwark'd towers,

And walls so strong and white.

Not great rocks they were which rolled

From the mountains steep ;

From the high, high walls there rolled

Foes into the deep.

No white snow shines on the fields,

All 60 white and bright ;

But the corpses of our foes

Shine so bright and white.

Not up-swollen by heavy rains,

Left the sea its bed :

No ! in rills and river streams

Tm-kish blood so red.

In the above tlie reader mtQ remark a
singular and very emphatic mode of Slavic
thought. It consists in the denial of some
thing, for which the fact detailed in the
narrative micrht be mistaken ; thus : —

yot a golden trumpet is it,
* * * *

I^ot a silver flute's tone is it,

*****

'Tis the great "WTiite Tzar who speaketh I

Again, the entire of the last verse is a
repetition of this singular figure. " Not
great rocks," " but foes" which rolled, &:c.
" Not white snow," " but corpses'' — " not
heavy rains" have swelled the rivers, but

" Turkish blood so red !"

TalW gives many examples of this figure ;
some are far-fetched enough, some pecuharly
graceful. Thus in the lighter songs :

" If of a swallow 'tis that hovering chngs,
Hovering clings to her warm little nest —
To the murdered son the mother clings."'

Again, from Bowring :

" What 's so white upon yon verdant forest ?
* * * ' * *

Lo ! it is not swans, it is not snow — there,
"T is the tents of Aga, Hassan Aga."

Again, from Tahi's own versification ;

" To White Buda, to white-castled Buda
Clings the vine tree, chng the vine tree branches ?
Not the vine tree is it with its branches,
No I it is a pair of faithful lovers."

There is a figurative metaphor in these
lines, a simile of the aflfections, infinitely
more charming than any could be of mere
words. And so throughout — Slavic poetry

is never outward ; hke all great poetry, the
thoughts it does not express, but evokes, ai-e
infinitaly more poetical than the " winged
words." With us it is quite different : we
often have splendid poetry ,words flowing
with exquisite music, like " water lihes float-
ing down a rih" — but seldom a thought at
aU. Indeed, we heai'tily sympathize \sith
young women and o^ra-going men, who set
down anything as unreadable which they
cannot understand without thinking. They
clearly " won't do for Russia," any more than
the sergeant's Repubhc.

We close our extracts with another of
more ancient date than the last, in which we
behold (more visibly than if a modern " il-
lustrator" had etched his notion thereof) a
faithful Boyar accepting welcome death from
the hand of his '' trulv gTacious Tzar." Talvi
introduces it with the foIlo\\ing preface : —

" There is one trait in the Russian character, which
we recognize distinctly in their poetry, namely,
their peculiar and almost Oriental veneration for
their sovereign, and a bhnd submission to his will.
There is indeed somewhat of a religious mixture
in thLs feeling ; for the Tzar is not only the sov-
ereign lord of the country and master of their
lives, but he is also the head of the orthodox Church.
The orthodox Tzar is one of his standing epithets.
The following ballad, which we consider as one of
the most perfect among Russian populai- narrative
j ballads, exhibits very aftectingly the complete
{ resignation with which the Russian meets death,
j when decreed by his Tzar. In its other features,
also, it is throughout natural. Its historical foun-
dation is unknown. There are several versions of
it extant, shghtly differing from each other ; which
seems to prove that it has been for a long time
handled by the people."

TEE BOTAE S EXZCUTIOX.

" Thou, my head, alas 1 my head,
Long hast served me, and weU, my head ;
Full three-and-thirty summers long ;
Ever astride of my gallant steed.
Never my foot from its sti-rup drawn.
But alas I thou hast gained, my head,
Nothing of joy or other good ;
Nothing of honors o;- even thanks."

Yonder along the Butcher's street,
Out to the fields through the Butcher's gate,*
They are leading a prince and peer.
Priests and deacons are walking before,
In their hands a great book open ;
Then there follows a soldier troop,
With their drawn sabres flashing bright.
At his right, the headsman goes.

* Names of the street and gate in Moscow, through
which formerly criminals were led to execution.

1850.

Russian Ambition.

631

Holds in his hand the keen-edged sword ;
At his left goes his sister dear,
And she weeps as the torrent pours,
And she sobs as the fountains gush.

Comforting speaks her brother to her :
*' Weep not, weep not, m j sister dear !
Weep not away thy tears so clear,
Dim not, 0 dim not thy face so fair,
Make not heavy thy joyous heart !
Say, for what is it thou weepest so?
Is 't ibr my goods, my inheritance ?
Is 't for my iands, so rich and wide ?
Is 't for my silver, or is 't for my gold ?
Or dost thou weep for my life alone ?"

" Ah, thou, my light, my brother dear,
Not for tliy goods or inheritance,
Nor for thy lands, so rich and wide,
Is *t tliat my eyes are weeping so ;
Not for thy silver and not for thy gold,
'Tis for thy life I am weeping so."

■" Ah, thou, my light, my sister sweet !
Thou mayest weep, but it won't avail ;
Thou mayest beg, but 'tis all in vain ;
Pray to the Tzar, but he will not yield.
Merciful truly was God to me,
Truly gracious to me the Tzar,
So he commanded my traitor head
Off should be hewn from my shoulders strong."'

Now the scaffold the prince ascends.
Calmly mounts to the place of death ;
Prays to his Great Redeemer there,
Humbly salutes the crowd around :
" Farewell world, and thou people of God ;
Pray for my sins that burden me sore !"

Scarce had the people ventured then
On him to look, when his traitor head
Off was hewn from his shoulders strono- *

We trust we have, by the above extracts,
sufficiently illustrated our object, mainly po-
litical. Into the various schemes of the Tzar,
to push forward the literary energies of the
Slavic people, to unite them by a common
tongue, and a literature transcendent amonc^
the nations of Europe, it is not our present
aim to enter. Such as we have given are
the songs of 70,000,000 of a warhke and
tenacious race — such the songs children learn
by the firesides of their fathers — such the
eloquent music discoursed by maidens to
their lovers — such the heart-stirring tones
heard around the bivouac of a Russian legion,
around the watch-fii-es of a Croat or Kozak,
whether they sup upon the track of a Napo

* Buinaya golowushka, that is, the fierce, rebellious,
impetuous he-id, and moa-uts/inja pletsha, or stro»g shoul-
ders, are standing expressions in Russia, in reference to a
young hero ; the former, especially, when there is allusion
to some traitorous action.

VOL. VI. NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

leon, feast amid the ruins of a Magyar land,
or burn imperial thrones for fire-wood in the
palaces of Paris. Such too the terrible mu-
sic which will yet awake Western Europe
from the hideous dream of " civilized mon-
archy," from the nightmare in which hypo-
critical "constitutions" and royal oaths of
mockery crawl across a sickly nation's face,
to the manhood and life of a republican ex-
istence, or the death of a relentless despotism.
For, granting even that the full reality of
Panslavism is a thing impossible in political
ethics, no statesman, however radical or
conservative, however democratic or des-
potic he may be in general thought, can
close his eyes to the fact that the power of
Russia is steadily increasing, yearly and
year after year, and that with a ratio of in-
crease unprecedented in the history of em-
pires. From the earliest hour of her national
existence to this, Russia has never lost a square
roodof ground she had once mastered. And
with the amassing of territory, the growth
of wealth, the accumulation of power, her
activity, her vitahty, her ambition, her si-
lence, her secret plottings, her open threats
and public brigandage are still on the in-
crease. Give her another Persian province —
she instantly makes a broader stride into
Turkey, and says, "I'll have that too."
Defeated on the mountain slopes of the
Cherkesses, with relentless severity she atones
for her loss by desolating the banks of the
Tlieiss and the Danube. Keep her out of
the Bosphorus, and she lays hold of Aus-
tria with the embrace of a Judas, and in the
most brotherly manner hands her forward
to death. Cross her in Greece, and she
turns up in Denmark arming with the sabre
and the port-fire the enemies of Germany.
Not in sorrow, but in proud and boastful
triumph, may her rulers exclaim, " Quce
regio in terra nostri non plena lahoris?''^
What land indeed ! We have seen her
during the last two years hurl legion after
legion up the walls of the Caucasus, regard-
less of defeat; subjugate and occupy two
Turkish provinces ; annihilate one Austrian
kingdom ; dethrone an old Hapsburgh and
crown a young one ; threaten a Pope with
her anger, and graciously pardon his errors
on repentance ; dictate to Presidents of re-
publican France ; beard England in the
Hellespont, and oblige her boasted fleets to
he, in telling what brought them there;
abolish the long-dreamed of nationahty of
41

632

Russian Ambition.

Dec.

Germany; raise Greece into the attitude of
war, and lower lier into the baseness of sub-
mission ; sit in judgment upon the infidelity
of the West, and dictate religious faith, po-
htical thought, and the terms of existence to
Europe. At this present moment her nod
is as terrible as that which the imaonnation
of Homer ascribed to his " earth-shaking
Jove." Her word is supreme in Vienna,
Turin, and Naples ; in Rome iteelf she sways
the counsels of a Church which numbers the
largest amount of subjects of any in the
world. At Athens, at Stockholm, at Con-
stantinople she reigns ; in Beiiin she pulls
about as with wires a puppet for a king. In
Paris, with red gold, the promise of a wo-
man, and the threat of a Beauharnais, she
smashes the universal suffi'ao-e won with the
blood of three revolutions, and holds over
the head of Orleanist, Bourbonist, and So-
cialist ahke the threat of an empire " with-
out glory and without genius," — the grin-
ning and re-animated bones of a forgotten
despotism. In London itself she avenges
an indignity in Greece, by raising up her
suborned newspaper organs, the most j; ower-
ful in England, and marshalling in the oldest
and most illustrious legislature of Europe
her peerage of treason. Somewhere this
must end, either in complete mastery of
Europe or in utter defeat. The Russian soil
you cannot conquer ; you must establish a
fortress on the pole before you master her
rear ; on either flank lie northern oceans and
ribbed walls of ice ; while to reach her capi-
tal impervious w^astes of endless snow must
be pierced through, to find therein the
graves of armies. On her western and south-
ern frontiers alone can she be met by defen-
sive war, by oflfensive propagandism, and
that not by the armies of an alliance devoted
to her, not by the hirehngs of monarchs, not
by the human machinery purchased and
trained for the service of aristocrats. This
terrible war must be borne by the popula-
tions of Europe, taking from the soil they
own a courage beyond discipline, a despera-
tion which, hving, knows no defeat.

The day is fast coming, my constitutional
friends, when royal constitutions " won't do
for Russia ;" a free European people, a free
Germany, a free France, a free England only
will " do for " her, — these alone can meet
her, can alone defeat her. Who so vain as
to beheve that the people of England, for
instance, could undertake — did their Russian

House of Lords permit them to undertake —
a war in defence even of their limited liberty
and wretched civilization, and support at the
same time a peerage of princely nobles, a
Church of expensive bishops, an army of
scions of nobility, a navy for asserting dig-
nity and collecting Jews' debts, a royal
household, and a large and increasing fam-
ily of small and interesting Guelphs ? Think
you, with these and the last war debts hang-
ing about their necks, — with an imbecile
Whiggery to guide them, which, when Eu-
rope was tumbling into anarchy, knew no
release from doom for " constitutional mon-
archy" but the setting up of a Duke of
Genoa, an Italian beggar of rank, as King of
little Sicily, — think you, with these, English-
men could protect the civilization of the
elder world, and drag European letters, art,
science, and liberty from the very maw of
despotism and Night ? It is not to be
thought of; they must strip in self-defence,
strip mother-naked, without a single muffle
of royalty about them, and " die or conquer
for themselves alone." Europe may become
Kozak — but it can only be by leaving it a
desert.

Nor to this gTcat battle for civilization can
we of this Western World be patient wit-
nesses. Every day the Atlantic is growing
less and less ; we and Europe are becoming
one. The liberty we have "winnowed from
the chaff of ages, our stable republicanism,
our commerce, our arts, our democratic edu-
cation, are acquisitions too dearly purchased
to be abandoned "with life. Already on more
than one occasion have the sympathies of
our people justified the interference of our
Government in behalf of European repub-
licanism. Wheii the war shall he between
the Europe of freedom and the Europe of
the Vandal and the rehabilitated Hun, —
when the English people themselves shall
gi)'d up their loins for the Holy War, —
think you we can turn deafly away, or look
on quiescent? Even if we should, even
should all Europe be quenched in night, even
should the foul disgrace of neutrality then
attach itself to our flag, the day will not be
distant when another Hermit Peter will
evoke an enthusiasm throuo^hout this conti-
nent forgotten by men since the fall of As-
calon, and bring the New World to the re-
demption of that Europe which is to us all a
Holy Land, and will be but the dearer to our
children, for that beneath the sway of a

1850.

British Policy Here and There : Who feed England ?

633

barbarian lies the sacred sepulclire of tbeir
ancestral history.

POSTSCRIPT.

Since writing the above, a recent mail has
brought lis intelligence, which cannot be
doubted, of the formal declaration by the Rus-
sian Government of its intention to invade
Prussia, for the purpose of seizing the Silesian
provinces, and otherwise partitioning between
itself and France the dominions of the Great
Frederic. By reference to the statistics we
have given, it will be seen that the Silesian
provinces contain more than 10,000,000
Slavi. We have been further informed that
new levies have been ordered throughout
the Russian dominions; and at this present
moment the British and French ao^ents of
the Czar are negotiating new loans of money
avowedly for war purposes.

The pretence for this action of the Czar
is the countenance and support given by
Prussia to the brave men of Schleswig-Hol-
stein, against the aggressions of the Danish
monarchy. But the step is by no means

accidental ; it is but a part of the system
we have been describing, and is so strikingly
confirmatory of the above article that we
take leave to call attention to it.

We beg our readers further to watch the
action of England in this matter. So far, it
is pusillanimous in the extreme. But whether
she fight or not, and we do not think she
will, the result will be the annihilation of
the Austrian and Prussian monarchies, and
the formation of a Confederated German
Republic, — either that or a desert.

But while England is thus engaged, would
it not be quite as well for the American
people to look after Central America ? When
thieves fall out, honest men may get their
own.

[At the risk of having as many postscripts
as old ladies of single propensities are wont,
we may add, that Prussia has succumbed,
and that Eno;land has allowed it. " The
dominions of the Great Frederick " form now
a Russian outpost — it is going hard with
" constitutional monarchy," for which let all
true men be devoutly thankful. The end is
not yet.]

BRITISH POLICY HERE AND THERE: WHO FEED ENGLAND?

In an article in the November number of
this Review, we endeavored to give a con-
densed exposition of the true nature and
tendencies of what the Eno-lish call " Free
Trade," i\nd of its eflfects upon this country,
and through this country upon less fortunate
nations. In attempting to place in distinct
terms before the reader the motives which
have guided and guide the British Govern-
ment and mercantile classes on all trade
questions, we knew we were throwing our-
selves in the teeth of long established pre-
judice. In almost every country of the
world classes of men exist of native birth,
who from mistaken judgment, from trade
interest, or servile prejudice, are the par-
tisans and worshippers of foreign rule,
foreign ideas, and foreign forms. In our
former article we alluded to the power ex-
ercised over the revolutionary people of
Europe by the " liberal " hypocrisy of Eng-
land. At this hour, throughout Germany,

Prussian or Austrian, we find Teutonic ideal-
ism endeavoring, with the best intentions,
to get itself into the " constitutions " of
England. For seventy years we have seen
every change in France bepraised, by one
class or another of Frenchmen, as truly
English. Robespierre honored himself as a
Cromwell ; Napoleon long indulged in the
idea of turning Monk ; Charles X. imagined
he was Charles IL, till by mistake he turned
out a James ; Louis Philippe held till Feb-
ruary, 1848, that he was the Prince of
Orange or the House of Brunswick, or both
in one ; and now, even Alphonse de Lamar-
tine, "poet, orator, and statesman," be-
writes himself as truly English — but then he,
to be sure, is looking for a loan in London.
In Ireland every one knows there is an
" Enghsh interest ;" and even in India, Chris-
tianized Hindoos, covered with piety and
Manchester cloth, are taught to write prize
essays in praise of Britain.

634

British Policy Here and There :

Dec.

But in all these instances we can account
for Anglomania ; here, however, on this
Republican soil, a Repubhcan may occasion-
ally indulge in wonder on finding the Man-
chester god transcendently woi*shipped. For,
indepeuclently of the classes whose pecuni-
ary interest impels them, there are many to
whom the patterns on English " goods ''
read as revelations — to whom the theoiies
of Malthus, and the statistics of McCulloch,
are the only gospels worthy of behef :
well-intentioned men. for the most part, who
desire to be right, and not knowing how,
indulge in the habit of riding hobby-horses.
Our respect for the institution of the hobby-
hoi-se, let us remark, is sincere and profound.
Rabelais instances the wondrous genius of
Garojantua, by narrating how the child
" himself of a huge big post made a hunting
nag, and another for daily sernce of the beam
of a wine-press ;" and further, we know that,
in more modern times, the institution was
bestrid with great perfection, ease, and good
results to mankind, by the philosophic Mr.
Shandv. Perhaps you too, good reader,
ride a' hobby, and if so, and if the equine
rocker be your own, made like Gargantua's,
by your own handicraft, and trained to the
conveniences of your nether man, we wish
you all joy and comfort. Sit by your fire-
side, knightly reader, without fear and with-
out reproach, go see-saw up and down, and
then, down and up, and call yourself a
"Conservative." You are a Conservative;
you keep your place, get into a mighty
pother by never moving, and if the world
moves, carrying you and your hobby along
with it, it is a foolish world, and a ridicu-
lous world, and an un-hobby -ridden and
radical world — out upon it for a world!
But concerning hobby-horses, we give you
two items of advice. Be careful and never
attempt to ride another mans hobby :
learn the paces of yoin- o^ti, and keep to
your own, for you remember how wofully
it fared with those aristocratic gentlemen,
the Lord of Breadiubag. the Duke of Free-
meale, and the Earl of Wetgullet, when
thev came to ride Gargantua's. And again,
we ad\ise you. Chevalier on post, take care
and do not ride yom- hobby across your
neighbor's shms.

Of all hobbv-horsenien, the rider of Eng-
lish hobbies in our Repubhc is the most
pitiable soul. TS'e have met, and can under-
stand an Englishman, self-exiled to this

countiy to make money out of her, get-
ting astride of the " greatness " of that
Eno-land which refused him a shirt or a
dinner. But the case is altered when one
of these Englishmen tires himself, and get-
ting him down, lends his nag to one of a
o-reat crowd of Americans who have long
envied the respectability and comfort of the
owner. Such an American lx)rrower of
I other men's foUies. is one of those singu-
I lar mortals whom we cannot understand.
I He gets astride, and breaks his shins, and
: breaks yom shins, and rolls to and fro, and
i howls again, and yet will not get oft'. You
' cannot pei-suade him he rides another man's
I hobby, or that it is a hobby which he rides.
I Create even a doubt in his mind of the con-
, trary of either fact, and you make him
! miserable. Drive him to the waU when he
, hits your shins too hard, and he roai-s again

■ that he is astride of a true thing. Reason
' with him that the thing he rides is a mere
\ pretext, a wooden pretext, and that it does
i not become him of all men, to ride that
' of all wooden pretexts, and he weeps like
; an infant, saying his fi'iend rode it quite

cavalierly for a long while, and with great

' distinction, and that he knows it must be a

horse, a hdng horse, and no lie, but true as

truth in all its points ; and so he takes again

to his see-saw exercise, and breaks his shins

i worse than ever — poor, miserable soul that

! he is !

j Astride of this " gi-eatness of England,"
' some of these hobby equestrians have faUen
I foul of us latterly — say our facts are not facte,
' but that their hobby is a horse ; and in proof

■ they tell us, 1st, That England produces from
her own soil ample food for her population.

. 2d, That even if she does import food from
other countries, she gives value for it. 3d,
o-ettiug bold on their hobby. That she is an
exqDorter of food. And further, they have,
^vith 2:reat wagsing of the head, discounte-
nanced in the most awful manner the preach-
' ino- of anv doctrines to the contrary.
I Now, our doctrines to the conti-ary are no-
' wise new. The asserters of the above propo-
! sitions are membei-s of an inveterate hobby-
horse school — ride in company with Harriet
Martmeau.Mahhus, and McCulloch— and yet
'■ they forget that while McCulloch endeavors
to show bv statistics, which we shall presently
account for. that England does produce food
in abundance, while others of the same school
attempt to show that she is an exporter of

1850.

Who feed England ?

635

food, yet these are the very men who have
held and hold that there is a " surplus pop-
ulation "in England. If men starve there,
Harriet Martineau, Malthus, and McCulloch,
et hoc genus omne^ give as a reason that the
starving are " surplus." Our Anglomaniac
friends will not see that they are riding two
flatly contradictory hobby-horses ; that, if
there be raised food enough in England,
the mouths in England cannot be too many,
and a fortiori^ that if England be an exporter
of food, there can be no surplus mouths, but
that in reality the mouths must be too few.
Here is contradiction on the very start.
We leave our wood-equestrian friends to
reconcile it. In the doctrines of Malthus, or
of his school, we have not one particle of
behef. We believe that the resources of the
earth in food are superabundant for the ut-
most population which can be crowded on
its surface ; and where this superabundance
is not forthcoming, be assured it is owing to
some breach of natural law, which compels
a perversion of the national industry. The
surface of England is capable of producing
more than ample food for her largest pop-
ulation ; but, we assert it does not produce
it, and has never since the days of the Nor-
man William been permitted to produce it.
Then was formed that roll-call of robbery,
which the English people, lifted in mass off
the land, called in their sorrow " Dome-
day's Book," signifying that the Saxon peo-
ple of England till the day of doom were
never to be the owners of their soil, or the
recipients of its produce — that till Dooms-
day their lot was to be coerced to till the land
of others for the mouths of others, to bear
on their shoulders " men of property," who
were to use them as "men of work." All
the changes of time have never overthrown
or materially altered that relation. The
names of Norman and Saxon may have
merged into " upper ranks " and " lower
classes," into " nobility, gentry, and clergy"
on one side, and " masses " on the other, —
into " men of property" and " persons of
position" on one side, and " the labor mar-
ket" and. " surplus population " on the other ;
but the true fact, as Robert of Gloucester
told it, is to this hour the same true fact : —

. . . . " The Folc of Normandie
Among us woneth yet, and scliulleth ever mo ....
Of the Normannes beth thys hey men, that beth

of this I'^nd,
And the lowe men of Saxons,"

Or, to adapt Robert of Gloucester to the
"Spirit of the Age" and the nineteenth
century, and make him, as they make Shak-
speare, " interesting " : —

. . . . "The Men of Propertie

Among us ruleth yet, and robbeth ever mo. , . .
Of the Owners be these high men, that be of this

land.
And the lowe men be Surplus /"

At this hour a few thousand persons own
all England, and the area of English soil cul-
tivated, the seeds grown, the produce raised
in amount and kind, is regulated, not by
the wants of the people, not by the desires
or enterprise or capacity of the tillers, not
by freedom of trade ; but by the amount of
rent needed for their personal profligacy
by these few thousand aristocrats. By the
most recent statistics of English make, the
number of English human beings " engaged
in agriculture," that is, employed in pro-
ducing the rent aforesaid, is less than two
fifths of the population of England — varies
in fact between two fifths and one fourth.
Suppose these all fed, and their owners all
feasted, what then becomes of the remaining
three fifths or three fourths, who never pro-
duce a root?

These facts were fully before the man who
is, we may safely say, recognized as the first
economic authority in the United States,
when he wrote the extracts we shall present-
ly subjoin, the author of the Past, Present,
and Future. We shall quote not from that
work, however, but from a subsequent work
to which, we believe, we are at liberty to refer.
We quote him not to bear us out in any
of our statements, but simply to show that
the general doctrine with which our critics
have so much quarrelled (Breadinbag and
the rest) has already been recognized and
laid down by Mr. Carey. In the anonymous
production to which we allude, Mr. Carey
says : —

" With abundant wealth to be applied to the
work of improvement, and with a power to pro-
duce food at less cost of labor than any country ia
the world, except Belgium, Great Britain buys
her food abroad,'' <fec. &c.

And again : —

" Nevertheless, she buys her food abroad when
she might produce it at home, and that she may do
so, she crowds hundreds of thousands of people

63G

British Policy Here and There :

Dec.

into closely built, ill-drained, and ill- ventilated
towns, [called manufacturing districts, being for
the manufacture of dry goods, Christianity, scarlet
fever, cutlery, and cholera,] who<e cellars are tilled
with starving operatives, who, if they could be em
ployed on the land, would obtain larger and more
constant returns to labor than any others in the
world. So employed, they would need neither
fleets nor armies for their protection. [Mr. Carey
means, probably, not their " protection," the peo-
ple's protection, but the protection of the land-
lords and others, who at present rob them of both
land, and food, and labor,] and taxes might be dis-
pensed with, [that is, as we understand Mr. Carey,
landlords, nobihty, gentry, and clergy, tax-gather-
ers, generals, queens, and other bodies who live on
taxes, would have to dispense with themselves
beforehand,] whereas under the existing system,
by which the .so27s of Germany and Russia, of Can-
ada, South Africa, and Australia, are cultivated by
the aid of spiraiing jennies and poicer-looms," &.C.

Mr. Carey omitted to add to the above
enumeration of the agricultural imple-
ments by which British colonies are culti-
tivated, some very important ones, -siz. :
" our cotton," " free trade," " democracy,"
and so forth.

Again Mr. Carey writes : —

"Her [England's] constant effort has been to
produce a7i unnatural state of things, [Mr. Carey
means by " an unnatural state of things;," the state
of " free trade,'] by which she might tax the world
for the support of the fleets and armies by which
it was to be maintained, and the efl'ect upon her-
self has been that of producing an unnatural dis-
tribution of her population. The con>umers of
food - the people employed in the work of con-
verting raw materials into clo*:hs and hardware,
and those employed in the work of transportation
and exchange — have home too large a proportion
to the producers of food, and heyice has arisen that
dependence on the proceedings of distant nations
that is now held to be the very perfection of a
sound political economy."

That is the economy of our worshipful
friends, Breadinbag, Freemeale, and Wet-
gullet.

And in concluding this subject Mr. Carey
writes : —

'•' The true cause of the present and probable
future difficulty of England, may be found in the
fact that her policy has tended to compel her sub-
jects in Ireland and in all her colonies throughout
the world, as well as the people of other nations,
[by "free trade," you know,] to do that which
they would not naturally do, in sending the fool
and the wool to the spindle and the loom, instead
of bringing those simple and inexpensive machines
to the great machine that produces food and wool.
The efl'ect upon ihem has been that of preventing

the natural concentration of man by aid of which
labor is rendered more productive, and of causing
the exhaustion of the land they cultivated, and
thereby increasing the difficulty of producing the
commodities for the supply of which England was
thus rendering herself ilependent upon them. She
has exhausted every country that was dependent
upon her, and the stare of exhaustion that she
now herself exhibits is but the necessary conse-
quence of this great error of her policy."

Mr. Carey adds a final assertion to tha
above remarkable sentences. Lookino- to
the fact that England, having depended on
countries and nations subject to her for food,
and having exhausted them, being at the
same time utterly without power to feed
or sustain herself, is entirely dependent on
the economic folly or stupid prodigality of
nations not in her power, but who at any
moment may become wise, and leave her
A^nthout a dinner, he pronounces this very
plain sentence : —

" Her day of power is past."

The present wiiter has nothing thereto to
add.

AVe have quoted Mr. Carey merely for
the purpose of estabhshing the fact that the
doctrines to which our noble hobby-horse
critics most strenuously object, are no new
doctrines ; and least of all novel in this Re-
view. But we do not believe that it is pos-
sible for any writer, who founds his conclu-
sions on figures furnished by British statists,
as all economic writers must, to comprehend
the full extent to which Eno-land, in Mr.
Carey's words, " has compelled her subjects
in Ireland and in all her colonies throuo-hout
the world, as well as the people of other na-
tions," to feed her ; and for these reasons :

1st. The English Government and upper
classes, for reasons we shall presently ex-
plain, have at all times endeavored to make
it be believed that their country was inde-
pendent of all foreign nations ; that the
people of England did and could live inde-
pendently of all the world, — nay, that if a
" wall of brass " (as Berkeley said, but not of
England) were raised around her, the loss
would be that of the world and its nations,
not of her or her people ; so beneficent a
dispenser is she of univereal wealth, comfort,
charity, piety, and cotton goods to all man-
kind. To make this beheved, tables of
produce, export, and import have been sys-
tematically falsified or altogether suppressed.

1850.

Who feed England ?

637

And accordingly, when the " Repeal of the
Corn Laws " was proposed, which laws, mind
you, did not prevent but only taxed the
import of corn, the landlords proved from
governmental statistics and officifd tables that
there was, had been, and Vv^ould be abun-
dant food grown in England, as by govern-
mental and all previous statistics they were
quite enabled to do. The landlord " House of
Commons" held this doctrine, till fear of
popular commotion compelled them to give
it up, and declare all previous tables and
statistics as to food, made by their " honor-
able House," untrue from beginning to end.
The fact of the repeal of the Corn Laws by
the English Legislature proved all previous
statistics on home-grown food to have been
fabricated, and further proved that the Eng-
lish people (of the " lower classes " of course)
starved, because their country, even with all
which could be plundered from Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales in addition, did not
produce sufficient food for their necessities.
Any ]-easoning founded on statistics referring
to periods prior to the repeal of the Corn
Laws, as any of Mr. McCuUoch's we have
seen do, cannot therefore be relied on, — may
be true by accident, but must, in general,
necessarily be false.

2d. Economic writers cannot determine
what quantity of produce consumed in Eng-
land is English produce, what not, in exist-
ing circumstances, because, since the repeal
of the Corn Laws, no account of her own
produce has been rendered, nor has any at-
tempt been made, that we know of, to render
such an account. Prior to that repeal, it
was a matter of interest to the nation to
know how much food of their own (or nom-
inally their own) they could depend on;
how much it would be necessary to pay
taxes for; grov/ers, factors, consumers, and
Mark Lane speculators were all interested in
this discovery. Hence official returns and
the like, correct and incorrect. But since
the repeal ot the Corn Laws, the produce of
England has been a matter of interest to
none but the growers ; and hence no returns
of home produce have been made or attempt-
ed to be made. The repeal of the Corn
Laws cut also in another direction, — "tax-
collectors," " revenue department," " govern-
ment," and the like, had no longer a taxa-
tive interest in returning duly and fully im-
ports of food. We shall presently show that
all returns of imports made by English Gov-

ernments, for long years, have been false
returns, and i7itentionally falsilied. But this
apart, since "free trade" in other people's
corn has been enacted as " law," such returns
as have been made have been merely frag-
mentary, one-sided, and v^ere got up to serve
some special purpose in a parhamentary de-
bate. Even in such of them as we have seen,
the countries whence the imports come are not
particularized. Mr. Bool, being as usual not
squeamish, lumps the accounts, takes all he
can get everywhere, bolts the whole, and
uttei's, with a divine look of truly Christian
benevolence, by way of grace, " Thanks be
to the Lord Free Trade !"*

* However, though we cannot pretend to state
how much, in figures, of the world's food John eats,
we are pleased to be enabled to produce a "very
recent authority, and one which no American can
question, as to the general fact that John does not
eat his own. John has several times sent out to va-
rious parts of the world sleeky, humanitarian gentle-
men as commissioners, to congratulate the nations of
the earth in general, and those whom he robs in par-
ticular, on the iujportant fact that lie has eaten a
g od dinner, that he is getting along finely, and
growing very fat, let the world want as it may ;
the great object of God in creating "the earth and
the fulness thereof," and the " Whole Duty of
Man," being to feed him John. It is to one of
these en)is>ai ies of love we are now about to intro-
duce the reader. Mr. George Thompj^on, M. P., an
itinerant rep()^itory of the Brougham and Wiiber-
force sediment, devoted too to ameliorating the
condition of all thieves and scoundrels, (as becomes
an enlightened '"nineteenth-century" individual,)
and elected under the wing of Mr. Johann Cobden,
to assist him in enabling Manchester manufactur-
ers to feed their workmen on American and every
other corn bat Engli-h, has veiy recently arrived
here to preach "abolition" and " free trade;" that
is, to elevate black labor and put down white
handicraft ; or, in words peculiarly humanitarian,
to ameliorate the condition of the negro, and noii-
ameliorate the condition of the Yankee. This
gentleman attempted to deliver a speech in Eos-
ton, (and we are very sorry he was not permitted
to deliver it : if George Thompson can imperil the
confederacy of the United States, the weakest
Avind can shatter it,) which has since been published.
It was intended as congratulatory of the citizens
of Massachusetts, (where, by Biitish free trade, fac-
tories are stopped, and men and women are idle ;)
and our readers will judge from this gentleman's
volunteer confessions whether in our last essay we
have misrepresented aught with reference to " free
trade " and England.

He writes of " free trade in corn :'' —
" The abolition of the Corn Laws has cheapened
the food of the people. [That is, the Engli>h, his
people,-- a pr-'tty subject truly to congratulate
Americans upon — and in Boston ; it has not cheap-
ened food though in Lowell, but made it so dear

638

British Policy Here and There :

Dec.

3dly. The tliird reason why it is utterly
impossible for any man, even a British
"statesman," even Mr. McCulloch, to state,
with the shghtest pretence to accuracy, what
the yearly agi-icultural produce of England
proper, at any period at all events in this
century, may have been, or now is, is that a
mean subteifutre has been for long years sys-
tematicaDy adopted, by legislative and gov-
ernmental authority, to wiis-represent facts,
to ftibricate certain false returns in her favor,
and purposely to omit and smother accounts
or items of a contrary character, to the end
that it might appear in grave official tables.
that England j^roduced yearly much more
than she ever did, or than under her pres-
ent ohgarchic system, and with her natu-
rally poor soil, she ever can. It was essen-
tial to the foreign poHcy and home stabihty
of the English aristocracy, that foreign na-
tions should be taught to beheve the English
nation was self-supportinor. to believe the
island a citadel not onlv bulwarked, but

victualled for a siege ; provided even with
parks and gardens, and rich tilled lands
within its '' sea-girt walV' on the produce
of which the o^amson could hve and fiorht
for ever. It was essential, too, that the peo-
ple within, whether they were called to hght
with Europe or America, or to work in peace
as mere day-laborers for their food, should
be made to beheve that food, at all events,
should not be wanting to them ; that " come
what would, England could stand I"* For-
eio;n nations were to be overawed with this
prestige of stability i an oppressed and
merely animal population were to be assm*ed
of a contented diwstion. Hence it became
the necessity of anv government presuming to
wield this pohcy, to render returns with an
•• official '' stamp, and the gravest aspect of
arithmetical truth, which would exhibit the
yearly produce of England as equal to her
yearly consumption. Accounts were to l^e ren-
dered to this effect, had indeed to be rendered,
come the items of produce whence they

that nobody now ran get it there.] It ha?," he
goes on, '• <ipened our [viz.. the British] port? to
the harvests of the world, [made, in fact, the whole
world a great shoemaker's cabbage garden fur ^ilr.
Johann B>ol.] It has." continues the excellent
gentleman, " extended our commerce with all grain-
proJucing countries. [We should feel much hap-
pier, to be sure, about Eugli-^h commerce bein^r ex-
tended— about Mr. .Johann's pot-boy having more
to do than ever, carrying away other people's food
and giving them cottons and cutlery — carrying
away mire of our food, and destroying our ottons
and cutlery.] It has established." he continues,
" a sound regulating principle, the benefits of which
are felt throughout all our [the British] trading and
monetary transactions."

No'S' wh:\t is this " sound regulating principle:"
what can it be ? VVe really cannot tell, unless
Mr. George Thompson, M. P.. Engh hman, meant
thereby to convey the undeniable fact (not prin-
ciple) that all the ^rain-producing countries of
the world, and especially America, (such an honor
for America!) have bten working night and dav,
digging, sowing, reaping, gathering, garnering, to
feed him and his, for the small retiuTi of cotton
patterns I

And really it seems this mu-t be it : for Mr.
Thompson, who, we should do him the justice of"
saying, -s a desperate wit ar»d keen satirist in his
way. adds, to the '• citizens of Miis=achusetts :" —

" Let it not for a moment be supposed by any on \
this side of the Atlantic, that there is he' faiiitest
pro-pect of a return to the protective laws which
have been recently swept away by the reformers \
of England. There is not one man amon^; us re-
garded by the People as worthy the name of an
ab-e or safe statesman, who would venture to pro- ■
pose the re-imposition of the taxes upon food, or the

j restoration of the old and now for ever exploded
protective policy."

I That is : Let it not be supposed by you. ye peo-
1 pie of New-England, that we are going to let you
set your mills agoing again ; nor by you, people of
I Ohio, that we do not like your com and your beef;
j nor bv you, people of America, that we. the great
English people, at whose feeding you so much re-
joice, are not going to feed on you for evermore !
Think ye. one of ?/-s '• statesmea"' looking out for
the regard of the eaters of your food, would make
them quarrel with your mutton ? Don't you see,
if some of you set your miUs agoing and closed
ours, and others of you brought your food to the
nearest of vom' own mills and fed your own
people, while they clothed you in return, that
we would get none of your food, that none of
you would have to come to our sh<>p to buy,
that you would get wealthier and happier, and we
' would cret poorer. " our ports not being open to one
i great harvest of the world ;'' and do you think we
are such fools as, of our own accord, to bring that
j about, or let you do it if we can hinder you, 0
1 citizen- of Massachusetts ?

j A pretty consrratulatory address truly to the
I "citizens of Massachusetts."' Xevertheless. even
I to factory girls, and those who would " ameliorate
I their condition," fa-i ext ah ho^te doceri^ may not,
I after all. be an unintelligible maxim.

If Mr, George Thompson's speech have a mean-
( ing, we have faithfully interpreted it : however,
meaning or no meaning, and we will not insist that
Mr. Thompson ever means anything, as an authority
from the " other side," speaking geographically and
argumentatively, t'^at England does live on "the
harve-ts of the world," and not on her own, it may
be worth while to introduce him to the valiant Chev-
alier Breadinba?. for the benefit of self and fellows.

1850.

Who feed England ?

639

might. Accordingly the simple piece of
legerdemain was resorted to, of calling all
food found within the year on English soil,
"English produce," and so setting it down in
the official returns, thereby throwing the onus
of proving that it was not English produce
on any who questioned the truth of the re-
turns, the returns being only " comeatable"
by those v/ho made them.

Now in the matter of food this neg-
ative is difficult of proof. If a man steal a
barrel of your flour, you may know and
swear to the barrel if it have your brand on
it ; but let the barrel be changed, and you
cannot swear to your flour : so of wheat,
oats, meal, &c. &c., of every cereal and veg-
etable product common to the English and
any other soil. So, too, of animal food —
bacon, or poi'k, or mutton, does not bear the
impress of the "stars and stripes," or of
" the Irish harp," or " red-hand," upon its
buttocks, when hung up in a London stall.
Thus of everything edible — let the English
claim as " English produce " anything found
on the English soil, of which some is grown
there, and no man could prove it was not.

Bat one chock existed or exists, by which
to exhibit the presumption of such a claim —
by which to prove that all the food on Eng-
lish soil is not of English production ; and
even this check is entirely in the hands of
the Government itself. This check is the
amount of food carried into England from
other countries, as entered at the ports, &c.,
by revenue officers and shipmasters. And
accordingly, if England proper entered in
her custom and re^'enue lists the amount
of food carried within her confines each and
every year, by subtracting this amount
from the sum total of food found upon her
soil, in each and every year, the difference
would be the true sum of English growth.
(Total in England — Import^Enghsh pro-
duce.) Accordingly, to keep up the show
of truth in their assumptions, it became the
policy of the English Government to make
the return of food imports small, and that
of the " Total in Eno-land " ffreat. This was
from time to time effected in the following
manner :

In the reign of Queen Anne, Scotland
was " united " to England. By the act of
" Union," made by England, all trade there-
after between the two nations was declared
inland or coasting trade. Prior to that, the
trade was as between any two independent

nations, in which exports and imports were
duly accounted for, allowing for the irregu-
larity of all accounts and retui'ns one hun-
dred and fifty years ago, and vast facilities
for smugghng by land and sea. But, since
then, exports from Scotland to England, and
imports by England from Scotland, and
vice versa^ have not existed, and do not exist,
in the returns of the " honorable House," —
although Scotland is a food-producing na-
tion, exporting large quantities of food to
England, all of which, of course, are set down
as "English produce." Thus Scotland for
a hundred years was made the scape-goat of
" English food."

But as the mouths of the English nation
multiplied, and the voracity of Englishmen
grew apace, Scotland became insufficient as
a produce garden of " English" food. In fact
her soil, always poor, became soon exhausted,
and what with a couple of insurrections, a
score of famines, and an economic system of
English make, her gallant population were un-
dergoing rapid extirpation — have been now
extii'pated to such' an extent, that when the
Queen of England of late years visits her
" Highland Castle," English footmen have to
be dressed up in old plaids, and stuck here
and there in the landscape, that she may
cheat herself into the belief that the Celtic
race has not altogether disappeared from a
valley which, but a few generations ago, num-
bered fifty thousand of its tartaned clansmen.*
In short, as we have said, it became impos-
sible in the days of George the Third to keep
up the pecuhar equation we have above re-
ferred to with any credit. Ireland in the
meantime, having got leave to draw breath
from the tyranny of penal laws and usurped
legislation, rapidly " developed her re-
sources," but almost entirely for her own
behoof, this time. Her people were increas-
ing in wealth, comfort and spirit ; agricul-
ture Avas extending, but at the same time
manufactures were growing too, and so the
English made little profit out of her. The
design was laid of " making a Scotland of
her." She was " united" to England —

Infandum, Regina, jubes revocare dolorem ?
She was "united," — let that word cover

*Let us add (as young ladies do "when in
"writing romantic fictions" they intersperse a
truth) that this is " a fact."

640

British Policy Here and There

Dec.

all. From that hour her manufactures were
at an end. " Duties'' were laid on, prevent-
ing all export save of raw produce, and that,
only permissible to be taken by English
ships, was declared thenceforth "'■coasting
traded Her exports to England were no
longer entered to her credit, or but loosely
and partially entered. George the Third and
his ministers at the sam3 time offered large
bounties for the produce of certain food to
be grown in Ireland ; and this produce
of food, so unnaturally forced, by coercing
and inducing the people of Ireland to do
that which was directly opposed to their
interests, was " coasted over,"' almost entirely
without entry, to England, and once there
called English, eaten as English, and re-
turned to '" our honorable House'' as '* Eno--
Hsh produce.''

For a certain time, indeed, the remnants
of the old "English interest" in Ireland
endeavored to keep up an account, in order
that themselves, not their count r}% might
E\>t be over-robbed, in order that they too
might get a share of the plunder, as Ireland
still retained a "treasury" and "revenue
department ;" and from such accounts we
shall presently extract a httle. Such a state
of things was, however, necessaiily, very dis-
agreeable to the Enghsh oligarchs, a very
impertinent and insufferable interference,
indeed, with their plunder ; and accordingly,
among other steps to prevent its continuance,
the '• treasuries were consohdated ;" that
is, Ireland's treasury, body and bones, was
taken and put into the English, after which
the international accounts have been mere
moonshine. The farce did not last much long-
er : for twelve or fifteen vears a sinorle vear's
account of such produce has not been rendered
upon which any man can rely. Almost every
atom grown in Ireland within that time and
earned to England, has been declared *' Eng-
lish produce," and no man can say that "it
is not Eno'lish." Between Eno-land and Ire-
land, we repeat, for those yeai-s, not a
single item of account as to import or ex-
port has been kept, or pretended to be kept,
with any reg"ularity ; purposely and afore-
thought these accounts were omitted or
suppressed, or partially contorted, that no for-
eigner mio-ht know to what extent the Eno- Hsh
nation was fed by " the starving Irish " —
and that even the Iiish mio-ht not know
how deep the vidture's beak was driving into
their vitals, ^ut, nil ad77iirari, — v^-hy should

we wonder ? It is the e very-day trick of the
vulgar swindler, to hide every item which
mav ojive an inkling of the amount he is
plundering ; and who ever heard of even a
'" conscientious thief," leavingr an account on
the lid, of the moneys he has stolen fi'om
the desk ?

And now let us take this one little island
of Ireland, and endeavor, almost without an
authority save that fm'nished l)y English-
men, to determine even proximately the
amount of produce OA\ing to her by Eng-
land in account for fifty years, — the amount
which Euo-lish emissaries and agents are
now actually, year after year, seizing on her
soil with economic claws, caiT\nno- from her
ports to their country without account and
without return, and calling it, once there,
'' Enghsh," and eating it as " English."
Let us remember, too, that this is the self-
same island whose inhabitants for now five
yeai-s have been known throughout the
world as the "starving Irish" — as "\ale
Celts," in the polite literature of the TimeSj
who would not work — as lazy scoundrels,
producing nothing, owning nothing, deserv-
ing nothing — as the verv offscouring and
excrement of humanity — but yet who. hang-
ing, as thev do, a wortliless log about the
neck of the charitable English people, the
charitable English people have nevertheless
supported, lent money to, fed, built work-
houses to shelter, protect, and refurm, nay,
sent round the begging-box on their behalf
to the philanthropic and bene^'olent govern-
ments and peoples of the whole world.
These are the poor wretches for whom the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the rest of
the Bishops (hard-working men all) preached
" chanty sermons ;" these are they fur whose
behoof the Queen of England, by "pre-
venient grace," ordered an univei'sal day of
prayei's ; these are they for whose crops,
everv harvest of the last five, she and her
ministers offered up to God a Parliamentary
thanksg-iving, (and well they might ;) these
are the " Insli subjects." recipients of the
public charity of mankind, on whase behalf
the Enghsh Queen returned thanks bv letter
and speech, to her British people, to the
Turk by the Dardanelles, to the people of
America ; these are the irreclaimable men-
dicants, for alms bestowed on whom, the
meanest Eughshman that ever trod the
earth thinks himself justified in standing
up before God and man, and expressing " a

1850.

Who feed England

641

nation's gratitude" for "generous pity."
Such is the coloring Eughsh authorities and
Enghsh men give the mattei" — now for facts.
Does Ireland need charity ? did she ever
need or ask charity ? Is she able to labor,
and has she resources to feed and clothe
lierself ? Does she grow sufficient food — has
she every year of her existence grown suffi-
cient food for her whole population ? If so,
what has become of it — who eats it — wlio
has eaten it — ivIlo has plundered her of her
means of living, and left her starving ? Who
plunders her in her starving, and then comes
out before the world with a sleek face, shakes
his head over "poor Celts," thanks his God
for their dinner, and tenders on their behalf
his thanks to " charitable humanity" ? Cant
and hypocrisy we have listened to till the
world is sickened — now for facts. "^

* Even tliis meliorative Mr. George Thompson,
speculator in Abolition in the proper market for
tlie sale of that commodity, and in " Free Trade"
in the proper market for the sale of that, e\ei\ this
meliorative Englishman presumes before the
American nation, by way of flattering an assembly
of Bostonians, to utter such hypocritical praises
as the following, knowing to the full the profound
and unmitigated hypocrisy of which he was guilty
in so speaking. In the speech to which we have
already referred Avith reference to the Manchester
fo xaXov the " Repeal of the Corn Laws," this gen-
tleman takes it upon him to say : —

" It (the Repeal) meliorated the horrors of a
desolating famine in Ireland, and when I speak
of that visitation, let me al-o express a nation's
gratitude to this country for its generous pity, and
most noble and seasonable assistance rendered in
the hour of calamity and want to the people of
Ireland."

And pray, sir, "this country," or even a Boston
audience of it loving truth and f^iir play as we
know they do, may fairly ask, who are you — who
are yoM, Mr. Thompson, that you should dare in the
United States, or anywhere else, to return thanks
for the Irish nation, or even for an Irish dog?
What drop of Iri?h blood is in your v ins, what
Irish man or woman do you represent, what
authority, in the name of decency and truth, have
you, that you should appear before us and venture
to " express a nation's gratitude to this country
for its generous pity ?" So! you are one of those
street-beggars, are you, Avho endeavor to create
pity for yourself among the passing wayfarers of
the world, by exposing the sores of those you have
made dependent on you and whom you have beaten
almost lifeless. You " beg a ha'penny," do you,
for, and give your blessing on behalf of, the starv-
ing idiot whose dinner you have just dragged from
his very throat to glut your own ! Be honest in
your thieving, n)an ; have mercy on the decency
and charity of a well-disposed world ; give up the
swindling of small potato virtues — the assumption

We have already mentioned that prior to
the year 1800, the year of "the Union,',
Ireland subsisted plentifully on her own food
and that her peoj-le clothed tlumselveS'
There was also an export of manufactured
goods, silks, linens, lace, &c. Only so much
cereal or animal products were ex],oit(:d to
England as were sufficient to pay "absen-
teeism" its rents, of which we shall presently
speak. With the Union all was changed —
raanufectui'es sank, stiuggled, and iinaliy
ceased in all but name. The export of food
to England increased, ran higher and higher,
till even, as given in the tables presented by
McCulloch, a thoroughly English authority,
we find the following statistical lesults
(McCulloch's Gcogr. Die, Ed. New- York,
1843-4, Art. Ireland):—

Of cereal products, "Wheat and "Wheat flour,
Ba»-ley, Bere, Oats and Oatmeal, Rye, Peas, Beans,
and Malt-
In the year 1801 imported into

Great Britain from Ireland, 525 qrs.*

1838 " 3,414,302 "

Increase in 31 years — nearly 3,500,000 quarters,
or, seven hundred thousatid per cent.

This increase was gradual and steady,
taking a slight leap occasionally, exactly
when a vacuum occurred in the English
stomach. Thus McCulloch, commenting
upon his own table, cannot conceal his as-
tonishment, but with " notes of admiration"
writes, just as if a rogue should write, " Think
how much we have robbed ! I" as follows : —

"The preceding table shows that they [tlie Irish
exports of " English food"] had increased from less
than a million of quarters previously to 1817, to
nearly three millions and a half in 1838 I !"

of a very vulgar grace, at best, and one we do not
need or seek for, thankfulness for alms — and in
your case thankfulness under false pretences.
And the next time you attempt to speak before
an American audience, prepare a speech in your
true cliaracter as an Englishman, thanking us, with
more or less sincerity, for that we were so foolish
as to play into your hands and stomach, and by
helping wtdl-intentioned but utterly mistaken
" alms" upon the " starving Irish," enabled you and
yours to eat more and more oi thnr Irish 'prrdnce^
and some of our alms too. Thank us for yourself,
man, in thy meliorated snivel ! — but let Ireland
alone ; if you are wise, let her alone. We have
long enough been duped by such Engli.-h exhibi-
ti ns of the sores and Avelts your ow^n liands have
inflicted upon your " suffering sister !" On this
soil, and in our presence, do not dare to reproduce
the disgusting swindle.

* Quarter of wheat — eight bushels.

642

British Policy Here and There

Dec.

Wonder XhQj did not know it before they
had eaten it — queer people these EngUsh,
they never think of considering the extent
of their thieving, till they have digested the
proceeds. Xow otu' motto is nil admirari ;
we are no wise astonished at the great in-
crease of Irish exports in 1818. as compared \
with pre^'ious yeare. M'Culloch's figures
stand thus : —

181*7, Irish exports to England. 695.651 qrs.
1818 '■' " " 1,204,733 qrs.

That is, in one ye^r the increase was about
double. Xow then, o-ood reader, mark one
thmg ; whenever you notice an extraordiuaiy
increase in Irish exports to England, you are
not to attribute it bv anv means to " ofreat
improvement in agi'iculture," as McCuUoch
remarks ; nor yet like him are you to have
recourse to " notes of admiration," by way of
mystifying youi-self with astonishment ; but
you are simply to conclude that of Irish
produce in that year — as Ireland produces a
constant quantity, (her agriculture notha\ing
in the least degree improved) — the English
have eaten more, and the Irish less — the
Enghsh have needed more, and the Irish
have been able to keep less ; or in other
words, in those years most notable for in-
crease in Irish food exports to England, there
was a general scarcity, and the Eno-lish, to
make good the deficit on their part, ate up
all in Ireland, and left her people nothing, !
In short, conclude when you see the export '
%ure high, " famine in Ireland f ' and in fact ;
and truth, the winter, spring and summer, j
1817-18, during which England doubled
her imports from Ireland, are notable in Ire-
land (we should ratber say were notable be-
fore " the desolatinof famine, meliorated'' bv
Enghsh thanks-givei*s, occiu-red) as the period
of the " black famine," or the year of the ',
typhus. This is a mere fact, which any Irish
laborer can tell the inquiring reader : and
which at once removes all necessity for ;
McCulloch's " notes of admiration ' — mere
fact, presently to be illustrated a httle farther.

But then you imagine this unusual ex- '
port ceased with the scarcity ] Not at all.
Mr. Johann Bool had discovered that the ;
shoemaker's cabbage garden could produce \
for him double its usual quantity when it \
was put to it, and accordingly, save in the '
ensuing year, he has never robbed below i

that standard.* In 1820, two years after,
the exports of Enghsh food, grown in Ire-
land, were (according to McCuUoch) 1,415,-
722 quarter : five years after they amounted
to 2,203,962 quartei's, (another year of Eng-
hsh scarcity, and of course of Irish famine ;)
seven years after that, to within a fraction of
3,000,000 quarters, and six yeai-s after that,
in 1838, to 3,474,302 quarters ; since when
the accounts were " consohdated, " and
nothing was known tiU the '' Great God,"
or " The Great Positive Cause," or " The
Simple Fact That You Cannot Take All
From A Man And Leave Him Anything,"
or whatever else you please to call the unerr-
ing law of cause and eflPect, has thrown up
the balance of the accounts for Ireland, in
the years 1846-7-8-9 and 1850, in a series
of " desolating famines," appeased by '' gen-
erous pity," and thanksgi\-ing English of
nomadic habits. We do not need notes of
admiration to add to that : it is the plain
truth ; neces-arily must have been, some
time, the plain truth.

And while this vast increase of Irish ex-
ports of cereal products was effected — how
about Irish exports of five stock, and animal

* If John had robbed le>-= after the di?covery, he
would have been raanifesfly sruihy of "mi>-govern-
ment of Ireland." It would have been said, agri-
culture, and " civilization,'' and •' enlightened com-
merce" were retrograding in Ireland -the "ad-
vance of civilization." the ' development of the
re-ources of the country," the "melioration of her
condition," being always in the direct ratio of the
increase of plunder taken out of her. "What a
blessed religion it is I thi^ more you rob a man the
better \ou make him, and the better you get : so
that the way for you, reader, to get the most rapidly
to heaven, and bring your neighbor along with you,
i- for you to get rich at his expense, and to make
him poor for your good ; till, after you have died of
apoplexy and fat. and he is thrown into a dead-
house, a stark naked skeleton, your two souls, he
fat and the lean, a~cend hand in hand, treading
the air to the gate of the Cele-tial Eden. Beau-
tiful religion ! You bear with /»*s sorrow-; for
Christ's =ake. as preached by the Church of Queen
and Bishops in England for some five years now,
and he bears with your nefarious tyranny for
Christ's sake, as preached by the Church of Rome in
Ireland, during the same period. Admirable '•eli-
gions ! both Churches ha ving been well paid f< »r the
same, as " the laborer is worthy of his hire'' —
of course he is— Queens of England and Viceroys
of Ireland being "middlemen" to the Almighty,
taking the lea=e of nations out of his hands, and
usins: them as their sub-tenants under the " Head
Landlord," with prie-ts for bailiffs. Splendid i lea
of Divinity, and thoroughly English. Breadinbag
knows it is.

1850.

Who feed England ?

643

food ? The)' increased too, enormously in- '
creased. McCuUocli says, (we quote from
him because we have no better,) " The in-
creased exports of animal produce have been
obtained, not only without any increase, but
with a positive diminution of the land in
pasture." And why ? Because, according
to him, of " stall-feeding." " Stall " fiddle-
stick ! No, but because the farmer, who
previously killed his beef at Christmas, no
longer could afford, under this economic sys-
tem of Eno'lish make, to kill his beef for the
use of his family, but by that inexorable
system was compelled to send his beef to
England to be eaten, that he might get leave
to eat potatoes at home. Because the " wid-
ow woman," as the Irish say, who previously
fed her pig, and killed her pig, and ate her
pig, was no longer permitted to eat her pig,
but was compelled by this economic system
of EngUsh make, to send her pig to Johann
Bool to eat it ; and lastly, because this eco-
nomic system of "coasting trade," " United
Kingdom," " consohdated treasury" and " no
account," was expressly designed to take
away the Irish farmer's beef, and the Irish wid-
ow's pig, and have them eaten by the English.
" United kingdom," quotha ! — reader mine,
suppose you and we were to " unite" on the
same broad principles, viz., what is yours, is
mine, and what is mine — is my own. Do
you not think you would soon find yourself
" starving Irish," meliorated into a " desola-
ting famine," needing fat gentleman, who
have eaten all your produce, animal and
cereal, to turn up their eyes before an audi-
ence ignorant of the facts,and give his thanks
on your behalf, for their " generous pity" —
Ugh !

As to animal produce exported from Ire-
land to England, we need only take an ex-
tract from a table in McCulloch, (ibid.)
showing the relative amount of exports in
two years, ten years apart, viz., 1825 and
1835 ; we have already shown the increase
of cereal produce during the same period : —

Exported from Irelmid.
Cows and Oxen, - - -
Horses, - - - - -
Sheep, - - ■ - -
Swine, - - - - .
Provisions, Bacon and H<ims,

" Beef and Pork,

" Butter,

« Lard, -

num.

CW.'S.

182 .=i.
63,524

3,140
72,191
6o,919

1835.
98,150

4,655
125452
376,191

599,124 379,111

604,253 370,172

474,161 827.009

35,261 70,267

Excepting in two items, (of dead stock,
set off by a more than proportional increase

of live stock,) an enormous increase ; the
cereal produce exported all the while more
than i)i'oportionately increasing, while agri-
culture was not to any extent improving,
the tilled land not extendino- in area worth
accounting for, no reclamations in progress,
and population rapidly on the increase.
" Starving Irish !" How could they be any-
thing else but starving ; if such an economic
system could not have that effect, what else
could ?

Hitherto we have for the most part writ-
ten of but a sino;le item in this lono- account.
Vast quantities, however, of Irish produce
have been exported by English agency and
economy, wholly for EngHsh uses, not "into
Great Biitaiii," but elsewhere, of which it is
impossible for us, under our present circum-
stances, to form any specific estimate. The
statistics in the tables of Irish cereal exports,
in McCulloch, from which we have quoted,
are only parts of " an account of the quanti-
ties of grain, (fee, of the growth of Ireland,
imported into Great Britain from Ireland."
The statistics relative to animal produce are
from his table showing, or pretending to
show, the articles " exported from Ireland "
in certain years, without defining their desti-
nation. Now of all English tables of Irish
exports to England, we have previously
shown the necessary inaccuracy. As to the
latter table of " exports from Ireland " to all
parts, McCulloch does not pretend to ac-
curacy— on the contrary, feeling himself in
the midst of palpable contradictions, he en-
deavors to " ease off " in this style : — " It is
supposed " that many of the articles evidently
omitted, "are returned in the Aggregate
Value of ' Other Articles,' " — that is to say,
" You see we are all wrong, but you will
have the goodness to suppose us all right.'^
Now we have no such goodness. As far as
the returns and tables go, up to 1838, they
show a vast debt to Ireland, vast plunder
by England, and that is true enough, but
insufficient. And accordingly, remember-
ing that such tables of cereal exports of
Ireland as he gives us, are defined as ex-
ported onhj " to Great Britain ;" and such
statistics as he gives us of the whole Irish
export of food, he requests us to suppose
right, knowing them to be vv^rong, we accept
in the largest latitude the following ac-
knowledgment : —

" The exportation of the raw produce of the soil
has always [not right, but no matter} formed the

644

British Policy Here and There :

Dec.

principal commercial bu-iness carried on in Ireland. ]
Duriui^ the late war, she supplied a large share of \
provisloiK required for the army and navy serving I
abroad; and she still sends large supplies to the \
colonial markets. Great Britain, however, is by far |
the best an 1 mostexten-ive market for all sorts of ]
Iri-h produce, and her exports to this country,
especially of corn and flour, and of butter, pigs,
€ggs, (feo., have prodigiously increat?ed."

" Prodigiously increased I" — Well done,
Dominie 1 " Prodigious."

From the above extract, it appears more
food is exported from Ireland for English
uses, than is brought into Great Britain.
It is sent after "the army and navy," to
feed the army and navy — it is sent " to the
colonies " — ^it is sent everywhere and any-
where out of Ireland. During the wars of the
French Revolution, the ports of Belfast, Cork,
&c., were filled with English transport ships
carrying off the food of Ireland, to feed the
armies of Britain in Spain, Portugal, Belg-ium,
France, Egypt, Syria, (tc, of which ex-
ports no account has been rendered. India,
too, has been fought from Seringapatam to
the Sutlej, with Irish "sincAvs of war,"
of which no account either has been ren-
dered. Wherever an Enodish soldier went
to subjugate, an Irish dmner followed on
his heels — of which no return exists, or has
ever existed, excepting " the hsts of killed
and wounded " for England's " glory."

We have given McCuUoch full play and
room. He is the English authority of our
friend Breadinbao- and we thouo-ht it but
fair to show how little he advances to be
relied on, and that anything he does print,
even to " notes of admiration," and facet'ous
expletives from Dominie Sampson's vernacu-
lar, fully bears out our assertion.

But it will be remembered that McCul-
loch offers no statistics of Iiish exports of
food, subsequent to the year 1838 — for the
plain reason, that however plausibly correct
some of the figures he presents may be,
to print any purporting to refer to subse-
quent years would be a ludicrous farce — no
such returns existing pretending to be correct ;
and for all such he has the sino-ular arith-
metical expression for progressive series,
" prodigiotis." Even presuming the statistics
up to 1838, w'hich we have quoted, to be
correct, and taking only for granted that
the ratio of increase durino; the ten or
twenty previous years has been continued
to the present year, the amount of exports
of Irish produce to Great Britain (omitting

to army, navy, colonies, &c.) would average
six millions of quarters, or more. But dur-
ing the intervening period, five years of
famine occurred in Ireland, and the reader
must therefore conclude fi'om what we have
said, that the exports from Ireland to England
must have been increased in proportion to
the severity of that famine which was their
simple and necessary effect — and following
out this law we shall presently prove it to
be strictly true. During the same period
the English " repealed their Corn Laws," that
is, having, after long years' "thorough
draining," exhausted Scotland, Ireland and
Wales, they found they needed even more
food, and accordingly determined to try
their powers of suction on the United States,
and all other countries. It is a base lie to
say that these " Corn Laws were repealed "
to meliorate the condition of the Ldsh — it is
a mistake to imagine that their repeal had
anv such effect ; on the contrary, its effect
was directly the opposite — we assert it open-
ly and plainly, the repeal of the Corn Laws
ao:o;ravated ten-fold the Irish famine. And
in this wise : In every previous year of
famine, a certain quantity of Irish produce
was firmly held on Irish soil. IIoldei*s of
land, whether their farms were great or
small, under such " visitations," or periodic
crises of the English economic system, made
it a rule to " pay no rent," they could not
afford to pay during that year, that is, not to
give up their necessary food and the necessary
food of their families to the landlord and the
tax-gatherer. Small farmers in any pre\ious
famine might have suffered want, but never
starved — nay, wei'e never systematically co-
erced to starve. But in 1846-7-8, the Whig
government of England placed their troops at
the disposal of the Irish landlords, and order-
ed them to " dri\'e the country." The}^ obeyed,
under the pretence that the English Govern-
ment were importing " cheaper food," and
larger quantities of food than there was
grown in Ireland, viz., of " Indian corn " —
that with the refuse of American >farm-
yards, with the off-scourings of the streets
of Smyrna, and the sweepings of Asiatic
granaries, '* the Government would feed and
work the Irish." Accordingly, the land-
lords did " drive the country," lifted every
sheaf of corn, every bushel of grain, sur-
rounded even the growing crops with regi-
ments of soldiery and police, cut them down,
heaped them on carts, and, scatterinej them

1850.

Who feed England ?

645

here and there with prodigal derision along
the roads, carried them, guarded by English
troops, to the ports where the English steam-
ers lay. There the English factor took
the crop, handed the landlord the amount
of his claim — the conditioned bribe for the
plunder of his country and the starvation
of his countrymen — placed the purchase on
board the Enghsh steamers, and next day,
or the day after, the proceeds of the foray
were landed on the wharves of Liverpool,
Bristol, or London. So too of oxen, swine,
sheep, of everything edible ; — it was not an
infrequent sight to see regiments placed
in echelon about a field of doomed wheat —
a brigade on march with skirmishers posted
and the like, encircling a devoted herd of
cattle — a file of infantry, or a squadron of
dragoons, marshalling a calf or a porker
from an empty cabin to the British ships.
In this way the whole produce of Ireland,
durinof the first and most fearful famine,
was lifted bodily off Irish soil and placed on
that of England. It was done at the insti-
gation and by the desire of that Cabinet over
which Lord John Russell still presides ; and
with the approval and for the gain of that
party of which Mr. George Thompson is
the representative here. The Irish land-
lords were merely the unprincipled and
base leaders of the foray. They received
their money — but the English, and the
English alone, ate the plunder. How much
it may exactly have been, no human being
can tell, because every account of it was
purposely omitted or destroyed. The
Enghsh finding at their jiand, with little
expense of carriage, and with no delay of
voyaging and no " uncertainty of the deep,"
an island, in spite of the general scarcity,
abundantly able to feed itsel^, deliberately,
and with knowledge aforethought, plun-
dered it thorough, as a reiven cateran would
a border sheepfold. And so great and so
certain were the incomings of the foray,
that on turning to the London Times of the
period we have specified, and of subsequent
periods, the incredulous reader (and indeed,
reader, you may well be incredulous) will
find it again and again stated, that for
weeks on weeks, " twenty steamers per diem
have arrived in our ports " from " star\dng
Ireland," " laden with produce," — with the
base addendum, that though this statement
may be converted to their diabolical pur-
poses, by seditious or evil-disposed persons,

(meaning certain decent Irishmen,) yet they,
the Times, " think it their duty to mention
it as a remarkable fact," or sometimes they
would say as a "singular coincidence."

But then, why did not the Enghsh govern-
ment and people import direct fi'om Asjil
Minor, or the United States, food for them-
selves ? Simply, because food of Irish gi-owth
was and is better than any which can be
imported ; because the food in Ireland is
nearest to England, and the carriage of it to
England of the least expense ; because the
import of Irish food re(|uires no delay or
uncertainty ; and lastly, because, in addition
to all these gains, it is the cheapest that
could be brought into England-— the best
Irish wheat imported into England, under
the present economic system, being cheaper
in money cost to that country, than the
worst Indian corn could be. The operation
of seizing the crops to pay rent, caiting them
to the ships, selhng them to a factor, and
paying the purchase-money to the Irishman's
landlord, in way of rent, was in nine cases
out often a farce — a sleight of hand by which
England received both the crop and the
purchase-money. For, in nine cases out of
ten, the seizor of the crop was not an Irish
landlord, or acting for an Irish landlord —
buu simply the agent, or collector, or attorney
of men hving in England, and "owning"
land in Ireland, either nominally and vir-
tually by conquest, or virtually by mort-
gages covering the rents of Irish estates.
Thus, when the English factor purchased a
crop, cai-ted to him by such an agent, at-
torney or other, aided by police and soldiery,
and paid money for it to the agent or other
receiver, that money did not remain in
Ireland, was not given to Ireland in heu of
so much food, but w^as immediately remitted
by the party receiving it to his employer
in England. Again and again has it hap-
pened that the very steamer which brought
the crop to the shores of England brought
too the " money " w^hich was nominally paid
for that crop. By law this was legal between
individuals — but between the two nations it
amounts simply to this : that the produce of
Ireland was removed to England, and the
price of it kept there too — England obtained
both crop and money ; Ireland lost her food
and received no substitute.

It was under the pretence of the melio-
rative mission of "Corn Law Repeal," that
this transaction was perpetrated. " Give up

646

British Policy Here and There :

Dec.

your food, poor people, quietly," quoth the
landlords ; " you will not starve, do not be
afraid of it — Government will feed you, will
bring Indian corn and Indian corn meal,
excellent food for you ; plenty of such stuff
^'A\ be here for you before your rotting
potatoes are all rotted, or eaten." And
what was the result? Ireland having been
stripped completely bare of food, was left to
wait on " Transatlantic resources " — on
winter navigation, on the tricks of com-
merce, and the speculation of forestallers ;
her people starved by the million — lay so
thick in death along the waysides, that the
foot passengers fell over them ; while, all the
time, the stores of Liverpool and other
English ports were iilled to bursting with
their food. JVIonths on months after, there
was emptied into the seas and rivers of
Eno-land, wheat and oats and cereal food
by the hundred tons, of Irish growth, which
had spoiled and rotted from being too closely
packed in storage, while, for want of that
very food, the Irish growers of it lay stiff
dead.

But then, " Indian corn " did come, " Gov-
ernment " did " lend money ;" — and what
was done with it? The foreio-n corn was
placed in the hands of the landlord^, or of
" boards " all nominated by landlords, and
three fourths of the members of which, by
" law," were landlords, for distribution to
the " poor." The people were lifted off their
land, just as their crops had been, and set
to cut up roads, to work week after week, and
month after month, at the "reproductive
employment " of digging down holes in hard
gravel, and fiUing them up again. Nor was
this all : as supervisors of this waste of a
nation's industry, whole tribes of English
spendthrifts and half-pay officers were
brought over, to whom were awarded, from
" the loans to the Irish," enormous salaries.
A law was enacted still further to increase
the number of the starving, by which more
than a million of persons were deprived of
house and land, and thrown upon the roads.
No person ever could be admitted as a recip-
ient of the " English charity" save as the land-
lords pleased ; and this atrocious law armed
them still further, by distinctly enacting
that no employment, assistance, or food
should be given to any individual (or his
family) in need thereof, who owned a farm
below a certain standard, unless he first
abandoned it. To qualify a man to be a

beggar, it was enacted that he should be-
come a vagrant. Thus was a universal act
of ejectment brought against a whole class,
previous to that year fixed, at all events,
and as industrious as the laws would permit
them. In the very agony of want, with
fainting wives and star\ing children about
them, tens on tens of thousands accepted
the doom ; tore down their houses, and
abandoned their farms for the promise of a
week's food. Even when the sympathies of
America, and the good offices of the worthy
Turk were excited by this abominable spec-
tacle, Irish landlords, the chosen of the
English Government, and the bailiffs and
drivers for the English people, used the alms
wrung from the hearts of distant nations by
the sufferings themselves infficted, to increase
these suffermgs and their own embezzlement.
Let it be known throughout this country, that
it may never again be possible to practise so
heartless a swindle upon the humanity of
men ; that never again may an Englishman be
believed or trusted when he asks or returns
thanks for " alms for the starving: Irish " —
let it be known, we say, the very food sent
from these shoi'es, and from those of the
Dardanelles, was distributed among " boards
I of guardians," and individual landlords, in
! trust for the people ; and that they were
I trustworthy, w^e need only remark, that it
j was a common habit of the trustees to work
I their tenantry by the day and w^eek, with
j the understanding that they were " working-
I in their rent," paying them at the same
time with " the assistance rendered by this
country, in its generous pity." Never did
an Irishman, with a spark of honor in his
soul, ask for alms for his country ; on the
contrary, individual Irish families have built
up the doors and windows of their houses,
converted them into overground vaults, and
died therein of want and cold, rather than
bend their souls to beggary. Never was a
single voice, known and trusted by Irishmen,
uttered from Ireland during her long years
of suffering, requesting, asking, or begging
loans or alms from any people under the
sun, from the British or the American, or
the Turkish people — never ! But the English
did — they asked, they begged ; filling their
ovm stomachs with the food of the Irish,
they publicly whined over the starving-
owners thereof, (all the while kicking them
and beating them underhand,) till distant
nations were deceived by their stupendous

1850.

Who feed England?

647

hypocrisy. The English begged — the Eng-
hsh received — the English used the alms for
their own profit and gain — made rent out of
them — and let the Enghsh be thankful.
Never have we heard an Irishman of intel-
lect and honor speak, whose sentiments were
not these. The policy of England reduced
them not only to want, but when they were
bearing that want right manfully, the English
press and government had the baseness to
represent them before the world, as beggars —
nay, upon one occasion, actually hired, paid,
and sent over men to Ireland, not one of
them of Irish birth or blood, to get up a
petition for charity to England ! And this
petition was actually presented to the Eng-
lish Queen, whose ministers had paid for its
fabrication, in the very teeth of the protest of
the whole Irish press and people !

We have erred a little from our fair
path to exhibit in its true colors a short
history of a plot, for baseness and hypoc-
risy unexampled in the annals of man-
kind. May it not be without exciting
those who read it to careful thought on that
country, in whose teeth every man with fat
on him seems privileged to throw an insult ;
may it not be either, without exciting the
reader to consider, whether the pohcy, whose
final results we have here described, is not
now actually practised against this country,
with results less only in degree ? If either
hope be fulfilled we shall not have digressed
altogether in vain, nor we hope beyond all
right of pardon.

To resume. During these years of Irish
famine, following the analytical law we have
heretofore mentioned, an excessive amount
of Irish produce must have been carried to
England. True, there was a general scar-
city throughout Europe, but then this scarcity,
as we shall presently show from tables fur-
nished by the English governing persons
themselves, did not exist at all in Ireland.
The potato crop became diseased, and we
may say was utterly lost. But, independently
of the potato crop, we shall see that food
was grown in Ireland, both in that and
every other year, more than amply sufficient
for her population. Meantime let us en-
deavor to arrive at some distinct estimate of
the amount of food per annum, carried out
of Ireland to England for several years back,
under ordinary circumstances, that is, when
there was no famine — or more properly
speaking, when there was no scarcity in

VOL. VI. NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

Engkmd impelling excessive exports from
Ireland, thereby causing famine.

From McCulloch's tables we have quoted
the exports from Ireland to England in 1838,
at 3,474,302 quarters ; taking the average
price of wheat in England that year at 649.
7d. sterling, ($15.50,) (as we find it in the
statistics nearest to our hand. Wade's Hist.
of the Middle and Working Classes, p. 172,)
the value thereof in British currency
would be £10,770,336 (odd) sterhng, or
$53,851,681 50. We have already esti-
mated that, supposing merely the same
ratio of increase which existed prior to 1838
to be continued up to this year, and no
scarcity in England further impelling that
increase, the export of Irish cereal produce
to England would, in 1850, at the same
rate, amount in value to £21,540,672, or
1107,703,363, as the actual normal drain
from Ireland to England of cereal food
alone. We shall verify these estimates
by calculations made on entirely dift'erent
data.

There has fallen into our hands a calcu-
lation made andpubhshedin the year 1847,
by an Irish gentleman whose authority and
truthfulness have never been questioned, we
believe, even by his enemies. It is a calcu-
lation, made from English authorities, of
the amount of cereal and animal produce
then yearly exported from his country to
England, and of the return made for it.
" Thom's Almanac," to which he refers, is,
we believe, a large work published by the
printer to the English Government in Dub-
lin, and contains annually all the statistics
relative to the country which can possibly
be got together from the reports and returns^
of the various boards, commissions, and
courts. The calculation we have referred
to has never been questioned, and we there-
fore give it, although it is below that we
have deduced from the data of McCulloch ;
ours includes only cereal food, — his both
cereal and animal, and it was made three
years previous to that we have given for
1850. It is founded on these truths : 1st, That
Ireland has to pay to England a certain
amount of value yearly ; and 2d, That inas-
much as Ireland exports nothing to England
but food and a certain quantity of linen, the
amount she yearly pays to England, minus
the value of the exported Hnen, must be, and
has been, paid in produce. None can ques-
tion the soundness of the principle; and
42

648

British Policy Here and There

Dec.

tliough the list of items is anything but per-
fect, we give it as we find it : —

1. Rent to absentees (that is, com and cattle)
sent away, for which Ireland receives rent

receipts in retui'n, £ 4,500,000

2. Interest on mortgages, (corn and cattle
sent away, for which we get interest re-
ceipts,) 3,500,000

3. Surplus revenue, (average excess of taxa-
tion on Ireland over expenditure in Ireland ;
it is oi course sent away in the shape of com

and cattle.— See Thorn's Almanac, p. 199,).. 400,000

4. English manufactures, tea, and colonial
produce, imported into Ireland, (paid for, of
course, in corn and cattle.) This we regard

as altogether an under-estimate, 10,000.000

5. Coals, 1,500,000

6. Wine, brandy, flax, flax-seed, and French
and German manufactures, (see, for the item
of flax and flax-seed alone. Thovi's Almanac,

p. 196,) .' 3.500,000

7. Parliamentary expenses on appeals, private

bills, &c., 500,000

£23,900,000
Deduct what we pay for in linen manufac-
tures, 3,000,000

Sent away in corn, cattle, poultry, &c., .£20,900,000

So that this estimate for 1847 varies
from that we have previously made for 1850,
from the data by McCulloch, but by a few
hundreds, — a striking proof of its accuracy
in general years. It includes animal pro-
ducts, however, and so far differs from oui-s.

The author adds, after some remarks on
the chfficulty of arriving at a true estimate :
"It is the more essential that Irishmen
should try to gain accurate information on
these points, because the English (who eat
our bread) take pains to conceal from us how
much of it they eat, and for that purpose
have allowed no accounts of this traffic to be
kept for the last twelve yearsP (The Italics
are in the original.)

This estimate was made by a man who
has since paid the penalty of " trying to gain
accurate information on these points." The
author is Mr. John Mitchel. To the esti-
mate itself we wish to direct the attention of
the reader.

1st. It was made entirely from English
authorities, and deduced from tables refer-
ring to periods prior to the famine ; and
therefore, inasmuch as it did not allow for
the greater drain on Ireland in consequence
of the scarcity in England, is deficient for the
year in which it was made, 1847, and for
subsequent years, (for we have already seen
that once Irish exports are screwed up to a
certain figure, no matter how great, they
.are never permitted to go below it.)

2d. The items for " parliamentary ex-
penses ■' and " interest of mortgages " are

under-estimates, as investigations have since
proved that the interests payable on mort-
gages alone amount to vastly more than
the amount stated. In one province it far
exceeds the entire rental.

3d. Many items of " absenteeism " have
since been added, not existing in the year
1847; as, for instance, the "instalments"
and " interest " yearly payable from eveiy
county and " poor-law division " in Ireland,
for " loans " made during the famine years.

4th. The item paid in corn and cattle for
"German and French manufactures, &c.,"
goes direct to England, — England trades
her manufactures in France and Germany ;
is the carrier to England, and again the
carrier to Ireland. Thus she buys with
cloth, and pen-knives, and Britannia metal
spectacles in shagreen cases, " fancy articles"
on the continent of Europe, and sells them
again to the Iiish for food. It is merely
lengthening the ^vizard tube, — putting in
corn and cattle in Ireland, and taking out
cotton pocket-handkerchiefs in Germany, —
England thereby making three profits, those
of manufacturer, carrier, (to and fro,) and bro-
ker of foreign manufactures. As to the fifth
item, we may also remark, that there are coal
fields in Ireland in abundance wholly un-
touched, because they are " royalties," and
so can only be owned or worked by land-
lords.*

oth. But even takino- the above estimate
by Mr. Mitchel as correct, it is divisible in
the main into two categories : 1st, the ex-
ports for which Ireland gets something;
and, 2d, the exports for which she gets
nothing. We shall now class them so : —

CLASS A. — VALUE OF EXPORTS FOR WHICH SOME RE-
TURN IS GIVEN.

Item 4. Price of English manufactures, tea, and

colonial produce, £10,000,000

Itcmb. Price of coals, 1,500,000

Item 6. Price of wine, brandy, flax and flax-
seed, and French and German manufac-
tures, 3,500,000

Total, Class I., £15,000,000

Dividing, on the other hand, the imports
in this class into imports which are capable

* If a tenant discoYer a coal or other mine upon
his farm, or even an old stick in the earth, he can-
not touch the mineral or use the stick ; his duty is
to inform his landlord, who, if he pleases, can
then turn the tenant and discoverer out, bring
workmen into the farm, and work the mine for his
own gain.

1850.

Who feed England ?

649

of reproducing wealtli, and those which are
perishable and utterly unproductive, we find
that the solitary item capable of reproduc-
tion is flax and flax-seed, if we except in-
deed so much of the coals as may be used
in smelting, (a very limited operation there,
and one for which the mines of Ireland offer
coal equally good, and her bogs, with the
merest digging and pressing, a fuel acknowl-
edged by the most eminent chemists in Eu-
rope to be infinitely superior,) — excepting,
we say, these, Jlax and Jiax-seed are the only
commodities of value to the national indus-
try imported, for the whole £15,000,000,
($75,000,000 ;) and even of these England
is not the producer, but merely the carrier
from Holland, Riga, Kronstadt, and the
ports on the Baltic. So that even for the
solitary branch of industry left the Irish,
they have to pay England a bribe by way
of employing her shipping.

At best therefore this system of trade is
one of thorough exhaustion. England takes
Carolinian cotton and Irish wheat, fuses
them in the alembic of an Eno-Hshman's

stomach, and produces thereout " dry goods,"
which she again sells to the Carolinian for
more of his raw produce, and to the Irish-
man for more of his ; and thus she lives and
grows rich, simply by eating^ — by using, as
Mr. Carey tersely remarks, the " machine of
the human stomach," (a machine common
to all other nations, if they had only the
power and wit to use it,) and digesting
" bales." Whatever may be the case of the
Carolinian, there is a heavy tax against Irish
stomachs being used in that style. It is
transportation to tell an Irishman to use his
stomach that way, or to teach him how to
get rid of the tax against his using his own
stomach that way ; and to help him to get
I'id of it, in the only way possible to get rid
of it, is only hanging.

We have said, at best — but then the best
is a very exaggerated good. The fact is
simply this: All these imports (excepting
English-made tea for the class above the
" poor ") are brought to Ireland, not for the
benefit of those who grew the food which
paid for it, but for an idle and non-pro-
ducing class ; for the landlords, professional
gentlemen, " people in situations," that is,
people paid by English hands from Irish
taxes, and the like. And the course of this
trade is just this : A man who has never pro-
duced the value of one cent, who has hved all

his life without raising forhimself or his neigh-
bors or his country as much as would lunch
a mosquito, when he needs or desires a coat,
calls an importer of cloth to him, and takes
the coat ; then, by way of paying for it, he
calls a working farmer to him, one of his
" tenantry," and griping the poor man's cow
by the ear, hands it over to the cloth-man ;
and the operation is complete. The clothier
walks oft' and exports the cow to England
for more cloth; the landlord puts on his
new coat, and makes himself comfortable ;
and the man who owns the cow, and did not
get the coat, walks his way too, quite satisfied
that it is all done in the course of " civiliza-
tion," according to the " rights of property,"
and by " law." And so of wine, brandy,
" French and German manufactures," &c.

Hence these imports, for which the enor-
mous yearly sum of £15,000,000 sterhng is
paid, (excepting a mere fraction for flax-seed,
payable to Holland or Russia, and not to
England, but out of which England takes
her profits,) are really no return whatever to
the people who pay for them. As far as
their interest goes, they might as well have
given utterly away without the name of re-
turn, so much of their hard-wrought produce
as might have been equivalent in the Eng-
lish market (paying in addition for waste
and transport) to £15,000,000 sterhng.
For we undertake to say that out of every
ten men in Ireland, you will not find more
than one who, for ten years, has seen a new
coat, or drank one glass of wine. As for
French fancy articles, and German Buhl-
work, and Geneva watches, and brandy ! —
brandy, at twenty-five cents per glass, (the
average,) may be a very inebriating nectar,
but is not exactly the beverao-e suited to a
surplus person who does not own his own
cow ; nevertheless his landlord drinks it, and
he pays for it ; his landlord has Buhl-work
and Geneva watches for self and wife, and he^
poor tenant, pays for them — pays for the who]e
to the Englishman, profit of manufacture,
profit of carriage, profit of sale — with, his cow.
We now turn to category B : —

CLASS B. VALUE OF EXrORTS YOT. TTniCH THERE 18

NO RETURN.

Item. 1 . Rent to absentees, X 1,500,000

Itcvi 2. Interest on m-ortgagos, 3,500,000

Ittm 3. Surplus revenue, 400,000

Item 7. Parliamentary expenses, &e., 500,000

Total exports of food for which there
is no return, save paper acknowl-
edgments oftbeir receipt, £8,900,000

650

British Policy Here and There :

Dec,

We may take these items in class B as
fixed quantities, not liable to change from
year to year by any circumstances, seldom
varying above or below a fixed standard,
whatever that may be ; and, though we
think the above a very low estimate, yet
here we find that, for fifty yeare at all
events, Ireland has been papng a yearly
tribute to England of £9,000,6oo"'sterling, —
a tribute for which Ireland has received not a
shilling or shiUing's worth in return ; and
which she has paid in raw produce, the dear-
est of all media of exchange. Totting it up
therefore for fifty years, she has paid in this
way to England £450,000,000 sterling —
more than half the entire national debt of
England ; or in our currency —

AMOUNT OF TRIBUTE IX FOOD PAID BY IRE-
LAND TO ENGLAND, FROM 1800 TO 1850,
WITHOUT ONE SHILLING OF RETURN

Two thoasand two hundred and fifty mil- |
lions of dollars.

Now pray, sir, who feed the English ?

But the reader ydW have remarked that
the amount of food paid to England yearly,
(in class A,) for which a nominal return was
^iven, may be taken almost as equally pro-
fitable to England with the ''tribute,'' or
Irish export without return (in class B) — at
all events, one thing is clear, taking Irish
farmers in the mass, either class of exports
is equally profit-^^5S to them. As to Eng-
land, she produced nothing of the return,
merely handed back to Ireland some of the
food she had prenously taken, and some of
the cotton she carried from the States or
India. She obtained " employment for her
population " — a very necessary article with
her — raw stuff on which to employ their
hands, and food with which to pay them
while employed ; and the profit of the manu-
facture was all her own, though the industry
of her people or the resources of her soil
were not expended on the production of a
particle of its ingredients. As to the Irish
farmer, it made little matter to him whether
the English people retained the price of his
crop or cattle, or whether their deputies in
Ireland received that price — he received
none of it at all events ; and accordingly
we find that the workers of the L'ish soil
pay yearly (according to Mr. Mitchel's esti-
mate) to England without returns to them

(£15,000,000 + £9,00,000 — £3,000,000
[linen exports]==£2 1,000,000 sterhng, or)
§105,000,000, — that is, an annual drain has
been going on for years to that amount, —
in heu of which not a single atom, even
of manure, is returned to the soil which
grows food to that amount, or to its grow-
ers.

Again we say this is a system of thorough
drainage, of complete exhaustion ; and that
we may arrive at some estimate of the
amount of food England has thus taken out
of Irish soil, without returning to it an atom,
take the average as between £21,000,000
in 1847, £10,000,000, in 1837-8, (animal
and cereal produce together) and £5,441,318
(or £5,500,000^) in 1 8 1 7-1 8 ; and we find the
average export of Irish produce to England
since the union, to be £12,500,000 per
annum, — which, computed for fifty yeai-s,
amounts to the enormous sum of £625,000,-
000 of money, (animal produce being al-
most altogether omitted from the computa-
tion ;) or in our currency —

AMOUNT or CEREAL FOOD FURNISHED BY

THE •• STARVING IRISH " TO ENGLAND

THE UNION, WITHOUT THE RE-

7 •

SINCE

TURN OF A CENTS WORTH BY ITS CON-
SUMERS TO THE SOIL W^HICH GREW IT-

Three thonsand one hundred and t^renty-
fire naillions of dollars.

Thorough exhaustion, is it not ? And now,
pray, sir, who feed the English ?

But we fear the reader has not even yet
realized the amount of this exhaustion. Let
us set it more plainly before him. The larg-
est estimate of the whole produce of the
United States amounts to one thousand
millions per annum, at this present time.
McCulloch computes its entire exports
to all countries in the world in 1842, at
$104,691,534 ; but that this was an under-
estimate, we have only to recall the return
o;iven by the London Morning Herald (vide
this Ile\-iew, Nov., p. 531) at 135,000,000
dolls, to England alone. However, suppose

* In 1817-18 there was exported (McCulloch)
from Ireland to Great Britain alone, 1204733
quarters, cereal produce, wheat being 9-ls. per
quarter, (Wade, History of the Middle and Work-
ing Classes, p. 172,) equivalent to £5,441,318 and
a fraction ; throwing off fractions, and omitting
animal produce exported altogether, we say, far
below The mark, £5,500,000, or $27,500,000.

1850.

Who feed England ?

651

it $105,000,000 in the whole, having Eng-
lish authority for that ; and we find that
Ireland has exported as much value in raw
produce to England every normal year of the
last ten, as the whole United States did to
the whole world of all their exports, their
average produce amounting, on the whole,
to $1,000,000,000 per annum.

Again, the area of Ireland is estimated at
(McOulloch) (lakes, &c., included) 31,874
square miles, of which, we shall presently
show from English authority, not more than
one fourth is under cultivation. The State
of Maine alone (McCulloch, Geog. Die, art.
Maine) is estimated to contain 30,000
square miles. The population of Ireland
was in normal years (i. e. without famine)
8,000,000 ; the population of Maine was in
1840, 501,793. So that an island just as
large as the State of Maine, one fourth of
the soil of which alone is cultivated, and
which numbered sixteen times the popula-
tion of Maine to eat any food it might pro-
duce, was made under this British system of
economy, known now as " free trade," to
yield to England as much food yearly as is
equivalent in value to the whole exports of
the whole United States — and that without a
cent's worth of return to its soil for fifty
years.

We beheve it impossible to find such an
example of " thorough drainage," or pro-
ductive swindhng, in all history. In com-
paiison with it the system of imperial
Rome, the regime of Assyria and Semiramis,
the bondage inflicted by the Pharaohs on
the children of Israel, and which it needed
the hands of a Great God to break, sink
into mere vulgar and very stupid bagatelle.
Out of this little island of Ireland, not
larger than Maine, the English Government
have taken in food alone, three times the
highest yearly production of the whole
United States. Subject the United States
to such a system of thorough exhaustion,
and would not its people too, even with
their thousand millions per annum, become
" starving Irish ?" How could they become
anything else ? Talk of the hand of the
Almighty — the visitation of God, forsooth,
as the cause of the starvation of the Irish
people — it is mere blasphemy ; the hand of
the Almighty could not, no visitation of
supernatural existence could, save a people,
subject to such enormous robbery for any
series of years, from starvation. It is against

the laws the Creator has constructed for the
being of men, that such could be.

But then the reader may fancy that we
have placed too much reliance on the esti-
mate made by Mr. Mitchel ; may also s,ay,
that, however true that estimate may have
been for general years, it must have been
far too high for the years in which there
was famine in Ireland. To which we
answer — Mr. Mitchel's estimate, as we shall
presently show, on evidence furnished by the
English Government itself, was in any cir-
cumstances far below^ the mark, and for
the years in which Ireland suffered under
excessive export, (or, as they say, under
" famine," the consequence of the export,)
and more particularly for the years 1847—
8-9, farther below the mark. It is an
error, leading to we know not what absurd
conclusions, to suppose that Irish " famine "
is owing to failure of produce in Ireland, or
deficiency of produce. Whenever, we re-
peat, a famine occurs in Ireland, you may
rest certam that the exports of food to Eng-
land in that year have been increased to an
enormous amount ; and, e contra, when the
exports are high, conclude Irish w^ant and
misery in the direct ratio of their increase.
Plenty, and we shall not say ease or happi-
ness, but mere animal contentment and heal-
thy digestion, are and must be in an inverse
ratio to the increase of exports. This is a
broad principle, of which we have already
given some examples, and which we shall
presently follow to the proof with as rigid
exactitude as if we were demonstrating a
mathematical analysis.

" But about the potatoes," did not they
fail ? Certainly they did. But what does
that amount to ? The value of the whole
potato crop of Ireland has never been more
than a mere fraction of the yearly agricul-
tural produce. To sustain themselves under
the enormous thorough drainage we have
above shown, the tillers of the soil and
those dependent on them were obliged to
sink down to the use of a root as food,
which gave vast bulk for little labor, and
which was so worthless and perishable r^
an article of export, as to be beneath the
cupidity of either the landlords or the Eng-
hsh. Its bulk, its low value, its perishable
nature, rendering it incapable of transport
or close storage, are its best quahties in the
eyes of those who are permitted to retain
nothing transportable. But even when that

652

British Policy Here and There :

Dec.

whole potato crop perished, ample food re-
mained in Ireland to pay its entire rental
fourfold. The very harvest prior to the
great famine — the harvest to the supposed
failure of which ignorant persons and false-
speaking Englishmen attribute the famine —
produced more than double the quantity of
cereal food necessary to feed the whole pop-
ulation of Ireland. For three years this
famine continued, and the harvest of the
second year of its duration produced cereal
food alone for two and a half times its popula-
tion ; and this, notwithstanding the waste of
the nation's industry on roads, and the utter
exhaustion by export to England of the pre-
vious year's produce — that is, of all the na-
tion's capital for a new crop. The produce
of either year would, we say, have more
than paid the whole rental of Ireland four-
fold. Moreover, the scarcity in England
necessarily insured, as compared with years
of plenty, larger prices for equal quantities,
and hence Ireland could have paid her
regular tribute and normal drain to Eng-
land, in those years of English scarcity, in
money value, with a less quantity of crop ;
that is to say, by the law of exchange, the
drain in food from Ireland in years of English
scarcity would be less in quantity of food and
equal in money value with general years.
The Irish would export less and be bet-
ter paid — the Enghsh import less, and pay
more.

This was clearly the very opposite of what
the Enghsh desired — they determined not
to be satisfied with even the quantity of
food exported to them from Ireland in
ordinary years — they determined to have
the whole crop, and pay as little as possible
for that same. Accordingly, as the phrase
is, " the screw was laid on ;" the process of
squeezing everything out of the country
was resorted to ; and opportunities were
favorable for its action. Arrears of rent
w^ere due to the landlords ; and besides arrears,
rent was legally/ due for the crop in the
gi'ound, although by the custom of "Irish
tenancy," as distinguished from "English
tenancy," rent for any one year is not paid
to the landlord, nor is it customarily payable
until the " gale-day," or period of payment,
subsequent to the harvesting and sale of the
crop grown in that year ; that is to say,
rents for the year 184Y were not payable
by custom^ though legally due, till the May
and November of 1848. The landlor(&

were, therefore^ directed by the administra-
tion of Lord John Russell to insist on
their legal rights — that is, to lift two
years'' rent off the island, and all arrears
for previous years, or so much of the whole
as they could exact, and that in a year of
"famine." The Enghsh forces in Ireland
were placed at the disposal of the landlords,
and every magistrate, officer, and subordinate
received orders to support them. The
demand fell like a shock upon the people,
the greater portion of whose crops were yet
in the ground. These w^ere surroimded as
we have described, and carried oft' to the
English ships. The factors paid what price
pleased them, and the landlord cared httle
about exacting the highest value, desiring
to have another opportunity of seizing the
subsequent crop. Thus the English ob-
tained more amount in quantity^ and at a
less rate, than in ordinary years. Every
other means calculated to effect the same
result was resorted to, English holdei's of
mortgages on Irish estates were directed to
insist on their claims, not personally by the
government, as in the case of the landlords,
but mediately through their bankei^ and
the "moneyed interest." Every English
creditor pushed his claims on Ireland with
the savagery of the Venetian Jew ; and the
Bank of London, being under the direct
control of the English Cabinet, actually or-
dered the Bank of Ireland to reneio no billSy
or give no bills on any tejins. The deter-
mination of screwing every atom possible out
of the country was fully effected ; landlords
drove, plundered, sold, and exterminated ;
merchants pushed their creditors to save
themselves from immolation under "the
screw," seized the effects of those creditors far
and near, and sold them — again their effects,
too, were seized and sold ; and thus numbers
of merchants and tradespeople till then
comfortable, and passing wealthy, struggled
against the overwhelming force, not knowing
what ailed them ; made bankrupts of others
in self-defence, were made bankrupt in their
turn, and thrown out upon the world as beg-
gars. In this way all classes were struck
down, and every house and farm gutted.
The whole proceeds were paid over to
England in the only commodity of Irish
export — food. And so the whole island was
divested of every atom of its harvest pro-
duce ; the number of paupers was increased
from 2,500,000 (more than one fourth of

1850.

WTio feed England .

653

the whole population) to between four and five
milhons, (one half the whole population,)
of which number fully two millions have
since perished, or have fled the country ; the
remaining half, or two milhons, who have
survived, are still paupers, fed by taxes
raised for the purpose of feeding them
totally independent of all other drains, im-
posts and tributes, levied on the people — and
these " paupers " must ever remain so,
utterly worthless, utterly emasculated, ut-
terly debased ; a non-productive, spiritless,
pitiable herd, moping idiotically through
putrid-smelling corridors, gulping, when a
bell sounds, so much of the offal of nations
as may be allotted to them, and sleeping in
unseemly filth, with no higher hope than
that the morrow may bring some offal with
it too. Not alone was harvest after harvest
carried off, but under pretence of a base and
hypocritical " civiKzation," a system was
adopted of penning up the plundered like
swine, and feeding them " through charity,"
with the refuse of the world ; " mehorating
the desolating famine," by making brutes of
the survivors !

But the reader is tired of horrors — we
will permit him to take a recess on figures,
in order to exhibit fully, from English
authority, the truth that Ireland raised in
the year of her worst misery, more than
ample food for her population, and to show
that Mr. Mitchel's computation for 1847
was far below the mark-
In the year 1848, the Viceroy Clarendon,
by direction of his confreres in England, in-
stituted a commission for the purpose of
inquiring, with exactitude and care, into
the amount of food grown, in 1847, in
Ireland. The chief aorent selected for this

purpose was a person named Larcom, a
captain of engineers in rank, and for a long
period employed, for his abihty and perspi-
cuity, as a statist by the Irish Govern-
ment. This gentleman made his report,
which was subsequently published. We
cannot now condense it for our readers ; but
happily we have fallen in with an ai'ticle
from the London Standard newspaper of
the time, which being a thorough Irish-
hating organ, much favored by the Russell
cabinet, we here quote at length. It saves
us all trouble : —

" Amongst the monstrous mass of unreadable
trash from time to time published at a vast ex-

pense by the House of Commons, there now and
then appears a volume containing information that
is really useful and important. Such is that one
lately presented to Parliament by command of her
Majesty, containing a minute account of every de-
scription of agricultural produce in every district of
Ireland, drawn up by Mr. Thomas A. Larcom, of
the Board of Works, by the order of Lord Claren-
don. The volume, or blue book, extends to 92
folio pages, which, with the exception of four pages
occupied by the report, are wholly filled with
tables exceedingly minute and clear. The country
is much in debt to Lord Clarendon for giving this
important document, which his lordship may rest
assured is the true way to let the world know the
real condition and value of Ireland, by which
means the evils that afflict her can only be correctly
known, and the proper remedies to remove these
applied, and which will put down for ever every
O'Connell and Mitchel agitation.

"We are promised speedily another volume,
with an account of the stock of every description,
and the produce thereof in Ireland. We shall
look for this with great eagerness, as it cannot
fail to be exceedingly useful and interesting. In
the meantime we proceed to bring before our
readers the following summary of the present
volume, premising that the price affixed to each
description of produce is our own work : —

"agricultural produce IRELAND, 1S47.

Extent.

Produce.

Acres.

Quarters.

Value.

Wheat, - - 743,871

2,926,733

£7,316,832

Oats, - - 2,200,870

11,521,606

13,249,846

Barley, - - 283,587

1,379,029

2,758,058

Bere, - - 49,068

274,016

411,024

Rye, - - - 12,415

64,094

126,180

Beans, - - 23,760

31.3,579

84,456

211,140

Acres.

Tons,

Potatoes, - - 284,216

2,048,934

8,606,-523

Turnips, - 370,344
Mangel Wurzel, 13,766

5,760,616 )
247,269 i;

3,841,100

Other Green Crops, 59,512

729,064

892,680

727,738

8,785,144

Hay, - - - 1,138,946

2,190,317

1,866,684

6,570,957

10,975,461

Cwts.

Flax, - - 58,312

58,312
338,575

349,872
£

974,780

Total acres 5,

44,958,120

" The first thing that arrests our attention is, that
little more than one fourth of the surface of Ireland
(the gross contents are 20,26-2,641 statute acres)
is cultivated for what is technically denominated
agricultural produce. This fact shows what room
must remain for improvement under this head, and
to what a great extent profitable and wholesome
employment may be found in Ireland for the
population of that fine country, instead of forcing
them away to cultivate the lands of strangers in
other quarters of the world. But, then, to accom-
plish and to secure the object mentioned, we must
cease to send our money and our means to culti-
vate the banks of the Ohio, the Mississippi, the
Vistula, and the Dnieper, (fee, (fee,"

654

British Policy Here and There

Dec.

The Englishman, of course, draws no
other conckision from the above than that
such a country is still a splendid field for
more plunder ; our conclusions are rather
to the esse than the posse — not as to how
much more may be squeezed out of Irish
soil, but as to how much that soil really
grew while its population were starving ;
and how that growth was disposed of.

Of cereal vegetable food alone she grew
in 184'7, (the year of the great famine,)
therefore, £44,958,120, (£45,000,000,
nearly,) or in our currency, $225,000,000 —
more than one fifth^ and nearly one quarter^
the entire produce of the United States in
the same year^ — Ireland being just as large
as Maine, and having but one fourth of the
soil cultivated. We are entitled to consider
this as a sufficient yearns food for twenty
millions of human beings — allowing fifty
shiUings British, a head, for all ages and
sexes.

Now what became of it ?
Almost every atom of this immense
cereal produce was carried to English soil,
to feed Englishmen.

We prove this fact as follows : —
1st. None of it was carried elsewhere.
If it left the Irish soil, it went to England.

2d. All was carried off which was not
consumed in Ireland. These two proposi-
tions will not be questioned.

3d. The population of Ireland numbered,
prior to the famine, about 8,000,000— of
this the famine swept aw^ay, by death or
compulsory emigration, more than one mil-
hon in 184Y ; but not to be particular, we
shall take 8,000,000 as the standing popu-
lation of Ireland. Suppose every one of
these 8,000,000, then, to have been fully fed
on their own produce, (excluding animal
food, as it is not included in the above ab-
stract,) a certain quantity of surplus cereal
and vegetable food over and above what could
have been used in Ireland remained, and was
not consumed in Ireland. It was therefore
carriea lo England, in amount equal to the
yearly sustenance of 12,000,000 of human
beings.

But the Irish eight millions did not eat
their own food. One half of them, or four
millions of human beings, are shown by
English returns under the poor laws to have
been " paupers " during that year — they
were not, therefore, fed on Irish food, on
any of the above food, but on Indian

corn, slop and vegetable oflfal, procured by
" charity," or " loaned " by the Enghsh
Government. Therefore, cereal and vege-
table food for four millions more human
beings was that year carried to England —
so that, supposing the remaining four mil-
lions in Ireland, who were not legal " pau-
pers," to have eaten their own food and
lived well, (a " prodigious" supposition in its
way !) there was cereal food of Irish growth^
sufficient for the yearly sustenance of six-
teen millions of human beings^ carried fronn
Irela.nd to England^ of the harvest o/"184Y.
Is there any wonder there was a famine left
behind ? In other words, four fifths of the
whole produce of Ireland for that year was
carried to England ; or returning to Captain
Larcom's estimate made by order of Viceroy
Clarendon, and by " command of her Majes-
ty," the exports of cereal and vegetable food
alone, from Ireland to England, during one
year of Irish famine, amounted to (four
fifths of £44,950,120,) £35,956,496, (nearly
thirty-six milhons of pounds British,) or in
our currency —

THE WAY TO "MELIORATE A DESOLATING

FAMINE."

Take out of an island about the size of
Maine, without giving a cent's worth in
return, save about one twentieth in maize
meal, the best wheat, flour, and agricul-
tural products of its native growth, to
the value of one hundred and eighty
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS per annum.

Result. — The famine is '^mehorated !"

The previous year's exports were much
higher, and produce greater — for the coun-
try had not been exhausted, and the full
complement of land was in tillage. In no
year since have the yearly exports been
below that figure. Remembering, therefore,
that from the above abstract all account of
animal produce is omitted, (a small fraction
of which is consumed in Ireland,) and re-
membering, too, the " twenty steamships per
diem" laden on deck with oxen, sheep, SAvine,
poultry, &c., &c., from the ports of Ireland
to those of England, and we shall not be far
wrong in stating the amount of yearly ex-
ports from Ireland to England at forty
millions of pounds sterling, or two hundred
millions of dollars^ exactly one fifth the

1850.

Who feed England ?

655

entire produce of the United States, and
exactly double of Mr. Mitcliel's estimate.

Here then is brought into England, food
to the yearly value of two hundred millions
from Ireland — food sufficient for the neces-
sities of a population of sixteen millions.
What becomes of it ? The voracity of
Englishmen is great, and their capacity for
holding food rather enormous. But still,
what becomes of it ? " Oh, it is expoi-t-
ed — we export food," answers Mr. Blenkin-
sop. Now, Mr. Blenkinsop, nothing saves
you from ha^'ing therein told a falsehood,
except the fact that your language is equivo-
cal. If you mean to say that England is, or
ever has been, since the days of Doctor
Bell, a grain or raw produce exporting
country, you have committed a mistake, or
told a lie. If, however, you mean that
your country exports " food " as slie exports
cotton, viz., digested into " bales," or fused
with iron in the alembic of the human
stomach, into cutlery, or " spectacles," then
we agree with you. England does export
food, Irish food, and American food, and
food brought from the Baltic, from Podolia,
from Smyrna, from The Levant, from Italy,
from Suez, from India, from China, from
Africa, from all places under the blue dome
of a witnessing heaven — after she has eaten
it ; and drives a good trade too with the
deposit-— or, as Mr. Carey, answering such an
Englishman as Blenkinsop, (in the publica-
tion from which we have already quoted,)
once expressed it more powei-fuUy and
justly than it is within the grasp of our
poor pen to do : —

" England doea export more food " says Mr.
Carey, " tlian any coimtry of the world. Of her
fifty millions of exports, more tlian two thirds
consist of food. She takes the potatoes of Ire-
land, the wheat of Poland and of the Black Sea,
the rice of India and Carolina, the sugar of Ja-
maica and Brazil, the coffee of Cuba and Carac-
cas, compresses them into the smallest possible
form by means of the laboratory of the human
stomach, and thus is enable; 1 to export food to the
amount ot more than thirty milHons sterling ;
while the people of these United States, pro-
ducing annually a thousand millions of bushels of
f,)od for man, and a thnusand millions of pounds
of cotton, are compelled for want of the light and
easily transported, and comparatively inexpen-
sive machinery by aid of which their food and
their wool could be converted into cloth, to send
both to a distance of thousands of miles, obtaining
a single bale of cloth for five bales of cotton, and
thus losing on the road and in the work of trans-

portation a large portion of the product of their
labor.

"England exports more food than any other
country, and fhe imports more. She realizes in
perfection the theory of the teachers who desire
that we should see in the amount of exports and
imports the measure of a country's prosperity.
According to them, the more ships, and wagons,
and men, that can be employed in the work of
transportation and exchange, the more rapid must
be the growth of wealth and happiness. If we
speak with them of the poverty and wretched-
ness of Ireland, we are referred to the amour.t of
imports and exports for evidence that she is be-
coming richer and more prosperous. If we refer
to the depopulation of India, we are assured that
she exports more than ever, and must, therefore,
be increasing in prosperity. If we point to the
superiority of the condition of the Chinese, as
compared with the people of Hindostan, we are
assured that a large external commerce is indis-
pensable to any advance in civilization, and that
the poor people of China are so deficient therein,
that it is lawful and Christian-like to batter down
their towns and destroy their inhabitants, in order
that those who remain may enjoy the blessings of
that system which has exhausted and depopulated
India."

With the above extract we might safely
close ; we are compelled however to notice
one item more.

If Ireland exports to England this vast
amount of food yearly, — if America, as she
does, exports an amount not far below it, —
(the ports of England since the repeal of
the Corn Laws " having been opened to the
harvests of the world,") — if to these contri-
butions of food be added food imports by
England from the various countries of South
Araerica,Oceanica, Africa, Asia, and the great
central plain of Europe, whether the produce
pour itself into her ships on the Baltic, or
the Mediterranean, or the Dardanelles, —
how much then remains of the population
of England fed on the produce of Eng-
land ?

We are enabled to give an inkling of an
answer.

1st. The best food for the people of any
country is that native to the country ; and it
always commands, ceteris paribus, the high-
er price. The course of native agricultural
trade is always from the market-garden and
farm to the great city and its wealthy in-
habitants. Therefore the most natural hy-
pothesis is, that the food grown in England
feeds, 1st, the laborer on the farm ; 2d, the
holder of the farm ; 3d, the landlord and
wealthy classes of the cities. If the produce
be great, classes below the wealthy become

656

British Policy Here and There : Who feed England ?

Dec.

the recipients of native produce, " and if not,
not."

2d. The interest of manufacturers is to
feed their workmen with cheap food ; and,
situated as England is, (with high rents, &c.,)
the food grown therein is the dearest in
Europe, ceteris paribus. Again, the interest
of manufacturers is to exchaiifre their manu-
factures directly for food; whatever its
money price may be, it becomes the cheapest
to them. Hence we conclude that the nat-
ural hypothesis, with reference to imported
food, is, that its consumption begins with the
lower classes, and goes up ; extending itself
even to the highest classes in cases of ex-
treme national want, — " and if not, not."

Hence, remembering the excessive im-
ports of foreign food into England, we be-
lieve we are justified in concluding that the
food grown in England, whatever its amount
may be, is consumed by the agricultural
laborers, the farmers, the landlords, and the
professional and wealthy classes. The work-
ing and pauper population live on foreign
and cheaper food.

With this guide, it is easy to determine
what proportion of the population of Eng-
land is dependent on foreign nations for
Hfe:—

In 1841 (we have no census since that period,)
the total population of England was —
(Wade's Hist. Mid. and Work. Class.,
p. 169,) 14,995,508

CONSUMERS OF NATIVE FOOD.

Of this the total agricultural, ... 4,057,114

The total metropolitan, 5,537,560, for which al-
low 1,000,000 lor professional and wealthy-
classes, (a high estimate,) consuming native
food, 1,000,000

Total consumers of native food, 5,057,114

CONSUMERS OF IMPORTED FOOD.

Total manufacturing population in 1841, (much

increased since,) ----- 5,310,452

Balance of metropolitan population, - - 4,537,560

Total consumers of imported food, 9,848,012

Or nearly ten millions — that, is out of
every three human beings in England, two

are dependent on foreign nations for their
" daily bread ;" but one is supported by his
country — ^but one has a country ; or, in
other words, build a wall round England, cut
her off from other nations by war or other-
wise, and two thirds of her population must
starve. At present these two thirds are a
floating mass, called workmen when there
is raw produce in the mill-ownei*s' hands with
which to work and feed them ; and " pau-
pers," when there is not.

And this is England as she is ! A bully
and a beggar, an extortioner and a bank-
rupt— the exhauster of the world, now so
utterly exhausted by her vices that she
hangs for life upon the quiet or folly of her
former enemies !

Breadinbao", and thou Freemeale, and thou
beloved Wetgullet, and thou illustrious scion
of the never-to-be-forgotten family of Blen-
kinsop, adieu !

To the general reader we owe an apology.
We have been compelled to exorcise for ever
a foul, mocking demon, raised up against us
by unholy wiles. We have for a long while
used against it full many a prayer, not pre-
scribed in the Rubric ; and, at last, were
forced, for the credit of our cloth, to turn
round boldly, and, with all our spiritual
might, wrestle with the besetting Evil One in
our friend Breadinbag. We trust it is the
last time we shall so have to err. The present
paper is merely supplementary to the last.
Our original plan will be henceforth ad-
hered to.

We have been further compelled for
the present month to limit ourselves to
a fixed number of pages. This has co-
erced us to heap together many figures in
a small space, and has prevented us from
developing much which has been, in the
foregoing pages, barely glanced at. W^e shall
at a future period embrace all omissions in a
distinct paper of the series on " Absentee-
ism." Meantime, pardon, and farewell.

1850.

Critical Notices.

657

CRITICAL NOTICES.

The Footprints of the Creator; or, the Asierole-
pis of Stromness. By Hugh Miller. From the
third London edition. With a Memoir of the
Author, by Louis Agassiz. Boston : Gould,
Kendall & Lincoln.

Of all the numerous essays directed towards
the refutation of the fallacies of the Lamarcldan
theory of development, so ingeniously set forth by
the author of the " Vestiges of Creation," this
book is probably the most conclusive and admir-
able. Mr. Miller is what is called a self-made
man, having taken his first lessons in geology as a
day-laborer in the stone quarries of Scotland.
Vf ere we to express at large our own opinion of the
graphic power and intellectual reach of the book,
it might appear to the reader who had not seen
it as pure puffing, "We will therefore only quote
the following, and earnestly commend the book to
every reader and thinker.

Dr. BucMand, at a meeting of the British Asso-
ciation, said: "He had never been so much aston-
ished in his life by the powers of any man as he
had been by the geological descriptions of Mr,
Miller. That wonderful man described these ob-
jects with a facility that made him ashamed of
the comparative meagreness and poverty of his
own descriptions in the ' Bridgewater Treatise,'
which cost him hours and days of labor ; * * *
and if it pleased Providence to spare his useful life,
he, if any one, would certainly render the science
attractive and popular, and do equal service to
theology and geology."'

The Pre- Adamite Earth : Contributions to Theo-
logical Science. By John Harris, D. D. Bos-
ton : Gould, Kendall & Lincoln,

This book may be considered as designed to
embrace the whole subject, physical and meta-
physical, of which the preceding one treats one or
two branches only. Beginning with the essential
nature and attributes of the Eternal Creator, as
necessarily inferred and comprehended by the
laws of reason and consciousness, the author from
thence, with a most profound and rigid logic,
deduces the principles upon which the processes of
creation will be actualized. Having thus stated
the " laws of the manifestation " of the Deity, he
proceeds to verify them by a logical analysis of
the last results of the researches of science in the
departments of, Ist, the inorganic world, 2d, organic
life, and 3d, sentient existence. The work may be
considered as an attempt, and a great one, at a
statement of the Christian cosmogony. The ulti-
mate Ao?/; ? can of course never be answered by
the finite intellect ; but the v)hence ? and why ?
have probably never received a better statement
and reply than is given by Dr. Harris in his val-
uable and admirably written work.

The Logic and Utility of Mathematics. By
Charles Davies, LL.D. New York : A. S.
Barnes & Co.

"We have failed to call the attention of our read-
ers to this new work of Prof. Davies as promptly
as we should. We consider the work a valu-
able contribution to the intellectual armory of the
country, and trust that it will be extensively used
for the mental training and invigorating of all
classes, as it seems to be the design of the author.
To which end also, we must not omit to mention
the co-operation of the publishers in the attractive
form they have given to the book, beautiful as it
is in its typography and arrangement.

Christianity Revived in the East : A Narrative of
the Work of God among the Armenians of
Turkey. By H. G. 0. Dwight. New York :
Baker <fe Scribner.

This narrative of the proceedings of the Mis-
sionaries of the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions among the Armenians in Tur-
key, will interest a large class of readers. We
confess that it is altogether too technical for our
taste, and too exclusive in its notions of Christian-
ity. The partyism too obvious in its pages, is cal-
culated to weaken confidence in the views of the
interesting events narrated. And as another view
of some of these events has been given by the
representative of another body of American Chris-
tians, we can only commend the judicious to look
at both sides before judging. It is a great pity that
so interesting a field for judicious religious exertion
should be made a field of strife among the reform-
ers themselves.

The Pathways and Abiding Places of Oxi>r Lord.
Illustrated in the Journal of a Tour in the Land
of Promise. By J. M. Wainwright, D.D. New-
York : D. Appleton <fe Co., Broadway.

This elegant volume, from the pen of a divine so
distinguished for his taste and ability, will no
doubt be one of the favorite books of the season.
The attractive title, beautiful style, fine engrav-
ings, and elegant typography, will insure its
popularity.

" James's New Novel, entitled, ' Henry Smea-
tonl will be issued complete, by Harper <fe
Brothers, in the cheap form. This is said to be
one of the best efforts of this popular writer, and
is of the usual size. This work, being the first one
written and published since the author's arrival in
this country, is looked for with much curiosity, and
will be read with avidity by his numerous admir-
ers."— Courier dt Enquirer of Nov. Ihthy and Tri-
bune, same date.

We were not aware of Mr. James's " situation^"

658

Critical Notices.

Dec. 1850.

when, to the horror of some of our contempora-
ries, we inadvertently permitted a too patriotic
contributor to deal him some good-natured, but
probably ill-mannered blows, in consequence of his
having permitted himself to fall into the general
habit of his countrymen of speaking about the
Americans not merely as foes, but as dishonorable
foes. It is a great consolation to our conscience,
however, to have on such good authority the fact
that it " is of the usual size."

This we understand is the second which this
prolific gentleman has contracted to bring forth
since his arrival ; both of which will of course be
native-born citizens, under the protection of the
copyright lav), and liable of course to none of the
objections which lie against the pai'ent.

The Berber ; or, tlce Mountaineer of the Atlas. A
Tale of Morocco. By William Starbuck Mayo.
New- York : G. P. Putnam.

Dr. Mayo seems to have established a pre-emp-
tion claim to Africa, and is determined to cultivate
it as a field of romance. The present fiction opens
however among the orange groves of Cadiz ; but,
not content with so fair a land, our author soon
transports all of his dramatis personas, after a veiy
dangerous passage, to Morocco, locating the prin-
cipal scenes around Xeon Moguinez.

As a novel, the Berber may lay claim to much
greater merit than Kaloolah, since the latter is at
best but a very pleasing and successful narrative,
while the former is a true romance, although per-
haps not of the modern school. The plot is far
from tame or common, but melo-dramatic and im
possible in the extreme. The incidents are start-
ling, and the descriptions fresh and vivid ; some-
times however shghtly marred by an attempt at
fine writing.

"Without possessing the brilliant imagery, natu-
ral but ever exciting positions, and deep interest,
increasing until the final denouement, of the late
Mr. Hope's admirable Eastern Tales, yet we find
something in the Bei ber, in its freedom from com-
mon-place, its restless activity of plot, and its
record of wild adventure, to remind us of them.

Although welcoming Dr. Mayo's book to the so-
ciety of those American novels likely to survive
the first editions, yet we much fear that its popu-
larity will Ml short of his previous work.

Zonz Powers ; or, the Regulators. A Romance of
Kentucky. By James Weie. Philadelphia:
Lippincott, Grambo & Co.

A further proof, if any were needed, that a book
may be very badly written, and yet well worth
reading.

The style of Lonz Powers is crude, even for a
maiden work ; the author has introduced many old
stories and recollections in a manner that, to say

the best of it, is in very bad taste ; he obtrudes his
ultra and unsophisticated views of men and things
continually ; and yet the interest and fidelity to
nature in the plot itself almost redeem the mani-
fold and glaring errors. The characters and inci-
dents are mainly taken from real persons and
events that existed and occurred during the times
of Mm"rel. One peculiarity in the book is worth
noting. The author's small-talk and needless in-
terpolations are printed* in different type from that
of the legitimate portions of the novel, so that the
reader may suit himself, and travel by the fast or
the slow line, as he may please.

Haw-ho-noo ; or, Records of a Tourist. By
Chakles Lanman. Philadelphia: Lippincott,
Grambo & Co.

A pleasing melange of sketches, Indian legends,
personal adventures, descriptions of manners and
scenery, with sundry fishing exploits, thrown care-
lessly together into a very readable book.

Mr. Lanman's style is light, amusmg, sketchy,
and always agreeable. In truth, the only fault
that we have ever heard imputed to him as a
writer is, that he gives somewhat too free a rein to
a discursive imagination, and sometimes deals
rather with fancy than fact. This however is but
a venial offence to urge against an author whose
works while away many a weary hoiir, especially
when his events, fabulous or real, do not militate
against known history, or recorded and approved
description.

Mental Hygiene ; or, an Exajnination of the In-
tellect and Passions, designed to show how they
affect and are affected by the Bodily Functions,
and their influence on Health and Longevity.
By Wm. Sw'eetser, M.D. IS'ew-York: G. P.
Putnam.

Every ordinary observer is aware of the great
influence exerted by the body upon the mind, and
also by the mind upon the body,— that to enjoy the
mens sana one must possess the corpore sano ; but
of the precise effects produced by the different
passions and emotions incident to humanity, too
many are ignorant. It is upon this point that the
accomplished author of Mental Hygiene has sought
to enlighten us. The work is divided into two
parts,— the first treating of the intellectual opera-
tions in connection with their influence upon the
general functions of the body, and the second com-
prising a view of the moral feelings and passions
in the relation which they also bear upon our
physical nature. Designing the work for the ben-
efit of the world at large, and not for the exclusive
benefit of the medical faculty, the author has en-
tirely omitted all technical expressions, making the
work plain and comprehensive. A more interest-
ing and intiinsically valuable book we have seldom
read.

INDEX.

A Few "Words about Tennyson, 176.

Bulwer as a Novelist, Change of public senti-
ment in regard to his merits, 312.

British Policy Here and There. Commerce with
America Illustrated, 518. Who feed England ?
633.

Congressional Summary, 99, 204, 320, 429.
Critical Notices, 111, 217, 442, 657.
t Campbell, life of, 405.

Dedication of Goethe's Faust, Translation, 470.

Everstone, by the Author of Anderport Records,

47, 152.
Education, 87.

General Winfield Scott; his services in the organ-
ization of the Army; his conduct of the war
in Mexico ; embarkation and landing of the
troops at Vera Cruz ; movement of the troops
through the enemy's country ; the rights of
private property respected ; cruelties and dis-
orders suppressed; severity and justice of ihe
military tribunals instituted by the Commanding
General, 276.

Hints toward Conciliation. 1. That it be accepted
as an established principle, that the power of
protecting, ameliorating, or abolishing institutions
of caste in a State is inherent in the people of
that State alone ; 2. That the absence or pre-
sence of castes in any sovereignty or territory,
asking admission to the Union, shall not be a
bar to its admission ; 3. That our knowledge of
the mode in which the people of any sover-
eignty, or territory, intend to employ the powers
to be guaranteed to them by the Constitution on

their admission, in regard to slavery, shall not
affect the question of their admission ; 4. That;
the powers of the General Government shall not
be exercised in impressing any particular system
of laws upon a republican people applying fof
admission to the Union, 114.

Introduction to Vol. VI., 1.

Life of Hon. Samuel S. Phelps, 93.
" Hon. J. C. Calhoun, 164.
" Gen. Winfield Scott, 276.
" E. Geo. Squier, 345.
" Hon. Edward Everett, 484.
" C. B. Smith, 561.

<|V[emoirs of the House of Orleans. Rise and influ-
ence of the Hou?e of Orleans ; aristocratic society
in France previous to the great Revolution;
Court of Louis the Fourteenth ; Madame de
Tencin, the mother of D'Alembert ; her origin,
life, and character; Madame de Genlis, 258.

Memoranda, Ethical, Critical, and Political, 468,

Memoir of the Public Life of Edward Everett, 484.

Morell's Argument against Phrenology, (T. Golden
Cooper,) 190.

Memoir of John Caldwell Calhoun, 164.

Mr. George Payne Rain«ford James; his poema
on America; his patriotism and ardor, 402.

Miscellany, 107, 433, 546.

Our Foreign Relations. Hon. E. G. Squier, Charg6
d' Affaires, Central America. Aggressive policy,
and designs of Great Britain ; Mr. Squier's birth
and education; the Squier family derived from
Samuel Squier, one of Cromwell's Lieutenants;
services of the Squiers, during the Revolutionary
war ; the unpublished letters of Cromwell, 345.

Political Paradoxes — Parad I, ''Ad Valorem,;''
Parad. II., " Free trade the best ;" Parad. HI.,
" Necessity, the tyrant's plea ;" Parad. IV., " The

Index

best government is that which governs least f^
Parad. Y., *' The people have declared their will ;"
Parad. V I., " Doctrine of instructions ;" Parad.
VII., " Men are born free and equal" 2.

Political Miscellany. Suppression of the African
Coast Squadron, advocated in England; im-
policy of that measure ; importance of the
squadron in preventing the increase of slavery
in South America; importance to the growing
commerce of Africa, 824.

Political Preface, 551.

Pacific Railroad ; the Senate Committee's Report
in favor of Whitney's plan, 539.

Political Economists. Henry C. Carey ; his views,
and discovery of the true principles of political
economy, 376.

Plain Words for the North, 555.

R.
Review of AUstou's " Lectures on Art and

Poems," 17.
Review of the " Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson.

Edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph," 33.
Rodolph of Hapsburg, the Consolidator of German

Empire; his life and character; manners of the

middle ages, 241.
Reply to Correspondents, 113.
Russian Ambition,
% Review of the Village Notary, and Memoirs of a

Hungarian Lady, 64,

S.
Sonnets to Fill Blanks, 366, 401, 493.
Sonnet, 126.

Sydney Smith's Sketches of Moral Philosophy.
(T. C. C.) Philosophy of wit and humor, 388.

The Spanish American Republics. Causes of their

failure ; Central America ; the two parties, Serj,

viles and Liberals ; the old Spanish Aristocracy ,

Monarchists, 337.
Tlie Danish Question, (the test question in Euro-

ropean Politics,) 331.
The Tariff of '46. Review of the Letters of the

Hon. Abbott Lawrence, 300.
The Genius of Sleep, a Statue by Canova ; a

Sonnet, imitated from the Italian of Missorini,

W. G. Simms, 240.
To the Political Reader. Article on the Danish

Question; Remarks on Southern Politics, 225.
The Bible and Civil Government, in a Course of

Lectures, by J. M. Mathews, D.D., 511.
Twenty More Sonnets, with a Preface and Notes,

G. W\ P., 505.

Twenty Sonnets of a Season, 564.

To the Political Reader, 439.

The Great Ship Canal Question ; England and
Costa Rica versus the United States and Nica-
ragua, 441.

The Poets and Poetry of the Irish. St. Sedulins ;
St. Binen; St. Columbeille ; Malmuraof Othian;
The Story of the Sons of Usna ; M Liag, Poet to
O'Brian, 77,141.

The Nameless. 181.

The Dead Child, 189. ^

Thomas Jefferson, 33, 182. Annexation of Terri-
tories; Policy of Jefferson, 290. The trial of
Aaron Burr; conduct of Jefferson; his hatred
and persecution of Burr, 367. His Presidential
career, last years of his hfe, 471.

Uses and Abuses of Lynch Law. Art. II. Murrel,
the Land Pirate of the Southwest ; his conspi-
racy; system of enlisting members ; all classes
of society embraced ; Muti-el Gang in Washing-
ton Co., Texas, 1849, {note) ; Murrel taken with
the stolen negroes ; his trial, and partial failure of
the prosecution ; attempt to Lynch him frustra-
ted ; steals Henning's negroes ; Stewart accom-
panies Murrel on his journey ; pretends to join
the clan ; bis critical situation ; visits the con-
spirator's Island ; Murrel's return home ; his
arrest; attempts to assassinate Stewart by the
clan ; Murrel's escape and recapture ; attempts
to destroy Stewart's evidence ; the trial ; Stewart
springs a mine upon the intended witnesses;
Murrel's conviction; Blake takes connnand of
the clan ; time for the revolt of the slaves «
changed, 494.

Unity of the Human Race, 567.

Union or Disunion, 587.

What Constitutes Real Freedom of Trade ? (H.
C. C.) Doctrines of Adam Smith examined;
shown to be identical with those of the Protec-
tionists ; misuse of Adam Smith as an authority
by the so called "free-traders," 127. Chapter
II. Examination and Refutation of the mod-
ern English theories of Fiee Trade; principle
from which a true theory of Public Economy
may be deduced ; agriculture the foundation
of national wealth, 228. Chapter HI. Doc-
trine of Adam Smith ; mutual aid rendered to
each other by the various departments of in-
dustry, 353. Chapter IV. The Earth the
great machine of production, 456.

Washington Irving and his Writings, 602.

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