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THE

NORTH AMERICAN

REVIEW

EDITED BY ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE.

VOL. CXXVIII.

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

NEW YOEK:
D. APPLETOISr AND COMPANY,

549 & 551 BROADWAY.

1879.

IS^ORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1879.

Abt. Page

I. The Fishery Award. By Senator George F. Ed-
munds ......

n. Unpublished Fragments op the " Little " Period
By Thomas Moore ....

in. Cities as Units in our Polity. By William R
Martin .....

TV. The Preservation of Forests. By Felix L. Os

WALD ......

V. The *' Solid South." By Henry Watterson

15
21

VI. The Pronunciation of the Latin Language. By

W. W. Story 59

YII. Substance and Shadow in Finance. By George

S. BOUTWELL . . . . . .74

VIII. The Cruise of the Florence. By Captain H. W.

HOWGATE . . . . . .86

IX. Recent Fiction: Trollope's Is he Popenjoy ? James's
The Europeans ; James's Daisy Miller ; Black's Mac-
leod of Dare ; Burnett's That Lass o' Lowrie's. By
Richard Grant White . . . .97

Publications Received . . . .111

The Editor disclaims responsibility for the opinions
of contributors, wbetlier their articles are signed or
anonymous.

CONTENTS OF VOL. CXXVIII.

PAGE

The Fishery Award. By George F. Edmunds, U. S. Sen-
ator 1

Unpublished Fragments of the " Little " Period. By

Thomas Moore 15

Cities as Units in our Polity. By William R. Martin 21

The Preservation of Forests. By Felix L. Oswald, M. D. 35

The " Solid South." By Henry TVatterson . . .47

The Pronunciation of the Latin Language. By W. W.

Story 59

Substance and Shadow in Finance. By George S. Bout-
well 74

The Cruise of the Florence. By Captain H. W. Howgate,

U. S. Army 86

Recent Fiction : Trollope's Is he Popinjoy ? James's The
Europeans ; James's Daisy Miller ; Black's Macleod of
Dare ; Burnett's That Lass o' Lowrie's. By Richard
Grant White 97

Publications Received Ill

The Conduct of Business in Congress. By G. F. Hoar,

U. S. Senator 113

The Mysteries of American Railroad Accounting. By

an Accountant 135

A Statesman of the Colonial Era. By General Richard

Taylor 148

iv CONTENTS.

PAGE

Recoi^stkuction and the Negro. By D. H. Chamberlain 161

The Empire of the Discontented. By a Russian Nihilist 174

The Scientific Work of the Howgate Expedition. By

O. T. Sherman, Meteorologist in charge .... 191

Sensationalism in the Pulpit. By the Rev. William M.

Taylor, D.D. . 201

Medieval French Literature : Histoire de la Langue et
de la Litterature Fran9aise au Moyen Age ; Les Epopees
Fran9aises ; Le Drame Chretien au Moyen Age ; Les
Prophetes du Christ ; Guillaume de Palerne ; Les Sept
Sages de Rome ; Miracles de Nostre Dame ; Aiol. By
Professor T. F. Crane 212

Publications Received 221

Ought the Negro to be Disfranchised ? Ought he to
have been Enfranchised ? By James G. Blaine, U. S.
Senator; L. Q. C. Lamar, U. S. Senator; Wade Hampton,
Governor of South Carolina; General James A. Garfield;
Alexander H. Stephens ; Wendell Phillips ; Mont-
gomery Blair ; Thomas A. Hendricks . . . 225

The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards. By Professor

George P. Fisher, D. D 284

The Indian Problem. By General Nelson A. Miles, U. S.

Army 304

Cryptography in Politics. By John R. G. Hassard . 315

Russian Novels and Novelists of the Day : The Diary of
a Sportsman, and other Novels ; Smoke : a Novel ; Virgin
Soil : a Novel ; Childhood and Youth ; War and Peace ;
Anna Karenina : a Novel. By S. E. Shevitch . . 326

Publications Received 335

Retribution in Politics. By Thomas A. Hendricks . 337

The Public Schools of England. By Thomas Hughes, Q. C. 352

CONTENTS. V

PAGE

German Socialism in America 372

A Friend of Lord Byron. By Henry James, Jr. . . 388

' The Census of 1880. By George Walker . . .393

The Pronunciation of the Latin Language. Part IL By

W. W. Story 405

An Indian's Views of Indian Affairs. By Young Joseph,
Chief of the Nez Perces. AVith an Introduction by the
Right Rev. W. II. Hare, D. D 412

Hartmann's ** Religion of the Future." By M. A. Har-

DAKER .......... 434

Recent Miscellaneous Literature : Weisse's Origin,
Progress, and Destiny of the English Language and
Literature ; Hohnes's John Lothrop Motley ; Conway's
Demonology and Devil-Lore ; Mrs. Kemble's Record of a
Girlhood ; Tyler's History of American Literature. By
A. R. McDonougu 438

Publications Received 446

Our Election Laws. By George W. McCrary, Secretary

of War of the L^uited States ...... 449

Campaign Notes in Turkey, 1877-78. By Lieutenant F.

V. Greene, U. S. Army 462

German Socialism in America. 'Part II 481

Absent Friends. By the Rev. O. B. Frothingham . . 493

A Plea for Sport. By Lloyd S. Bryce . . . .511

Notes on Recent Progress in Applied Science. By

Henry Morton, Ph. D., President of Stevens Institute . 526

Law and Design in Nature. By Simon Newcomb, LL. D. ;
the Rev. Noah Porter, D. D., LL. D., President of Yale
College ; the Rev. Joseph Cook ; the Rev. James Free-
man Clarke, D. D. ; the Rev. James McCosh, D. D.,
LL. D., President of the College of New Jersey . . 537

vi CONTENTS.

PAGE

Publications Received 563

MoN Testament, ^pitre a Chloe. An Unpublished Poem.

By Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire . . . 565

National Appropriations and Misappropriations. By

General J. A. Garfield 572

The Stagnation of Trade and its Cause. By Professor

BoNAMY Price 587

The Education of Freedmen. By Harriet Beecher

Stowe 605

Secret Missions to San Domingo. By D. D. Porter, Ad-
miral, TJ. S. Navy 616

Sacred B©oks of the East. By Professor Max Muller . 631

Evolution and Theology. A Rejoinder. By Professor

Simon Newcomb 647

The Pacific Railroad. By Henry V. Poor. . . . 664

Current Literature. By Mayo W. Hazeltine . . 681

Will England return to Protection? A Letter to the

Editor. By the Right Honorable John Bright, M. P. . 695

Publications Received 697

Index 699

XORTII AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCLXVI.

JANUARY, 1879.

THE FISHERY AWARD.

The fishing riglits exercised by American citizens in the neigh-
borhood of the eastern coast of British North America have been
for nearly a century the subject of irritation and controversy be-
tween the people.^ aiul governments of the two countries. Every
effort to compose disputes and prevent diiiiculties has usually pro-
duced only a fresh and copious crop of doubtful questions and new
points of collision.

At the peace of 1783 the banks of Newfoundland and the islands
and coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence had been the common and
productive fishing-ground of all his Majesty's northern colonies —
chiefly indeed of those whose independence was acknowledged by
the treaty of that year, for the population and enterprise of what
are now known as the maritime provinces of Canada were then
much less than those of New England and New York. By the
third article of the treaty of 1783, then, it was agreed "that the
people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the
right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and all the
other banks of Newfoundland, also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
and at all other places in the sea where the inhabitants of both
countries used at any time heretofore to fish ; and also that the
inhabitants of the United States shall have libeHy to take fish of
every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British
fishermen shall use (but not to dry or cure the same on that island),

VOL. CXXVIII. — NO. 266. 1

2 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

and also on the coasts, bays, and creeks of all other of his Britannic
Majesty's dominions in America ; and that the American fishermen
shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays,
harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labra-
dor, so long as the same shall remain unsettled ; but so soon as the
same or either of them shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for
the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement, without a
previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprie-
tors, or possessors of the ground."

Thus the whole waters and shores of British North America,
with a certain limitation as to Newfoundland, were open to the
American fishermen. There was no exception of waters within the
marine league from the shore, which marks the limit of territorial
dominion. Wherever there was sea, there was the place of right-
ful fishery. In like manner, and with the like exception, the use of
the shores for curing and drying was secured, subject to the rights
of private possessors. It would not be easy to find any general lan-
guage that should establish a clearer or more definite right ; but the
jealousy of British fishermen, beaten in the equal contest with the
winds and waves and the erratic denizens of the sea on those drearv
coasts, led British statesmen to find difficulties, and to maintain that
the treaty was finally abrogated by the war of 1812, and not re-
vived by the peace that followed it. So by the treaty of 1818 new
provisions were made, by which, along certain parts of those coasts,
the Americans were in terms excluded from fishing within the
league line, and which defined by fixed bounds those parts of the
coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador where the Americans could
fish within it. Thus the United States " renounced " all the in-
shore fisheries excepting the coasts of Newfoundland not occupied
by the French fishermen, the Magdalen Islands, and that for the
most of the year almost unapproachable shore of Labrador, extend-
ing from Mount Joli, through the strait of Belle Isle, to the Arctic,
where the most abundant products of nature are storms, fogs, ice-
bergs, and floes, for a territorial definition on the Newfoundland
coast, in the place of common fishery with the British, and for the
right to dry and cure fish on the unappropriated shores of that
island. The causes of " irritation and dispute " were to be removed
by renouncing the larger part of American rights, the enjoyment
of which produced them, and by the establishment of a new boun-
dary to the enterprise and industry of American fishermen, not along
shores whose location and identity could not be easily misunder-

THE FISHERY AWARD. 3

stood, "but upon a line of sea three miles from the coast — a line
always indeterminable with precision by any means within the
reach of the persons who are bound to respect it. Nevertheless,
nearly forty y^ars passed by under this treaty without producing
any insoluble difficulty of ultimate consequence between the two
nations, although continuing to give rise to collisions, more or less
serious, between the authorities and people of the Provinces and
the fishermen of the United States, until the so-called reciprocity
treaty of 1^54 came into force, which by its first and second articles
provided for American fishing for ten years in the same waters (not
naming Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands, where the right
already existed), without regard to distance from the shore, but
with the exception of certain places to be ascertained by a commis-
sion and umpire. This arrangement terminated in 1865, under
notice from the United States for that purpose ; it having been
found by experience that the treaty as a whole was made to operate
greatly to the disadvantage of the United States. Whatever of
conflict existed before was of course revived, when her Majesty's
Government made use of those collisions as an indirect and con-
venient means of opening for discussion and settlement the great
affair of the depredations upon American commerce by cruisers
built and fitted out in her ports, manned chiefly by inhabitants of
her territory, and sailing under the Confederate flag.

Negotiations thus introduced ended in the treaty of Washino-ton
of 1871. Every matter of difference between the two nations was
agreed to be submitted to the decision of the various tribunals cre-
ated and described. We have now only to deal with the provisions
of that treaty on the fisheries question, though it is not easily for-
gotten that, in the face of the most comprehensive and general lan-
guage, the Government of Great Britain, exercising a right she un-
doubtedly possessed, and one which the United States might have
exercised as well in the Halifax affair, refused to proceed w^th the
Geneva arbitration until all claim for a certain class of injuries, which
were in one point of view the most serious and important of all, had
been taken out of the consideration of the tribunal to which, it ap-
peared plain to the United States, everything had been submitted.

The fisheries articles of this treaty are the eighteenth to the
twenty-fifth inclusive, and the thirty-second and thirty-third. The
eighteenth purports to grant privileges additional to those of the
treaty of 1818 by obliterating the three-mile line on the coasts of
Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward's Island,

4 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

and to grant, subject to private rights, landing privileges for curing
and drying fish upon all their shores. The nineteenth gives British
fishermen the same rights in American waters north of latitude 39°.
The twentieth provides for commissioners and an umpire to decide
upon the excepted places. The twenty-first allows free trade in fish
and oil. The twenty-second recites that " it is asserted by the
Government of her Britannic Majesty that the privileges accorded
to the citizens of the United States under Article XYIII. of this
treaty are of greater value than those accorded by Articles XIX.
and XXI. of this treaty to the subjects of her Britannic Majesty,"
and provides that *' commissioners " shall be appointed to determine
the amount of any compensation which in " their opinion " ought to
be paid by the United States therefor ; and that any sum of money
which " the said commissioners " may award shall be paid within
twelve months. The twenty-third provides for the selection and
meeting of the three commissioners. The twenty-fourth provides
for the mode of procedure, limit of time, etc., and that '* the com-
missioners shall be requested to give their award as soon as possi-
ble." The twenty-fifth also regulates procedure, etc. The thirty-
second puts Newfoundland, in a certain contingency, under the
operation of the eighteenth, and the thirty-third fixes ten years, and
two years after notice, for the termination of the arrangement.

It will be seen from the language of all the treaty provisions be-
tween the two countries upon the fisheries, that no permanent gain
for American interests has been made since the treaty of 1783.
While the line of demarkation has been moved offshore and in-
shore, the obliteration of one point of collision and dispute has ap-
parently produced one or more others equally troublesome.

What the treaty of 1871 gave to the United States that they
were not entitled to under that of 1818 was in substance : first, the
removal of the three-mile limit in respect of the Provinces of Que-
bec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward's Island, and
such part of Newfoundland as was not covered by French rights
and the treaty of 1818 ; second, the right to land and cure fish on
those shores and the Magdalen Islands, where no private rights or
occupation of British fishermen should exist. That was all. But
almost every mile of the shores of those provinces, excepting cer-
tain parts of Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands, has come
into the possession of settlers and local fishermen. It is indeed
chiefly the shore lines that in the best fishing regions are settled at
all. A girdle of exclusion has thus, consistently with the treaty,

THE FISHERY AWARD. 6

come into existence, that must for all practical purposes keep Amer-
ican tisherraen afloat unless they purchase landing privileges, which
they might do without a treaty. The provisions of this last treaty
were "in ad<lition " to those of 1818, and so added little as to New-
foundland, and did not touch the Labrador fishing at all ; and as to
the Magdalen Islands, it only secured the right of landing to cure
fish, subject to the private rights, etc., before mentioned. A study
of the population and shore development of the coasts and islands
to which the treaty of 1H71 admits American fishermen, or a single
trip upcm the steamers that in the summer season ply along and
among them all, will show that the landing rights thus secured are
substantially of little imi)ortance ; and every year of prosperity in
the maritime provinces will, of course, make them less so by still
further settlements along the shores, and the increased occupation of
the best shore-tishing stations by resident British fishermen.

Although it apj)ears as nearly certain, from all the evidence
before the Halifax Commission, as any such matter can be, that the
value of the privileges ac({uired by the Americans was not greater,
certainly, than those acquired by the British, yet it is plain that the
shore line, as a boundary of right, is far better than the invisible
one three miles at sea, even though the space between contain no
valuable fishing ; for no misunderstanding can arise as to any trans-
gression of the boundary. But this is, of course, of equal advan-
tage to both countries, for it tends to peace and mutual good will,
to which no preponderance of monpy value can be attributed. The
rightful power of the United States, however, to protect their fisher-
men by force against unlawful interference on the high seas, might
not exist on waters within the territorial jurisdiction of Great Britain.

The recent publication of the correspondence between the two
governments will enable the reader, with the text of the treaty
before cited, to form some opinion upon the question of valuation
80 ably argued by Mr. Evarts, and so wisely avoided by Lord Salis-
bury. But the American side must, we think, take two not unim-
portant circumstances in connection with it as facts : First, that the
thing the Americans obtained was a " privilege," the value of
which, if it had any at all, must be measured by what a full use
and the utmost reasonable diligence might get from it,, and not
what may have been or may be actually obtained by a use and a
diligence short of that. Second, that the value of such a privilege
to catch fish on the inside of a certain arbitrary line in the sea is as
much incapable of definite proof or ascertainment by any means or

6 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

process known among men, as any that can be conceived. We may
perhaps count or measure the sands upon a given section of coast,
but we can not number or weigh the inhabitants of a single square
mile of the sea, or attribute to inshore waters any definite propor-
tion of the nomads of the great deep.

It is perhaps not too much to say, then, that notwithstanding
the extremely able and ingenious discussion in the letter of Mr.
Evarts on the subject, it can not be demonstrated by proof or reason-
ing that the award of Mr. Delfosse and Mr. Gait of $5,500,000 as
the excess of the value of a chance in the Canadian waters over the
value of a like chayice in American waters, and the free importation
of fish and oil to American markets, was excessive ; but this very
infirmity in the American argument should have been fatal to the
British case, for it was the duty of that Government to prove
affirmatively such claimed excess of value. Still less could it be
maintained that an award, otherwise regular and fair, could be
ignored on that ground. Indeed, it is hardly necessary to say thaj;
Mr. Evarts does not so contend : he only appeals to the enlightened
good sense of the other party to consider whether it ouglit to eat
the fruit, sweet as it might be, of such wild guessing ; but it seems
the other party did not wish to consider.

The interests of peace and good will among nations are so tran-
scendent, and the practice of international mediation and arbitra-
tion is so essential to those interests, that a proud and self-respecting
people would always submit to tUfe consequences of very great errors
of judgment, and sometimes even to those of bias and prejudice in
international arbitration, rather than to refuse to execute an award ;
but it should be kept in mind that there are occasions when such
obedience would be a crime against the true interests of peace and
good neighborhood, and destructive of international arbitration as
the best of their safeguards. If, as Yattel tersely states it, " the
arbitrators, by pronouncing a sentence evidently unjust and unrea-
sonable, should forfeit the character with which they are invested,
their judgment would deserve no attention." A just nation, how-
ever, in whose favor an award has been made, should be willing to
forego the advantage of a victory on far less evident grounds than
those which would justify a refusal by the losing party to perform,
and to readjust and retry the matter in dispute, if it had reason to
think that any serious error had been committed, or that anything
of corruption or unfairness had played a part in the affair, for no
honorable government could consent to profit by a success so gained.

THE FISHERY AWARD. 7

Upon such principles Congress at its last session authorized the
President to reopen, if he should see cause, certain awards in favor
of citizens of the United States against the republic of Mexico.
The extravagance of the Halifax award does not, under the circum-
stances, raise any implication, or even suspicion, of corruption or
conscious partiality in the eminent gentlemen who made it. That
they may have had an unconscious bias in favor of Great Britain is,
when the relatitms of the governments and their people are consid-
ered, quite jjrobable ; and a similar contrary bias may have existed
with the American commissioner. i>ut that they placed little or
no confidence in the evi<lence and contention as to value put for-
ward on the British side is manifest. According to the British
case and to Lord Salisbury's statement, the two concurring commis-
sioners awarded only about one third what the proofs and argu-
ments thereon ])urported to make out. The trouble was that the
British assertion in the treaty of excess of money value of the fish-
ing chance in question was one in its very nature incapable of that
kind of proof which convinces the understanding. So Mr. Delfosse
and his British associate must have thought, for they evidently
failed to believe the British evidence as applied to the question.
They, then, forgetting apparently that it was for Great Britain to
make out its assertion of superior value, and that nothing could be
found to exist that had not been proved, without disclosed or de-
fined elements or computations, or declared bases or reasons, came
to a given sum 3i& proved. Such a finding is of course as incapable
of explanation as a verdict of a jury in those actions of tort where
punitive or exemplary damages are allowable ; but the case at Hali-
fax was not of that nature. It was, so far as any right of recovery
could go, a question of measurable substance and not of sentiment.

The sum awarded has been paid. It could not, within certain
limits, be refused as excessive merely, for that, as Lord Salisbury
observes, would be for the losing party to set up its own opinion
against that of the commissioners on the very point submitted. It
might, we think, have been lawfully and justly refused at first— but
not at last — on the ground that, wanting the concurrence of one of
the three commissioners, no award existed. But that question Mr.
Evarts proposed to waive if, in the opinion of the British Govern-
ment, there was a valid award ; and on that point the decision of
Lord Salisbury was against him.

That Congress, which under our system controls the issues of
war, and to a large degree foreign intercourse, and can alone pro-

8 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

vide the means of executing money treaties, should have transferred
to the Executive the responsibility of determining whether there
had been any award within the treaty, is, on principle, perhaps to
be regretted ; but when it is considered, in view of the scrupulous
delicacy the whole people as well as the Government felt in respect
of declining to treat the Halifax decision as an award on their own
judgment alone, however clear, it may be cause of congratulation
that the question was left for diplomatic consideration, and, through
it, to Great Britain itself. It might not be wise to resort to this
process in all cases. Her Majesty's Government did not think so
when it insisted that the American case presented at Geneva claimed
compensation for matters not submitted to the tribunal. But in
this particular instance it was possibly best, for the comedy of errors
has been played harmoniously through all its acts, and is ended,
and the diplomatic stage is clear for a different representation.

Accepting with cheerfulness the foreseen consequences of the
judgment which our Government has invoked on this last question
of the existence of any award, its correctness may now be ques-
tioned without exposure to the suspicion of a selfish desire to escape
the payment of money.

It may, we take it, be assumed that commissioners appointed
under a treaty have only the faculties and powers imputed to them
by the instrument of their appointment ; and that the meaning of
that instrument is to be found in its language considered in the rela-
tion of all its parts, and in the light of similar transactions between
the same parties. Upon the mere grammatical meaning of the lan-
guage in Articles XXII., XXIII., and XXIV., of 1871, it is pre-
sumed that no one would deny that the matters in dispute were
committed to the consideration and decision of all the three persons
named, and not to a part of them. They are never named as a
tribunal, or board even, but as " commissioners " — " one " to be
named by the President of the United States, " one " by her Bri-
tannic Majesty, and the " third " by a friendly power. " The com-
missioners " are required to meet ; the case is to be submitted
to the " commissioners " ; " the commissioners " are to " give
their award." Such language can only mean, grammatically, all
of the persons named. If it does not import all, it may as well
mean one of them as two. Lord Salisbury endeavors to control
this grammatical reading by the argument that it was an arbitra-
tion " of a public nature," and so, as he thinks, within the rule of
municipal law, both in England and America, that where the law

THE FISHERY AWARD. 9

creates a tribunal or board for public purposes connected with the
administration of justice in any of its forms, the judgment of a
majority is taken as the judgment of the body. But was this such
a case V The two nations, in respect of the matter in difference,
stood exactly like two persons in a state of nature. There was no
tribunal, public or other, to which either could appeal. The treaty
then was, as between them, a private agreement to submit the deter-
mination of a dispute to three men. It was public only in the sense
that it was a contract of two great public bodies, and that it involved
the possilile payment of money from one to the other. The analogy
with a statutory enactment, conferring powers upon a tribunal com-
posed of many persons, does not then seem to hold. But let it be sup-
posed that the treaty of Washington had been a statute of Great Brit-
ain or the United States, to dispose of disputes between the people of
either. We shouM then have had in the same act — first, for the Ala-
bama claims, " a tribunal of arbitration," composed of five arbitra-
tors, with the provision that " all questions considered by the tribu-
nal, including the final award, shall be decided by a majority of all
the arbitrators " ; second, for the Alabama claims in one event, " a
board of conmiissioners," composed of three persons, with the pro-
vision that "a majority of the commissioners in each case shall be-
suilicient for a decision " ; third, for other claims arising during
the rebellion, "three commissioners," with the provision that "a
majority of the commissioners shall be sufficient for an award in
each case " ; fourth, in respect of the location of excepted places in
the fisheries, a "commission" composed of two persons, with the
provision that " the commissioners shall name some third person to
act as arbitrator or umpire in any case or cases in which they may
thus differ in opinion " ; fifth, for the valuation of fishing privileges
granted to the Americans, three " commissioners," with the provi-
sion that " the commissioners " shall hear, etc., and that " the com-
missioners " shall be requested to give "their award as soon as
possible," etc. In such a case, would not a court of justice feel
bound to decide that the legislative will did not intend to confer
upon a ^:)ar^ of the three last-named commissioners any power of
binding the parties against the judgment of the other ? Following
acknowledged and universal principles in construing and applying
written law, would not a court say that the same act in respect of
the three separate subjects of dispute between the same parties has
studiously provided that the views of the majority shall be valid ;
and in respect of the fourth, on a difference of opinion, an umpire

10 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

shall decide ; and in the fifth it has not conferred upon nor recog-
nized the existence of any power in any other than all the persons
to whom the duty was intrusted ; and that the affirmation of it in
the four cases and the non-affirmation of it in the fifth would nega-
tive such a power in the last case, even if, standing alone, it would
have been held to exist ?

But the treaty of Washington was a written agreement between
two parties, and not a statute ; and the history and language of
previous treaties between them may be justly resorted to to throw
light upon a disputed interpretation. The fifth article of the treaty
of 1794 provided for three commissioners to decide upon the river
intended by the " St. Croix," named in the treaty of 1783, but it
was silent as to the "power of a majority. The same treaty created
five commissioners to ascertain certain damages to British subjects,
and conferred decisive power upon three of them. It also estab-
lished a similar commission of five to ascertain certain losses of
Americans, and conferred full power upon a majority. Can it be
doubted that in that case both governments intended, for obvious
reasons, to make different and more elastic provisions respecting
decisions touching private claims from those relating to their boun-
daries ? The article as to the St. Croix was followed by Article V.
of the treaty of Ghent on the same general subject, which provided
for two commissioners and the umpirage of a friendly power. The
treaty of 1822 created a commission to ascertain the value of slaves,
etc., under the award of the Emperor of Russia, and provided for
the decision of " the majority." The decision of the Emperor on
the subject in dispute referred to him is worthy of notice, as declar-
ing a wholesome rule in interpreting treaties. lie says that, with
the concurrence of the two powers, he has " given an opinion found-
ed solely upon the sense which results from the text of the article.''''
The claims treaty of 1853 provided for two commissioners and an
umpire. The same was done on the fishery question in the treaty
of 1854. By the slave-trade treaty of 1862 the judges of the mixed
courts and the arbitrator were authorized to decide by a " majority
of the three." It appears, then, from the history and language of
the long series of treaties between the two governments, that they
never treated upon the idea that by the rules of public law, as be-
tween them, a majority of commissioners or arbitrators, or even of
members of a court, had decisive powers unless the contrary was
expressed ; and that, on the contrary, they had treated in confor-
mity with the well-known rules of law of both countries, that the de-

TUB FISHERY AWARD. 11

ciiiion of conventional arbitrators, commissioners, or courts must be
unanimous to be valid, unless the instrument of their creation pro-
vided otherwise ; and that, as in the article of the treaty of ISTl*
respectini^ places excepted from fishery, when they were willing
that a ditference between two commissioners of their own appoint-
ment should be decided by a single other person or jjower, they
knew how to say so, and did say so.

The necessary limits of this article do not permit an extended dis-
cussion of the questions of inconvenience and probable failure of a de-
cision in such cases, were a majority not sutlicient, put forth by the
liritish Government. It is sufficient to say that if they existed, they
could not be allowed to subvert the clear meaning of the language of
the treaty, and that experience has shown that in all cases that have
rested uj)on definite j)rinciples and proofs, the concurrence of the com-
missioners or ar))itrators of the two nations has usually been obtained ;
while in a matter like that submitted to the Halifax commissioners,
no prudent government would be willing to consent in advance to
anything less than unanimity when the commissioners are only three.
Such prudence, there is some reason to believe, was in the minds of
the Hritish j)ublic and some officials before the commissioners acted.

Lord Salisbury a])j)oars also to repose his belief in the efficacy
of a majority on what he thinks to be rules of international law.
It was competent for the treaty in this instance, as it did in some
others, to make other provisions ; but it is hardly competent for
either party to reverse the meaning of the treaty by invoking the
law. Let us examine, however, exactly what the rule of interna-
tional law is. Ilalleck, whose valuable book was, as he states, made
up from notes and extracts, is quoted as follows : " The following
rules, usually derived from the civil law, have been applied to inter-
national arbitrations when not otherwise provided in the articles of
the reference. If there be an uneven number, the decision of the ma-
jority is conclusive." This maybe true. The rule named may have
been so applied ; but under what circumstances ? Ileffter, the only
wTiter cited by Halleck who refers to the point, states how and
when such a rule is applied. He says (Bergson's French transla-
tion of the third German edition, livre deuxieme, chap, i., sec. 109) :
" Lorsque plusieurs arbitres ont ete nommes, sans que leurs fonc-
tions respectives aient ete determinees d'avance, ils ne peuvent, sui-
vant rintention presumee des parties, proceder separement. En cas
de desaccord entre eux, I'avis de la majorite doit prevaloir, confor-
moment aux prmcipes de la procedure ordinaire.''''

12 THE NORTH AMEEICAIT REVIEW.

This is a statement to which every power ought to subscribe,
for it rests on the solid principles of justice and philosophy, that
require us to seek in the language of the instrument and the situa-
tion of the parties their true intent ; and so, in a case in which they
have not spoken, it is presumed that they intended that the ^^prin-
ciples of ordinary procedure " should govern. What are the prin-
ciples of ordinary procedure in arbitration ? In Germany, France,
and other countries whose jurisprudence is founded on the Roman
law, they are one thing — allowing a majority to decide. In Great
Britain and the United States, where the common law prevails,
they are and always have been the opposite — not allowing a ma-
jority to decide without a stipulation to that end. Ilalleck's state-
ment, then, is practically correct ; but the rule he lays down does
not apply between all states, and the structure of his sentence does
not import that it does so. Thus Heffter, the accuracy and preci-
sion of whose writings has made his work a universal authority,
states the complete rule. Bluntschli, also cited by Lord Salisbury
(whose book was published in 1868 without notes or citations),
states boldly that " the decree of the majority serves as the decree
of the entire tribunal " (sec. 493, German edition). He, too, was a
civil-law writer in a civil-law country, and in that light states the
rule correctly ^-ithout, like Heffter, giving the foundation of it,
viz., the principles of ordinary procedure.

Calvo, the only other authority referred to in the British letter,
is also an author of a country whose jurisprudence is based upon
the Roman law, and he naturally refers to the droit civil as the
guide in the absence of a compact, as representing the presumed
intent of the parties, and containing the principles of ordinary
procedure (Calvo, *' Droit International," deuxi^me edition, tome
premier, livre xiv., sec. 667). That he means precisely what
Heffter states, and nothing more, is made manifest from another
part of section 667, a sentence of w^hich is quoted by Lord Salis-
bury. Preceding the statement that, in the absence of an obliga-
tion traced in the treaty, the decision is by a majority, he says :
" L'arbitrage international derive de la m^me cause et repose sur
les memes principes que l'arbitrage priv^ en matiere civile ou com-
merciale." Applying this plain principle, so clearly stated by Calvo
as well as by Heffter, to an arbitration between Great Britain and
the United States, it necessarily follows, in the absence of a stipula-
tion, that unanimity is essential to an award ; for that is acknowl-
edged to be the rule of law of both countries in " private arbitra-

THE FISHERY AWARD. 13

tion in a matter civil or commercial." Again, in section 28 of the
same volume, Calvo shows that the Roman law is only to be invoked
hy those peoi)k's who are obliged to have recourse to the " Corpus
Juris Civilis" for the decision of their conflicts and the determina-
tion of their law. Neither the English nor the American people
have ever adopted that practice.

On a full view, then, of the authorities referred to, in connection
with the observations of other writers on the subject, and its his-
tory, is it not a just and inevitable conclusion that international
law, so far as any such thing exists, lays down no other rule on the
subject than that, in the absence of an intention to be di'awn from
the text of the treaty, the powers of the arbitrators or commission-
ers are to be measured by the principles of ordinary procedure of
the treating nations ?

A question of more inimi'diate practical importance in connec-
tion with the fisheries remains unsolved. Has the American fisher-
man a right under these treaties to fish freely and without restraint
in British waters, or is he subject to such regulations while within
the niunicij)al jurisdiction of Great Britain as her laws may establish ?

The events occurring at Fortune Bay, on the southern coast of
Newfoundland, in January last, have raised the question. There,
it is said, the Americans, fishing on Sunday, were forcibly inter-
rupted and driven off under color of a statute against Sunday fish-
ing, while tlie pious islanders continued to fish ! The correspon-
dence on the subject appears to leave the English position some-
what obscure. It is indeed admitted that the provisions of the
treaties are sui)reme, and can not be impaired by colonial legislation ;
but the question whether reasonable municipal regulations, affect-
ing all persons equally, are consistent with the treaty right, is left
yet undecided. As to Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Magdalen
Islands, the treaty of 1818 declares the right to take fish, "in com-
mon with subjects" of Great Britain ; and the same language is
used in the treaty of 1871. The natural meaning of such language
would seem to be to admit the foreigner to a footing of equality
with the subject. It is not a grant to the subject, whose position
is left untouched ; and he is undoubtedly under the control of the
municipal law. If, then, the American is given a liberty in com-
mon with him, is it not such a liberty and such only as he has?
Again, the municipal jurisdiction of a state is not understood to be
different, either in kind or degree, as regards its waters and its
land. If this be so, it would seem to follow that whatever restraint

14 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

upon legislative power is created by such provisions as these would
also occur under all treaties of commercial intercourse, unless special
reservations were made. To hold, then, that an absolute immunity
from any municipal legislation, in respect of the exercise of privi-
leges conferred, exists, would involve very serious consequences, and
appear to put the foreigner upon a footing not common with, but
superior to, the subject or citizen of the nation granting the right.
On the other hand, if the power of legislation still exists in such
cases, has it any and what limits ? If it has no limits, the fishing
rights acquired and paid for under these treaties have no other
value than such as is measured by the will of the power granting
them. If the scope of such laws must be measured by reason,
justice, and equality, and they are enacted in that spirit, then they
ought to be enforced. But suppose a British colony chooses to
extend its mercy and pardon to its own subjects who break the
law, and not to the stranger ; what then ? On the whole, it is dif-
ficult to maintain that the exercise of a just and equally applied
power of regulation ought to be surrendered by such treaties {al-
though particular provisions on analogous points in some of those
we have referred to lead to the inference that where the exercise
of the right is to be subject to regulation, it is so provided in the
treaty) ; and it is at least equally difficult to get the benefit of
actual fair play in cases where the regulative power is exercised by
governments whose people and local authorities look with jealousy
and discontent upon the enjoyment by others of privileges which
they have regarded as exclusively their own. It is evident that
under such circumstances the power of regulation, if it exists, may
be exercised to the extent of a practical defeat of the right.

These fishing privileges, such as they are, have been paid for by
reciprocal grants and in cash for a few years yet to come. The
Government of Great Britain and the Canadians believe that they
have been greatly undervalued by the Halifax Commission. The
Government and people of the United States are equally earnest in
the opinion that, aside from the money paid, the British have
largely the best of the bargain ; and it is evident from the Fortune
Bay aifair, and others, that the arrangement has not improved the
sentiments of kindliness and friendship so much to be desired. In
this state of things, both governments ought to be glad to terminate
by mutual consent what remains unperformed of the agreement
immediately.

George F. Edmunds.

II.

UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS OF THE "LITTLE"

PERIOD.

By Tuomas Moore.

As the bird witli trembling pinion

First attempts the faithless gale,
Till the Tempest's rough dominion

Drives her to the sheltered vale,
On the dripping spray sits mourning.

There replumes her little wing,
Soon triumphant Sol returning

Bids lier soar aloft and sing :

So fond dreams of embryo pleasure

Early taught my breast to glow ;
AVhile I grasped illusive treasure

Sober wisdom waked to woe.
Still kind Hope a ray discloses

Peeping from the winter's frown ;
Thorns of anguish teem with roses,

Sorrow's thistle has its down.

I saw her where in life's first bloom

She sprung, and marked the spot ;
And when the wintry weather came,

I took her to my cot.
And watched her growth, that none might tread
Where sweetly, from her modest bed,
Baised her unassuming head
My lily of the vale.

16 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

Then stay to-night, and deign for once
To bless a poor man's home ;

For you my simple store I'll spread,
For you my ale shall foam :

But turn aside, and do not tread

Where sweetly, from her modest bed,

Lifts her unassuming head
My hly of the vale.

Dame I^ature first laid down the rule,

And Time has improved on her plan,
That he ofttimes may be a great fool

Whom Fortune has made a great man.
For, though ragged Poverty looks melancholy
That she has no charter for madness and folly.
Yet, among Fortune's minions, take this for a rule

By a wise reservation.

All men in high station

(No doubt for the good of the nation)
Have got letters patent for playing the Fool.

Glowing dreams my fancy fire,
Ardent hopes my breast inspire ;
Thoughts harmonious, visions bright
Dance before my ravished sight.
Arranged in sweet confusion,
I catch each gay illusion.
Till Fancy's eyeballs sink in night.

Sweet roses and lilies,
Each Chloe and Phillis
By the poets of old have been settled to be.
They've so rifled of flowers
The groves, meads, and bowers.

UNPUBLISHED FEAOMEXTS OF THE ''LITTLE'' PERIOD, 17

There scarce is one left for a poet like me.
Yet if the dear creature resembles a flower,

'Tis a sprig of sweetbrier, where blossoms the rose —
An emblem at once of their sweetness and power,

For it scratches your face while it tickles your nose.

With a maid young and coy

If you wish for to toy.
She disdains with a frown what would give her heart ease ;

While a widow of mettle

Resembles a nettle :
The closer you press her, the less you displease.
Yet the whole of the sex most resemble my flower.

The sprig of sweetbrier, where blossoms the rose —
An emblem at once of her sweetness and power,
For it sci-atches your face while it tickles your nose.

By all bards 'tis agreed

An old maid's a dry weed,
Who forgets while she blossoms that life's but a span ;

And the sly hand of Time

Having wasted her prime.
She resolves, when too late, to take pity on man.
Yet maids, wives, and widows resemble my flower.

The sprig of sweetbrier, where blossoms the rose —
An emblem at once of their sweetness and power.
For it scratches your face while it tickles your nose.

Divinity, Physic, and Law,

Of the good things of life have possession ;
And who wishes to put in his claw
Must follow a learned profession.
For if each vulgar elf
Through the lucre of pelf
Is permitted to humbug and pilfer his brother.
The sons of the Church
Will be left in the lurch.
And Physic and Law may go hang one another.
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 266. 2

18 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Be still, my bosom ; beat not so
At thought of finding long-lost treasure ;
Hope only brings this dream of pleasure

To wake thee to severer woe.
Yet thus by Hope we're treated :

So sweetly she beguiles,
The oft'ner we are cheated,

The more we trust her smiles.

]^one but her eye's mild beam of pleasure

E'er can wound with cares my breast,
None but her bosom's fragrant treasure

E'er can lull those cares to rest.
In vain all other scenes impart

A respite from despair ;
Her smile alone can heal the smart

Which fixed the arrow there.

Woman still our faith abuses.

Seems to scorn what most she wants ;
Only coy when she refuses,

To be kinder when she grants.

Is she cold as winter's bosom ?

Cold as wintry winds I'll be.
But with kindness greet the blossom

Which unfolds its sweets to me.

Is her cheek with anger flushing ?

Chloe's cheek shall smiles impart —
Chloe's cheek, which, warmly blushing.

Yields her lip to heal my smart.

* * 4f -5^ *

UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS OF THE ''LITTLE'' PERIOD. 19

Tis fixed ; I disdain

Of my fate to complain ;
Though the trial I prove is severe,

'Tis better to know

The full measure of woe
Than to live on the rack of despair.

Come, Pride, bring me back my soft hours of rest.

While 1 blush for the pangs I endure ;
Oblivion, erase her false form from my breast.

And scorn and contempt be my cure.

I am a soldier, gentle lady,

And know a soldier's duty ;
With heart and hand am always ready

To dry the cheek of weeping beauty.

Then set thy beating heart at rest.
And back recall that starting tear ;

For, know, where valor warms the l)reast.
Soft Pitv is an inmate there.

Honor is the poor man's dower,
Peace and sweet content his lot :

Wealth awaits the sons of Power,
llim the lowly russet cot.

Yet, humbly blest, the sons of Toil
From nature's bounty may inherit
As rich a heart, as high a spirit

As the proud owner of the soil.

The cry of battle charms no more.

Where slaughter swells the tepid flood.

And Yict'ry 'midst the cannon's roar
Marks his groaning path with blood.

20 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Farewell to the lieart-rousing drum,
And peace to the cannon's rude throat.

Let the loud-clanging trumpet be dumb,
And the fife cease its shrill piercing note.

For Love shall now with sweeter sounds

His lo Paean breathe,
And on the laurel's blood-stained bough

Ingraft his myrtle wreath.

Hence with wrinkled care and sorrow !
Gloomy thought may cloud to-morrow ;
Here to-night, with festive glee.
Mirth shall keep her jubilee.

Still to bless this haj)py meeting.

Kindred Love with Friendship vies —

Hearts with honest rapture beating,
Glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

III.
CITIES AS UNITS IN OUR POLITY.

It has been an accepted truth since the writings of De Tocque-
ville that the town organization is the unit of American political
life. In the preceding number of this Review it was clearly set
forth by Governor Seymour. There lies the germ of political wis-
dom and reform ; but it is in the cities that the greatest difficulties
are found. The periodical ebb and flow of the great tide of popu-
lation, the varied interests, the unceasing friction, the banded masses
of the unsympathetic foreign-born, with universal suffrage as the
basis of power — all these present an organization very different from
the simi)ler unity of a rural town. Yet the cities stand as the great
head from which purposes, and the great heart from which pulsa-
tions, start for the whole country, and from them good government
and reform must arise. Are they too unwieldy for human direc-
tion, too discordant to elect their best men, and too debased for
universal suffrage? Must they drift without helm through tides
and rocks, by negations through imbecility and corruption ? or is
an intelligent, manly, and affirmative administration practicable?

Of all cities on this continent, New York presents this question
with the widest relations and the greatest complications ; and suc-
cess here would be the most emphatic. Its local relations to the
whole continent, its wealth, and its energy force it onward to a
manifest destiny. It must go on, in spite of every ill fortune and
of antagonistic legislation, to receive the growth which nature gives
it. It must become the largest and the most elegant city of the
continent, and it must do this on the basis of universal suffrage.
Noblesse oblige. If it works this out well (and it must work it out
well or ill), it will present a new unit and germ of political life to
the honor of the whole country. It is in this aspect that its fortunes
are worthy of especial study.

It has the best climate, the unmatched advantage of a central
position on a north and south line of coast, the best harbor for ship-

22 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

ping from the Eastern world, the best waterways to the West ; and,
as Horace Greeley said, every railroad in the country has one ter-
minus in New York. Its environs surpass in beauty those of any
other city in Christendom. Its career was one of uniform success
and rapidity of growth until the last decade, when it began to be
loaded down with adverse legislation, with a great debt and costly
unfinished improvements. To rescue it from these evils and to
guide it on a successful course it needs its best men and their wisest
efforts, with an affirmative policy of strong measures into which it
will never drift.

The legislation of the country has greatly reduced its share of
its own foreign commerce, and the interests of its ship-builders and
-owners. The debt it bears for stolen money, for which it received
no equivalent in profitable public works, rests on each piece of real
estate with a weight as heavy as a permanent mortgage for twenty
per cent, of its value, on which the owner must pay the interest and
can not pay the principal. Its unfinished public works were planned
without forethought and inadequately, and were constructed ex-
travagantly and corruptly. Terminal facilities for the interchanges
and transit of its merchandise have been almost wholly neglected.
It has been built up on a plan devised in the colonial times and in
the earlier years of the present century, with little study of its
wants, so that its domestic economy is conducted with great and
needless expense. It is as if a great hotel had been built up on a
plan which occupied each floor wholly with lodging-rooms, and its
need of halls, staircases, and offices was first discovered after it was
inhabited, and they then had to be constructed with great waste and
expense. Its taxation has been heavy, its public works and its
growth have been stopped, its population has been drawn and driven
away into the neighboring towns and cities, its business is not pros-
perous, and its population is not profitably employed.

There is a policy, comprised in a few affirmative measures, by
which these evils can be remedied, greater economy induced, and a
course of business prosperity again commenced. Many of these
measures are within its own direct power. Not one of them would
be beneficial to it alone, at the expense of any other community.
The present era of resumption is auspicious. Its money will be the
money of the world, by which the prices of all its commodities are
fixed, and no longer irredeemable credits ; the fluctuating price of
gold will no longer be a factor in every transaction ; and the at-
tempt to make a second standard in silver will be as futile as it

CITIES AS UXITS IN OUR POLITY. 23

would be to make two gold dollars, one worth a hundred and the
other eighty-five cents. This much has been prepared. It will
remain for Congress to enact such changes as will enable Americans
to own their own vessels and carry their own goods, and to amend
the tariff laws in the direction of free trade, so as to secure a mar-
ket for its great surplus of productions. In other respects New
York can help itself and work directly for its own reform. The
subjects are : first, increased facilities for the internal movement of
passengers and goods, and better terminal facilities ; second, the judi-
cious j)rosecution of its public works ; third, a broader basis of taxa-
ble property to support its taxation ; fourth, greater economy in its
domestic life ; fifth, working its unexplored sources of city revenue.

When measures are taken for these results, and the end comes
that all its citizens are profitably employed, the general cause of its
evils will be removed, and the first condition of prosperity will be
met. I'he causes of the misfortunes of the past have been a waste
of caj)ital and labor in premature and unnecessary public works ; a
currency which forced an element of unregulated fluctuation into
every contract and checked operations ; a large proportion of men
thrown out of employment who did not return to productive labor,
but remained idle waiters ; and tariff legislation that led to over-
production without a market. The salutary change brought about
by five years of hard times is, that men give up living upon the
labor of others and seek to be productive laborers themselves. We
therefore stand at the threshold of great national prosperity ; for
wealth follows the employment of all hands in productive labor.

New York lives upon its foreign commerce and the interchange
of commodities which its wealth and position bring to its doors.
The facilities for this interchange are those of the last century,
while other competing cities have put in use the closest connections.
It remains for the city to bring the vessel and the freight car side
by side, and in every way to diminish the expenses and risk of the
transshipment of goods. It should be accomplished as a public
work by a private corporation, as rapid transit has been accom-
plished for passengers by the elevated railroads ; and the city should
derive a revenue from the privilege it gives. If this connection
were well designed and economically constructed, it would greatly
expand business, save needless expense and damage, and increase
profitable employment.

There should be a judicious prosecution of the public works,
both those undertaken by the city at its own expense and those un-

24 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

dertaken by it at the expense of the property-owners. With land
and building materials at low prices, upon a basis of real money,
and with the new means of rapid transit, the first revival of business
will open a period of rapid growth. This must be kept within the
city limits and within its own taxation, and not scattered abroad
among its neighbors as it has been for ten years. The completion
of the Brooklyn Bridge will bring back this scattered population.
The northern sections of the island have every attraction for a new ^
New York. Such works as the Riverside and Morningside Parks,
which will surpass the Central Park and draw population as it has
never done, should be completed. They fix the highest character
to the finest portion of the whole island. The Harlem River as the
waterway of a region of which the Third Avenue Bridge is a center,
with its channel opened and its bulkhead and bridges built, would
concentrate in a location which possesses every natural advantage
the manufacturing business which has built up the surrounding
towns into cities from Paterson to Bridgeport. Population grows
around some business as a nucleus. A port, a water-power, a water-
way, or a railroad fixes the location for some great business, and the
population follows. Except in a few places of great natural beauty,
as Newport, Irvington, or New Brighton, population does not ac-
cumulate alone. It does not feed upon itself. A cathedral and a
mausoleum will not make Garden City a success, nor change it from
the waste Dlace it has been for two and a half centuries. Sydney
Smith commended the breed of pigs which, in growing fat, deserted
the cheap portions of the carcass and accumulated on the places
where it was worth a shilling a pound. The Harlem River is such
a place. A small portion of the money expended on the Brooklyn
Bridge, the cost of one of the untraveled boulevards, w^ould open it
to business, and at the present era of low prices start its growth.
Here has been the mistake of the city. It has laid out great areas
for population, without providing for the business to support it. If
places had been prepared for business first, its wealth and population
would have demanded and used its boulevards. The great burden
of the city debt is an outcry against, but not an answer to, the
progress of improvement. It would raise a great manufacturing
compeer to the commercial energy of the southern end of the island,
and bear its half of the burden ; it would bring in more and new
business, and help give to every one profitable employment. It is
not an objection to such public works that they are in the interest
of the laborers and give them employment. When this follows as

CITIES AS UNITS AY OUR POLITY. 25

a result from the prosecution of judicious and necessary works de-
manded on their own merits, it is well. The period of low wages
and low prices is the time when they can be done to double advan-
tage. They prepare for natural growth, and they dissipate the
delusions about the conflicts between bbor and capital which spread
in idle times. Such conflicts can not arise in a free country but by
some interference with the free working of the laws of trade. j

Labor is the law of human life. "By the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread." It has two modes : to work enough only to
gain the bread of the day, and to work more and accumulate bread.
The flrst is labor and the second is capital. To enforce the first
mode, as by the eight-hour law, and limit labor is an interference
with freedom that bars labor from capital. No man ever made a
fortune on eight hours' work a day. To encourage the second
mode l)y l)usiness enterprises which stimulate labor, invites labor to
capital. Tlie laborer who owns his spado, his horse, his shop, is
beginning to be a capitalist. Many of the great business capitalists
of this country began by saving their first dollar. To check busi-
ness by tariffs, and by paying the laborer with promises instead of
money, is an interference with freedom which drives the incipient
capitalist back to labor again. The temper of some laborers leads
tlicm to prefer fixed wages to the excitement and profits, the risks
and hopes of business enterprises ; to others they have a fascination
wliich is irresistible. A fixed rate must be met by the profits of the
business, and there is a limit which it can not exceed. Its level is
not easily raised when the employer is reaping great profits, nor de-
pressed when he meets great losses. The preference for a fixed rate
is so strong that few will accept a proportion of the profits of the
business in which they are employed if they must anticipate a share
in its losses. This binds the multitude within the ranks of the
laborers. Three classes are thus produced : laborers who by suc-
cessful enterprise become capitalists ; the unsuccessful, who return
to labor or drift outside ; and those contented to be laborers, whose
only accumulation is in saving. Cooperation and trades unions
conflict with this principle by reducing all to one level, and that
a low one, or by binding to work for the benefit of all the able man
who will soon start out for himself. All these are interferences
with freedom, in whose presence the conflict between labor and
capital can not continue.

This is illustrated by strikes. A high tariff protects one class
of manufacturers. Their profit is at the expense of those who use

26 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

their products, who in turn want like protection. One after the
other obtain it, till prices are artificially increased. The laborer on
a fixed rate of wages has to pay larger prices for all he consumes,
and the burden all falls upon him. Under adverse circumstances,
local or general, his wages are reduced. He sees before him the
starvation point' and begins to resist. The weight of the whole
false system is upon him. He can not control legislation, nor wait
for a change of parties or policy. The resistance to his appeals is
solid, and against his wrongs and the parties who are protected at
his expense he strikes. It is ineffectual, but it is all that he can do.
It is a revolutionary protest against unjust legislation which inter-
feres with freedom.

The position which the laborers assume when they make a con-
flict with capital shows that they abandon their right to freedom.
The successes which have been won by long generations of laborers
against their political and moneyed masters the laborers of to-day
give up, and they seek to enter again under the bonds their fathers
cast off. Tliey ask everything of a government which, as they con-
ceive it, would be the most intolerable despotism. They want work
allotted, and the regulation of wages and hours. They want land,
government loans and false money, measures which would reduce
them to serfdom. The lesson of individual liberty has been lost on
them. Instead of bursting the few bonds by which their liberty is
restricted, they seek to forge the iron framework of a despotism to
an unknown, indefinite, and irresponsible tyrant, when, if they knew
it, with freedom they themselves are sovereign. Their imported
ideas of the antagonism between labor and capital are delusions in
a free country, which exist here only in so far as freedom has been
impaired by restrictive tariffs and false money. It is against these
few remaining restrictions that the labor organizations should com-
bine.

[N'owhere should these restrictions be more sedulously fought
against than in a great city of laborers, whose prosperity depends
upon their profitable employment. Every restriction and embar-
rassment on commerce should be removed. Every encouragement
to new business enterprises should be given. In order to accommo-
date itself to new business, the city has much to do — much to pro-
vide for the incoming population which grows upon business ; and
this work should be done, so that business will be drawn here and
the city become as great in manufactures as it is in commerce.

The great objection to city works has been the prodigality and

CITIES AS UXITS IN OUR POLITY. 27

con*iij)tion which have attended them. This has been all wrong,
but it need not continue. The remedy is a simple one — rigid pro-
fessional superintendence. There have been debates between the
advocates of city work by contract and by the day ; and as the
advantages of each have been looked £^t, and the disadvantages dis-
regarded, each finds advocates in turn ; so that in this city, where
great success had followed the prosecution of the public works by
the day, public opinion swung over with great momentum, because
of some disadvantages, to the contract system, at the very time that
the exposure of the Canal frauds at Albany stamped the contract
system as the source of corruption and enormous extravagances.
The secret of good work is thorough inspection — a wise design, a
rigid adherence to plan, and a vigilance that thrusts out idle and
incompetent workmen. IIow is such inspection to be obtained ? In
private work done by the day, under the eye of the owner who is his
own inspector, the work is well done, of the best material, and at a
fair cost ; in private work done by contract, it is the inspection of the
contractor who drives his men. Honest inspection compels good ma-
terial and work from the contractor, w^iose constant temptation for
his own j)rofit is to slight the work. In private work the owner selects
tlie contractor by his character and ability, and not by price alone.
City work by contract goes to the lowest bidder without regard to any
other consideration — often, therefore, to the bidder who has made
a mistake in his calculation, or who has some undisclosed scheme.
In such a case, the conflict between the contractor and honest in-
spection becomes irrepressible. The contract for the Riverside
drive is a good illustration. It extends for three miles along the
high and wooded bank of the Hudson, through a park with varied
and commanding views. It was park work, and required elegance
and taste in treatment. The contractors, who were the lowest bid-
ders, took the work at 8510,000. The engineers who drew the
plans and specifications had estimated the work at 8700,000, and
most of the bids of the closest contractors indicated a correspondence
with this estimate. It was doubtful whether the contractors could
complete the work to meet the design at the price they bid. Non-
political and superior professional superintendence was established,
under Mr. Olmsted. The corps of engineers, under James C.
Aldrich, C. E., was as fine a body of men as had ever been gathered
on such work. The work was commenced in the autumn of 1876,
and at the close of 1877 rigid inspection had driven the contractors
from it. The question arose whether this inspection should be

28 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

maintained against the contractors, or broken down for them.
The Commissioners of the Park Department by a majority vote
decided it. As Mr. Wenman, who then became president, naively
expressed it, they " made such changes in the engineering force as
to enable the contractors to continue the work to a speedy comple-
tion." Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Aldrich and his corps were displaced.
The contractors had bidden high prices for some of the earlier por-
tions of the work and low prices for the later portions, and the work
was about half finished. They had two alternatives : the first, to
lay the foundation for claims for extra work ; the second, to have
the quantities of the profitable portions of their work increased, and
in the unprofitable portions to force upon the engineer the accept-
ance of worthless work. The first chance was cut off by a special
clause inserted in the contract to prevent it, and the second chance
was adopted. A year's prosecution of the work has raised a public
discussion at the present moment about its execution. By days'
labor, under the professional inspection which was established, eco-
nomical work of the highest quality would have been produced,
worthy of the finest drive in any park in the world. As it is,
worthless work has been accepted, quantities have been illegally
increased, the general design has been grossly maltreated, portions
of the park surface of historical interest and great beauty, and
matchless foliage, have been ignorantly destroyed, and the property-
owners have been abundantly supplied with " substantial errors "
as legal grounds for vacating the assessments on their property,
throwing the whole cost of the work upon the city. There is but
one remedy, and that is the restoration of the superb professional
superintendence under which the work was started. Non-political
professional inspection is the condition of honest city work.

If the city be thus adapted to the easier prosecution of its proper
business and made attractive to new business enterprises, and such
public works as will pay are carried on, the immediate result will
be to subject a larger amount of property to its taxation, and its
830,000,000 a year will be raised upon 82,000,000,000 instead of
upon $1,100,000,000, as it now is. It is because its policy for twenty
years has been the reverse of that now indicated, and because of
the lack of steam transit, that Jersey City and Brooklyn have grown
at its expense, and New York has enriched its neighbors. A city
with a great debt, impoverished resources, and stagnant business,
must recover in the same mode that a merchant or a corporation
would adopt. They would not attempt it by retrenchment alone,

CITIES AS UNITS IX OUR POLITY. 29

but by working at their assets, making their capital productive, and
enlarging their resources. All the materials for enlarged resources
and increase of capital are present, if by wise measures we choose
to invite them at the best period of natural growth. The city's
taxation is four fifths of it upon land ; and the proposition is broadly
discussed and supported that, if all personal property was relieved
of tax and made free in this city, the influx of money and capital
for all enterprises would so largely add to the business of the city,
and so enhance the uses of real estate, that it could easily and profit-
ably bear the additional one fifth of the taxation. The Constitution
of this State does not require equal taxation, and it would be a
very safe measure to try ; it would lead directly to the profitable
employment of all its citizens.

With the facilities of steam transit and the improvement of the
district north of the Harlem River annexed to the city, all the
tendencies of growth due to natural causes will be toward the
north, over an area subject to its own taxation. Without this
growth the high values for taxation placed upon vacant land in
this northern area are unsubstantial, and must disappear. Sjdccu-
lalive values placed upon vacant land, because of its supposed
future use, are not a sound basis for taxation. They ruin the
owners and check improvements. If the values can not be reduced,
they must be supported. Speculative values are based upon the
expectation that a lot of land will come into a use, in say five
years, which will make it worth say $10,000. Those who believe
this will make five years' discount on this price, to fix the present
value of the lot. Their faith in such prices depends on the near-
ness of the time in which they believe this use will be reached.
There is a law, too, which determines the value of land and places
a limit upon its rise. It is this : Where land is improved, the land
is worth a sum equal to the value of the improvements. This is
true in a general sense over neighborhoods and localities of like
character. The real value of land is based upon its net rents and
the rates of interest on permanent investments. This value de-
pends on the improvements and buildings upon it. In a good
farming district, a careful estimate of the average value of the
buildings, fences, and improvements through the district will be a
fair measure of the naked value of the land. On Broadway, the
value of the building best adapted for the business of the street,
and bringing the best rent, will best measure the naked value of
the land on which it stands. The same rule holds in any residence

30 THE NORTH AMERIGAK REVIEW.

or business section of uniform character, and it deserves a great
deal more consideration than this bare statement of it. There are
many exceptions, under spasmodic or speculative causes, under
transitions from one occupation to another, under cumulated lines
of value, like the intersection of Broadway and the Fifth Avenue,
and from special improvements in certain places ; but the general
rule will be found true in all cases of extended and accurate obser-
vation, and its bearing is this : that there is a law for the value of
land, at a mean between speculative inflations and spasmodic de-
pressions. It fixes a future value to land now vacant lying in the
line of improvement, from which its present value is derived by a
discount from that value and the cost of making it ready for im-
provement. In any scheme for placing the taxation on land and
making it uniform, this law becomes fundamental.

There should be greater economy in the internal administration
of the city's supplies and waste. For this the fault lies with the
plan of the city. Places for daily market supplies of all sorts, and
for daily waste of sewage, garbage, and sweepings, should have
been provided ; a plan for a city without these is as defective as a
residence would be which had no cellar and kitchen. The colonial
plan of the lower part of the city provided for the only great mar-
kets of original supply we now possess. Beyond that the plan con-
tained no provision ; the collection, deposit, and disposal of the
daily waste was not provided for ; and all this work is now done at
a great expense. The markets of original supply — the Washington
and Fulton markets — are wholly inadequate. The producers have
insufficient accommodation, and a great army of expensive middle-
men and distributors intervenes between the producer and the con-
sumer, who pays a price double that which the producer receives.
The producer should have place and space to be brought in im-
mediate connection with the consumer. Places and spaces should
also be provided for the daily waste, as they should have been in
the original plan. The land which the city owned has long ago
been sold, and for such purposes it has in great part to buy land, as
it has bought it for its schoolhouses and courthouses, police sta-
tions and fire stations. It is a great drawback to the city that its
market supplies have to be drawn from so remote a place as Wash-
ington Market ; it increases the necessary cost of living, makes it a
needlessly expensive place for residence, and depresses its advance
with a constant blight. Midway along the river border vast areas
should be purchased, in immediate connection with ferries leading

CITIES AS UNITS IN OUR POLITY. 31

to country highways and railroads, where the producer could meet
the consumer face to face. A reasonable and moderate rent or
license fee on each jjroducer would be a good source of city reve-
nue. To undertake such a reform ])resents the difficult question,
viz., whether such markets should be carried on by the city or left
to private enterprise. Private enterprise is the present system ;
any change and reform must be by markets established and con-
trolled by the city. The single difficulty is a broad area of land.
Washington Market presents the right plan. It needs more space
and a location farther up town. By such markets, in which the
cost of mi«l(llemen and distribution — an enforced agency — could be
dispensed with, the ])rice could be reduced, and the city, for a fair
license fee and for honest regulation, could derive a large income,
similar in effect to the octroi duties in Paris.

Not only should public places have been provided in the plan
of the city for markets and for supplies, but also for the econom-
ical disposal of all the city waste. This daily waste is of three
classes : that which is useful for manure, that which is useful for
filling, and that which is unlit for either. The science of chemistry
has established the economy of returning the first class to the soil.
Here the soil in the close vicinity of the city from which its daily
supplies come, in New Jersey and Long Island, would receive this
means of enrichment. Its place of deposit should be on the water-
side, whence boats could move it to the water-side near the farms.
The second class of waste is needed to the extent of tens of mil-
lions of yards in the upper portion of the island, for the necessary
tilling of sunken lands, within the bulkhead line along the water's
edge. A proper discrimination would soon reduce the third class
of worthless waste to a minimum, for nothing is absolutely useless.
The first requisite is places of local deposit ; the second, modes of
transportation ; the last, the final deposit. These places for dispos-
ing of its waste are as necessary in the economy of a city as they
are in dwelling-houses. They must be properly located, and space
otherwise valuable must be given up to them for the good of the
whole. These places of local collection should be frequent and dis-
tributed through the city, so that the collection could be made with
the least cost of cartage. The surface and elevated railroads should
be used, between midnight and morning, to transport the collec-
tions in tight boxes to the place of final deposit. They should do
the work as a rent-service to the city without expense. There is
room for waste of the second class within the bulkhead lines on the

32 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

south side of the Harlem River for many years to come. All the
lines of elevated and the avenue surface roads would reach it. The
expense of final deposit and leveling would not be too great for the
land to bear, from the increase of value gained by the filling up
into solid streets and blocks ready for business occupation. These
are two notable instances in city administration in which greater
economy could be introduced.

Most important of all the topics is the development of the un-
explored resources of city revenue. In an article in the November
number of this Review, the title of the city to its own streets,
and its right to a compensation for all uses of the class which have
received the legal designation of " mixed public and private uses "
— that is, uses which aid and extend the public use of the streets in
a mode which also enriches private persons and corporations — were
set forth ; and the grounds were stated in respect to the right of a
compensation from the elevated railroads in the shape of a percentage
of their gross receipts. These same reasons support the city's right
to take compensation, or fixed rent, for every other kind of street
occupation — surface railroads, telegraph poles, gas pipes, news and
business stands, and all future uses. In every one of these cases
the use of the city property is of great and paramount advantage
to the private company, and an equal and just mode of compensa-
tion should be established for them alike. Fixed sources of income
are better for the city than the payment of a given sum as princi-
pal for the privilege. Annual payment is therefore a better mode
than the product of the sale of the privilege at auction ; the latter
mode might operate as a grant which would be disadvantageous to
the city in the future. Income rated by a fixed percentage, which
will increase with the growth of the business out of which it arises,
is best for the city and just for the company. It obviates, too, the
uncertainties which attend any calculation of the value of future
rents. To base it upon gross income is better than upon net, for
the latter is as variable as the most complicated calculations can
make it. An examination of the statistics of the companies who
use the streets would show, on well-established principles, what pro-
portion the use of the streets bore to the capital they use, and what
would be a fair proportion for the contribution the city gives by
the use of its streets toward the general results.

The use of the Fourth Avenue above Forty-second Street by
the railroads which occupy it is a notable instance in which the
rights of the city were not protected. The Harlem Railroad had a

CITIES AS UNITS IN OUR POLITY. 33

right to use the avenue for two tracks, for a limited number of
years, which were running out. Its tracks ran upon the surface
for a portion of the distance between Forty-second Street and the
Harlem River. The railroad required four tracks for an unlimited
time. A few accidents led to an outcry from the people for a road
at an undergrade. " Sink the track," rang in the papers ; and the
railroad company, following the people, by legislative aid took from
them a perpetual right to four tracks, on a plan for the improve-
ment of the avenue, the expense of which was borne one half by
the company and one half by the city. In addition to this, the
company have occupied by their depot and yards the whole of the
avenue and portions of the cross-streets for several blocks. The
j)rinciple8 on which the company should have given to the city com-
pensation for the ])rivileges and such use of the avenue were as clear
then as now ; but there was no city officer to stand forth and ask
for it — not even so much as to require frequent trains, low fares,
and commutations on that part of the road which ran within the
city limits. That alone would have been of great service to the
city, in gathering the outflow of its population along with the rail-
road lines which ran through its own territory.

These thoughts point in the direction of measures to accomplish
them, fitted into the contracts, laws, and ordinances by which the
several companies enjoy their privileges, and adjusted to what they
hold of right, what they assume beyond right, and what they have
future need to ask for. The point is open to the city where its
claims to revenue and rent service can be inserted and enforced ;
but at this point the work is more appropriate to a lawyer's office
than to these pages. The city of Paris presents illustrations of the
closest economy in the directions now presented. Its income for
1878 was 254,063,335 francs, of which 122,203,250 was proposed
from octroi duties on the supplies of food, etc., which entered its
gates, and 28,369,895 of the residue from the use of the streets and
other property, for every purpose under, upon, and above the surface.
If New York were to begin now to establish on a sound basis a
revenue from such uses of its property, within limits which were
just to those who paid them, an income would be secured which
would, by a reasonable increase with the growth of the city and a
return of its prosperity, either provide for its debt within the period
of its maturity, or relieve a large portion of the burden of its annual
taxes. As a remedy for its financial evils retrenchment is wholly
inadequate ; and an affirmative policy, by measures through which
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 266. 3

34 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

its property will be made productive and its unexplored resources
be made available, is imperative.

A work of this kind is difficult ; it would be beset with antago-
nisms and obstacles ; but it is practicable. It would gather immense
momentum by being well stated ; the people would help in it. It
would insure a rapid recovery from past evils ; it would bring re-
turning prosperity into the service of the city. Such an affirmative
policy, firmly carried out, would, in a most notable instance of ill
fortune, demonstrate that the best government was practicable in
great cities, and that the American unit in political life, born in the
town orga;nization, did not fail under the complications of great
aggregations of energy, population, and business. There is no bet-
ter time for the practical consideration of any efforts for reform
than the accession to power of a new Mayor such as Mr. Edward
Cooper. The financial administration of the city is honestly con-
ducted. The policy of retrenchment has been carried on so success-
fully as to demonstrate its insufficiency for the relief that is needed,
and that affirmative measures of some sort are in order. A com-
bination between such a Comptroller as Mr. Kelly has shown him-
self to be and Mayor Cooper may now produce all that is needed
— a far-sighted and energetic administration, with the highest pro-
fessional and non-political superintendence over all public works.
There is no need of men who trifle along the surface of affairs, or
who are satisfied with personal distinctions ; who are controlled by
party considerations, or who drift on the current of abuses. A wise
man to foresee, a patient man to perfect measures, and one with in-
fluence to combine all forces to accomplish good results, is what the
city of New York awaits.

William R. Martin.

IV.

THE rilESERYATION OF FORESTS.

" Baldness is perhaps the least of the thousand ills which man
is heir to," says Dc Lamartine, " but it is a rather serious evil if it
befalls a country. The value of a nation's territory depends a good
deal on its vegetative productiveness."

That " understatements " are in good taste is a rule with occa-
sional exceptions ; for it would be about as appropriate to speak,
like Aristophanes, of annihilation and death as " annoyances of the
first magnitude," as to talk about a "rather serious evil" in referring
to the change of a national territory from fertility to desolation.
We must think of individual instead of public misfortunes to im-
agine a nw7'e serious evil than that. Nay, it is a grave question if
w^ have a right to speak of any other evil as a national calamity
in that fearfullv literal sense of the word. War and revolution
affect the upper strata of society, and pestilence may blight the
k flower of one entire generation, while yet the deep roots of national

life remain intact, and capable of resuming their germinative func-
tions with the next favorable season ; but spring and summer return
in vain if the soil itself has lost its reproductive force, and neither
secular nor religious reforms nor the most pawerful political stim-
ulus can break the death-slumber of a nation whose country has
ceased to support vegetable life.

The inhabitants of Persia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, and the
Mediterranean nations, who once " enjoyed heaven on this side of
the grave," have thus perished together with their forests, leaving
us a warning in the ruins of their former glory, which nothing but
a plea of religious insanity can excuse us for having left unheeded
for the last eighteen hundred years.

The physical laws of God can not be outraged with impunity,
and it is time to recognize the fact that there are some sins against
which not one of the Scriptural codes of the East contains a word
of warning. The destruction of forests is such a sin, and its sig-

36 THE FORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

nificance is preached by every desolate country on the surface of
this planet. Three million square miles of the best lands which
ever united the conditions of human happiness have perished in the
sand drifts of artificial deserts, and are now more in-etrievably lost
to mankind than the island ingulfed by the waves of the Zuyder Zee.

Some of these countries, like Egypt and Palestine, were over-
taken by their fate long ago, while the ruin of others has been com-
passed within comparatively recent periods. Since the beginning
of the sixteenth century the population of the four Mediterranean
peninsulas has decreased more than fifty-five millions, and the value
of their agricultural products by at least sixty per cent, (even with-
out making allowance for the increase in prices) ; and the rate of
the decline from year to year bears an exact proportion to the de-
crease of the forest area of every district.

During the reign of Abul Hassan (1466-1484), the forests of the
Sierra Nevada were protected by stringent legislation, and in every
district where the original woods had disappeared the proportion of
orchards and grain fields was no longer optional, but regulated by
a code of " field laws." After the conquest of Granada these laws
were abrogated, and the Moorish orchards and chestnut groves dis-
appeared to make room for Christian vineyards. The Moslem in-
habitants of Andalusia, who were hunted out of Europe like wild
Beasts, had created a paradise in southern Spain ; but their Chris-
tian conquerors could not prevent that country from becoming a
desert.

The Turkish provinces in Europe and Asia Minor, especially
those south of the Balkans and southwest of the Taurus range, en-
joyed abundant crops and comparative prosperity till after the ac-
cession of Amurath III., when the exigencies of the Ottoman navy
exhausted the timber stores of those regions, which ever since have
been visited by periodic droughts and severe famines. The aridity
of the south Italian coast districts and the island of Sicily dates
from the time when cotton fields first superseded the mulberry
groves of the Neapolitan silk-farmers, and the extensive grape cul-
ture of Apulia encroached on the live-oak forests that had clothed
the spurs of the Apennines since the days of the elder Pliny. Here,
as well as in Greece and Portugal, the introduction of the tobacco
plant, which needs a rich vegetable mold, suggested the cultiva-
tion of the upper mountain-valleys, that had nursed the fountains
of classic rivers in their ancient woods, and from the slopes of
Olympus to the Sierra Morena the beds of former watercourses are

THE PRESERVATION OF FORESTS. 37

now marked only by barren ravines, choked with rocks and a maze
of withered brambles.

Afghanistan, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece,
Macedonia, the southern islands of the Mediterranean, and the
whole of northern Africa from Cairo to the western extremity of
Morocco — countries which were once blessed with abundance and a
glorious climate — are now either absolute sand wastes or the abodes
of perennial droughts, hunger, and ^Tetchedness ; and wherever
statistical records have been preserved, it is proved, beyond the
possibility of a doubt, that their misfortunes commenced with the
disappearance of their arboreal vegetation.

In view of these facts, it may not be quite uninteresting to know
that since the year 1835 (the date of the first reliable South Ameri-
can statistics) the forest area of the western hemisphere has de-
creased at the average yearly rate of 7,000,000 acres, or about
11,400 square miles ; and that in the United States alone this rate
has advanced from 1,000 square miles in 1835 to 7,000 in 1855, and
8,400 in 1870. Between 1750 and 1835 the total aggregate of for-
ests felled in South and Central America (especially in southeastern
Mexico), an<I in the Eastern, Southeastern, and Southwestern States
of our republic, may be estimated at from 45,000,000 to 50,000,000
acres. In other words, we have been wasting the moisture-supply
of the American soil at the average ratio of seven per cent, for
each quarter of a century during the last one hundred and twenty-
five years, and are now fast approaching the limit beyond which
any further decrease will affect the climatic phenomena of the en-
tire continent.

\Vlien Ojeda and Vespucci landed at Rio Hondo in 1499, the
mainlands of the New World contained already a greater propor-
tion of barren territory than the northeastern continent (Asia and
Europe) in the century of Herodotus and Xenophon. Three hun-
dred years after the foundation of Rome, Europe, as we call all the
western portion of that continent, was covered with continuous
woods from Iberia to the foot-hills of the Caucasus, while the des-
erts of the East were limited to the table-lands of Gobi and the
northern half of the Arabian peninsula. But the seemingly inter-
minable forests that excited the admiration of the first American
colonists are in reality confined to an alluvial belt along the eastern
coast of South America and the eastern third of our northern main-
land. The eighteenth degree of longitude west from Washington
marks very nearly the boundary between America Felix and Ameri-

38 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

ca Deserta, as we raiglit distinguish the fertile eastern garden lands
from the alkali plains of the West. This line, which passes through
western Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, the Indian Territory, and eastern
Texas, is approached here and there by the great East American
Sylvania, which once reached from the Missouri to the Atlantic,
and is bounded in the West by table-lands which, on the whole,
exceed in sterility the so-called deserts of Central Asia, and contain
regions which for hundreds of miles are absolutely without a vestige
of vegetation.

Between the Great Slave Lake and the Saskatchewan, our Brit-
ish neighbors own a track of barren territory which surpasses the
treeless plateau of northern Tartary in repulsiveness as well as in
size ; and, owing to the lower temperature of America, the same
degree of latitude that passes through extensive Siberian forests lies
far to the north of a line that divides the last North American tim-
ber lands from the dismal snow wastes of the polar regions.

Adjoining the British boundary, we have a piece of sand land
which reaches from the Red River of the North to the Indian
reservations of Washington Territory, and southward to a line
drawn from Virginia City to the mouth of the Big Cheyenne, and
which, after subtracting a few strips of cottonwood-trees along the
main watercourses, may be described, in the words of General
Hazen, as " a blank from the Columbia to the Missouri — a hopeless
and absolute barren, 300,000 square miles in extent." Viewed from
a sufficient elevation, the Black Hills of Dakota and the mountains
of eastern Colorado would appear as forest islands in the midst of a
sandy ocean — the fabled Great West, or the central plateau of our
continent, which, instead of being an " emigrants' paradise," is per-
haps the most forbidding region which an intending agriculturist
could encounter outside of northern Africa. The word barrenness
is hardly sufficient to describe the azoic and utterly unimprovable
character of enormous sections of these plains. Sixty thousand
square miles in Utah and Nevada, 45,000 in Arizona, and 180,000
between the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico and the sand hills
of western Texas, are as unfit for tillage as the crater of an active
volcano. Twenty inches of annual rainfall may be considered as a
minimum, below which no inland region can repay the trouble of
cultivation ; but twelve inches is all that can be hoped for in the
most favored districts of Arizona, while in the southern part of
Utah and New Mexico the average yearly moisture-supply (even
including occasional heavy dews) falls short of seven inches, and in

THE PEESERYATION OF FORESTS, 39

the center of the Llano Estacado amounts hardly to three inches
and a half. There is no soil on these bleak hills, if that word
implies any admixture of vegetable mold, but only a thin stratum
of drift-sand or alkali dust, spread over the flinty rock ; and during
the six summer months the hunter or miner may wander over dis-
tricts as large as the island of Great Britain without seeing a drop
of running water. The Pais del Muerto, the "Land of Death,"
south of the Rio Gila, extends far into the republic of Mexico,
which can boast of two other such embryo Saharas ; one in western
Sonora and the other northeast of Mazatlan, between Durango and
the seacoast.

South America has few absolute deserts — i. e., lands devoid as
well of annual as of perennial vegetation ; but portions of the
Pampas and of the Tierra Templada of Peru are quite as sterile
as the table-lands of Syria and southern Spain, and experience has
l>roved that nine tenths of the Argentine Republic, and the larger
half of Bolivia and Paraguay, can only be utilized as pasture
grounds.

In the heart of the Andes, too, there are extensive plateaus
which even the enterprise of the Incas failed to put to any useful
account ; and the Peruvian seacoast from Arequipa to the Chilian
frontier is skirted by a broad belt of sandy downs.

The treeless regions of America lie chiefly in the west, those of
Africa and Arjibia in the north, of Europe in the southeast, and of
Australia in the northwest ; and the theory that all deserts on the
face of our globe have been produced by the hand of man is, there-
fore, supported by the remarkable circumstance that the most
barren portions of four continents are found on the side turned to-
ward Asia^ and which, according to all geographical and ethnologi-
cal probabilities, must have been first reached by the waves of emi-
gration which emanated from that common home of the human
race.

But, besides these prehistoric (as we should call them rather
than aboriginal) sand wastes, America now contains a number of
smaller but growing deserts, which date their origin from the arri-
val of the white man. Any neglect of the precautions by which
Abul Hassan preserved the productiveness of the Andalusian Yega
could not fail to be quickly resented by the thin-skinned soil of the
tropical table-lands ; and it need not, therefore, surprise us that the
Spaniards succeeded in desolating the plateaus of South and Central
America, as their fathers had desolated those of Aragon and Castile,

40 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

and that even the rich valleys of the Brazos and Colorado have be-
come subject to perennial droughts.

Still, it might have been hoped that the virgin woods north of
the Red River had been secured by nature against the possibility
of such a fate. To overcome the stubborn fertility of the East
American forest lands might well seem a task which would baffle
the united efforts of the cotton-planters and lumbermen for a thou-
sand years to come ; but a fatal perseverance in the worst possible
method of cultivation has solved the problem in less than two cen-
turies. Eleven times (or almost every other year) since 1850 the
country between the Alabama River and the State border of the
two Carolinas had to suffer from dry summers, which in 1855, '59,
and '75 threatened the South with a general famine, and have per-
manently lowered the average water line of some Southern rivers
by several inches. It seems that, while there were any remnants
of woodland to encroach upon, irrigation and the use of fertilizers
were never resorted to. The rich mold of a newly cleared piece
of land yields abundantly for a few years, but the quick repetition
of uniform crops soon exhausts the soil, and where labor is cheap
the temptation may have been great to abandon such worn-out
lands to their fate and continue the work of destruction in the
forests. But if, instead of thus denuding entire countries, the
planters had spared a grove here and there, they would have reaped
larger crops on a hundred acres than they can now oa a square mile,
in spite of the lavish use of guano ; and the woods, besides reward-
ing their forbearance with fuel, nuts, and berries, would have in-
sured the needful humidity of the atmosphere, the perpetuity of
their springs, and the health and happiness of their children.

The coincidence of more favorable climatic and geological con-
ditions than any other region of the Western World can boast of,
has so far enabled the State of North Carolina to resist the devas-
tating energy of her tobacco-planters and turpentine-distillers ; but
the country which once realized Daniel Boone's ideal of a hunter's
paradise, the land south and southeast of the Kentucky River, which
he describes as " a boundless rolling ocean of wood-covered hills,"
has now hardly tree-shade and water enough left for the exigencies
of the stock-breeders, and assumes an ominous resemblance to the
parched hill country of southern California.

In the sandy and level districts of New Jersey and Delaware the
natural tendency to aridity is counteracted by the extensive orchards
that have taken the place of the virgin forests ; but the farmers of

TUE PRESERVATION OF FORESTS. 41

Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and Indiana, who devote their plains
to the exclusive production of grain crops, are inviting a danger
from which the neighborhood of the Great Lakes will not save them
for many more years.

The ruinous experiments of the Old World nations have taught
them some lessons which will be repeated on our own continent,
unless we prefer to learn by a cheaper method, remembering the
thrifty proverb of the aliena jyericida. As a general rule, from
which only the alluvial deltas of large rivers can be excepted, we
must assume a sixfold excess of treeless area over the woodlands of
any district as the limit, beyond which its fertility becomes depen-
dent on irrigation and artificial stimulants, and which can not be far
exceeded without defeating the purposes of tillage ; for after the
total disappearance of forests from a large tract of land, the lost
fertilizing influence of arboreal vegetation can only be retrieved by
processes whose expensiveness would neutralize the profits of hus-
bandry. In Persia, Asia Minor, southern Spain, and throughout
northern Africa, with the exception of Egypt, agriculture has ceased
to " pay " in the commercial sense of the word, and the peasants
prefer semi-starvation to the superhuman task of raising a full crop.

Only a small i)ortion of the magnificent forests that once adorned
the paradise of the Mediterranean nations owe their destruction to
war, accidental fires, or the market value of their timber ; but in the
Old World, as well as in Wisconsin and Alabama, the cultivators
of cereals and some other annuals have felled ten out of every dozen
acres of woodlands that have disappeared from the face of the earth.
The lumberman selects the tallest and straightest trees, prefers the
full-grown ones even for fuel, and not only permits, but desires and
helps, the saplings to replace their fallen seniors ; while the grain-
or cotton-planter uproots the forests to the bottom of the organic
soil, and glories in the sight of a level country, " cleared " as far as
the eye can reach. In accordance therewith, we see that the cedars of
Lebanon, which had to furnish timber for every architectural enter-
prise of western Asia since the days of Solomon, are not exhausted
yet ; that the peninsula of Yucatan, which has supplied the world
with logwood and mahogany for three hundred years, is still as
woody as before its discovery by the conquistador^es ; and that the
coast districts of Maine, Michigan, and North Carolina, which have
been most heavily taxed by the lumber-trade of North America,
contain still as much woodland as the rest of our Eastern States
taken together.

42 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

In the agricultural districts of the Southern and Central States
the cultivation of four deciduous plants — maize, wheat, tobacco, and
cotton — has accelerated the work of denudation, which in the Old
World was accomplished almost by wheat alone ; and it is a fact of
ominous significance that the first swarm of the Rocky Mountain
locusts which invaded the Atlaiftic settlements made its appearance
in the western counties of Alabama, the " champion cotton State "
of the South.

The physical history of the eastern continents has demonstrated
that, where the productions of the soil have been reduced to decid-
uous (or " annual ") plants, neither remoteness from the equator nor
the neighborhood of the ocean can secure a country against the
fate of northern Africa — the utter and permanent extinction of
organic life. The desolation of the central regions of a continent
is only observed where such districts are formed by table-lands of
considerable elevation, as in Utah, northern Mexico, and Turkistan.
The midland plains of South America and the birth-land of the
Nile are covered with a luxuriant vegetation, while the Sahara bor-
ders on the very ocean for more than fifteen hundred miles, and
Arabia, with eighty-five per cent, of desert surface, is surrounded
by four seas. The highlands of northern Tartary rival those of
Dakota in barrenness as well as in the severity of their winter cli-
mate, and Europe as well as South America contains many dreary
wastes at a great distance from the equator ; while the equator
itself, in its range through two continents and three large islands,
does not touch a single desert nor any country that ever suffered
from a scarcity of water.

It would be a mistake, then, to suppose that any region inclines
to aridity on account of its latitude or its distance from the sea. A
natural tendency of that kind, 9r rather an inability to withstand
the ravages of man for any length of time, can only be ascribed to
extensive table-lands of an elevation exceeding three thousand feet,
and remote from any higher and snow-covered mountain range.
Vast lowland plains may preserve their productiveness under very
trying circumstances, as we see in Russia, China, and southern
India — countries that have been under cultivation for more than
fifteen centuries ; but the only regions which seem absolutely proof
against any outrages on their fertility are the alluvial estuaries and
deltas of larger rivers, and valleys at the foot of mountain ranges
which lift their summits above the line of eternal snow. No such
mountains are found east of the Mississippi, and the glaciers and

THE PRESERVATION OF FORESTS, 43

perennial snow fields of the West are restricted to a few isolated
peaks ; but of alluvial bottom lands, replenished by inexhaustible
rivers, we own about forty thousand square miles, at the mouth of
the Mississippi and its southern tributaries and in the swamps of
the Gulf coasts, whose inhabitants, like those of the lower Amazon
Valley, may violate every law of agricultural economy to their
hearts' content ; they will never exhaust the cornucopia of the river
god, who will continue to lavish his abundance on them, as he has
lavished it on Egypt, in spite of all they can do to abuse his bounty
— though these exceptional privileges may be offset by the un-
healthiness of their luxurious marshes. But the vast majority of
our population, the dwellers of the Western plains and the hill coun-
tries of the East and North, enjoy their prosperity on terms which,
however easy to the strict observer, and seemingly pliant to altered
conditions, are in reality as inexorable as the laws of^health.

In a country like ours, where government interference is almost
sure to make a refomi unpopular, and where, happily, the enforce-
ment of unpoi)ular laws is still impossible, the success of every
legislative innovation depends on the degree in which the public's
opinion of its usefulness has approached to conviction ; and I be-
lieve that, in regard to the necessity of forest laws, as the Austri-
ans call them, this condition will be attained by the following
provisional measures :

1. In every township, or smaller subdivision of a county or par-
ish, where the disappearance of arboreal vegetation begins to affect
the perennial springs and watercourses or the fertility of the fields,
let a space of, say, fifty acres, on a hill if possible, or on ground of
comparative elevation, be appropriated for a " township grove," an
oasis to be forever consecrated to shade-trees, birds' nests, picnics,
and playing children.

2. In all new settlements, and in the mountain regions of the
older States where a remnant of the primeval forests has survived,
let the woods on the upper ridges or on the summits of isolated
hills be spared by mutual agreement of the proprietoa'S. By elimi-
nating decaying trees and cultivating the aftergrowth, such forest
reservations may become directly remunerative, especially in dis-
tricts where timber and firewood are as scarce as they are sure to
be in all our central States before the end of this century.

3. In the treeless regions of the " Great West," not only ama-
teur societies (which have set a good example in Kansas and Iowa,
and in the Southwest here and there), but every grange and farm-

44 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

ers' union of every county should devote themselves to the work
of tree-culture. Let them form oak-, beech-, and pine-tree associ-
ations, organize rival forest clubs under attractive names, offer
prizes for the greatest number of shade-trees of five or more inches
in diameter raised by any planter, celebrate the return of spring by
grove festivals after the manner of the ancient Assyrians, or try the
device of Pastor Oberlin, who created a paradise in a dreary valley
of the upper Moselle, by instructing parents to plant a hatful of
chestnuts or cherry kernels at the birth of every child, which it
became the duty and the privilege of the little citizen to cultivate.

4. Let every landed proprietor see to it that the balks or boun-
daries of his estates, and the unplowed ridges between the sub-
divisions, be set with shade-trees, and that wooden fences be either
supplanted or reenforced by quickset hedges.

5. Plant fr^iit-trees wherever there is a piece of ground neither
otherwise occupied nor absolutely barren ; and be sure that their
influence on the atmosphere in summer and their fertilizing leaves
in fall will more than indemnify the adjoining fields for the modi-
cum of sunlight they may intercept.

Any State, nay, any county, where these precautions should be
generally adopted, would soon be so unmistakably distinguished by
the unfailing humidity and freshness of its fields and the abun-
dance of its crops, that the sheer necessity of competition would
induce backward neighbors to try the same experiment ; and before
long the maxim would not only be generally recognized, but gener-
ally acted upon, that husbandry and tree-culture are inseparable.

But the interest we should take in the preservation of our woods
might rest on even a broader basis than their agricultural impor-
tance. That man was not created in a desert, nor in a cotton field
or a city, but in a forest, is one of the few points in which Moses
and Darwin agree ; and, with our forests, we would lose their health-
giving atmosphere, the music of their song-birds, the purest enjoy-
ments of our early years, and nature's remedy for the mental dis-
cords of manhood. Woods are the native life-element of the human
race ; and a homesickness, an instinctive yearning after the garden
home of our forefathers, haunts the nomad of the desert as well as
the inhabitant of luxurious cities.

" If a future Messiah should appear among us," says Gotthold
Lessing, " ask him what he can do to restore our lost earthly para-
dise, and let that be the test of his divine authority." But a para-
dise is much easier lost than restored. Nature, instead of healing

THE PRESERVATION OF FORESTS. 45

corrupt civilizations, prefers to civilize healthy barbarians ; and the
wildest wilderness of the backwoods has a better chance to be im-
proved into a garden than the desolate remnants of the finest East-
ern garden to be restored to vitality. Lands as well as their nations
seem subject to chronic diseases ; and, if the "baldness of a country"
is not a cureless evil, the geographical records of the Old World at
least prove nothing to the contrary. From Bokhara to Gibraltar
the progress of that disease has been toward death — toward the total
disappearance of organic life ; and the present productiveness of our
most favored regions is no safeguard against the possibility of such
a fate.

Even now, though exposed to the blighting influence of sur-
rounding deserts, some districts of Turkish Asia and southeastern
Europe can rival the garden spots of the Western World ; but of
the fertility of their golden age neither the valley of the San Joa-
quin nor the " Piedmont " counties of North Carolina can give us
more than a faint conception. In Assyria and the central provinces
of Asia Minor, where water is now as scarce as in the eternal man-
sion of Dives, the humidity of the soil, combined with a sunny
climate, once produced grain crops, flowers, and fruit-trees in a
superabundance which could astonish even the children of Israel,
who had become familiar with the bottom lands of Egypt, and, even
in the latter centuries of the Roman Empire, could lure the Italian
magnates from their luxurious villas. Pliny, Hadrian, Marcus
Aurelius, Alexander Severus, and others frequented the Elysian
valleys of Smyrna and Antioch, much as a Massachusetts Senator
might rusticate in Chattanooga or Los Angeles ; and the Emperor
Varus, who marched against the Parthian invaders, a. d. 162, was
80 charmed by the mountain gardens of Daphne that, like Tasso's
Rinaldo in his dolce prigione, he forgot his army, empire, and all,
and rusticated away, while his generals were battling in distant
Mesopotamia. Two centuries after the birth of Christ, and after
the hordes of Persia and Arabia and the legions of Rome had rav-
aged this garden for more than a thousand years, Asia Minor still
contained forty-five cities whose population exceeded a hundred thou-
sand each ; and the total number of her inhabitants, variously esti-
mated from fifty-five million to twice that number, certainly exceed-
ed the present population of the North American Continent. The
Grecian settlements, which occupied only a narrow strip along the
western coast, were more populous than the entire Asiatic empire
of Turkey in its present extent, and Mesopotamia sustained more

46 THE NORTE AMERIGAK REVIEW.

human beings to the square mile than the south of modern England
or the factory districts of Belgium. What land of the New World
is safe, if such a country could become a desert ?

The least regard for the welfare of our children might teach us
to attach a stigma to the wanton destruction of forests which even
the invader of a hostile country would hesitate to incur. No other
sin is so relentlessly visited upon posterity. The children of the
poor Spanish peasant have to starve because their forefathers devas-
tated the Sierras, and " preferred the cultus of the Virgin to the
culture of the fruit-trees," as Guiccardini maliciously expresses it ;
and unborn generations may labor in vain to repair the ruin which
we might now prevent by such simple precautions. If we admit
that " he is a benefactor of mankind who makes two blades of grass
grow where only one grew before," we can hardly fail to recognize
the turpitude of an act which has entailed incurable sterility on
regions which once furnished the means of life and happiness to
millions of human beings. Like the destruction of cereals, it might
be called a crimen in Deam, a crime against the sanctity of our all-
sustaining Mother Earth.

If we consider how the agricultural products of the eastern
continents become from year to year more inadequate to the wants
of their still growing population, we may foresee the time when the
hope of the world will depend on the productiveness of the Ameri-
can soil ; but that productiveness depends on the fertilizing influ-
ence of the American forests. If they are gone, we shall have on
earth no newer world to hope for ; no future Columbus can allevi-
ate the struggle for existence ; '' we must fight it out on this line."

" What an opportunity to recover ! " exclaims Baron Yarnhagen
— " to recover from all our physical, financial, and political diseases
in that broad continent of woodlands and of freedom ! What a
blessed and lasting chance to heal all the wounds and retrieve all the
losses which the cruel Old World and the mistakes of the last
eighteen centuries have inflicted upon us ! "

Let us make the best, then, of this opportunity to recover ; for,
while the fate of Asia Minor makes it rather doubtful if the chance
will be a lasting one, it is distressingly probable that it will be our

last.

Felix L. Oswald.

THE "SOLID SOUTH."

The " Solid South " is a reaction against proscription, attended
by misgovernment, and a protest against the ever-recurring menace
of Federal interference.

There are many ways of punishing a people, just as there are
many kinds of arbitrary power. The old methods have for the
most part grown obsolete. It was left for the leaders of the Re-
publican party, having confiscated more property and impoverished
more non-combatants than were ever before submitted to the hazards
of war, to invent a new process in the art of inflicting popular pains
and penalties — that of freeing the slave and enslaving the free on
the side of the vanquished. Nor was this all ; for, adding insult to
injury, it was done on the assumption that the class enslaved, unfit
to govern or to be trusted, was at once treacherous and cruel ; it
was done, and its succeeding enormities have been justified, in the
name of philanthropy, patriotism, and liberty, and in terms at once
complacent and unfeeling.

It did not last because it could not last. With the overthrow
of responsible governments, there came disorders, and, as a conse-
quence of these, the destruction of material prosperity. Ruin in the
South threatened ruin at the North. The party which wrought the
mischief was unable to maintain itself in its mischief. It lost its
footing therefore, slowly but surely, until, twice driven from power
in the lower House of Congress, it is about to lose possession of the
upper. To this conclusion the " Solid South," united by proscrip-
tion, has indeed played a most important part ; but it has been a
part assigned to it by the Republican leaders themselves. The
South is simply what the Republican party has made it. Failing
to destroy by reconstruction, failing to divide by misrepresentations.

48 TEE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

threats, and hard words, the policy now is to make the solidity of
self-defense the pretext for a " Solid North," and to accomplish at
last what was designed at first, the perpetual ascendancy of sectional
passions.

To this end the politicians and the journalists of the Republican
party have set themselves the task of educating the Northern mind ;
and no occasion is missed for establishing and enforcing the assump-
tions on which the native white people of the South are to be sub-
verted : that they are lawless in practice and disloyal at heart ; that
they hate the blacks and seek to disfranchise them ; that they ac-
tually do suppress all liberty of speech and action ; and, finally,
that if the whole power of the North is not consolidated to check
their progress, they will presently control the Government, over-
throw the national credit, and disgrace the national honor. These
are mere sectional and partisan assumptions, which, if true, bode no
good for the future of the Republic. But they are persisted in all
along the Republican line with an ardor which never loses its self-
glorifying righteousness, and a painstaking zeal in the fabrication
of examples worthy the fanatical times of religious persecution.
Every utterance which can be misquoted or misconceived is tortured
into treason. Every fisticuff is elevated to the dignity of rebellion.
Everything, in short, that passes in the South is wrested from its
surroundings, and lugged off Northward to do duty as an informer
against the humanity and opinions of the Southern people, to whom
are assigned baser motives and a different standard of morality than
prevail at the North. Thus tittle-tattle, hitherto employed by mis-
chief-makers in the poor service of private pique, has got a promo-
tion, has become a Government agent, and ranks as one of the forces
in our public life.

As far as the authors of this policy are concerned, it is useless
for the South to offer so much as a plea in its own behalf. Like
Sydney Smith's old women who quarreled across an alley, the two
can never agree because they argue from opposite premises. Nay,
the premise set up by the Republicans was constructed in order
that there might be no possible agreement. It may be fairly doubted
whether the abject submission of the Southern mind to the dictation
of the extremest Republican leader, selected for the purpose, would
exempt the South from the reproaches of the Republican party and
the defamation of the Republican press, or secure that internal free-
dom from Federal tampering which is so necessary, not only to its
domestic peace, but to its progress in good works and arts.

TEE ''SOLID south:' 49

II.

It is given out, apparently by authority, that the President has
no idea of joining the stalwarts of his party in this new crusade
against the South, but that, confessing a certain disappointment in
the reception accorded his conciliatory policy by the Southern peo-
ple, he will proceed without malignance upon the line of his duty,
executing the Federal laws with rigorous impartiality.

Assuredly, no one can complain of such a course, carried out in
good faith. But everybody knows that, as a rule, there is consider-
able divergence between the professions and performances of men in
great place ; and, as the relation of the South to the Government
is still sufficiently equivocal to tempt partisans to rush in where
statesmen dare not tread, and, moreover, as partisan legislation has
furnished machinery to that very end, thoughtful people may well
regard the position assumed by the President as lacking in specifi-
cation, and therefore to be accepted with allowance, if not with
anxiety. For example, the President need not say that in with-
drawing the troops from the South he merely accepted the situa-
tion, carrying out the plan already agreed upon by his predecessor.
Again, he might well spare himself the trouble of mentioning that,
even if he desired to undo what he has done, he could not. Sug-
gestions of this kind are presumptuous and misleading. They are
unworthy to come from the Chief Magistrate of a great and united
country, who is conscious of having done his duty by the whole
people. They smell of the old leaven of sectional bigotry, and
make one doubt whether the official who permits such expressions
to escape him is capable of executing the Federal laws, designed in
the first place for party service, impartially in the South.

An election never occurs. North or South, but that on the side
of the defeated there is plenty of outcry. Perhaps too often there
is plenty of reason for outcry. If the foundations of this, true or
false, are to be carefully collected by hostile agents appointed at
Washington for the purpose, how shall we hope ever to be rid of
the sources of sectional strife? There will never be a party in
power w^hich will not use the machine made to its hand. There
will never be an election in which it may not be used. It is the
machine itself, and the President's unquestionable application of it,
which constitute the danger; and, as he declares himself disappointed
in the Southern people, it can hardly be hoped that he will not give
his ear rather to the adventurers who run to him with wild stories

VOL. CXXVHL NO. '^QQ,. ^

50 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

than to tlie less enterprising and demonstrative elements of society,
•which recognize neither his paternity nor his right of surveillance.

For why should he be disappointed in the South ? He came
among us, and we treated him as a President and a gentleman
should be treated. Did he expect us to break up our party con-
nections and relations and join his party, or unite with him in mak-
ing a new party ? What has happened in the South the last twelve
months which has not happened in the North ? We have reached
the millennium in neither section. In both there are disorders and
violence ; the strong are unjust ; the weak are trod upon ; and good
men are not always able to quell bad men. But is this situation to
be mended by renewing sectional bickerings, and throwing into the
flame of evil, which always burns, the combustible materials of par-
tisan interest and malice ?

The principle of home rule has not yet been denied by any re-
sponsible American authority. By the operations of the adminis-
trative policy its practice was restored in the South. The President
claims that in restoring it he only did his duty, which is true, and
in which event party payment should not be asked. Undoubtedly
beneficent results have followed. Undoubtedly beneficent results
will continue to follow. The partisan solidarity of the South is
referable, not to unfair elections, but primarily to the courses pur-
sued respectively by the Republican and Democratic parties of the
North. The one has been friendly ; the other has been proscriptive
and unfriendly. The South, on the issues of the last few years, is
Democratic, and for good reason. It would be strange if it were
not. It is the effort to array the North against us on a line of pro-
scription, simply because we have resisted and do resist proscrip-
tion, which seems unreasonable, and which we contest. At this
time there is, practically, no Republican party in the South to con-
test elections with the Democrats. In South Carolina and Louisi-
ana, where it subsisted by military sufferance, and was represented
by armed encampments, the withdrawal of the troops left it with-
out a reason for continued existence. It fell to pieces literally by
its own rottenness. In Louisiana, at the recent election, its rem-
nants united themselves with the wildest rag-money lunatics ; in
South Carolina there was not enough left of it to put a ticket in
the field. Yet the Republican press of the North, taking the old
set of bankrupt vagabonds and jail-birds for their witnesses, are
shrieking for " a free ballot," and pointing to Democratic majorities
in South Carolina, where there was no Republican organization, as

THE SOLID south:' 51

proof of foul play. And because the people of the South dare to
defend themselves, they are denounced en masse as traitors to lib-
erty and humanity, whose chief delight is "bulldozing" and ballot-
box-8tufting.

Against this unfair and illiberal dealing the South protests, and
the protest is universal, embracing all the responsible elements of
life. There is thus a real difference between a "Solid South" and
a " Solid North." The South is " solid " in its own defense. The
Republican leaders would have the North "solid" in continued
pursuit and jicrsecution of the South. At this rate we should never
have any peace, never have any sectional repose, never have any
national prosperity and glory in which all might share ; but we
should go on forever, criminating and recriminating, steadily im-
pairing the public credit, ultimately to close the account in bank-
ruptcy, repudiation, anarchy, and despotism.

To this feast the sectional policy of the Republicans invites us.
That policy is not only aggressive, but is based upon an assumption
which, if it be true, means the overthrow of republicanism — the
incapacity of the people of the South for self-government.

III.

The people of the South are nothing if not sentimental. Cli-
matic influences have, of course, had much to do with this idiosyn-
cratic feature of Southern life ; but it is also the offspring of con-
ditions equally potent : the institution of slavery, which built up
great homesteads and homestead affections, for one ; a leisurely,
isolated, provincial existence, affording the opportunity and the
means for the equivocal culture of the voluptuary, not the severe
training of the schools, for another ; a traditionary reverence for
England and things English, an inherited love of old English liter-
ature, a belief in the social, domestic, and political system of Eng-
land, or rather in a mistaken conception of that system, for a third.
The Southern lad who has been educated at home knows a little
Latin, less Greek, and a great deal of English ; his repertory em-
bracing a mass of crude knowledge, sometimes familiar, sometimes
useless, but always engaging, crowded in between Addison and Swift
and Hallam and Macaulay. Of mathematics he is almost as igno-
rant as of Greek ; and, with a store of what, for the want of a bet-
ter term, the world agrees in calling polite learning, lacking not in
readiness, ho lacks accuracy, the source and resource of modern
thought and action. He is thus, in the materialistic debates of a

62 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

thoroughly materialized generation, an ill match for the cool and
wary disputant, who throws rhetoric to the dogs and plies the heart-
less logic of statistics.

The whirligig of time, come at last to the aid of the North, has
brought in its revenges. For fifty years, during the bucolic period
of the republic, the South sent its best men into public life, the
North its worst. The Southern statesman may not have been al-
ways a planter or even a rich man ; but, when he was not, he still
sprang from the dominant class, and was a conservative. In a
sparsely settled agricultural community, yielding to the foremost
talent, professional incomes necessarily small, a seat in Congress
was, in dollars and cents, as lucrative employment as was to be had.
To him whose fortune made him independent of venal considera-
tions, the place itself was sufficiently tempting. So the South never
wanted for efficient representatives : men in full sympathy with the
spirit of the age ; men adequate to all the exigencies of the time ;
good judges of constitutional law, though poor judges of facts and
figures, which did not happen to rule ; good declaimers and debat-
ers upon the theoretic topics which arose out of an angry sectional
controversy. The North, on the other hand, in many instances,
sent her lackeys to Congress. Her rising merchants, lawyers — citi-
zens of real worth and mark — could seldom afford to abandon great
and paying enterprises, to give up richly rewarded professional pur-
suits, to struggle for political preferment, which not only demanded
sacrifices, but required the exercise of low arts and imposed the
contamination of vulgar association. With rare exceptions they
staid at home. The scrub who could scuffle, the pettifogger who
might not get a practice but who could serve a corporation, went
to Washington ; and these were unable to cope with the gentlemen
of the South either in honesty or in capacity. To be sure, there
were many notable exceptions. When Tom Marshall stumbled
upon John Quincy Adams in the House — when Hayne shied an un-
wary lance at Webster in the Senate — the force of the whole cul-
ture upon half culture showed itself, to the discomfiture of two
men of real genius. But such scenes were rare. The rule was
that the Southerner came off victor in most of the fights and got
most of the glory ; and for the reason given, and no other.

Times have changed ; conditions are reversed. Beneath this
illusory stream of glory a steady undercurrent ran. A conspicuous
Southern statesman, Mr. Toombs of Georgia, recently boasted that
during eighteen years' service in Congress he had never obtained a

THE ''SOLID south:' 53

dollar for his district. His Northern colleagues were neither so
sublimated nor so squeamish. While he declaimed they manoeuvred :
a light-house here, a custom-house there ; to-day a railway subsidy,
to-morrow a river improvement ; fat cuts in all the general appro-
priation bills ; land grants and water grants, year in and year out,
from one session to another. Truly, the Southerner had to pay
dearly for his glory ! Finally the war came, and, the North
equipped, the South without equipment — a victim to misleading
theories and calculations, each of which in its order came to grief
— the issue was simply that of force against force, and, as discern-
ing men on both sides saw at least a year before the close of it,
there could be but one result.

IV.

The overthrow of the Confederacy verified the predictions and
vindicated the opinions of the conservative intelligence of the
South, which had opposed disunion, and was dragged into the
secession movement by the violence of the times. It also produced
an element previously unknown in the South — a bright, active, self-
reliant young manhood, educated in the rude school of war. Since
18G5 the Republican party has done what it could to debauch and
destroy these geniis of a new and sound political life ; and if it has
not quite succeeded, its failure has been due rather to the strength
of the germs than to any lack of tormenting ingenuity in its meth-
ods. I shall not burden this hasty resume with a recital of the
nagging which divided time with the muddling, throughout the
short-sighted treatment bestowed upon the Southern people and the
Southern question by the Republican leaders. It is sufiicient to say
that the charge of exceptional hostility to the negro rests mainly
upon devices brought about to produce antagonism and to prevent
an honest understanding and cooperation between the native races,
and that the cackle about " social ostracism " rests upon no founda-
tion worthy of respectful consideration.

The wonder is, not that there has been so much bloodshed at
the Soutli, but that, under the circumstances, there has been so
little. But, much or little, the country at large can look with hope
only to domestic forces for improved conditions. Outside political
pressure tends but to inflame. Administrative meddling begets
conflicts of jurisdiction in the courts. State and national ; between
the two stools, justice falls to the ground and malefactors make
their escape. He is a poor judge of human nature, or else very

54 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

ignorant of the Southern character, who does not know that the
well-being of the negro must originate at home ; most certainly it
can not be shaped or hastened by missionaries carrying banners on
which sectional and partisan inscriptions, carefully worded to convey
the greatest possible oifense to the native white population, are em-
blazoned. The negro is placable and kindly — the fortunate possessor
of a sweet, loving, and generous nature. He is yet half a savage.
His future is shrouded in mists which are not very penetrable. A
free man, a citizen, a voter, he should be left to work out his destiny
— a hard one at best — in his own way. Rescued from the agitation
of which he has been the victim, he is likely to grow in grace and
good works ; to educate himself and to be educated, slowly of course ;
to be useful, contented, and happy ; perhajDS to develop, with in-
creasing aspiration and advancing civilization, faculties now merely
susceptible and imitative into forces of which he does not dream.
But, employed for party service as he was employed for domestic
service, he is a devil incarnate ; a barbarian, useful to the basest
purposes ; the easy prey of the vilest. No true friend of his but
would take him out of politics as a factor or leading issue. Handled
for ten years as an instrument of torture and pillage by unscrupulous
camp-followers who remained in the South to rob the dead and dying
left by braver and better men upon the field, the time may come
when he will compose the Tenth Legion in the Army of Repudia-
tion, already mustering in the North, to sweep down upon New
England, with New England's own battle-cries in his mouth and
the reflection of hell itself in his eyes. Better, far better, leave him
where he stands, to be " bulldozed," if you please, into voting the
Democratic ticket, than attach him again to the fortunes of a cor-
rupt and heartless body of mercenaries, having no local interest or
ties, to be used by them for incendiary purposes. Better, far better,
leave him to his fate with the conservative intelligence of the South,
which comprehends his peculiarities and sympathizes with his real
wants and needs, than have him trained and sharpened for efiicient
service in future agrarian movements.

It is absurd, if not monstrous, to suppose that he can ever govern
in the South, or anywhere else. The scheme to force his ascendancy
is merely a job to transfer Tweedism from the North to the South,
and to multiply the Tweeds in the fancied interest of the Repub-
lican party. The negro is a creature of circumstance, easily led.
He voted the Republican ticket while there was a Freedman's
Bureau to serve him rations, while there were promises of " forty

TEE ''SOLID SOUTH*:' 55

acres and a mule " to lure him into camp, while Republicanism
seemed synonymous with the glittering paraphernalia and the power
of the armies he had seen sweep over the country. These with-
drawn, he ft'U under the ordinary domestic influences, and is to-day
voting the Democratic ticket with the cheerful adaptability of his
nature. lie is at least out of harm's way. He is beginning to de-
pend less upon the Government and more upon himself. In his
person and property he is as safe as a man, ignorant and poor, can
be. A true philanthropy, whose first duty is to advise itself, would
sec the wisdom of letting well enough alone. Nobody pretends
that the condition of the negro is an enviable one. It is only
aflirmed that it is better than it was under his old or his new mas-
ter, the planter or the carpet-bagger ; and that his future can not
be improved by going back for counsels or practices into the period
of reconstruction.

In its organized capacity, neither party cares anything for the
negro. Each would enslave him to its uses. But there is in the
South, as there can not be in the North, a humanity which is not
partisan, born of old ties and associations, common griefs, fellow
feeling, which link the homestead and the cabin, not perhaps by
hooks of steel, but by " the mystic chords of memory " which
stretch across the chasm between the present and the past. To
this humanity, and to it alone, the destiny of the negro may be
safely intrusted. If it does not educate and elevate him, the fault
will be his, and not its want of interest and effort. The Republican
party has done much to stamp this out ; but, thank God, it is not
yet extinct !

In these random notes upon the " Solid South," I have attempt-
ed to give, in a suggestive way, the case of the Southern people
against the Republican leaders, with some reference to their case
for themselves ; and by the term " Southern people " I mean, dis-
tinctly, the responsible classes, on whom the Government and the
Northern people must rely, if the rule of the bayonet is not to be
restored ; the native white population as distinguished from the
irresponsible, entirely ignorant, and helpless blacks, who, having no
volition of their ot\ti, must and will be controlled, either in the
home interest by those who represent it, or in the rotten-borough
interest by partisan agents sent down to usurp the honest and be-
neficent functions of home rule. I have charged that the Republican

56 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

party, which for ten years had sole custody of the Government,
ignored all that was good and cultivated all that was bad in the
South. I have hinted that there are people in the South who,
" forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto
those things which are before," not only love their country, and are
loyal to all that should constitute its greatness and pride, but enter-
tain sound opinions upon the material issues which press upon our
day and generation. My conclusion is that, if the Republican pol-
icy of meddling and muddling, of nagging and double-dealing, con-
tinues, it will at length complete the demoralization which it has
only half accomplished ; that it will loosen the South from its con-
servative moorings ; and that, when the unlucky moment comes,
instead of a reservoir of wholesome ideas, we shall find the South
a magazine of combustibles, ready to be used by adventurers and
charlatans.

The circumstances attending the last Presidential election put a
serious strain upon our elective system, and it was the South which
saved the country from civil strife and secured the peaceful settle-
ment of a most dangerous issue. It is the South to-day, the " Solid
South," to which the friends of social order and honest money will
have to look for reenforcements when the tug of war is really at
hand. How shall they fare if, in the mean time having leveled
suffrage in the South to the low standard of suffrage at the North
— yea, to a lower — having elevated ignorance into a power, and
employed this power to prostrate and debauch the intelligence
which could only organize and direct it for good — they find the
South detached from its fixed principles, a monster without a head,
broken into worthless cliques and ripe for political adventures ?

Be it remembered that this cry about the " Solid South " and a
" Solid Xorth " is but an echo, after all. The country had four
years of a " Solid South " against a " Solid North." Each side
spoke its mind freely out of the cannon's mouth ; the declamation
was vociferous, the rhetoric was magnificent, the argument was
conclusive. Good men on both sides, satisfied with the result,
wish to forget the unhappy events which led to it. Is it possible
that any wise man can believe that continuous debate on the old
sectional lines can bring us nearer to a happy consummation of the
questions in dispute ?

But the Republican leaders say : " We don't want to do this ;
it is you. Cease to mistreat the negro, learn to love your country,
guarantee the security of life and property and freedom of speech :

THE ''SOLID south:' 57

that is all we ask, and, by all the gods of a solid North ! this we
mean to have."

In reply, tlie South, conceiving itself a peer and not a vassal,
might say : " What right have you to use such language ? The
assumption on which you base it is false. The spirit in which it is
delivered is born of cowardice and cant. You seek no peace. You
care nothing for the negro. Freedom of speech, and the security
of life and property, are the last things which you would have
established in the South. Your aim is continued disturbance, on
which you hope to trade and derive a profit. Your game is to goad
us into tlie imprudent utterances of outraged manhood. For years
you legislated against us. For years you have maligned us. You
lose no opportunity to insult us. Well, if the North can stand it,
the South can. The present generation of Southern men is not
responsible for slavery or the war of secession. Nearly all of the
active leaders of the South were obscure young men when the war
beijan. The leaders who are comin^; on were in their cradles. In
all that constitutes good government, the government of the. peo-
ple, we are equally interested with you. In private virtues, as in
public spirit and in public virtue, we claim to be at least your peers.
As for you — the radical leaders of the Republican party, who would
rekindle the smoldering fires of an almost extinguished sectional
fury to gain a partisan victory — we make no disguise of our feeling
toward yow ; we detest and distrust you : detest you for your mean
pursuit of us ; distrust you for your hypocrisy and corruption.
You alone, among Americans, have caused the cheek of honest
Americans to blush for their country in every part of the world.
You alone, mountebanks and malignants that you are, have driven
our flag from the seas, to convert it on the land into a drop-curtain
to conceal your machinations against the liberty and peace, the
prosperity and fair good name of a section of your countrymen,
sprung from the same origin as yourselves, and having an equal
right to share with you the glorious achievements and the birth-
right of our fathers. If you are able to drag your neighbors, a
majority of the good people of the North, down to your baseness,
to poison their very blood with lies, and to array them * solid'
against us on the line of an insincere, proscriptive charlatanism, so
be it. We wash our hands of the consequences. Degrade our-
selves by alliance with you, contaminate ourselves by intriguing
with you— that we will not do, because you have exhausted the
resources of human forgiveness by transcending the limits set upon

58 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

human endurance. In seeking to dishonor us, you have dishonored
yourselves ; and, though death and the devil stood at the door,
we'll none of you ! "

The South might say this, and more ; and, in moments of exas-
peration, many an honest, liberal Southern man, who entertains
opinions and "sentiments and sympathies with the foremost thinkers
of the North, has been tempted to say it. I am sure that he does
not live, if in a discourse of this sort one may be allowed a personal
reference, who more thoroughly respects the character and polity
of New England than I do ; who warms more heartily to her
prowess, her courage, and her geniality ; who has a kindlier laugh
for her grotesquerie ; who is freer of prejudices against her, hav-
ing indeed none except such as favor her, and would elevate her
munificence, her culture, and her thrift into examples to be con-
stantly set before the ill-taught, the half -taught, the indolent,
spendthrift, and impoverished South. And yet, speaking to the
radical leaders in question, and to them alone, I do make bold to
reiterate the words I have written down and to hold them true ;
and, sure of the intelligence and candor of the average Northern
audience, and fearing not to disturb the ghostly back numbers of
the " North American Review " by recording them in these pages,
I should be surest of all in Faneuil Hall itself !

The Republican party is a sectionalist. It has done what it
could to create the " Solid South " in order that it might compel a
" Solid North." At length it has the appearance of the desired
array of sectional forces. The effect upon parties affords pretty
and timely speculation for the newspapers. The result, for the
people at large, may be foretold by any thoughtful person ; for
vicious agitation leads inevitably to loss of business, public confi-
dence, and credit, opens the way for corrupt enginery and adven-
turers, and, in the end, threatens the demolition of either liberty or
property, and oftenest of both.

Heney Wattekson.

VI.

THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE LATIN
LANGUAGE.

In a previous paper we have given a rapid glance at the relation
of modern Italian to ancient Latin. In further illustration of this
Buhjoct we now propose to consider what was the probable pronun-
ciation of the ancients, as far as it is indicated in their literature.
This question has been much mooted of late, and deserves careful
consideration. Hitherto each nation has assumed the right to pro-
nounce Latin according to the rules and intonations of its own
language. This, however, is as preposterous as if we were to insist
on pronouncing French or Italian as if it were English. In Ger-
many, Latin becomes German ; in France, French ; in England,
English. Of all these, certainly the worst and the least defensible,
at least so far as the vowels are concerned, is the English pronun-
ciation ; and probably the worst, so far as the consonants are con-
cerned, is the German. Of late a considerable interest has been
aroused on tliis question, especially in England ; but it is to be
regretted that, without apparently any very deep study of the sub-
ject, England proposes to follow the lead of Germany and adopt
her pronunciation. At a conference of the head masters of schools
in England held in 1871, the system of Latin pronunciation preva-
lent in England was declared to be unsatisfactory, and the Latin
professors of Oxford and Cambridge were requested to draw up
and issue a joint paper, to secure uniformity in any change con-
templated. Complying with this request, a syllabus was drawn up
and published by Mr. Edwin Palmer and Mr. H. A. J. Munro, rec-
ommending an entire change of pronunciation ; and these changes
we now propose to consider.

First, as to the vowels. There can scarcely be a question that
at present all of these are pronounced incorrectly in English.
Though we have all the vowel sounds, yet each vowel or character

60 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

is differently sounded from that of any other nation. Our flat a is
the Italian e y our e is their i ; our o is different from their o ; our
i is not a vowel at all, but a diphthong, with the double sound of a
broad and e ; our u (when not pronounced as 06) is also a diph-
thong, or combination of 6 and 00.

The first rule given in this Oxford and Cambridge syllabus is
that " d " should be pronounced " as the accentuated Italian a, as in
the middle a of amata, or as the a of father / d as the unaccen-
tuated Italian a, that is, as the first and last a of amata. It is not
easy to represent this sound in English ; we know nothing better
than the first a in aicay, apart, aha.''''

Now, with all due deference be it said, there is no such sound
of a in Italian as in the initial letter away or apart ; a has always
the same sound as in father, and never the light, flying sound of
the first a in away. This is one of the mistakes by which an
Englishman is always recognized in speaking Italian. The three a's
in amata have all the same sound. The only difference is, that
there is the stress or accent on the second.

The third rule is : " ^ as accentuated Italian ^, as the first i of
timidly or the i of machine / ^ as unaccentuated Italian i, i. e., as
the last two ^'s of timidi, or the i of pity.^'' Again we have to
make the same comment. The three ^'s in timidi are precisely
alike in Italian, and there is no such sound as the light ^ in pity, as
any one may prove by asking an Italian to pronounce this word.
He always says eat for it, and peety for pity, in speaking Eengleesh,

The pronunciation of o is correctly given in the syllabus accord-
ing to Italian. The pronunciation of u is given thus : " u as ac-
centuated Italian u, as the first xi in tumido, the second of txmiultOy
or as u in rule or lure / ii as unaccentuated Italian u, as the second
u in tumulo, the first in tumulto, the u of fruition.'''' To this we
have to observe that the u in Italian is always like our 00 in moon.
The two iC^ in tumulo have exactly the same sound.

These are, however, but slight differences, about which little
need be said. The rules are, if not absolutely accurate, sufiiciently
so to serve all common purposes. Where we must differ more seri-
ously and decidedly is in respect to the proposed pronunciation to
be given to certain consonants, and these we shall discuss more at
length. For the most part, although in the preliminary remarks it
is admitted that the Italian pronunciation is probably the most
proximate to that of the ancients, in point of fact the German rule
is followed, and especially in the g, the c, and the v.

THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. 61

As far as 8cbolarship is concerned, there can be no question that
great deference is due to the erudition and critical acumen of the
Germans. They are eminent as ])hilologists, and in their commen-
taries and criticism tliey stand in the highest rank. The debt we
owe tliem for their laborious and discriminating ehicidations of the
text of ancient authors is very great. But in their pronunciation
of foreign languages the Germans are singularly inapt and without
discrimination. In their utterance they confuse, confound, and
mispronounce more than half the consonants, seeming incapable of
distinguishing between them to an extent which is found in no
other nation. It is this defect of ear and utterance which renders
them very unsafe guides in matters of pronunciation. So remark-
able is this peculiarity, that one has only to confound and mispro-
nounce the consonants of any lano^uasje in order to imitate the utter-
ance of a German. The Germans unconsciously transpose, without
aj)parently recognizing any real difference, h with 7?, d with t and
M, J with c and qu^ j with ch and <7,/*with v, s with z. You have
only to dransboze dese ledders, ant you have de sbeech of a Chair-
man — in garigachure. This is equally the case in their pronuncia-
tion of Italian, French, and Spanish. It is rare to find a German
who can distinctly say the simple words, "Bon jour, madame,"
without changing three of the consonants — Pon choiir, onatame.
The pronunciation of Latin by the Germans was formerly consid-
ered barbarous, as will plainly appear from the following accredited
fragment of historj- : In 1482 ambassadors from the Pope were
sent to Germany, to whom the Chancellor of the University of
Tubingen was deputed to return answer. But his pronunciation
was so barbarous as to be nearly unintelligible, and the duty was
thereupon transferred to Reuchlin, on the ground that he could at
least make himself understood, and had a " sonum pronuntiationis
minus horridum." And in the sixteenth century, at Wtirtemberg,
regulations were issued ordering that those whose German mouths
could not pronounce all the letters were not to be immediately
beaten or dragged by the hair !

The pronunciation of Latin by the Italians, though it is prob-
ably incorrect in some particulars, would certainly seem to afford
the best general rule to follow. Indeed, it would be difficult to find
any satisfactory reason to support a contrary opinion. They are
the descendants of the ancient Romans — with much intermixture of
foreign blood, undoubtedly, but still the nearest in line of all na-
tions. The language has varied, grown, developed, and assumed

62 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

new forms ; but it has probably changed less in their mouths than
in that of foreigners, of whatever clime and speech. It has been
the constant utterance, even in its original form, in the Church,
from the earliest days of Christianity. It has been employed con-
stantly, as not only a written but a spoken language. Until 1870
it was the documentary language employed in the highest court of
law in Rome ; it still continues to be used in papal allocutions, and
it was the recognized cosmopolitan language adopted by all bish-
ops and representatives of the Church in the late Council. It has,
therefore, a continuous line of living descent from the ancient days.
Though in some respects, of which we shall have occasion to speak
later, there appears to be strong ground to dispute their pronuncia-
tion, yet in general it would seem to approximate more closely to
that of the ancients than that of any other people.

In the pronunciation of c, g, and v, the Italians differ entirely
from the Germans. Before e and ^, the c is pronounced by the
Italians as our ch in church or chest, but by the Germans as k ; and
it is this latter pronunciation which is recommended by the syllabus
of Cambridge and Oxford. They say, " C always as K ; in Cicero,
facies, as well as Cacus."

In like manner, the Italians make the g soft before e and ^, and
hard before a and o, just as we do generally in English, as in gen-
eration, ginger, gallant^ got. The Germans make it invariably
hard, and the syllabus recommends this pronunciation : " G always
as g in get, in gero, gingiva, gyrus, as well as gaudeo.^^

We cannot for various reasons think there is any sufficient war-
rant for such a statement. In the first place, the letter C is con-
stantly found in old inscriptions, in Greek and Latin, as representing
the letter S or Z, which would have been quite unnecessary and
misleading if it had the sound of the Greek kappa, or our IC. Thus,
to mention one of a thousand instances, the name of Sardanapalus
is inscribed on a statue in the Vatican as CAPH^ANAllALOC.
This would rather seem to indicate that the C was sounded like S.
But there are other facts and words which more plainly point to
the probability that the modern Italian pronunciation of c soft, be-
fore e and i, as in chest, conforms to that of the ancients. In many
words t was used interchangeably with c before e and i, showing
that the pronunciation of these letters in such positions must have
been the same, or nearly the same, and therefore that c could not
have been pronounced as k. Thus, solatium, convitium, suspitio,
tribunitius, nuntius, conditio, among others, are often spelled sola-

TUB PRONUNCIATION OF TUB LATIN LANGUAGE. 63

cium, convicium, suspicio, tribunicius, nuncius, condicio. A still
stronffer evidence of this is to be found in the ancient names of
persons. There would seem to be no safer method of determining
the ancient pronunciation of letters than by a recurrence to the
proper names in which they are to be found. Names alter little, if
at all, for centuries. They are in constant use, and handed down in
hundreds and thousands of families from one to another generation.
The sound is constantly on the tongue and on the ear, and is subject
naturally to less variation than in any other words. The first mis-
pronunciation of it would be saluted with laughter. Even w^ere the
spelling lost, the pronunciation would remain. Now, among the
ancient names c is constantly used interchangeably with t, show-
ing that these two letters were in such cases nearly, if not exactly,
equivalents in sound. Thus, among others, Marcia is sometimes
spelled ^lartia ; Mucins, Mutius ; Neratius, Neracius ; Portia, Por-
cia. The c must, therefore, have had the soft Italian sound. Again,
such names as Celsus, Caesar, Decius, Cincinnatus, Caecilia, Mar-
cellus, Lucius, Lucia, Lucilla, Marcia, and many others of the same
character, have always been in use in Italy. Is it possible to believe
that the present j)ronunciation of these names in Italy, which have
been in constant familiar use in hundreds of families for twenty cen-
turies at least, is entirely false ? When did it suffer this change ?
Why was it altered ? The syllabus w^ould have us pronounce Cicero,
Kikero. But the name of Cicero has always been a living name,
familiar to every ear in Italy, and no one there ever heard it pro-
nounced Kikero. It is alleged, as an argument in favor of this pro-
nunciation, that it was spelled with the kappa, Kt/ctpwv, when written
in Greek. l>ut, supposing it were pronounced by the ancient Ro-
mans, as by the moderns, Chichero, how were the Greeks with their
alphabet to represent this sound ? They had no letter with which
to spell it nearer than kappa. The chi was a deep guttural, the
kappa was the soft k ; they had no other letter, and they took the
one nearest to it. And, still more, do we know what was the exact
sound of the Greek kappa f The same reasons also apply to the
Greek spelling of all similar names, such as Caesar and Celsus. In
fact, when we find Caius spelled Fatof, one is tempted to ask why
the r is here used instead of the kappa, if the Jcappa had the sound
we suppose of our own k f

In like manner, in all ancient names of persons and places in
which g occurs before e and f, it is pronounced soft by the Ital-
ians, and this affords one of the strongest proofs that it was so pro-

64 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

nounced by the Latins. As examples of this, among many others,
may be cited Virginia, Virginio, Girgente, Egisto, Virgilio, Eugenio,
Gemma, and Gelasio. Not only the Italians give this soft sound,
which still adheres to these words even in English, but there is not
one of the Romance nations by whom it is pronounced hard. The
Spaniards aspirate it, and between French and Italians there is but
a shade of difference, it being softer in French, and having a slight
sound of the z. No one pronounces it hard, like g in English get.
Again, not only in names, but in almost if not all other words of
Latin derivation, in which g precedes e and ^, it has the same soft
pronunciation. Gentilis is gentil in French, gentle in English, and
gentile in Italian. So also genius, gemma, generatio, germen, ges-
tatio, may be adduced. But it is useless to multiply examples ; they
will occur to every one. Is it in any way probable that all the Ro-
mance nations, whose languages are derived from the Latin, are
utterly wrong in their pronunciation, and that the Germans (or the
Ghermans, if they are right in the sound of the g) have preserved
its true pronunciation ?

Let us go further. Undoubtedly in ancient inscriptions we find
the g and the c before e and i used indifferently. A clear proof
of this is to be found in the inscription of Duilius, a. v. c. 493, at
Rome. This was engraved on the base of the Columna Rostrata,
raised to celebrate the first naval victory over the Carthaginians,
and which was struck down by lightning between the second and
third Punic wars, and remained b^iried in the ruins of Rome until
it was unearthed in 1565 near the Capitol. Though considerably
defaced in parts, it was legible, and has been carefully restored by
learned hands. It is as follows :

" C. Duilios. M. F. M. N. Consol advorsum Poenos en Siceliad Secestanos
socios Eom. obsidioned craved exemed, leciones refecet, dumque Poeni
maximosque macistratos lecionumque duceis ex novem castreis exfociont,
Macelam opidora oppucnandod cepet, enque eodem macistratod bene rem
navebos marid consol priraos ceset. Socios clasesque navales primos
ornavet paravetque, curaque eis navebos claseis poenicas omnes et max-
sumas copias cartaciniensis praesented sumo dictatored olorom in altod
marid pugnad vicet, XXXque navis cepet cum socieis septem milibos,
quinreinosque triremosque naves XIV merset, tone aurom captom numei
^ D . . . pondod. Arcentom captom praeda numei cccIood. Pon-
dod crave captom aes ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo,
ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo,
ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo, ccclooo. Is quoque navaled praedad

THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. 65

poplom rom. deitavet atqne Cartaciniensis incenuos duxet triiimpod cum
XXX rostreis clasis cartachiiensig captai. Quorum erco S. P. Q. R. eei
p. (posuet)." *

Here we have the g and the c used interchangeably, showing
that they had nearly the same sound before ^. Either both were
liard or both were soft. If both were hard, then the Italians, as
well as the French and Spaniards, are entirely wTong in their pro-
nunciation of both letters, and the same incorrectness is to be found
in most of the Enorlish words derived from the Latin in the use of
the (J. In fact, all the world is wrong except the Germans. Is it,
however, probable that all these nations sliould wrongly pronounce
all tlie Latin words which still exist unclianged in their languages
in whicli either c or (j precedes e and i ; and that the Church, carry-
ing on daily and continuously its functions and offices in Latin for
eighteen centuries, shouM have assumed a totally new and false
pronunciation ?

If tliis be the case, what is to be made of the observation of
Quintilian, "Cum 6\ac siinilitier G non valuerunt in T^ac Z>, mol-
liuntur ; ne illas (]ui«lem circa S literam delitias [which, be it ob-
served, he spells delitias] hie magister f eret " (Inst., lib. i., cap. 11) ?
What are we to say of this word gingiber, which was also spelled
zinziber — our P^nglish ginger? There can be no doubt that the z
was soft, at least if we can trust Dionysius of Halicarnassus and
Fabius. Again, the Latins sometimes put D for (r, showing that
it was soft. Were the Germans ever called the GheiTnans ? Why,
too, was it ever necessary to spell the Greek chi with ch, if C had
the same hard sound ? Why Cherubini, and Chiragra, and Cheli-
donia, and Chiromantis, and Chelae, and others? How, too, are
we to pronounce words in which c follows x, as excire, excipio,
excerpo, exceptio, etc. ? If the c is soft, it is easily elided ; if hard,
this would scarcely be possible. So again, how are we to explain
the fact that such names as Valentia and Sulpitia are written Va-
lencia and Sulpicia ; and conditio and solatium appear as condicio
and solacium ? f Again, why spell pulcher with an A, if pulcer has
the same sound ?

There is still another clear indication that g had not the hard

* Other examples are to be found in the royal edicts where ^ and c are used in-
terchangeably, as having the same force. Thus, agnum is spelled acnum; agrum,
acrum, etc.

f "Letters of Fronto and Marcus Aurelius, In Nepote Amisso," pp. 216, 217.
VOL. cxxviii. — ^o. 266. 5

QQ THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

sound in all cases. According to Priscian, the Emperor Claudius,
recognizing the imperfection of the Roman alphabet to express va-
rious distinction of sounds, proposed to introduce three new letters
or characters, one of which was called the anti-sigma, which was
formed by reversing one c against another. This oc represented the
function of the Greek ^:)s^, and all three letters were, in the opinion
at least of Priscian and Quintilian, necessary. If, therefore, the
sound of c formed any part of that of psi, it clearly could not have
been hard like A\*

It would seem, therefore, all things considered, that there is not
sufficient warrant to overthrow the present Italian pronunciation of
c and g, as recommended in the Oxford and Cambridge syllabus.
Nothing certainly is gained, variety is sacrificed, and there seems
to be every probability that the traditional pronunciation is right.
At all events, such is the universal pronunciation in the south of
Europe.

Again, when we consider the large number of pure Latin words
still in constant use in Italy, without change, so many of which are
names of things and materials in common use — words which have
been constantly spoken at every turn — it is difficult, to say the least,
to imagine that in all these the letter c has been vitally changed
in its pronunciation by the Italians and direct descendants of the

* Plutarch tells us, in his " Qusestiones RomanoD," that the letter g was unknown
in Rome for five centuries, and was first introduced into use by the grammarian Spurius
Carvilius, in the year 540 (about 213 b. c). Though this must be a mistake, as it ap-
pears in the Duillian inscription of 494, and also in the epitaph of Scipio Barbatus,
who was consul in 456, yet it is plain that it must have been of infrequent use, or he
would not have made such a statement. In macistratus, Cartaciniensis, Leciones,
exfociont, c and g were apparently equivalents in sound, as they would be if pro-
nounced as the Italians now pronounce them, the difference being what in English lies
between " chin " and " gin." Had they pronounced both these letters hard, they
could easily have used the letter k (since they were misspelling these words), which
was already in the alphabet, and appears in a bronze tablet in the Barberini Library
at the date of the beginning of the fourth century of Rome — " sub aedc kasiorisy

Again, in late excavations at Ostia the following inscription was found of the early
Christian times :

" Loc. Aphrodisias, cum deus permicerit,

Caelius hie dormit, et Decria, quanda deus

Boluerit."

From a passage in Ausonius it would even seem that c had more the sound of s than
of k, for without this pronunciation the jest would be lost. Venus says of herself,
*'Xata salo, suscepta solo, patre edita coelo." If the c be here pronounced as A:, the
play upon words is lost. So also ceu, seu, sive, point to this pronunciation.

THE PRONUNCIA TlOy OF THE LA TIX LAXG UA GE. 67

Romans. For instance, is it probable that such unchanged words
as the following are all mispronounced now in Italy ? — civitas
(civita), cervello (cerebellum), celebre, cedo, celere, celare, cella,
cenere, ciccus, cibus (cibo), cimex (cimice), circa, cippus (cippo),
cinctura, cista, sacerdos.

But to pass from these letters, let us now consider what author-
ity there is for the recommendation in this syllabus that J as a con-
sonant should be pronounced as in the English " y in yard." This
undoubtedly is the present pronunciation in Italy, as in Germany,
but there are manifestly many ol)jectiuns to its acceptance. In the
ancient alj)habet there was but one letter to represent two entirely
distinct sounds in two cases : one was the Y and the other the I,
which were both consonants and vowels. It is this simple fact
which has led to great confusion in distinguishing the two ; but, if
the distinction be clearly kept in mind, there will be little difficulty.
Of the sound of i as a vowel we have already spoken. jT as a con-
sonant would seem to have had exactly the pronunciation of the
English J/ and this is clearly indicated by the fact that, whenever
a word en<ling in a consonant is followed by one beginning with /,
the last syllable of the first word becomes long by position. Had j
possesse<l the vowel sound of long i or ?/ (which is simply a com-
]»ound diphthong oo-a-i when pronounced by its English name, and
when sounded in a word has the value generally of the vowel ^, as ,
in hiUlard)^ there would in verse be an elision of a preceding vowel,
or of the letter m. But this is never the case. Open Virgil's JEneid
anywhere, and examples will be found of this. For instance, here
is the elision of the vowel before i and not before j in the same

line :

Hand cquidem prctio inductus pulchroque juvenco.*
Pergaraaque Iliacamque jugis banc addidit arcem.f

And here is the elision of m before i and not before J:
Nunc etiam interpres divum Jove missus ab ip8o4

Or take such lines as these, and how can they be scanned if J' is a

vowel ?

" Quern sequimur, quove ire jubes, ubi ponere sedes." §
" Perge ; sequar. Tum sic excepit regia Juno." ||
" Cetera populea velatur fronde juventus." 1"
" Mutata agnoscunt, excussaque pectore Juno est." * *

* .Eneid, v., 1. 399. f Id., iii., 1. 336. X Id., iv., 1. 356.

§ Id., ii., 1. 88. II Id., iv., 1. 134. ^ Id., v., 1. 134. * * Id., v., 1. 679.

68 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

There is not a line to be found in the JEneid where the initial J
of Jupiter or Juno, or of any word, is subject to an elision. e7"as a con-
sonant was merely a vai'iation of Di. Zeus, 9e6c, Deus, as well as
the Sanskrit Deva, derived probably from Djo, or Dyu, heaven, have
all the same hard consonant sound, and this was never lost in Jupi-
ter, the Divum Pater or Diespiter. In like manner we have Diovis,
subsequently spelled Jovis, and Dianus, afterward spelled Janus,
while Diana still retains its original form. Again, is j ever found
alone or at the end of a word, and is it not always followed by a
vowel ? Can it stand by itself ? Does i^t ever follow a consonant ?

We have already stated that, in our opinion, the Italian pro-
nunciation cannot be safely followed in all respects, and this is one
of the exceptions to which we alluded. And the reason of this
mispronunciation of j (as it seems to us) is very clear. Through
all the illiterate ages, when the darkness of ignorance was over the
land, the Italians retained the true pronunciation, but they knew
not how to write or read. On the revival of letters, they began
by respelling and rewriting according to their pronunciation ;
and this spelling will give us the traditional pronunciation. Xow,
the extraordinary fact is, that there is not a single name, if there be
a single Latin word, beginning with^, that is not written in Italian
with gi, and sounded hard like the English J.* The modern Italians
in reading Latin pronounce J as if it were a vowel, but the true pro-
nunciation evidently survives in their common speech ; and, as we
have had occasion before to observe, in the pronunciation of names
of persons it would be very difficult for any change of a vital char-
acter to take place. When we find this rule of changing the j of
the Latin into hard gi in Italian an invariable one, extending over
hundreds of words, it is difficult not to believe that this was the
real ancient pronunciation. Jesus also becomes Gesii in Italian,
though in Latin it is read lesus, probably because the Greek form
was adopted in the Church after it was removed to the East. The
mispronunciation oij in Latin is all the more intelligible, because
the Italians have no single character representing the J in English,
and in reading it this mistake is natural. In all such words as those

* Thus among names Julius becomes Giulio ; Johannes, Giovanni ; Julianus, Giu-
liano ; Josephus, Giuseppe ; Juno, Giunone ; Jupiter or Jovis, Giove ; Jason, Giasone ;
Jeremias, Geremia ; and so on. Take also all such common words, among hundreds
of others, as judex, giudice ; jurare, giurare ; Justus, giusto ; jam, gi^ ; juvenis, gio-
vane ; juvare, giovare ; jugum, giogo ; and so on. Invariably they have the hard
Bound of the consonant.

TEE PRONUNCIATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. 69

Bpoken of in the syllabus compounded of ai, ei, oi, or tii, such as
Grains, maior, Troia, eius, Pompeius, cujus, Seianus, the only ques-
tion is whether the ^ is a vowel or a consonant. If it be a vowel,
the Italian gives the true sound, which is precisely similar to our y.
But in all these words is the i a vowel ? Major is in Italian maggi-
ore, hard and consonantal. In Troja and Sejanus, it is far from
clear that the^* was not similarly sounded ; at all events, Sejanus is
still a common name in Italy, and is pronounced hard. In the
palimpsest of Cicero's orations edited by Amadous Peyron, one
word at least occurs showing plainly the pronunciation of J, and
proving that it was not a long i. This is justitianiy which is spelled
(fiiustitiam.

We now come to what seems a still more serious innovation
upon all accredited forms of utterance, and which is in vogue solely,
as far as we are aware, among the Germans ; and this is in the pro-
nunciation of the consonant v. The syllabus says, "As to con-
sonant M, or V, we believe that its sound was as near as possible to
that of the vowel n ; that is, like the ou of the French oui, not
differing much, therefore, from English w. But, as there is great
diversity of opinion on this point, we propose to leave it an open
question whether it shall be pronounced in this way or as the Eng-
lish and Italian r." The Germans pronounce it as if it were simply
u or ta. Thus they say (to express the sound in English) Waynee,
weedee, weekee, for Veni, vidi, vici. Against this pronunciation
we must enter the most positive and absolute protest.

The confusion which has arisen in regard to the pronunciation
of this letter is simply due to the fact that the Romans had only
one character to express two totally different sounds, that of the
vowel u or oo, and that of the consonant v. If this letter v be al-
ways pronounced as ?r, which is simply the Italian u, it instantly
ceases to be a consonant at all, and we must admit that there was
no consonant v in Latin. It cannot be too strongly insisted that w
in English is only the Italian vowel u, pronounced oo ; our English
t^ is a diphthong, eoo. Well is simply nell (ooell) ; wait is iiait (or
ooait) ; Washington is TJashington or OOashington ^ and so on.
Now, if any fact on earth is clear, it is that the Romans had a con-
sonant V, as distinguished from u. It is useless to multiply quota-
tions from ancient grammarians to establish this point ; one or two
will suffice. Quintilian expressly states (lib. 1, cap. iv.) that "all
grammarians admit that certain necessary letters are wanting in
the Roman alphabet, not only in writing Greek, but also in writing

70 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Latin — as for instance in these words, servus and vulgus, Not only
the ^olic digamma is wanting for the consonant, but also the char-
acter to distinguish the peculiar sound of the second vowel ?i, which
was something between u and ^." Priscian (cap. De Num. Liter.)
says, " T^ standing as a consonant had in all words the same force
as the JEolic digamma, that is, vau^ from which it is derived, as
Varro and Didymus, who gave it that name, expressly assert." It
was to supply this deficiency that the Emperor Claudius reintro-
duced into Latin the sign of the old ^olic digamma, or inverted
F, thus,^, to represent the consonant ^, which has so close a re-
semblance to our/* in sound that the Germans constantly confound
them together in their speech. Quintilian, in his first book (cap.
viL), alluding again to the deficiency of the Roman alphabet, says
that ceruum and seruum are by some written ceruom, seruom, in
order to prevent a confusion between the consonant %i and the vowel
w, and that later writers use a double v for the same purpose ; and
he adds, " Not uselessly did Claudius introduce for this purpose the
letter^" ("Nee inutiliter Claudius ad hos usus^ literam adjece-
rat.") This innovation, however, did not come into general prac-
tice, and soon fell into disuse ; but it is to be seen in the inscrip-
tions of his time, where it indicates our v^ as in OCTji^IA,
AMPLIA^IT, TERMINA^IT, DI^I, for Octavia, ampliavit,
terminavit, and Divi.

What was the sound of the ^olic digamma of the ancient
Greeks is a matter of dispute, into which we have no space here to
enter ; suffice it to say that the modern Greeks give to the v^ as in
avrbg, the sound of our v. If it had the simple sound of the vowel
u, there would seem to have been no reason for reducing it into
Latin, to distinguish v from w, as it would have served no purpose.

That the Latin consonant v was not represented in sound by the
vowel V of the Greeks is clear, from the fact that the latter employed
(3 constantly to represent it, having lost the JEolic digamma, ^.
Thus — Severus, Yarro, Yalentius, Yenusia, and Yalerius, for in-
stance, were spelled Jle(37]pog, Bdppcov^ BaXevria, and so on, showing
that the v had not the vowel sound in such words.*

* In the Ambrosian Library at Milan, cod. 82, is a MS., attributed by Cardinal
Mai to Quintus Aurelius Syramachus ; and though this is doubted by Amadcus Pey-
ron, in whose collection of codices the fragment is given, there is every probability
that it is at least as old as the sixth century. In this MS. b and v are constantly
written interchangeably : thus, lahoribus is spelled lavorihus ; civica, eibica ; vduscas,
betustas ; volatas^ bolatas ; revertitur, rebertitur ; absolvunt, absolbunt ; and dcbiiorem^

THE PRONUNCIA TION OF TEE LA TIX LANG UA GE, 71

Again, the Italians still retain the sound of our v in all names of
persons and places which have come do^^Ti from the ancients. As
we have before obsei'ved, such words would be less subject to alter-
ation than any others. Thus, Valeria, Virginia, Vittoria, Virgilia,
Octavia, and Livia may be adduced as examples of the names of
persons ; and Volterra, Venetia, Verona, Vesuvio, Velabro, among
many others, as names of places. Is it possible that such names
were pronounced AVerona, Wenetia, Waleria, or, worse still, Liwia
and Octawia (which are almost impossibly cacophonous) ? At all
events, we cannot recall a single name of a person or place in which
V has the sound of u in Italian, whether occurring in the beginning
or the middle of the word. On the contrary, there are a number of
words beginning with u which, in various parts of Italy, still retain
the sound of our v ; as, for instance, uomo, which is sometimes pro-
nounced V())no*

The story told by Cicero, in his " De Divinatione," has been by
some thought to show that the u was pronounced as w. When Mar-
cus Crassus carried his anny to Brundisium, a hawker of Caunean
figs cried out, " Cauneas," which some interpreted as a bad omen, as
he seemed to be saying " Cave ne eas," beware of going. But if the
^^]olic diij^amma was a c — if the Greeks are ris^ht in their modern
pronunciation — then the hawker very nearly said, " Cave ne eas," as
the Italians would pronounce it.

The Germans themselves, who claim that the consonant v of the
ancient Latins was sounded like ic, in their own language, singularly

devitorem. (" Martii Tullii Ciceronis Orationum Frag, inedita ex Membranis Palimp-
sestis," by Amadous Pepon, p. 183.)

Peyron says that in the codices of the tenth century b and v are interchanged in
more than a thousand instances, and this is also the case with c and i.

The lines of Terentius Maurus give additional weight to this view. He says :

" Graeca diphthongus ou Uteris nostris vacat,
Sola vocalis quod v complet hunc satis sonum."

Here, of course, he refers to the vowel v or w, and not to the consonant v.

* Again, compare in Latin such words as fatidicus, fatum, fatuus, vatcs, vaticinus^
which are also written vatidicus, etc. — all derived iromfaius — and it is clear that between
the sound of the / and the v there was but a slight distinction. Still further, if v had
only the sound of w, what was the object of writing iiva, or uvcsco, or uvea ? It was
simply superfluous. Or how would it be possible to pronounce uvula ? In the letters
of Marcus Aurclius to Fronto we also ^ndfribola iov frivola (lib. ii., lib. vi.), and dvo
for ciho (" De Eloquentia ") ; and in Fronto, viho for vivo (lib. i., lib. viii.) ; and Isi-
dorus, speaking of the habit of writing thus, says, " Birtus, boluntasjbita et his similia,
quae Afri scribendo vitiant omnino rejicienda sunt, et non per h sed per v scribenda."

72 THE FORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

enough, generally pronounce the w like our v, though they never
seem accurately to distinguish between them. Yossius says : " V
efferebant ut German! duplex to; nempe pronunciabant winum,
wallum, widua, wacillare, unde nostrum wijn, wall, widuwe, wag-
gelen," etc. ; but the fact is that, instead of pronouncing these words
with a w, and saying, as we do, wi7ie and widoio, they commonly
pronounce Wein, Vine ; Witwe, Vitve ; Was, Vas ; Wilhelm, Vil-
helm ; though there is a sort of burr of lo in some provinces, and in
others almost a clear tc. Their principles and their practice are,
therefore, a little at variance.

It also seems that, so far from the Latins and Italians accepting
the sound of the w in German names, they changed it into gu, and
the name Wilhelm, for instance, becomes Guilelmus ; Walter, Gual-
terus ; which they certainly would never have done had the sound
been represented by the v.

As to the qu, it would also seem probable that, in some cases at
least, it had the sound of k or hard c, since we find in many words
the c used for the qti, as in quotidie, cotidie ; quum, cum ; loquutus,
locutus ; quur, cur ; and others. In the letters of Fronto and Mar-
cus Aurelius, according to the palimpsest MS. discovered by Cardinal
Mai, this peculiarity constantly appears, and even cur is spelled qur.
How far this went it is impossible to determine, but it is even pos-
sible that, after all, the Italian, French, and Spanish chi and qui may
represent in sound the Latin qui. This, at least, would seem to be
indicated by the double pun of Cicero, who, being requested to give
his vote for the son of a cook, answered, "Ego quoque tibi jure
f avebo," punning on the word quoque, as well as jure.

Time and space will only allow us to speak briefly of the letter
s, which, we are told in the syllabus, in the beginning and end of
words, and at the beginning of syllables and before consonants, is
always sharp (as the s in sin) in Italian, and should be so in Latin.
This, certainly, is not always the case in Italian. It not uncom-
monly has the sound of z, as in deserto, which is pronounced dezerto,
or misura, which is mezu7'a.

But, more than even in the sound of the letters, it is to be feared
that in accents our English pronunciation is entirely wrong. We
almost always throw the accent backward instead of forAvard, and
probably are as wrong in so doing as if we should pronounce French
in like manner. Indeed, this is precisely the vice to which all Eng-
lish are prone in speaking French. Our ordinary accent of Latin
words conveys no correct notion of their quantity. It is almost

THE PROXUNCIATION OF THE LATIX LANGUAGE. 73

impossible in our spoken Latin to distinguish a spondee from a
trochee or an iambus, and it is only when we scan a verse that we
accentuate the words according to their real quantity and rhythm.
But, after all, is it possible that the Romans did not clearly express
the rhythm of their verses in reading or declaiming them, or that
the accent of words in verse was totally different in reading from
what it was in speaking ? Did not the poet follow the real accent
and quantity of the word as spoken ? Is it credible that in speaking
they threw the accent backward, and said, for instance, Dulces
moriens reminiscitur Argus, and in reading threw the accent for-
ward and said, DulcOs moriOns Argus ? We have laid down elabo-
rate rules and classifications to indicate the quantity of words, which
when spoken ordinarily are totally different in quantity and accent ;
so that our pronunciation gives us no real clew to the quantity of
any word, to enable us to distinguish a spondee from an iambus or
a trochee. Is there any living language in which so extraordinary
a ]»eculiarity occurs? Is any nation forced to consult dictionarieSj
and encumber its memory with rules of prosody varying from those
of common speech, in order to write verse in its own language ?
Yet this is j)recisely what we are forced to do in Latin, and this^f
itself would be suiiicient to j^rove that our pronunciation is false.

(7b be continued,)

VII.

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW IN FINANCE.

The citizens of the United States are of the opinion generally
that a paper currency, in the form of United States notes (" green-
backs ") or national-bank notes, is at once more economical and more
convenient in use than the metals, whether gold or silver. Two
questions remain which are open to serious dispute :

1. Shall the paper currency be redeemable in coin ?

2. "\Yhether so redeemable or not, shall it be exclusively of
greenbacks, exclusively of national-bank notes, or a currency com-
posed in part of each ?

The notion that a government may make a declaration upon a
piece of paper, that the piece of paper on which the declaration is
made is one dollar or one thousand dollars, the difference being a
difference of typography alone, is a very modern notion, which one
of its advocates attempts to dignify by calling it " the American
system of finance." As a notion it is American, but as a system it
has as yet no existence in this or in any other country. Experi-
ments containing everything that is proposed by the advocates of
this experiment, and something advantageous in addition thereto,
have been tried, and in every instance they have failed.

The French notes called assignats asserted first their value re-
spectively, and they were also made receivable for all public and
private obligations and debts. The national domain was pledged
for their redemption, the penalty of death was declared against
counterfeiters, the nation promised to recompense informers, and
art contributed an efiigy of the goddess of justice holding the
scales evenly balanced, and an effigy of the goddess of liberty an-
nouncing the rights of man. Yet, in spite of all these declarations,
safeguards, and inducements, the French assignats became utterly
worthless, and were stowed away in closets and garrets until the
civil war in America, when the neglected accumulations were brought
out and sold to the manufacturers of new paper. Every quality of

SUBSTANCE AXD SHADOW IX FINANCE. 75

goodness which the genius of our American financial reformers has
yet suggested may be found in the French assignats, with the prom-
ise of redemption added thereto ; and yet they depreciated in pur-
chasing power, and disappeared finally from the business channels
of the country.

Again, the experiment was tried by the Southern Confederacy
during the civil war. The notes of that government were endowed
with every quality that is proposed for the currency to be issued
under " the American system of finance," to all which was added a
stipulation as to redemi)tion — remote and contingent, to be sure,
but not more harmful, it would seem, than a pledge perpetual of
non-payment. In the end it could be said truthfully of that Amer-
ican system of finance, that a householder would carry his money
to market in a basket, and take home his dinner in his waistcoat
pocket.

Our own experience was the same in kind, though not so disas-
trous in the results. The greenback bore a declaration of its value,
supported by the promise of the Government to pay the holder
thereof, at a time future but not specified, a sum in gold or silver
coin equal to the value declared. It was receivable by the Govern-
ment for postage, for excise and direct taxes, and it was a legal ten-
der for all private debts ; and yet, in spite of its qualities and uses,
and the obligations it carried wath it, the greenback depreciated
until it was worth in gold no more than thirty-five cents on the
dollar.

The advocates of ''the American system of finance" have one
position only ; and if that be indefensible, then their scheme is a
failure altogether. It is this : A government, by its official and
absolute decree, can give to that which has no appreciable value in
itself a continuing, commercial purchasing power. The attempt to
do this was made in fact, though not in form, by France, by the
Southern Confederacy, and by the United States, and in each in-
stance the undertaking was a failure. Further, it is to be said that
the history of the world furnishes no evidence of the success of the
experiment in any country or in any age. Is it urged that the fail-
ure in all these cases was due to circumstances ? If so, then the
power claimed for a government is not an absolute power, but only
a capacity to do a certain thing when the circumstances are all favor-
able. There have been three trials by three different governments,
under differing conditions, at times quite remote from each other,
and each and every of the trials was a signal failure. Thus far all

76 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the circumstances have been unfavorable, if tested by the results ;
and who among the prophets can forecast the circumstances that
wait on success ?

In the presence of this experience, is the suggestion out of place
that there may be inherent difficulties attending the project which
the advocates of " the American system of finance " can not remove ?
A piece of plain paper, of the size of a United States note, is of so
little intrinsic value as to defy expression except in vulgar or deci-
mal fractions. The proposition is, that by the mere declaration of
a government imprinted upon this paper it at once takes on the
quality of value, or that all men will so assume, and upon the as-
sumption so act in all the business affairs of the country.

The statement of this absurdity in the alternative ought to be
its refutation. Can a government, a mere human government, cre-
ate something out of nothing — make that valuable which, in the
opinion of all mankind, is valueless ? Or, if it can not do that or
this, can it by a decree so change the opinions of men in mass that
tney will accept as valuable that which in fact has no value, and
after experience so continue to act through indefinite periods of
time ? The best evidence that men might be so deluded is to be
found in the wickedness of those who propose the measure and in
the folly of those who accept it. The existence of such classes,
even though they bear a small proportion only to the whole, is sug-
gestive of a state of society in which the wildest absurdities and
the most dangerous vagaries may flourish for a time.

When the advocates of fiat money propose to limit its issue, or
when they assert that the failure of previous experiments was due
to the limitation of uses to which the currency was applicable, as
the refusal of the Government to accept greenbacks for customs du-
ties, they admit that the quality of value does not inhere in paper
decreed money by a government. And if paper bearing the decree
of a govei-nment that it is money have no intrinsic value, and if it
carry not a promise of some other thing that is valuable, then it
lacks each and both the essential qualities of a currency. Having
in itself no value, and not bearing on its face a promise of some-
thing of value, no man in his senses would surrender actual property
in exchange for it.

Every business transaction, from the barter of a dozen of eggs
for a pound of sugar to the sale and purchase of an empire, has in
it as the essential quality one or the other of two conditions and
stipulations — either the exchange of one thing of value for another

SUBSTAXCE AND SHADOW IX FmANCE. 77

thing of value, or the surrender of one thing of value for the prom-
ise of another thing of value. The ciuTency of a country, the cur-
rency of the world, the medium of exchange — that is, the means by
which transfers of i)roi)crty from one to another are effected — must
answer to one or the other of these conditions. It must be either
valuable in itself, or it must bear on its face the promise of some-
thing valuable to him who receives it.

A conspicuous leader in financial reform, and the author of the
phrase "the American system of finance," has admitted recently
that there must be a limit to the issue of fiat money ; and it is the
general assertion of the friends of the system that the issue is to be
limited to the wants of trade. These concessions are an admission
that what is called fiat money has no intrinsic value ; and as it car-
ries no promise of redemption in any valuable thing, it lacks mani-
festly both the essential qualities of a currency. Its capacity for
circulation must depend, therefore, upon the prevalence of the ad-
mitted error that it is valuable. The advocates of this scheme may
wisely consider whether a public policy w^hich rests upon an appa-
rent and actual falsehood can long withstand the assaults of truth.

It is a po])ular saying that the currency of the country should
be sufiicient for the wants of trade. If it is meant by this that the
currency should be sutlicient to satisfy the wants of tradesmen,
there is reason to apprehend that the limit would never be reached.
The truth is, that the honest wants of trade are limited by the rights
of trade, and the rights of trade are easily understood when we ex-
amine its nature. As before stated, trade is the exchange of one
thing of value for another thing of value, or the surrender of one
thing of value for the promise of another thing of value. When,
therefore, the possessor of property yields his title to another, he
should receive other property in return or a promise of other prop-
erty ; and when this is not done, he is the subject of a wrong.

Upon the argument already presented it is apparent that the
currency of a country should either be intrinsically valuable, or it
should bear a promise that the holder may at his pleasure command
the sum specified in that which possesses intrinsic value. The hon-
est wants of trade can not be made to extend beyond a currency
possessing one or the other of these qualities ; and a currency pos-
sessing either of these qualities, from the nature of the case, must
be limited in amount.

The friends of the fiat system of money dogmatize thus : The
Government takes a piece of gold, stamps upon it one dollar, makes

78 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

no provision for its redemption, and it passes from hand to hand,
answering all the purposes of business ; and if the Government but
so will, it may do the same with a piece of paper and with the same
results. As the agent to be employed, to wit, the Government, is
the same in both cases, the proposition must be true unless there is
an intrinsic difference between a piece of gold and a piece of paper ;
but if a difference shall be made to appear, then with equal certainty
is the proposition false.

In this connection it may not be amiss to consider the fact that
there is not a human being in any civilized country who, having in
his possession an article of property with which he is willing to part,
will not dispose of it for a quantity of gold. This statement is
equally true of every civilized nation during the entire historical pe-
riod ; and with slight qualifications, it is also true of semi-civilized
and savage races and tribes of men. Can this be said of paper,
whether tendered in its ofiice of money or otherwise ? There is a
universal desire for gold, and gold is the only product of nature or
of art for which a universal desire exists.

Next it is to be said that the act of the Government in coining
gold does not in any sensible degree affect its value.- The piece of
gold stamped one dollar had the same intrinsic value when it en-
tered the mint as when it came from the mint, and its nominal value
conforms very nearly to its intrinsic value. The Government assays
the gold, weighs the gold, stamps the coin for the convenience of
those who have occasion to use it ; but if the agency of the Gov-
ernment Avere withheld, the owner of gold could purchase every-
thing that he might desire in all the markets of the world. Can
the same be said of paper, even though coined, to use a favorite
word of the friends of " the American system of finance " ?

Further, it is to be said of gold that its cost, measured by the
application of human labor to its production, is equal to its pur-
chasing power of other articles which are also the products of labor.
Can this be said of coined paper dollars, of fiat paper, of paper
which carries no promise of redemption ? By the use of steam and
power presses the Government could produce a million dollars of
coined fiat paper money by an expenditure of labor paid in gold
not exceeding one hundred dollars. A million dollars of gold brought
out of the Rocky Mountains costs in labor as much as the quantity
of wheat brought out of the prairies that the million of gold will
purchase.

Nor should the suggestion be omitted that the human mind can

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW IN FINANCE. 79

not conceive of such an addition to the quantity of gold as to de-
stroy its value either in mass or as coin. The purchasing power of
a given weight or of a specific coin would diminish by an increase
of production, but gold would still remain the one solvent of every
financial transaction. On the other hand, no one, not even the
wildest advocate of an irredeemable currency, denies the possibility
of such an issue of paper, whatever its nature or form, as to render
it in its parts and as a whole utterly valueless.

If the distinctions pointed out are not altogether visionary, they
furni>h a complete refutation of the proposition that, inasmuch as
the Government coins gold, stamps it, and makes no provision for
its redemption, it may therefore safely and wisely coin paper, stamp
it, issue it, and leave it to its fate.

Underlying all the visionary theories of the advocates of irre-
deemable paper money is the error that value or wealth is created
by human agency. What we call wealth, the result of human labor
and the object of human desire, is, in the specific things of value,
but the product of the combination of forces and elements pre-
viously existing. The province of man is to change the position of
things, to make new combinations, to call to his aid the forces of
nature. By the use of these processes and agencies, which demand
labor on his i)art, he produces articles of value ; and the general
rule is, that the value is measured by the labor required.

Proceeding upon the view submitted that an irredeemable paper
currency, as a permanent public policy, is incompatible with na-
tional honesty or private prosperity, it remains to be said that the
use of paper redeemable in coin is not free from peril ; but it is at
once the most convenient and the most economical means of trans-
acting both public and private business. When there is but little
demand for coin in a country, as in the United States at the present
time, it is possible for the Government and the banks to increase
the issue of notes, even though redeemable in coin, to such an extent
as to inflame prices, promote speculations, and involve merchants
and business men in distress and bankruptcy. This is the tendency,
and under the old State-bank system it was a frequent result.
There are, however, counteracting influences. An advance in prices
is soon followed by a change in the balance of trade. Exports
diminish, imports increase, and the result is a demand for coin. The
apprehension of such a demand operates as a check upon banks, and
they avoid a course of action which they foresee can end only in
disaster. If, however, the precautionary policy is not adopted gen-

80 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

erally, a change in the balance of trade and a demand for coin fur-
nish an early and wholesome corrective of any over-issue of paper.
This corrective is equally efficacious whether the issues of paper are
by the Government directly or through the agency of banks.

The old theories in favor of an exclusively metallic currency
have disappeared. When financial transactions, both public and
private, were limited in amount, when in the agricultural sections
of the country the business was chiefly by barter, and when there
were but few opportunities of communicating with the centers of
wealth and trade, a partiality for a metallic currency was both
natural and wise. But the condition of the country has changed
in the nature and magnitude of its productions, in the habits of
business of its inhabitants, especially of the agricultural sections,
and in the means of communication. These changes involve the
disuse of coin for ordinary business, and the substitution of paper,
whose volume and quality can only be fixed by the circumstance
that the holder may at any moment command the coin of the Gov-
ernment or bank by whose authority the paper was issued.

The securities against an over-issue of paper redeemable in coin
are : first, a public judgment expressed in the laws of the country ;
then the wisdom and foresight of those intrusted with the manage-
ment of the issues, whether by the national Treasury or by the
banks ; and, at last, the correctionary force of the inevitable de-
mand for coin when the balance of trade is against us. While it
can not be maintained that these securities will prove sufficient at
all times, it can be said with truth that the wisdom of men and the
laws of business have as yet furnished none better.

The convenience of paper as compared with coin is established
by the fact that a thousand dollars of silver weighs about sixty
pounds, and an equal value of gold weighs more than one twentieth
as much. Such is the magnitude of business, both public and pri-
vate, that its transaction would be impossible if only coin could be
employed.

The relative economy of paper is worthy of notice also. The
annual interest on a metallic circulation stifficient for the country
would not be less than $25,000,000 ; while the interest upon the
coin reserve in the banks and the national Treasury need not be
more than one third of that amount. Coin in general use deteri-
orates annually by abrasion about one per cent. ; and the final
losses of coin by individuals are a loss of property to the country,
while the loss of paper by the owner is a gain to the bank issuing

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW IN FINANCE. 81

it, or to the national Treasury, of an equal amount. The use of
fractional subsidiary coins in place of fractional notes involves a
loss to the Government of not less than 8400,000 a year, and im-
poses upon the whole public a heavy burden in their use. If to the
old system of fractional paper money there should be added a fea-
ture of redemption of mutilated currency by the post-offices, our
change-money would be at once both economical and agreeable.

The conclusions to which assent is now asked are : first, that a
paper currency is more convenient and economical than a currency
of coin ; and, secondly, that the paper currency should at all times
be redeemable in coin at the pleasure of the holder.

For further consideration there remains the question : Shall the
paper currency so redeemable be exclusively of United States notes,
exchisively of national-bank notes, or shall it be composed in part
of each ?

It is the fortune of nations, as of individuals, that there is never
a moment of time when they are so entirely free from all obliga-
tions as to be absolute masters of their own policy and conduct.
Our financial policy has been dictated in its most important fea-
tures by events and circumstances over which the nation had no
control. An im])erative necessity for money led to the overthrow
of the State banking system, and the establishment of the national
banking system in its stead. The same necessity compelled Con-
gress to authorize the issue of greenbacks, and as early as 1862 to
give a pledge in advance to those who might purchase our bonds
that nothinc: but coin should be received for duties at the custom-
houses, and that the coin so received should be applied to the pay-
ment of the interest and a portion each year of the principal of the
public debt. If the faith of the nation is kept, nothing but coin can
be received at the custom-houses, and the coin so received must be
used in payment of the interest of the public debt, and each year to
the extent of one per cent, of the principal, the latter appropriation
to be treated as a sinking fund. This pledge creates a use for coin
which will continue until the public debt is paid.

Out of our necessities as a nation came the issue of greenbacks
and the national banks with their privilege of issuing notes, and the
questions now are : Shall we abandon both, shall we abandon either,
or shall we continue to use both ? To the extent of the volume of
greenbacks in circulation the Government enjoys the benefit of the
amount represented, and without the payment of interest. They
constitute a debt without interest. Their redemption implies the
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 266. 6

82 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

increase of the interest-bearing debt to a like amount, or the use of
moneys or revenues which otherwise would be applied to the pay-
ment of the interest-bearing debt. As a currency the greenback is
entirely satisfactory. Waiving the fact that hitherto the Govern-
ment has not been prepared to redeem the greenback, it may be
said with entire confidence that no nation ever had a better paper
currency.

The national-bank notes are guaranteed by a pledge of Govern-
ment stocks, and they are redeemed daily in greenbacks at the
Treasury of the United States. In commercial value they are
equal to greenbacks, and both circulate in every part of the coun-
try, without question and without loss. The item of exchange no
longer appears as an expense in domestic commercial transactions,
or upon the note-book of the traveler.

If we could treat the subject of finance solely as a question of
profit and loss to the national Treasury, there would be no reason
why we should not abandon the national banking system, and issue
an amount of greenbacks equal to the volume of bank notes with-
drawn. Something would be gained by the change. The interest
saved by the substitution would slightly exceed the revenue now
obtained by the States and nation from the taxation of the banks —
say five million dollars a year. The province of a bank is, by the
aggregations of capital represented by its stock, and by the receipt
of moderate sums of money deposited by its patrons, to mass funds,
and therefrom to make loans to merchants and manufacturers.
Thereby they become aids to business. The profits of banks are
derived from original capital, from circulation, and from deposits.
Should the General Government assume the entire circulation of
the country, the profits of banks would be limited to capital and
deposits. At present the profits of country banks are derived
chiefly from capital and circulation, while in the cities the profits
are mainly from capital and deposits. The change proposed would
deprive the country banks of the means of existence, and .the pro-
portion of surplus capital in the cities would be greater than it now
is. Business must follow capital, and the change would tend to
promote the wealth and population of cities at the expense of the
country. The tendency to the cities is sufficiently strong already,
but the abolition of the national banks would be an important aid
in the same direction.

It would happen, however, that the abolition of the national
banks would be followed by the restoration of the State-bank sys-

SUBSTAXCB AND SHADOW IN FmANGE. 83

tern. The interior States and sparsely settled sections of country
would not long rest quietly under a system which tended to im-
poverish them and to enricli the most wealthy sections of the Union.
The overthrow of the national banks means the recstablishment of
the State-bank system, and the movement should be so treated.
This will be the result, whatever may be the purpose of those who
advocate the destruction of the national banks. These institutions
are creditors to the amount of more than 8800,000,000, and in pros-
perous times the a[T<rregatc liabilities to them of merchants and
manufacturers would not be less than 81,000,000,000. The people
and the authorities may wisely consider whether the overthrow of a
system by which the debtor class will be compelled to pay $1,000,-
000,000, and to find credits elsewhere for the conduct of their busi-
ness, can be effected without a shock that will touch every interest
of society.

Nor is it easy to see how the restoration of the State system
would benefit the national Treasury. The revenue derived from
the present system amounts to more than 87,000,000 a year, which
is to be considered in set-off against the advantages which the banks
derive from their circulation. The States realize about 89,000,000
more.

In time, were the change effected, there would arise a conflict
of interest between the General Government and the State banks.
The circulation of national-bank notes and of greenbacks is now
quite equal to the capacity of the country to maintain them at par
with coin. The scheme i)ro})Osed assumes that the bank notes are
to be withdrawn and the volume of greenbacks increased by a cor-
responding amount, leaving the aggregate where it now is. This
being done, an issue of notes by State banks would increase the
volume of currency, and we should be again involved in the diffi-
culties of an excessive volume of paper money, or the national Gov-
ernment would be re(iuired to retire greenbacks in proportion to the
issue of State-bank notes.

Finally, after debate and controversy were over, the practical
questions would be : Shall we have a currency composed in part of
greenbacks and in part of national-bank notes, or a currency com-
posed in part of greenbacks and in part of State-bank notes ? Shall
we have a national currency under the control of the General Gov-
ernment and everywhere uniform, or shall we have a currency under
the control of thirty- eight or more States, without uniformity of
value, and subject to such rules and methods of redemption as the

84 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

cliiierent States may provide ? If the view taken be sound, the
abolition of banks of circulation is an impossibility, and the prac-
tical question is : Shall those banks be controlled by the several
States or by the nation ?

The banking system is now free, and the amount of capital em-
ployed from time to time will be determined by the business of the
country. The resumption of specie payments will check the busi-
ness of banking, and there is no reason to anticipate any consider-
able increase of banking capital within the next two years. Fur-
ther, it is probable that the Government can keep in circulation
from $300,000,000 to $850,000,000 in greenbacks. The law pro-
vides for the issue of certificates of the denomination of ten dollars
and upward upon a deposit of silver coin. Ultimately, unless the
act authorizing the coinage of silver is repealed, these certificates
will form a part of the currency of the country. AYhen that time
arrives, the means of the Government to pay specie will be limited
to the use of silver, and thus greenbacks and silver certificates will
be of the same value. Under the silver bill there will be a steady
addition to the volume of paper money, varying from $24,000,000
to $48,000,000 a year. This addition will be sufticient to produce a
perceptible increase in prices, estimated in silver — an increase which
ought to satisfy those who think that the legislation in regard to
resumption has been beneficial to the creditor class and injurious to
the debtor class. In truth, neither class has been affected seriously
by the legislation of the last ten years. Since 18G8 there has been
no contraction in the volume of paper money which can be pleaded
in justification of the statement that our financial troubles are at-
tributable to that cause. Nor has legislation contributed to the
causes and processes by which the premium on gold has been di-
minished.

The opening of the South to business furnished a new field for
the use of paper. In these ten years population and business have
increased, and the uses of money have increased also. These causes
have produced the same results as would have flowed from an actual
contraction in the absence of any new demand for money.

In prosperous times capital is in the hands of borrowers ; in
periods of depression it returns to its owners. Thus it happens
that for the purposes of business the currency has been contracted
in the sections of country where capital was most needed.

The depression of business, reducing the cost of domestic prod-
ucts, has stimulated our exports, and the same causes have dimin-

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW IN FINANCE. 85

ished our imports. The result is, that the balance of trade is in
our favor, the demand for gold for export has ceased, the products
of our mines accumulate in the Treasury and bank vaults, and the
premium on gold has disappeared.

The ability of the country to resume specie payments is not due
to legislation, but to a condition of affairs which laws could neither
create nor prevent. The suspension of railway-building, the dis-
covery of dynamite, and the invention of the Burleigh drill are
the contributors of chief force to the present financial condition of
the country ; and dynamite an<] the power-drill will remain as aids
to the Government in maintaining specie payments.

George S. Boutwell.

VIII.

THE CRUISE OF THE FLORENCE.

THE PKELIMINAEY AECTIC EXPEDITION OF 1877-78.

The vessel selected for the preliminary Arctic expedition of
1877 was the Florence of New London, a schooner of fifty-six tons
burden, built for the whaling trade, and but recently returned from
a sealing voyage around Cape Horn. Her mission was to collect,
in the Gulf of Cumberland, Esquimaux, dogs, sledges, and clothing
for the main expedition, which it was then hoped Congress would
authorize for the ensuing year. She was rapidly fitted out and pre-
pared for a winter in the Arctic seas, and sailed from New London
Harbor on the morning of the 3d of August, 1877, under command
of Captain George E. Tyson, of Polaris and ice-drift fame, with
two scientists as passengers — Mr. O. T. Sherman of New Haven,
meteorologist, and Mr. Ludwig Kumlien, naturalist — and a crew of
ten men, all provisioned for a fifteen months' absence. ' The Flor-
ence carried a complete whaling outfit in addition to her other sup-
plies ; but the peculiar nature of her mission lifted the enterprise
from the level of an ordinary whaling voyage to the higher plane
of geographical discovery, in which the whole scientific world ex-
pressed a lively interest.

As the season was far advanced, the most direct route, through
the Straits of Belle Isle, was taken. On the 20th of August a large
bark was fallen in with, by which letters were sent home via Scot-
land ; and from this time nothing occurred to vary the usual monot-
ony of life on shipboard until September 2d, when Resolution Isl-
and was sighted. Heavy fogs had prevailed during the whole voy-
age to this time, and now prevented a landing on this island for a
boat-load of natives, as had been originally intended. It was de-
termined, therefore, to grope along through the fog to the gulf.

Soon after losing sight of the island, the vessel had a narrow
escape from destruction. The sound of breakers warned the look-

THE CRUISE OF THE FLORENCE. 87

out of the presence of several large icebergs, against which the
surf was dashing furiously ; and in sheering off from this danger
breakers were again heard, this time proceeding from one of the
small islands with which the straits are studded. At this moment
the fog lifted, and showed on the other side a large iceberg, so close
that a biscuit could have been tossed upon it from the vessel. The
only chance of escape was to pass between the two before the ice-
berg drifted closer in shore. The wind was fortunately blowing
fresh, and, putting the helm about, the little schooner shot through
the dangerous channel like a thing of life, and berg and island dis-
appeared from view in the fog.

Niantilic Harbor was reached on this 12th of September, when
several Scotch whalers were found, who reported others at the
Kickerton Islands farther up the gulf. Their presence here was
unexpected, and compelled Captain Tyson to push on beyond these
islands, to a point that could not be reached with safety by the larger
vessels. Before doing this, however, it was necessary to secure
the services of some natives ; and, as the able-bodied ones were all
absent on the annual deer-hunt, an enforced delay occurred. The
two scientists im])roved the time — Mr. Sherman by taking regular
observations on shore, and Mr. Kumlien in collecting birds and
other specimens along the coast.

On the 27th of September a number of boats Were observed
coming off to the schooner, filled with Esquimaux, men, women,
and children. They were soon alongside, over the rail, and on
deck, and i)roved a motley-looking set. They were strangely spot-
ted with grease and dirt combined, the dark-bro^vn skin showing
behind the spots. They had been in the mountains hunting for two
months, with no opportunity for washing. Soap is unknown among
the natives who do not live convenient to the coasts frequented by
the whalers, and many of them come into the world and go out of
it without knowing the civilized luxury of a wash. The present
visit was one of ceremony, and, as many of the older ones had
known Tyson when he wintered on the gulf years before, of friend-
ship also. Several of the females brought their little ones, carried
in hoods upon their backs ; their cries, the howling of the dogs
from the boats alongside, and the continual chatter of the men and
women, made a pandemonium, from which relief was finally ob-
tained by giving each native in turn a " glass of grog," when they
separated in high spirits. Among the natives was a namesake of
Captain Tyson, with a wife and two little ones ; and these remained

88 TEE FORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

with the Florence until forced to leave her when she sailed for the
United States the ensuing year. When the ships first began to
winter in the gulf, the sailors, finding the native names hard to re-
member and difficult to pronounce, amused themselves by bestow-
ing English ones instead. In this way the present visitor, then a
sprightly youth, was named after Captain Tyson, who had taken a
fancy to him.

On the 1st of October the Florence left Niantilic for the head
of the gulf, laden almost to the water's edge with the extra cargo
of natives and their household effects. The wind blew quite a gale
soon after leaving the harbor, and the water washing over the
deck drove the Esquimaux below, and some of them took shelter in
the officers' cabin, one old woman even taking possession of the
captain's berth. At Kickerton Islands a brief stop was made ; and
on the 7th of the month Annanatook Harbor was reached, when
the vessel went into winter quarters. Several Esquimau families
found on shore were joined by those brought in the Florence, and
the preliminary Polar Colony fairly organized. From this date
until the schooner broke out in July of the next year, from thirty-
five to forty natives were fed daily from its stores.

A lookout for whales was stationed on the small island which
sheltered the vessel ; and Mr. Sherman was also located on shore
for the winter, in an observatory constructed from a wall-tent, some
boards, two small windows, and a stove. Later in the season this
tent was surrounded with blocks of snow, which effectually pro-
tected the inmates from cold, and enabled them both (for Mr.
Kumlien shared its accommodation) to pursue their labors free from
interruption and with comparative comfort.

The male portion of the natives were sent out seal-hunting daily,
but the women were idle, as they will not work upon deer-skins
until the water is frozen over, owing to a superstitious fear that by
doing so they will bring misfortunes upon themselves or friends.
One of their native ceremonies, called ankoote, was performed dur-
ing the latter part of October, to propitiate the spirits which watch
over the whaling interests. To insure a favorable response from
these spirits, certain presents are required, including a liberal allow-
ance of spirits of a more material nature. The result of the cere-
mony was quite satisfactory, and a night's debauch on shore, free
from the presence of white men, who would render it inoperative,
was speedily followed by the capture of the only whale obtained
during the voyage. This whale was landed about forty miles be-

THE CRUISE OF THE FLORENCE. 89

low the vessel, and the bone extracted and brought up on sledges
during the winter. One of the sailors was badly frozen while en-
gaged in the capture, and at the date of this writing has not fully
recovered.

On December Ist ice had formed as far as the eye could reach.
While opening some boxes on this date, one was found that had
been sent by Colonel Lupton, of the Interior Department in Wash-
ington, a former friend of Captain Hall. It contained a framed
portrait of that lamented navigator, and a snuill flag which accom-
panied Drs. Kane and Hayes, and also Captain Hall, on their peril-
ous expeditions to the North. The portrait and flag were carefully
preserved, and are now in possession of the writer, who hopes to
see the flag yet planted farther north than has hitherto been reached
by civilized man.

In February a child was bom to one of the native families.
During the j)eriod of child-birth the female Esquimau is compelled
to remain alone in a small snow hut especially prepared for her.
Here, in solitude and without human aid, she stays until the pains
of labor are over, when she washes and dresses the child and re-
turns to the bosom of her family. Infanticide is practiced exten-
sively, although but very few male children are destroyed. Among
the western tribes it is carried to such an extent with the female
children that at this time there are not enough women to furnish
wives for the men, who are in consequence obliged to seek them
among strange tribes.

The month of March came in with very cold weather, but a
clear and bright sky. The coldest day experienced was January
21st, when the thermometer fell to 53° Falir. ; but the longest sus-
tained period of cold was from March 5th to the 13th, when the
temperature was quite steady at 40° below zero.

Toward the latter part of the month the weather moderated,
and the natives selected their location for the young-sealing, each
Esquimau taking a section several miles in extent. These seals
are their principal food in winter, and are much different from the
kiotlck or saddle-backs, as they are called by the whalers. These
latter have their young on the pack ice, and are easy to capture.
They are found in thousands, the ice being at times black with
them as far as the eye can reach. The netzik, more timid than its
cousin the kloticky has its young under the ice, or between the ice
and snow. It chooses a place where the snow lies deep upon the
ice, and, commencing from below, will burrow a resting-place be-

90 THE NORTH AMERICAF REVIEW,

tween the hard sea ice and the snow, perhaps fifteen feet long and
six feet wide, with a hole at an extremity to afford access to the
burrow or egress to the sea. As this resting-place is covered with
snow to the depth of several feet, the aid of dogs is necessary in
hunting them. When young, the fur of these seals makes excel-
lent clothing.

The Esquimaux were found to believe in a Supreme Being, and
also in a place of future punishment. On the death of one of their
number, if a man, they place his hunting equipments in the grave
to assist him in finding his way to the next world. This custom
enabled Mr. Kumlien to obtain many interesting specimens which
would otherwise have escaped him. The survivors appear to have
little feeling of reverence for the dead, as they cheerfully aided
Kumlien to despoil of their contents such graves as he wished to
open. The sailors, more civilized, did not approve of this sacri-
lege ; and it was only by stealth that his specimens thus obtained
were got on board the Florence. As some of them are quite valu-
able, it is gratifying to know that they reached the United States
in safety, and now form part of the Smithsonian collection.

Auroras were of almost nightly occurrence, but none of remark-
able brilliancy were observed. Coronas, parhelia, and other celes-
tial phenomena were also noted, and will be more fully described
by ]VIr. Sherman, within whose province their record naturally
fell.

In the latter part of March social life at the colony was bright-
ened by a wedding between one of the local belles and a young
Esquimau from below. The day after the ceremony the happy
couple started off upon a sealing instead of a bridal tour. Their
equipage consisted of an old sleigh drawn by three good dogs and
a lame one, deer skins for their nuptial couch, blubber and seal
meat, with a little molasses and tea from the ship's stores for their
wedding feast. At times when the hunters had been more than
usually successful, the officers and scientists of the expedition in-
dulged in the luxury of a feast upon the livers of the female seal,
which are highly prized as a gastronomic delicacy.

One of the natives named Chuny was quite intelligent, and
communicated to the whites many legends and traditions of his
people. Among these was the following account of the manner in
which dogs were first obtained : The primitive Esquimaux early
felt the need of some animal to draw them to and fro in their hunt-
ing expeditions, and therefore importuned the Great Spirit for re-

TEE CRUISE OF THE FLORENCE. 91

lief. They made a rude harness of seal thongs, placed it near some
large white rocks in the remote north, and returned to their homes;
and in a brief time a fine dog team fully equipped made its appear-
ance.

Domestic infelicity exists even among the icy regions of Cum-
berland Gulf. On the 1st of April a native from Katernuna ar-
rived at the Florence colony in search of his runaway wife. She
was found without difficulty, but persistently refused to acknowl-
edge the husband's authority, and he was forced to return without
her.

It is one of the observed peculiarities of the gulf region, that
in the coldest seasons the water in certain localities does not freeze
over. The most solid-looking winter ice is open here and there, in
pools and hollows worn by the action of currents and tides. The
massive ice which surrounded the little Florence had a tidal rise
and fall of twenty-four feet. At the full tides the crunching and
grinding of the ice, the dashing of the water, the gurgling of the
eddies, and the toppling over of the nicely poised ice tables along
the shores, imjjress the beholder with an awe-inspiring sense of
power. In these open holes the seals are found in great numbers
through the winter, and they are therefore favorite resorts for the
hunters. Even here hunting is not without danger, as the tides
run with such force as to frequently detach large masses of ice
around the openings, and, lifting them up on edge, will carry them
under the main floes.

On the 5th of April one little snow-white bird made its appear-
ance.

The quantity of moisture in the air produced at times very
beautiful effects, when congealed by frost upon the masts and rig-
ging of the Florence, decking her out in bridal array.

The inactive habits of the men, with plenty of food, produce
some astonishing results. The cabin boy, a slight youth of eigh-
teen when he left New London, had increased to a weight of one
hundred and seventy pounds by the following April. A part of
his duty was to go on shore daily for the regular allowance of seal
meat, which he brought off to the vessel on a little hand-sled.
Being a round and rosy-faced youth, he became a great favorite
among the dusky damsels of the colony, who would reserve for his
special use the choicest delicacies of the season.

By the middle of April the weather became warm, and the crew
and natives amused themselves by playing ball on the ice.

92 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

The following account of Lake Kennedy, a large body of fresh
water to the west of the winter quarters of the Florence, is given
by Captain Tyson : The approximate location of the lake is in lati-
tude 66° north and longitude 73° west, but has not been accurately
determined, as it is not known to have been visited by white men
previous to the year 1876. The natives often speak of this great
lake, of its fish and game, including seal, and of its great size. The
land about it is a vast plain or prairie, stoneless and treeless, but
covered in summer with tall grass, upon which the reindeer feed in
immense numbers. The natives visit the lake every spring to hunt
reindeer, of which they kill great numbers. They all agree in their
statements of the size of the lake and of the abundance of game
and fish. In the spring it is the resort of thousands of birds which
breed there. Among these birds are several species of geese, the
young of which the squaAvs destroy in vast numbers, and pile in
heaps for dog food. The soil about the lake is dark and abounds
in fossils. Considered from a scientific point of view, this section
is interesting, and it is possible that in a pecuniary one it could be
made profitable. It is not probable that so inviting an Arctic para-
dise will long remain unexplored, Mr. Kumlien occasionally joined
the Esquimaux in their visits to this lake and in their seal-hunts,
but none of the other members of the expedition felt active enough
to do so.

The natives are nearly always traveling, either in the mountains
deer-hunting, or over the snow-clad ice floes in search of seals or
bears ; and, being light, strong, and muscular, they have greater
powers of endurance than the heavier and less active white men.
The natives can also sleep upon the ice when tired, and when hun-
gry can easily satisfy their appetite upon such provisions as the
country affords. White men, as was proved in the case of Captain
Hall, can accustom themselves to the same mode of life ; and it is
for the purpose of effecting this that the colonization plan of ex-
ploration is proposed.

The case of Nep-e-ken, Tyson's boy, is an instance of the in-
herent skill and courage of the natives. Although not more than
five years of age, he captured six young seals while the Florence
lay at Annanitook ; and it was reported that he had been equally
successful the preceding year. In addition to his skill as a hunter,
he was possessed of other accomplishments more nearly allied to
those of civilization, such as chewing and smoking tobacco and
drinking rum with all the zest of an old tar. The young girls

THE CRUISE OF TEE FLORENCE. 93

could equal him in these matters, having been trained to such evil
courses by the ungodly whalemen.

Tlie weather continued very fine through April, leading Captain
Tvson to remark enthusiastically that there is no climate in the
world superior to that of the Arctic region during the months of
April, May, and June. At times the journal becomes quite poeti-
cal, as the following extracts will show :

^* April ISth. — The beauty of the surrounding scenery, of the
glorious sunlight shedding its glittering rays over mountains, val-
leys, and snow-clad iloes, of the fleecy cumulus clouds floating lazily
across the deep-blue vaulted arch of heaven, form a picture of mar-
velous beauty of indescribable splendor."

^^ April Ufth. — Another perfect day. The sun has a peculiar sil-
very whiteness, like a burnished mirror, with not a cloud in sight to
dim its brightness."

The eyesight of several of the crew soon became affected by
the brightness of the sun's rays as reflected from the glittering
snow and ice ; and, as by an unfortunate oversight there were no
spectacles among the supplies of the Florence, recourse was had to
the primitive ones used by the natives. These are made of wood
fitted to the shape of the nose, w^th two slits for the eyes, over each
of which a small shelf projects. They are fastened to the wearer
with a thong of sealskin, and, although rude in construction, afford
grateful protection to the eyes.

Auroras were frequent during the spring, and some of the dis-
plays were conspicuously beautiful. On the 14th of April an
aurora, visible about midnight, was considered especially interest-
ing by Mr. Sherman, from the fact that it hung over and appa-
rently emanated from some water-holes to the eastward of the
schooner.

The Esquimaux have a peculiar manner of expressing or noting
distance. Cone-took means a little way only, as a hundred yards
or a few miles. Conings-ticadle means a distance that would not
be undertaken without steam or sail, and in fine weather ; while
weser-pooh means distance so great that no person was ever known
to accomplish it.

Mr. Kumlien's labor of procuring seal skeletons was greatly les-
sened by using those from which the flesh had been eaten by the
colonists and crew. Each day the meat cart of the vessel was sent
ashore laden with skulls and other anatomical fragments, for Mr.
Kumlien to select specimens from.

94 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

By April 23d night had practically disappeared. At midnight
it was light enough to render large print visible, and a week later
fine print could be read at the same hour.

The order of precedence at meals was as rigidly enforced on
board the Florence as at a Cabinet dinner in the White House.
The whites came first, and took the best" ; they were followed by
the male Esquimaux, who took then* choice ; and the squaws, com-
ing last, took what was left.

On May 6th Mr. Sherman obtained a fair observation upon the
transit of Mercury. The weather was foggy, but not sufficiently
so to obscure the heavens.

May 10th was rendered noteworthy from its being a rainy day
— the first observed during the month of May in this r^egion since
1860. The day was an uncomfortable one for the crew, as the
water penetrated everywhere on board the vessel. By the latter
part of May grass in small quantities made its appearance on shore,
and a few flowers straggled forth on the southern exposures. Flies
were abundant, and as annoying as in more southern climes. The
ice began breaking up rapidly, and large water-holes miles in extent
were visible to the north and west ; but the outlet to the south was
still blockaded by a barrier of firm ice extending across the gulf
from shore to shore. Mr. Sherman made daily visits to the land to
take observations, but did so at the risk of a wet jacket. The na-
tive men also came off to the vessel regularly for their meals, but
the women and children would not venture.

On June 11th the Florence got under way, and moved from her
winter harbor ; and from this date until the Kickerton Islands were
reached, July 13th, the little vessel and her crew were exposed to
all the dangers of Arctic navigation. They were repeatedly com-
pelled to take shelter behind some protecting island or iceberg
larger than its fellows, to escape destruction ; and it was only
by skillful seamanship, under Divine guidance, that they finally
escaped.

On one occasion, the 21st of June, the scene from the deck was
one of the wildest confusion. The Florence was at anchor. The
ice outside the harbor, under the combined force of the wind and
ebb tide, was rushing southward with fierce rapidity. The larger
floes slid over the smaller and weaker ones, crushing and grinding
them to atoms. The noise of the breaking ice and the wild roaring
of the wind, with the flying snow, produced a scene not soon to be
forgotten. During all this time the two scientists were steadily at

THE CRUISE OF THE FLORENCE. 95

work — sometimes on shore, sometimes on the ice, and again on the
vessel, but always actively employed.

Takini; on board fifteen Esquimaux, who volunteered to go
north with the expedition to remain indefinitely, twenty-eight dogs,
several sledges, and the necessary household goods of the emigrants,
the Florence left the Kickerton Islands on July 17th for Disco, and
reached that port, after a dangerous and stormy passage, on the
3l8t of the same month. Off Cape Mercy, a large bear, seen on the
floating ice, was killed. The Esquimaux confined in the hold of
the vessel had an uncomfortable voyage, and, to secure better
weather, held an ankoote, which in their opinion produced the
desired result, as the wind the next day was less boisterous. The
poor dogs suffered also, but only two of the number died. They
were landed on one of the outer islands in the harbor, and, being
fed daily, soon recovered their normal condition.

At Disco none of the crew were permitted to visit the town
until the 13th of August, when the Governor returned from a visit
along the coast and removed the restriction, which was based upon
erroneous reports received from a Scotch whaler, to the effect that
an epidemic was raging among the natives on the mainland where
the Florence wintered. C\i])tain Tyson and the two scientists made
several visits to the Blue Mountains during this enforced detention,
and secured several valuable specimens of meteoric ore, which is
found there in considerable quantities. After intercourse was es-
tablished with the shore, the Goveraor was exceedingly kind, and
8up})lied such articles of food, etc., as were needed on the Florence.

On the *^'Jd of August Captain Tyson gave up all hopes of see-
ing the main expedition, and, in compliance with his instructions,
took on board the natives, dogs, and other material collected during
the winter, and returned with them to the mainland near Niantilic,
reaching that harbor on the 30th of August. In discharging the
Esquimaux, they were paid liberally for their services, and given
such articles of equipment and food as could be spared from the
vessel. They joined the whites in the feeling of regret at the non-
arrival of the expedition, and promised to be in readiness to join
one in the summer of 1879 if called for.

Leaving Niantilic on the 12th of September, the Florence reached
St. John's, Newfoundland, on the 2Gth. Here she remained, making
such repairs as had been rendered necessary by the rough weather,
until the 12th of October, when she sailed for home, encountering
a succession of storms, during which anxious friends mourned those

96 THE NOBTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

on board as lost. She touched at Provincetown, Massachusetts,
October 26th, for supplies, and dropped anchor in New London Har-
bor on the morning of the 30th, after an absence of fifteen months.

Her mission was fully accomplished. The practical and scien-
tific^esults of the A'oyage equal the most sanguine hopes of its pro-
jectors, and show that Arctic colonization is as practicable as African
colonization, and can possibly be made as profitable, if profit alone
is desired.

It is to be hoped that Congress will take a broad and generous
view of the subject, and, appreciating in its true spirit the devotion
of the men who left the comforts of home to winter within the
Arctic seas, enable them to plant the American flag as far to the
north as human endurance and human pluck can carry it.

Henry W. Howgate.

IX.

RECENT FICTION.

Trollope's Is lie Popenjoy ?
James's The Europeans.

James's Daisy Miller.
Black's Macleod of Dare.

Burnett's That Lass o' Lowrie's.

NovEL-WEiTiNG has become a business, almost a trade. Of
those who engage in it, nearly all— the exceptions being very rare —
do 80 merely for the purpose of making money by supplying a de-
mand. For there has come to be, and indeed there has long been
in existence in regard to novels, that tirst factor in the equation of
the political economists, a demand ; this demand being something
very different from the interest awakened by the appearance of a
book showing great original power, such for example as " Waver-
ley," " The Pickwick Papers," " Vanity Fair," " The Scarlet Let-
ter," " Adam Bede," or " Jane Eyre." There are millions of people
in Enirhmd, and millions in America, and almost millions in Austra-
lia, to whose enjoyment of life novels are almost as necessary as
food is to their life itself, every one of whom asks month by
month, almost week by week, a new story. They, many of them,
take some credit to themselves for the time they pass in " read-
ing" ; complacently contrasting themselves with idlers and those
who are given up to the frivolities of life. A vain and foolish
notion ! for there is probably no more insidious form of laziness, no
method of passing time more absolutely void of exertion of any
kind, than novel-reading, as novels are read by most of those for
whom they are written. As a child opens its mouth and has sugar-
plums i)ut into it, so the ordinary novel-reader sits quietly and
thoughtlessly, and has a story poured through his eyes into his
mind, or into what sei'ves him in that capacity. It is in quite
another spirit and with another purpose that great works of imagi-
nation are approached by those who can appreciate them.

To meet this demand for novels, thousands of pens are con-
stantly employed. The work of most of them never sees the
light ; but of the number that are set before the public, the general
reader has probably no just notion. Moderately rating the num-
ber published yearly in London as three hundred, we may be sure
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 266. 7

98 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

that fifty are published in the United States during the same time,
which makes about one new English novel for every " week-day "
in the year. Of this mass of fiction nearly the whole passes at
once into oblivion. And yet not only is the writing of a good
nof el the great literary achievement of the day, but good novels
are written more and more frequently year by year ; as, when all
men were soldiers, to be a valiant soldier and a great captain was
the highest of all distinctions, and valiant soldiers were common
and great captains were not rare ; as, when London was full of
playwrights and new plays were comparatively as common as
new novels are now, the Elizabethan drama came into life, and
above the crowd of successful men rose Shakespeare and Ben Jon-
son, and Beaumont and Fletcher. The great distinction is that
which is won in the face of many competitors ; and much competi-
tion exalts the standard of excellence.

Really good novels are, however, rare enough ; so rare in propor-
tion to the numbers of the people who read them, that the produc-
tion of one is not only a sure distinction but a certain source of
considerable money profit. Since the appearance of " Daniel De-
ronda " only one good novel, or perhaps it might be said two, have
been published in England. Of the better of these Anthony Trol-
lope is the author. His last novel has a name that would have de-
terred the public from reading it had it been the work of an un-
known writer. Why he should have given it so ridiculous a title
as " Is he Popenjoy ? " when " The Dean " or " The Dean's Daugh-
ter " would have been so much better and so much more appropriate
and descriptive, it is difficult to divine. The representation of
character, of which Miss Burney in " Evelina " gave the English-
reading world, if not the first, at least the most conspicuous and
successful early example, has gradually become the one great pur-
pose of the novel-writer. To this Mr. Trollope adds, incidentally
perhaps, but surely not unconsciously, the portraiture of the so-
ciety of his day. There is in all literature nothing like the pic-
ture which is presented in his novels of the social life of Eng-
land in the middle of the nineteenth century. The truthfulness
of the picture is confessed by those whom it represents. It is not
merely vividly imagined, as an untrue thing may be and seem
real, as for example Carlyle's Robespierre. It is "the form and
pressure of the time." Even the most intelligent and fastidious
women in the society which Mr. Trollope's novels represent admit
that he portrays that society with absolute faithfulness ; they con-

RECENT. FICTION, 99

fess that he makes them act and talk to each other just as they do
act aud talk in their every-day life ; and this admission they make
in rep:ard to him alone of all those who have undertaken to rep-
resent the higher classes of English society, Bulwer-Lytton not
excepted. This being the case, it is worthy of remark by the way
that Trollope's social pictures conform so nearly as they do to the
traits of correspon<ling life in this country. That in the former
certain men are called lords, or deans, or what not, and that there
are great houses, and parks, and a tenantry, and fox-hunting, and
so forth, are incidents for which allowance is to be made, but which
do not touch the soul or even the substance of the picture. These
are the mere outside, the accidents of the life that is set before us.
It remains none the less true that as Mr. Trollope's personages pass
before us singly or in groups in the familiar intercourse of their
cver}'-day life, the sense of reality and of intimacy is so strongly
awakened in us that we have sometimes a sense of shame, as if we
were watching our friends and neighbors from behind a curtain, or
listening to them through the crack of a door. No such effect as
this is produced by the best work of the best novelists of France or
of Germany.

In Mr. Trollope's last novel he is, however, less in sympathy
than usual with his American readers. The great personage of
the book, the one that gives the story its strength and vitality,
is Dean Lovelace ; and the conditions of his life and the springs
of his action are practically so unknown to us that, although
we can understand them and may sympathize with them, we yet
constantly feel their foreignness. The Dean of Brotherton is the
son of a well-to-do livery-stable-keeper. This is his origin. As to
himself, he is a man of character, of ability, of the highest culture,
of tine presence, of personal dignity, and of unexceptionable man-
ners. Moreover, he is a tenderly loving father, and a man whose
life is sweetened by good nature, and whose passage through the
world is made easy by humor, that sovereign and subtile lubricant.
That such a man, even after he had become wealthy and attained
the position of a dean, should be hampered by his origin, and should
find it so in the way of his complete and proper recognition, and of
the happiness of his daughter in the society into which they are
thrown — that it becomes, next to that daughter's happiness and as
a means thereto, the chief object of his life to assert himself social-
ly, and to bring certain persons, people of rank among those about
him, to a thoroughly respectful consideration of him and his daugh-

100 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

ter — is almost incompreliensible to those who have not been very
directly under the influence of aristocratic institutions. Be this
as it may, the man is an admirable creation. He will not suffer
by comparison with Archdeacon Grantly or with Mrs. Proudie.
And the difference between him and the Archdeacon is worthy of
remark ; the distinction is so fine and yet so clear, and it is so plain-
ly produced, almost if not altogether by their difference of birth
and early breeding. And yet the difference between them is as
clearly distinguishable as if they were men of opposite natures and
circumstances, although the difference — the inner unlikeness in char-
acter — is produced mainly by self -consciousness. The Archdeacon
is conscious that, besides being archdeacon, he is a gentleman of
recognized position. There are other men indeed who may take
precedence of him, as there are men who may take precedence of a
duke ; but his position as a gentleman is as clearly acknowledged
as a duke's, and it is not necessary for him to assert it, or to trouble
himself at all about it. Dean Lovelace, on the other hand, knowing
that he has every other advantage of the Archdeacon's but that one,
feels constantly the lack of the assuredness which it would give
him ; and in this consciousness on the part of the two men lies
chiefly the difference between them in their actions, and it may
almost be said their characters. The Dean of Brotherton, in his
union of worldly wisdom and a sleepless ambition with perfect
honor, with kindliness and good-fellowship, and with a capacity of
tenderest love for his daughter, is one of Mr. Trollope's happiest
conceptions, and one of those which he has been most perfectly suc-
cessful in delineating. He has never shown a clearer eye or a steadier
hand.

The other personage in this book who commands most atten-
tion, and who also removes it from American sympathy, is the
Marquis of Brotherton, who is a pendant to Thackeray's Marquis
of Steyne, but a far more detestable character. Steyne's part
might possibly be played here by a very rich, a very important, and
a very coarse-minded man ; but a Brotherton in America would be
impossible. He is not very rich, for a Stewart or a Vanderbilt
might buy him over and over again ; nor is he a man of much im-
portance. But he is a marquis, rich, and the head of the family ;
and, having the position given to him by these circumstances, he is
able to tyrannize over his mother and sisters, to be brutally inso-
lent to his bi'other, and to make himself pestilently offensive to the
world in general, with impunity. The Marquis of Brotherton is a

RECEXT FICTION. 101

personage impossible in America. At the North he would be ex-
clufled from every decent household ; at the South he would be
"shot on sight." And yet this marquis is not only possible
in nature and consistent with himself, but a natural, although an
extremely rare, product of the society of which he forms a part,
and from which he yet holds himself as much aloof as possible.
This Mr. Trollope makes apparent without saying it, and without
condemning the system of that society ; for he writes as an artist,
portraying men and women as he sees them, and not as a dissector
of morbid social anatomy, nor even as a satirist, except when he
turns his eyes upon anything American.

From the long-practiced British novelist let us turn to a young
American, Mr. Henry James, Jr., who, although he is the author of
several books, including now four novels, is, compared with Mr.
Trollope, almost a tyro. But, although one of the younger TVTit-
ers of the day, Mr. James is no timid experimenter, doubtful of
his powers, ignorant of the field upon which he has entered, and
uncertain of his aims. We do not know a living writer, except
Matthew Arnold, who produces upon his readers a greater impres-
sion of self-knowledge, of self-restraint, or of perpetual self-con-
sciousness, nor one whose work shows more evidence of fastidious
taste, cautious i)roceeding, and careful elaboration. Indeed, in his
mental traits and literary workmanship, Mr. James does not belong
to the English school (English and American being in literature
but one), but rather to the French. His cast of thought is French ;
he has the French nicety of taste, the French reserve of manner,
dexterity of hand, and fineness of finish ; what wit he has is French,
and he is French in the paleness and paucity of his humor. He
seems to have Balzac before him as his model ; and the best thing
he has yet produced is " Madame de Maulves," a sketch which ap-
peared in the " Galaxy " magazine, and which Balzac himself need
not have been ashamed to own.

Mr. James's latest work in fiction of any importance is " The
Europeans," which is intended, of course, as a companion piece to
" The American." The author of " The Europeans " styles it upon
his title-page a sketch, probably recognizing himself, by that word,
its absence of plot, and confessing that in writing it he did not
propose to himself to interest his readers strongly in the fate of his
personages. And indeed the sayings and doings of these shadowy
people are not such as to trouble us much as to what becomes of
them. Their sayings are many and their doings few. The Euro-

102 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

peans are two European-born Americans of very Bohemian type
and tendency : a youngish woman, Eugenia Young, who as the
morganatic wife of a German prince has received the title of Bar-
oness Munster, and her brother, a clever draughtsman, half ama-
teur, half professional, who is engaged in furnishing sketches to an
illustrated journal in Europe. To put the matter plainly, the Bar-
oness Munster is an adventuress, nothing more nor less. As an
adventuress she became a morganatic wife of the brother of a petty
German grand duke (it was thirty years ago), and now as an adven-
turess she comes to America to try her fortune in finding some rich
American to take her in some fashion — as a wife preferable of
course — off her German prince's hands. In the first place it is dif-
ficult to see why these people are called " the Europeans." They
are in a certain sense indeed the product of the conditions of soci-
ety upon the continent of Europe, as the Marquis of Brotherton
and Dean Lovelace are the product of the conditions of society in
England. But they are not, like the Marquis and the Dean, indige-
nous products of that society, integral parts of it ; they are waifs
and strays — Europeanized Americans of a not very admirable sort.
It was a little fretting to see Mr. Newman set forth as " the
American " by Mr. James ; that personage being hardly, we think,
what Mr. James himself would like to have accepted as a fair rep-
resentative of the social product of his country. But Mr. James's
Europeans have really no claim whatever to the style and title
which he bestows upon them ; being simply cosmopolite Bohemians
of European origin ; folk which the real people of no country would
acknowledge as being of themselves, not to say take pride in owning.
These adventurers find their New England kinsfolk living in one
of the suburbs of Boston, and are kindly received by them and
placed in a pretty cottage near their own house. There the Baron-
ess and her brother remain week after week, month after month,
visiting the big house, doing nothing, suffering nothing, getting
into no trouble and therefore getting out of none, making no mate-
rial for a story even of the slightest kind, but revealing their own
characters and drawing out those of their cousins, young and old.
These cousins are a father, Mr. Wentworth, and two daughters,
Charlotte and Gertrude, who seem to be presented as types of New
England people of their condition. And what character they have,
it may be acknowledged, is New-England-ish. Their €ommon trait
seems to be a pale, intellectual asceticism ; but besides this they
have very little character at all. Their coldly moral view of life is

RECENT FICTION, 103

admirably described by Mr. James. As he makes Felix say to Ger-
trude, who is falling in love with him, she and her family " take a
painful view of life." This is also indicated reflexively by Gertrude,
who, going from the bare neatness and respectability of New England
to the Baroness's drawing-room in the little cottage, which the latter
has decked and softened with curtains and colored drapery (some of
it rather dingy), looks at it, and then "*What is life, indeed, with-
out curtains ? ' she secretly asked herself ; and she appeared to her-
self to have been leading hitherto an existence singulai'ly garish, and
totally devoid of festoons." These Yankee girls have none of the
conventional reserves to which Felix has been accustomed ; and the
effect upon him is thus delicately suggested : " He had known for-
tunately many virtuous gentlewomen, but it now appeared to him
that in his relations with them (especially when they were unmar-
ried) he had been looking at pictures under a glass. lie perceived
at present what a nuisance the glass had been — how it perverted
and interfered, how it caught the reflection of other objects and
kept you walking from side to side." These traits of character and
others like them, on both sides, are touched by Mr. James with a
dainty and skillful hand.

Although ^Ir. James's Wentworths may be recognized as pos-
sitle New England people, they can not be accepted as fair repre-
sentatives, mentally or physically, of their class. His description
of the young ladies personally is puzzling. Gertrude, whose slum-
bering love for the vanities of the world is aroused by the Baron-
ess's festoons, and who finally captivates Felix, is described as being
*' tall and pale, thin and a little awkward ; her hair was fair and
perfectly straight ; her eyes were dark, and they had the singularity
of seeming at once dull and restless — differing herein, as you see,
fatally from the ideal fine eyes, which we always imagine to be both
brilliant and tranquil." Her sister Charlotte "was also thin and
pale ; but she was older than the other ; she was shorter, and she-
had dark smooth hair." And yet these most unattractive young
ladies are afterward referred to more than once as beautiful. The
truth seems to be that Mr. James, clever literary artist as he is, is
not strong in imagination. His personages do not exist, even for
himself, as living, independent, " self-contained " human beings.
They act and speak only as he wishes them to act and speak from
time to time. He has no personal respect for them. How could it
be otherwise ? How could he treat them with any deference when
they plainly have no existence for him out of the range of his own

104 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

consciousness ? He calls " The Europeans " a sketch ; and indeed its
effect is very sketch-like as well as very French. It brings to mind
some of those very clever things of which so many are done by
French painters : a mere outline, with a dot or a line suggestive of
light and shade set here and there, and then filled with color very
faintly washed in ; the whole thing indicative of the great skill
that comes from careful training, but nevertheless a very shadowy
hint of humanity, demonstrative rather of great half-exercised
powers on the part of the artist than of the solid and vital person-
ality of the subject. The author seems to be making his sketches,
just as Felix did his, to send them to his illustrated paper. Hence
it is, probably, that while they are touched off so cleverly they are
so unsatisfactory. And yet this lack of individuality and vital
force in their personages is the great defect of all Mr. James's
novels. His men and women, although they talk exceedingly well,
are bloodless, and remind one of the " vox et prseterea nihil " of
his youth. This shadowy, bloodless effect is not at all the con-
sequence of the particular type of New England personage de-
picted in " The Europeans " ; for, besides that it is manifest in the
peopling of all of Mr. James's novels, let the Went worths, any or
all of them, be compared with Madame Launay in TroUope's re-
cent "Lady of Launay," which is a mere sketch no longer than
Mr. James's own " Daisy Miller." It consists chiefly of a pair of
every-day lovers, and of an old lady who is ready to sacrifice every-
thing and everybody, herself included, upon what she regards as
the altar of duty. The lovers have the virtue of constancy ; the
old lady, Madame Launa}^, that of inexorable firmness. She is ill,
she is almost bed-ridden, she becomes a shadow ; but there is more
strength, more individuality in this attenuated old woman than in a
regiment of Mr. Wentworths. There is one scene in this little
sketch in which Philip Launay faces his mother and wins a victory
over her, partly by his boldness in assaulting her fortress of will,
and partly by the treachery of love within the walls, in which that
young man outweighs a ton of such men as are in " The Europeans,"
although one of them, Mr. Brand, is an enormous specimen of mus-
cular Christianity, and the other is the sinfully positive and joyous
Felix Young. This is the question in regard to Mr. James's ulti-
mate success as a novel-writer — whether he will be able to bring
before us living personages in whose fate we take an interest. As
to his literary skill there is no question. The impression which
Felix, always gay, always a little aggressive in his fullness of animal

RECENT FICTION, 105

spirits, makes upon the shy and shrinking Charlotte, is illustrated —
we might say ilhiminated — with a little flash of wit \i which the
most brilliant French writer might be proud : " Poor Charlotte
could have criven no account of the matter that would not have
seemed unjust both to herself and to her foreign kinsman ; she
could only have said — or rather she never would have said it — that
she di<l not like so much gentlemen's society at once."

The moral pedantry and the chilly unemotional life characteris-
tic of a not inconsiderable part of New England society in past gen-
erations are delicately exposed all through the book. These might
have dei)re8sed a much less sybaritic person than the Bohemian
Baroness. As the story, if story it must be called, draws to a close,
these motives find happy expression in the view taken by Mr. Went-
worth of the love aff'airs of (iertrude, who was with his approval to
have been given to Mr. Brand, the big young minister, but who
with that frentlcnian's consent transfers herself to Felix. When the
change was made known to him, " Where are our moral grounds ? "
demanded Mr. Wentworth, who had always thought that Mr. Brand
would be "just the thing for a younger daughter with a peculiar
temperament." And soon after, when he is urged to consent to the
marriage, he again reverts to his cherished view of her case : " * I have
always thought,' he began slowly, " ' that Gertrude's character re-
quired a special line of development.' " This brings to mind Mr.
Ilowells's humorous presentation of the same trait of character in
his charming *' Lady of the Aroostook," yet incomplete. When the
Rev. Mr. Goodlow's advice is asked in regard to the unfortunate
circumstance of Lydia Blood's being the only woman on board that
vessel, and her making the voyage to " Try-East " in company with
five men, exclusive of the crew, he replies, " I think Lydia's influence
upon those around her will be beneficial, whatever her situation in
life may be."

But, merely remarking that Mr. James commits an error of fact
and of time in making people of the position of the Wentworths,
living in the suburbs of Boston, so ignorant as they are represented
to be in regard to European social life and art and literature only
thirty years ago, say 1845, we turn to his " Daisy Miller." This he
calls a study ; and probably it is, as surely it might have been, a
study from nature. Daisy Miller is a beauty, and, without being ex-
actly a fool, is ignorant and devoid of all mental tone or character.
She dresses elegantly, has " the tournure of a princess," and is yet
irredeemably vulgar in her talk and her conduct. She shocks all

106 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

Europeans and all well-bred Americans by the terms on which she
is with the courier of her party, and by making chance acquaintances
with men and flirting with them. She has a grand affair of this
kind in Rome, which, after excluding her from the society of more
reserved American women, ends in her going to see the Coliseum by
moonlight with her Roman cavalier, who is not a gentleman, and
taking there the fever of the country and dying. In Daisy Miller
Mr. James has undertaken to give a characteristic portrait of a cer-
tain sort of American young woman, who is unfortunately too com-
mon. She has no breeding, little character, a headstrong will, in
effect no mother, and with all this has personal attractions and a
command of money which are very rare in Europe, even among
people of rank. As she flares through Paris, and flits from place to
place over the continent, attended but not controlled by her parents,
she is the wonder and horror of all decorous people, American and
European. Mr. James's portrait is very faithful. lie has succeeded
to admiration in the difticult task of representing the manner in
which such people as Mrs. and Miss Miller talk ; the difficulty being
caused by the extremely characterless nature of their conversation,
which is never coarse, or very vulgar, or even very foolish. It is
simply inane and low-bred, and is marked by certain slight perver-
sions of language ; for example, *' going around," instead of " going
about," of which one phrase, by the way, Mr. James makes rather
too much. It is perhaps well that he has made this study, which
may have some corrective effect, and which should show European
critics of American manners and customs the light in which the
Daisy Millers are regarded by Americans themselves. But the
probability is that, on the contrary, Daisy Miller will become the
accepted type and her name the sobriquet in European journalism
of the American young woman of the period.

AYilliam Black has returned to the scene of his former success.
It might be said of him that in his last novel once more his foot is
on his native heath, and his name is Macleod. The signal failure
of " Madcap Violet " has evidently startled the author of the ad-
mirable " Princess of Thule " ; and " Macleod of Dare " is a desper-
ate effort to renew the Gaelic spell which in that book and in " A
Daughter of Ileth " he cast upon the public. To a certain degree
the effort is successful ; but it is not entirely so. Some of the y^qy-
sonages in " Macleod of Dare " are interesting, and the story will
certainly command the pleased attention of many readers ; but the
book has many weak places, and some great faults. It is pervaded

RECENT FICTION. 107

by the one great fault of constantly apparent effort, of a straining
after " sensational " effect ; and in its catastrophe this is pushed
past tlie limit of the endurable. The two principal personages are
as strongly contrasted as it is possible that two members of civilized
society at this age of the workl could be. Macleod is noble, gener-
ous, tender-hearted, unselfish to the verge of human possibility, but
yet at bottom an untamed Highlander, capable of desperate actions,
and incapable of submission to the restraints of cultivated, not to
say of civilized life — almost incapable of their comprehension. It
was to a certain extent a very clever device to bring such a man in
contact with a beautiful, soft-mannered, selfish, and utterly heartless
woman, the product of London life at the present day, like the ac-
tress Gertrude White. Macleod's noble nature is as open as the
day. To him deceit, subterfuge of any kind, or a mean motive, is
absohitely impossi])le. The woman whom he loves at first fatuous-
ly, and afterward desperately, is as faithless as a cat or a she-fox, and
is always acting, not only on the stage but at home with her father
and her sister, who yet see through her ; for she is shallow and
weak, and the only depths which she fathoms are the little depths
of meanness. Flattered by the grand passion of such a man as the
handsome Macleod, borne down perhaps by its strength, and will-
ing to become the wife of a Scotch baronet and to exchange the
theatre and her little house in London for Castle Dare, she engages
herself to him, and he rides upon the crest of happiness. But she
does not love him ; and a visit to Castle Dare, where his mother
and a female cousin are, soon gives her a distaste for the harsh
and simple life that awaits her there, and makes her long for the
flesh-pots and the flatteries of London. She soon says to her father
that she shall not be sorry to get away from Castle Dare, and this
when her lover is quivering in every fibre of his excitable nature
with delight in ber mere presence ; for she neither makes love to
him nor suffers him to make love to her. She returns to London,
and briefly, in social slang phrase, she throws him over, and en-
gages herself to a distinguished painter — "a w^oman-man," as the
Highland huntsman, sailor, and swimmer calls him. Macleod,
whose physical health and joyousness conceal a morbidly sensitive
nature, has fretted himself ill under her coldness, and when he
hears of her engagement to the painter he goes mad ; that is, he
becomes a monomaniac upon the subject of his love. Only on the
assumption of his monomania can his subsequent conduct be regard-
ed as any other than savage, fiendish. A faithful Gaelic henchman

108 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

of his, Hamish, whose admirably depicted character is not quite
new, for it brings to mind another in " A Princess of Thule," hates
the beautiful, soft-mannered Englishwoman, because of the deplo-
rable condition into which her indifference has brought the master
for whom at any time he would give his life ; and he suggests a
plan to Macleod for carrying off Gertrude — plainly, for abducting
her and forcing her inclinations. They go to London in Macleod's
yacht, and the plot succeeds : Gertrude is taken on board the Um-
pire into the northern seas again. She still refuses Macleod ; and
he, seeing a tremendous equinoctial storm approaching, sends Ha-
mish and the rest on shore on a little island, awaits the storm with
Gertrude, and the yacht goes down with them together.

This is poor business for the author of " A Daughter of Heth,"
" The Adventures of a Phaeton," and " A Princess of Thule." It
is artistically no better than the melodrama that wins the applause
of a cheap theatre. Essentially Macleod's act is no better or other
than that of the jealous ruffian of the slums who murders his "girl"
because she " goes with another feller." It is dressed up very skill-
fully, and by Mr. Black's art is elevated in seeming into an act of
just retribution, aided by the powers of nature, and accompanied by
the self-sacrifice of love driven to desperation. But, for all that, it
is simple revenge, murder, and suicide. Mr. Black, it must be con-
fessed, carries us through the strain of this catastrophe with a strong
hand ; but all his art cannot, upon a moment's reflection, conceal
the base and savage character of IVIacleod's conduct, although we
may partly excuse him on the assumption that he has become a
maniac. The development of Gertrude's character is an admirable
piece of work. The author reveals with great delicacy the utter
baseness of her smooth and selfish nature ; and, more, he shows us,
without describing, one of those women, happily rare, who, although
they may not be without passions, are wholly devoid of sexual ten-
derness. Gertrude White was incapable of loving either man or
child — the child that she might herself have borne, or its father.

Of all recent fiction, the flower and crown is " That Lass o' Low-
rie's." Its appearance, like that of "Jane Eyre" and "Adam
Bede," marks the advent of a new writer of original power. What
the range of that power may be, and what its endurance, is to be
shown in the future. The conception itself is admirable, and it
embodies in a most impressive manner a thought, or rather a senti-
ment, which is not new, but which is widespread and strong, and
which has never before been born into flesh and blood. The exist-

RECENT FICTION. 109

ence of such a noble soul and such noble beauty as Joan Lowrie's,
in a condition of life so low and so coarsening as that of a Lan-
cashire coal-pit girl, has doubtless occurred to other minds as among
the possibilities ; but it has been reserved for Mrs. Burnett to show
us the workings of such a woman's soul, to make us feel the influ-
ence of such a woman's beauty, to develop her before us by varied
influences into a thoughtful, gentle woman, to let us see her love for.
a man so much above her that she deems herself hardly fit to speak
to him grow into the one absorbing passion of her life, which she
yet sacrifices in mute agony rather than put him to shame. There
are other personages in the story, all of which are admirable, even
down to Nib the terrier. Fergus Derrick is a complete man, and
so different from the usual woman's model man. Old Sammy Crad-
dock is a grotesque, yet full of life and nature. Anice Barholm is
a new woman, and a very winning one ; and her father, the Rev.
Harold Barholm, in his embodiment of mingled good nature and
colossal conceit, is one of the most successful figures in the story.
But before Joan Lowrie they all "pale their ineffectual fires."
Like a great actress, she comes before us, and at once takes the
stage ; but it is a shame even to compare anything in her to act-
ing, to hint that there may be any likeness between her and such a
creature as Gertrude White. We feel her presence throughout the
book. From the time when we first see her at the pit's mouth, we
have an apprehension of her nature, its grandeur and its richness,
and of the supreme loveliness of her — soul and body. We see, too,
what her heart's trial is to be, although we do not see how she will
go through it or what will be its issue. The changes which are
worked in her — which yet are not changes, but developments — are
brought about with admirable skill, it might be said with skill intui-
tive. The development of her womanly tenderness through her care
of poor Liz's child, the elevation and chastising of her nature by her
acquaintance with the story of Christ's life and suffering, and the
quickening of her womanly reserve by the growth of her love and
the sense of her humiliation, advancing side by side with equal steps
— these unite to make the portrayal of the character of Joan Lowrie
one of the finest feats in modern novel-writing. And all this is
done so quietly, with such a firm hand, with such reserve of power !
It is, indeed, very admirable. Some of Mrs. Burnett's earlier stories
have been published in book form: "Pretty Polly Pemberton,"
" Lindsay's Luck " (which has an American Robert Lindsay, a fine
fellow, for its hero), "Surly Tim," and others. Although much

110 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

inferior to " That Lass o' Lowrie's," they show in common with it,
to a certain degree, the power of making living men and women,
and setting them before us in free natural action. What Mrs. Bur-
nett may be able to do in writing of greater elaboration than she
has yet attempted, cannot of course be now even conjectured ; but
she has already shown that, among all the novel-writers .of the
present generation, not one has surpassed her in vividness and
strength of imagination. But, if she were never to write another
book, we should owe her perpetual thanks for " That Lass o' Low-
rie's." It is a book of which all women may well be jealous ; for
no man whose love is worth having can read it and lay it down not
more than half in love with his ideal of Joan Lowrie.

Richard Grant White.

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old) to decide the Debate between " Science " and Religious Faith. By Thomas
Scott Bacon. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 16mo, pp. 400.

The Germ. Theories of Infectious Diseases. By John Drysdale, M. D.
London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox. 12mo, pp. 74.

Pretty Polly Pemberton. By Frances Hodgson Burnett. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. 24ino, pj). 213.

Lindsaifs Luck. By Frances Hodgson Burnett. New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons. 24mo, pp. 154.

Kathleen Mavoitrneen. By Frances Hodgson Burnett. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. 24mo, pp. 216.

The Normans in Europe. By the Rev. A. H. Johnson, M. A. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 16mo, pp. 273.

THE

NORTH AMERICAN

REVIEW.

February, 1879.

No. 267.

Troi Tyriusque raihi nullo discrimine agetur.

NEW YOEK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

549 & 561 BROADWAY.
1879.

ALLEN THORNDIKE EICE.

1879.

:N^ORTn AMERICAN REVIEW.

FEBRUARY, 1879.

AXT. Paob

I. The Conduct of Business in Congress. By G. F.

Hoar, U. S. Senator from Massachusetts . .113

n. The Mysteries of American Railroad Account-
ing. By an Accountant .... 135

m. A Statesman of the Colonial Era. By General

Richard Taylor ..... 148

rV. Reconstruction and the Negro. By D. H. Cham-
berlain ...... 161

V. The Empire of the Discontented. By a Russian

Nihilist ...... 174

VI. The Scientific Work of the Howgate Expedi-
tion. By O. T. Sherman, Meteorologist in charge. 191

Vn. Sensationalism in the Pulpit. By William M.

Taylor, D. D. . . . . .201

VIII. Medieval French Literature : Histoire de la Lan-
gue et de la Litterature Fran9aise au Moyen Age ;
•Les Epopt'es Fran9aises ; Le Drame Chretien au
Moyen Age ; Les Prophetes du Christ ; Guillaume
de Palerne ; Les Sept Sages de Rome ; Miracles de
Nostre Dame ; Aiol. By Professor T. F. Crane,
Cornell University .... 212

Publications Received . . • . 221

The Editor disclaims responsibility for the opinions
of contributors, wbetlier their articles are signed or
anonymous.

IS^ORTII AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCLXVII.

FEBRUARY, 1S79.

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS.

There are few subjects of equal public interest concerning which
80 much misuntlerstanding prevails among well-informed people as
the course of business in the national House of Representatives.
Most persons think that their re})rcsentative can at any time, if he
choose, rise in his place and demand the attention of the House to
a speech on any subject which may interest him or his constituents,
and compel the body to record its opinion on any bill or resolution
he sees fit to introduce. Tliis is far from being true. The House
of Representatives is governed by a complicated and artificial sys-
tem of rules, so difficult to be understood that many able men of
great national fame go through long terms of service without pro-
fessing to comprehend it. It is not my purpose to write a treatise
on this complex aiTangement. I wish only to call attention to the
operation of a few parts of the mechanism which seem to me to re-
quire alteration, and to show how they tend to diminish the author-
ity, weight, and dignity of the House, and how they have deprived
that illustrious body of the equality with the Senate which the
framers of the Constitution contemplated.

The representatives of the large States in the Convention of
1787 contended earnestly for the apportionment of representation
among the States in both branches according to numbers. The rep-
resentatives of the small States demanded equality of representa-
tion in the Senate. This difference seemed for a long time inca-
voL. cxxviii. — NO. 267. • 8

114 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

pable of adjustment, and nearly caused the Convention to break up
without accomplishing its purpose. The difficulty was compro-
mised by the appointment of a committee of one from each State,
whose report was adopted with some modification. The large
States yielded the equality of representation in the Senate, but de-
manded and secured for the House the sole power of originating
bills for raising revenue. The clause as reported was as follows :

All bills for raising or appropriating money, and for fixing the salaries of
the officers of the Government of the United States, shall originate in thp
first branch of the Legislature, and shall not be altered or amended by the
second branch; and no money shall be drawn from the public treasury but
in pursuance of appropriations to be originated in the first branch.

In the second branch, each State shall have an equal vote.

The clause as to revenue bills was adopted in this form :

All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representa-
tives ; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments, as on other
bUls.

It will be observed that, while the Convention voted to confine
the power of originating bills for raising revenue to the House, it
with equal distinctness voted not to extend this prohibition to bills
for appropriating money. The system so established differs from
the Constitution of England in three essential particulars : In Eng-
land, no appropriation for a public purpose can be introduced in the
House of Commons without a previous request from the Crown ;
no money bill can be amended by the Lords ; and the exclusive
prerogative of the Commons extends to all bills for raising or ap-
propriating money. So jealous are the Commons of this preroga-
tive, that the Lords rarely attempt to make any but verbal altera-
tions in money bills, in which the sense or intention is not affected ;
and, when the Commons accept these, they make special entries on
their journals recording the character and object of the amend-
ments, and their reasons for agreeing to them.

There is no historical evidence that anybody in the Convention
gave much consideration to the effect of these changes from the
English system upon the value of the prerogative. The better
opinion was, that the importance of the privilege, as asserted by
the English Commons, was very much exaggerated, and that Ameri-
can experience in those States whose constitutions contained a like
provision had shown that it was without advantage, and was a fruit-
ful source of wrangling between the two Houses. Mr. Madison

TUE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. 115

said : " I confess I see nothing of concession in it. The origina-
ting money bills is no concession on the part of the smaller States,
for, if seven States in the second branch should want such a bill,
their interest in the first branch will prevail to bring it forward. It
is nothing more than a nominal privilege."

This is one of the few subjects upon which General Washing-
ton's vote is recorded : "He disapproved, and till now voted
against, the exclusive privilege. He gave up his judgment," he
said, " because it was not of very material weight with him, and
was made an essential point with others, who, if disappointed, might
be less content in other points of real weight."

Similar views were expressed by many of the most eminent
members. Three of the larger States, to whom this privilege was
offered as a concession, by way of equivalent for the equality of
the small States in the Senate, voted against it as an independent
proposition. ^Ir. Ilallam, in his " Constitutional History," expresses
a similar opinion as to the exaggeration by the House of Commons
of the importance of their exclusive privilege. If this view was
sound when the scheme was to deny all power of amendment to the
Senate, it has infinitely greater weight after the power of amend-
ment has been yielded. The pocket of the Englishman is protected
against lavish exj)en(liture by the fact that no sixpence of his money
can be granted for a public purpose that has not first been asked
for by the Crown, on the advice of a responsible and accountable
minister, and because none of his possessions can be made the sub-
ject of tax, excise, or duty, unless the proposal come from his own
representative. The assent of the sovereign and the Lords is only
needed to give the force of law to what is the gift of the free will
of the Commons.

To the system established by our Constitution, widely departing
as it did from the methods by which the unwritten constitutional
law of England keeps the power of the purse in the hands of her
Majesty's faithful Commons, two important additions have been
made by construction. It should be stated that, whenever a ques-
tion has arisen between the two branches in regard to the construc-
tion of this clause in the Constitution, the House of Representa-
tives has invariably had its OAvn way. It was said by Mr. Web-
ster, in the Senate, in 1833 : " The constitutional question must be
regarded as important, but it was one which could not be settled
by the Senate. It was purely a question of privilege, and the de-
cision of it belonged alone to the House."

116 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

1. By a practice as old as the Government itself, the constitutional
prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general
appropriation bills.

2. The power of amendment, as on other bills, has not been
held, as between the two Houses, to be limited to the subjects em-
braced in the bill as sent from the House, or to perfecting its spe-
cial arrangements. Each House has a rule, which seldom is an
obstacle to the accomplishment of anything which a majority of its
members desire, declaring that no proposition on a subject different
from that under consideration shall be admitted under color of
amendment. It seems impossible to doubt that the amendments
contemplated by the framers of the Constitution were amendments
touching the particular subject matter to which the clauses received
from the House relate. The House of Commons, so strict to assert
its prerogative against the Lords, admits the right of the Lords to
amend, by admitting altogether provisions which are not germane
to the other provisions of the bill (189 Hansard, third series, 411).

The rules of our House are so construed that, on the great appro-
priation bills, any amendment designed to carry into effect existing
law, or provide for administering any department of the Govern-
ment, is held admissible ; and they are never invoked by the House
against the Senate.

If this were all — if the House and Senate were two bodies of
equal numbers, acting under the same rules, and made up substan-
tially of men of the same sort — it is difficult to perceive the slight-
est advantage that the House or the people could derive from this
prerogative, so far as it relates to the appropriation of public money.
The eleven general appropriation bills, and one or more deficiency
bills, are reported annually. The former are required by a rule of
the House to be reported from the Committee on Appropriations
within thirty days after its appointment. This rule is seldom
obeyed. These bills contain, on an average, appropriations to the
amount of more than two hundred millions, to which the Senate
commonly adds many millions more. These Senate amendments
embrace every variety of expenditure for the public service, and
every variety of new legislation ; the discretion of the upper branch
being, in this particular, as absolutely unaffected by this constitu-
tional barrier as if it had no existence whatever. The wishes of the
Senate, in case of difference of opinion in regard to a proposition
which the Senate originates, are much more likely to prevail when
that proposition is added to a measure the House has agreed to,

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. II7

than if the same measure should originate as a separate bill in the
Senate, and be sent to the House by itself for consideration on its
own merits.

The surrender of the power of amendment, then, as it has in-
variably been construed, was the surrender of the whole privilege.
It has not only destroyed the advantage intended to be secured
for the immediate representatives of the people, but has given the
Senate a considerable preponderance of influence in legislation. It
has enabled the Senate to exert the power of tacking clauses to bills
of supply, and thereby to extort the consent of the House. This
power has been always «lenied in Parliament, even to the Commons
as against the Lords. On December 9, 1702, it was ordered and
declared by the Lords, " that the annexing any clause or clauses
to a bill of aid or supply, the matter of which is foreign to or dif-
ferent from the matter of the said bill of aid or supply, is unparlia-
mentary, and tends to the destruction of the Constitution of this
Government" (see Sir Thomas Erskine May's "Parliamentary
f*ractice," seventh edition, pages 581-583).

Hut the destruction of the rightful power of the House over
the great a]>pro])riati<)n bills which regulate and supply the Gov-
ernment in all its ordinary administrative functions, and which con-
tain a very large portion of its general legislation, is rendered more
complete by the method of doing business to which the House has
confined itself by its own rules. All appropriation bills which are
first reported in the House must, by their rules, be first discussed in
Committee of the Whole. No bill can be reported from this com-
mittee to the House until every member has had an opportunity to
move as many amendments as he chooses. Debate cannot be stopped
by the previous question. The House before going into committee
may, it is true, order debate to close on any particular section or on
the whole bill at a fixed time. Yet this does not prevent amend-
ments, and is rarely resorted to until debate has strayed from the
particular subject of the bill into general political discussion. So
far, therefore, as the consideration of the appropriation bills as
originally reported is concerned, the usages of the House preserve
for itself the character of a deliberative assembly, and for each of
its members the privilege of expressing his opinion in debate, and
of bringing to a vote whatever measure he may desire. But these
bills then go to the Senate. They are there examined by the appro-
priate committee, and reported to the Senate, where days are spent
in their consideration, with unlimited opportunity for debate and

118 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

amendment. Not only is the original bill remodeled, reviewed, re-
vised, at the pleasure of the Senate, but hundreds of entirely new
provisions are added at the pleasure of the upper branch. The
measure which came from the House, the prerogative of originating
which is specially secured by the Constitution and guarded by the
House with such jealous care, has precisely the same position and
weight, neither more nor less, as any proposition moved by a single
member of the Senate.

When the bill goes back to the House, containing the Senate
amendments, the session is usually far advanced. In the year of
the short session the constitutional limit of the life of the House is
approaching. In the alternate years, when the session extends into
summer, the scorching heats render men eager to leave Washington,
and the two branches have usually fixed the time of adjournment
by concurrent vote. There is no time for examination, debate, or
reference to Committee of the Whole. The House non-concurs in
the Senate amendments in the lump, w^ithout hearing them read.
The Senate insists. A conference is asked and granted. Confer-
ence committees are appointed, consisting of three members from
each branch, usually the chairman of the Committee on Appropria-
tions, with that member of the committee most conversant with the
subject of the bill, and one member of the minority. These com-
mittees confer and agree upon a report compromising and com-
pounding all matters of difference between the two Houses as they
may be able. Their report is matter of the highest privilege. It
may be made at any time, no matter in what business the House be
engaged. A member who is speaking may be taken off his feet by
its superior claim to attention. No motion to lay it on the table,
to indefinitely postpone, or to amend it is in order. The House or
Senate must accept it as a whole or reject it as a whole. If it be
rejected, a new conference may be ordered, but the result of a con-
ference must sooner or later be accepted in a mass, or the whole bill
be lost. The House is all this time under a sort of duress. If it
suffer the appropriation bill to fail, the Government must stop, or
an extra session be held at midsummer, with its cost and discom-
fort. Every other year the House votes on the appropriation bill
with the knowledge that if it do not agree to amendments on which
the Senate insists, and the bill fail, its power over the subject must
be lost altogether by the arrival of the 4th of March, when its life
expires, and the new bill must be dealt with by its successors.

Degrading as this system is to the House as a body, its effect on

TUE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. 119

the individual member is still more remarkable. The whole power
of legislation over that vast field which is covered by the Senate's
amendments to the groat appropriation bills is in practice delegated
to two of the three members who are appointed on the conference
committee. No other member gets a chance to discuss them, to
vote separately on any one of them, to make any motion in relation
to them, or even to see in print what the* committee recommend in
regard to thentL "Gape, sinner, and swallow."

If the reader has followed this somewhat technical statement,
he has observed that while the power of amendment reserved in our
Constitution, as it is expounded in practice, allows to the Senate
and to each of its members the fullest opportunity to deal with ap-
propriation and revenue bills as freely as with bills relating to any
other subject, the rules and usages of the House leave that body
with much less practical power of deliberation or amendment in
regard to all those provisions which have their origin in the Senate
than the House of Lords has in relation to money bills under the
English system.

Suppose, now, all this were reversed. Suppose the Constitution
were to provide that all money bills should originate in the Senate,
permitting the House to amend, as in the case of other bills. The
House would then, on the arrival of the bill, commit it to the Com-
mittee of the Whole, where every clause proposed by the Senate
and every amendment proposed in the House would be fully dis-
cussed, with unlimited power to propose changes, every individual
member having the fullest opportunity to express his opinion or
offer his plan ; and the conference committee of both branches
would receive the bill fully possessed of the views of their respec-
tive Houses as to every syllable which had been proposed by either.
When, therefore, the large States accepted the clause in question
as a partial equivalent for the equality of the small States in the
Senate, they accepted a further limitation of their own power.
When the House, in 1832, refused to permit Mr. Clay's compromise
bill to have its origin in the Senate ; when, in 1856, it refused to
permit the Senate to originate some of the general appropriation
bills ; and when, in 1870, it refused to permit* the Senate to add a
revision of the whole tariff to a bill abolishing the duties on tea and
coffee, its victory was an abdication of its equality in legislation
with the Senate, and tended to deprive every one of its members of
his right to debate or amendment in regard to a large part of the
most important legislation of the country.

120 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

I have been speaking of the course of the ordinary business of
Congress. Upon the great questions which move the heart of the
nation and divide political parties, the body of the House and its
leaders are commonly in full accord, and the representatives of the
American people know how to make their power felt and assume
their rightful and constitutional place in legislation. But even
here it is not enough that the House preserves its power. The
power to do what it will, and to refuse consent to what it will not,
will not preserve its own dignity or its value as an important factor
in legislation, unless its will is the result of its best judgment ; in
other words, unless it preserve its function as a deliberative assem-
bly. The difficulty is not that on great occasions and great ques-
tions the voice of the House is stifled. On such occasions the House
and its leaders are in accord with each other, and commonly in
accord with a public sentiment which the Senate will not lightly
resist. But the practice I have been exposing tends largely to take
from the House the character of a deliberative assembly. The
barren and empty privilege of originating bills of revenue and bills
of supply it has purchased at the sacrifice of that essential preroga-
tive — essential to its own dignity and to that of every individual
among its members — its freedom of debate.

Let us pass now from the subject of money bills to a glance at
the methods of general legislation. The morning hour of every
Monday is devoted by the House to a call of all the States and
Territories for the introduction of bills and joint resolutions. The
House commonly takes care that every member has full opportunity
to introduce as many bills as he desires. These bills are usually
printed. The rule is peremptory that they shall be at once referred
to their appropriate committees without debate and without the
right to move to reconsider the vote of reference. Several thou-
sand bills are introduced in this way in every Congress. Worthy
citizens interested in special reforms are much gratified to read that
their member has introduced some excellent and radical measures
of reform. The bills themselves are copied by approving news-
papers, and redound greatly to the credit of their enterprising au-
thors. For all practical purposes, they might as well be published
in a newspaper in New Zealand or Alaska. The processes by which
these bills are strangled will be understood by comprehending the
operation of the committees and the effect of the previous question.

The House has forty-seven permanent committees, and usually
half a dozen special committees on important subjects. Appropri-

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IX CONGRESS. 121

ation bills, revenue bills, contested-election cases, and resolutions
authorizing the necessary public printing may be reported at any
time. All other national legislation can only, under the rules, be
reported from the appropriate committee when it is called by the
Speaker for reports in its turn. For this call, an hour after the
reading of the Journal, on every day except Monday and Friday,
is set apart. Each committee is entitled, when it is called, to oc-
cupy this morning hour of each of two successive days with the
measures which it has prepared, and, if its second morning hour
expire while the House is actually considering one of its measures,
to have that single measure hold over in the morning hour till it is
disposed of. Supposing the two sessions which make up the life of
the House to last ten months, and allowing for the holidays, the
time taken for organization and appointing committees, and the
time when the four privileged subjects above named take up the
attention of the House, so that theanorning hour can not be devoted
to this call, I suppose one hundred days in two sessions is an un-
usually large average of days when such a call is had. This gives
an average of not more than two hours apiece to the committees of
the House to rei)ort upon, debate, and dispose of all the subjects
of general legislation committed to their charge. From this time
is taken the time consumed in reading the bill, and in calling the
yeas and nays, which may be ordered by one fifth of the members
present, and which requires forty minutes for a single roll-call.
The members of the committees, of course, take special interest in
the subjects assigned to them, which they have investigated and
reporti-'d, and which they have prepared themselves to discuss. It
will readily be believed, therefore, that the House is inclined to
shorten rather than to lengthen the time given to any one matter —
each member eager that the committee holding the floor shall give
way as soon as possible, that the call may go on and his own com-
mittee's turn come the sooner. The committee holding the floor,
if it have several measures matured, desires to hurry each along as
fast as possible, that it may dispose of the others. After the bill
is reported, the member reporting it is entitled to the floor for an
hour. If the previous question is ordered, he has a further hour to
sum up. No amendment can be offered till the member's first hour
is over, and none after the previous question is ordered. The re-
sult is, that the floor is held by the member who made the report,
and parceled out by yielding portions of his time to persons who
desire to speak for or against the measure. The sense of fair play

122 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

in the House usually secures an equal division of the time allowed
for debate between friends and foes. But the person who reports
the bill dictates how long the debate shall last, who shall speak on
each side, and whether any and what amendments shall be offered.
Any member fit to be intrusted with the charge of an important
measure would be deemed guilty of an inexcusable blunder if he
surrendered the floor, which the usages of the House assign to his
control for an hour, without demanding the previous question. The
House in rare instances refuses to grant the demand, but this is at
the hazard of prolonging debate indefinitely, which, for the reason
above stated, is usually the last thing which any considerable num-
ber of members desire. Another expedient is more frequent. A
minority who wish to secure a chance to debate or amend a special-
ly obnoxious bill sometimes bring the majority to terms by what
is called filibustering, that is, consuming time by repeated motions
to adjourn, on which the yeas a^id nays are called, so that no prog-
ress is made in business until the majority grant time for debate or
agree to test the sense of the House by permitting an amendment
to be moved. These difficulties, which stand in the way of the
introduction of bills in the regular mode under the rules, and beset
them after they are introduced, have led to another device by
^ means of which a large proportion, perhaps a majority, of all the
bills which pass the House are carried through. Every Monday
after the morning hour, and at any time during the last ten days
of the session, motions to suspend the rules are in order. At these
times any member may move to suspend the rules and pass any
proposed bill. It requires two thirds of the members voting to
adopt such motion. Upon it no debate or amendment is in order.
In this way, if two thirds of the body agree, a bill is by a single
vote, without discussion and without change, passed through all the
necessary stages, and made law so far as the consent of the House
can accomplish it ; and in this mode hundreds of measures of vital
importance receive, near the close of exhausting sessions, without
being debated, amended, printed, or understood, the constitutional
assent of the representatives of the American people.

In administering this system, the general outline of which I
have given, many subtile and artificial constructions and distinc-
tions have been established, which it is not necessary to deal with
here. I have failed to make myself understood if the reader has
not seen how completely, by its own rules, the House has deprived
itself of '' that freedom of deliberation, speech, and debate " which

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. 123

our early American constitutions declare to be " essential to the rights
of the people." This result has been brought about by what is called
" the previous question " — a guillotine which is in constant operation.

The previous question in England is used to postpone or defeat
a question which for any reason it is not desirable to bring to a
direct vote ; never to force through a measure without debate. In
early times the form of the previous question was, " Shall the pre-
vious question be put ? " If this were decided in the negative, the
question was indefinitely postponed ; if in the affirmative, the ques-
tion was at once put. In 1004, at the suggestion, it is said, of Sir
Henry Vane, the present form, " Shall the main question be now
put ? " was substituted. Under this, if the vote be in the negative,
the question goes over to the next legislative day ; if in the affirm-
ative, the question is at once put. If the previous question, as
under our rules, were to be at once put without debate, it is obvious
that the English system would put it in the power of a single mem-
ber to stop debate, against the wish of the rest of the body, by
making a motion which, if decided one way, causes the main ques-
tion to be at once put, and, if decided the other, removes it alto-
gether from before the House. But in England debate goes on
after the previous question is moved as before, and the previous
question is not voted upon till debate is exhausted. " Hence," Mr.
Cashing says, " it happens that when the previous question is moved
and seconded, the adversaries of the measure, instead of being con-
fined in the debate to its merits, as would otherwise be the case,
have the advantage of all objections which can be urged against
the proposition itself, against the time when it is brought forward,
and against the fonn in which it is moved ; and this is an advan-
tage of which they can not be deprived, so long as a single member
objects to the withdrawal of the previous question."

The previous question thus restricted has never come into com-
mon use in Parliament. Sheridan, in a memorable debate, speaks
of "the shabby shelter of the previous question." It never is
applied in Committee of the Whole. It was never applied in the
second reading of a bill until 1858, and it has probably not been
resorted to a dozen times since.

The Senate, on its first organization in 1789, adopted by its rules
the previous question as used in the House of Commons. On the
17th of March, 1806, it established a new code of rules in which no
mention is made of the previous question ; but the eighth rule was
as follows :

124 TRE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

While a question is before the Senate, no motion shall be received, un-
less for an amendment, for postponing the question, or to commit it, or to
adjourn ; and the motion for adjournment shall always be in order, and shall
be decided without debate.

By this rule the Senate abolished the previous question altogether.
For seventy-tAYO years there has been no restraint in that body upon
the liberty of debate and the power of amendment. Mr. Foot of
Connecticut proposed, on the 23d of January, 1832, that the ques-
tion of consideration should be decided without debate. This was
denounced by Mr. Benton as an invasion of the liberty of speech,
and was not pressed.

In 1841, after twelve years of Democratic rule, the "Whigs took
possession of the Government, with a majority of nearly fifty in the
House and of seven in the Senate. On the 6th day of July, at the
extra session, the rules of the House were amended by adding that
the Hou^e might, " by a majority vote, provide for the discharge
of the Committee " (of the Whole) " from the consideration of any
bill referred to them, after acting without debate upon all amend-
ments pending and that may be offered." This was carried by a
vote of 117 to 95, after a considerable struggle. John Quincy
Adams speaks of it in his diary as " a new screw." Mr. Medill,
afterward Governor of Ohio, denounced the new rule in language
which would seem both impressive and prophetic, if we did not find
like epithets so constantly in the mouths of Democratic speakers on
all occasions great and small :

What is the tendency and operation of this monstrous proposition ? It is
to enable the majority to apply the gag in Committee of the Whole as well
as in the House, and thus cut off debate on any subject whatever. This is a
proposition that I venture to say was never before made in any legislative
body, and even in the British Parliament would subject its mover to the most
indignant rebuke. In the Committee of the Whole the utmost latitude of
debate has ever been indulged, and there the minority have a right to be
heard without any other restraint than is imposed on all. In the British
Parliament, as well as in the legislative bodies of this country, all bills rais-
ing supplies or levying taxes must be committed here, that the discussion
may be free, and unrestrained by the majority, which is most frequently with
the Executive.

But adopt the proposition of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Cal-
houn), and you can cut off all debate, not only in the House but the Committee
of the Whole, whenever a drilled majority shall so determine. Thus appro-
priations may be made and our constituents taxed to maintain the expenses
of our extravagance of government; and, standing here in the minority,

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. 125

though representing a largo and intelligent constituency, our mouths may be
absolutely closed, and abusea of every kind may be practiced without the
possibility of exposure.

Immediately after the declaration of the vote, Mr. Lott Warren
of Georgia, with a view, as he said, "to carry out the reform which
had been begun," announced his puqDOse to offer as an amendment
to the twenty-eighth rule : " And that no member be allowed to
speak more than one hour to any question under debate." This
was ad(>j)ted on the following day, June 7th ; yeas 111, nays 75.
Mr. Adams records in his diary : " I voted against the resolution,
but hope it will effect much good." On the 8th of June, the
House being in committee on the loan bill, while !Mr. Pickens was
speaking in opposition, the Chair reminded him that his hour
was out. Mr. Pickens denied that the House had any constitutional
right to pass such a rule. The Chair again reminded Mr. Pickens
that he had spoken an hour. Mr. Pickens would then conclude by
saying that it was the most infamous rule ever passed by any legis-
lative body.

With this ineffective remonstrance the minority of the House
submitted to the inauguration of the practice, which has ever since
prevailed with constantly increasing strictness. I suppose the large
majority of measures which pass the House of Representatives are
passed on motion to suspend the rules and adopt the bill, on which
motion neither debate nor amendment is permitted, or under the
previous question, moved by the member who introduces the mea-
sure at the time of its introduction, either wholly w^ithout discussion
or amendment, or with only so much of either as the mover, in his
discretion, sees fit to allow.

These resolutions, which have had so great effect on the char-
acter of the House, are attributed by Mr. Benton to Mr. Clay. Mr.
Clay was the leader of the Whig party in Congress. His lordly
and imperious nature chafed under the incessant and vigorous at-
tacks of his Democratic antagonists on the one hand, and the refusal
of the Executive branch of the Government to submit to his dicta-
tion on the other. He was impatient to carry through the measures
for which the extra session had been called. The Whigs had taken
possession of the Government after the sweeping political revolu-
tion of 1840, eager to reverse the policy which had prevailed for
twelve years, and, with a brief interval, since the accession of Jeffer-
son in 1801. In regard to every one of the great subjects of legis-
lation, the Whigs attempted to exercise national powers which had

126 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

never been used or had long lain dormant. The Democrats en-
countered every measure with the charge that it violated the Con-
stitution, and that it was legislating for the rich* against the poor.
The Democrats in the Senate, reduced in numbers, were united and
compacted by their defeat, and never had abler leaders. Franklin
Pierce, Levi Woodbury, Silas Wright, James Buchanan, John C.
Calhoun, William R. King, Robert J. Walker, William Allen,
Lewis F. Linn, Thomas H. Benton, with associates of scarcely less
eminence, acted, says Benton, " on a system, and with a thorough
organization, and on a perfect understanding. There were but
twenty-two of us, but every one a speaker, and effective. We kept
their measures upon the anvil, and hammered them continually ;
we impaled them against the wall, and stabbed them incessantly."
Almost every sentence of their speeches had its separate sting, often
going to the very verge of parliamentary freedom of debate. " Ac-
tion, action, action," cried Calhoun, "means nothing but plunder,
plunder, plunder ! "

As soon as the new rule had been adopted in the House, and the
peaceable submission of the minonty ascertained, Mr. Clay gave
notice of his purpose to introduce it in the Senate. Fortunately for
the Senate, fortunately for the country, he encountered a very dif-
ferent spirit from that which prevailed in the lower branch.

Mr. Benton states that the Democratic Senators, having got
wind of what was to come, had consulted together and taken their
resolve to defy and dare it — to resist its introduction and trample
upon the rule if voted ; and, in the mean time, to gain an advan-
tage with the public by rendering odious the attempt. In pur-
suance of this agreement, the minority did not wait for Mr. Clay
formally to propose his rule, but raised the first pretext to demand
an explanation of his purposes. In reply to some remarks of Silas
Wright on the fiscal-bank bill, Mr. Clay charged that the opposition
to the measure was meant to delay the public business, " with no
other design than to protract to the last moment the measures for
which this session had been expressly called. This, too, was at a
time when the whole country was crying out in an agony of dis-
tress for relief."

Mr. Calhoun resented this imputation with great spirit, and de-
manded : " Did the Senator from Kentucky mean to apply to the
Senate the gag law passed in the other branch of Congress ? If
he did, it was time he should know that he and his friends were
prepared to meet him on that point."

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. 127

Mr. Clay replied that he was " ready at any moment to bring
forward and support a measure that should give to the majority the
control of the business of the Senate of the United States. Let
them denounce it as much as they pleased in advance ; unmoved
by any of their denunciations and threats, standing firm in support
of the interests which he believed the country demanded, for one
he was ready for the adoption of a rule which would place the busi-
ness of the Senate under the control of a majority of the Senate."

Mr. Calhoun said there was '* no doubt of the Senator's predilec-
tion for a gag law. Let him bring on that measure as soon as ever
he i)leases." Mr. Benton : " Come on with it."

Benton, in his " Thirty Years' View," states that Mr. Clay found
that some of his associates who had agreed to stand by him in estab-
lishing the hour rule withdrew their promise under the firm opposi-
tion of the minority, and that the latter had determined not only to
opjjose the adoption of the rule, but to resist its execution, even if
the resistance should involve disorder and violence. Mr. Clay
under these circumstances gave way, but proposed the introduction
of the previous question, expecting this would be accepted as a
compromise. Three days after the former debate he declared that
" the minority ccmtrolled the action of the Senate, and caused all
the delay in the public business. They obstruct the majority in
the dispatch of all business of importance to the country, and par-
ticularly those measures which the majority is bound to give to
the country without further delay. Did not this reduce the major-
ity to the necessity of adopting some measure which would place
the control of the business of the session in their hands ? It was
impossible to do without it ; it must be resorted to."

Benton says that " several Whig Senators had refused to go
with Mr. Clay for the hour rule, and forced him to give it up ; but
they had agreed to go for the previous question, which he held to
be equally effective, and was in fact more so, as it cut off debate at
any moment. It was just as offensive as the other."

Mr. King, afterward Vice-President, said he was " truly sorry
to see the honorable Senator so far forgetting what is due to the
Senate as to talk of C9ercing it by any possible abridgment of its
free action. The freedom of debate had never yet been abridged
in that body since the foundation of this Government. Was it
fit or becoming, after fifty years of unrestrained liberty, to threaten
it with a gag law ? He could tell the Senator that, peaceable a man
as he []Mr. King] was, whenever it was attempted to violate that

128 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

sanctuary, he, for one, would resist that attempt even unto the
death."

It was thought best that the public mind should be prepared for
what might follow by a full statement of the position of the minor-
ity, which Mr. Benton was designated by his Democratic associates
to make. The report of his speech in the " Congressional Globe " is
somewhat tamer than that found in the newspapers of the day. He
said : " He understood it was in contemplation to introduce the pre-
vious question into the Senate, not only in its ordinary proceedings,
but in Committee of the Whole. It was easy to see how a bill
would be amended there. He should consider an attempt to rule
the Senate by the despotism of the gag as bad as introducing a
band of soldiers into it to force measures through by pitching
opposing Senators out of the windows."

He closed by saying :

Sir, when the previous question shall be brought into this chamber — when
it shall be applied to our bills in our quasi committee — I am ready to see my
legislative life terminated. I vrant no seat here when that shall be the case.
As the Romans held their natural lives, so do I hold my political existence.
The Roman carried his life on the point of his sword; and when that life
ceased to be honorable to himself or useful to his country, he fell upon his
sword, and died. This made of that people the most warlike and heroic
nation of the earth. What they did with their natural lives I am willing to
do with my legislative and political existence : I am willing to terminate it
when it shall cease to be honorable to myself or useful to my country ; and
that I feel would be the case when this chamber, stripped of its constitutional
freedom, shall receive the gag and muzzle of the previous question.

Mr. Clay flinched before this resolute resistance, and in a day
or two abandoned his project amid the taunts and defiance of his
opponents.

Benton closes his naiTative of this extraordinary contest by re-
marking : " Thus, the firmness of the minority in the Senate — it may
be said their courage, for their intended resistance contemplated
any possible extremity — saved the body from degradation, consti-
tutional legislation from suppression, the liberty of speech from
extinction, and the honor of republican government from a dis-
grace to which the people's representatives are not subjected in
any monarchy in Europe. The previous question has not been
called in the British House of Commons in one hundred years,
and never in the House of Peers."

Neither party appears to much advantage in this narrative.

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS 129

The Democratic leaders did not overrate the injurious consequences
to public liberty of the suppression of debate and amendment at the
will of a majority. The suppression of these in one branch of the
national Icgi^latiiw renders infinitely more important their preser-
vation in the other. Mr. Clay and his associates seem to have been
acting under the pressure of a temporary exigency, and to have
given little consideration to the grave and far-reaching consequences
which their schemes involved. It is probable that the debate would
have so fully exhibited the evil effects of the previous question on
the Senate that Mr. Clay would have lost his slender majority
before the vote ; if not, the attitude taken by the Democratic party
toward the rule would have assured its early rei^eal. But, however
indefensible in principle, the Constitution gives to the Senate the
power to make rules for the conduct of its business, and the ques-
tion whether this rule were constitutional or expedient is one of
which the Senate itself must, of necessity, be the final judge. The
threat to resist its determination by violence was treasonable in its
nature. Clay yielded to such threats, as he did in his compromise
bill of 1832, and in his compromise bills of 1850. Benton was
approving and sharing a defiance of lawful authority similar in kind
to that which he supported Jackson in suppressing in 1832, and to
that the shadow of whose near approach saddened the closing hours
of his own life in 1858. We are dealing, however, with the effect
of the previous question on the conduct of legislative business.
The c nduct of those who proposed or of those who defended it is
foreign to our present purpose.

The vast increase of public business in modern times has pressed
as heavily on the British Parliament as it ever did on Congress.
On three occasions — in 1848, in 1854, and in 1861 — committees have
been appointed, including some of the ablest and most experienced
members, to suggest a remedy. On the committee in 1848 were
Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Hume, Mr.
Cobden, and Mr. Evelyn Denison, since Speaker ; on that of 1861,
Lord Palmerston, Mr. Bright, I^ord Stanley, Mr. Disraeli, Sir
George Grey, and Sir John Pakington. These men have had each
of them a personal responsibility for the conduct of public business
in Parliament, and were quite as likely as Mr. Clay to be impatient
of the useless consumption of time in fruitless debate. But it never
seems to have occurred to any of them to consider for a moment
that it was possible to secure the dispatch of business by any
abridgment of the freedom of debate. The committee in 1848
VOL. cxxvni. — NO. 267. 9

130 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW,

took evidence as to the course of business in our House of Repre-
sentatives and in the French Assembly, examining Mr. Edward
Curtis of New York, Mr. Josiah Randall of Philadelphia, and M.
Guizot. The last named was examined by Sir Robert Peel and Mr.
Cobden as to the operation of la cloture in the French Chamber of
Deputies. He declared that he did not remember a case where la
cldture was demanded by the majority to suppress discussion, and
that, even with its existence, all subjects are amply and fairly de-
bated.

The committee of 1848 say in their report :

The Parliament of the United Kingdom conducts the whole work of
public and private legislation, and to it all parties Lave recourse for the
redress of real or supposed grievances. The extent, also, of the colonial
empire of Great Britain imposes very heavy additional duties on the Imperial
Legislature. It is certain that a far greater amount of business is transacted
by the English House of Commons than by the Chamber of Deputies of
France, or by the Legislative Assembly of the United States. (" Report of
Select Committee on Public Revenues," 1847-'48, p. vii.)

Neither they nor the committee of fifty-four in 1861 suggest any
interference with the freedom of debate. In 1861 the average
length of the session was eight hours, thirty-four minutes, fifty-
seven seconds. The number of days of the session was one hundred
and forty-five ; the number of hours the House sat after midnight,
one hundred and forty-seven. The committee declare :

The old rules and orders, when carefully considered and narrowly inves-
tigated, are found to be the safeguard of freedom of debate, and a sure de-
fense against the oppression of overpowering majorities.

One other peculiarity of the conduct of business in the House,
under its present methods, is the absen<)e of responsible leadership.
In the British Parliament the whole executive power of the Govern-
ment is lodged. The prime minister, if a commoner, is the recog-
nized leader of the majority of the House of Commons ; if he is a
peer, the function of leadership of that House is vested in a member
of the Government, selected for that i)urpose usually for his tact
and ability in debate. Differences of opinion, jealousies, struggles
for personal advancement, distract the counsels of political parties
in England as they do with us ; but they are reserved for the
secrecy of cabinet discussions, and are not permitted to show them-
selves ia public in the House.

Lord Palmerston's diary for May 22, 1828, gives a curious ac-

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. 131

count of the conduct of business in the cabinet, of which he was a
member :

The cabinet has gone on for sonle time past as it had done before, differ-
ing upon ahnost every qiie>tion of any importance that has been brought
under consideration : nK-eting to debate and dispute, and separating without
deciding.

To this Sir Henry Bulwer adds :

I can not lielp observinjr, with reference to the sentence ^ast quoted, that
the father of the late Lord Holland, who had lived almost all his life with
cabinet ministers, once said to me that ho had never known a cabinet in
which its members did not dispute more among themselves during their
councils than they disputed with their antagonists in the House of Commons.

These discords disapjuar when the measures of the Government
are lirought into the publicity of the House of Commons. Her Ma-
jesty's Government are responsible for the due preparation of all
imjiortant measures. By the standing orders the right is reserved
to her ^lajesty's ministers of placing Government orders at the
head of the list on every order day except Wednesday ; and near
the close of the session this precedence is extended to other days,
and sometimes to Wednesdays. In our House the business suffers
from the want of some such arrangement. All subjects of legisla-
tion are parceled out among the different committees. Each of
these almost comes to regard itself as a little legislature, and con-
tends with great jealousy against encroachments on its own juris-
diction.

With rare and conspicuous exceptions of persons who bring to
the House when they enter it a reputation which insures them a
place at the head of some important committee, the members attain
places of influence on these committees by seniority. The House
becomes in this way a sort of presbytery, the senior member of each
leading committee having special influence over his own subject.
The result is, that there is a struggle betAveen the different leading
committees for the opportunity to bring their questions before the
House. Toward the close of the session this contest becomes spe-
cially apparent. A member who has carefully prepared some impor-
tant measure, with which he is identified in public estimation, feels
that the success or failure of his political career depends upon his
getting an opportunity to bring it to a vote. As the termination
of the session approaches, the appropriation bills press for passage.
The rules of the House give the Committees on Appropriations and

132 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

on Ways and Means, who have charge of the kindred measures of
revenue, the right to report at any time when a member is not
speaking. The right to report from a conference committee is even
more highly privileged, and may be exercised when a member is
actually on his feet in the midst of a speech. The chairman of the
Committee on Appropriations, who may be held responsible if one
of the great bills under his charge fails and an extra session is made
necessary, feels that he must use his power without much mercy.
The result is, that he becomes almost the natural enemy of every
other important bill before the House. In the Forty-first Con-
gress, General Schenck, as chairman of the Ways and Means Com-
mittee, prepared a thorough revision of the tariff. The House spent
many days and nights in perfecting the bill. At last, on the 16th
of May, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee moved that
the bill be postponed until after the appropriation bills. This mo-
tion was hotly resisted by the chairman of Ways and Means, but
was adopted by a vote of 92 to 77, the Democrats voting for the
motion in a body. Thus, the most important measure of the session,
which had taken the House months to mature and perfect, was de-
feated by the opposition combining with a few Republicans, under
the lead of the chairman of one of the two most important commit-
tees, against the resistance of the chairman of the other. Such an
occurrence in the British Commons would have caused the over-
throw of an administration. It could hardly be termed unusual in
any Republican House for the past twenty years.

In the winter of 1874-'75 the House ordered several investiga-
tions into the condition of Southern States. On the 24th of Feb-
ruary, eight days before the session ended. Judge Poland of Ver-
mont had in his charge a bill which undertook to settle the question
which of two rival State governments should be recognized in
Arkansas ; General Coburn of Indiana had in charge a bill which
provided for a new general election in Alabama ; the chairman of
the Louisiana special committee reported the resolutions which gave
peace to that State, under the arrangement known as the Wheeler
compromise ; Mr. Conger, representing the Yicksburg committee,
demanded precedence for a consideration of the affairs of Missis-
sippi ; while Mr. Smith of New York, from the Committee on Elec-
tions, claimed consideration for an important bill in relation to
counting the votes in the election of President and Vice-President
of the United States. They were encountered by General Garfield,
the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and one of the

THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN CONGRESS. 133

two unquestioned Republican leaders of the House, with a motion
to take up the appropriation bills. This motion prevailed by 147
to 101, General Garfield and a few Republicans voting with the
solid Democratic column against the large majority of the Repub-
licans of the House to overthrow those important measures which
nearly the whole of his own party favored, just as his predecessor
overthrew General Schenck's tariff bill, which had a large majority
of the Republican party. The Louisiana resolutions were adopted
a fgw days after, on the 1st of March, the chairman of Appropria-
tions, with great reluctance, consenting to permit a vote on them
to be taken without debate, and the Republicans being strong
enough to carry them by suspending the rules. I do not mean by
this narrative to impute the least blame to General Garfield, or to
his distinguished predecessor. Each of them was doing with entire
fidelity the important duty he had undertaken of seeing to it that
the appropriation bills, without which the functions of the Govern-
ment must cease, were not lost. Neither of them had any more
responsibility than the humblest member of the House for anything
that did not come from his own committee.

It would be easy to multiply instances. The strength of the
personal influence of able and popular men is and must be very
great in a body composed as is our House of Representatives. But
there is no man on the floor whose position gives him the right to
lead ; no man who is responsible that each measure receives its due
share of attention ; no man of prominence who is not likely to have
matters under his special charge which, in the struggle for the com-
mand of the previous hours when the session draws near its end,
tempt him to thrust out of the House other measures of equal pub-
lic consequence.

It is needless to set forth at length the evils which this state of
things brings forth. There is one which I regard as peculiarly un-
fortunate for the character and dignity of the House, and whose
bad consequences can hardly be overstated. It is that almost in-
evitably the Speaker of the House is forced into the position of a
party leader.

The space of this article will not allow me to point out other
kindred evils that have grown up in the recent practice of the House
of Representatives. Those to which I have called attention are the
most important, and are growing year by year. The House is losing
its freedom of debate, of amendment, even of knowledge of what
it is itself doing. A member is almost the last person to ask what

134 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

is contained in an appropriation bill on its final passage. More and
more the contest over important measures is a contest, not whether
they shall be discussed, but whether they shall be brought to a vote.
The Speaker becomes a party leader, while obliged to observe forms
of impartiality. There is nowhere responsibility for securing due
attention to important measures, and no authority to decide between
their different claims. The chairman of the principal committee
becomes almost the natural enemy of every other committee in the
House.

I must take another occasion to deal with the question of remedy
for these evils. I do not believe in radical changes in the institu-
tions of the state, contrived by doctrinaires. The practice of the
House of Representatives is a growth, not a scheme. Still less
would I urge a blind reverence for English examples. But if we
could in some way secure a Speaker who should be absolutely in-
dependent of party, it would be a great gain. If the three com-
mittees. Ways and Means, Appropriations, and Banking and Cur-
rency, could be blended in one, as formerly, the number of this
committee to be at least fifteen, dividing its functions among sub-
committees, the chairman never himself to have charge of an ap-
propriation bill, but to be responsible for the order of business of
the House, subject, of course, to the control of the body itself, a
great step in efficiency would be gained.

But the great point, the restoration to the House of its function
of a deliberative assembly, can only be fully accomplished by a re-
duction of its members. I know the strong objections to this re-
duction. For obvious reasons, it is not likely to receive the assent
of the House itself, until demanded by an irresistible public opinion.
That demand may be long delayed, perhaps avoided altogether, by
making provision for removing from Congress the consideration of
private claims, thereby diminishing the pressure of business, and by
a reorganization of the system of committees, which shall give the
House the benefit of responsible leadership.

Geokge F. Hoar.

II.

THE MYSTEIIIES OF AMEllICAN RAILWAY

ACCOUNTING.

It is now nearly twenty-nine years since the passage by the New
York State Legislature, in April, 1850, of a general law relating to
railroads. There wert no giants in those days. Possibly, how-
ever, the far-seeing and remarkable man who originated the vast
combinations which now control, to a great extent, the internal com-
merce of the country, was even then engaged upon those plans which
resulted in the formation of what a public speaker^in the recent
political campaign in New York City characterized as the closest and
wealthiest corporation in America. It is a significant fact that the
occasion which called forth this remark was an effort to prevent the
importation of the Forty-second Street influence into the City Hall,
through the election to the mayoralty of a gentleman who has long
been identified with the interests of the company alluded to. Every
well-regulated State very properly undertakes to control many of
its public corporations, so that, through a perfect knowledge of
their financial condition, only to be ascertained through complete
and enforced reports, the public at large may know to what extent
it is safe to trust their promises to pay, losses, interest, or dividends,
as the case may be.

The purpose of this paper is to invite attention to the laws of
New York, which, as they now stand, render possible, either the ren-
dering of no account whatever of their financial condition, by com-
panies whose stocks may constitute the sole means of subsistence
of otherwise helpless families, or the publishing of such statements,
or reports, as are a mockery of t"he law, and an insult to the com-
mon sense of every business man.

The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company is

136 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the most prominent and important of all the railroad corporations
of the United States. Upon its honest and successful administra-
tion depends the welfare of a greater number of our people than
upon any other enterprise or investment of capital in the United
States. Because it is the most prominent and apparently the most
successful of this class of corporations, and because it appears to
furnish an illustration of the existence of such laws, a brief review
of its history and practices is here proposed. There are other cor-
porations, almost equally important, which will have attention in
the future.

For some ten years past, no perfect "general balance-sheet"
has been published by the company ; and it is not a little singular
that this circumstance, instead of awakening the suspicions of
brokers and investors, seems to have been entirely ignored. The
market price of the stock has been governed by the fact that it has
paid eight per cent, dividends, regardless of the absence of any
proof of its intrinsic value, as indicated by the existence of a due
proportion of assets to liabilities. There has been, to be sure, given
to the public every year, through Poor's " Railroad Manual," a state-
ment purporting to show the financial status of the concern, but this
exhibit will be demonstrated to be untrue and impossible on its face.
The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Company, which is under
the same direction, furnishes annually, if not the very best, certainly
one of the best reports in the country, a document that any manage-
ment, may well be proud of. Why, then, it may not unreasonably be
asked, if the New York Central has nothing to conceal, does it not
give an equally explicit statement ? The reputation of the stock,
acquired by its continual payment of eight per cent, dividends, and
the knowledge by the direction that it is widely known and con-
stantly quoted as an investment stock, would seem to make it the
imperative duty of the company to publish such full particulars
of its condition as shall leave no doubt of the actual value of the
stock in the minds of trustees and others seeking a safe invest-
ment.

The history of the enterprise, for the purposes of this article,
dates back to 1853. In that year the energetic founders succeeded
in consummating their great scheme of consolidating eleven different
companies operating in the State of New York between Albany on
the Hudson River and Lake Erie, the stocks and convertible bonds
of which amounted, as will be seen from the following figures, to
$23,235,600 :

MYSTERIES OF A^TERICA^ RAILWAY ACCOUJS'TmG. 137

Rochester and Lake Ontario $150,000

Syracuse and Utica Direct 600,000

Schnectady and Troy 650,000

Ruffalo and Lockport 675,000

Mohawk Vulk'V 1,575,000

Albany and Schenectady 1,621,800

Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls 2,155,100

Syracuse and Utica 2,700,000

Buffalo and Rochester 3,000,000

Utica and Schenectady 4,500,000

Rochester and Syracuse 5,608,700

$23,235,600

For this amount, stock in the new coq^oration was exchanged,
it has been stated, to the extent of 8*^4,000,000. The various com-
panies had enjoyed different degrees of prosperity, and their stocks,
consequently, bore different values. In the settlement, a computa-
tion of these values was made, and the difference settled by issuing
bonds of the Central to the various stockholders, payable in thirty
years — that is, in 1883 — with interest at six per cent. These bonds
were denominated "debt certificates (future income)," amounted
to 88,894,500, and were provided for by a sinking fund of one and
a quarter per cent., say 8111,182, payable annually out of the future
income of the road. The attention of the reader is specially called
to these details, as in them may be found the first evidence of ques-
tionable statements put forth by the company. The business of the
new line continued to increase, being of course greatly augmented
by the war of 1861-'65, down to the year 18G9, when a new and
further consolidation was effected by uniting the Central with the
Hudson River road, thus forming the present company. The last
regular balance-sheet of the New York Central Company published
in Poor's " Railroad Manual " was for the year 1868, and may be
found on pages 204, 205, of that work for 1869-'70. It is here
reproduced for examination :

Construction account $36,607,697

Cash 2,372^855

Buffalo tind State Line Railroad stock " 816,687

Troy Union Railroad stock 89 350

Hudson River Bridge stock 467 500

Erie and Pittsburg Railroad bonds 212 971

Debt certificates (future income) 6,023,689

Fuel and supplies 759,776

Bills receivable 519,053

General Post-Office 34,936

Real estate 32',500

$47,937,014

138 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Capital stock $28,'780,000

Funded debt 11,458,904

Unclaimed dividends 5,777

Expenses (paid in October) 688,553

Interest accrued 301,072

United States tax account 71,795

Income balance 6,630,913

$47,937,014

For the information of persons who may not be familiar with
book-keeping, it may be pointed out that the two statements balance,
that is, they equal each other in amount. The first represents the
assets, and the second the liabilities of the company. In the lat-
ter will be found the item "income balance, 86,630,913," which,
not being in the nature of a liability or debt, purports to be the ex-
cess of the assets over the liabilities. In other words, it purports
to show that, if the company had at that date converted its assets
into cash, and therewith paid off all its liabilities, it would have had
remaining in its possession a surplus of $6,630,913. But to produce
this result it is necessary that the items found in the list of assets
shall be veritable assets. On examining the list we find in it the
item of " debt certificates (future income), $6,023,689," being the
alleged unpaid balance of the $8,894,560, issued in 1853, the remain-
der having been converted, or paid by the sinking fund created for
that purpose. As these are not assets, they must be deducted from
the list — the result being Jthat the company, instead of having on
hand at that date a surplus of $6,630,913, had really only $607,224.
In plain terms, the statement represents the condition of the com-
pany as being better than it actually was by $6,023,689. To make
this plain to the dullest comprehension, the following figures are
presented :

Amount of assets as per statement $47,937,014

Deduct item of debt certificates, as not being an asset 6,023,689

$41,913,325

Amount of liabilities as per statement $47,937,014

Deduct item of income balance, as not being a liability 6,630,913

$41,306,101
Income balance (synonymous with surplus, or profit and loss) . . 607,224

$41,913,325

To the professional book-keeper, it is only necessary to say that
the original sum of $8,894,560, for which bonds were issued, being

MYSTERIES OF AMERICAN RAILWAY ACCOUNTING. 139

an expense or loss incurred by the company in effecting the con-
solidation, should have been charged at the time of the transaction
lo profit and loss account, and afterward closed into income bal-
ance account. The stock sold in December, 1868, at 159. As the
company in that year paid only seven per cent, dividend, there could
have been no reason for the stock ruling so high in the market ex-
cept the belief on the part of the public that the statement regard-
ing its financial condition was true. From this time forward the plot
thickens. In this year (18G8) the famous scrip dividend of eighty
per cent., convertible into stock, was declared, and in the following
year the consolidation with the Hudson River road was carried into
effect. The result of these two operations may be learned from the
following figures :

Original capital of the two roads $44,815,800

Present capital 89,428,300

Increase $44,612,500

This increase appears to be just so much money made to the
stockholders out of nothing. In these transactions may be found
the explanation of the present attitude of the company toward the
city of New York. There can now be little question that they
represent the hugest financial blunder of the age. But, although
the stockholders may be said to have made this large amount with-
out giving an equivalent therefor, it is certain that some other
parties must in some way or other pay it to them, and that these
other parties are the public at large. The capital once doubled, if
the value of the stock were to be maintained, regular dividends
must be declared, and this could only be done by means of doubled
business or increased rates of freight to be paid by the public, or,
if needful, by a combination of both expedients. To increase the
difficulty of the situation, the enormous impulse given by the war
to the traffic of the country had begun to subside. The railroad
interest was among the first to feel this. The New York Central
continued to meet its regular payments up to 1871, but in the suc-
ceeding year its earnings seem to have been insufficient to provide
for the sinking-fund demand of $111,182. This payment was passed
in 1872, and has never been made since. The following statement,
compiled from the annual reports to the State Engineer and Sur-
veyor, shows that in the last six years the earnings of the company
have fallen short of the amount required to meet the s^king fund
by $430,102.21 :

140 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Earnings in 1872 $25,580,675 87 Balance.

Payments, except to sinking fund 25,565,873 23 $14,802 64

Earnings in 1873 $29,126,851 I'i

Payments, except to sinking fund 29,105,330 77 21,520 40

Earnings in 1874 $31,650,386 72

Payments, except to sinking fund 31,534,471 16 115,915 56

Earnings in 1875 $29,027,218 03

Payments, except to sinking fund 28,824,702 33 202,515 70

Earnings in 1876 $28,046,688 45

Payments, except to sinking fund 27,973,040 73 73,547 72

$428,302 02
Earnings in 1878 $26,579,085 90

Payments, except to sinking fund 26,776,398 i3

Deduct deficit $197,312 23 197,312 23

$230,989 79
Six years' sinking fund, $111,182 667,092 00

Deficit $436,102 21

The great revulsion of 1873, from whicli we are slowly emerging,
has been called by thoughtful observers the " Railroad Panic," from
the fact that railroad building was the last theatre of active specu-
lation to which the remnants of the immense money accumulations
of the war were transferred. Oil-wells, coal-mines, gold and silver
mines, and village plots had been thoroughly exploited and as
thoroughly exhausted. It would appear, from the figures here
given, that a crisis was reached in the affairs of the New York
Central in 1872, and subsequent events indicate that it was boldly
met, in a manner characteristic of the presiding officer.

The exigencies of the case seem to have demanded immediate
action, and this could be but in one direction. Hence the building
of the additional tracks ; the creation of the blanket mortgage of
$40,000,000 in January, 1873 ; and the increase of the funded debt
from $16,496,020 in 1872, to $40,003,667.62 in 1875. The deficiency
of $197,312.23 in the operations of 1877, as shown above, super-
added to the failure of the company to meet the sinking-fund quota
of $111,182, looks as if this supreme effort had not been crowned
with the success anticipated. In the light of the foregoing facts,
the extraordinary letter of the President, published this summer,
in which he states that " the New York roads have put New York
on an equality " (in the matter of freight rates) " with the most fa-

MYSTERIES OF AMERICAN RAILWAY ACCOUNTING, Ml

vored rival" (city), "her merchants must do the rest," intimating
that he feels bound to see that other cities shall not suffer through
the commercial supremacy of New York, is apparently susceptible
of but one construction. It seems to utter the sentiments of a man
who, having exhausted every business appliance, at last stands at
bay, against friend and foe.

During the last live years it may be said that the country has
been in a state of bankruptcy. No class, no interest, has been exempt.
From the humble depositor in the Dime Savings Institution to the
millionaire promoters of railway undertakings that should grasp the
continent with a span, all have alike bowed to the inevitable. Some
of the soundest banks have reduced their capitals largely — capital,
too, which represented solid money. Time will show whether the
company under consideration is superior to all financial and com-
mercial laws.

The preceding statements of earnings and payments are derived
from the published reports of the company, which are sworn to, as
required by law, and should therefore be truthful. One of them
for the year ending September 30, 1870, is here presented for the
thoughtful consideration of the reader.

Earnings and Cash Receipts and Payments.

RECEIPTS.

From passengers $6,738,592 01

From freight 14,489,216 52

Rents, interest, divideuds on stocks held in other railroad
companies, use of engines and cars, work done at shops,
telegraph, mail service, and miscellaneous items 1,135,511 14

$22,363,319 67

PAYMENTS OTHER THAN FOR CONSTRUCTION.

For transportation expenses $14,068,079 31

For interest 1,093,840 80

For dividends paid and balance on hand for dividends, October

15, 1870, at the rate of eight per cent 6,861,241 29

For United States tax on earnings 168,975 89

For rents 60,000 00

For sinking fund .....,..,o 111,182 38

$22,363,319 67

The officers swear that in that year the company earned precisely

enough money to pay certain fixed charges — no more, and no less.

If it be true that the receipts in that year from passengers was

16,738,592.01, and that the odd cent was the amount needed to

142

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

make up a sufficient sum to meet exactly the fixed charges of the
road for the year, then it may be conceded that the days of miracles
and of supernatural intervention have not departed ! But if there
is some mistake about it, then the legal maxim, " Falsiis hi imo,
falsns in omnibus,^'* must be commended to the reflections of those
interested.

To speak more seriously, can any sane business man believe such
a report ? And yet it is duly and formally sworn to, accepted and
presented to the Legislature by the State Engineer and Surveyor,
and printed and distributed in the bound volume of annual rejDorts.

But there be sins of omission as well as sins of commission, and,
mindful of this pregnant fact, it is here asked if the provisions of
subdivision 101, section 31, chapter 140, of the act passed April 2,
1850, entitled " An act to authorize the formation of railroad cor-
porations, and to regulate the same," have ever been complied with
by the New York Central. The inquiry is important, because the
act is known as the general railroad law, and, by the subdivision
here indicated, the company is required to report annually the
" payments to surjDlus fund, and total amount of said fund." The
object of this inquiry will be understood when it is explained that,
in the yearly statement furnished by the company to Poor's *' Rail-
road Manual," there appear the following language and figures :

Financial Statement, September 30, 18 7 7.

Construction $75,033,786 52

Equipment 17,868,949 26

Engineering, etc 2,999,473 27

Branches, etc 3,230,199 66

Balance, reserved ) ^ ^ ^ 30,631,336 84

fund, etc )

8129,763,745 55

Capital stock $89,232,900 00

" " certificates 195,400 00

Funded debt 39,801,233 33

Bonds and mortgages

and real estate.

534,212 22

$129,763,745 55

The wording of the last item in the left-hand column is ingen-
ious by hardly ingenuous. By the term " balance, reserved fund,
etc.," there is evidently an implication that a reserve or surplus does
exist, but how much of the large amount of 830,631,336.84 is of
that character, is left entirely to the imagination of the reader. To
assist the latter in his dilemma, it is suggested that the right-hand
column contains simply an account of the debts due by the company,
while the left shows the means at its disposal wherewith to pay them.
If we suppose that each of the ^\q items in the left-hand column is
an asset equivalent to cash, and could be instantly converted into

MYSTERIES OF AMERICAN RAILWAY ACCOUNTING. 143

money, it will be seen that, collectively, they would produce an
amount precisely sufficient to liquidate the debts, so that he must
have indeed a lively imagination who can discover any reserved
fund in the premises. If, now, we turn to page 308, Table II., sub-
division 101 of the printed volume of the State Engineer and Sur-
veyor's Reports to the Legislature for 18T7, we shall find, in the
column entitled " Amount carried to surplus fund," a conspicuous
blank space opposite the name of the New York Central and Hud-
son River Company.

It will not be denied that a case of this kind furnishes grave
reasons for dissatisfaction. The question is, What is the remedy,
and can it be eifectually applied? It is obvious that the irregulari-
ties complained of are the fruits of imperfect legislation, and that
consequently the remedy lies in a revision of the railroad laws.
Not only do the present laws fail to call for such information -as
will demonstrate the financial condition of a company at a given
period, but the penalties provided for non-compliance are so piti-
fully inadequate as to almost constitute a premium for disobedi-
ence. For instance, section 32 of the general act of 1850 reads as
follows : " Any such corporation which shall neglect to make the
report as is provided in the preceding section shall be liable to a
penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars, to be sued for in the
name of the people, for their use." As if the amount of fine were
not small enough, it is provided that if any person expend time and
money to bring a delinquent company to book, the money recov-
ered may not reimburse him, but shall go for the use of the people.
Section 8, chapter 900, laws of 18G7, amends the preceding by im-
])Osing an additional fine of *' twenty-five dollars for each day after
the first day of December on which they shall neglect to file said
rei)ort ; " but this emendation is but slightly less ridiculous than the
original provision. Indeed, it may be doubted if anything can be
found in the entire railroad code to conflict with the supposition
that it was framed directly in the interest of the roads, and under
the inspiration of their agents. A defect in the law is the omission
to prescribe the form of oath by which the correctness of the report
is attested. Section 31 of the law of 1850 provides that the an-
nual report shall be verified by the oaths of the Treasurer or Presi-
dent, and acting Superintendent of operations, neither of which offi-
cers can be supposed to be personally acquainted with the contents
of the books or the methods of entries. They, accordingly, swear
that they "have caused the foregoing statements to be prepared

144 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

by the proper officers and agents of the company from the books
and records, and have examined them as far as practicable, and
believe them to be correct." Practically, this oath amounts to
nothing. Were a proper form prepared, to be signed by the chief
book-keeper, auditor, and secretary, besides the officers already
named, a long step would be taken toward the attainment of cor-
rectness.

The same section contains 105 subdivisions specifying the par-
ticular information to be set forth in the report. As touching the
receipts of the company the following particulars are demanded :

Subdivision 95. Receipts during the year from freight.
" 96. From passengers.

" 97. From other sources, specifying what, in detail.

It will occur to any thinking person that if a railroad company
pay eight per cent, dividends during a period of general bankruptcy,
it is but natural that the stockholders should desire to know that the
earnings from which the dividends are paid are legitimate. Now
mark what the company under consideration reports for the last six
years, as a compliance with the requirements of the law:

From Report of September 30, 18Y2.

EECEIPTS.

From passengers $6,662,006 82

From freight 16,259,646 79

Car service $882,078 54

Rents ■ 217,807 99

Mail service 192,870 00

Telegraph 5,964 89

Interest 58,274 70

Miscellaneous 1,302,026 14

2,659,022 26

$25,580,675 87
From Report of September 30, 1873.

EECEIPTS.

From passengers $6,999,456 01

From freight 19,616,017 90

Car sevice $1,104,527 23

Rents 235,940 54

Mail service 179,172 55

Telegraph 7,948 55

Interest 154,888 81

Miscellaneous 828,899 58

2,511,377 26

$29,126,851 17

MYSTERIES OF AMERICAN RAILWAY ACCOUNTING. 145
From Report of September 30, 18Y4.

RECEIPTS.

From passengers ^ $7,497,356 54

From freight , 20,348,725 23

Car service 81,292,655 67

Rents 679,386 12

Mail service 350,961 25

Telegraph 7,395 76

Interest 230,551 38

Use of road 274,904 36

Miflccllaneous 968,450 41

3,804,304 95
$31,650,386 72

From Report of September 30, 1875.

RECEIPTS.

From passengers 87,276,847 54

From freight 17,899,701 50

Car service $1,078,331 30

Rents 730,636 87

Mail service 325,319 00

Telegraph 5,215 50

Interest 263,869 27

Use of road 273,964 74

Miscellaneous 1,173,332 31

3,850,668 99
$29,027,218 03

From Report of September 30, 1876.

RECEIPTS.

From passengers $6,762,966 88

From freight , 17,593,264 78

Car service $973,293 01

Rents 828,615 16

Mail service 446,537 00

Telegraph 4,434 62

Interest 337,801 33

Use of road 261,092 77

Miscellaneous 838,582 90

3,690,356 79

$28,046,588 45

VOL. cxxvni. — NO. 267. 10

146 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

From Report of September 30, ISYV.

E E C E I P T S .

From passengers $6,5'76,816 83

From freight 16,424,316 6*7

Car service $1,05'7,113 74

Rents i;055,855 72

Mail service 326,420 52

Telegraph 4,417 89

Interest 355,281 24

Use of road 236,008 31

Miscellaneous » 542,855 48

8,577,952 90

$26,579,085 90

The preceding statements contain, in detail, the receipts of
money from all the regular and ordinary sources that the company
can be supposed to have at command, and in addition thereto :

Miscellaneous, 1872 $1,302,026 14

" 1873 828,899 58

" 1874 968,450 41

'♦ 1875 1,173,332 31

" 1876 838,582 90

" 1877 542,855 48

Total miscellaneous $5,654,146 82

The dividends paid in these years were as follows :

Dividends, 1872 $7,244,831 78

" 1873 7,136,790 08

" 1874 ■ 7,136,884 60

" 1875 7,136,679 97

" 1876 7,139,528 00

" 1877 7,140,659 48

Total dividends $42,935,373 91

So that, when the stockholder puts his dividend check in his pock-
et, he has the satisfaction of knowing that more than thirteen per
cent, of it consists of a miscellaneous and mysterious receipt which
the company declines to " specify in detail." When the redoubt-
able Mr. Punch, of famous London town, characterized as the
"Great Unaccountable," an alderman who was suspected of ab-
sorbing city moneys, but who firmly declined giving an account of
his stewardship, he probably did not foresee that he was giving
currency to a term that might become a classic among his "kin
beyond sea."

MYSTERIES OF AM ERIC AX RAILWAY ACGOUNTINa. 147

It must not, however, be imagined that the New York Central
monopolizes the distinction of contemning the law, and putting
forth statements based, apparently, on improper book-keeping. An
astounding chapter might be written concerning entries to be found
in the books of another railway corporation, that has recently at-
tracted a large share of public attention.

The law of this country, very wisely, recognizes no class or
family as superior to all others in the management of corporations,
or as free from the dangers of ambition, error, and peculation.
With rare exceptions, either in this country or in England, have
directors been found, no matter how important their titles or their
families, who could or would safely and honestly administer the
business of great corporations, unchecked and uncontrolled, by
complete and absolute publicity both in general and in detail.
Absolute knowledge and unlimited publicity can alone prevent
such disasters as have recently, in England, been so great as to
paralyze private credit and to beggar whole classes of people, who
trusted everything to the respectable names of those controlling
their property. Once given all the facts, the press will soon dis-
cover the weak spots in the balance-sheet, the errors of administra-
tion, or the frauds of managers. Figures cannot lie. But, that
this truism may be made eifective, all the figures and all the facts
must be given ; and to this end, our laws touching the form and
substance of such reports as are proper to be made require instant
and thorough revision.

Ax Accountant.

III.
A STATESMAN OF THE COLONIAL ERA.

As the Greeks were reminded that brave men existed before
Agamemnon, so it may be well for the present generation of Ameri-
cans to reflect that our land produced great statesmen in the past,
whose memory should be cherished.

The populace, and especially in republics, has ever been attract-
ed by the glitter of the soldier, the clang of whose martial shout
deadens the footfall of the statesman, as the bray of the ass the song
of the nightingale. Ignorant savages crowd in adoration about the
loud, criarde colors of a sign-painting, while the masterpieces of
Raphael or Correggio pass unnoticed. Napoleon wished to go down
to posterity with the " Code " in his hand, but posterity forgets the
great lawgiver, who made France, in despite of revolutions and ca-
lamities, the first of industrial and economic nations, and remembers
Lodi and the Pyramids, Marengo and Austerlitz. Many, who have
heard of Blenheim and Malplaquet, are ignorant of the fact that
Marlborough was the most accomplished diplomatist of his age, and
that all his skill was required to keep the frugal Dutch, the greedy
Germans, and the selfish Austrians true to the " grande alliance."

In popular estimation Washington is always crossing the Dela-
ware or receiving the sword of Comwallis. His lofty patriotism,
his pure motives, his calm civic wisdom are measurably overlooked,
though his capacity as a commander did not reach mediocrity, and
was far below that of Greene, the only general produced by our
Revolutionary struggle.

The character and composition of our population strengthen
this tendency. Many thousands of our citizens migrated from des-
potic governments, where they had dreamed of liberty as " monks
of love." Without capacity for discrimination, they have mistaken
for heroes, soldiers whose only triumphs have been over their own
countrymen; for patriots, selfish place-hunters, and for statesmen, un-
scrupulous partisans. Vituperation has passed for eloquence, slan-

A STATESMAN OF TEE COLONIAL ERA. 149

der for truth, denunciation for argument, and the practice of using
official station as a means to private fortune has been regarded as
evidence of loyalty to the Union. But if this Union is to endure
as the home of national liberty, as the asylum of the nations ; if the
Federal authority is to be a beneficent agent for all and a tyranny
for none, leaving the right of self-government to the people in their
several communities, wo must recur to the principles and methods.
of the founders of the republic, study their characters and acts, and
emulate their examples. Among the wise and good who in the past
century secured the independence of our country and founded its
government, George Mason, of Virginia, holds a place second to
none.

Of all pursuits in which men engage, agriculture best promotes
sound minds in healthy bodies, when she is a kindly handmaid,
not an exacting taskmistress. The yeoman, compelled to follow
his plow-tail from dawn till dark, has little time for thought, less
for study, and usually falls into that bovine condition characteristic
of his class ; but the proprietor who superintends his estate, and
whose capital absolves him from the necessity of constant labor,
has ample time for reflection and books, and his contact with mother
earth is as refreshing as was that of the classic giant. To such pro-
prietors England and America are deeply indebted. They con-
ceived and brought forth the true spirit of liberty, liberty of thought,
of speech, of action ; whose limitation was at the point where its
exercise intrenched upon the rights of others. Equally opposed to
the tyranny of monarchs and majorities, they asserted the rights of
individuals, and, controlled by dignity and self-respect, accorded to
the persons and opinions of others the same courteous consideration
which they claimed for their own. To this class in England be-
longed Eliot, Vane, Hampden, and, in America, George Mason.

His ancestor, of the same name, came to Virginia in 1651-52.
A Staffordshire gentleman of fair estate, he sat in the House of
Commons in the reign of the first Charles, whose arbitrary mea-
sures he steadily opposed, but, like Clarendon, Falkland, and many
others, joined the royal army at the outbreak of war. As a colonel
of horse, he served until the royal cause went down at Worcester —
the " crowning mercy " of Cromwell — when he escaped the country
and established himself in Virginia. A younger brother — William
— accompanied him. This William settled at Norfolk, Virginia,
where he married and died, leaving a son who removed to Boston,
Massachusetts. It is pleasant to think of the formal but kindly

150 THE NORTH AMERICA!^ REVIEW,

intercourse that was doubtless kept up between the Yirginia and
Massachusetts cousins after their separation. Codfish, chow-chow,
and chutney — for Salem and Boston were early traders to the East
Indies — were exchanged as tokens of kinship for hams and tobacco,
and with all the stately phraseology marking the friendship between
the houses of Waverley and Bradwardine. Now, ^^ nous avons
change tout cela^'' and it requires some effort of the imagination to
recall a time when there was sympathy between Yirginia and Mas-
sachusetts.

A great-grandson of the royalist colonel, and of the same name,
married in 1726 Miss Anne Thomson, a relative of Sir William
Temple, the wise and virtuous minister of the second Charles, who
negotiated the triple alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden,
to curb the ambition of the fourteenth Louis. George Mason, the
subject of this memoir, was the first child of the marriage, and was
born near the close of 1726, at Doeg's Neck, in Stafford (now Fair-
fax) County, Yirginia.

His childhood and youth were passed on the paternal estate,
amid the wholesome and cheery influences of the country life of the
period, when horse and hound, rod and gun filled a large place in
the daily life of the Yirginia gentry. The practice of sending
youths of birth and expectations home, across sea, to be educated,
was not followed in his case, but he was most carefully instructed at
home, imbibing a taste for books and habits of study which he re-
tained throughout life. Especially was he versed in English history,
from Magna Charta to Somers's " Declaration," adopted by the con-
vention calling William and Mary to the throne, and the struggles
and methods by which our ancestors wrought out their liberties had
been carefully studied by him. In the experience of our English
fathers assaults upon liberty were to be apprehended from executive
power, and hence they sought to protect it by limitations of the
authority of the Crown ; but Mason distrusted the nature of all
power, its greed and tendency to encroachment, and in the Constitu-
tion of Yirginia — largely his work, and the first written constitution
of a free commonwealth in history — adopted on the 29th of June,
1776, he restrained legislative and judicial as well as executive
powers.

He succeeded to the family estate of Doeg's Neck at the death
of his father, who was drowned by the accidental upsetting of his
sail-boat in the Potomac.

Subsequently, he married Miss Ann Eilbeck, of Charles County,

A STATESMAN OF TEE COLONIAL ERA. 151

Maryland, and built a new mansion on his property, wliich he called
Gunston Hall, in honor of the seat of his maternal ancestry in
EnMand. The estate consisted of seven thousand acres, and lies on
the Potomac next below 3Iount Vernon. With his neighbor and
devoted friend, Washington, he was a pewholdcr and vestryman of
old Pohick Church.

Absorbed by the care of an increasing family and a great estate,
Mason, was averse to a public career, but no man in the colonies
more closely watched the current of events, or held more decided
opinions as to the rights of the people and the duty of asserting
them. In 17 GO the merchants of London addressed a public letter
to the planters of Virginia, to which Mason, in the London " Public
Ledger," replied, defending the position maintained by the colonists,
and concluding with — " These are the sentiments of a man who
spends most of his time in retirement, and has seldom meddled in
public all'airs ; who enjoys a moderate but independent fortune,
and, content with the blessings of a private station, equally disre-
gards the smiles and frowns of the great." When Parliament
subsequently asserted the right to tax the colonies "^V^ all cases
irhatsoevery'^ ^lason wrote a tract entitled " Extracts from the
Virginia Charters, with some Remarks upon them." From this many
of the arixuments ajj^ainst the claim of the Crown were drawn. In
a letter to a friend in England, dated 1770, he writes : " We will
not submit to have our money taken out of our pockets without
our consent or that of our representatives ; because, if any man, or
any set of men, without such consent, take from us one shilling in
the pound, we have no security for the remaining nineteen."

Li 17G0 he prepared the non-importation resolutions which were
offered by AVashington in the Virginia Assembly, and unanimously
adopted. Among these resolutions was one not to import or pur-
chase any imported slaves after the 1st day of November ensuing.

It may be said that Mason was the only leading man of the time
to foresee the difficulties and dangers of the slave question. At a
meeting of the people of Fairfax, held on the 18th of July, 1774,
and presided over by Washington, Mason made his first public appear-
ance on the theatre of the Revolution, by presenting a series of
twenty-four resolutions, which embraced a statement of grievances
and proposed the means and measure of redress. The ground of
controversy with the Crown was reviewed, a Congress of the colo-
nies recommended, and the policy of non-intercourse with the mother-
country urged. These resolutions, conspicuous in our annals, w^ere

152 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

•

transmitted to the first Virginia Convention which met at Williams-
burg in the following August. They were sanctioned by that body,
and substantially adopted by the first general Congress on the 20th
of October of the same year.

Mason first appeared in the public councils as deputy from the
county of Fairfax to the Virginia Convention in 1775, when he was
elected a member of the Committee of Safety, and, at an early period
of the session, pressed by Peyton Randolph, Pendleton, JelPerson,
and others to accept a seat in Congress. This last he declined. The
recent death of his beloved wife, leaving to his care nine children,
made him unwilling to go abroad. To one of Mason's warm affec-
tions and domestic habits this bereavement was especially heavy.
In a letter to a friend, written four years after, he alludes to this
unhealed wound. The Convention of 1775 adjourned on the 29th
of August, leaving the administration of the government in the
hands of the Committee of Safety. It reassembled on the 6th of
May, 1776, but Mason, detained by an attack of gout, did not take
his seat until the 18th. The resolution instructing the delegates of
Virginia in Congress to propose independence had been adopted
three days before, when the committee to prepare a declaration of
rights and a plan of government was appointed. He was imme-
diately placed on this committee, as well as on three others. Propo-
sitions and Grievances, Privileges and Elections, and for the encour-
agement of the manufacture of salt, saltpetre, and gunpowder.

That a private gentleman of a retiring disposition should, on his
appearance in council, have been charged with such responsibilities,
is proof of his reputation, and of the general confidence reposed in
his judgment and patriotism.

The Declaration of Rights was reported by the committee to the
Convention on the 27th of May, and on the 12th of June, 1776, was
adopted by a unanimous vote. This great instrument, the first of
its kind, the work of a scholar, statesman, and patriot, in which may
be found the history of English and American liberty, is here given :

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.

DRAWN BY GEORGE MASON.

A DECLARATION of rights made by the representatives of the good
people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention ; which rights do
pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of govern-
ment, unanimously adopted by the Convention of Virginia, June 12, 1776 :

1. That all men are created equally free and independent, and have cer-

A STATESMAN OF TEE COLONIAL ERA. 153

tain inherent naturcol rights of which they can not, by any compact, deprive
or divest their posterity ; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty,
with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and ob-
taining haj)piness and safety.

2. That all power is by God and nature vested in and consequently de-
rived from the people ; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and
at all times amenable to them.

3. That gov%rninont is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit,
protection, and security of the people, nation, or community. Of all the
various modes and forms of government, that is best whicli^s capable ot
producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually
s.cnred against the danger of administration ; and that whenever any gov-
ernment shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority
of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, indefeasible right to
reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most condu-
cive to the public weal.

4. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate
emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of pub-
lic services ; which, not being descendible, neither ought the oflSces of ma-
gistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.

5. That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be sep-
arate and distinct from the judicial ; and that the members of the two first
may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burthens
of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station,
and return unto that body from wliich they were originally taken, and vacan-
cies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections.

6. That elections of members, to serve as representatives of the people
in the Legislature, ought to be free, and that all men havingsufiicient evidence
of permanent, common interest with and attachment to the community,
have the right of suffrage ; and can not bo taxed or deprived of their prop-
erty for public uses without their own consent, or that of their representa-
tives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like man-
ner, assented for the common good.

7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any
authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious
to their rights and ought not to be exercised.

8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man hath a right to
demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the
accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial
by an impartial jury of his vicinage ; without unanimous consent he can not
be found guilty, nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself ; and
that no man bo deprived of his liberty, except by the law of the land, or the
judgment of his peers.

9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines im-
posed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

10. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man

154 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to
be held sacred.

11. Tliat the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty,
and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

12. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people
trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state ; that
standing armies in time of peace should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty;
and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and
governed by tlie civil power.

13. That^o free government or the blessing of liberty can be preserved
to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance,
frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

14. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the
manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not
by force or violence ; and, therefore, that it is the mutual duty of all men to
practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity, toward each other.

This is from the manuscript wi'itten by Mason, to which he
added, " This Declaration of Rights was the first in America," and
herein are to be found all the principles of the subsequent " Decla-
ration of Independence " and the declaratory enactments of the
several States. Indeed, the great principles on which free govern-
ment rests are more perspicuously and forcibly stated by Mason
than by his followers and copyists.

In a letter to a friend, written more than two years after, an
allusion is made to the " Declaration," and, as it exhibits Mason's
opinions at a critical period, as well as his style, the letter is here
given :

ViBQiNiA, GuNSTON Hall, October 2, 1778.
My dear Sie : It gave me great pleasure, upon receipt of your favor of
the 23d of April (by Mr. Digges), to hear that you are alive and well, in a
country where you can spend your time agreeably ; not having heard a word
from you or of you for two years before. I am much obliged by the friendly
concern you take in my domestic affairs, and your kind inquiry after my
family ; great alterations have happened in it. About four years ago I had
the misfortune to lose my wife : to you who knew her, and the happy man-
ner in which we lived, I will not attempt to describe my feelings. I was
scarce able to bear the first shock ; a depression of spirits, a settled melan-
choly followed, from which I never expect or desire to recover. I deter-
mined to spend the remainder of my days in privacy and retirement with
my children, from whose society alone I could expect comfort. Some of
them are now grown up to men and women ; and I have the satisfaction to
see them free from vices, good-natured, obliging, and dutiful ; they all still
live with me and remain single, except my second daughter, who is lately
married to my neighbor's son. My eldest daughter (who is blessed with her

A STATESMAN OF THE COLONIAL ERA. 155

n. *' ""> amittMo disposition) is mistress of my family, and manages my little
(. .r matters with a degree of prudence far above her years'. My eldest

Bon engaged early in the American cause, and was chosen ensign of the first
independent company formed in Virginia, or indeed on the continent; it
was commanded by the i)resent (Jeneral Washington as captain, and consisted
entirely of gentlemen. In the year 1775 he was appointed a captain of foot
in one of the first minute regiments raised here ; but was soon obliged to
quit the service by a violent rheunmtic disorder, which has followed him
ever since, and, I believe, will force him to try the climate of France or
Italy. My other sons have not yet finished their education ; as soon as they
do, if the war continues, they seem strongly inclined to take an active part.

In the summer of 1775 I was, much against my inclination, dragged out
of my retirement, by the peo[)le of my county, and sent as a delegate to the
General Convention at Richmond, where I was appointed a member of the first
Committee of Safety ; and have since, at difi*erent times, been chosen a mem-
ber of the Privy Council and of the American Congress ; but have constantly
declined acting in any other public character tlian that of an independent
representative of the people, in the House of Delegates, where I still remain,
from a consciousness of being able to do my country more service there than
in any other department, and have ever since devoted most of my time to
public business, to the no small neglect and injury of my private fortune ;
but if I can only live to see the American Union firndy fixed, and free gov-
ernments well established in our Western world, and can leave to my children
but a crust of bread and liberty, I shall die satisfied, and say, with the psalm-
ist, '' Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace."

To show you that I have not been an idle spectator of this great contest,
and to amuse you with the sentiments of an old friend upon an important
subject, I inclose you a copy of the first draught of the Declaration of Kights,
just as it was drawn and presented by me to the Virginia Convention, where
it received few alterations, some of them I think not for the better : this was
the first thing of the kind uj)on the continent, and has been closely imitated
by all the States. We have laid our new government upon a broad founda-
tion, and have endeavored to provide the most eff'ectual securities for the
essential rights of human nature, both in civil and religious liberty; the peo-
ple become every day more and more attached to it ; and I trust that neither
the power of Great Britain nor the power of hell will be able to prevail
against it. . . . To talk of replacing us in the situation of 1763, as we first
asked, is to the last degree absurd and impossible : they obstinately refused
it v.'hile it was in their power, and now that it is out of their power they
off'er it. Can they raise our cities out of their ashes? Can they replace, in
ease and aftluence, the thousands of families whom they have ruined ? Can
they restore the husband to tlie widow, the child to the parent, or the father to
the orphan ? In a word, can they reanimate the dead ? . . . The die is cast,
the Rubicon is passed, and a reconciliation with Great Britain, upon the terms
of returning to her government, is impossible. ... As long as we had any
well-founded hopes of reconciliation, I opposed, to the utmost of my power,

156 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

all violent measures, and such as might shut the door to it ; but when reo-
onciliation became a lost hope, when unconditional submission or effectual
resistance were the only alternatives left us, when the last dutiful and hum-
ble petition from Congress received no other answer than declaring us rebels
and out of the King's protection, I, from that moment, looked forward to
a revolution and independence as the only means of salvation ; and will risk
the last penny of my fortune and the last drop of ray blood upon the issue.
. . . God has been pleased to bless our endeavors in a just cause with re-
markable success. 'J'o us upon the spot, who have seen step by step the prog-
ress of this great contest, who know the defenseless state of America in the
beginning, and the numberless difficulties we have had to struggle with,
taking a retrospective view of what is passed, we seem to have been treading
upon enchanted ground. The case is now altered. American prospects
brigliten and appearances are strongly in our favor. The British ministry
must and will acknowledge us independent States.

The well-balanced intellect, the noble independence of character,
the unselfish patriotism of the man stand forth in every sentence
of this letter. Indeed, all the opinions of George Mason, written
or spoken, deserve attention. A collection of his writings and
speeches would be an admirable text-book, wherein the student
could find the true meaning of civil and religious liberty, the duty
of a citizen in a free state, and the proper limitations of govern-
ment.

After the adoption of the Constitution, Mason was appointed
chairman of the committee to draft the T)aths to be taken by the
Governor and Council, and was subsequently made a member of
the committee to revise the laws. It is remarkable that a man
without professional training should have been placed at the head
of committees, consisting of the ablest lawyers of the day, to deal
T\dth purely legal subjects. The last duty assigned him by the
Convention of 177G was to assist in the preparation of a seal for
the new Commonwealth, and the present seal of Virginia, with the
" Sic semper tyrannis^'' was recommended and adopted.

At this time Mason was fifty years of age, his dark hair sprin-
kled with gray, but retaining all the fire of youth in his bright eyes.
Nearly six feet in height, his frame was massive, yet, despite of his
hereditary gout, his step was elastic and free. His love of field-
sports presei-ved the activity of his limbs, and exposure to the open
air had deepened his swarthy complexion. His contemporaries seem
to have been much impressed by his dignified bearing. This de-
scription of his personal appearance is confirmed by his portrait,
which was preserved at Clermont, Fairfax County, Virginia, resi-

A STATESMAN OF THE COLONIAL ERA. 167

dence of the widow of General John Mason, fourth and last sur-
viving son of George.

In the first Virginia Assembly under the new Constitution Ma-
son's talents for debate, as well as his liberal tendencies, were con-
spicuously displayed in many warm discussions. Assisted by Jef-
ferson he brought forward, and carried through, measures for the
repeal of all the old disabling acts, and for legalizing all modes of
worship, releasing dissenters from parish rates.

. Madison declared him the ablest man in debate that he had ever
hoard ; and Jefferson, near the close of his life, wTote : " I had many
occasional and strenuous coadjutors in debate ; and one most stead-
fast, able and zealous, who was himself a host. This was George
Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those who acted
on the theatre of the Uevoliition, of expansive mind, profound judg-
ment, cogent in argument, learned in the lore of our former Con-
stitution, and earnest for the republican change on democratic
principles. His elocution was neither flowing nor smooth ; but his
language was strong, his manner most impressive, and strengthened
by a dash of biting cynicism, when provocation made it seasonable."

In 1777 Mason was elected a member of the Continental Con-
gress, and was engaged in correspondence and consultation about
public affaii's with leading men, but took no conspicuous part until
1787, when he was chosen a member of the Federal Convention to
frame the Constitution of the United States. Devoted to his home
and children, he preferred privacy, and a sense of duty alone could
induce him to accept public station. He took the lead in the de-
bates on the formation of the Constitution, and always on the liberal
and democratic side. When the question was discussed whether the
House of Representatives should be elected directly by the people,
he maintained that no republican government could stand without
popular confidence, and that confidence could only be secured by
giving to the people the election of one branch of the Legislature.
He also favored the election of the President directly by the peo-
ple and for one term, with ineligibility afterward, but opposed the
project to give the Federal Legislature a veto on all State laws.
He denounced the proposition to make slaves equal to freemen as a
basis for representation, or to require a property qualification from
voters. With great fire and energy he spoke against the clause in
the Constitution which prohibited the abolition of the slave trade
until 1808, declaring slavery to be a source of national weakness and
demoralizatio7i, and that it was essential for the General Goverrh-

158 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

ment to have the poicer to jt)reve?2^ its increase / this by a Virginia
planter, himself a large owner of slaves. The Convention defeated
some of Mason's efforts to render the Constitution more democratic ;
and, an enemy to all implied and constructive powers, he was espe-
cially dissatisfied wdth the extended and indefinite authority con-
ferred on Congress and the executive, declining for these reasons
to sign it.

On his return to Virginia he was chosen a member of the Con-
vention called to ratify or reject the Federal Constitution, where he
led the opposition to ratification, unless subjected to amendments.
Those proposed by him were a Bill of Rights and some twenty altera-
tions in the body of the instrument. Several of these amendments
were subsequently adopted by Congress and the States. In this
debate Mason, followed by Patrick Henry in the Virginia Conven-
tion, and by Luther Martin in that of Maryland, clearly pointed out
the danger of implied and constructive powers, and foretold the evils
that would come. He was elected the first United States Senator
from Virginia under the Constitution, but declined the position and
retired to Gunston Hall, where he passed the three remaining years
of his life with his children and books, preserving his fondness for
field-sports to the last.

He died in the autumn of 1792, and was buried at Gunston Hall.
A plain marble slab, inscribed with his name, date of birth and
death, marks the spot ; but, with those of other illustrious Virgin-
ians, his statue stands at the base of Crawford's statue of Washing-
ton in front of the Capitol at Richmond.

The following extract from his last will and testament is charac-
teristic : " I recommend it to my sons, from my own experience in
life, to prefer the happiness of independence and a private station
to the troubles and vexations of public business ; but if either their
own inclinations or the necessity of the times should engage them
in public affairs, I charge them, on a father's blessing, never to let
the motives of private interest or ambition induce them to betray,
nor the terrors of poverty and disgrace, or the fear of danger or of
death, deter them from asserting the liberty of their country, and
endeavoring to transmit to their posterity those sacred rights to
which themselves were born." But the limits of a " Review article "
are too restricted to give more than a sketch of Mason's public
career. To be appreciated by the political student, who desires to
understand the principles of free government and the formative his-
tory of the Federal Constitution, his work must be sought in the

A STATESMAN OF THE COLONIAL ERA. 159

journals of Congress, in the Declaration of Rights, Constitution and
revised Code of Virginia, and in the debates of the Federal and Vir-
ginia Conventions, as must his affectionate nature in such letters to
children and friends as have been preserved ; and it may be safely
asserted that no one can carefully exhaust these sources without
doubting whether his own or any age has produced a men superior
to George Mason in all the elements of greatness.

" Bon sang ne pent mentir," says the old French proverb, and
the stock planted in Virginia by the ex-colonel of royal horse proves
its truth. George Mason declined the position of Senator. His
nephew, Stephen Thomson Mason, was a Senator from Virginia in
1794—1803. Another nephew, John Thomson Mason, was offered
the- position of Attorney-General of the United States by Jefferson,
and again by Madison, but declined. A grand-nephew, Armistead
Thomson Mason, was elected a Senator from Virginia in 1815, but
fell in a duel with his cousin, John Mason McCarty, at the age of
thirty-two. A grandson, Richard B. Mason, colonel and brevet-
brigadier in the United States Army, was the first civil and military
Governor of California. Another grandson, James Murray Mason,
was sent to the Senate by Virginia in 1837, and remained a member
until the civil war, when he went as Confederate commissioner to
England. Descended, but more remotely, from the same stock was
John Y. Mason, of Virginia, who was Secretary of the Navy under
Tyler, held the same office, as well as that of Attorney-General,
under Polk, and died in Paris, whither he had been sent by Pierce
as United States Minister. Few families have furnished as many
distinguished men to the service of the republic.

On the soil of Virginia rests the tomb of George Mason, within
sound of the Capitol of the Union which he labored to establish,
while pointing out, and in vain endeavoring to strengthen, the
weak places in its foundation. A Virginian to the core, his sym-
pathies extended to the uttermost limits of the colonies, and were
as deeply stirred by the sufferings of Massachusetts as were those
of her own great patriots, the Adamses, Warren, Hancock. Mayhap
there lurks some germ of truth in the weird superstition that dis-
embodied spirits keep watch and ward over the resting-places of
their mortal remains. What changes has the spirit of Mason wit-
nessed since his body was returned to earth ! As the mighty
prophets of Israel, mournfully has he watched the fulfillment of his
own predictions. He strove for a Union of consent and love. He
has seen one of force and hate. He urged independent States to

160 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

create a common servant, the Federal Government, as a useful
agent. He has seen the creature they called into being rend, like
Frankenstein, its creators, disperse their assemblies at the point of
the bayonet, deprive their citizens of every legal right. This he
was prepared for ; this he foretold. While his mind was pregnant
of the Union, like the Queen of Ilium, he dreamed of firebrands,
knowing the greed of all power and the necessity for its limitation.
But even he must be startled as he listens to the sentiments of the
representatives of New England uttered in the halls of Congress ;
and more, as he hears those of the representatives of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, whose States were formed from
territory so generously donated to the Union by Virginia.

With a sadness surpassing that of Rachel, he has seen the wealth
and cultivation of the South destroyed by unlettered multitudes
from the interior of the continent, directed by the fanaticism of the
East. But time is as naught to immortal spirits, and he may wit-
ness a similar fate overtake the East, either through the physical
force of these same multitudes, or through wild schemes of currency
and finance, derived from the savage tribes which they have so
recently displaced.

The role of Cassandra is not a pleasant one, but any calamity
may be predicted of a land wherein millions of people have for-
gotten George Mason, to worship " old John Brown." Yet a pil-
grimage to the shrine of Mason may restore to their first affections
hearts alienated from our Union, and teach those whose devotion
to it savors of fanaticism and intolerance the beautiful lesson of
charity and love. The blood of our English fathers spilled in the
" Great Rebellion " had not dried before Puritan and Cavalier were
in earnest council to cement the fabric of England's greatness.
The leaders, who had often met in mortal strife, had not passed
into dust ere the Cavalier boasted of the unflinching endurance of
Cromwell's " Ironsides," while the Puritan mother crooned her babe
to sleep with songs of knightly Cavendish or Stanley.

That it may speedily be so with us is the fervent prayer of every
true American heart ; and then, should the cry arise that the repub-
lic is in peril, the only rivalry between the sons of the North and
those of the South would be, as in days of yore, who could carry
the common banner deepest into the ranks of the common foe.

R. Taylor.

IV.

RECONSTRUCTION AND THE NEGRO.

The condition of the colored race of the South has been, for at
least forty years, the leading question in our politics. For the most
part it has been an unwelcome question, forcing itself into promi-
nence and compelling attention against the choice and interest of
most of our political leaders and their followers. The two forces
which would otherwise have shaped our political ends — commerce
and empire — have feared and hated this issue. The business in-
terests of the country have constantly deprecated its agitation ; the
pride of empire, the sentiment of nationality, has always deplored
its existence and struggled to banish it from the political field. The
statesmen who from 1835 to 18G0 held the foremost places of politi-
cal honor and influence were engaged in a continuous effort to
settle it by superficial compromises. Their successors at the North,
with comparatively few exceptions, refused practically to recognize
its essential and controlling power except under the final stress of
unavoidable necessity. The same influences were strongly felt at
the close of the war. Not a few of the leaders of the party which
had pushed the conflict of arms to a successful close resumed the
old temper of compromise in dealing with the new phases which
this question then presented. Business and the desire for a formal
national unity loudly demanded the restoration of the South with-
out further changes than such as the war had actually accomplished.

Throughout this long conflict, the history of which is too fresh
to need fuller statement, the nature of the issue touched and
enlisted the deepest forces that affect human society. It was pri-
marily an ethical question, a strict question of moral right and
wrong. No economical or political tests could alone decide it.
Conscience and the moral sense claimed jurisdiction of the question
whether the colored race should be treated as men or as brutes, as
brethren or as aliens and outcasts from the human family. The

VOL. CXXVIII. — NO. 267. 11

162 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

moral convictions of the North would permit no settlement which
did not recognize the complete manhood of this race. The stub-
born and fanatic bigotry of the South would consent to no settle-
ment which did not leave the political power of the States exclusively
in the hands of the white race. Under these influences and circum-
stances the question, by what methods conformable to our system
of government the civil rights belonging generally to other citizens
might be practically secured to the colored race, became, in the
judgment of a majority of the people, the most serious political
problem growing out of the war. The result was the enactment by
Congress, over the President's veto, of the reconstruction act of
March 2, 1867, making it the condition of the restoration of the
seceding States that new constitutions should be adopted, framed
by "delegates elected by the male citizens, twenty-one years old
and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition," and
securing to all such persons the elective franchise. Under the pro-
visions of this act all the seceding States were finally restored to
their practical relations to the Union.

In the light of present results, the policy of universal suffrage
thus enforced at the South is condemned not only by those who
originally opposed it, but by many who were hitherto its advocates.
It becomes, therefore, an appropriate inquiry, whether universal suf-
frage at the South, or especially what is commonly called negro
suffrage, was a mistake. Such an inquiry should be made, if pos-
sible, without reference to partisan opinions or interests. The pres-
ent condition of the colored race of the South can not be viewed
with toleration by any right-minded man who is acquainted with
the facts. It is certain, too, from the nature of the question itself,
as well as its close relations to all our public interests, that it will
remain, as heretofore, an issue which can not be avoided. Settle-
ments may be attempted which shall again leave this race to its
fate, to an unaided and friendless struggle with the hostile forces
which surround it ; but such settlements will settle nothing. In the
mean time it is well to consider whether whatever degree of fail-
ure may be fairly said to characterize the present results of the plan
of Southern reconstruction is due either to the principle applied in
the general enfranchisement of the colored race, or to the incapacity
of that race to properly exercise the rights conferred.

In determining the correctness of the principle adopted in the
enfranchisement of the colored race, it is essential to recall the chief
features of the situation when that measure was adopted, A war

RECONSTRUCTION AND THE NEGRO. 163

of four years, with its enormous sacrifices of life and property, had
just ended. The cause of the war was the existence under the Gov-
ernment of the r('])ublic of the system of chattel slavery. Aside
from this system tlie Government was essentially republican. All
other leading influences had, for more than three quarters of a
century, tended toward its harmonious growth, development, and
consolidation. Territory and population had increased beyond pre-
cedent. A commanding position had been reached among the na-
tions. All the elements of national prosperity and greatness had
been developed to a high degree. Slavery, the one anti-republican
influence, had put at hazard all this growth and glory. It had
struck at the life of the nation. The struggle had agonized the
land. The plain and inevitable lesson of this experience was, that
our Government, to be safe, must be self-consistent ; that, in Mr.
Lincoln's words, *' this Government cannot endure permanently
half slave and half free " ; that no anti-republican element can be
safely suffered to remain in the fabric of our Government.

This lesson was strongly enforced by the influence of the great
principles which inspired the founders of our Government, and still
constituted the professed faith of the republic. By those princi-
ples the nation was " dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created eipial." Except in the slave States the suffrage had been
the sign and safeguard of that civil equality contemplated by the
fathers. The extension of the suffrage had kept even pace with the
progress of our most prosperous and enlightened communities. The
enjoyment by all citizens of the right of suffrage was therefore
regarded as the true corner-stone of our Government as well as the
best if not the only guarantee of individual freedom. In fixing the
political conditions of the seceding States, the traditions and prin-
ciples of our Government united in pointing to universal suffrage
as the true defense of public welfare and personal rights.

But, at the time of which we speak, disloyalty to the national
Government characterized the whole white population of the South.
The weapons of armed rebellion had but just been wrenched from
their hands. To permit the political power of the restored States to
be wielded exclusively by this class, was to invite the recurrence of
the dangers so lately experienced. A basis of loyalty must be found
on which to build the new governments. The colored race alone
furnished this indispensable condition of reconstruction. Their
loyalty to the Union was undoubted. It was deep, passionate,
unfaltering. If, then, the conquered communities of the South

164 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

were to be restored to political life and to resume their position as
States, tlie logic of republican principles, the principles of the Decla-
ration of Independence, and the logic of events and surrounding cir-
cumstances, alike pointed to the immediate enfranchisement of the
colored race as the chief feature in a wise plan of reconstruction.
Gradual enfranchisement could not meet the conditions then exist-
ing. Tests of property or education, if ever wise or admissible,
under our theory of Government, were clearly inadmissible here.
The application of these tests would exclude those whose influence
and participation could alone insure a republican basis for the new
governments and the political predominance of those who were
loyal to the General Government.

Other considerations led to the same conclusions. It was be-
lieved, as the result of our political experience as a whole, that the
best method of dealing with the so-called " dangerous classes " —
those who have, for the most part, neither property nor educa-
tion — was to admit them to the full privileges of citizenship.
Such, with slight exceptions hardly requiring mention, had been
the policy adopted in all the remaining States. It was believed,
upon the same authority, that the exercise of the rights of free
citizens was the best school for the education of the citizen in
the proper discharge of the duties imposed by his rights. These
beliefs were the results of experience. They were not theories
merely. They were the practical, working rules by which our
most successful political communities had carried on the business
of government. Those who shaped the plan of reconstruction
were convinced that the civil rights and future welfare of the
colored race demanded that the ballot should be placed in its
hands. They felt that the national Government was charged with
the duty of recognizing and securing, so far as legislation could
go, the complete civil and political equality of the colored race
with the other races under our Government. This was especially
due to that race by reason of its whole previous history in this
country, as well as its peculiar position at the close of the war.
But it was not sentiment alone that guided to this result. All other
policies were open to insuperable objections. Direct military super-
vision of the South, the continuance of the abnormal condition ex-
isting from 1865 to 1867, or the return to power of those who had
previously exercised exclusive political control, were the only re-
maining policies. Neither of these policies could be justified by
reason or experience. That temporary evils would arise from the

RECONSTRUCTION AND TEE NEORO. 165

imraecliatc enfranchisement of the colored race no man doubted,
but the men who supported the measure believed, with Macaulay,
that " there is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired
freedom produces — and tliat cure is freedom. When a prisoner
leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day ; he is unable to
discriminate colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is not to
remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of
the sun. . . . Many politicians of our time are in the habit of lay-
ing it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be
free till they are tit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of
the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till
he had learned to swim ! If men are to wait for liberty till they
become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever."
They believed, with Mackintosh, that "justice is the permanent
interest of all men, and of all commonwealths," and that " the love
of liberty is the only source and guard of the tranquillity and great-
ness of America." They believed, with Abraham Lincoln, "All
honor to Jefferson ; to a man who, in the concrete pressure of a
struggle for national independence by a single people, had the cool-
ness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolution-
ary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times,
and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming days it
shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the harbingers of reap-
pearing tyranny and oppression." To men of real faith in the prin-
ciples of our government, to men who loved and practiced justice,
who held that governments exist for the good of all the people, the
immediate and unconditional enfranchisement of the colored race
of the South was an act and policy supported by the highest sanc-
tions of political justice and civil prudence.

The charges now brought with most frequency and apparent
effect against this policy are, first, that it was unjust and cruel to
the white people of the South thus to subject them to negro rule ;
and, second, that the enfranchisement of the colored race was a
deliberate giving over of society to the control of ignorance, a
reversal of the order of Mature and Providence which demands that
society shall rest on intelligence and capacity, not on ignorance and
inexperience.

To the first charge the reply is that colored suffrage was not the
subjection of the white race to negro rule. The white race retained
its suffrage, with all its immense advantages of property and edu-
cation. Colored suffrage was simply placing the two races on the

166 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

same plane of civil and political rights. It was the giving of a fair
field and an equal chance to the members of both races. It was
the removing of all legal or artificial hindrances from the path of the
one race, without diminishing a single right or adding a single bur-
den to the other race. Nor was this true only of the legal situation
and relations of the two races. No restriction or hindrance in fact
existed, under this policy, to the freest and most effective use and
influence of all the advantages which property, education, and po-
litical experience necessarily gave to the white race as a whole. No
such obstacle existed either as a proper consequence of the policy
of colored suffrage, or of the temper of that race toward the other
race. That policy had no elements but justice and civil equality ;
that temper was friendly and generous. The sole cause of the po-
litical supremacy of the colored race at the South was the willful
and deliberate refusal of the white race to contribute its proper and
natural influence to the practical work of government. They chose
to yield to the embittering influences of defeat and race-hatred,
rather than to act the part of faithful citizens in guiding and con-
trolling those whose ignorance and inexperience most imperatively
required their aid. The necessary results of such conduct on the
part of a class occupying such relations to any community, under
our form of government, are obvious and uniform. It was as if
to-day the greater part of the tax-paying and educated class in New
England and New York should cease from all influence or aid in
the work of government, and sullenly leave public affairs to the
control of such as might be left to take it. Or, more exactly, it was
as if that class, not content with refusing all aid in the conduct of pub-
lic affairs, should seek, in a spirit of bitter and vengeful hostility, to
deride, dishonor, and embitter those into whose hands they had sur-
rendered the political power. It is certain that no state or com-
munity could suffer such a separation and antagonism of its elements
without plunging, more or less rapidly, into temporary misrule.

But with what patience would just and reasonable men listen to
the charge, especially when coming from those who had forsworn
their political duties, that this result was due to the false and cruel
policy which had established universal suffrage ? The indignant re-
ply would be : " Your sufferings are self-inflicted, the just penalties
of your own folly and crime ; you have sown the wind, and you reap
the whirlwind." The best success of self-government anywhere
presupposes a fair degree of cooperation between all classes in carry-
ing on the work of government. If such cooperation is refused by

RECONSTRUCTION AND THE NEGRO. 167

the class representing property and education, that recusant class,
not the policy or principle of self-government, is chargeable with
the results, whatever they may be. " I do not admit," said Govern-
or Dix, in vetoing the proposed city charter of New York in 1872,
" that misgovernment in this city is proof of the failure of repub-
lican government. When the Legislature gives to New York muni-
cipal government in conformity with the general idea of American
institutions, it performs its whole duty. All further responsibility
is on the people of New York City themselves. If they culpably
neglect their own affairs, if they will not give to their own political
affairs the same attention which the rest of the people, in their
several localities, are in the habit of giving, they must suffer the
consequences."

The second main charge brought against the policy of universal
suffrage in our reconstruction, is perhaps sufficiently answered al-
ready. Instead of violating or disregarding any natural or moral
law, or law of human nature or society, it was the dictate and ex-
pression of the highest morality applied to the affairs of govern-
ment, the recognition and protection of the natural and inalienable
right of all men — the opportunity, without artificial shackles or
hindrances, to run the race of life. It is safe to say that there is
no political community of considerable importance, either State,
city, or large town, in our country, in which the voluntary and com-
plete withdrawal of the greater part of the educated and property-
owning class from all participation in public affairs would not
speedily produce the state of things which has been denounced, when
seen at the South, as the forcible and artificial elevation of the
ignorant and irresponsible over the educated and responsible. The
cause of such results wherever seen, under our Government, is
the same. It is the violation of moral duty and natural law by
those who are endowed with the chief power of securing and up-
holding good government. To raise an outcry against universal
suffrage because of results traceable directly to the neglect of their
unquestionable duties as citizens, by the educated and tax-paying
classes, is a conscious mockery or a pitiable mistake. No better
words have been spoken of late on this point than these of Gold-
win Smith : " There is yet another class dangerous in its way — the
class of political seceders. Malcontents from this country are al-
ways telling their sympathizing friends in Europe that the best men
here stand aloof from politics. The answer is, that those who in a
free country stand aloof from politics can not he the best men. A

168 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

man is not bound to seek the prizes of public life ; he will perhaps
exercise more influence for good if he does not ; he is not bound to
become the slave of party ; he is not bound to sit in any conclave
of political iniquity. But he is bound to do his utmost, in such
ways as are morally open to him, to get the best men elected, and
to make the right principles prevail. If he can not do much, he is
still bound to do what he can. Striking pictures have been drawn
of men with high foreheads and intellectual countenances con-
demned to sit in council beside low brows and stolid faces. But
would the matter be mended if the low brows and stolid faces had
the council to themselves ? "

And if, it may be further asked, the "low brows and stolid
faces " do have the council to themselves, is it the fault of universal
suffrage ? Does it suggest the remedy of the restriction of the suf-
frage until the " high foreheads and intellectual countenances," with-
out effort on their part, shall have the council to themselves ? Not till
we abandon all pretense of faith in the cardinal doctrines of repub-
lican government as understood and practiced hitherto in the United
States, will it be admitted that it is the province or aim of govern-
ment to secure to " high foreheads and intellectual countenances "
anything more than it secures to "low brows and stolid faces,"
namely, a fair chance to exercise their own faculties, follow their
own ends, and influence the course of public affairs according to
their abilities and the dictates of their own judgments, subject only
and equally to such impartial legal restraints as may be necessary
to prevent crime and preserve public order. It is not claimed that
there is anything sacred about the right to vote, except as it is be-
lieved and proved to be the best means of securing those other
rights which are sacred and inalienable — "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." The ballot is no more than a means of se-
curing the best government, and the best government is that under
which all the people rise to the highest plane of intellectual and
moral development. The American idea is that, by giving and
securing to all the right to vote, the result in the large will always
be, at least in any American community, that the various classes
will have, each its appropriate influence ; that good government
being the general interest will be the general aim ; and that in the
process of reaching this end the whole community will be educated
and elevated to a degree never resulting from other methods. And
further, it is a part of this idea of government, that if for a time
evils arise and prevail, the remedy will be constantly in the hands

RECONSTRUCTION' AND THE NEGRO. 169

of those who suffer, and that, whenever such evils arrest the public
attention or threaten the public welfare, the general interest will
compel their correction and removal. If, then, under this system
and in this country, the '' low brows and stolid faces" anywhere or
at any time have the council to themselves, it is because the ^'high
foreheads and intellectual countenances " have failed to use their
proper influence. No single instance can probably be pointed out in
our history, where it is not certain that the evils of bad government
could have been promptly corrected by the earnest and faithful ef-
forts of the educated and property-owning classes. The Southern
States under colored suffrage were not exceptions to this rule. No
class ever had greater advantages for securing a proper share of in-
fluence in public affairs than the white race of the South in 18G7 ; no
class were ever more open or responsive to the influences of property
and education than the colored race of the South. The plan of re-
construction did not set the colored race to rule over the white ; it
did not place ignorance above education. Such results, if they have
ever existed, were due to causes which would produce in New Eng-
land evils similar to those which have prevailed in South Carolina
and Louisiana.

If we turn now to an examination of the conduct and capacity
of the colored race as shown during the period of its free exercise
of the suffrage, it will appear that that race exhibited qualities en-
titling it to all the political privileges conferred by the reconstruc-
tion measures. It is necessary here to shut out the partisan clamor
and misrepresentation of the day, and attend only to the authentic
facts as the ground of judgment. First, then, it may be said that
the colored race gave to the Southern States wise, liberal, and just
constitutions. Under influences which elsewhere had led to puni-
tory and proscriptive measures toward those who had supported
slavery and rebellion, the organic law of the ten States embraced in
the reconstruction act of 18G7 shows no instance of a purpose or
effort to exclude any classes or individuals from an equal share in
all political privileges. The demands of public education were
fully recognized and provided for. The methods and principles of
taxation were just and enlightened. The modes of selecting judi-
cial oflicers were such as prevail in the most prosperous States of
the North. In a word, the constitutions of the reconstructed States
would to-day command the almost unqualified approval of all com-
petent and impartial judges and critics. And the same conclusion
will follow from an examination of the general legislation in these

170 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

States during the same period. It was, with few exceptions, dic-
tated by the public wants and suited to the public needs.

In the ordinary conduct of the practical affairs of government,
much must be said in approval of the spirit and methods which
then prevailed. Elections were free, fair, and honest. Political
canvasses were conducted by the colored race without violence, or
disorder, or excessive rancor. The power which they held they put
fairly at hazard with each recurring election. They neither cheated
nor intimidated nor sought to intimidate their opponents. Their
popular assemblages listened with respect and attention to the ar-
guments of their bitterest political foes on those rare occasions
when their foes condescended to address them with argument.
Public order was maintained. Crime was detected and punished.
Life and property were as safe as in most of the States.

There was a period of official corruption and profligacy in the
States in which the colored vote predominated, extending generally
from 1869 to 1874. It arose from causes already explained. It
was confined to official life ; it was produced and inspired by a few
leaders who had, for purposes of plunder, made their way to public
places. As in the similar condition of affairs which prevailed in the
city of New York from 1866 to 1873, official corruption at the South
for a time baffled investigation and defied public sentiment. In its
worst stages it did not equal this description, given by the " Com-
mittee of Seventy," of corruption in New York : " It has bought
Legislatures, controlled Governors, corrupted newspapers, defiled
courts of justice, violated the ballot-box, threatened all forms of
civil and religious liberty, awed the timid rich, bribed the toiling
masses, and cajoled respectable citizens, and has finally grown so
strong and reckless as to openly defy the intelligence and virtue
which is believed to be inert, voiceless, and powerless to stay its
aggressions, or to assert the supremacy of honesty and justice."
Southern corruption assumed more grotesque, and perhaps more of-
fensive forms, than were displayed elsewhere ; but it was never so
powerful, daring, or pervasive as in other sections of the country.
It never polluted the sources of political power ; it never violated
the ballot-box; it never bribed the "toiling masses." It maybe
said with perfect truth that the colored voters of the South never
sustained public men whom they believed to be corrupt. They ad-
hered with rare fidelity to those who had once gained their confi-
dence. But, whenever a public man was shown to be corrupt, the
colored voters rejected him with as much certainty and promptness

RECOXSTRUCTION' AND THE NEGRO, 171

as the voters of the North have shown. It is not true — with what-
ever frequency or confidence the assertion may have been made —
that the colored race of the South deliberately or consciously sus-
tained leaders or public officers who were found guilty of dishonest
conduct or corrupt practices. Such leaders and officers were de-
prived of office and power. From 1873 till 1876, when political
power was violently wrested from them, it is the truth of history
that there was at the South a steady progress toward good govern-
ment, purity of administration, reform of abuses, and the choice of
capable and honest public officers, in those States in which the col-
ored race had most complete control. There were here, as there are
in all communities, sham reformers. At periods of special excite-
ment, or under peculiar infltiences and circumstances, the reform
movement was checked, and corrupt and dishonored leaders seemed
for a time to regain power. But such reverses were overcome, and
in 1870 those who had most conspicuously shown their ability and
courage in the work of reform were in substantial control of the
political power of the colored race. In South Carolina, where per-
haps official corruption had been greatest, the progress of reform
had been such as to compel tiie acknowledgment, by those who had
most violently denounced colored suffrage, that the best assurance
of good government in the future lay in the continuance of the
power of those who were then successfully working out, through
the political party supported by the colored vote, the correction of
public abuses.

This condition of affairs, it is to be remembered, was the result
solely of the movement for reform within the political party which
owed its power mainly to the colored race. The reforms accom-
plished were demanded and supported by the colored voters. The
reform leaders were chosen and sustained in their work by the
sympathy and approval of a vast majority of that class of voters.
If, as was the fact in the crusade against corruption in I^ew York,
' party lines could have been disregarded ; if the white minority had
looked only to securing the best means for reform and good govern-
ment, the reform movement would have advanced to complete suc-
cess without serious hindrance or delay. Such cooperation would
have been welcomed by the colored race. A better agency for
peaceful and permanent reform was never presented. The colored
race by nature and habit were mild, peaceful, order-loving, teacha-
ble, patient, and religious. Taught by such influences and methods
as are made use of in other States, this race would have yielded to

172 TEE EORTE AMERIGAE REVIEW.

the sway of reason and justice in their political conduct, far more
readily than did the masses through which for a time corrupt leaders
and public officers maintained their power in New York. The work
of maintaining good government without the aid and with the hos-
tility of the greater part of the class possessing property and educa-
tion must always be extremely difficult. No people or race that
has shown itself able, under such conditions, to establish wise and
liberal constitutions and laws, to set in successful operation the great
agencies which produce and uphold our best civilization, and, when
attacked and welliiigh overcome by official corruption and profli-
gacy, to defeat and destroy this enemy, and to restore the rule of
public integrity and honor, is without the very highest title to
exercise the rights and assume the duties of self-government. This
title the colored race earned by their conduct from 1868 to 1870.

The fact of the present suppression and overthrow of colored
suffrage at the South is now made the ground of the argument that
the race was not equal to the duties of self-government. It is said
that every people worthy of freedom and self-government will have
freedom and self-government. It is said that the inability of a
people to cope, in physical and material resources, with its enemies,
is proof that such a people is not entitled to retain its political
power. Such conclusions are as illogical as they are immoral.
Under the principles of our Government and of all just govern-
ment, rights are not dependent on numbers or physical strength or
material resources. The right to vote, and to have that vote hon-
estly counted — the right to hold and exercise the political power
conferred by a majority of the votes when honestly counted — these
are rights, under our Government, totally independent of the power
or wealth or education of the voters. If at any time or in any
place these rights are denied or defeated, there the most character-
istic principle of our political system is dishonored. Nor is it an
answer to this to say — even if the statement were true in any sense
— that better government has been secured by the defeat of the
will of a majority of the voters. In the first place, there can be
no legitimate State government, good or bad, under our system,
which does not derive its title from the actual legal result of the
votes cast. A government otherwise derived is tainted by an origi-
nal and incurable vice. In the next place, no government, however
wise and pure in administration, is worth the price of a violation of
the first principles upon which all governments, under our system,
must rest. To hold otherwise is to make government dependent

RECONSTRUCTION' AND THE NEGRO. 173

for its sanction, not on the consent of the governed nor on the will
of the majority, but on the consent and will of any number or
combination of persons who may chance to possess the preponder-
ance of physical streni^th and resources.

The present political supremacy of the white race in at least five
of the Southern States is the result of the violent exclusion or
fraudulent suppression of the colored vote. No honest and well-
infoiTned man will question this. In South Carolina, Mississippi,
and Louisiana, the result has been reached by a system of deliberate,
organized violence in all its forms, supplemented and crowned by
the most daring and stupendous election frauds. It is an intoler-
able affront to every sentiment of humanity or dictate of justice,
to argue that any results secured by such means are less detestable
than the atrocities and crimes by which they were wrought. Who-
ever prevents any lawful voter from casting his vote, or constrains
him to cast it contrary to his will, or deprives it, when cast, of its
equal share in determining the result of the election, is guilty of a
palpable and vulgar fraud. The defense of such fraud, by a refer-
ence to any results which may follow, is a specimen of degrading
Jesuitism.

What morality and reason thus affirm, experience confirms.
The only serious menace to the prosperity, unity, and life of the
nation has proceeded directly from a departure from the doctrine
of equal civil and political rights — the claim and exercise of exclu-
sive political control by a few over the many. The South from
1789 to 1800 was the complete type and embodiment of communi-
ties in which political power is held exclusively by property and
education. By a law as sure and uniform in its results as the opera-
tions of Nature, these communities became oligarchies in the most
odious sense of the term, hostile in spirit and action to all repub-
lican ideas. In seventy years from the foundation of the Govern-
ment "ordained to establish justice and secure the blessings of
liberty," the wealth, education, and piety of the South stood ready,
sword in hand, to destroy that Government, and to maintain in its
place a government proclaimed by its founders to rest on the cor-
ner-stone of human slavery. And to-day again, as in 1860, the same
oligarchicr^l power, crushing the colored race under its feet, seeks
with bloody and rapacious hands to grasp the national power as the
agency through which it may extend and perpetuate its own spirit
and practice of caste and oppression.

D. H. Chamberlain.

THE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED *

It has been often remarked that foreigners visiting Russia
derive from their journey widely different impressions, according
to the social classes they had intercourse with, their personal expe-
rience, and still more, perhaps, according to the institutions, habits,
and customs of their own country. Indeed, there scarcely can be
found another country about which so many different opinions exist
as about Russia. It appears to be something of a modem sphinx —
a puzzle for all mankind, an unraveled and incomprehensible mys-
tery.

That the present state of Russia is most deplorable is a plain
fact, which is beyond doubt and discussion. The Russian press
itself freely admits it. " Russia has become an empire of the dis-
contented ! " exclaimed the celebrated Katkoff, in his " Moscow
Gazette," shortly after the war, and this expression has been echoed
by the whole public opinion in Russia, and given a theme to all the
press. Reviewing the abominable cases of corruption which the
last war has disclosed, the *' St. Petersburg Kews " says in a recent
issue : *' The moral standard of our society seems to have sunk so
low that we have utterly lost the faculty of distinguishing right
from wrong, honor from baseness, patriotism from egotism. In
almost every representative of our official spheres we are led to
suspect a rascal and a thief. We distrust each other, we believe
no more in ourselves, all honest principles seem to have become an
empty phrase ; and a cold skepticism in all things not pertaining
directly to our personal interests seems to have taken hold of the
whole nation." Still more violent in its expressions is the " ISTovoye
Vremja " (" ISTew Time "), the leading St. Petersburg paper. " What
a time we are living in ! " it exclaims. " Every day brings new dis-

* This article is printed unaltered in the author's own English. — Editor.

TUE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED. 175

closures, on all sides we are surrounded with rascals who have long
ago lost all sense of their moral debasement. In this pestiferous
atmosphere honest hearts lose their energy, gradually sink lower
and lower, or are crushed in fruitless attempts to shake off the curse
lying upon us." Such is the picture of utter demoralization drawn
by the Russian press. Muzzled as it is by a barbarous censorship,
it can certainly not be suspected of exaggeration. If we add to
this picture financial exhaustion and utter impoverishment of the
laboring classes caused by an exorbitant and disproportionate taxa-
tion, we shall convey to the reader a fair idea of the terrible crisis
through which Russia is now passing, and exclude the suspicion of
attempting to conceal its importance.

Is this state of affairs hopeless ? Is it the agony of the Russian
nation ? lias the latter played out its part in history, and is this
the beginning of an utter decomposition ? There is every reason
to believe that such is not the case. The nation itself is safe and
sound — the czardom alone, that cancer which has for centuries
sucked the life's blood out of the Russian people, with its whole
train, is rotting off and falling to pieces. What the world is
now witnessing is the agony of Hussicoi autocracy. The czardom
alone is the true cause of all the misery Russia has endiired for
centuries and is now still enduring. With its overthrow the nation
will breathe freely, and will at last be able to develop all its latent
energies. Few foreigners, and especially few citizens of a free
country, can form an adequate idea of what the Russian Czar actu-
ally is, and of the necessary consequences of the power he is endowed
with. I have had occasion to meet several Americans in St. Peters-
burg who, chaiTned by the pleasant intercourse with the representa-
tives of the Russian court and high life, were rather inclined to
consider the Russian Government a sort of paternal and comfort-
able arrangement, saving the peaceful citizen a good deal of trouble
and expense, and forming a necessary part of the Russian national
institutions. The truth, however, is that the czardom is not at all
of Russian origin. It was born out of the Tartar yoke, which has
weighed on Russia for two centuries. The Asiatic despotism of
the Khans crushed all independent classes and political organiza-
tions in Russia ; and the Czars of Moscow, after driving away the
Tartars, continued the same policy, and achieved the work begun
by their Moslem predecessors.

The power concentrated in the Russian Czars is without prece-
dent in history, and has at all times exerted a most fatal influence

176 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

on public life in Russia as well as on the personal character of
the Czars themselves. Trained to a slavish obedience and to the
belief that the personal will of one man and not the law was the
guiding principle of their whole existence, the people gradually
sank into that political and intellectual apathy from which even
now the mass of the Russian peasantry has not yet awakened. The
Government took in the popular imagination the form of a law of
Nature, the effects of which could neither be foreseen nor avoided,
but only like those of Nature deified and adored. Not only to the
people, however, but to the Czars themselves has their power be-
come a curse. Feeling the awful responsibility weighing on them,
they naturally sought to alleviate it by giving their power a divine
character. Every one of their acts they began to consider as the
will of God, themselves as His instruments, and every man who
dared to oppose them as an insolent atheist not recognizing the
dictates of Heaven, for whom no punishment could appear too cruel
and severe. In a certain sense the opinion is well founded, that all
Russian Czars were more or less maniacs. A human mind can not
bear the strain put on it by the exercise of an almost divine power.
It naturally acquires a morbid disposition, which takes different
forms, according to the character and energy of each individual.
A man with an undaunted will and energy becomes a maniac of
his own power, a cold-blooded tyrant, in whose eyes the strict main-
tenance of his " divine " rights becomes a religion, a creed it is his
duty to uphold. The prototype of this species of " Caesarean " ma-
nia is to be found in our century in the person of Nicholas I., the
present Emperor's father.

In order to understand rightly the present state of affairs in
Russia, we must devote some of our space to the characteristics of
that extraordinary man. Nicholas was the type of a convinced
autocrat — of an autocrat "by the grace of God." In him all the
traditions of ancient czardom were personified ; he exercised his
power not only as a right, but as a holy duty, imposed on him by
Providence, and crushed his enemies, not from personal hatred or
out of governmental interests, but simply as a work of heavenly
justice.

An episode which happened in 1848 with a member of my own
family will best serve to illustrate this feature in the character of
the " Iron Czar." A relation of mine, who was then a student at the
St. Petersburg University, had, with a few friends, formed a literary
society, in which the works of contemporary political economists,

THE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED. 177

publicists, and philosophers, were read and debated. One of the
innumerable spies of the secret police denounced the society as a
"secret revolutionary organization," and my relative, as president
thereof. The latter was of course arrested, locked up in one of the
underground cells of the St. Petersburg fortress, and summarily
condemned, by a special military court, to transportation to Siberia
for life.

All the influence which our family possessed in high quarters
was brought to bear on the Czar, but all in vain. At last the mother
of the prisoner, meeting the Czar one day during one of his solitary
walks in the Summer Garden, threw herself at his feet, averring her
son's innocence, and imploring his pardon. The Czar seemed to be
profoundly touched. He raised the old lady with the most chival-
rous and j)itying deference, and promised her to reconsider her son's
case, and to have a personal int^'rview with him. Nicholas was true
to his word. The very next day the young culprit was brought out
of his cell, and, a few moments later, he stood alone before the
Emperor. The latter took him by the hand, led him before an
image of the Saviour suspended in a corner of the room, and, forcing
him down on liis knees, exclaimed :

*' Can you swear before the Almighty God that neither you nor
your associates had any criminal design against my life ? Can you
swear that you believe in the holiness and eternity of the Russian
autocracy ? "

As soon as the prisoner had recovered from his unbounded sur-
prise, he answered :

"I can swear to your Majesty that neither I nor any of my
friends had the remotest design against your safety. As to the
autocratic form of government, I can not conscientiously swear that
1 believe in its eternity. The history of other countries teaches us
that the time must come, even in Russia, when the people itself will
take part in its government."

The Czar answered not a syllable, embraced the young man with
almost paternal tenderness, and drawing a ring from his own finger
gave it to him, saying :

" This is a token of respect from your Czar. You have been
sincere and truthful to me ; and there is nothing I hate so much as
a lie."

He then approached his writing-table, on which the sentence of
the court concerning my relative was lying, and with one stroke
of the pen — signed the paper !

VOL. cxxvni. — NO. 267. 12

178 THE NORTH AMERIGAN REVIEW.

" I pity you from the bottom of my heart," he said ; " you are an
honest man, and an honest man, true to his convictions, is more
dangerous to autocracy than an unprincipled rascal. Therefore I
must punish you, though never was this duty more painful to me
than now. God bless you, my son, and judge me mercifully if I
should appear to be in the wrong."

And, once more embracing his victim, he led him to the door.

This story, every particular of which I have heard from my
relative himself, who, at the beginning of the present reign, was
pardoned and returned to St. Petersburg, depicts vividly the pe-
culiarities of Nicholas's great but entirely deranged mind. The
holiness of his position, as defender of autocracy, became a mania,
an idee fixe, for which he would have sacrificed his life as he did
those of others, if the occasion of doing so had presented itself.
Nicholas may have been called the " Brutus of autocracy." Like
all the princes of the Romanoff family, he had received but a miser-
able education. Accustomed from childhood to deal either with
fawning courtiers or with severely disciplined soldiers, he consid-
ered a soldier the ideal of a true citizen, implicit obedience the
only civic virtue, and a barrack the model of political organization.
In his mind a spirit of military discipline was to pervade the whole
country. TJ^ free will of each citizen was limited by the scope of
his private life. In all public matters the *' holy power " of the Czar
reigned paramount, and not only criticism, but a plain discus-
sion, even a thorough knowledge of such matters on the part of a
private citizen, was considered criminal.

This horrible system, w^hich only the morbid imagination of a
maniac could have invented, was carried out with a merciless logic
and a set purpose, as only a great mind, great even in its aberrations,
is capable of. The public schools were managed on a thoroughly
military plan. Learning by heart was the chief occupation, and all
sciences were " arranged " specially for Russia, so as not to give the
slightest possible occasion for liberal theories or religious skepticism.
In ancient history, for instance, the Roman Republic was entirely
eliminated. From the kings the pupils had to skip over to the
emperors, and the intermediate period was done away with the
sentences : *' After Tarquinius the Roman people became unruly and
revolted against the legal authorities. A time of hideous disturb-
ance followed until Julius Caesar appeared," etc. The history of
France was taught only up to Louis XV. The history of Russia
was distorted in all possible ways, so as to conceal all that could

TEE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED. 179

have been interi)reted unfavorably for some of the Czars. It seems
scarcely credible, and yet it is but the plain truth, that until the
present day the facts of the murder of Peter III. by his wife Catha-
rine, and of Paul I. by a conspiracy of noblemen, of which the poor
maniac's owi\ son, the "gentle " Alexander I., was the guiding spirit,
are not admitted to publication in Russia, and severely proscribed
from all school-books !

To say that the public press was muzzled beyond description
would scarcely give an adequate idea of the reality such as it
was. Not only was all discussion of public affairs strictly forbidden,
but even silence on certain matters was often considered a crime.
Many instances may be cited of publications having been suppressed,
not because they criticised the Government, but because they did
7iot praise it sufficiently !

As I have said, this system was carried out by Nicholas with
that steadfast logic and settled purpose peculiar to maniacs. His
whole life, all the faculties of a naturally powerful mind, had been
devoted to training the people into a nation of crippled idiots and
knaves. When aftcT the crash of the Crimean war this terrible
truth began to dawn upon him — when the stern, merciless hand of
History showed him the abyss of corruption, rascality, ignorance, and
apathy into which he had cast his people by carrying out what he
deemed to be the will of God — then the " Iron Czar " broke down
like a reed and died. It is well known to the initiated in court mat-
ters at St. Petersburg that on his deathbed he confided to his son,
the present Emperor, the secret of his broken life, and made him
swear to adopt a scries of liberal measures, and before all the eman-
cipation of the serfs, which was accordingly accomplished in
1861.

A more striking contrast of character can scarcely be imagined
than that which exists between Nicholas and his son and successor
Alexander II. If the former presents a typical instance of the effects
of czardom on a powerful, manly, and energetic mind, the latter
illustrates, on the contrary, the perhaps still more direful influence of
absolute power on a weak mind. Alexander received, under the au-
spices of the poet Joukoffsky, a somewhat better education than is
generally awarded to the princes of the Romanoff family. But at
the same time this education inculcated in the mind of the young
prince that vague, purposeless sentimentality of the romantic school
of which Joukoffsky was one of the distinguished representatives.
Combined with his naturally weak, imaginative, and unsettled dis-

180 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

position, the romantic education he received exercised a pernicious
influence on the further development of his faculties, impairing their
energy and destroying that clearness and precision of thought which
is the conditio sine qua non for an able ruler. Alexander's char-
acter can be defined in one sentence : he has not will enough to be
good, and he is not good enough to have a will. Keenly aware of
the heavy responsibility which rests on him, he constantly wavers
between two opposite resolutions ; he ponders sometimes whole years
over one decision, and, when he at last carries it out, the right time
for it is generally past, and it has long ago " lost the name of action."
Hamlet on the throne, endowed with an almost superhuman power
of doing good or evil, is the true picture of the Czar Alexander I.
That such a character is open to all influences, that it mistakes ob-
stinacy for strength of will, and is unable to distinguish, in the prac-
tice of government, truth from falsehood and good from evil, need
scarcely be added.

Indeed, the present reign has as many phases as the Czar has
had favorites, each phase retaining the peculiar tint of indecision
and incompleteness cast on it by the Czar's personal character. The
first years of the present reign awakened in the hearts of the Rus-
sian people the most sanguine hopes. Almost immediately after
the death of Nicholas the whole system of government changed
abruptly. The preparatory measures to the emancipation of the
serfs were begun, the press was given a freedom of speech altogeth-
er unprecedented in Russia, the system of instruction underwent a
most radical reform ; the courts, the army, the local administration,
in short, every branch of govermiiont, was revised and reformed,
and a new life seemed to spring up amid the ruins of the former
tyranny. A powerful liberal movement seized Russian society.
Everything seemed possible and attainable. Out of the maddest
tyranny Russia was to leap with one stride into the most accom-
plished liberalism, guided by an enlightened, benevolent Czar.
Liberalism became the fashion, even at court. Of course even
then, in the midst of this orgy of liberalism, men were to be found
who were not blind enough to believe that the work of centu-
ries could be effaced in a few days. In all the liberal excitement
of the moment these skeptics could perceive little more than a
passing fashion, a childish play with liberty on the part of a soci-
ety which scarcely understood the true meaning of the word. And
the event proved that they were right. An address, presented
by the nobility of Moscow to the Czar, demanding an aristocratic

THE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED. 181

constitution, as a sort of compensation for the losses the nobility
had sustained by the emancipation of the serfs, gave the first im-
pulse to an abrupt change of politics. The address was received
very ungraciously; the ringleaders of the whole concern were
advised to retire to their estates for some time, in order to medi-
tate at leisure on the true nature of Russian liberalism, and the
very first occasion was seized upon to remind the " Liberals " that
"autocracy was a heavenly institution, and that every attempt at
anything which might possibly resemble a constitution was in future
to be considered as an offense against his Imperial Majesty, and
punished according to law " — a rather uncomfortable threat, mean-
ing death, or Siberia.

It now became evident that a painful misunderstanding had
prevailed all round. Like all natures endowed with a strong and
morbid imagination, and but a weak mind and will, Alexander had
built up his ideal of an autocratic millennium in all its slightest par-
ticulars. By his courtiers and by some of the half -crazy idealists
of the old Slavophile school this dream was received with unbounded
enthusiasm. When it was shattered to pieces by the "ingratitude"
of the people, when it became apparent that what the people were
impudent enough to desire was liberty, and not " paternal benevo-
lence," the Czar's disenchantment was bitter, and gave the first
impulse to that morbid melancholy which further events developed
in his mind to the extent of a mental malady.

The ordinary consequences of political repression followed : the
revolutionary movement became more intense. "Conspiracies"
were almost daily discovered by the police. At last came the catas-
trophe : on the 16th of April, 1866, a crazy young fanatic, almost
a child, Karakozoff by name, fired a shot at the Emperor while the
latter was stepping into his carriage after a walk in the Summer
Garden. This fatal shot marked a turning point in the Czar's policy
toward his subjects, and opened the career of a man who richly
deserves the name of an evil genius of modern Russia, in whom
Russian autocracy with all its decay and hypocrisy found an able,
unscrupulous, and powerful representative. This man is the now
celebrated Count Peter Shouvaloff, at present Russian Ambassador
at the court of Great Britain, and the probable successor of Prince
Gortchakoff to the office of Chancellor of the Empire. Immedi-
ately after Karakozoff's attentat, Shouvaloff was summoned to the
post of " Chief of the Third Section of his Majesty's Private Chan-
cery," and the task of prosecuting the criminal and of extirpating

182 TEE NOETE AMERICAN EEVIEW.

tlie "revolutionary party" in Russia to the very roots was intrusted
to him.

Citizens of a free country are scarcely able to form an adequate
idea of the true nature of this terrible and profoundly demoralizing
institution. The " Third Section " is a great deal more than a secret
police for political cases. It is in every sense the true and full ex-
pression of the Czar's supreme power ; it is the organ and instrument
of his personal will ; it stands accordingly above all the laws,
the institutions, and even the civil rights of each citizen. Its
agents are spread all over the country, exercising a secret con-
trol over every officeholder, every provincial institution — the gov-
ernor of the province himself not excepted, who is generally the
first to quail before its secret power. It is clear that, so long
as this institution exists, every law, every liberal reform, is but a
mockery.

A history of the secret doings, of all the horrors and crimes,
perpetrated by this disgraceful institution, would fill up many
volumes, before the contents of which the most sensational novels
would appear tame and shallow. There is scarcely any sphere of
public or private life which is exempted from the irresponsible con-
trol of this inquisition of the nineteenth century. The verdict of a
court has no value whatever for the Third Section. Not only ac-
quitted political offenders are as a rule transported "administra-
tively " to some distant town of the empire, but even the judges
themselves, when they are considered to have passed too lenient a
verdict, are liable to be forced into resigning their office and to be
then exiled in company with the very prisoners who had stood
before them !

Such is the institution at the head of which Shouvaloff was
placed in 1866 ; such was the power given into his hands which
made him in one year the actual master of Russia. Shouvaloff is a
man of more than ordinary intellectual abilities, admirably suited
for a post such as the one he occupied. Endowed with a profound
knowledge of human nature, he understood at a glance the character
of the Czar. He knew how to maintain the Czar in a state of per-
petual nervous excitement by reporting almost daily about new
conspiracies in a most distorted and exaggerated shape, leading him
to the belief that the whole of Russia was covered by a net of a
murderous and bloodthirsty revolutionary organization. Alexander
lived in constant fear of assassins, and had a revolver always at
hand. Once his aide-de-camp, Ryleeff, entering unexpectedly the

THE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED. 183

imperial private study, the Czar sprang up in dismay and fired at
him, happily missing his aim.

Repressive measures against the press, the provincial elective
assemblies (the zemstvo), the universities, and the new law courts,
followed almost daily. A true and able disciple of that political
adventurer jtar e.rcdle/icey Napoleon III., Shouvalojff knew how to
deprive public life in Russia even of that phantom of liberty which
had been awarded by the " liberal 7 Czar ; how to tear out of the
new institutions their spirit, without touching their outward, civil-
ized form. In the repression he exercised against every spark of
independent sj)irit in Russian society, he artfully evaded any of-
fense to that peculiar feeling of tact which is innate in persons of
good breeding and high social standing : he carefully dealt with
every case according to the social reputation and family position of
the inculpated persons ; he could discriminate between those who
could be struck and crushed in the most merciless and brutal man-
ner and those toward whom forms of a chivalrous and accom-
plished civility must be observed.

A personal experience of mine admirably illustrates this trait in
the character of the " Great Russian Spy," as the Londoners called
ShouvalolT. In 1872 I was an editorial writer on the staff of a
weekly paper at St. Petersburg. This paper still exists, and I am
therefore compelled from obvious reasons not to name it. Through
the literary jjosition I occupied, I naturally came into contact with
all the stirring, turbulent, and intelligent elements of the Russian
hohhne — students, artists, young officers of the army, teachers in
public schools, literary men, and such like — all of whom were any-
thing but loyal subjects of the Czar, and therefore all personce in-
gratissimce in the eyes of the St. Hermandad. At the same time,
in consequence of some family ties and traditions, I was intimately
acquainted with some of the first aristocratic families of the capital,
and had thus access to that mysterious and undefinable sphere which
the French call '^ the world." One evening I was called upon to
read a paper about " Socialism in Russia," before a literary society
we had formed. In the very midst of my oratorical effort I was
interrupted by the clash of sabers in the anteroom, and there ap-
peared suddenly among us a man, clad in that awful blue uniform
of the gendarmes, the executive agents of the Third Section. In
the most civil manner possible he invited us to disperse, an invita-
tion we of course acted upon immediately. At the door we met
another *' blue gentleman," who took down our names and addresses,

184 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

warning us of the consequences if any one should venture to give
a false statement. The very same night I received a summons to
appear the next day at two p. m. at the Third Section, or in the
" building near the suspension bridge," as this amiable institution
is usually called in St. Petersburg, from the locality it occupies.
There an amiable and smooth-tongued official gave me fair warning
that, if I should again be seized by a desire to express my opinions
on socialism, the Government would be happy to give me the occa-
sion for meditating further on the subject in the quiet town of
Belozersk, and then let me go, after warning me that I had hence-
forth to consider myself under the strictest surveillance of the
secret police. On coming home I found to my utter amazement
on my writing-table an envelope, adorned with the Shouvaloffs'
crest and coat-of-arms, and containing an invitation to a great ball
which was to take place the next day in the same building which I
had left a few moments before a susj)ected " Nihilist " and revolu-
tionist !

In such petty details of tact and urbanity Shouvaloff was always
a master, and it is principally by such means that he succeeded in
conciliating to his policy all such representatives of superficial
liberalism for whom public life and liberty were not an earnest
necessity but only a play and a fashion. At the same time he car-
ried out a system of preventive measures all directed to one pur-
pose — that of diverting the public mind from political interests.
Just like his master in Machiavelianism, Napoleon, he used public
amusements, feasts, and pageants, even if they were of more than
doubtful morality, as a diversion for the exuberant energies of
society. Debauchery of every kind was patronized, the imagina-
tion of the ablest and best classes of the people was systematically
perverted, their senses were flattered in every manner, and their
mind and reason left as barren as possible. Liquor-shops, night
restaurants with private parlors adorned in the most luxurious man-
ner, low theatres specially dedicated to can-can^ where performers
and public chiefly belonged to the lowest class of fallen women,
and other establishments of the same or of a worse kind, enjoyed
an active protection on the part of the police, while public lectures,
schools, newspapers, books — in short, every function of public
thought and opinion — were subjected to a most tyrannical control
of half a dozen police authorities.

The effects of this dastardly system of government were terrific,
indeed more dangerous for the development of the nation than even

THE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED, 185

the tyranny of a madman like Nicholas. Lying and hypocrisy be-
came the officially recognized principles in politics, and gradually
invaded all the spheres of })iiblie life. A generation of knaves sud-
denly sprang up, invading all the branches of the government ser-
vice, of the linancial and economical institutions. With resounding
phrases about liberty, honesty, and civic duty on their lips, this
" new generation," these beloved children of the " liberal " czardom,
inaugurated an epoch of corruption and demoralization unprece-
dented in the history of their country. The members of the impe-
rial family themselves took the lead on this glorious path. The
brothers and other relatives of the Czar were foremost in robbing
the people, and took the lion's share of the booty. The education
received by the i)rinces of the Romanoff family mostly stands on
a level with that of a groom in civilized communities. Their habit-
ual associates are the most despicable and unprincipled snobs among
tlwjt'H/iesse doree of the capital and French court isa?ies.

More or less all the Russian princes come up to that level. They
pass tlieir whole life in brutal idleness, whiling away their time with
drinking, gambling, and hunting. As far as education and knowl.
edge is concerned, there is perhaps but one exception to this gen-
eral rule : that is the Grand Duke Constantine Nicolajevitch, broth-
er of the Czar, President of the Council of State, the supreme
legislative body of the empire, and admiral-general of the Russian
fleet. lie is a man of more than ordinary intellectual ability, well
informed, and possessing a keen appreciation for the fine arts : his
])alace is the constant rendezvous of artists, litterateurs, musicians,
and singers. But, on the other hand, the Russian people have to pay
dearly for the luxury of possessing a well-educated Romanoff :
among the studies which Constantine has pursued with the most
complete success, the science of bribery stands paramount. He has
managed to discount his influence as President of the Council of
State in the most profitable manner. Every new railway, manufac-
turing or banking company, which applies to the Government for
incorporation, has to pay Constantine, of course not personally, but
through half a dozen agents and sub-agents, a handsome tribute.
Also the accounts of many a ship-building firm might, if published,
tell curious tales about how expensive an article a clever and edu-
cated member of the Romanoff family actually is.

This remark, however, does not imply that stupid and badly
educated grand dukes prove less expensive to the country than
clever ones. A recent example has proved the contrary ; that of

186 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the Grand Duke I^Ticliolas Nicolajevitcli, the commander-in-chief
of the Russian army during the last Bulgarian campaign. The gen-
eral opinion about that man in Russia before the war was, that he
was a thoroughly ignorant, stupid, but honest and brave soldier.
Recent events have proved, however, that if the former part of this
judgment is correct the same can not be said of its latter part. The
fact is now generally known in Russia that the Grand Duke Nicho-
las, the brother of the Czar, the generalissimo of the army, not only
brought this army to the verge of ruin by his utter imbecility as a
commander, but actually robbed the miserable, hungry, dying sol-
diers of seven million rubles, of which he gave a handsome share
to his mistress, a former opera-dancer ! I must earnestly request
the reader to bear in mind that this is not idle gossip : the fact has
been officially proved and reported to the Czar by General Greigh,
the present chief of the Russian Finance Department, who was sent
by the Czar to Bulgaria to investigate the terrific cases of corruption
which occurred during the war. Greigh went earnestly to work,
and the very first result he obtained from his investigation was
that the Czar's brother was the chief criminal. Horror-stricken,
he started at once for St. Petersburg and reported to the Czar —
the truth. The investigation was immediately closed, and General
Greigh received the Finance Department as price for his silence.

These examples, drawn from the life of two of the most promi-
nent members of the Czar's family, will suffice to characterize the
latter as a whole. With one or two exceptions (among these the
Czarevitch, who, under the beneficent influence of his wife, the Dan-
ish Princess Dagmar, has as yet held aloof from the filth surround-
ing him), not one single prince of the Romanoff family can be
named whose existence is not a burden to the people and a nui-
sance to society.

The different departments of civil service (with the exception of
the law courts, where honest officials predominate) present an aspect
which is in no way more pleasing than the picture I have drawn of
the imperial family. Foremost stands the ministry of the imperial
court, which is considered a sort of patrimony of the Adlerberg
family. The old Count Adlerberg, a friend of Emperor Nicholas
(the chronique scandaleuse of the Russian court has a good deal to
say about the primary motives of this friendship), was the chief of
this petty dynasty. His son succeeded him in office, and all the
different departments of the ministry have been adroitly distributed
among brothers, nephews, and cousins of the family. The chief,

rUE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED. 187

and in the eyes of the uninitiated the only, purpose for which this
ministry exists is the payment of the Adlerberg family debts.
Kvery four or five years some six or seven hundred thousand ru-
bles are paid off in this way out of the public Treasury. The good
example of the chiefs is naturally followed by the minor officials,
and thus the Russian court has been converted into a very den of
burglars and thieves, in which corruption and bribery is exercised
quite openly with a sort of refreshing 7ia"ivete.

What abyss of corruption has been disclosed in the War Depart-
ment by the last war is too well known to need any illustration on
my part. In all the Government offices in which money-making
business is transacted we meet with the same system of bribery and
venality. The party who best knows how to find the right man for
the right price is assured of success, even if its case be as bad and
as illegal as possible. Of course I do not wish to imply by this
that every Russian official is a thief. In the Government offices
hundreds of honest men are to be found, who abominate the system
under which they are compelled to serve. But in most cases they
are powerless. Only the drudgery work is intrusted to them ; the
actual j>ower rests in the hands of those who are unscrupulous
enough to acquire it at any price. Examples illustrating this fact
are so numerous that to choose among them is extremely difficult.
I will mention but a few names of dignitaries who are known be-
yond the Russian frontier.

General Mesentzoff, the victim of the recent murder, began his
service as a penniless officer of obscure family. By a series of un-
scrupulous nianijiulations, and base services rendered to persons of
high standing, he obtained a position in the corps of the dreaded
secret police, and since then identified himself entirely with all its
darkest intrigues. By malpractice of every kind he rose gradually
higher and higher, until he became the chief of the whole institu-
tion, and a rich man. Trepoff, *' the honest father Trepoff," as he
was universally called at St. Petersburg, from a penniless foundling
educated by charity, became the absolute master of the Russian
capital, and was on retiring from office in the undisturbed posses-
sion of three million rubles. The same may be said of the former
Minister of Finance, Yon Reutern, who, though an " honest Ger-
man," has during his ministry succeeded in investing over one mil-
lion rubles in foreign bonds, without counting the shares he pos-
sesses in Russian enterprises of every description.

" Tel mattre, tel valet^ says a French proverb. It is natural

188 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

that the example set by the members of the imperial family and by
the first dignitaries of the realm should be acted on by the subor-
dinate agents of the Administration. And as, generally speaking,
the higher social classes in Russia, that portion of Russian society
which, though improperly, bears the name of aristocracy, are almost
entirely absorbed by the Government service, the effect of such a
state of things on public life and public morals generally may be
easily imagined. The younger generation of Russian aristocrats
presents a pitiful sight indeed. A cold-blooded, cynical material-
ism, scarcely varnished over with a superficial education and ele-
gance of manners, treating honor, devotion to principles, and politi-
cal convictions, as so many " humbugs," unworthy of a true child
of the nineteenth century — such is the main feature of the present
generation of Russian aristocrats. It is perfectly astonishing in
what measure all moral feeling has died out among them. The
worst slander and the highest praise seem to have lost all their sig-
nificance in the leading circles of Russian society. The social stand-
ing of each individual is determined by a series of petty character-
istics : his good breeding, his appearance, his wealth, sometimes his
way of tying his cravat or putting on his gloves — all these undefin-
able nonentities which, put together, form the outward shape of a
jeiine homme com'ine il faut. From such things as these depends
what in St. Petersburg one is pleased to call a reputation. The
rest is of secondary importance. A man may be a gambler, a
swindler, or worse — if he is but endowed with that peculiar varnish
of genteelness and savoir vivre which society requires from him, he
is welcome everywhere all the same.

One brilliant " swell," the favorite of the ladies, the leader of all
the cotillions, owes his fortune, his social and administrative career,
to the good graces of a lady friend, who happens to be at the same
time the friend of a rich and powerful statesman. Another has
been repeatedly caught cheating at cards, but, as he is indirectly
related to a member of the imperial family, one gladly overlooks
his *' little peculiarities." There exists in St. Petersburg a whole
set of the most fashionable and fast young men in society — officers
of the guards, sons of old princely families, aide-de-camps of grand
dukes and of the highest dignitaries of the Russian army — who,
not being rich enough to pay for the life they are leading, contrive
to discount their social position most dexterously by serving in a
certain sense as living advertisements for commercial establish-
ments, restaurants, horse-dealers, and such like, all of whom they

THE EMPIRE OF THE DISCONTENTED. 189

never pay, remunerating them indirectly by bringing them into
" fashion." Among the business establishments thus enjoying the
young aristocrats' protection the boudoirs of the demi-monde natu-
rally occupy a prominent position. Such facts are perfectly well
known to everybody, and do not impair in the least the social posi-
tion of such men. On the contrary, they are the envied and ad-
mired models of fashion and good breeding ; for them every door,
from the gates of the imperial palace to the back door of a French
variety singer's apartment, is opened far and wide ; they are the
future dignitaries of the empire ; a brilliant career is opening before
them I

Around this rotten, glittering "aristocracy" a whole swarm of
speculators, swindlers, money-lenders, business men of every de-
scription, clusters, who, like dogs, feed from the crumbs falling
from their master's table, and carry corruption, and decay even
into the middle classes of society.

This is one side of the picture. Such are the " leading classes "
of Russian society, as the " holy czardom " has shaped them. And
the people ? And those seventy millions of unknown, unheard-of
human creatures who are strewed on the endless expanse of land
))etween the l^aciiic Ocean and the Niemen, the White and the
Black Seas ?

There, all around, as Nekrassoff, the great poet of the woes and
vices of modern Russia, sings — there, " in the depth of Russia, eter-
nal stillness reigns ! " — " Eternal stillness" over the fields on which,
bending over his plow, the peasant toils from dawn to nightfall ;
"eternal stillness" in those dark, dreary, dilapidated villages with
their black, smoky huts looking more like kennels than like human
abodes ; " eternal stillness " in the soul of that great, heroic nation,
which with its hands' unrequited toil, with its hearts' blood, has
made Russia what it now is, reaping for its reward but misery, ig-
norance, injustice of every kind ; " eternal stillness" in the heart of
that nation which still lies prostrate before its Czars, before the real
and only origin of all its misery !

Such is the true picture of that " dark realm " the brilliant sur-
face of which is mostly alone seen by foreign observers. And yet,
disconsolate as this picture may appear, it is far from being hopeless.
It would be so if the corruption and demoralization of the upper
classes and of the Government pervaded the whole body of the na-
tion, and did not arouse any indignation nor any active opposition
on the part of the honest elements of the people. But such is not

190 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

the case. An opposition exists and it grows daily in strength and
numbers, gathering around its banner all the stout hearts and hon-
est minds of the nation.

Those are not rightly informed who think that the revolutionary
movement now going on in Russia is the work of one party or of
a secret society of any kind. It is the work of all intelligent Rus-
sian citizens, to whatever class of society they may belong, who are
tired of the yoke Russia has borne for so many centuries, and who
consider political liberty and the downfall of autocracy the necessary
condition of all further progress of the Russian people. The name
of this party, if it still may be called a party, is — legion. It is every-
where and nowhere. Representatives of the noblest families of the
empire, professional men of every description, government officials
and even priests, school-teachers, and army officers — all are to be
found in the ranks of this great " army of the Discontented." The
powerful machinery of Russian bureaucracy has long ago been un-
dermined by this spirit of discontent, and it is now little more than
a sham weapon in the hands of the Czar. He himself in his Winter
Palace is surrounded either by cowards who mil forsake him, as
soon as their personal interest will no more depend on the mainte-
nance of his power, or by secret converts to the great liberal move-
ment who will gladly contribute to the overthrow of that same re-:
gime they are ostensibly serving.

Thus, from the present state of Russian society we may venture
to predict with a considerable amount of probability that the Rus-
sian czardom will soon sink beneath the weight of its own decrepi-
tude and of the merciless logic of history. Then, and only then, the
true national life of Russia will begin; the vital forces of the nation
will be enabled to act freely, and the scum of Russian society, which
now holds the supreme power in its hands, will be wiped away from
the surface of political events.

A Russian Nihilist.

THE SCIENTIFIC WORK OF THE HOWGATE

EXPEDITION.

The ficientific work of this preliminary expedition was intrusted
to the writer as meteorologist and to Mr. Lud>vig Kumlien as nat-
uralist. We were both young, of strong ph^/siquej and full of zeal
for the work.

Professor Loomis, of Yale, and Professor Abbe, of Washing-
ton, prepared the meteorological instructions, and Professor Baird,
of the Smithsonian, those for the naturalist. These instructions
were followed as closely as the circumstances of the situation and
the outfit permitted.

It is dithcult for a single observer to carry on a system of hourly
observations in meteorology day and night for a whole year, even
in a comfortable observatory in lower latitudes, and very much
more difficult within the Arctic and the restricted limits of a small
schooner. The same difficulties attend the naturalist, whose obser-
vations on land are limited to a few weeks of summer, in which 55°
Fahr. marks the maximum of heat (in June), and with an average
temperature of not over 37° Fahr., and who does not see the sur-
face of the earth free from snow for even those few weeks.

Mr. Kumlien's collections in entomology comprise four or five
species of butterfiies or moths, a few beetles, mosquitoes, and house-
flies ; and of birds perhaps forty species, chiefly aquatic. It was
among the quadrupeds and marine vertebrata that he found his
chief reward, and in this field he was greatly assisted by the re-
markable sagacity of the native Esquimaux, whose senses, by long
training, enable them to detect the spoors of animals and other

192 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

indications of their presence in those snow-clad regions, which the
hunter from lower latitudes would disregard.

With better equipment and a more numerous staff, the explo-
ration of Kennedy Lake — a large body of fresh water, near which
the Florence wintered — might have been undertaken. This lake is
almost wholly unknown to science, and there is no doubt that it will
yield. rich results to the future explorer.

On account of the limited space and equipment of the Florence,
many physical phenomena were of necessity unobserved, such as
the polarization of the atmosphere, the spectra of the aurora, the
actinic force of the sun's rays during the long reign of the " mid-
night sun," etc., etc. All these and other problems, physical, chemi-
cal, vital, astronomical, and meteorological, must be considered and
provided for in the complete outfit of the proposed Arctic colony
on the shore of Lady Franklin's Bay. Many of these problems can
never be so well solved as by a thoroughly equipped party resident
for a sufficient time within the Arctic as contemplated in the coloni-
zation plan.

The following brief abstract will show what was accomplished
by the meteorologist. The position of the observatory was deter-
mined by the averages of sextant observations made on April 12
and May 24, 1878, as being in latitude 66° 13' 45" north, longitude
67° 18' 39" west.

This is the position of Annanatook, the Esquimau name of a col-
lection of small islands on the western coast of Cumberland Gulf,
where the Florence wintered. This determination of position dif-
fers from that given on published maps. But those who are ac-
quainted with the gulf — as the whalers, for example — say the map
is incorrect. There is no record of any other observations for
this station except those by the writer. On the northeast of these
islands rises a range of high, snow-capped hills ; the western hori-
zon is bounded by a chain of low hills ; southeast is open water ;
and northwest, as far as the eye can reach, are seen only small,
rocky islands dotting the surface of the sea. The surface of the
Annanatook Islands is naked rock, save only in the valleys and
rocky crevices, where a little soil has gathered, and a few grasses,
flowering plants, and mosses grow. Dwarf willows, resembling
blackberry-vines, run along the ground, and diminutive beeches lie
hidden, buried in the moss, while the rocks are covered with
lichens.

The highest hill at Annanatook, by barometer, measured only

SCIENTIFIC WORK OF AX ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 193

two hundred and ninety-nine feet in height, two others being one
hundred and ninety-eight and eighty-four feet respectively. But
on the eastern mainland one hill, by no means the highest, measured
fourteen hundred and sixty-six feet, an elevation corresponding
very closely to the snow-line in summer at this point. Patches
of snow were observed at this elevation on other hills behind the
one here measured rising to the estimated elevation of from two to
three thousand feet.

Jiarometer. — The monthly averages of the barometer at Annan-
atook show a gradual increase of the atmospheric pressure from
December, when it is at minimum, until May and June, when it
is the greatest. It then falls pretty uniformly to its initial point in
December and January, as will be seen by comparing the means in
the following condensed table. The lowest pressure observed was
28-89 in December, and the highest recorded was 30*47 inches, a
difference of 158 inch.

The mean hourly difference was only '005 inch ; the greatest
was June 9th, '025 inch.

Northwest winds accompanied the highest and southerly winds
the lowest barometer.

Tabu of Barometric Means observed at Annanaiook for the Several Months of 18*78,
corrected for TempercUure. — 0. T. Sherman, Observer.

MONTHB.

7A.lf.

January..
Ft'l)ruury,
March . . .
April . . . .,

May

.June

July

August.. .
September
October. .
November,
December

20-598
29-736
29-830
29-995
29-960
29-786
29-757

29-712
29-735
29 770
29-571

4p. x.

29-594
29-716
29-823
29-984
29-964
29-785
29-748

29-698
29-751
29-775
29-575

11 p. M.

29-594
29-719
29-815
29-999
29-959
29-799

Means.

29-595
29-724
29-823
29-993
29-961
29-790
29-753

29-705
29-743
29-773
29-573

Temperature. — It is often remarked that it is the extremes of
temperature rather than its averages which decide the character of
a climate. It is undoubtedly true that extremes are the limiting
conditions of distribution of species if not of life in both animals
and plants, but especially in the latter. At Annanatook we were
too far south to meet the extreme of Arctic cold, the lowest tem-
voL. cxxviii. — ]N^o. 267. 13

194

THE NORTE AMEBIC AF REVIEW.

perature observed being — 52*5° by the ship's thermometer, and
— 49 '5° by the station thermometer on shore in January. But in
the same month the temperature rose to 21*5° Fahr. Sudden
changes of temperature occur in these high latitudes as well as in
lower : for example, on the 5th of May there was a rise in the ther-
mometer of 11° F. in an hour, and encouraged perhaps by such a
promise of warm weather a fly was found on the ice on the 8th of
the same month, and by the 24th of May crowsfoot was in bud.
Yet in May the temperature fell to — 8° Fahr. How relative our
notions of temperature are is evident from the fact that in Disco
Bay the ladies of the Danish officers, resident there, find use for
their parasols against the fervid heat when the thermometer reads
35° to 40° Fahr. ! On the day in January when we had the lowest
temperature, coming on board the Florence I was met by the cabin-
boy, bareheaded on deck, rejoicing in the fine warm day, which he
guessed might be about 4- 10°. It was by record — 49*5 ! This
confirms Dr. Kane's statement that they felt oppressed by heat
when the temperature rose from — 60° to zero. We print a con-
densed tabular statement of the highest, lowest, and mean tempera-
tures observed at Annanatook :

MONTHS.

Highest.

Lowest.

Mean.

— 17-6

- 18-0

- is-Y

10-4
25-6
34-9

MONTHS.

Highest.

Lowest.

Mean.

January

February. .

March

April

May

June

21-5
11-5
85-8
35-4
48-5
55-3

-49 5
-42-0
-45-0

— 14-0

- 8-0
18-0

July

August. . .
i September
October. . .
November.
December.

52-8

4V-6
36-2
28-0
21-5

34-0

'28-6
4-0

- 10-0

— 41-0

40-0

sV-o

22-8

7-3

- 11-8

Thus it appears that in seven months of the year the tempera-
ture fell below zero, and for four months the mean was under —
10°. In the three summer months alone is the mean above freez-
ing, the maximum summer temperature (55*3°) being in June
(August having no record).

A limited number of observations only were made with the
black-bulbed thermometer showing the effect of absorption of solar
radiation. The results are presented in the following table :

SCIENTIFIC WORK OF AN ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 195

Table xhovnng the iJiffcrence of Temperature due to Absorption of Solar Heat by a
Thertnonieter-Bulb blackened with India Ink and protected from Wind^ at Anna-
natook.

DATE.

January 31.
February 1.

1.
" 2.

7.
7.
7.
7.

March

Mean time.

Black bulb.

Noon.

- 13°

- 10

- 15

- 23

- 10-5

- 12-8

1 12

— 90

! 1

- 10-0

+ 46

4- 36

+ 26

+ 30

+ 40

+ 27

Air.

Difference.

20-3°

21-4

22-5

23-5

18-2

17-5

27-5

34-5

28-5

28-6

7-3^

11-4

7-5

0-5

9-5

5-2

9-2

7-5

73-5

70-5

59-6

56-0

68-5

54-0

The differences noted in these observations are remarkable, and
render tlie multiplication of similar observations hereafter very de-
sirable with an instrument properly constructed for the purpose.

Temperature of the Human Body. — A few observations appear
to show that the normal temperature of the human body, 98*4° Fahr.,
is very slightly if at all changed by the climate. Thus, February
28th the temperature of two of the corps was respectively 98*2° and
98'4°. March 4th, a native was 98*4°. "This fellow has come
this morning on a sledge-ride, and has been working in the snow,
building a house, at a temperature of — 25° Fahr." Three Es-
quimau children, March 8th, had a temperature of 98-4°, and a
man 98*4°. It is desii*able that these observations should be ex-
tended. The blood is known to become abnormally heated by
intense summer weather, rising even to 99*7°, and by prolonged
exposure to cold baths the human body has been cooled with safety
to 88° Fahr., but not lower, showing an extreme range of ob-
served temperature of 11-7° Fahr.*

Sea - Water Temperature. — The surface - water at Annanatook
was in January, 28*2° ; February, at surface, 29° ; at 18 feet depth,
29-l°-29-3° ; in May, 29° at surface, 29-5° at 18 feet depth ; in
June, 31-8° at surface, and 31-1° at 18 feet depth ; in July, 38*2°
at surface, and 22*4° at 18 feet depth ; these are means.

* Dr. B. F. Craig, " Variations in the Temperature of the Human Body," "Ameri-
can Journal of Science" (3), ii., 330.

196

TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

In September the surface in the early days of the month was
37° ; in the latter days, 33° ; and for the mean, 35°. In October
it was 30-01° ; in November, 28-8° ; and in December, 27-8°. The
highest temperature observed in the sea, at Annanatook, was 39*4°,
and the lowest, 26*7°. At Disco, in August, the surface of the sea
was 44*1°.

Day and Night. — There are two circumstances influencing the
Arctic night by way of compensation, not often mentioned, namely,
the great length of the twilight, and the power of the moon to tem-
per the darkness. During winter the moon has her highest north
declination, and remains above the horizon for some days continu-
ously, giving light enough for the traveler, and greatly alleviating
the gloom of this oppressive season. All Arctic travelers agree in
the depressing effect of the darkness. Work at other times pleasant
then becomes most irksome. As showing the approach and depart-
ure of night, it is noted in my journal :

" November 7th. — Observation at four taken by lamplight."

" March IJf-th. — The first day we were inconvenienced by the
glare of the sun's reflected light."

" April 26th. — Read common pica type with ease at midnight."

Table of Mean Length of Bay and Nighty and of Twilight, at AnnanatooJc.

MONTHS.

Day.

Night.

Twi-
light

h. m.

October 16...

9 28

8 24

6 8

November 16.

5 44

11 28

6 48

December 16.

2 32

12 56

8 32

January 16. . .

4 37

12 01

1 22

February 16..

8 14

9 36

6 10

March 16

11 48

5 58

6 14

MONTHS.

April 16

May 16

June 16

July 16

August 16. . . .
September 16,

Day.

Night.

h. m.

15 56

21 16

....

24 00

21 02

16 48

13 00

3 20

Twi-
light.

h. m.
8 4
2 44

2 68

T 12
Y 40

Aurora. — The aurora is emphatically a polar phenomenon, and
all who have wintered in these boreal regions dwell on the wonders
of this polar light.

The records show that one hundred auroral exhibitions were ob-
served at Annanatook from November, 1877, to August, 1878, dis-
tributed as follows, viz. : twenty in January, sixteen in February,
twelve in March, seventeen in April, and two in May. After the first
few days of May it was too light to observe the aurora, and so
continued until the close of August, when two were observed — in
November ten, and in December twenty-one.

The most brilliant auroras were seen in January and April.

SCIENTIFIC WORK OF AX ARCTIC EXPEDITION 197

The colors observed were usually pale blue, sometimes very pale
green, rarely straw yellow, and once only, rose, at the base. The
light from the aurora was sufficient to guide the traveler in his
path. Twice I recovered my lost way by its aid, and once its bril-
liancy was sufficient to cast a glare on the water like that of the
moon. It occasionally affected the ordinary compass-needle, as on
the 29th of August when the ship's compass could not be used
while the auroral display lasted. Doubtless if our magnetic instru-
ments had been more complete we would have observed more fre-
quent magnetic disturbances. The number of auroras observed is
larger than could have been expected at this position. The usual
appearance of the polar light as seen at Annanatook is as follows :
<^)n the approach of evening after a clear day, a dim, haze -like
])ank appeared along the south-southeast horizon, above which
could be detected a faint line of bluisli light. About nine o'clock
this line began to show some motion, the signal of the grand display
which rapidly followed. Arches two or three degrees in breadth
commenced to shoot upward toward the zenith, following each
other in rapid succession, to the number usually of two or three,
the highest number observed being six or eight. Sometimes only
one arch was seen. The night of January 10th furnished the fol-
lowing record : About 4 a. m. the arches which had remained
in quiet glow, without motion for some time, darted up to the
zenith, arch after arch following, until at 5.30 there were eight
arches in sight. Each of these sprang from one original arch,
advancing rather rapidly toward the zenith. After reaching a
point a little to the south and east of the zenith each arch halted.
Here live of the arches rested, forming one bright nucleus at the
junction, the lower portions of the arch extending beyond and
seemingly bending it concave toward the north. The zenith mean-
time remained fixed, as also the base of the arches. Now, on the
approach or development of each new arch the others break into
streamers, all passing through the bright nucleus already named.
Of the three remaining, two are indistinct, to the south and east,
and the third has passed the zenith and to the north in a line run-
ning through Capella and Gemini, remaining here as a row of
streamers. These gradually fade out, and at 6 (a. m.) only one
arch is left in the zenith, moving slowly southward, to be soon
blended in the advancing dawn.

On the 2d of March, during a fall of snow, one of the clouds
was overspread with a faint-yellow light, which later developed, or

198 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

continued, into an aurora. At other times the margins of clouds
are seen lined by a faint-white light, and the activity of the com-
pass indicated the presence of an aurora.

They have in Greenland comparatively few auroras, so that the
European inhabitants at Disco seemed incredulous as to the reports
of the constant recurrence of this phenomenon in other parts of
the Arctic. The number recorded at Annanatook is exceptionally
large.

Halo. — One conspicuous halo was observed on the 19th of Jan-
uary. It consisted of a circle of 22° radius with two extraordinary
arcs beyond. Through the sun ran a circle of 40° radius, which ap-
peared to rest horizontally. There were no mock moons at that
time ; but on the 24th of February there was a halo with mock
moons.

Snow. — The fresh-fallen snow (December 24th) crackles under
foot like glass beads or " dry oats hanging on the stalk." On the 1st
of January the snow fell like spiculae of ice, hardly noticeable save
as it gathered on one's clothes and other objects.

The temperature of the snow at surface and below the surface
was taken on two occasions with interesting results. Thus, Decem-
ber 25th, the surface of the snow being — 20°, at one foot below
it was — 7'5° ; at two feet, — 3° ; at three feet, — 1° ; at four feet,
-H3°; at five feet, +10°.

January 5th the same observations gave, at one foot below the
surface, — 15° ; at two feet under, — 9*5° ; at three feet, +0*5° ; at
four feet, -f 9° ; and at five feet, +10°.

These observations explain the comparative comfort of the na-
tive snow-houses with walls five feet thick. The precipitation for
January was 0*5 inch of water ; for February, 0*49 ; for March,
0-5; for April, 077; for May, 1*18; for June, 1-85; for July,
4*18 ; for August, — ; for September, 8'88 ; for October, 1'07 ;
for November, 1*04 ; for December, 0*98 — total (less August), 21*44,
or, for the twelve months, about 28 inches, probably, estimating Au-
gust as a mean between July and September.

Ice — Freezing of the Sea. — October 9th, ice appeared in the fiord.
October 12th, crystals of ice came up with the deep-sea thermome-
ter. October 29th, ice is reported in the lower gulf. November
10th, new ice formed in the harbor, and afforded passage to the
ship. November 27th, the ice in the harbor would hardly bear pass-
ing. May 10th, the ice at the schooner was very rotten, and quickly

SCIENTIFIC WORK OF AN ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 199

broken through by a cask thrown overboard. May 19th, the ice
decayed very rapidly. May 28th, the Esquimaux hunters report the
ice as very treacherous. June 4-5th, on the breaking up of the
shore ice the passage to the ship became hardly passable. June 8th,
the ice near the ship, eight inches thick two days since, would not
bear a man's weisrht. June 9th, ice formed on the salt water near
the edges of the firm ice — probably fresh-water ice from regela-
tion.

Winds. — Happily during the winter months the winds are very
light in the Arctic. A much less degree of cold would become in-
tolerable with a high wind. The change from a westerly to a south-
erly wind produces a marked change in the atmosphere, and be-
comes most depressing to those exposed to its influence. The year's
observations on the wind are condensed in the following

Wind Table.

MONTHS.

January .
Fehniary .
March. . . .

April

May

June

July

August. . .
September
October.. .
November.
December.

HSAN 1

nouBLY vELOcrrr.

8 A.M.

5 p. M.

Midnight,
12.

4-3

4-1

3-9

4-4

4-8

6 4

8-1

5-7

5-6

8-1

121

• • • •

170

210

110

5-2

5-9

8-2

11-7

• ■ • •

11-4

15-2

• • • •

8-98

8-4

9-49

Prevailin':
current.

West.

Southeast.

West.

Southeast.

Northwest.
Northwest.
West.
West.

Highest velocity
per month.

36'3 miles.

241 "

48-0 "

35-7 "

26-9 "

33-9 "

25-0 "

35*0 "

29-5 "

42-8 "

31-8 "

Clouds. — Taking the mean of the year, about 68 parts in the 100
of the sky at this station were overcast. November, December, and
January were the least cloudy months ; from May to October was
the period of cloud, and in September was the maximum, 89 parts
in 100 of the sky being overcast. The stratus was by far the most
common cloud. It was found difficult to distinguish between the
stratus and the cirro-stratus. The cirrus was unlike the form so dis-
tinguished in our latitudes. In place of the so-called " mares' tails "
the cirrus clouds of the Arctic seemed to repose on beds inclined to
the horizon at an angle of about 40-55° from southeast to 120° north-
west, the impression on the mind of the observer being that the cloud-
mass thus stratified always moved from some westerly point. Out

200

TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

of forty-two recorded cases the movement in only two instances was
from an easterly point, and one of these is doubtful. The Esquimaux
say that high clouds moving from the east indicate fair weather.
Many facts go to show the sagacity of these people with regard to
natural phenomena.

The cumulus or " thunder-head," so common as a summer cloud
in lower latitudes, was not observed. Cumulo-strata do occur, how-
ever, as has been noticed by another voyager.

Table of the Amount of Cloudiness observed at Ammnatook,

MONTHS.

January.
February
March. . .
April . . .

May

June ....

HOtTBS OP 0B8BBVATI0N.

11.

Mean.

tV^

tVtt

44
TUT5"

T^A

t'A

tVtt

65
100

T«^

t'tSt

5 f»
100

TUII

T5^

t'A

T7r?F

80
loo

76
100

79
100

75
100

79
100

MONTHS.

July

August. . .
September
October.. .
November.
December.

HOURS OF OBSERVATION.

8_0_

Too

91
ITU

79
TTTO"

3 7
TOlT

80
TTTO"

80
TTJTT

58
TTJTT

11. Mean.

5 9
TTTTT

63
T^TT

77
TTTCT

Tinr

80.
TTJIF

71
ITS

49,

Tinr

The average cloudiness of the year in New England is about 53
parts in 100, while for Great Britain it rises to 3%, or a little more
than the average within the Arctic at this station.

Other Observations. — Systematic observations were also con-
ducted, as far as circumstances permitted, on several other lines of
investigation, such as determination of the density of sea-water by
the balance, upon ocean currents, on sediments obtained from melted
snow and ice, upon tides, etc., etc.

The tidal records, when reduced, will, it is believed, give valu-
able data for comparison with the work of other observers in this
line, no observations in this part of the Arctic having been hitherto
made. The rise and fall of the spring tide at Annanatook was
twenty-four feet and six inches ; of the neap tide, seven feet. Es-
tablishment 4^ 52", and the age of the tide 54^ 8*". From January
13th to April 26th the record is nearly complete, and for forty con-
secutive days, ending in April, it was uninterrupted. The writer
desires to acknowledge here the valuable assistance rendered him
in the preparation of this article by Professor B. Silliman, of Yale
College.

Obeay Taft Sherman.

VII.

SENSATIOXALISM IN THE PULPIT.

We do not believe that the American pulpit is fairly chargeable
with sensationalism. If, indeed, we were content to take our im-
pressions from the general character of most of the sermons which
our daily papers think it worth their while to report, or from some
of the ad-captandum advertisements which appear weekly under
the heading of " Religious Notices," we might be led to an opposite
conclusion. But it must not be forgotten that the daily papers are
wetrspapers. When, therefore, they report sermons, it is not so
much for their excellence as for that in them which brings them
under the head of news. If the preacher be a distinguished stranger,
they will faithfully reproduce his utterances, that all their readers
may know what manner of man he is. But equally, if any stated
pastor has done or said anything out of the common, they will be
sure to chronicle his eccentricity. That which they are after is the
unusual, and if a minister has said something daring in its defiance
of all good taste, or something that smacks of heresy, or something
that will be shocking to the feelings of the better portion of the
community, then for. that very reason his words will be faithfully
recorded. There are, it may be, in these two cities, some six or
seven hundred Protestant places of worship, in each of which week-
ly sermons are delivered, and it would be monstrously unjust to
judge of the character of those which are unreported from that of
those specimens which are given to the public just because of their
deviating in some respect from the general standard. We do not
wonder that readers at a distance should fall into the mistake of
supposing that all our clergymen are of the same class as those
whom the daily press has made notorious ; but it is due to the
Christian community to make it clear that in this case the unre-
ported are overwhelmingly in the majority, and that they are uure-

202 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

ported not for lack of excellence so much as for lack of peculiarity
in their ministrations. In our own immediate locality you may
number all who by any correct use of the words can be called
" sensational preachers " on the fingers of both hands ; while hun-
dreds of others are seeking with quiet earnestness " to commend
the truth to every man's conscience in the sight of God." And
what is true here is, in the main, true also over the whole country.
It is not to be supposed, therefore, that by writing on this subject
we mean to insinuate that sensationalism is a common pulpit vice, or
that American preachers are sinners above all others in regard to it.

In fact, much as we dislike sensationalism, and greatly as we
deplore the evils to which it leads, we are far from believing that
it is either the only or the chief danger of the pulpit in these days.
We have more fear, on the one hand, of that heartless intellectual-
ism which, by its uniform appeals to the head, develops a cold mod-
eratism that leads at length to a positive unbelief ; and, on the other,
of that tepid sentimentalism which, in its method of proclaiming
that " God is love," wipes out all moral distinctions and drugs con-
science into sleep. On each of the three sides of our nature, the
intellectual, the moral, and the sensational, the preacher is in danger
of yielding to that which it is his proper function to seek to correct
and control ; and, in proportion as the moral and intellectual are
superior to the sensational, the peril in regard to the former is more
serious than it is in regard to the latter.

Biit, while not ignoring the others, our present business is with
the sensational, and it will contribute to clearness if we here attempt
a definition of that which we propose to treat. So soon, however,
as we try to formulate that vague conception which we have of the
thing, by putting it into words, we encounter difficulty. For it is
immediately discovered that a certain kind and degree of the sen-
sational enter into all eloquence. The orator, whether in the
pulpit, or at the bar, or in the senate, seeks to persuade. But in
pursuing that main design he uses certain tributaries, all of which
are made by him to run into the swelling current of his speech.
He employs ridicule to expose the absurdity of his antagonist's
position ; he uses pathos to enforce the appeal which he makes for
the consideration of the weak ; he turns imagination to account, by
a harrowing description of the sufferings of those for whom he is
pleading : and at length, by the united force of these influences, he
carries his position and secures the consent of his audience to the
course which he has been advocating. While he was dealing in

SENSATIONALISM IN THE PULPIT, 203

ridicule, his hearers laughed, and that was a sensation. When he
was pathetic, the tears coursed down their cheeks, and that was a
sensation. When he set the miseries of the suffering plainly before
their eyes, they shuddered, and that was a sensation. Are we, then,
to condemn all this ? And, if we do, must not our censure lie
against every triumph that the orator has won? Plainly, there-
fore, we must admit that the production of a sensation is not, in
itself, an evil thing in eloquence, and can not be regarded as that
which we designate sensationalism. The mischief lies in the promi-
nence given to the sensation as an end in and of itself ; and in the
nature of the sensation as being out of harmony with the great pur-
pose which every preacher of the gospel ought to have in view, and
with the associations of the place in which his discourse is given.
Much that would be proper enough on the platform, or at the bar,
or in the senate, would be sensational in the pulpit, because there
are certain restraints around the house of God, and the treatment
of sacred subjects, the mere passing of which would be a shock to
all reverent worshipers, and would tend to keep them from being
suitably impressed by what is otherwise excellent. And, in every
instance, the making of the production of an incidental and sec-
ondary effect a deliberate object must be pronounced objectionable.
This, like the seeking of wealth, or the pursuit of pleasure, or the
gratification of taste, for their own sakes, is more than an infelicity.
It is the violation of an ethical principle. It is an immorality in
rhetoric, and in the end it loses that which it desires, while the
pursuit exposes him who enters on it to many perils. It might be
too much perhaps to say that, like the determination to be rich at
all hazards, it leads to evils " which drown men in destruction and
perdition " ; but it is undoubtedly true that they who will practice
it do "fall into temptation and a snare."

These distinctions, as important as they .are simple, will prepare
us for defining sensationalism in the pulpit as the deliberate pro-
duction by the preacher of an immediate effect which is not subor-
dinated to the great purpose of his office, and is out of harmony
with the sacred associations of the house of God. It is differentiated
by the character of the effect, and the intention of the speaker to
produce it. The sensationalist aims at an immediate result, and
loses sight of the great permanent object which the minister of
Christ should have in view. Instead of seeking to " present every
man perfect in Christ Jesus," he desires instant appreciation of his
own performance. He sets a trap for the applause of his audience,

204 THE NORTH AMEBIC AN REVIEW,

and when that comes lie has his reward. He does not seek to per-
suade, but to please, or to exhilarate, or to startle, or to excite, and
so descends from the lofty position of the sacred orator to the low-
er level of the actor. He is not forbidden to do any of these things,
provided they be not in themselves irreverent or ridiculous, and
provided also they be made by him conducive to the highest in-
terests of his hearers. But he rests in the doing of them as itself
his success. Every true minister feels, as Chalmers has so eloquent-
ly illustrated in his sermon on " The Slender Influence of Taste in
Matters of Religion," that his hearers are in danger of mistaking
their appreciation of " the loveliness of the song " for their submis-
sion to the truth which it expresses. But that which is an inciden-
tal peril even to the sincerest preacher is made by the sensationalist
the deliberate object which he seeks to gain. It is to him, above
all things, indispensable that his " effort " be enjoyed, and the ulti-
mate issues are of small importance.

We have said all this is his deliberate purpose. There are men,
who are unconsciously carried away by the vividness of their im-
aginations, or their natural dramatic power to say things which pro-
duce what might be described as sensational effects, and yet it
would be unfair to call them sensationalists. Thus when White-
field, in depicting the danger of the blind man, did it so graphi-
cally that even the cold and phlegmatic Chesterfield was com-
pelled to relieve his feelings by crying out, " Good God ! he is
gone " — that was undoubtedly a sensational effect ; but it does not
follow that Whitefield was a sensationalist. The truth rather is
that, in that case, he had a sensational hearer, who came not to
be benefited by the discourse, but to enjoy the eloquence of the
speaker. It is, of course, possible for one unconsciously to overdo
that which is in itself perfectly legitimate, and every true preach-
er, who has any adequate conception of the sanctity of what
Spencer used to call '' that awful place the pulpit," will seek to
curb everything that would savor of a mere performance. But,
in fairness to every speaker, his motive must be allowed here, as
in other cases, to give its character to his action. When the an-
niversary orator at Bunker Hill, seeing the last survivor of the
Revolutionary fight rising in the midst of his address, thus apos-
trophized him, " Sit down, venerable man ! it is for us, the de-
scendants of that generation, to stand up before you ! " he did a
thing which, if it had been spontaneous, would have been truly as
eloquent as it was appropriate ; but, when the ancient warrior was

SENSATIONALISM IN THE PULPIT. 205

heard muttering to himself, " What does the man mean ? Why, he
told me to get up at that part of his speech," it was discovered that
it was all a trick which he had devised for the production of a fac-
titious effect, and that stamped it as sensational. So when subjects
are announced beforehand of such a character as the following :
" A Man getting out of a Ship " ; " How Jonah lost his Umbrel-
la"; "The Speckled Bird"; "A Little Man up a Tree"; "The
Run-away Knock," we can not but recognize in such advertisements
so many deliberate baits to catch a crowd, and it is impossible that
the sermons should not be constructed with a view to pander to the
multitudes when they came. All this is beginning at the wrong
end, and is a mistaking of the expectation of curious hearers for
that genuine acceptance which sooner or later always follows excel-
lence. But it is worse — it is a deliberate letting down of the great
aim of the Christian ministry, and makes the gathering of a large
assemblage the primary object of the preacher ; while the spiritual
instruction of the people is treated as secondary and subordinate.
We do not find fault with advertising the services. On the con-
trary, it might be very useful if the churches would combine to
furnish every Saturday morning, in the columns of the daily papers,
a complete directory of the places of worship in the city, with their
locations distinctly defined, and the hours of service carefully noted.
There would be no harm either in adding to each the pastor's name.
But this hunting for taking sermonic titles, much as the author of a
new romance cudgels his brain for a fancy name to it, is out of all
taste ; and we are glad to see that it is becoming less common
among us than it was a year or two ago. It always seems to us to
be a Hag of distress, which indicates that it is with the utmost dif-
ficulty that things can be kept afloat ; and those who indulge in it
are apt to enter into a rivalry with each other as to which shall out-
do his neighbor. Thus the subjects are chosen, not because the
minister feels that there is something existing among his hearers
that he can not keep silence about, or because there is something in
his own heart which is as " a burning fire shut up in his bones "
which he is weary with forbearing and he can not stay, but because
he wishes to outrival others who have gone into the same line with
himself. It is reported of Robert Hall that he declined attending
what were called " association meetings," at which, in the course of
the exercises, several ministers officiated before each other, saying,
" What is it, sir, but preaching for a hat ? " but sometimes, as we
have glanced down the column of religious advertisements (so

206 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

called), we have thought that the brethren have been advertising
for a hat ; and occasionally we have been reminded of the story
Lockhart tells concerning the minister of Lilliesleaf, who, on being
complimented by the father of Sir Walter Scott on having main-
tained his popularity as a preacher for two generations, made reply :
" Indeed, I sometimes think it's vera surprising. There's aye a talk
of this or that wonderfully gifted young man fresh f rae the col-
lege ; but, when I'm to be at the same occasion with any o' them, I
e'en mount the white horse o' the Revelation, and he dings them
a' ! " Alas, there it is ! the object is not to save souls, but to dis-
tance all competitors in the race for popularity ; and notoriety is
supposed to be the precursor of usefulness. It is a poor thing at the
best, but even at its best it is an effect and not a cause. The gar-
dener never concerns himself about the fragrance of his flower, but
he seeks to make the flower itself the best of its kind, knowing that
then the perfume will take care of itself. So let the minister strive
to secure the great end of preaching in the salvation of men, and
never trouble himself about the popular recognition of his work,
for that will always come where it is deserved. The crowd that
comes for an advertisement will go for a more attractive subject ;
but they who are drawn to a ministry because they are spiritually
fed by it will be seldom absent from their places, and will frequently
bring others with them.

But sensationalism connects itself with the character of the
effect produced as well as with the intention of the preacher to pro-
duce it. Everything shocking from its irreverence, or merely start-
ling in its character, which is out of harmony with the great design
of a discourse, and tends to detain attention upon itself to the ex-
clusion of that which ought to have been, and which, perhaps, in
other portions of his address really was the main purpose of the
preacher, must be accounted blameworthy. Thus, to take an illus-
tration from one of the grandest works of the great dramatist him-
self, it is impossible to acquit even Shakespeare from the charge of
sensationalism for the introduction of the grave-digging scene into
"Hamlet." It is out of harmony with the great purpose of the
production, which is to show how

.... the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

and brooding reflection lays an arrest on action. It is, besides, har-
rowing in its suggestions ; and the ill-timed mirth of the sexton is

SENSATIONALISM IN THE PULPIT. 207

not atoned for even by the moralizings of the hero ; while the
presence of the ghastly skull produces a physical hoiTor that does
not help, but hinder, the spiritual effect of the whole. We can
not read the tragedy without feeling that the teaching of the story
is marred by the introduction of an entirely extraneous and repul-
sive thing ; and that, however true to nature the representation is,
it is a dead fly in a very noble pot of ointment. In the estimation
of many doubtless it will be the best-remembered part of the poem,
and multitudes who have no glimmering of an idea of the lesson
which the author meant to teach in it, or who have been unmoved
by the noble passages in which it abounds, will greatly enjoy the
witticisms of the men at their hardening work. Now, some ser-
mons, otherwise excellent, are marred by similar incongruity. There
is something in them which does not lie in the line of the design
which they profess to have in view, but which has been brought in
because of the shock which its presence there will give. Who does
not know that the zest with which some preachers are listened to
springs not so much from the things said by them as from the fact
that such things are said in a church, in defiance of the sanctity of
the associations with which such a place is connected ? The same
expressions coming from men in other circumstances would provoke
no remark, but in a church they show that the preacher has risen
above conventionality, and so they commend him to a certain class
of hearers. The joke which would be little accounted of elsewhere
is greatly relished in the sanctuary, and the effect which it produces
remains, while other portions of the sermon which were in every
way unexceptionable are forgotten. The profanity of the oath
which is common on the street has a peculiar piquancy when it is
quoted, even if it be quoted only to be condemned, in the house of
God, and the gusto with which it was given will be commented on
when other things of great value are entirely lost sight of. We know,
indeed, that conventionality may be so cared for that power will be
destroyed, and we have heard fears expressed lest the pulpit should
die of dignity ; but that is no reason why it should be murdered by
irreverence. In order to escape the one extreme, it is not necessary
to run into the other ; and, to prevent an audience from going to
sleep, it is not absolutely essential to turn the sermon into a mid-
night directory. We would not reject an apt illustration which
would clinch a lesson, even if it should bring a smile to the coun-
tenance ; but we demur to the deliberate introduction of low comedy
into a discourse pronounced in a church. To our thinking, all that

208 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

comes under the category of " jesting which is not convenient " ;
and, if it be said that it is resorted to in order to bring an audience
out, we can only reply that we are not of those who believe that
the end sanctifies such means, and moreover that such means are
not needed in order to gain the end. Everything low, vulgar, or in
the least degree savoring of the profane, ought to be banished from
the pulpit. For, though we draw a distinction between the service
and the sermon, they are both alike a part of our homage to God.
Why does the preacher care to preach if it be not because preach-
ing is God's ordinance ? Why does the hearer care to hear if it be
not because of the reverence which he has for preaching as God's
way of saving them that believe ? The sermon is an offering to
God on the part of the preacher equally with the praise and prayer ;
and the hearing is an offering to God on the part of the worshiper
equally with the hymns and supplications ; and, if that were re-
membered by all, there would be less disposition to say smart things,
or to laugh at them when said. The associations of the place, too,
should count for something. Even if we do not believe in what
our Episcopal friends call consecration, " Nature herself " may teach
us that a certain propriety should be observed by us when we are in
a house of worship. Call it conventionality, if you please, still we
are entitled to ask what greater harm there is in maintaining it
there than there is in enforcing special rules at an evening party ?
And yet men who would be scrupulous to nicety in their regard to
the etiquette of dress and address in the latter case will laugh to
scorn all deference to recognized rules of decorum in the pulpit,
and make a merit of their rudeness. But they can not do so with-
out shockinor the more refined of their hearers and inflictinor an in-
jury upon themselves. They destroy their usefulness with all who
seek to be devout. But they blunt also their own finer instincts.
It makes no great matter whether the conventionality be in every
respect proper or not ; the mere existence of it suffices, and it is
one of the things in which a w^ise man, even if he differed from it,
would seek to become as " a Jew to the Jews." Few uphold the
justice of the game laws in the old country, yet the poacher com-
monly end ^ in becoming a good-for-nothing, for in breaking a bad
law he has lost his sense of the sanctity of law as such, and so is
ready for something worse. In the same way even if the conven-
tionality that puts a restraint around the pulpit were not in every
respect to be approved, the setting of it at defiance must break the
enamel of the preacher's reverence, and may end in eating it away

SENSATIONALISM IN THE PULPIT. 209

altogether. How much more likely is that to be the case when the
sentiment to which we refer is in the main a right one, sustained
and approved by Christian people generally !

But this prepares us for looking a little at the evils to which
sensationalism leads. One can see at a glance that it is hurtful to
the hearers. It not only depraves their tastes, but it blunts their
sensibilities. It has an effect upon them not unlike that produced
by highly-seasoned novels of the " blood-and-thunder " order on their
juvenile readers. It renders them largely impervious to the ordi-
nary presentation of truth. The pampered appetite disdains every-
thing that is not " gamey " ; and he

who peppers the highest is surest to please.

Besides, the exhilaration that is produced by the hearing of such
exciting things is apt to be mistaken by those who experience it
for real enjoyment of Christian ordinances ; and so under its in-
fluence they make professions which time only dishonors. They
have confounded the intoxication created in them by the gratifica-
tion of their perverted tastes with that totally different thing which
the apostle describes when he says, *' Be ye filled with the Spirit."
It is nothing to the purpose here to reply that the same thing
is done at the other end of the scale by those who are highly
aesthetic in their likings ; for that is only another form of the evil,
and not an extenuation of it. It makes little difference whether
intoxication be produced by the vulgar absinthe or the aristocratic
champagne ; the thing is always bad, and is not to be mistaken for
the enthusiasm of a sober man. And the misfortune is that, in the
case of those of whom we speak, a sensuous effect is regarded as a
spiritual result to the detriment both of the self-deceiver and of the
church at large.

But perhaps the most insidious danger is incurred by the preacher
himself. He is apt to think more of saying a " smart," a " telling,"
or a " taking " thing than of communicating the truth. In this way
he uses extravagant epithets, gives exaggerated descriptions, and
magnifies or distorts features for the sake of effect. Even so noble
a man as Thomas Guthrie once said, in regard to the preparation of
a sermon, " It is like the drop-scene in a theatre, and you must lay
on the color thick." But, with all deference to such an authority,
that advice is exceedingly pernicious. For he who consciously ex-
aggerates does at the same time blunt the edge of his conscience.
Every time he deviates from or adds to the real state of the case he
VOL. cxxvni. — NO. 267. 14

210 THE NORTH AMERICAN- REVIEW.

makes himself a worse man. Truth is the girdle of character, and
he who loosens that is on the way to looseness in other departments
of morality. He is on an inclined plane, and may some day pro-
duce the biggest sensation of his life by a terrible ^'asco. For the
temptation is to go on. His hearers become accustomed to the dose,
the appetite " grows by what it feeds on," and, in order to have the
effects which were at first produced, they crave for something
stronger. He seeks to meet that new demand just as he sought to
meet the first, and so it increases until the flippant has become the
irreverent, and the irreverent has become the profane, and the pro-
fane becomes the impure ; or until the odd has become the hereti-
cal, and the man who began with throwing aside conventionalities
ends by parting with the central verities of the gospel. We do not
aflSrm that all this has actually happened in any individual case,
but the drift and tendency of sensationalism are in that direction ;
and, in a day when some who are guilty of it are riding on the top
of the wave, it is proper to warn young preachers of the peril that
is incurred by entering on such a course.

It may seem, indeed, to offer a short and easy path to success ;
for it can not be denied that we are living in an age which appears
to crave for the sensational, but the yielding to it is always attended
with danger, as may be seen by looking at what has actually oc-
curred in other departments. There has been a call for it in worship,
and the answer has been given in that ritualism which has honey-
combed the Church of England ; but the peril has been revealed in
the perversions to the Church of Rome which have thereby been
caused. There has been a call for it in business, and the answer has
been furnished in those feverish speculations which have maddened
our Exchanges, while the danger has been made manifest in Black
Fridays, Glasgow Bank failures, and that general depression from
which we are only beginning to emerge. There has been a call for
it in politics, and the response has been made by the appearance of
a Beaconsfield conjurer on the one side of the Atlantic, while the
peril has been exposed by cipher dispatches on the other. Now,
when the same appeal is made to the pulpit, we may not flatter our-
selves that we can respond to it without similar danger. That which
in literature has made the difference between Walter Scott and
Ouida will make as wide a chasm in ^he pulpit between the true
minister of the word and the caterer to the cravings of the crowd.
Trustees of embarrassed churches may so far catch the infection of
our times as to look for a minister who will fill the pews by some

SENSATIONALISM IN THE PULPIT. 211

sndden rush, and bring up the revenue to a flowing surplus. But
it will be " lightly come, lightly go," and pastors should steadily re-
fuse to lead any such forlorn hope in that commercial spirit. There
is but one attraction that it is safe for a minister to use, and that
has not yet lost its power : " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me." Let him adhere to that, for in the end it
will prove sufficient. It may not bring the crowd so rapidly ; but it
will transform them as they come, and they will come to stay. But,
if they do not come, let him still keep to the lifting up of Him.
Let him not forget that, when the sensation-loving multitude sought
Ilim that they might see liis miracles, he declined to gratify their
curiosityj and gave them instead that deeply spiritual sermon which
drove them largely away. But it was with the winnowed men that
remained that he laid the foundations of his church. The call of
the age for the exciting is a temptation to be resisted, rather than
an influence to be yielded to, and if in resisting it the multitudes
should be offended, then let them be offended, for in that case the
discipline is only what they need. But they will not be offended,
for, wherever the gospel is faithfully and earnestly proclaimed, " the
common people hear it gladly." Let the ministers of Christ among
us, therefore, remain true to the scriptural ideal of their office as
designed not merely for the pleasing of men, but for their salvation
" through sanctitication of the Spirit and belief of the truth " ; let
them be loyal to the Master whose they are and whom they serve ;
let them preserve that reverent spirit which a belief in the inspira-
tion of the Book which they expound is fitted to produce within
them ; above all, let them follow fully the example of Him of whom
it was said, " He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be
heard in the street ; a bruised reed he shall not break, and the
smoking flax shall he not quench," and they will never be long with-
out eager and numerous hearers ; nay, they may succeed, by the
might of his gentleness and the power of his Spirit, in changing the
character of the age from that of spasmodic and erratic excitement
to that of steady, sure, and benevolent advancement.

William M. Tatloe.

VIII.

MEDIJIVAL FEENCH LITERATURE.

1. Ch. Aubertin, Histoire de la Langue et de la Litt6rature Fran^aise an

Moyen Age. 2 vols. 1 876-' 78.

2. L6on Gautier, Les Epopees Fran^aises. I. 1878.

3. M. Sepet, Le Drame Chretien au Moyen Age, 1878 ; Les Proplietes du

Christ, 1878.

4. Societe des Anciens Textes Frangais : Guillaume de Palerne, 1876 ; Les

Sept Sages de Rome, 1876 ; Miracles de Nostre Dame. I., II. 1876-'77 ;
Aiol, 1877.

The immense influence exerted on the rest of Europe during the
middle ages by the literature of France should entitle it, aside from
8Bsthetic considerations, to more careful attention than it has yet
received. Not only is its volume enormous (a proof of intellectual
activity such as it was), but several departments are fully repre-
sented in which the French mind has, from its modern manifesta-
tions, been supposed to be inferior to its neighbors, the Germans
and Spaniards — we mean the epic and the national drama. Finally,
certain favorable influences — the rapid and complete assimilation of
Roman culture, the early adoption of Christianity , and the perfection
of the feudal system — contributed to render the medisBval literature
of France the most splendid and varied of Europe. The causes
which have led to the neglect of this literature are those which have
affected the rest of Europe to a greater or less degree. The revival
of letters produced in no other country so profound a revolution in
literary taste, or led to such deep scorn of all that was mediaeval.
A reaction had, however, begun in France before the indiscriminat-
ing enthusiasm of the Romantic school had directed attention to
the early literature ; and two French scholars, Sainte-Pelaye and
Raynouard, devoted their lives to rendering accessible treasures
which only a radical change in taste could enable their countrymen
to enjoy. Unfortunately, the question of literary criticism became

MEDIEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE. 213

entangled at the outset with the religious questions involved in the
revival of mediicval studies, not so much as in Germany, perhaps,
but sufficient to render any impartial judgment impossible for a long
time, and to lead in turn to a reaction the effects of which are
now strongly felt. In other words, the mediaeval literature of
France has been exposed to the extreme criticism of two schools,
one cherishing for it a blind worship, not because it is national (its
truest title to reverence), but because it is Catholic, the other refus-
ing to see any good in a literature which is the exponent of a spirit
they fear and hate.

Fortunately, two causes have worked to modify these extreme
views and restore old French literature to the place it rightly claims
at the head of the mediaeval literature of Europe. One of these
causes is the linguistic interest awakened by the new methods intro-
duced into Romance philology by Friedrich Dicz, and continued in
France with such brilliant success by Caston Paris, and which has
caused the early literature to be carefully edited and critically ex-
amined in the interest of philology alone. Thus a common meeting
place for both parties was rendered possible. The second cause is
the new method of study in literary history in which prime impor-
tance is laid not upon oBsthetic considerations, but upon the histori-
cal development of a literature. From this standpoint the begin-
nings of a literature, formerly passed over as barbarous, assume an
importance not attained by much that is aesthetically superior.

The vast extent of the subject has as yet prevented any strict
application of this method to mediaeval French literature as a whole,
and the lack of a compendious history of this period has long been
felt, and has contributed in no slight degree to the ignorance of the
subject.* M. Aubertin has therefore laid the general reader as well
as the scholar under great obligations by his recently completed
history, which, with certain restrictions, we do not hesitate to pro-
nounce admirable, f The author has patiently and skillfully con-
sulted the most recent works (not often enough those published out
of France) on the subject, and compiled a work which, while it lays

* There are two very unsatisfactory German compends of mediaeval French litera-
ture : the first " Geschichte der altfranzosischen National-Literatur," von J. L. Ideler,
Berlin, 1842, is a dry bibliographical manual; the second, "Geschichte der franzo-
eischcn Literatur im Mittelalter," von Dr. H. Semmig, Leipzig, 1862, is incomplete and
unreliable.

f Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature Fran9aise au Moyen Age d'apr^s les
Travaux les Plus Recents, par M. Charles Aubertin, Paris, Belin, 1876-"78, 2 vols.
Svo, vol. i., viii.-582 ; vol. ii. 685.

214 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

little claim to original research and independence of opinion, is
valuable as a digest of the results of the best scholarship in this
field. At the same time M. Aubertin has known how to give his
book the appearance and attraction of an original work, and has
accomplished, with certain limitations, the object he proposes in his
preface : '' Mon ambition est qu'en sortant de la lecture de cet ou-
vrage on emporte non pas un aper9u, une idee vague et superficielle,
mais une connaissance intime et penetrante de notre ancienne littera-
ture et des nombreux travaux que I'etude de nos origines litt6raires
a sus cites." In addition to great care and industry in the study of
his sources, he has brought to his task skill in the arrangement of
his material and sobriety of judgment in the critical portions of his
labor. The faults of M. Aubertin's work are a multitude of minor
errors of fact very difficult to avoid in view of the immense mass of
material to be examined and collated, and some errors of judgment
in the due proportion of his matter and its aesthetic valuation.*
We will mention briefly some faults of the second class which affect
more particularly the general reader. The author devotes almost
everywhere too much space to the discussion of the origins of the
literature and too little to the literature itself. The general reader
does not need to read an entire chapter on the debris of the ancient
tragedy at the beginning of the middle ages in order to learn what
the author states at the outstart, that " no living germ could spring
from this debris.'^'* The Epopee is treated with unwarrantable brev-
ity, but one chapter of thirty-two pages is devoted to the chansons
de geste and only two are analyzed at some length, the " Chanson
de Roland " and " Raoul de Cambrai," which represent but two of
the five great cycles adopted by Gautier in the work to be men-
tioned later. The same remarks apply to the author's treatment of
the romances of the Round Table, those belonging to the ancient
cycle and the romans d^aventures to which we shall return d propos
of " Guillaume de Paleme."

To conclude, the weakest part of the work is the introduction
on the origin of the language and the treatment of the chansons de
geste ; the best the pages devoted to the drama in the first volume,
and 4n the second to the prose writers of the twelfth to the sixteenth
century, especially the second section, devoted to the orators.

Fortunately, the weakest part of Aubertin's book, his treatment

* We advise the student who uses Aubertin to consult the careful review of the
first volume by Gaston Paris in the " Romania," No. 23, pp. 454-466.

' MEDIEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE, 215

of the chansons de geste, is supplemented and completed in the
fullest manner by Gautier's masterly work.* The author represents
the most extreme Ultramontane school in literature. Everything
about his work, to the very printer, is Catholic, and the " indulgent
reader " whom the author has in view is indicated by the w^ords in
the preface to the second edition : " S'il est chretien et Fran9ais, il
n'accueillcra pas sans quelque sympathie un livre consciencieux et
qui a did surtout inspire par Tamour de I'^figlise et de la France."
AVe venture to predict that the author's circle of readers will be
larger than he imagined, and many not embraced in the above cate-
gory will welcome with delight a work which, when completed, will
be a monument of profound scholarship and ardent enthusiasm.

In 18G5 M. Gautier published three volumes of the first edition
(it was never completed), the success of which was immediate and
great. It was three times crowned by the French Academy, receiv-
ing the great Gobert prize in 1868, and the edition was soon ex-
hausted. Not all the author's theories, however, were accepted by
the learned world, and the w^ork was exposed to the severe and
intelligent criticisms of such scholars as Karl Bartsch (" Revue Cri-
tique," 1800, No. 5:^) and Paul Meyer (" Recherches sur T^popee
Franyaise," Paris, 1807), who rectified many of Gautier's errors.
Moreover, since the publication of the first edition several works
have appeared in France which have made an epoch in the study of
its early literature; w^e need only mention the "Vie de Saint-
Alexis," Paris, 1872, in the introduction to which Gaston Paris
formulated (for the first time in France) the principles of textual
criticism which have made a veritable revolution in this field.

In preparing, then, a second edition of his work, M. Gautier was
able to avail himself of a large mass of new material, and was
obliged, in order to keep abreast of the immense advance in schol-
arship, to entirely rewrite his former work. He has performed this
difficult part of his task in the most exemplary manner, rectifying
his minor errors and modifying his theories, so that the work before
us is, to all intents and purposes, a new one. The work has growTi
in the process, and when completed will consist of six volumes,
their contents disposed as follows : the first and second will be
devoted to the origin, form, and vicissitudes of the chansons de
geste in France and abroad ; the third to the analysis of the chan-

* Les 6pop6es Fran9aise3. ^tude sur les Origines et I'Histoire de la Litt^rature
nationale, par L6on Gautier. Seconde Edition, entierement refondue. Paris :
Soci6t6 Gen6rale de Libraire Catholiquc. ISYS. Vol. I. 8vo, pp. xii.-661.

216 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

sons de geste of the Cycle of the King (those relating more closely
to Charlemagne himself), the fourth and part of the fifth to the
Cycle of William of Orange ; part of the fifth to the Provincial
Gestes ; and the sixth to the Cycles of Doon de Mayence and the
Crusades.

The first volume may be considered complete in itself, and is of
value, not merely to those interested in the chansons de geste, but
to all students of mediaeval French literature. It is principally
concerned with the origin, poetical form, refacciamenti, and style
of the c/tansons de geste. The discussion of these topics involves
a number of other important questions, which are treated in extenso
by the author. The principal are : the age of the chronicle attrib-
uted to Turpin, the MSS. of the chansons de geste and the various
modes of editing them, and an exhaustive treatise on early French
versification in general, and that of the chansons de geste in particu-
lar. The most important theories in regard to the subject treated
in the first volume are as follows : The French epic was born to-
ward the ninth century, when the Gallic, Latin, and Frankish na-
tions were no longer clearly separated, and when from their fusion
a new nationality had arisen to which the name " Romance " must
be applied, or, in the words of Gaston Paris, " the French epic is
the German spirit in a Romance form." The epic was preceded by
certain popular songs which were lyrical and narrative at the same
time. These cantiUnes were sometimes the source of the epic,
which, however, in many cases had its rise in oral tradition. The
theory that there was between tradition and the epic an interme-
diate link in the shape of Latin chronicles (such as the Chronicle of
Turpin) is incorrect. The date of the chronicle falsely ascribed to
Turpin is the beginning of the twelfth century and posterior to the
^rly chansons de geste, some of which the writer of the chronicle
must have used. Finally, the epic is essentially French, and the
claim of Provence to an extensive epical literature must be denied.

In conclusion, the author has produced a work of great scien-
tific value and popular interest, which can not but give a powerful
impetus to the study of a period and subject so dear to the author's
heart, and to which he has devoted his life with the most intense
enthusiasm.

The extent of the subject of Gautier's work may be inferred
from the statement he makes on page 223 (note) that about one
hundred chansons de geste have come down to us, most of them
from the twelfth century ; forty-seven of these have been published

MEDIAEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE. 217

in extensOy and ten or eleven in extracts. It will be seen that not
quite half have been published, and that a wide field is still left for
I he editor and scholar. One of those most recently published,
" Aiol," presents many features of interest.* The original poem,
written in French and in verse of ten syllables, about the middle of
the twelfth century, was made over at the beginning of the next
century by a Picard poet who employed the Alexandrine verse.
The change in metre takes place in about the middle of the poem,
and is accompanied by a very noticeable change in the character of
the narration. The Alexandrine verse follows the usual rules of
mediajval French versification : the ten-syllable verse is noteworthy
for having the caesura at the sixth instead of at the fourth syllable.
This caesura, heretofore supposed to be peculiar to Proven5al, is
now shown to be French also. Another peculiarity of the ten-syl-
lable verse in " Aiol " is that the cajsura is always after the sixth
syllable, but in a large number of verses the second hemistich be-
gins with the last mute syllable of the preceding word, which
counts as an accented syllable. The poem rests on an historic basis,
and with !£lie de Saint-Gille constitute a little cycle by themselves.
Til the thirteenth century, however, the tendency was to include the
minor separate ycstes in one of the three great ones (the gestes of
the King, of Doon de Mayence, and of Garin de Monglane), and
our poem was accordingly referred to the last named.

The subject of the poem is exploits of Aiol, son of Avisse, sister
of Louis, son of Charlemagne, and Elie, who has been unjustly
driven from France by the intrigues of the traitor Makavie of
Lausanne.

This poem enjoyed unusual popularity abroad, imitations being
found in the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain. It has been very dif-
ferently judged by different scholars, some deeming it unworthy of
notice, and others, among them Gautier, not hesitating to call it a
fine poem, and one which can occupy one of the most honorable
positions among the monuments of mediaeval literature.

The roman cPaventiires is not considered by Gautier as epic in
its nature, and is therefore excluded from his work as well as the
romances of the Round Table and those belonging to the Cycle of
Rome. Aubertin treats them very insufficiently, not laying enough
stress on their literary value or their importance for the history of

* Aiol, Chanson de Geste, publiee d'apres le MS. Unique de Paris, par Jacques
Normand et Gaston Raymond. Paris, ISYV. (Societe des Anciens Textes Fran-
^ais.) 8vo, pp. lxvii.-350.

218 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

culture. Of especial value from the latter standpoint is " Guillaume
de Palerne," * a roman d'^aventures, and also interesting from being
the original of an English version composed about 1350 and edited
by Sir F. Madden for the Roxburghe Club, and again in 1867 by
W. W. Skeat in the first volume of the " Extra Series of the Early
English Text." Besides the English version there is a prose ver-
sion in French which has passed through several editions, and an
analysis in the " Nouvelle Biblioth^que des Romans," that final
resting-place of mediseval romances.

The hero Guillaume is the son of a King of Sicily and of the
daughter of the Emperor of Greece. A perfidious uncle plans his
destruction, but the child is carried off one day by a were-wolf who
bears him to its den near Rome. The wolf, we learn, is the son of
the King of Spain, turned into a beast by his mother-in-law to assure
the throne to her oAvn son. Guillaume is found in the forest by a
shepherd who brings him up until one day the Emperor of Rome,
having lost his way in a forest, meets him, takes him to his court
and makes him the page of his daughter, the fair Melior. Guil-
laume is knighted and defeats the Duke of Saxony, who has declared
war against the emperor. After this the Emperor of Greece de-
mands the hand of Melior, who has long loved Guillaume. The
lovers flee, disguised in the skins of bears. The wolf accompanies
them and assists their flight. They all make their way to Sicily,
where, after many complicated adventures, the plot is unraveled,
the wolf is restored to his original shape, Guillaume becomes King
of Sicily, marries Melior and succeeds her father, the wolf becoming
later King of Spain. The influence of the Orient is felt not merely
in the enchantment of the prince, but in the exaggerated tone of
gallantry that reigned at the period the work was composed, the
end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Entirely Oriental is the next work we shall mention, two versions
of the famous " Seven Wise Masters." f Both versions are in prose:
the first is the old French poem published by Keller in 1836, un-
rhymed and not following exactly the original ; the second is a
reprint of the French translation (published at Geneva in 1492) of
the Latin version known as the " Historia Septem Sapientum," here-

* Guillaume de Palerne, public d'apr^s le Manuscrit de la Biblioth^que de 1' Arse-
nal Ik Paris, par H. Michelant. Paris, 1876. (Societ6 des Anciens Textes rran9ais.)
8vo, pp. xxii.-280.

f Deux Redactions du Roman des Sept Sages de Rome, publiees par Gaston Paris.
Paris, 1876. (Soci^te des Anciens Textes Fran9ais.) 8vo, pp. xliii.-217.

MEDIEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE. 219

tofore considered the source of most of the European versions. The
editor does not share this opinion, and shows very clearly in the
preface that the Latin work is only a translation, with some changes,
of a French original from which is derived a group represented by
some dozen MSS., one of which, B. N., No. 2,137, has been partly
published by Leroux de Lincy (in " Essai sur les Fables Indiennes,"
par A. Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Paris, 1838). The Latin work
is very rare, and the French translation here reprinted will replace
it very conveniently for scholars. The interest attaching to the
" Seven Wise Masters " is not entirely a thing of the past, for the
work is still popular as a whole in some parts of Europe, and many
of the individual stories still entertain crowds of listeners in Italy.

We have to mention very briefly in conclusion three works re-
lating to the mcdia3val drama.* The first of M. Sepet's works is a
popular account of the mediieval drama, contained in a series of
articles published in various periodicals. The author gives a clear
and interesting account of the origin and development of the rnys-
tdre from the liturgy of the Church, and shows how the Renaissance
prevented it from being transformed into the modwn national dra-
ma, as in Spain and England. He also gives examples of religious
dramas belonging to the cycles of Christmas and Easter, and a
sketch of a dramatic representation at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury. The second work is strictly technical, its object being " to
show how a sermon on the Nativity, which formed in a large num-
ber of dioceses durinjx the middle a^res one of the lessons for Christ-
mas, was transfonned into a liturgical mysthre, then into a semi-
liturgical nii/sth'C, performed both within and without the Church,
and finally became an integral part of the great dramatic cycle of
the fifteenth century." The author's profound scholarship and pa-
tient research are everywhere apparent in this valuable work.

The remarkable series of plays entitled " Miracles de Nostre
Dame " represent the highest aesthetic point reached by the mediae-
val drama, and the most interesting stage of its development as far
as the possibility of a national drama based on the mysthres is con-
cerned. The forty miracles of the MS. will be contained in six
volumes, a seventh will give the necessary notes and the glossary.

* Le Drame Chretien au Moyen Age, par M. Sepet, Paris, 18V8. Les Pro-
phfetes du Christ. Etude sur les Origines du Theatre au Moyen Age, par M. Sepet,
Paris, 1878. Miracles de Nostre Dame par Personnages publics d'apr^s le MS. de
la Biblioth^que Nationale, par Gaston Paris et Ulysse Robert. I., II. Paris, 1876-
'77. (Soci6t6 des Ancicus Textes rran9ais.)

220 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

These plays early attracted the attention of scholars, and some fif-
teen have been published at different times. The MS. is of the
beginning of the fifteenth century, and the plays were probably
performed by some of the religious and literary confreries so com-
mon in the north of France in the thirteenth century. Some of the
plays are preceded by short sermons, and terminated by a poem
(called serventoys, from the Provenyal form), one of which is said
to have been crowned at the Puy, or assemblage where the plays
were performed.

From the above brief review of some recent works it will be
seen that the interest in mediaeval French literature is constantly
increasing, and rapidly losing a dilettante character. An excellent
history of the literature of this period and the publications of the
Societe des Anciens Textes Fran^ais will aid in making a larger
circle acquainted with the remarkable manifestations of French
genius in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

T. F. Ceane.

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222 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

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224 TEE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

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No. 268.

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ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE.

1879.

is^ORTH america:n^ review.

MARCH, 1879.

I. Ought the Negro to be Disfkanchised ? Ought

HB TO have been ENFRANCHISED? . . . 225

By James G. Blaine,

United States Senator from Maine.

L. Q. C. Lamar,

United States Senator from Mississippi.

Wade Hampton,

Governor of South Carolina.

General James A. Garfield,

Member of Congress from Ohio.

Alexander H. Stephens,

Member of Congret^s from Georgia.

Wendell Phillips.
Montgomery Blair.
Thomas A. Hendricks.

n. The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards. By Pro-
fessor George P. Fisher, D. D., of Yale College . 284

m. The Indian Problem. By General Nelson A. Miles,

U. S. A .304

IV. Cryptography in Politics. By John R. G. Hassard. 315

V. Russian Novels and Novelists of the Day : The
Diary of a Sportsman, and other Novels ; Smoke : a
Novel ; Virgin Soil : a Novel ; Childhood and Youth ;
War and Peace ; Anna Karenina : a Novel. By S.
E. Shevitch ...... 326

Publications Received . . . • 335

The Editor disclaims responsibility for the opinions
of contributors, whether their articles are signed or
anonymous.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCLXVIII.

MARCH, 1879.

OUGHT THE NEGRO TO BE DISFRANCHISED!
OUGHT HE TO HAVE BEEN ENFRANCHISED I

Jaxes O. Blaine. James A. Garfield. Montgomeey Blaie.

L. Q. C. Lahar. Alexandeb H. Stkpuens. Thomas A. Hendbicks.

Wadb Uampton. Wendell Phillips. Conclusion— James G. Blaine.

Mb. BLAINE.

These questions have lately been asked by many who have been
distinguished as the special champions of the negro's rights ; by
many who have devoted their lives to redressing the negro's wrongs.
The questions owe their origin not to any cooling of philanthropic
interest, not to any novel or radical views about universal suffrage,
but to the fact that, in the judgment of many of those hitherto ac-
counted wisest, negro suffrage has failed to attain the ends hoped
for when the franchise was conferred ; failed as a means of more
completely securing the negro's civil rights ; failed to bring him
the consideration which generally attaches to power ; failed, indeed,
to achieve anything except to increase the political weight and in-
fluence of those against whom, and in spite of whom, his enfranchise-
ment was secured.

Those who have reached this conclusion, and those who are tend-
ing toward it, argue that the important franchise was prematurely
bestowed on the negro ; that its possession necessarily places him
VOL. cxxvni. — NO. 268. 15

226 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

in inharmonious relations with the white race ; that the excitement
incident to its free enjoyment hinders him from progress in the
rudimentary and essential branches of education ; that his advance
in material wealth is thus delayed and obstructed ; and that obsta-
cles, which would not otherwise exist, are continually accumulat-
ing in his path — rendering his progress impossible and his oppression
inevitable. In other words, that suffrage in the hands of the negro
is a challenge to the white race for a contest in which he is sure to
be overmatched ; and that the withdrawal of the franchise would
remove all conflict, restore kindly relations between the races, place
the whites on their proper and honorable responsibility, and assure
to each race the largest prosperity attainable under a Government
where both are compelled to live.

The class of men whose views are thus hastily summarized do
not contemplate the withdrawal of the suffrage from the negro
without a corresponding reduction in the representation in Congress
of the States where the negro is a large factor in the apportionment.
And yet it is quite probable that they have not given thought to
the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of compassing that end.
Under the Constitution, as it is now construed, the diminution of
representative strength could only result from the States passing
such laws as would disfranchise the negro by some educational or
property test, as it is forbidden by the fifteenth amendment to dis-
franchise him on account of his race. But no Southern State will
do this, and for two reasons : first, they will in no event consent to
a reduction of representative strength ; and, second, they could not
make any disfranchisement of the negro that would not at the same
time disfranchise an immense number of whites.

Quite another class — mostly resident in the South, but with
numerous sympathizers in the North — would be glad to have the
negro disfranchised on totally different grounds. Born and reared
with the belief that the negro is inferior to the white man in every-
thing, it is hard for the class who were masters at the South to
endure any phase or form of equality on the part of the negro.
Instinct governs reason, and with the mass of Southern people the
aversion to equality is instinctive and ineradicable. The general
conclusion with this class would be to deprive the negro of voting
if it could be done without impairing the representation of their
States, but not to make any move in that direction so long as dimin-
ished power in Congress is the constitutional and logical result of
a denial or abridgment of suffrage. In the mean while, seeing no

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 227

mode of legally or equitably depriving the negro of his suffrage
except with unwelcome penalty to themselves, the Southern States
as a whole — differing in degree but the same in effect — have striven
to achieve by indirect and unlawful means what they can not achieve
directly and lawfully. They have so far as possible made negro
suffrage of none effect. They have done this against law and
against justice.

Having stated the position of both classes on this question, I
venture now to give my own views in a series of statements in
which I shall endeavor to embody both argument and conclu-
sion :

First. The two classes I have named, contemplating the possible
or desirable disfranchisement of the negro from entirely different
standpoints, and with entirely different aims, are both and equally
in the wrong. The first is radically in error in supposing that a
disfranchisement of the negro would put him in the way of any
development or progress that would in time fit him for the suffrage.
lie would instead grow more and more unfit for it every day from
the time the first backward step should be taken, and he would
relapse, if not into actual chattel slavery, yet into such a dependent
and defenseless condition as would result in only another form of
servitude. For the ballot to-day, imperfectly enjoyed as it is by
the negro, its freedom unjustly and illegally curtailed, its inde-
pendence ruthlessly marred, its purity defiled, is withal and after
all the strong shield the race has against a form of servitude which
would have all the cruelty and none of the alleviations of the old
slave system, whose destruction carried with it the shedding of so
much innocent blood.

— The second class is wrong in anticipating even the remote pos-
sibility of securing the legal disfranchisement of the negro without
a reduction of representation. Both sides have fenced for position
on this question. But for the clause regulating representation in
the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution we should to-day
have the South wholly under the control, and legally under the con-
trol, of those who rebelled against the Union and sought to erect
the Confederate Government — enjoying full representation by rea-
son of the negroes being counted in the apportionment without a
pretense of suffrage being conceded to the race. The Fourteenth
Amendment was designed to prevent this, and, if it does not succeed
in preventing it, it is because of evasion and violation of its express
provisions and of its clear intent. Those who erected the Confed-

228 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

erate Government may be in exclusive possession of power through-
out the South, but they are not so fairly and legally ; and they will
not be permitted to continue in the enjoyment of political power
unjustly seized — and seized in derogation and in defiance of the
rights not merely of the negro but of the whites in all other sections
of the country. Injustice cannot stand before exposure and argu-
ment and the force of public opinion ; and no more severe weapons
of defense will be required against the wrong which now afflicts the
South and is a scandal to the whole country.

Second. But, while discussing the question of the disfranchise-
ment of the negro, and settling its justice or expediency according to
our discretion, it may be worth while to look at its impracticability,
or, to state it still more strongly, its impossibility. Logicians attach
weight to arguments drawn ah inconvenienti. Arguments must be
still more cogent, and conclusions still more decisive, when drawn ah
impossihili. The negro is secure against disfranchisement by two
constitutional amendments, and he can not be remanded to the non-
voting class until both these amendments are annulled. And these
amendments can not be annulled until two thirds of the Senate and
two thirds of the House of Representatives of the United States
shall propose, and a majority in the Legislatures or conventions of
twenty-nine States shall by affirmative vote approve, the annulment.
In other words, the negro can not be disfranchised so long as one
vote more than one third in the United States Senate, or one vote
more than one third in the House of Representatives, shall be re-
corded against it ; and if these securities and safeguards should
give way, then the disfranchisement could not be effected so long
as a majority in one branch in the Legislatures of only ten States
should refuse to assent to it, and refuse to assent to a convention to
which it might be referred. No human right on this continent is
more completely guaranteed than the right against disfranchisement
on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, as em-
bodied in the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.

Third, In enforcement and elucidation of my second point, it is of
interest to observe the rapid advance and development of popular
sentiment in regard to the rights of the negro as expressed in the
last three amendments to the Constitution of the United States. In
1865 Congress submitted the Thirteenth Amendment, which merely
gave the negro freedom, without suffrage, civil rights, or citizen-
ship. In 1866 the Fourteenth Amendment was submitted, declaring

NEORO SUFFRAGE. 229

the negro to be a citizen, but not forbidding the States to withhold
suffrage from hira — yet inducing them to grant it by the provision
that representation in Congress should be reduced in proportion to
the exclusion of male citizens twenty-one years of age from the
right to vote, except for rebellion or other crime. In 1869 the
decisive step was taken of declaring that ''the right of citizens of
the United States to vote shall not be abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condi-
tion of servitude." A most important provision in this amendment
is the inhibition upon the "United States " as well as upon "any
State " ; for it would not be among the impossible results of a
great political revolution, resting on prejudice and grasping for
power, that, in the absence of this express negation, the United
States might assume or usurp the right to deprive the negro of
suffrage, and then the States would not be subjected to the forfeit-
ure of representation provided in the Fourteenth Amendment as the
result of the denial or abridgment of suffrage by State authority.
— In this stately progresruon of organic enactments the will of a
great people is embodied, and its reversal would be one of those
revolutions which would convulse social order and endanger the au-
thority of law. There will be no step backward, but under the
provision which specifically confers on Congress the power to en-
force each amendment by " appropriate legislation " there will be
applied, from time to time, fitfully perhaps and yet certainly, the
restraining and correcting edicts of national authority.

Fourth. As I have already hinted, there will be no attempt made in
the Southern States to disfranchise the negro by any of those meth-
ods which would still be within the power of the State. There is
no Southern State that would dare venture on an educational quali-
fication, because by the last census there were more than one million
white persons over fifteen years of age, in the States lately slave-
holding, who could not read a word, and a still larger number who
could not write their names. There was, of course, a still greater
number of negroes of the same ages who could not read or write ;
but, in the nine years that have intervened since the census was
taken, there has been a much greater advance in the education of
the negroes than in the education of the poor whites of the South ;
and to-day on an educational qualification it is quite probable that,
while the proportion would be in favor of the whites, the absolute
exclusion of the whites in some of the States would be nearly as
great as that of the negroes. Kor would a property test operate

230 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

with any greater advantage to the whites. The slave States always
had a large class of very poor and entirely uneducated whites, and
any qualification of property that would seriously diminish the
negro vote would also cut off a very large number of whites from
the suffrage.

Thus far I have directed my argument to the first question pro-
pounded, " Ought the negro to be disfranchised ? " The second
interrogatory, " Ought he to have been enfranchised ? " is not prac-
tical but speculative ; and yet, unless it can be answered with con-
fidence in the affirmative, the moral tenure of his suffrage is weak-
ened, and, as a consequence, his legal right to enjoy it is impaired.
For myself I answer the second question in the aflarmative, with as
little hesitation as I answered the first in the negative. And, if the
question were again submitted to the judgment of Congress, I would
vote for suffrage in the light of experience with more confidence
than I voted for it in the light of an experiment. Had the fran-
chise not been bestowed upon the negro as his shield and weapon
of defense, the demand upon the General Government to interfere
for his protection would have been constant and irritating and em-
barrassing. Great complaint has been made for years past of the
Government's interference, simply to secure to the colored citizen
his plainest constitutional right. But this intervention has been
trifling compared to that which would have been required if we
had not given suffrage to the negro. In the Reconstruction experi-
ments under President Johnson's plan, before the negro was enfran-
chised, it was clearly foreshadowed that he was to be dealt with as
one having no rights except such as the whites should choose to
grant. The negro was to work according to labor laws ; freedom
of movement and transit was to be denied him by the operation of
vagrant laws ; liberty to sell his time and his skill at their market
value was to be restrained by apprentice laws ; and the slavery that
was abolished by the Constitution of a nation was to be revived by
the enactment of a State. To counteract these and all like efforts
at reenslavement, the national authority would have been constantly
invoked ; interference in the most positive and peremptory manner
would have been demanded, and angry conflict and possibly resist-
ance to law would have resulted. The one sure mode to remand
the States that rebelled against the Union to their autonomy was
to give suffrage to the negro ; and that autonomy will be complete,
absolute and unquestioned whenever the rights that are guaranteed
by the Constitution of the Republic shall be enjoyed in every Statfe

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 231

— as the administration of justice was assured in Magna Charta
— " promptly and without delay ; freely and without sale ; com-
pletely and without denial."

James G. Blaine.

Mr. LAMAR.

The precision with which Mr. Blaine states his premises and
the unimpassioned spirit in which he draws his conclusions render
tlic discussion which he proposes both possible and profitable. His
statement itself deprives the issue of nearly all its difficulty and
danger. He lays down with force and clearness his propositions :

1. That the disfranchisement of the negro is a political impossi-
bility under any circumstances short of revolution.

2. That the ballot in the hands of the negro, however its exer-
cise may have been embarrassed and diminished by what he con-
siders, erroneously, a general Southern policy, has been to that race
a means of defense and an element of progress.

I agree to both propositions. In all my experience of Southern
opinion I know no Southern man of influence or consideration who
believes that the disfranchisement of the negro on account of race,
color, or fonner condition of servitude, is a political possibility. I
am not now discussing the propriety or wisdom of universal suf-
frage, or whether in the interests of wise, safe, and orderly govern-
ment all suffrage ought not to be qualified. What I mean to say
is, that universal suffrage being given as the condition of our politi-
cal life, the negro once made a citizen cannot be placed under any
other condition. And in this connection it may surprise some of
the readers of this discussion to learn that in 1869 the white peo-
ple of Mississippi unanimously voted at the polls in favor of rati-
fying the enfranchising amendment for which Mr. Blaine voted in
Congress — believing, as they did, that when once the negro was
made a free man, a property-holder, and a tax-payer, he could not
be excluded from the remaining privilege and duty of a citizen, the
right and obligation to vote. And I think I can safely say for
that people what Mr. Blaine says for himself, that, if the question
were again submitted to their judgment, they " would vote for
negro suffrage in the light of experience with more confidence than
they voted for it in the light of an experiment."

I concur also in the second proposition, that the ballot has been
in the hands of the negro both a defense and an education ; and I

232 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

am glad to find this important truth recognized so fully by Mr.
Blaine. We might possibly differ as to the extent to which the
defense was needed, or as to the progress which has been made in
the education. But enough would remain for substantial agreement.
There can be no doubt that in the unaccustomed relation into which
the white and colored people of the South were suddenly forced,
there would have been a natural tendency on the part of the former
masters, still in possession of the land and of the intelligence of the
country, and of its legislative power, to use an almost absolute au-
thority and to develop the new freedman according to their own idea
of what was good for him. This would have resulted in a race dis-
tinction, with such incidents of the old system as would have dis-
contented the negro and dissatisfied the general opinion and senti-
ment of the country. If slavery was to be abolished, it must, I
think, be admitted that there could be nothing short of complete
abolition, free from any of the affinities of slavery ; and this would
not have been effected so long as there existed any inequality be-
fore the law. The ballot was, therefore, a protection of the negro
against any such condition, and enabled him to force his interests
upon the legislative consideration of the South.

What I do not think Mr. Blaine fullv realizes, or makes due
allowance for, is that this sudden transformation, social and political,
would necessarily produce some jar in its practical operation, and
that its successful working could be effected only by experienced
and conscientious men acting on both sides with good sense and
good temper. Conquest on either side only complicated the prob-
lem. Its only solution was a sagacious and kindly cooperation of
all the social forces. The vote in the hands of the negro should
have been genuinely " a defense," not a weapon of attack.

The proper use of this defensive power, and its growth into a
means of wholesome and positive influence upon the character and
interests of the country, could only be attained by the education of
the negro. And I agree fully with Mr. Blaine that his practical
use of the ballot was an important part of that education. I am
willing to accept the present condition of the South as the result of
that practical education. Will he ? I say that the negro has been
using this defense for ten years, that in this time hundreds of thou-
sands of negroes, born free, have grown to manhood under the ex-
perience of a political life as open to them as to the old, white
governing race ; and Mr. Blaine himself asserts that education has
been more generally diffused among the youth of the colored race

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 233

than among the poorer classes of the whites — whether truly or erro-
neously we will not here discuss — and the result is, that throughout
the South the races vote together ; that they have learned where
their mutual interest lies ; and that, whom God has joined, all the
politicians have failed to keep asunder.

I have his essay before me. He denies that this is a legitimate
result. He insists that the facts prove that the negro vote has been
cheated by fraud or defeated by force, and that the present condi-
tion of Southern politics is an unnatural result. I am willing to
meet this issue on his oAvn principles. I will indulge in neither in-
vective nor denunciation. I will simply take the late government
of South Carolina or of Louisiana, or of other States under similar
rule, and describe it in language that Mr. Blaine may himself select.
When he has told its history I will ask him whether he would will-
ingly, as a patriotic American, desire to see his own State, or any
other of the free States, reduced to such a level? I am not afraid
of his answer, or that of any man who has been bred under the tra-
ditions of a virtuous civilization.

Then I will say to him : This, it is true, is a painful result ; but,
when you put the ballot in the hands of an ignorant negro majority
as a means of education and progress, you must be patient while
they learn their lesson. AVe of the South have borne all this, be-
cause we knew that the reaction must come. It has come. The
results which you see to be so bad the negro has seen also. He has
come back to us with the same blind impulse with which a few years
ago he fled from us. He may be as ignorant a Democrat as he was
an ignorant Republican, but years must yet pass before the ballot
will have educated him fully into self-reliant, temperate citizenship ;
and what we of the South have borne, our friends of the North
must bear with us, until the negro has become what we both want
to make him. This is part of his education. By a system, not one
whit less a system of force or of fraud than that alleged to exist
now, he was taken away from his natural leaders at the South, and
held to a compact Republican vote. Granting — which I do not
grant — that the present methods are as bad as those then applied,
the fault lies in the character of the vote. It is not educated to free
action, and we must educate it to what it ought to be. Take the-'
history of the race, as stated by Mr. Blaine himself, and is there not
progress, astonishing progress, when the material with which we are
dealing is considered ? Force and fraud have been freely charged.
Suppose it granted. Could any one expect, did any one expect, that

234 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

such a tremendous political and social change — the sudden clothing
of four million slaves with suffrage and with overruling political
power — could be made without violent disturbance and disorder?
Had any such change ever been made in any free State without con-
vulsion ? Was it to be expected that, when the capital and character
of a State were placed at the mercy of a numerical majority of igno-
rant and poverty-stricken voters, it would present a model of peace
and order ?

But all this while the ballot has been educating the negro. He
has learned that he was a power between Republican and Demo-
crat. He is now learning rapidly that at the South he is a power
between Democrat and Democrat, and in the late election he made
that power felt in the result. I would have preferred a much less
costly tuition ; but, such as it is, it has been paid for, and, if Mr.
Blaine will patiently trust his own theory, he will find the ballot in
the hands of the negro the best defense and the best educator.
But, as the South has been patient, so must he be patient. As the
South has chafed ineffectually when that vote was all against her
white people, so will he chafe ineffectually when it is now largely
for them.

In his perplexity over the sudden change in the vote of the negro,
Mr. Blaine has forgotten that, at this stage of its progress, the negro
vote can not intelligently direct itself. It must and will follow
some leader. Now, up to 1876 the Republican party, armed with
all the authority of the Federal Government, supplied those leaders.
They were strangers in the States they governed. The moment
that the compact vote upon which their power rested was divided,
they abandoned their places, and in almost every case left the State
in which they had ruled. The great mass of colored voters was
left without guides. In many of the largest counties, where their
majority was absolute, they were not only not organized, but there
was not interest enough to print a Republican ticket. The weapon
of defense which had been given to the negro was thrown away by
his leaders in their flight, and Mr. Blaine can scarcely complain if
it was picked up by the Democrats. In saying this I do not wish
to provoke or renew useless and irritating controversies ; but Mr.
Blaine's position is, that not only the negro ought not to be disfran-
chised, but that such a question could never have suggested itself
but for an illegal control of the negro vote by Southern Democrats.
My view is that, while the enfranchisement of the negro was a po-
litical necessity, it could not be effected without subjecting the

NEORO SUFFRAGE. 235

country to such dangerous political aberrations as we have experi-
enced ; that a wise man would have foreseen them ; and that, in
fact, they have been less than could reasonably have been antici-
pated ; that the ballot in the hands of the negro has been a protec-
tion and an educator ; that with it he has been stronger and safer
in all his rights than the Chinese have been in California without
it ; and that the problems it raised are steadily and without danger
solving themselves through the process of local self-government.

When Mr. Blaine admits that disfranchisement is impossible
and that the ballot has been, in spite of all drawbacks, a benefit to
the negro, he really proves that there is no organic question affect-
ing great national interests, but simply the subordinate question,
How rai)idly is the ballot fitting the negro for the full enjoyment
of his citizenship, and what influence does his vote exercise upon
the supremacy of one party or the other in national politics ? This
latter may be an interesting question, but not one which should dis-
turb either a sound national sentiment or great national interests.
I do not propose to discus:3 it. I am of opinion that to make the
negro a free citizen it was necessary first to take him from his mas-
ter. Tlien it became necessary to take him from the party which
claimed his vote as absolutely as his master had claimed his labor.
The next step will be to take him as a class from either party and
allow him to differ and divide just as white men do. The difficulty
so far has been that the Republican party desires to retain the
negro not as a voter, but as a Republican voter. Party politics
have been directed to keep him at the South in antagonism to the
white race, with whom all his material interests are identified.
"Whenever — and the time is not distant — whenever political issues
arise which divide the white men of the South, the negro will
divide too. The time will then have come when he can not act
against the white race as a body or with the white race as a body.
He will have to choose for himself ; and the white race, divided
politically, will want him to divide. The use of his vote will then
be the exercise of his individual intelligence, and he will find friends
on all sides willing and anxious to enlighten and influence him, and
to sustain him in his decisions.

The whole country has passed through a very painful experi-
ence in the solution of this question, and no one can adequately
describe the bitterness of the trial of the South ; but she has borne
it, and it seems to me that a statesman who loves this great country
of which we are all citizens should feel that the time has come when

236 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

a kindly judgment of each other's difficulties would bring us nearer
to that unanimity of action which can alone aid the solution of a
grave social and political problem. I was born and bred a slave-
holder, born and bred among slaveholders ; I have known slavery
in its kindest and most beneficent aspect. My associations with
the past of men and things are full of love and reverence. In all
history never has a heavy duty been discharged more faithfully,
more conscientiously, more successfully, than by the slaveholders
of the South. But, if I know myself and those whom I represent,
we have accepted the change in the same spirit. No citizen of this
republic more than the Southerner can or does desire to see the
negro improved, elevated, civilized, made a useful and worthy ele-
ment in our political life. None more than they deplore and con-
demn all violence or other means tending to hinder the enjoyment
of his elective franchise. The South took him, as he was sent to
her, a wild and godless barbarian, and made him such that the North
has been able to give him citizenship without the destruction of our
institutions. The progress which he made with us as a slave will
not be arrested now that he is a freeman — unless party passion and
personal ambition insist upon using him as an instrument for selfish
ends. And I have joined in this discussion because I regard it an
honest effort to remove this question from the heated atmosphere of
political debate, and to ask the conscientious attention of thinking
men to a problem the wise and peaceful solution of which will be
one of the noblest achievements of democratic civilization.

Mr. Blaine assumes that the Southern States as a whole — differ-
ing in degree but the same in effect — have through force and fraud
so suppressed the negro vote as to make negro suffrage as far as
possible of none effect. The statistics of election will show that
the negro vote throughout the South has not been suppressed. That
there have been instances of fraud and force I admit and deplore,
but they have been exceptional. Take them all in the recent elec-
tion and average them among a population of twelve millions of
people, and to what do they amount ? The President, in reviewing
the whole subject after these elections, did allege, and could only
allege, that in all these States but seven Congressional districts ex-
hibited results which were altered by either fraud or force. When
we consider the fact that since the formation of the Government
there have been but few Congresses, if any, in which there have
not been elections from all parts of the Union contested on these
very grounds, and then bear in mind that at no time in our history,

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 237

and in no other part of our country, has there ever been so keen
and searching a scrutiny into the facts of election as that to which
the South has been subjected, these exaggerated statements of force
and fraud must be reduced to their real proportions.

But suppose the allegation which Mr. Blaine puts as the argu-
ment of those who advocate disfranchisement be true, viz., that
the present political condition of the South is practically the rule,
not of a numerical majority of the whole people black and white,
but of the whites as one unanimous class ; and let it be conceded
fully that such a political condition, if it actually exists, is an evil,
what is the precise nature and extent of that evil ? In the first
place, it is not pretended that any of these civil rights of person
and property that negro suffrage was intended to protect have been
invaded or endangered. Indeed, this seems to be impliedly ad-
mitted, though not explicitly stated in Mr. Blaine's article. The
object of the Fifteenth Amendment is fully disclosed by contem-
poraneous debates. It was to protect and establish free labor in
the South, in all its new relations of rights and interests, by giving
to the emancipated laborer the political .means of maintaining those
rights and interests. Now, will any one deny that this purpose has
not achieved its fullest consummation under existing conditions?
Is free labor anywhere on earth more firmly established, more fully
developed, or more absolute in its demands (even for exaggerated
remuneration), and more secure and unrestricted in the enjoyment
of its gains, than in the South ? In all respects, negro freedom and
negro equality before the law, security of person and property, are
ample and complete. To protect these, should they be invaded, he
has the franchise with which a freeman can maintain his rights.
He may no longer allow it to be used as a tool for the rapacity of
political adventurers ; but he is perfectly conscious of the fact
which Mr. Blaine states, that his right to vote is to himself and his
race a shield and sword of defense.

The question, then, recurs — conceding, for the sake of argument,
that in the South political rule represents not the will of mere num-
bers, but the intellectual culture, the moral strength, the material
interests, the skilled labor, the useful capital of that entire sec-
tion, as well as its political experience — is not this result exactly
what the intelligence, character, and property of the country are
striving to effect in every Congressional district in the Union, and
is it not a perfectly legitimate result of placing the ballot in the
hands of a population unfamiliar with its use, and who are pecu-

238 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW,

liarly susceptible to the influences which property and brains have
always exerted in popular government ?

I anticipate the answer ; it is, that the property and intelligence
of the other sections seek to control the votes of the masses by
methods that are legitimate and peaceful, while the Southern whites
have achieved their power by means which are unlawful and unjust.
So far I have to some extent, for the sake of argument, conceded
the assumption that the negro vote has been subjected to the forci-
ble control of the white race, but that I deny. Reference has been
made to the great change which the election returns show in the
negro vote throughout the South. The phenomenon is easily ex-
plained. Let any intelligent Northern man review the history of
the State governments of the South for the last ten years under
Republican rule — their gross and shameless dishonesty, their exor-
bitant taxation, their reckless expenditure, their oppression of all
native interests, the social agonies through which they have forced
all that was good and pure to pass as through a fiery furnace ; the
character of the men — many of them — they have placed in power ;
and then say if such a state of things in a Northern or Western
State would not have been a sure and natural precursor of a Repub-
lican defeat, so absolute and complete that the very name of the
party would have become in that State a name of scorn and reproach.
Then why should not that result have occurred in the South ? Are
we to assume that the black race have neither instinct nor reason —
have no sense, no intelligence, no conscience, no independence ; that
in every Southern State the thralldom of the negro vote to party
leaders, even when abandoned by them, is so unquestioning and
abject that no amount of misrule can cut him loose from them or
teach him the advantage of a more natural and wholesome political
alliance ? To reason thus is simply to say that the negro is unfit
for suffrage, and to surrender the argument to those who hold that
he ought to be disfranchised.

But this is not true. There are many honest, intelligent, and
independent men among the negroes in every Southern State.
There are thousands of them who own property, who cultivate their
own lands, who have taxes to pay, and who appreciate their vital
interests in good government. This change in his political rela-
tions which has been the subject of so much incredulous comment
is the legitimate result of the experience through which he has
gone.

So far from proving his weak subordination to a hostile influence,

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 239

it demonstrates what Mr. Blaine says, that the ballot-box indeed
educated him to understand his own interest, and that he has learned
to use it as an instrument to protect his own rights. To interfere
with such a result because it does not square with the necessities or
the ambitions of this or that party, seems to me to be in direct con-
tradiction to what has been suggested by Mr. Blaine himself. He
says, "The one sure mode to remand the States that rebelled
against the Union to their autonomy was to give suffrage to the
negro," leaving (I venture to add) to self-government the evolution
of the proper remedies for whatever of evil or error may attend the
working out of this grave and critical experiment.

L. Q. C. Lamae.

Mb. HAMPTON.

In discussing the questions upon which my views are asked, the
limits prescribed me in the invitation prevent anything more than
a mere statement of opinion. Even were this otherwise, my pres-
ent condition forbids me to enter into any extended or elaborate
argument. Mine must be, therefore, simply a presentation in crude
form of the views I entertain, and have entertained for some years,
upon the grave questions submitted for consideration. I shall en-
deavor to write in a spirit free from all partisanship or sectional-
ism, with the sole purpose of promoting the cause of truth and the
welfare of the whole country.

The first question is, "Should the negro be disfranchised?"
There has been much agitation of this subject recently — chiefly at
the North — and many who have hitherto been the most earnest ad-
vocates of negro suffrage begin to think that the bestowal of this
privilege upon him has resulted in failure. Those who thus think
suppose that the withdrawal of the right of suffrage would at once
restore the ancient and normal condition of things in the country ;
would reestablish friendly relations between the races of the South ;
and in so far as it would diminish representation would lessen the
influence of that section in national affairs. This latter argument,
I regret to see, has had most weight with a large class, though it
is inconsistent with a true and catholic patriotism — a patriotism
which looks to the good of the whole republic, and not to that of
a limited section.

240 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

But, whatever may be the motives of those who desire the dis-
franchisement of the negro, the accomplishment of such a result
has been rendered impossible by the action of the national and
State governments. Great and startling as have been the political
mutations of the last few years, the disfranchisement of the negro
at this or any subsequent period would be more surprising than any
political event in our past history. The question, therefore, does
not belong to practical politics, and is a mere speculative one.
Considering it in the latter aspect, I do not hesitate to answer in the
negative. Whatever may have been the policy of conferring the
right of voting upon the negro, ignorant and incompetent as he was
to comprehend the high responsibility thrust upon him, and what-
ever may have been the reasons which dictated this dangerous ex-
periment, the deed has been done and it is irrevocable. It is now
the part of true statesmanship to give it as far as possible that
direction which will be most beneficial or least hurtful to the body
politic.

How is this to be accomplished ?

My answer would be, by educating the negro until he compre-
hends the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. By " educa-
tion " I do not mean the mere acquisition of learning, but I apply
the term in its broadest sense. The possession of the rudiments of
education — the mere mental training that this implies — so far from
being always beneficial to its possessor, is often harmful. Many of
our lately enfranchised citizens make the first use of their newly
acquired ability to read and write by committing forgery, and here,
at least, they have manifested a wonderful aj^titude. By educating
them I mean that their moral nature should be cultivated, pari
joassit, with their intellect. This moral education is of far greater
importance than an intellectual one. A man is not necessarily a
better citizen because he can read and write, nor does the possession
of these acquirements make him, as a matter of course, more com-
petent to understand and discharge the duties of citizenihip. I
doubt whether the citizens of that State which makes its boast
that more of its people can read and write than in any other gov-
ernment are equal in art, in culture, and in statesmanship, to the
Athenians in their palmiest days, who were without these ac-
complishments the most intelligent and critical of political con-
stituencies.

As the stability of our institutions depends on the intelligence
and virtue of our citizens, it is the duty of every patriot to pro-

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 241

mote the cause of true education. Especially is this the case with
regard to that unfortunate people who, after centuries of servitude,
were suddenly called to exercise the highest duties of freemen.
They came to the discharge of these duties utterly ignorant, with
the prejudices, the habits, and the evils inculcated by a life of
slavery— merely children of a larger growth, and, like all children,
full of credulity. It is not to be wondered at, then, that they were
easily misled by the v»'icked and designing men who flocked to
the South when she was prostrate. But, in spite of the evil advice
they have so constantly received, they have on the whole behaved
better than any other people similarly situated would have done,
and the whites of the South have no reason to cherish any ill
will toward the blacks. Nor do they ; and the time is rapidly
approaching when the colored people will find their best friends
amono" the tliouditful and considerate whites of the South — a class
by no means small at present, and which is growing larger and
stronger every hour. But this digression leads me from the dis-
cussion of the question under consideration ; and my purpose, as
declared at the outset, was only to state my opinions, not to enter
into argument to establish them.

From the remarks already made, my answer to the first ques-
tion submitted is easily anticipated : it would be almost impossible
to disfranchise the negro, and, if possible, it would not be carried
into effect. The South does not desire to see this done, and with-
out her aid it can never be accomplished. The negro contributes
not only to the wealth of the South, but to her political power,
and she is indisposed to deprive herself of any of her advantages.

As the negro becomes more intelligent, he naturally allies him-
self with the more conservative of the whites, for his observation
and experience both show him that his interests are identified with
those of the white race here.

This is the inevitable tendency of things as they now stand at
the South, and no extraneous pressure can change a result which is
as sure and fixed as any other natural law.

The opinions which are announced above have not been hastily
formed or only recently entertained. They are the result of very
earnest and long reflection, and as an evidence of this it may not be
improper, even at the risk of appearing to touch too closely on per-
sonal matters, to state the position that I have occupied in regard
to these questions since the close of the war. In 1865, even before
I had received my parole, I spoke, and was the first man at the
VOL. cxxviiL — NO. 268. 16

242 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

Soutli who did so, to a large audience of negroes upon the changed
relations between the two races, and I gave to them the same advice
that I have given from that day to this. In 1867, in the city of
Columbia, at the earnest invitation of the colored people themselves,
I spoke to them again, and upon that occasion advocated qualified
suffrage. It must be borne in mind that at the time this was done
some of the most prominent leaders of the Republican party had
taken decided ground against giving the right of suffrage to the
negro. It is unnecessary to give all the reasons that induced me to
take this course : it is sufficient to say that I fully realized that
when a man had been made a citizen of the United States he could
not be debarred the right of voting on account of his color. Such
exclusion would be opposed to the entire theory of republican insti-
tutions, and I foresaw that, unless the States, while they had the
right of regulating the elective franchise, prescribed the qualifica-
tions of their voters, the national Government would intervene, and
we should have universal suffrage forced ujDon us. My object,
then, was, by fixing an educational qualification as a prerequisite for
voting, to allow the most intelligent of the colored people to vote
at once, and this would have been an inducement to the rest of the
race to endeavor to qualify themselves for the attainment and exer-
cise of this privilege by securing the necessary education. The
admission of the limited number who would thus have been allowed
to vote at first would have produced no confusion in the machinery
of the State governments, and the relations between the two races
would have been friendly and harmonious ; but the course that I
recommended was not adopted, and we of the South have been sub-
jected to all the humiliation and crime brought about by recon-
struction. As the negro is now acquiring education and property,
he is becoming more conservative, and naturally desires to assist
in the establishment and maintenance of good government and
home rule. I have endeavored — and I think not without success —
to teach him here how to use the vote for his own good, and the
benefit of the political society in which he lives and with which
his future prosperity is identified. The result has been shown in
the last two general elections in this State, where thousands of
negroes voted with their white friends ; and if any doubt is en-
tertained of the sincerity of these voters, and any impartial visitor
from the ^N'orth will take the pains to inquire throughout the State,
I will venture the assertion that in every locality he will find as
earnest, as active, and as consistent Democrats among the colored

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 243

people as among the whites, and these colored Democrats are gener-
ally among the more intelligent of their race.

Under these circumstances, as the negro is endeavoring very
generally to qualify himself for the duties of citizenship, the wrong
of disfranchising him would be as great as that inflicted upon us in
the first instance, when universal suffrage was given to him while
he was yet utterly unprepared to exercise it.

The second question to which my attention has been invited is,
" Ought the negro to have been enfranchised ? " It may seem in-
consistent with the views I have expressed in the first part of this
article to say that I do not think he should have been enfranchised
at the time and in the manner in which it was done. My first ob-
jection is, that the mode that was pursued, if not directly unconsti-
tutional, was certainly extra-constitutional, and I am utterly opposed
to any violation, direct or indirect, of that instrument. Whenever
a political party thinks it is necessary, in order to secure its suprem-
acy, to act outside of the Constitution, and this is permitted by
the people without rebuke, we may be sure that wfe have entered
upon that downward plane which every previous republic has trav-
eled to destruction. The only hope of maintaining our institu-
tions in their integrity is by a strict observance of the Constitution,
and no party should be allowed to remain a moment in power
which countenances in any manner any violation of its sacred pro-
visions.

JNIy next objection to conferring suffrage on the negro, immedi-
ately upon his emancipation, was that he was totally incompetent
to exercise or even to understand the rights conferred upon him.
The injection of such a mass of ignorant and untrained voters into
the body politic was the most perilous strain to which our institu-
tions have ever been subjected, and the danger arising from this
experiment has not yet passed. It was a crime against the whites
of the South to disfranchise them in large part while enfranchising
the negro, and thus practically placing all the rights of the former
at the mercy of newly emancipated slaves. All these difiiculties
might have been avoided had partial suffrage been adopted in the
first instance, and the relations between the two races been allowed
to adjust themselves by the unimpeded action of natural laws. This
course would have been infinitely better for the negro himself, as it
would gradually have trained him in the exercise of the rights of
freemen, and would have prevented that antagonism between the

244 THE NORTH AMEEICAK REVIEW.

two races which has resulted, in so many instances, to the injury of
the negro.

Those who assert that the negro should have been enfranchised
have not hesitated to declare that the Indian, the native freeman of
America, and the Chinese, who have sought our shores in such
numbers, should be debarred that right. There seems to be some
inconsistency in these views, and the advocates of negro enfran-
chisement should be called on to show why the privilege should be
granted to him, the newly emancipated slave, and yet denied to
men who have always been free and who possess more intelligence.

When the negro was made a citizen, it followed as a logical
consequence, under the theory of our institutions, that he must be-
come a voter. My objection to his enfranchisement, therefore, is
confined to the time when and the mode in which this privilege was
conferred upon him.

I have answered these questions with entire frankness, in the
hope that such a discussion, free from political acrimony and parti-
san misconceptions, would encourage the calm and conscientious
consideration of the whole subject.

Wade Hampton.

Me. GARFIELD.

The editor of " The Review " has asked my opinion on the two
questions discussed by Mr. Blaine. Were these questions proposed
to the two Houses of Congress, I have no doubt that it would be
declared, with hardly a dissenting vote, that the negro ought not to
be disfranchised. On the second question, the formal vote might
not be unanimous ; but I have no doubt that a large majority would
declare that the negro ought to have been enfranchised.

If it shall appear on a new roll-call in 1879 that none are in
favor of disfranchising the negro, and few are ready to declare that
he ought not to have been enfranchised, we may reasonably con-
clude that these measures are gaining strength, and that their wis-
dom will finally be fully vindicated by the popular judgment.

But a vote on these questions at this time, by " ayes and noes,"
is misleading, for it does not disclose the real differences of opinion
which prevail among the people ; nor does it reach the marrow of
the controversy out of which the questions themselves arise. In
fact, both of the great parties are influenced by the strongest politi-
cal motives to maintain at least a profession of friendship for the

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 245

negro. Political interest will therefore prevent a direct assault
upon the constitutional amendments. It is practically impossible
to rescind them ; and I believe it is an historical fact that no gov-
ernment, based on the national will, has ever withdrawn the right
of suffrage when once granted.

But below the formal questions which head this article, lies this
deeper one : Will enfranchisement finally prove a blessing or a curse
to the negro, and an element of weakness or of strength to our in-
stitutions ?

Not long since a citizen of great ability and national prominence
said to me : " Your party has ruined the Government of our fathers.
In carrying up the walls of our national temple you have used un-
tempered mortar ; and your work will crumble and fall, involving
in ruin the whole structure. The negro belongs to an inferior race ;
is without intellectual stamina and without any strong, enduring
qualities of mind. Though he has been on our continent but a
few generations, he has wholly forgotten the religion, the language,
and even the traditions of his native country. lie has no perma-
nent individuality of character. Like the chameleon, he takes the
color of his surroundings ; and as a voter he will for ever be a
source of weakness and danger to our institutions."

This is perhaps the most powerful arraignment of the policy of
enfranchisement which has been made. In reply it should be said,
in the outset, that those who denounce the enfranchisement of the
negro as unwise and dangerous are bound to show a better adjust-
ment of his status. Even the defenders of the old system will
hardly deny that the continued existence of chattel slavery was im-
possible. It was the sum of all injustice to the negro himself and
a standing declaration of war against the public peace. Its de-
struction did not arise from mere meddlesomeness on the part of the
North ; the feeling against slavery was world-wide, and we were
among the last of modern nations to realize its infamy and remove
it from our system.

Between slavery and full citizenship, there was no safe middle
ground. To strike the shackles from the negro's limbs, to declare
by law that he should not be bought or sold, scourged or branded
at the will of his master, and then to leave him with no means of
defending his rights before the courts and juries of the country —
to arm him with no legal or political weapons of defense — would
have been an injustice hardly less cruel to him, and a policy even
more dangerous to the public peace, than slavery itself. To leave

246 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the defense of all the rights of person and property of the manu-
mitted slave to those who had just voted unanimously against his
freedom, would have been alike dishonorable and cruel. Indeed,
this experiment was attempted soon after the close of the war.
While the seceding States were under military control, the white
people of the South were invited to aid in solving the difficulties of
the negro problem by electing their own Legislatures and establish-
ing provisional governments. The result was that in 1865, 1866,
and a portion of 1867, their Legislatures, notably those of Missis-
sippi and Louisiana, restricted the personal liberty of the negro,
prohibited him from owning real estate, and enacted vagrant and
peonage laws, whereby negroes w^ere sold at auction for the pay-
ment of taxes or fines, and were virtually reduced to a slavery as
real as that which existed before the war.

Congress w^as, therefore, compelled to choose between a policy
which would have made the negro the permanent ward of the
nation, and by constant interference with the local laws of the States
would protect his personal and property rights, or to place in his
own hands the legal and political means of self-defense. It was a
choice between perpetual interference with the autonomy of the
States — a policy at war with the fundamental principles of our Gov-
ernment, and intolerable to the white populaiton of the South — and
the risk of admitting to the suffrage four millions of people who
were, as yet, in a large measure unfitted for its wise and intelligent
exercise. In reviewing the situation as it existed from 1867 to 1869,
I can not conceive on what grounds the wisdom of the choice then
made can be denied. Possibly a plan of granting suffrage gradually
as the negro became more intelligent would have been wiser ; but
the practical difficulties of such a plan would have been very great,
and its discussion at this time can have no practical value.

The ballot was given to the negro not so much to enable him to
govern others as to prevent others from misgoverning him. Suf-
frage is the sword and shield of our law, the best armament that
liberty offers to the citizen.

It would be strange indeed if the negro should always use this
weapon with wisdom and honesty. That he would sometimes be
influenced by corrupt leaders was inevitable ; but that, in spite of
all drawbacks, the suffrage has done and is doing much for his
protection and elevation, is evident from the anxiety shown by all
political parties to prove themselves his friend.

His progress under liberty may have disappointed some of his

NEGRO SUFFEAGE. 247

over-sanguine friends ; but, in a still more marked way, it has dis-
appointed the expectations of those who opposed his freedom.
Dullness of intellect, a low state of morals, a want of thrift and
foresight— all these were the inevitable results of generations of
slavery, which afforded no incentive to the development of those
qualities that make citizens independent, intelligent, and self-reli-
ant. If the negroes had lost the passion for acquiring property, if
they had shown themselves unwilling to work, neither liberty nor
suffrage could have saved them. They would finally disappear, as
the Indians are disappearing, and for the same reasons. But the
evidences arc increasing on every hand that they are successfully
solving the problem of their own future, by a commendable degree
of industry, and by very earnest efforts to educate their children.
In these efforts they are outstripping the class known in the days
of slavery as " the poor whites." AVhile they and their political
friends had the control of legislation in the Southern States, vigor-
ous measures were adopted to establish and maintain public schools ;
and, though these efforts have been greatly discouraged by recent
State legislation, their thirst for knowledge has not been quenched.
There is every indication that in the next generation they will show
a marked advance in intelligence.

They are acquiring property far more rapidly than their white
neighbors expected. In the Freedman's Saving Bank alone, the
failure of which was so calamitous, they had deposited surplus
earnings to the amount of three millions of dollars. They are
gradually becoming owners of real estate and of comfortable homes.
In one county of South Carolina they are now paying $300,000 of
taxes per annum ; and this is neither an isolated nor an exaggerated
example. In short, they are gradually gaining those two elements
of power, " intelligence and wealth," which Senator Thurman says
will in the long run control the politics of a community.

As an example of what the negro can do under more favorable
circumstances than those which have existed in the 'South, I refer
to the settlement of the Virginia Military Reserve in Ohio, between
the Scioto and Miami Rivers. Late in the last and early in the pres-
ent century, many Virginia soldiers of the War of Independence
removed to their lands in Ohio. Most of them were antislavery
men by conviction, and brought their slaves with them for the pur-
pose of manumission. These negroes settled near their late masters,
enjoyed their friendship and counsel, and did not encounter the pre-
judices of race and color which they might have met among men of

248 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Northern birth. Under such conditions they have lived for two or
three generations. There has been scarcely any admixture of blood
and no serious collision of interests ; and to-day, in central and
southern Ohio, their descendants, to the number of several thousand
families, rank fairly with other intelligent, respectable, and well-to-
do citizens of the State ; and are, in all respects, greatly superior to
their Virginia ancestors.

Much as the negroes of the South have accomplished since
emancipation, their most unfriendly critics will hardly venture to
assert that they have had a fair chance to test the influences of free-
dom and citizenship. Our theory of government is based upon the
belief that the suffrage carries with it individual responsibility,
stimulates the activity and promotes the intelligence and self-respect
of the voter. To accomplish these results the voter must be allowed
to exercise his rights freely and without restraint.

Doubtless the mere property rights of the Southern negroes are
every year being more and more fully recognized by their white
neighbors ; but in many parts of the South, it is the merest mockery
to pretend that the suffrage has been free. The spirit of domina-
tion which slavery engendered has led a large portion of the white
population to consider the effort of the negro to cast his ballot in
his own way as an act of intolerable impertinence. Open violence,
concealed fraud, and threatened loss of employment, in many parts
of the South, have virtually destroyed the suffrage and deprived
the negro of all the benefits which it was intended to confer.

Hitherto, these outrages have been justified or excused on the
ground that they were provoked by the interference of the national
authorities with local self-government in the South. But during
the past two years, there has been no ground even for this poor ex-
cuse. And now we have a new ground of justification. A leading
politician of Louisiana, testifying before the Teller Committee a
few days ago, declared that the murders and other acts of violence
which attended the late election in that State were provoked by
"incendiary speeches" of Republican leaders. In his cross-ex-
amination, this witness favored us with his definition of political in-
cendiarism. When asked to give examples, he cited the fact that
a certain campaign orator " had referred to the old days of slavery,
saying that old men who had been slaveholders, and whose ideas
were fixed in the past, would not be as likely to respect the rights
and advance the interests of the blacks as younger men who had
grown up under the new condition of affairs." Also, in discussing

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 249

the industrial relation of the negroes to their employers, the incen-
diary orator told the negroes that " they were paying too high rent
for land, often as much each year as the land would sell for."
Such discussion the witness considered so dangerous as to justify
the wratli and violence of the white population against the Repub-
lican party.

Until there is one acknowh'dged law of liberty for white and
black men alike, it is idle to claim that the amendments of the Con-
stitution are obeyed either in spirit or letter, or that enfranchise-
ment has had a fair trial.

The plea of " incendiary speeches " will not be accepted by a
liberty-loving nation as a justification of murder, violence, or any
invasion of the rights of citizens, however humble, however black.
The wisdom of enfranchisement cannot be impeached by prophe-
sying in advance that it will prove a disastrous failure, and then
endeavoring ^;ery(;5 aut nefas to make it a failure.

If the Democratic party does not disclaim and effectively resist
such outrages and invasions of constitutional rights, we shall again
witness the deplorable spectacle of parties — divided by geographi-
cal lines, a solid South and a united North — arrayed in political
opposition.

Such a conflict will not only retard the advancement of the
negro and delay the restoration of national harmony, but it will
inflict immeasurable injury upon the social and business prosperity
of the South itself. Emigration follows the path of liberty. Free
and independent Americans will not voluntarily become citizens
of a State in which full liberty of debate and of the ballot is not.
assured.

Since the war, it is probable that more emigrants from the North
and from Europe have settled in Texas than in all the other Gulf
States combined. And this is because the traditions and sentiments
of the Texan people have been regarded as more favorable to free-
dom of personal opinion and political action than those of the
people of neighboring Southern States.

If the policy of repression and exclusion, which unhappily pre-
vails in most of the late slaveholding States, shall be maintained,
each new census will disclose such a relative loss of population and
wealth as will prove every way disastrous to their political influence
and commercial prosperity. But parties will not always divide on
the color line. I have no doubt that enlightened self-interest will
ere long lead the people of the South to seek prosperity by making

250 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the suffrage in fact, as it already is in law, free and safe to all on
whom the Constitution has conferred it. When that day comes, we
shall enjoy a national unity which slavery would have made for ever
impossible ; and the wisdom of enfranchisement will be fully vindi-
cated. Beneficent as its results have already been, they are des-
tined to be still more fruitful of good in the future.

In conclusion, I answer these questions by saying that on
every ground of private right, of public justice, and national
safety, the negro ought to have been enfranchised. For the same
reasons, strengthened and confirmed by our experience, he ought
not to be disfranchised. Reviewing the elements of the larger
problem, I do not doubt that enfranchisement will, in the long run,
greatly promote the intellectual, moral, and industrial welfare of
the negro race in America ; and, instead of imperiling the safety of
our institutions, will remove from them the greatest danger which
has ever threatened them.

James A. Garfield.

Mr. STEPHENS.

The questions submitted for inquiry and consideration in the
paper now presented involve problems of the gravest and most in-
teresting character that ever engaged the attention of philanthro-
pists or statesmen.

It is not the purpose of the undersigned, in taking part in the
discussion or in connecting himself with it, to enter at this time
into a consideration of the merits in the abstract of either of these
questions.

The great problem involved in the first is now in a state of
solution, and it does not seem to be at all practicable or advisable,
in the midst of this process, to be mooting or answering the reasons
which led originally to the policy on which it was founded, or the
propriety of its adoption.

The matter, according to Mr. Blaine's own assumption, has been
settled beyond the power of even constitutional remedy. No argu-
ments drawn ah inconvenienti are allowable ; they are precluded
by conclusions drawn ah imjyossihili. This is the announcement.
Then why agitate or disturb it? Should it not, rather, be the
object of all good citizens, of all parties, and all friends of human-
ity, whether originally favoring that policy or not, to give it a fair

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 251

trial, with an earnest and hopeful effort for its success, leaving the
future in this matter, as in other like problems, to take care of
itself*:'

The discussion of these questions now, therefore, seems to be
quite as irrelevant as impracticable. The undersigned, however,
will avail himself of the occasion thus presented to make a few
general observations upon the paper submitted :

1. Mr. Blaine, after thus setting forth the perfect inviolability
of the right of suffrage, constitutionally secured to the colored man,
uses these very notable words :

In the mean while, seeing no mode of legally or equitably depriving the
negro of his suffrage, except with unwelcome penalties to tliemselves, the
Southern States as a whole — differing in degree, but the same in effect —
have striven to achieve, by indirect and unlawful means, what they can not
achieve directly and lawfully. They have, so far as possible, made negro
suffrage of none effect. They have done this against law and against justice.

These are grave assertions. Where is the evidence to support
them ? On them issue is directly joined.

The charge in substance is, that the Southern States as a whole,
with common design, have striven to deprive the colored man of
his right to vote by indirect and unlawful means. Wherein have
" the Southern States as a whole," or a single one of them, done, or
attempted to do, any such thing ? States act by their Legislatures,
courts, and executives. Has it been by legislative acts, or execu-
tive acts, or judicial decisions? If so, the production of these high-
handed usurpations is invoked.

The undersigned speaks mainly of his own State, Georgia.
That wrongs, and great T\Tongs, have been committed by indi-
viduals at the polls in that State and in many of the Southern
States, or perhaps all of them, he does not question — wrongs to
whites as well as blacks ; but he does question if greater wrongs
have been perpetrated in the Southern States, in this respect, than
in the Northern States. " The world is a school of wrong," and
skilled proficients " swarm about " everywhere. But, that the
Southern States, in whole or in part, in any way in which States can
act, have ever arrayed themselves against their own constitutions
and laws, to say nothing of Federal obligations, in an effort to de-
prive the colored man of the right to vote, is utterly denied. It is
true, in Georgia, and perhaps in other States, the constitutional
requirement of a poll-tax of a dollar for school purposes does prac-
tically keep several thousand colored voters from the polls ; but it is

252 TEE EORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

a provision wise and just in its objects, and applies equally to white
and black. The constitutional provision, also, making conviction
of felony a forfeiture of the franchise, is likely in its workings to
exclude a much larger number of colored voters from the polls than
whites ; but no one questions the justice of such exclusion either
of whites or blacks.

The Constitution of Georgia, before the Fifteenth Amendment
was even proposed, secured the right of suffrage to colored and
white alike ; and it has been the object of the State government in
all its branches to maintain this franchise, in its purity and integ-
rity, from that day to this. It was but yesterday the undersigned
saw in the Augusta " Evening News " the charge of Judge Snead,
of that judicial circuit, upon this very subject, an extract from
which may not be deemed impertinent or irrelevant in this connec-
tion. It shows to what full, free, and even abusive extent the right
of suffrage is carried in that State by the colored people. Here is
the extract :

After treating of general subjects prescribed by law, the Judge gave the
following strong points in reference to the freedom of the ballot at the recent
elections. He said : Outside of all these, I desire to direct your attention to
one section of the penal code, which was intended to guard the freedom of
the elective franchise and the purity of the ballot-box. It is section 4,5G9,
and is in these words : " If any person shall hereafter buy or sell, or offer to
buy or sell, or be concerned in buying or selling a vote, or shall unlawfully
vote at any election which may be held in any county of this State, such
person shall be indicted for misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall be pun-
ished by imprisonment and labor in the penitentiary for a term of not less
than one nor more than four years."

In this connection I read for your consideration extracts from our city
papers, which profess to portray certain scenes at the last municipal election
in Augusta :

"Money was freely exhibited and offered for votes, and as freely and as
openly taken. The price of a vote ranged from ten cents to five dollars,
according to the desire of the purchaser to obtain the vote and the estimate
put by the seller upon the value of the franchise. Hundreds of votes were thus
openly disposed of in plain view of everybody. In some instances the voter
held the ballot at arm's-length with one hand and held out the other for the
money which was to pay for his vote." — " Chronicle and Constitutionahst."

" The election-day has passed, and with it a day has gone to record that
will stand as a foul stain upon the fair name and reputation of a city grown
old in honor, and up to yesterday unsullied by the bold hand of bare-faced
bribery and open corruption. Votes were openly bought and sold with

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 253

money and whisky as a price — one hand holding the vote and the other
Btretclied out for the reward."—" Evening News."

I know not whether this is true, but it has been published as a part of
the history of this our day and generation. It could not have escaped the
observation, and must have excited the solicitude, of many good citizens. If
true, it is a sad commentary upon the corruption of the times, when the
purity of the ballot-box Is thus violated in the broad light of day; when the
elective franchise is made a purchasable commodity, and voters are bought
and sold as so many herds of cattle. The whole theory of our Government
is in the opposite direction. It rests upon the free consent of the governed.
This, at least, should 1)e the practice in every department, from the Federal
head at Washington, through the various ramifications in the States, down
to the humblest nmnicipality. The liberty of the citizen, the security of
property — ay, the whole fabric of society rests for its base upon the free,
unbought suffrages of the people. . . . Present all parties implicated, wheth-
er high or low. . . . Let your investigation be strictly impartial — not con-
fined to one, but extend to all sides — and if your sword, like that which
flamed at Eden's gate, turns a double edge, let the great blow fall.

This record of one of our judges truly exhibits the tone of the
judiciary throughout the State of Georgia. It is needless to add,
perhaj)s, that the votes which were so openly sold in the market
were chiefly, if not entirely, those of the lowest class of the colored
race. The same is true of the elections held near the same time in
Atlanta, !Macon, and other parts of the State, according to news-
paper accounts.

2. Mr. Blaine clearly intimates his own belief, as well as that
of other original advocates of the enfanchisement of the colored
race, that ** negro suffrage has failed to attain the ends hoped for
when the franchise Avas conferred .... failed to achieve anything
except to increase the political weight and influence of those against
whom, and in spite of whom, his enfranchisement was secured."

Pray, what were the ends thus hop^d for ? Without extended
comment on these sentences, as to the character of the motives actu-
ating some, at least, of the original advocates of " negro suffrage,"
which are very apparent from the entire passage, it may be pardon-
able to say that perhaps the present gravamen with them is that
the colored man does not vote as they expected him to vote ; per-
haps they may also see from the exhibitions referred to in Augusta,
Atlanta, Macon, and in other places, that their votes are much more
easily controlled by money than they supposed they would be. If
this be intimidation, and depriving the colored people of the ines-
timable right of voting, then it must be admitted that it is carried

254 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

to a lamentable extent in Georgia, if not in other States, and can only
be prevented by sucb enforcement of our State laws as Judge Snead
invokes. It cannot be remedied, as far as the undersigned sees, by
any proper action of Congress.
3. Mr. Blaine says :

The Fourteenth Amendment was designed to prevent this [that is, the
increased representation of the Southern States in Congress, on the eman-
cipation of those at the South who previously owed service for life], and, if
it does not succeed in preventing it, it is because of evasion and violation of
its clear provisions and of its plain intent. Those who erected the Confed-
erate Government may be in exclusive possession of power throughout the
South ; but they are not so fairly and legally ; and they will not be permitted
to continue in the enjoyment of political power unjustly seized — and seized
in derogation and in defiance of the rights not merely of the negro, but of
the whites in all other sections of the country.

What is really meant here by the reference to the intent of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and the enjoyment of " political power un-
justly seized — seized in derogation and defiance of the rights not
merely of the negro but of the whites, in all other sections of the
country," by no means clearly appears. Explanation is wanted.

When and where has any Southern State unjustly seized any
power or exercised any which is not clearly reserved to it in the
Constitution ? The real trouble seems to be this :

After all the clamor against the slave power, so called, under the
Constitution, before the war, growing out of the three-fifths basis
of representation, it was found that, on the adoption of the Thir-
teenth Amendment abolishing slavery, thirty-five representatives
were thereby added to the South in Congress ; and that, so far from
the three-fifths feature of the Constitution being an augmentation
of the political power of the South, it was actually a diminution of
that power to the extent of two fifths of their colored population.
It was then that an attempt was made, by the Fourteenth Amend-
ment, to deprive the Southern States of this increase of political
power, which they by no means seized or attempted to seize, but
which came to them rightfully under the Constitution. This at-
tempt, as has been stated, failed of its object by the Southern States
putting suffrage upon an equal footing between the blacks and
whites.

Mr. Blaine says that the clear intent and express provisions of
the Fourteenth Amendment have been evaded and violated by the
Southern States.

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 255

Where is the proof to sustain this assertion ? Is not the consti-
tutional right of voting secured as amply to the colored people in
the Southern States as in the Northern ? If not, let proofs to the
contrary be adduced. The question is not as to the wisdom of such
policy, but as to the existence of the fact.

The public mind seems to be somewhat in a cloud upon this
subject of representation, and the grounds upon which the colored
population were rated in the Federal basis, as five blacks to three
whites, or what is known as the three-fifths basis.

Before the war the idea seemed to be industriously inculcated in
certain sections of the country that it was a grant to the South of
property representation in their slaves. No greater error ever ex-
isted in the popular mind. This three-fifths principle was first
agreed on in Congress under the old Articles of Union of the
States, known as the first Constitution, in 1783. The history of it
is thitj : There was not any power under the Constitution as it then
existed to collect taxes by impost, or by any direct means ; and the
quota of each of the States '.vas apportioned first upon land valua-
tion in the respective States. This was found to work unjustly ;
and it was afterward determined that the best basis of taxation was
population. But it was insisted that the black population was not
so efficient in the production of wealth, which should be the crite-
rion in taxation, as the white ; and it would be unjust to make
the basis of the quota of each State upon its population, without
considering the character of its population. Some maintained that
one white man's labor was more productive than that of four
blacks ; some three ; some two. It was eventually agreed, on the
motion of Mr. Madison, that three fifths should be the ratio, thus
cutting off two fifths of the black population. This feature, thus
originating in the Congress under the old Constitution, was incor-
porated into the new one, formed in 1787. It was then thought
that the revenue would continue to be chiefly derived from direct
taxation, as it had been under the old organization. This feature
was thus retained at that time upon the principle that taxation and
representation should go together. Yery soon, however, the reve-
nues were chiefly raised from imposts, and hence the Southern
States for all practical purposes lost that power in legislation to
which they would have been justly entitled upon the principle of
representation in accordance with population.

After emancipation, in 1865, the two-fifths restriction ceased to
exist, as a necessary result. The entire population of the Southern

256 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

States then entered into the count for apportionment, as well as the
entire population of the Korth. The Southern States, therefore,
came into the enjoyment of this increased political power not by-
seizure, but by constitutional right ; and they can not be deprived
of it except by a wrong not less atrocious than the most wanton and
illegal seizure could be.

4. ]yir. Blaine seems to maintain that it was the main object of
the Fifteenth Amendment to secure the right of suffrage to the
colored race.

To a great extent this may be granted as true ; and yet, not to
the extent which he would seem to argue. That amendment con-
ferred no right of any kind. It was only intended to restrain the
States and the United States from denying or abridging the right of
suffrage on account of " race, color, or previous condition of servi-
tude." The words are : " The rights of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States,
or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude." This is but an additional covenant between the States,
imposing restraints and obligations upon themselves, and of course
takes its place alongside other similar constitutional provisions,
restraining the power of the States. No State, under this provision
of the Constitution, can make any discrimination as to the right of
suffrage within its limits, " on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude " ; nor has any State, South or North, within
the knowledge of the undersigned, made any such discrimination.

If there have been violations of the right of suffrage on the
part of individuals by intimidation, force, violence, or bribery (which
is by no means denied), the remedy under the Constitution is a plain
one ; and the undersigned believes that the remedy through the
courts would be as strongly enforced in the South as in the North.
In elections to Congress each House is the sole judge of the election
and returns of its own members.

If a State were to pass a law making a discrimination, the State
courts as well as the Federal courts would of course hold such a
law to be unconstitutional. This prohibition against discrimination
by any State in the matter of suffrage is analogous to the prohibi-
tions against any State passing ex post facto laws or laws impairing
the obligation of contracts, etc.

The remedy in all such cases is through the courts. The posi-
tion of Mr. Blaine, that Congress, under its power of " appropriate
legislation " to carry out all the provisions of the Constitution, can

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 257

take jurisdiction of this clause of the Constitution in any way dif-
ferent from what is proper in the other prohibitions against the
States, can not be successfully maintained. The true remedy for
all these evils, wherever they exist, North or South, is in the courts,
under such laws as Congress may find it necessary to pass for the
protection of rights, within its limited jurisdiction and specified

Alexander H. Stephens.

Mr. PHILLIPS.

Negro suffrage has not been a failure. Only the merest surface
judgment would so consider it. Though his voting has been crippled
and curtailed throughout a large part of the South during half the
time he has been entitled to vote, the negro has given the best evi-
dence of his fitness for suffrage by valuing it at its full worth.
Every investigation of Southern fraud has shown him less purchas-
able than the white man. lie has wielded his vote with as much
honor and honesty — to claim the very least — as any class of South-
ern whites ; even of those intellectually his superiors. For nine
fearful years he has clung to the Republican party (which at least
promised to protect him) as no white class. North or South, would
have done. Want and starvation he has manfully defied, and as-
serted his rights till shot down in their very exercise. Where to-
day is the Northern white class that would have clung to a party or
a principle in such peril or at such sacrifice ? If any man knows of
such, let him testify. I have known Northern politics reasonably
well for forty years, and my experience has shown me no such
Northern politicians.

In law-making the negro has nothing to fear when compared
with the whites. Taking away the laws which white cunning and
hate have foisted into the statute-book, the legislation of the South
since the rebellion may challenge comparison with that of any pre-
vious period. This is all due to the negro. The educated white
Southerner skulked his responsibility. Either the negro himself de-
vised those laws, or he was wise enough to seek and take the good
advice of his friends. When some one told Sully that Elizabeth
was not able, but only chose able advisers, " Is not that proof of
the greatest wisdom ? " said the sagacious minister of Henry IV.
They say negro Legislatures doubled the taxes. Well, there were
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 268. 17

258 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

double the number of children to be educated, and double the num-
ber of men (one half of them previously things) to be governed
and cared for.

The South owes to negro labor and to legislation under negro
rule all the prosperity she now enjoys — prosperity secured in spite
of white ignorance and hate. The negro is to-day less ignorant,
superstitious, and helpless than the same class of Southern white
men ; yes, than a class of whites supposed to be immeasurably his
superiors.

The South would not have disfranchised the negro if his suf-
frage had been a failure. Its success is what she fears and hates.
When lawless and violent men attack any element of law and civ-
ilization, and can only succeed by destroying it, does not that very
assault prove the value and efficiency of that obstacle to their law-
less purpose ?

Negro suffrage gave the helm to the Republican party when
it represented a principle — that was intelligent. It stood firmer
against bribery than other Southerners — that was honest. It vindi-
cated the negro's fitness for legislation — that scattered the fogs
about negro inferiority. It educated the negro more and more
every day, and was fast bringing him to a level with the whites of
the best class — that was death to Southern dreams of future rule
and treason.

In those States where either circumstances or the nation have
secured the negro anything like fair play, his suffrage has been a
marked success.

If negro suffrage has been in any particular or respect a failure,
it has not been the negro's fault, nor in consequence of any want
or lack in him. If it has failed to secure all the good it might
have produced, this has been because of cowardice, selfishness, and
want of statesmanship on the part of the Government of the
United States. Wliile squabbling over the loaves and fishes of
office, we have allowed our only friends and allies to face the fear-
ful dangers of their situation — into which we called them in order
to save the Union — without the protection of public opinion, or
of the arm of the Government itself. We have believed every
lie against them ; fraternized with unrepentant rebels ; and on the
Senate floor clasped hands dripping with the negro's blood — blood
shed because, without sympathy or support from us, the negro
wielded his vote so bravely and intelligently as to make the ene-
mies of the Union tremble. Does any man imagine that Senator

NEGRO SUFFRAGE, 259

Hamburg Butler shoots negro voters because he fears they will not
rule South Carolina intelligently !

Negro suffrage has not, therefore, been a failure, even in any
trivial degree, from any lack of courage, intelligence, or honesty
on his part. And let it be remembered how early the Ku-klux
assaulted him ; how incessant have been the attacks upon him all
these years; how brave and unquailing has been his • resistance.
Let it be kept in mind also that, meanwhile, one half of the jour-
nals of these forty States have been against him ; and seven tenths
of the Federal officers and the whole organized power of the white
South. All this while the negro has accumulated property, risen
in position, advanced marvelously in education, outrunning the
white man in this race. He has proved himself equal to any post he
has gained. On the floor of Congress the Southern white has more
than once quailed before negro logic, sarcasm, and power of retort.
Nothing has checked his progress or put him down but a hundred
lawless armed men assailing, at midnight, single men unarmed and
at disadvantage. And let it be also kept in mind that this same
lawlessness has shut up courts, silenced white Republicans, scattered
their conventions, suppressed journals, and driven merchants from
Southern cities ; so that yielding to it argues no cowardice in the
negro, since the white of every profession, class, and grade shares
in the same humiliation.

Does any man advise the disfranchisement of the white Repub-
lican because his voting is (to quote Mr. Blaine's picture) " a chal-
lenge to the Democrats in which he is sure to be overmatched, and
his disfranchisement would remove all conflict and restore kindly
relations between the two political parties " !

These considerations show the negro's fitness for the vote, and
therefore that he ought to have been enfranchised.

Every consideration of policy and statesmanship demanded his
enfranchisement, the negro being the nation's only ally in an ene-
my's country. Everything, therefore, that helps him strengthens the
Union. Equality of condition breeds self-respect. Responsibility
is God's method of educating men, making them sagacious, pru-
dent, calm and brave. Power insures consideration to its possessor.
When a vote in the House of Commons addjed half a million to
the number of British voters. Lord John Russell sprang to his feet
and exclaimed, " N'ow the first anxiety of every Englishman is to
educate the masses ! " It was their having the vote, and so endan-
gering the state, which awakened that anxiety/

260 TEE FORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

Then, again, while the negro remained without the suffrage it
was a logical inconsistency under our Constitution. The popular
mind frets at any such inconsistency. It was such intellectual and
moral fretting against a logical inconsistency — slavery — that pro-
voked the antislavery movement and gave it strength. To have
prolonged such a state of things after the war ended would have
been sure to have stirred angry debate. It was therefore wise and
necessary to avoid this danger. Finally, the exercise of suffrage
is the only sufficient preparation for it. You might as well post-
pone going into water until one has learned to swim, as to put off
granting suffrage until all the world agrees that a man is fit for it.

When the North, therefore, gave the negro the vote it did all
law could do to close the war between two civilizations, the bar-
barism of the South and the industrial and equal civil polity of the
North. Of course this was the highest wisdom as well as simple
justice.

After the negro has used his vote as honestly and intelligently
as the average Northerner, and more bravely, shall we withdraw it
because the caste prejudice, that hates him and dreads it, lives " un-
harmoniously " in its sight ? And surely it would be absurd and a
foul disgrace to take it from him for the single reason that this
present Administration of our Government can not protect him in
its exercise ! Would you break up a good locomotive merely be-
cause one raw and blundering engineer proved himself incapable
of running it ?

Every man sees now what very few saw ten years ago (and I
am glad I was one of those few, ridiculed as we then were), that to
enfranchise the negro, without doing all the nation could to insure
his independence, was a wrong to him and disastrous to us.

Treason should have been punished by confiscating its landed
property. We all see now that magnanimity went as far as it
safely could when it granted the traitor his life. His land should
have been taken from him ; and, before Andrew Johnson's treachery,
every traitor would have been only too glad to have been let off so
easily : that land should have been divided among the negroes, forty
acres to each family, and tools — poor pay for the unpaid toil of six
generations on that very soil. Mere emancipation without any
compensation to the victim was pitiful atonement for ages of wrong.
Planted on his own land, sure of bread— instead of being merely a
wages-slave — the negro's suffrage would have been a very different
experiment.

NEGRO SUFFRAGE, 261

Then, again, those States should have been held as Territories
(which United States authority could enter and rule directly, and
without troublesome questions), until a different mood of mind
among the whites, and the immigration of Northern men, wealth,
and ideas, made it safe to trust that section with State govern-
ments. In his last years, the late Vice-President, Henry Wilson,
confessed to me that this was the great mistake in that national
settlement. His only excuse was, that the Republican party did
not dare to risk any other course in the face of Democratic opposi-
tion — which only means that the nation was not ready for the
statesmanship the time demanded. But this surely was not the
negro's fault, and he should neither be blamed, nor visited with
disfranchisement, because we were unready, cowardly, and incom-
petent.

But there is no need even now of bating one jot of hope. The
United States Government is amply able to protect its own citizens.
Put a man into the Executive chair, and there will be peace at the
South — not, as now, the despot's peace, when " order reigns in
AVarsaw " — but quiet homes, streets free from bloodshed, and each
man safe and unmolested while he exercises all a citizen's rights.

Mr. Blaine has made it clear that no right in this country is
more completely guaranteed than the negro's right to vote. It is
hard to imagine any eclipse of public honor so dark as to make his
disfranchisement possible. But men who have seen the Dred Scott
decision and slave-hunts in Northern cities — defended and welcomed
by journals and pulpits — who have seen Webster bow his majestic
fame, and Clay try to barter his early good record for infamous
success — may well hesitate to say that any baseness or sycophancy,
in a matter touching the negro, is impossible. The South will
probably never, by law, disfranchise the negro while she remains
in the Union. But the South does not (practically) disfranchise
him now from petty spite. It is a well-matured plan. She pur-
poses to rule this nation or break it. In her present mood union
between her and the North is as impossible as between Germany
and France, or Austria and Italy. Until Northern men, capital,
and ideas, permeate the South, that mood will perpetuate itself.

But right is stronger than wrong. Barbarism melts and crum-
bles before civilization. The South can build no wall high enough,
she can enact no law bitter enough, to bar out the nineteenth cen-
tury. Even isolated Cuba has no tariff rigid enough to keep out
justice. The Indian, with right on his side, and so alert that he

262 THE FORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

makes it cost the United States one million of dollars to kill an In-
dian in war, can not resist the wave of civilization. Equally im-
potent is the South. Whether under our flag, or outside of it, she
will, in time, recognize the laws of industrial civilization, and accept
justice as a good bargain, long before she is virtuous enough to see
its righteousness.
I Wendell Phillips.

Me. BLAIR.

The negro ought to have been given the franchise if capable by
nature of exercising it. If not, it ought not to have been conferred,
and ought to be withdrawn. Hence the two questions presented
are but one in substance. It ought to surprise no one that this
question is likely to occupy the public attention again. The subject
of the abolition of slavery occupied the public mind during many
years, and was thoroughly discussed before it was acted upon ; and
no one now denies the wisdom of the decision made upon it. But
the question of negro suffrage was discussed very little before the
people prior to its decision ; and neither the Congress which pro-
posed nor the Legislatures which adopted the amendment were
elected with reference to the question. And this is equally true of
the Congress which j^assed the reconstruction act, by which negro
suffrage was imposed upon the Confederate States, and by which the
adoption of both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments was
secured.

It is certainly proper for the people to reconsider a measure
adopted so precipitately for the purpose of enabling one section of
the country to hold the other in subjection, in violation of the
Constitution and of the fundamental principle of local self-govern-
ment, and which has never had the sanction even of the Northern
people in any form (for the power to accomplish it was obtained
from them by denying that any such action was contemplated).

Having been accomplished according to the forms of law, it is
the Constitution, and can only be revoked by observing the same
forms ; but if negro suffrage is pernicious to the public welfare,
degrades suffrage, fosters corruption, defeats responsibility, strength-
ens the money power, and endangers the liberty of the race which
established representative government, and so far alone has shown

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 263

capacity to maintain it, that capacity itself gives absolute assurance
that it will be revoked.

Nor will it be long before the subject may be properly consid-
ered. The escape of the Southern States from the thralldom which
negro suffrage was devised to impose upon them has defeated the
object for which it was devised, and its authors now find that, in-
stead of being an instrument to perpetuate their power, it serves
only to increase that of their adversaries. They still clamor about
outrages upon it ; but this is only to arouse the jealousy of the
North to consolidate it against the power they have strengthened
at the South. If defeated in this, the sectional issue will be elimi-
nated from our politics, aud the subject of negro sulfrage will cease
to have any relation to sectional power and national politics, and
will probably be allowed to be considered upon its merits by the
communities affected by it. In that event, the only advocates of
negro suffrage will be the representatives of the planters and other
possessors of wealth, who will control their labor and their votes.
They alone will have any political interest to promote by maintain-
ing it.

Our fathers, North and South, were all emancipationists, and
refused to put the word " slave " in the Constitution, not wishing a
trace of it to appear in that instrument ; but not a man among
them contemplated making the negro a voter. Mr. Jefferson, who
predicted that slavery would go out in blood unless provision was
made for emancipation, saw also that the races could not live to-
gether as equals. " Nothing is more certainly written in the book
of fate," he said, " than that these people are to be free ; nor is it
less certain that the two races, equally free, can not live in the same
government. N^ature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of
distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the pro-
cess of emancipation and deportation, and in such slow degree as
that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be filled up,
pari passu, by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to
force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held
up." Prior to the war, Jefferson was the recognized exponent of the
true principles of our Government, in theory and practice. He had
extinguished the opposing party, and every succeeding Administra-
tion professed to be guided by his principles. And his counsel would
have been followed with respect to slavery, as it had been upon
other important subjects, but that a new prophet arose in the South,
who, by firing the hearts of its politicians with a fatal ambition in

264 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

connection with it, so changed the morale of Jefferson's party as to
make slavery its most powerful element, and his teachings on the
subject to be pronounced " folly and delusion " ; and slavery, in-
stead of being " a moral and political evil," as he had taught, and
as hitherto universally held at the South, became " the most safe
and stable basis for free government in the world." We know the
result.

Is there any better reason for accepting the new revelation, de-
claring it to be " folly and delusion " to say that Nature has draAvn
such indelible lines of distinction between the black and white races
that they can not live as equals in the same government, if that gov-
ernment is to be a free government f It was inspired by the lust of
sectional power, and relies for success upon the triumph of military
over civil institutions. It was established by the sword, in viola-
tion of the Constitution. More than half the white people were
disfranchised, and all their leading men, and the blacks, num-
bering 4,000,000, were given more votes than the whites, number-
ing about 8,000,000 — the official returns of registration in nine of
the States giving the blacks 631,746 votes, and the whites 585,769.
General Grant, under whose direction the work was done, reported
that the combined negro vote was indispensable ; that the negroes
were incapable of making that combination of themselves ; and that
the whites sent there from the North to direct that combination
could not remain there for that purpose unless supported by the
army. The military became the governing power. The part of the
negro was that of " dummy " in the game. They were beaten at
all points without regard to numbers, except where the military
and United States deputy-marshals took charge and voted them.
Negro suffrage has, in fact, never existed. It has been only an
expensive process of registering and supervision by the military to
have pieces of paper put in their hands and deposited as directed
by the white men sent down to combine and lead them.

These were, necessarily, persons of the worst class ; p,nd the result
was the most disgraceful chapter in our history. Th^^ votes of the
blacks, which made the Republican candidate President, installed
these harpies in the government of the States ; they loaded the States
with 1200,000,000 of debt, while exacting the most exorbitant taxes
from the impoverished people, and gave entire immunity to crime.
The demoralization thus infused into our system infected the Fed-
eral Government. The enormous expenditure during Grant's two
terms — being, exclusive of all payments growing out of the war,

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 265

greater than the expenditure from 1789 to 1861, including that on
account of the war of 1812, the Algerine war, the Mexican war, all
our Indian wars, and the purchase money of Louisiana and Florida —
is traceable to the irresponsible government thus established. And
80 is the corruption which has pervaded the Government, not yet
fully exposed, but which the whisky ring, the Indian ring, and the
multitude of similar blotches accidentally brought to the surface
show to have permeated all departments.

Tlie British Government learned from the American Revolution
what, in their eagerness for power, our Republican politicians lost
sight of — that it was " neither possible nor desirable " to govern the
English-speaking race against their will. And hence, instead of sup-
pressing representative government in Canada after the rebellion, as
our rulers did in the South, Earl Grey, in his instructions to Lord
Elgin, the Governor-General, said that " it could not be too dis-
tinctly understood that it is neither possible nor desirable to carry
on the government of any of the British Provinces in North Amer-
ica in opposition to the opinion of its inhabitants." To shame the
great Republic and to foment discord in it, the blacks in Jamaica
were also enfranchised to elect a Parliament, while all the working-
men in England were denied that privilege ; but the incapacity of
the negro for that function was so fully demonstrated that it had
to be withdrawn. This fact ought to silence those among us who,
for mere party objects, have lately echoed the ruling class in Eng-
land in attributing the universal repugnance of our people, North
and South, before the war, to mere pride of race. Having tried
the experiment themselves where there was no race conflict, and
found it a lamentable failure, they have themselves vindicated the
wisdom of our fathers and the good sense of our people.

Many honest and true men have been persuaded that it was
necessary to give the ballot to the negro to secure him his free-
dom. They assumed that he could acquire the knowledge and
character which qualified him to use it. Knovf ledge sufficient he
might acquire, but not the independence and the self-reliance. It
was for want of these qualities that he was for centuries an hereditary
bondman in America, and did not himself strike the blow which
made him free. Indeed, all the acts passed to make him a voter,
from the reconstruction to the enforcement act, and all the speeches
of their advocates, recognize his want of every essential quality of
a voter by treating him as not fit to be the master but only to be
the ward of the Government. On this theory the Freedman's Bu-

266 TEE KORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

reau was established to remove liim from the influence of the white
race, General Grant empowered to sustain the men sent to mass
them against the white people, and for this reason it is assumed that
the Republicans can not be legally beaten where the negroes are in
the majority. The Republicans knew that the race which takes so
largely the direction of public affairs of this continent would con-
trol the negro unless the Government interposed to prevent it. And
the recovery of political power in all the Southern States, in spite
of this interposition, shows that he is more feeble than he was ac-
counted.

And the fact that Wade Hampton had five thousand blacks, uni-
formed with red shirts, marching in procession during his canvass
for Governor in 1876, received all the votes for that office in 1878,
and all but two for Senator in 1879, will satisfy any mind open to
the truth that this is not due to intimidation.

Hampton is the type of a class to whom the negro naturally
gives fealty ; and enfranchisement will, for a time at least, be a
grant of vast political power to them when the Northern politicians
shall discontinue the attempt to use him as the instrument of their
power, and make it possible for the local politicians to avail them-
selves of his aid. Hampton, the boldest of this class, long ago
avowed his pleasure at the grant, and has availed himself of it.
Others will soon follow his example.

As it is manifest that, as followers of this class, the negro can be
better protected than as the instrument of Northern dominion over
the people of the South, it ought to be the policy of all who have
any true feeling for him to discountenance the new crusade which
the Northern politicians are preparing to preach in 1880. But
while under the guidance of a class of leaders who are respon-
sible to public opinion, they could be trained, if it were possible to
train them at all, to the exercise of government, no such result can
be expected. It would be as reasonable to expect them to develop
wings by training. The negro is not a self-governing nature. He
is of the tropics, where, as Montesquieu observes, despotism has pre-
vailed in all asces. His nature, of which this form of Government
is the outgrowth, is not changed by transplanting, more than that
of the orange or the banana. Hence to incorporate him in our sys-
tem is to subvert it. His nominal enfranchisement is but a mode of
disfranchising the white man, and makes them equals indeed, but
only as the subjects of irresponsible power. For this reason Mr.
Jefferson believed it would not be submitted to. We have seen

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 267

that lie understood the American people better than Mr. Calhoun.

It remains to be seen whether he knew them better than Mr.

Thaddeus Stevens.

Montgomery Blair.

Mr. HENDRICKS.

The editor of "The North American Review" has asked me
to express some views upon Mr. Blaine's article on the questions,
" Ought the Negro to be disfranchised ? Ought he to have been
enfranchised ? " and also my views upon the questions themselves.
It is almost impossible for me to comply with this request. I am
in Washington for a few days only, and my engagements will not
allow me to attempt a review of Mr. Blaine's article. Upon the
two questions I can only express my opinions, without much argu-
ment or illustration.

It is not yet ten years since the right to vote was conferred upon
the negro by constitutional provision. That period is too short to
allow such test of the wisdom of the measure as would justify its
abrogation, llie constitutional amendment is supposed to have
been the deliberate and well-considered act of the people. It must
not be regarded as an ordinary legislative measure, to be repealed
or modified " for light and transient causes." To make such a
change of the Constitution because an election in one section of the
country has not resulted as some might have desired or expected, is
to treat the most solemn act of the people with contempt, and to
weaken the force and impair the authority of the Constitution
itself. Opposition to negro enfranchisement ten years ago does not
now require an effort to strike the Fifteenth Amendment from the
Constitution. Any provision of the Constitution should be regard-
ed as fixed and permanent, and not to be disturbed, except upon the
test of such experience as would justify a change of Government
itself, because of great and permanent evils. It was not reason-
able to suppose that the two races would at once and without dis-
cord adjust themselves to the new relations prescribed and fixed by
the constitutional amendments. In the establishment of civil and
political changes so radical and extended, strife and discord for a
time were inevitable.

The experiment by which the negro is now being judged has
not been a fair one. When enfranchised, he was made to feel that

268 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

he owed servitude to a party ; through the agency of United States
officials and of the Freedmen's Bureau, and by means of secret
leagues, the entire negro vote was consolidated into a party inspired
by a distrust of, if not hostility to the white race. The color line
was distinctly drawn. They were taught to distrust every sugges-
tion made by their former masters for their political welfare, and
to give their utmost confidence and support to a class of men who
most unscrupulously used the power so acquired to promote their
own selfish ends. The result was the introduction in many South-
ern States of the most objectionable practices. Bribery and cor-
ruption fastened themselves upon the public service. The State
governments became the worst possible. The increase of State in-
debtedness was frightful. Taxation threatened to swallow up not
only the earnings but also the accumulations of the people. Men
contemplated approaching ruin with horror. Judged by these
results, negro enfranchisement was worse than a failure, it was a
gigantic evil.

In that condition of the country, excesses and abuses did un-
questionably occur. No foresight, no patience, no policy could have
averted them. The fierceness of the struggle for better government
was necessarily proportioned to the enormities that were practiced
upon the people. The efl^orts of the people to promote their own
welfare soon passed from personal conflict, and neighborhood
struggle, to the adoption of measures and policies of safety and
reform. The colored people were appealed to. They were told
that their own welfare, as well as that of the white race, required
economy and reform ; that the value of the products of their labor
depended upon measures that would reduce taxation. These ap-
peals were heard and heeded. In great numbers, by their influence
and their votes, they contributed to the changes in men and mea-
sures that experience has shown were essential to the welfare of all
classes, especially of producers.

Perhaps in this connection it is proper to refer to the State of
South Carolina as an illustration. Next to that of Louisiana, her
government was the worst, and the condition of her people the most
intolerable. Her present able chief Executive, in his canvass for
the office, addressed the colored voters in the language of argument
and of patriotic appeal. He and his cause proved stronger than
party control. They came to his support. They contributed to
his election. Without their help, no change could have occurred.
The reform that followed was complete. The men who had ruled

NEGRO SUFFRAGE, 269

and ruined the State, and who had oppressed all her industries, met
their just punishment in prison, or sought safety in flight. Honesty
took the place of fraud, and economy displaced profligate expen-
diture. Judged by such results, negro enfranchisement is not alto-
gether a failure. The results in Georgia are equally instructive.
The evil influences that controlled the negro vote in other localities
were never so strong in that State ; and at an earlier day legitimate
and good authority prevailed. A beautiful illustration of the har-
mony that has come to exist between the races occurred in one of
the cities of that State but a week since. The negro vote had con-
tributed to the election of an able Representative in Congress. He
died, and, when his remains were taken home for interment, they
who had helped to elect helped also to bury him. They appeared
in the funeral procession in organized companies of the militia, in
full uniform, and carrying the arms of the State. At the polls and
at the grave the races united in the expression of confidence, and
in tributes of respect toward one whose family was connected with
the history of the State. It. is a pleasing reflection that when thus
restored to its proper condition society has become relieved, in a
great degree, of the strife and bloodshed that attended the govern-
ment of the people of the States by outside poAver.

It is but recently that we have heard the demand for the with-
drawal of the right to vote from the negro, and for a reduction of
the representation allowed to the Southern States. The demand
comes only from those who relied upon their power to control him
as a political machine. It can not be said that his late indepen-
dent action in harmony with that of the white people is wrong.
Beyond di8})ute, it was well for all the people of South Carolina,
both white and black, and for the people of the whole country,
that Governor Hampton was successful, and that the corrupt power
was overthrown. Peace is assured. Labor is secure and encour-
aged. Calmly, quietly, and intelligently a large body of the ne-
groes have joined the whites to correct intolerable evils. This
was fully and well stated by a late colored United States Sen-
ator from Mississippi, in a letter written to the President shortly
after the bad government had been overthrown in that State. The
" Solid South " is the result of the union and harmony of the races,
and of their united effort for economy and reform.

I am not able to see why the subject of negro suffrage should be
discussed. It must be known to all that the late amendments will
not be, can not be, repealed. There is but the duty upon all to

270 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

make the political power now held by the enfranchised race the
cause of the least evil, and of the greatest possible good, to the
country. The negro is now free, and is the equal of the white man
in respect to his civil and political rights. He must now make his
own contest for position and power. By his own conduct and suc-
cess he will be judged. It will be unfortunate for him if he shall
rely upon political sympathy for position, rather than upon duties
well and intelligently discharged. Everywhere the white race
should help him, but his reliance must mainly be upon himself.

Thomas A. Hendricks.

Conclusion, — Me. BLAINE.

At the instance of the Editor of the " North American Review,"
and not by request or desire of mine, the brief article which I wrote
in regard to negro suffrage was submitted to the gentlemen who
have replied to it, and in turn their articles have been submitted to
me. I have now the privilege of rejoinder, and the whole series of
papers thus assumes the phase of a connected discussion.

With the exception of Mr. Wendell Phillips and General Gar-
field, the replies are from gentlemen identified with the Democratic
party, and distinguished and influential in its councils. General
Garfield is a Republican, and has taken prominent and honorable
part in all the legislation respecting negro suffrage. His views are
so entirely in harmony with my own that nothing is left me but to
commend his admirable statement of the case. Mr. Phillips is nei-
ther a Republican nor a Democrat, but reserves to himself the right
— a right most freely exercised — to criticise and condemn either party
with unsparing severity, generally bestowing his most caustic denun-
ciation upon the party to which he most inclines. It is by this sign
that we feel occasionally comforted with the reflection that Mr. Phil-
lips still has sympathies with the Republican party, and still indulges
aspirations for its ultimate success.

The arraignment of the Republicans at this late day by Mr.
Phillips, because they did not reduce the Confederate States to
Territories and govern them by direct exercise of Federal power, is
causeless and unjust ; and it can not certainly influence the judg-
ment of any man whose memory goes back to 1 866-' 67. For I
assume that if anything, not capable of demonstration, is yet an

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 271

absolute certainty, it is that such an attempt by the Republican
party would have led to its utter overthrow at the initial point of
its reconstruction policy. The overthrow of the Republican party
at that time would have restored the Confederate States to full
power in the Union without the imposition of a single condition,
without the exaction of a single guarantee. All the inestimable
provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment would have been lost :
its broad and comprehensive basis of citizenship ; its clause regu-
lating representation in Congress and coercing the States into grant-
ing suflFrage to the negro ; its guarantee of the validity of the war
debt of the Union and of pensions to its soldiers and their widows
and orphans ; its inhibition of any tax by General or State Govern-
ment for debts incurred in aid of the rebellion or for the emancipa-
tion of any slave ! These great achievements for liberty, in addi-
tion to the Fifteenth Amendment, vrould have been put to hazard
and probably lost, could Mr. Phillips have had his way, in a vain
struggle to reduce eleven States — four of them belonging to the
original thirteen — to the condition of Territories ; thus committing
the General Government to a policy as arbitrary and as sure to lead
to corruption and tyranny as the proconsular system of Rome.

And as if the territorial policy w^cre not enough to have destroyed
the Republican party at that time, Mr. Phillips would have plunged
us into the wild, visionary, and unconstitutional scheme of confiscat-
ing the land of the rebels and giving it to the freedmen. Confisca-
tion laws were passed by Congress during the hottest period of the
war ; but even then, when passions were at the highest, no enact-
ment was proposed which did not recognize the express limitation
of the Constitution that in punishing treason there should be no
** forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." The
Republican party has been flippantly accused by its opponents of
disregarding the Constitution, but I venture to say that there is no
parallel in the world to so strict an observance of written law dur-
ing a critical and mighty war as was shown by the Republicans
throughout the protracted and bloody struggle that involved the
fate of free government on this continent. It is impossible, there-
fore, that the Republican party could have adopted the policy which
Mr. Phillips commends ; and impossible that it could have succeeded
if the attempt had been made.

Of the replies made by the other gentlemen, identified as they
have been and are wdth the Democratic party, it is noteworthy that,
with the exception of Mr. Blair, they agree that the negro ought

272 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

not to be disfranchised. As all of these gentlemen were hostile to
the enfranchisement of the race, their present position must be
taken as a great step forward, and as an attestation of the wisdom
and courage of the Republican party at the time they were vio-
lently opposing its measures. This general expression leaves Mr.
Blair to be treated as an exception, and for many of his averments
the best answer is to be found in the suggestions and concessions
of his Democratic associates. I need not make an elaborate reply
to Mr. Blair, when he is answered with such significance and such
point by those of his own political household. It is one of the
curious developments of political history that a man who sat in the
cabinet of Abraham Lincoln and was present when Emancipation
was decreed should live to write a paper against the enfranchise-
ment of the negro, when the Vice-President of the Rebel Con-
federacy and two of its most distinguished officers, are taking the
other side !

Of Governor Hampton's paper it is fair to say that it seems to
have been written to cover a case ; its theory and application being
adapted to the latitude of South Carolina, and to his own political
course. Mr. Hampton is a man of strong parts, possessing courage
and executive force, but he has been in the thick of the fight, and
has had personal ambitions to gratify which may not place him
in history as an impartial witness. His personality protrudes at
every point, and his conception of what should be done and
what should be undone at the South is precisely what is included
in his own career. When Mirabeau was describing all the great
qualities that should distinguish a popular leader, the keenest of
French wits said he " had forgotten to add that he should be pock-
marked."

Mr. Lamar offers a contrast to Governor Hampton. He gen-
eralizes and philosophizes with great ability, and presents the strange
combination of a " refined speculatist," and a trustful optimist — em-
bodying some of the characteristics of Mr. Calhoun whom he de-
voutly followed, and of Mr. Seward, whom he always opposed. Mr.
Lamar is the only man in public life who can be praised in New
England for a warm eulogy of Charles Sumner, and immediately
afterward elected to the Senate as the representative of the white-
line Democrats of Mississippi. And yet, inconsistent as these posi-
tions are, it is the dream of Mr. Lamar's life to reconcile them. He
is intensely devoted to the South ; he has generous aspirations for
the Union of the States ; he is shackled with the narrowing dogma

NEORO SUFFRAGE. 273

of State rights, and yet withal has boundless hopes for an imperial
republic whose power shall lead and direct the civilization of the
world. Hedged in by opposing theories, embarrassed by forces
that seem irreconcilable, Mr. Lamar, probably more than any other
man of the Democratic party, gives anxious and inquiring thought
to the future.

Of Mr. Stephens and Mr. Hendricks it may be said that in their
treatment of the question, one aims to vindicate the course of his
native Georgia ; the other to gain some advantage for the Demo-
cratic party of the nation. Mr. Stephens has the mind of a meta-
physician, led astray sometimes in his logic and sometimes in his
facts, but aiming always to promote the interest of the State to
which he is devoted. Mr. Hendricks is an accomplished political
leader, with large experience, possessed of tact and address, and
instinctively viewing every public question from its relation to the
fate and fortune of his party. Mr. Stephens argues from the stand-
point of Georgia ; IMr. Hendricks has in view the Democracy of the
nation.

These Democratic leaders unite in upholding the suffrage of the
negro under existing circumstances, but each with an obvious feel-
ing that some contradiction is to be reconciled, some record to be
amended, some consistency to be vindicated. They all unite, how-
ever, on the common ground of denouncing the men who controlled
the negro vote at the outset in the interest of the Republican party ;
and the underlying conclusion, not expressed but implied, is that if
the military force had been absent and the persuasion of the Freed-
men's Bureau had not been applied, the negroes would have flocked,
as doves to their windows, to the outstretched and protecting arms
of the Democratic party. This seems to me to be sheer reckless-
ness of assumption ; the very bravado of argument. Why should
the negro have been disposed to vote with the Democratic party ?
Mr. Hendricks says he was made to feel that " he owed servitude to
a party through the agency of United States officials and the Freed-
men's Bureau." But can Mr. Hendricks give any possible reason
why the negro should have voted with the Democratic party at
that time ? Does not the record of Mr. Hendricks himself as the
leader of the Democratic party in the Senate show the most conclu-
sive reasons why the negro should have voted with the Republicans ?

Mr. Hendricks argued and voted in the Senate against emanci-
pating the negro from helpless slavery ; when made free, Mr. Hen-
dricks argued and voted against making him a citizen ; citizenship
VOL. cxxvni. — NO. 268. 18

274 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

conferred, Mr, Hendricks argued and voted against bestowing suf-
frage ; and he argued and voted against conferring upon the negro
the most ordinary civil rights, even inveighing in the Senate against
giving to colored men who were eligible to seats in Congress the
simple privilege of a seat in the horse-cars of Washington in com-
mon with white men. Conceding to the negro the ordinary in-
stincts and prejudices of human nature, it must have required the
combined and energetic action of the United States army, the Fed-
eral officers, and the Freedmen's Bureau, to hold him back from his
impulsive and irrepressible desire to vote with Mr. Hendricks and
the Democratic party !

I do not use this argumentum ad hominem in any personal or
offensive sense toward Mr. Hendricks. His position was not differ-
ent from his associates and his followers in the Democratic party on
all the questions where I have referred to his votes and his speeches.
Mr. Lamar occupied the same ground practically, and so did Mr.
Stephens and Governor Hampton. Indeed, the entire Democratic
party opposed legislation for the amelioration of the negro's con-
dition at every step, and opposed it not with the mere registry
of negative votes, but with an energetic hostility that too often
assumed the phase of anger and acrimony. Emancipation from
slavery, grant of citizenship and civil rights, conferring of suffrage,
were all carried for the negro by the Republicans against a protest-
ing and resisting Democracy. Democratic Senators and Represent-
atives in Congress fought all these measures with unflagging zeal.
In State Legislatures, on the stump, in the partisan press, through
all the agencies that influence and direct public opinion, the Demo-
crats showed implacable hostility to each and every step that was
taken toward elevating the negro to a better condition. So that it
was inevitable that the negro who had sense enough to feel that he
was free, who had perception enough to know that he was a citizen,
who had pride enough to realize that he was a voter, felt and knew
and realized that these great enfranchisements had been conferred
upon him by the persistent energy of the Republican party, and in
spite of the efforts of an embittered and united Democracy. Is
further statement necessary to explain why the negro should have
cast his vote for the Republican party when a free ballot was in his
hands ? It can be readily understood why he may now cast a vote
for the Democratic party when he is no longer allowed freedom of
choice, when he is no longer master of his own ballot.

It must be borne in mind that the Republicans were urged and

NEGRO SUFFRAGE, 275

hastened to measures of amelioration for the negro by very danger-
ous developments in the Southern States looking to his reenslave-
ment, in fact if not in form. The year that followed the accession
of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency was full of anxiety and of
warning to all the lovers of justice, to all who hoped for "a more per-
fect Union " of the States. In nearly every one of the Confederate
States the white inhabitants assumed that they were to be restored
to the Union with their State governments precisely as they were
when they seceded in 18G1, and that the organic change created by
the Thirteenth Amendment might be practically set aside by State
legislation. In this belief they exhibited their policy toward the
negro. Considering all the circumstances, it would be hard to find
in history a more causeless and cruel oppression of a whole race
than was embodied in the legislation of those revived and unrecon-
structed State governments. Their membership was composed
wholly of the " ruling class," as they termed it, and in no small
degree of Confederate officers below the rank of brigadier-general,
who sat in the Legislature :n the very uniforms which had distin-
guished them as enemies of the Union upon the battle-field. Lim-
ited space forbids my transcribing the black code wherewith they
loaded their statute-books. In Mr. Lamar's State the negroes were
forbidden, under very severe penalties, " to keep firearms of any
kind " ; they were apprenticed, if minors, to labor ; preference being
given by the statute to their " former owners." Grown men and
women were compelled to let their labor by contract, the decision
of whose terms was wholly in the hands of the whites ; and those
who failed to contract were to be seized as " vagrants," heavily
fined, and their labor sold by the sheriff at public outcry to the
highest bidder. The terms " master " and " mistress " continually
recur in the statutes, and the slavery that was thus instituted was a
far more degrading, merciless, and mercenary type than that which
was blotted out by the Thirteenth Amendment.

South Carolina, whose moderation and justice are so highly
praised by Governor Hampton, enacted a code still more cruel than
that I have quoted from Mississippi. Firearms were forbidden to
the negro, and any violation of the statute was punished by " a fine
equal to twice the value of the weapon so unlawfully kept," and, " if
that be not immediately paid, by corporeal punishment." It was
further provided that " no person of color shall pursue or practice
the art, trade, or business of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper, or
any other trade or employment (besides that of husbandry or that

276 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

of a servant under contract for labor), until he shall have obtained
a license from the Judge of the District Court, which license shall
be good for one year only." If the license was granted to the negro
to be a shopkeeper or peddler, he was compelled to pay one hundred
dollars per annum for it, and if he pursued the rudest mechanical
calling he could do so only by the payment of a license fee of ten
dollars per annum. No such fees were exacted of the whites, and
no such fee of free blacks during the era of slavery. The negro
was thus hedged in on all sides ; he was down and he was to be kept
down, and the chivalric race that denied him a fair and honest com-
petition in the humblest mechanical pursuits were loud in their asser-
tions of his inferiority and his incompetency.

But it was reserved for Louisiana to outdo both South Carolina
and Mississippi in this horrible legislation. In that State all agri-
cultural laborers were compelled to make labor contracts during the
first ten days of January, for the next year. The contract once
made, the laborer was not to be allowed to leave his place of employ-
ment during the year except upon conditions not likely to happen
and easily prevented. The master was allowed to make deductions
of the servants* wages for " injuries done to animals and agricul-
tural implements committed to his care," thus making the negroes
responsible for wear and tear. Deductions were to be made for
" bad or negligent work," the master being the judge. For every
act of "disobedience" a fine of one dollar was imposed on the
offender ; disobedience being a technical term made to include,
besides " neglect of duty," and " leaving home without permission,"
such fearful offenses as " impudence," or " swearing," or " indecent
language in the presence of the employer, his family, or agent," or
"quarreling or fighting with one another." The master or his
agent might assail every ear with profaneness aimed at the negro
men, and outrage every sentiment of decency in the foul language
addressed to the negro women ; but if one of the helpless creatures,
goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back
with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort
indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one
dollar for every outburst. The " agent " referred to in the statute
is the well-known overseer of the cotton region, and the care with
which the law-makers of Louisiana provided that his delicate ears
and sensitive nerves should not be offended with an oath or an inde-
cent word from a negro will be appreciated by all who have heard the
crack of the whip on a Southern plantation.

NEORO SUFFRAGE. 277

It is impossible to quote all the hideous provisions of these stat-
utes, under whose operation the negro would have relapsed gradual-
ly and surely into actual and admitted slavery. Kindred legislation
was attempted in a large majority of the Confederate States, and it
is not uncharitable or illogical to assume that the ultimate reen-
slavement of the race was the fixed design of those who framed the
laws, and of those who attempted to enforce them.

I am not si)eculating as to what would have been done or might
have been done in the Southern States if the National Government
had not intervened. I have quoted what actually was done by
Legislatures under the control of Southern Democrats, and I am
only recalling history when I say that those outrages against human
nature were upheld by the Democratic party of the country. All
the Democrats whose articles I am reviewing were in various de-
grees, active or passive, principal or endorser, parties to this legisla-
tion ; and the fixed determination of the Republican party to thwart
it and destroy it called down upon its head all the anathemas of
Democratic wrath. But it was just at that point in our history
when the Re})ublican party Avas compelled to decide whether the
emancipated slave should be protected by national power or handed
over to his late master to be dealt with in the spirit of the enact-
ments I have quoted.

To restore the Union on a safe foundation, to reestablish law
and promote order, to insure justice and equal rights to all, the Re-
publican party was forced to its Reconstruction policy. To hesi-
tate in its adoption was to invite and confirm the statutes of wrong
and cruelty to which I have referred. The first step taken was
to submit the Fourteenth Amendment, giving citizenship and civil
rights to the negro, and forbidding that he be counted in the basis
of representation unless he should be reckoned among the voters.
The Southern States could have been readily readmitted to all their
powers and privileges in the Union by accepting the Fourteenth
Amendment, and negro suffrage would not have been forced upon
them. The gradual and conservative method of training the ne-
groes for franchise, as suggested and approved by Governor Hamp-
ton, had many advocates among Republicans in the North ; and,
though in my judgment it would have proved delusive and im-
practicable, it was quite wdthin the power of the South to secure its
adoption or at least its trial.

But the States lately in insurrection rejected the Fourteenth
Amendment with apparent scorn and defiance. In the Legislatures

278 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, it did not receive' a single
vote ; in South Carolina only one vote ; in Virginia only one ; in
Texas five votes ; in Arkansas two votes ; in Alabama ten ; in
North Carolina eleven ; and in Georgia, where Mr. Stephens boasts
that they gave the negro suffrage in advance of the Fifteenth
Amendment, only two votes could be found in favor of making the
negro even a citizen. It would have been more candid in Mr.
Stephens if he had stated that it was the Legislature assembled
under the Reconstruction Act that gave suffrage to the negro in
Georgia, and that the unreconstructed Legislature, which had his
endorsement and sympathies, and which elected him to the L^nited
States Senate, not only refused suffrage to the negro, but loaded
him with grievous disabilities, and passed a criminal code of barbar-
ous severity for his punishment.

It is necessary to a clear apprehension of the needful facts in this
discussion to remember events in the proper order of time. The
Fourteenth Amendment was submitted to the States June 13, 1866.
In the autumn of that year, or very early in 1867, the Legislatures
of all the insurrectionary States except Tennessee had rejected it.
Thus and then the question was forced upon us, whether the Congress
of the United States, composed wholly of men who had been loyal
to the Government, or the Legislatures of the Rebel States, com-
posed wholly of men who had been disloyal to the Government,
should determine the basis on which their relations to the Union
should be resumed. In such a crisis the Republican party could
not hesitate : to halt, indeed, would have been an abandonment of
the principles on which the war had been fought ; to surrender to
the rebel Legislatures would have been cowardly desertion of its
loyal friends, and a base betrayal of the Union cause.

And thus, in March, 1867, after and because of the rejection of
the Fourteenth Amendment by Southern Legislatures, Congress
passed the Reconstruction Act. This was the origin of negro suf-
frage. The Southern whites knowingly and willfully brought it upon
themselves. The Reconstruction Act would never have been de-
manded had the Southern States accepted the Fourteenth Amendment
in good faith. But that amendment contained so many provisions
demanded by considerations of great national policy, that its adop-
tion became an absolute necessity. Those who controlled the Fed-
eral Government would have been recreant to their plainest duty,
had they permitted the power of these States to be wielded by dis-
loyal hands against the measures deemed essential to the security

NEORO SUFFRAGE. 279

of the Union. To have destroyed the rebellion on the battle-field,
and then permit it to' seize the power of eleven States and cry
check on all changes in the organic law necessary to prevent future
rebellions, would have been a weak and wicked conclusion to the
grandest contest ever waged for human rights and for constitutional
liberty.

Negro suffrage being thus made a necessity by the obduracy of
those who were in control of the South, it became a subsequent
necessity to adopt the Fifteenth Amendment. Nothing could have
been more despicable than to use the negroes to secure the adop-
tion of the Fourteenth Amendment, and then leave them exposed to
the hazard of losing suffrage whenever those who had attempted to
reenslave them should regain political power in their States. Hence
the Fifteenth Amendment — which never pretended to guarantee
universal suffrage, but simply forbade that any man should lose his
vote because he had once been a slave, or because his face might be
black, or because his remote ancestors came from Africa.

It is matter of sincere congratulation that, after all the contests
of the past thirteen years, four eminent leaders of the Democratic
party should unite in approving negro suffrage. It will not, I
trust, be considered cynical, certainly not offensive, if I venture to
suggest that this Democratic harmony on the Republican side of a
long contest has been developed just at the time when many causes
have conspired to render negro suffrage in the South powerless
against the Democratic party. Even in districts where the negro
vote is four to one, compared with the whites, the Democrats readily
elect the Representatives to Congress. I do not recall any warm
approval of negro suffrage by a Democratic leader so long as the
negro was able to elect one of his own race or a white Republican.
But when his numbers have been overborne by violence, when his
white friends have been driven into exile, when murder has been
just frequent enough to intimidate the voting majority, and when
negro suffrage as a political power has been destroyed, we find lead-
ing minds in the Democratic party applauding and upholding it.
So lately as February 19, 1872, years after negro suffrage was
adopted and while it was still a power in the Southern States, such
influential and prominent Democrats as Mr. Bayard, of Delaware,
and Mr. Beck, of Kentucky, united in an official report to Congress,
wherein they declared, regarding negro suffrage, that " there can be
no permanent partition of power nor any peaceable joint exercise of
power among such discordant bodies of men. One or the other

280 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

must have all or none. . . . Pseudo-philanthropists," continued Mr.
Bayard and Mr. Beck, " may talk never so loudly about ' equality
before the law,' where equality is not found in the great natural law
of race ordained by the Creator." Mr. Beck and Mr. Bayard made
this report when fresh from protracted intercourse with Southern
Democratic leaders, and it will not be denied that in their ex-
pressions they fully represented the opinions of their party at
that time. Will it be offensive, if I again ask, what has changed
the views of Democrats except the overthrow of free suffrage ? So
long as the negro can furnish thirty-five Representatives and thirty-
five Electors to the South, his suffrage will be upheld in name, and so
long as the Democratic party is dominant it will be destroyed in fact.

Mr. Hendricks is a conspicuous convert. The negro is washed
and made white in his eyes as soon as he votes the Democratic
ticket. He is greatly affected by the fact that negroes " helped to
bury a Democratic Congressman whom they had helped to elect."
In this simple incident Mr. Hendricks finds great evidence of re-
stored kindliness between the races. Was there ever a time when
the colored people refused to show respect to the whites, living or
dead ? The evidence would have been stronger if an instance had
been quoted of white men paying respect to a deceased negro.
But, unhappily, if funeral incidents are to be cited, Mr. Hendricks
will find more than he cares to quote. Almost at the moment of
his writing, testimony was given before a Senate Committee in
Louisiana not only of the murder of two negroes for the sin of
being Republicans, but of their being left without sepulture, and
actually devoured by hogs on the highway ! Their remains — the
phrase is doubly significant in this case — were finally covered with
earth by some negro women, the negro men having all fled from
their white persecutors.

Mr. Hendricks's high praise of the governments of South Caro-
lina and Louisiana, since they fell under Democratic control, is not
justified by the facts. Where he speaks of Republicans connected
with the government of South Carolina "meeting their punish-
ment in prison and seeking their safety in flight," he provokes an
easy retort. One of these men, an ex-Congressman, was sent to
prison on disgracefully insufiicient evidence, the Judge delivering a
bitter partisan harangue when he charged the jury to convict.
Governor Hampton, to his credit be it said, pardoned him, and it
would have been still more to his credit had he pardoned him more
promptly. In another case the Executive of a great Commonwealth

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 281

refused Governor Hampton's requisition, on the ground that the
man was not wanted for the cause and the crime alleged. These
criminal charges have in many cases borne the appearance of mere
political persecutions, in which the victims are not the persons most
dishonored.

On the other hand, when South Carolinians by the hundred were
indicted for interfering with the freedom of elections in killing
negroes by the score, it was found impossible to convict one of
them. Against the clearest and most overwhelming evidence, these
murderers were allowed to go free, and the prosecutions were aban-
doned. South Carolina courts appear to be *' organized to convict "
when a Republican is on trial, and South Carolina juries impaneled
to acquit when Democrats are charged with crime.

In the opinion of Mr. Hendricks, Louisiana under Republican
control was the very worst of all the Southern governments. A
change was made in April, 1877, and since then the Democratic
party has held undisputed power in that State. When the Repub-
licans surrendered the State there was a surplus of $300,000 in its
treasury ; taxes were collected, credit maintained, and interest on
its public securities promptly and faithfully paid. To-day, after
twenty-one months of Democratic government, according to public
and undenied report, the State is bankrupt ; its taxes uncollected ;
its treasury empty ; nearly half a million overdrawn on its fiscal
agent ; the interest on its public debt unpaid, and its most sacred
obligations protested and dishonored. Had such decadence hap-
pened in a State under Republican rule — succeeding a prosperous
Democratic administration — the denunciations of Mr. Hendricks
might have been fittingly applied.

My conclusions on the topic under discussion are :

First. Slavery having been constitutionally abolished by the
adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, the question of suffrage was
unsettled. But it may be safely affirmed that the Republicans had
no original design of interfering with the control which the States
had always exercised on that question.

Seco7id. The loyal men who had conducted the war to a victorious
end were not willing that those who had rebelled against the Union
should come back with political power vastly increased beyond that
which they had wielded in the days of pro-slavery domination ; and
hence they proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, practically basing
representation in Congress upon the voting population — the same
for North and South.

282 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Third. Instead of accepting the Fourteenth Amendment, the in-
surrectionary States scornfully rejected it, and claimed the right to
settle for themselves the terms on which they would resume rela-
tions with the Union. And they forthwith proceeded to nullify the
Thirteenth Amendment by adopting a series of black laws which
remanded the negro to a worse servitude than that from which he
had been emancipated.

Fourth. When the Government, administered by loyal hands,
found it impossible to secure the necessary guarantees for future
safety from the " ruling " or rebel class of the South, they demanded
and enforced a Reconstruction in which loyalty should assert its
rights. Hence the negro was admitted to suffrage.

Fifth. The negro having aided by loyal votes in securing the
great guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Republicans
declared that he should not afterward be deprived of suffrage od
account of race or color. Hence the Fifteenth Amendment.

Sixth. So long as the negro vote was effective in the South in de-
feating the Democracy, the leaders of that party denounced and
opposed it. They withdraw their opposition just at the moment
when, by fraud, intimidation, violence, and murder, free suffrage on
the part of the negro in the South is fatally impaired ; by which I
mean that the negro is not allowed to vote freely where his vote
can defeat and elect. As a minority voter in Democratic districts
he is not disturbed.

Seventh. The answer so often made, that, compared with the
whole number of Congressional districts in the South, only a small
number are disturbed, is not apposite, and does not convey the
truth. For it is only in the districts where the negroes make a
strong and united effort that violence is needed, and there it is gen-
erally found. Thus it is said that only in a comparatively few par-
ishes of Louisiana was there any disturbance at the late election.
But the Democrats contrived to have a disturbance at the points
where it was necessary to overcome a large Republican vote, and
of course had none where there was no resistance. It will generally
be found that the violence occurs in the districts where the Repub-
licans have a rightful majority.

Eighth. As the matter stands, all violence in the South inures to
the benefit of one political party. And that party is counting upon
its accession to power and its rule over the country for a series of
years by reason of the great number of electoral votes which it
wrongfully gains. Financial credit, commercial enterprises, manu-

NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 283

factiiring industries, may all possibly pass under tlie control of the
Democratic party by reason of its unla^vf ul seizure of political power
in the South. Our institutions have been tried by the fiery test of
war, and have survived. It remains to be seen whether the attempt
to govern the country by the power of a " Solid South," unlawfully
consolidated, can be successful.

No thouf^htful man can consider these questions without deep
concern. The mighty power of a republic of fifty millions of peo-
ple — with a continent for their possession — can only be wielded per-
manently by being wielded honestly. In a fair and generous strug-
gle for partisan power let us not forget those issues and those ends
which are above party. Organized wrong will ultimately be met
by organized resistance. The sensitive and dangerous point is in
the casting and the counting of free ballots. Impartial suffrage
is our theory. It must become our practice. Any party of Ameri-
can citizens can bear to be defeated. No party of American citi-
zens will bear to be defrauded. The men who are interested in
a dishonest count are units. The men who are interested in an hon-
est count are millions. I wish to speak for the millions of all politi-
cal parties, and in their name to declare that the Republic must be
strong enough, and shall be strong enough, to protect the weakest
of its citizens in all their rights. To this simple and sublime prin-
ciple let us, in tlie lofty language of Burke, " attest the retiring
generations, let us attest the advancing generations, between which,
as a link in the great chain of eternal order, we stand ! "

James G. Blaine.

II.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS.

It is pretty clearly implied in a remark of Dugald Stewart that
up to his time Jonathan Edwards was the only philosopher of note
that America had produced. " He," it is added, " in logical acute-
ness and subtilty, does not yield to any disputant bred in the uni-
versities of Europe." * This was said more than a half century ago ;
but all will agree that Edwards even now is incomparably the fore-
most among those who have cultivated metaphysical studies on this
side of the Atlantic. He was the pioneer in this department, and the
same might almost be said of his relation to our literature generally.
" The foundation of the literature of independent America," writes
F. D. Maurice, speaking of the treatise on the Will, " was laid in a
book which was published while it was a subject of the British
crown." f Edwards is an example of that rare mingling of intellec-
tual subtilty and spiritual insight, of logical acumen with mystical
fervor, which make up together the largest mental endowment, and
qualify their possessor for the highest achievements in the field of
thought. Augustine is an instance of this remarkable blending of
the rational with the mystical, this union of light and heat. In his
" Confessions," in the midst of glowing utterances of adoration, trans-
porting visions of a glory unseen, he turns off into a speculation upon
the nature of time, or an argument upon the infinitude of the divine
attributes. In the typical men of the scholastic age, Anselm and
Aquinas, there is found the same combination of intellect and feel-
ing. 1'he understanding follows out its problems, being quickened
and illuminated, yet not in the least blinded, from a deeper source
of light. The lack of the one element, that of devout sensibility,
was the weakness of Abelard ; a degree of deficiency in the other,

* Stewart's " Works " (Hamilton's ed.), vol L, p. 424.
t " Modem Philosophy," p. 469.

TUE PniLOSOPUY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 285

that of dialectic enterprise and keenness, lessened the greatness of
Bernard. A like conjunction of diverse qualities appears in the
most subtile, the most powerful, the most interesting of living Eng-
lish theologians, John Henry Newman. Let any competent student
take up Edwards's treatise on the Will, and mark the sharp, un-
relenting logic with which he pursues his opponents through all the
intricate windings of that perplexed controversy, and then turn to
the same author's sermon on the " Nature and Reality of Spiritual
Light." It is like passing from the pages of Aristotle to a sermon
of John Tauler ; only that, unlike most of the mystics, Edwards
knows how to analyze the experiences of the heart, and to use them
as data for scientific conclusions. He has left a record of medita-
tions on " the beauty and sweetness " of divine things, when even
the whole face of nature was transfigured to his vision. We see
this keen dialectician, whose power of subtile argument Sir James
Mackintosh pronounces to have been "perhaps unmatched, certain-
ly unsurpassed, among men," * melted in an ecstasy of emotion.
We shall have occasion to point out the effect of this characteristic
upon his ethical and religious philosophy.

Edwards was only thirteen when he entered Yale College ; and
it was while he was a monibor of colloge that he committed to writ-
ing philosophical remarks that would do credit to the ablest and
maturest mind. He is one of the most astonishing examples of
I)recociou8 mental development of which we have any record.
Pascal is in some respects a parallel instance. He was only twelve
years old when he framed from his own ingenious observations a
dissertation upon sound, and when he discovered anew, without aid,
the truths of geometry as far as the thirty-second proposition of
the first book of P]uclid. It was chiefly as a mathematical prodigy
that Pascal was distinguished in his boyhood. Edwards at the age
of twelve wrote a letter, which is really a well-reasoned scientific
paper, on the habits of the spider, as ascertained from his own sin-
gularly accurate observations, f His copious " Notes " on physics
and natural science, which afford a striking proof of his intellectual
grasp and versatility, were ^\Titten, at least in great part, before he
left college. But prior to the composition of these, he set down,
under the head of " Mind," a series of metaphysical definitions and
discussions, which, as emanating from a boy of sixteen or seven-

* " Progress of Ethical Philosophy," p. 108 (Philadelphia, 1832).
f In Dwight's " Life of Edwards," chap. ii.

286 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

teen, are truly marvelous. In them may be found the germs of
much that is developed afterward in his theological writings.

Edwards was a Berkeleian. A large part of these juvenile
papers are devoted to the elucidation and defense of the doctrine
that the percepts of sense have no existence independently of mind ;
that, although they are not originated by us, but by a power with-
out, that power is not a material substance or substratum, but the
will of God acting in a uniform method. Sensations are the divine
ideas, communicated to creaturely minds by the will of Him in
whom these ideas inhere, and by whom they all consist. " The
world is an ideal one ; and the law of creating and the succession
of these ideas is constant and regular." * If we suppose that the
world is mental in the sense explained, natural philosophy is not in
the least affected. f The common questions which are brought for-
ward by way of objection — as, " What becomes of material things
when we do not see them ? " — he ingeniously answers, and in a tone
that renders his own belief in their nullity plain. He quotes from
Cudworth Plato's famous passage about the cave, to illustrate his
doctrine that material things are shadows and not substances. The
substance of all bodies is declared to be " the infinitely exact and
precise divine idea, together with an answerable, perfectly exact,
precise, and stable will, with respect to corresponding communica-
tions to created minds, and effects on their minds." J The objec-
tion that the ideal theory is contradicted by common sense, he con-
futes by show^ing how erroneous, on any theory, is the vulgar im-
pression as to the character of our perception of distant objects, and
by exhibiting the Berkeleian discovery, which Professor Bowen calls
the one great psychological discovery of later times, § that our im-
pression of objects of sense from visual perception is totally diverse
from that given through the sense of touch. Take away color, take
away the secondary qualities of matter which are confessed to be
relative — view matter as one who is born blind would regard it —
and we have only resistance, with the connected ideas of place and
of space. Matter is thus known to be something quite different
from what the vulgar imagine it to be. So the way is opened for a
more just appreciation of the ideal theory, and for the conclusion,
which Edwards considers to be the truth, that there are only spirit-
ual beings or substances in the universe.

* Dwight's " Life," p. 669. f I^id.

X Ibid., p. 674. § " Modem Philosophy," p. 141.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 287

It is important to decide whether Edwards adhered to the Berke-
leian doctrine in after-life. It is found in the " Notes on Natural
Philosophy," as well as in the manuscript entitled " Mind." These,
however, were nearly contemporaneous. But in the last-mentioned
manuscript there are passages inserted of a somewhat later date ;
and in these the same doctrine is defended.* Moreover, I find in
the treatise on " Original Sin," one of his latest compositions and a
posthumous publication, this remark : " The course of nature is
demonstrated by late improvements in philosophy to be indeed what
our author himself says it is, viz., nothing but the established order
of the agency and operation of the Author of nature." f Here it is
altogether probable that the reference is to the philosophy of Berke-
ley. With this passage may be compared incidental statements on
perception, in the treatise on the Will, which, however, do not go
80 far as necessarily to imply the Berkeleian theory. J

A less important yet interesting question relates to the particu-
lar source from which Edwards derived his acquaintance with Berke-
ley. Professor Fraser, in his very thorough and instructive biogra-
phy of this philosopher, conjectures that it may have been through
the influence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was a personal friend of
tlie j)hilosoj)her, and adopted his system. Johnson was a tutor at
Yale from HIG to 1719, when Edwards was a student. But, from
1717 to 1719, a portion of the students, of whom Edwards was one,
were taught at Wethersfield, Johnson remaining in New Haven.
The seceding students who went to Wethersfield did not regard
Tutor Johnson with favor. Nor is it certain that he had himself
espoused the Berkeleian theory at that time. But the " Theory of
Vision" was given to the world in 1709, and the "Principles of
Human Knowledge " in 1710 ; so that it is not improbable that
copies of these works had come into the hands of Edwards, inde-
jjendently of Johnson. They found in him an eager and congenial
disciple.

Locke is the author whose stimulating influence on Edwards is
most obvious. He read Locke when he was fourteen years old,
with a delight greater, to use his own words, "than the most greedy
miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from
some newly-discovered treasure." § Deeply affected as Edwards was
by this great wi'iter, he read Locke with independence, and not only

• Sec Dwight's " Life," p. 674. f Dwight's edition, vol, ii., p. 540.

X Vol. ii., pp. 206, 207. § Dwight's " Life," p. 30.

288 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

pursued a theological direction quite opposite to that of his master,
but also criticises not unfrequently his doctrines and arguments.
For example, he exposes the fallacy of the illustration by which
Locke would support his distinction between preference and choice ;
and he likewise shows that Locke does not rightly define the differ-
ence between desire and will.* In this last point, Locke goes coun-
ter to the description which he gives of the will in the context,
according to which it can not be at variance with predominant
desire. Edwards could easily detect the inconsistency of Locke
in postulating a power to suspend the prosecution of a desire ; since
this act of suspension must itself be a choice, determined, like every
other, on Locke's principles, by the strongest motive. It is to
Locke's chapter on " Power " that Edwards was most indebted for
quickening suggestions. This discussion, as we are explicitly in-
formed, caused him to perceive that an evil man may properly be
said to have a natural or physical ability to be good. Locke an-
ticipates Edwards in combating the proposition that choice springs
from a previous state of indifferency, an absolute neutrality of feel-
ing, either preceding the act of judgment or interposed between
that act and the act of will. Locke's conception of liberty as
relating exclusively to the effects of choice, or events consecutive
to volition, and not to the origination of choice itself, is precisely
coincident with that of Edwards. " Freedom," says Locke, " consists
in the dependence of the existence, or not-existence, of any action
upon our volition of it." Locke asserts that the question whether
the will itself be free or not is unreasonable and unintelligible ;
and he precedes Edwards in seeking to fasten upon one who asks
whether a man is free to choose in a particular w^ay rather than in
the opposite, the absurdity of assuming the possibility of an infinite
series of choices, or of inquiring whether an identical proposition is
true. " To choose as one pleases," if it does not mean " to choose
as one chooses to choose " — which involves the absurdity of a series
of choices ad infinitum — can only mean " to choose as one actually
chooses," a futile identical proposition. In the psychology of the
act of choice there is no essential difference between Locke and
Edwards. Both represent the mind as perpetually moved by the
desire of good. Locke's invariable antecedent of choice, " uneasi-
ness of desire," or last dictate of the understanding as to good or
happiness, does not differ from Edwards's " view of the mind as to

* Vol. ii., pp. 16, 17.

THE PIIILOSOPnY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 289

the greatest apparent good." In one grand peculiarity they coin-
cide : will and sensibility are confounded. The twofold division
of the powers of tlie mind still prevailed in j^hilosophy. We are
endued with understanding and will ; and mental phenomena which
do not belong to the understanding are relegated to the will. It
is impossible to ignore wholly the existence of a third department
of our nature ; and the principal inconsistency of Edwards in his
discussions of this subject, in his various writings, is the failure
persistently to identify or persistently to distinguish voluntary and
involuntary inclinations. Inclination and choice are treated as in-
distinguishable,* and yet the one is spoken of as the antecedent
and cause of the other. The ambiguity of " inclination " and of
its synonyms has been a fruitful source of confusion. It was
reserved for the metaphysicians of the present century to establish
the bounds between sensibility, an involuntary function, and will.
It is important, however, not to overlook the distinction between
those choices which are permanent states of the will, and constitute
the abiding principles of character and motives of action, and the
subsidiary purposes and volitions which they dictate. It is right
to add that, however Edwards may have owed to Locke pregnant
hints on the subject of the will, these fell into the richest soil ; and
the doctrine of philosophical necessity was elaborated and fortified
by the younger writer with a much more rigid logic and a far wider
sweep of argument than can be claimed for Locke's discussion.
Locke modified his opinions from one edition to another ; and his
correspondence with Limborch discloses the fact that he was him-
self not satisfied with the views of the subject which he had pre-
sented in his work. The conviction of Edwards, on the other hand,
was attended by no misgivings, and staid with him to the end of
life.

The resemblance of Edwards's treatise on the Will to the trea-
tises of llobbes and Collins on the same subject is another topic that
merits attention. As to Hobbes, Edwards has occasion to ob-
serve that he had never read him. There is no probability that he
had ever seen a copy of Collins's " Inquiry." Edwards was not the
man to conceal a real obligation. His intellectual resources were
too large to make it requisite for him to borrow, and no one has
ever questioned his thorough honesty. Whatever similarity is
found to exist between him and the authors referred to is accidental.

* See, e. g., vol. v., pp. 10, 11.
VOL. cxxviii. — xo. 268. 19

290 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

Hobbes, like Edwards, holds that " he i^free to do a thing, that he
may do it if he have the will to do it, and may forbear if he have
the will to forbear " * — that is, freedom is concerned not with the
genesis, but with the event, of the choice. " The last dictate of
the judgment concerning the good or bad that may follow on any
action," in agreement w^ith Edwards, " is made the proximate effi-
cient cause of the will's determination on one side or the other." f
The objection that counsels, admonitions, commands, and the like,
are vain and useless on the necessitarian doctrine, is met by Hobbes
with the retort that, on no other doctrine, can they have any effect
at all. This is precisely in the manner of Edwards. The argu-
ment for necessity from the principle of causation, applied to the
determinations of the will, is substantially the same in both writers.
Collins brings forward the same definition of liberty as " a power
in man to do as he wills, or pleases." J He applies, also, the reduc-
tio ad ahsurdum to the statement that a man can choose as he
pleases : it is an identical proposition. § He seeks to prove the ne-
cessity of volitions by bringing them under the law of cause and
effect, and by driving his antagonists into the admission that the
mind is determined by causal agency to choose so and not other-
wise, the alternative being atheism. |1 This corresponds closely to
the reasoning of Edwards. Their arguments from the divine fore-
knowledge are in substance the same. T Things must be certain in
order to be foreseen, and they are not certain unless antecedent
causes render them certain. Persuasions, appeals, and laws, are ad-
dressed to men only on the supposition that they tend to produce
effects, or contain within them causal energy. These coincidences
between Edwards and the authors above named are really not re-
markable. The defenders of the doctrine of necessity naturally
take one path. They demand an explanation of the determination
of the will, so far as it involves the election of one thing in prefer-
ence to another. They deny that the mere power of willing ac-
counts for the specification of the choice, by which one thing is
taken and another rejected. Taking this weapon, the axiom of
cause and effect, they chase their opponents out of every place of
refuge. Edwards is peculiar only in the surpassing keenness and
unsparing persistency with which he carries on the combat, even

* " Works " (Molesworth's edition), vol. ii., p. 410. f P. 247.

X " Inquiry" (London, lYlY), p. 2. § P. 41.

\ Pp. 68, 69. 1 P. 83 seq.

THE PUILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS, 291

anticipating defenses against his logic which had not been as yet
set up. lie was anxious to demolish forts even before they were
erected. His habit of taking up all conceivable objections to the
proposition which he advocates, in advance of the opponent, is one
main source of his strength as a disputant. He not only fires his
own gun, but spikes that of the enemy.

It is far from being true that Edwards was the first to assert
the impropriety of the term " necessary " as a predicate of acts of
will, on the ground that necessity presupposes an opposition of the
will, which, of course, is precluded when the occurrence in question
is itself a choice. I am constrained to that to which my will is
opposed, but which nevertheless occurs. That is necessary " which
choice can not prevent." * The same objection is made to the
terms " irresistible," ** unavoidable," " inevitable," " unable," and
their synonyms, as descriptive of the determinations of the will.
I do not find in Augustine this criticism of the above-mentioned
terms in any explicit form ; yet there lurks continually under his
statements the feeling that underlies this criticism ; as, for instance,
when he speaks of "the most blessed necessity" of not sinning,
under which the Deity is placed, '^ if necessity it is to be called " —
" si necessitas dicenda est." f But the objection to all terms imply-
ing coercion, especially to the word "necessity," is set forth by
Thomas Aquinas as clearly as by Edwards. " That which is moved
by another," writes Thomas, "is said to be constrained (cogi), if it
is moved against its own inclination (contra inclinationem propriam);
but if it be moved by another which gives to it its own inclination
((plod sibi dat propriam inclinationem), it is not said to be con-
strained .... So God in moving the will does not constrain it, be-
cause he gives to it its own inclination. To be moved voluntarily
is to be moved of one's self, that is, from an internal principle ; but
that intrinsic principle can be moved by another principle extrinsic;
and no to be i/ioved of one's self is not inconsistent with being moved
by another.'''' \

It is the doctrine of Edwards, then, that the will is determined
by " that view of the mind which has the greatest degree of pre-
vious tendency to excite volition." § This antecedent mental state
secures the result by a strictly causal efficiency. Moral necessity is
distinguished from the natural necessity that prevails in material

* Edwards's "Works," vol. ii., p. 84. f Op. imp., i., 103.

X "Summa," Part I., Question 5, Article 4. § "Works," vol. ii., p. 25.

292 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

nature, in that the former is concerned with mental phenomena,
with motives and the volitions which they produce ; but the dif-
ference " does not lie so much in the nature of the connection, as in
the two terms connected,'''' * It is cause and effect in both cases.
To the objection that morality and responsibility are subverted by
this doctrine, Edwards replies that men are responsible for their
choices, no matter what the causes of them may be ; that moral
quality inheres in the choices themselves, and not in their causes.
As liberty " does not consider anything of the cause of the choice," f
so it is with moral accountableness, with merit and ill-desert. Suf-
ficient that the choice exists in the man as an operation of will. \
On no other hypothesis than the necessitarian did Edwards think it
possible to hold to the omniscience of God and his universal provi-
dence and government. Principles which freethinkers maintained
for other ends, he defended as the indispensable foundations of
religion.

Edwards came forward as the champion of Calvinism against
Whitby and its other English assailants. He scattered to the winds
the loosely defined notions of free-will which made it include the
choosing of choices, and choice from a previous indifference, or apart
from all influence of motives. It is not true that, out of various pos-
sible choices, the mind decides upon, i. e., chooses one. Nor is it
true that the act of choice starts into being independently of induce-
ments. Although his adversaries must have felt that he took ad-
vantage of the infirmities of language, and confuted what they
said rather than what they meant, yet it is quite untrue that he
was guilty of any conscious unfairness. He was not the man pur-
posely to surround himself with

. . . . " mist, the common gloss
Of tbeologians."

He had no faith in their conception of freedom, however it
might be formulated. But, in prosecuting his purpose, Edwards
set up a philosophy of the will which is not consonant with the
doctrine that had been held by the main body of Augustinian
theologians. It is true that the Wittenberg Reformers, at the out-
set, and Calvin, in his earlier writings, especially the " Institutes,"
pushed predestination to the supralapsarian extreme. The doctrine
of Augustine, however, and the more general doctrine even of Cal-

* Ibid., p. 34. f P. 39, cf., p. 191. % P. 186 seq. (Part IV., § 1).

THE rniLOSOPUY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 293

vinistic theologians, the doctrine of Calvin himself, and of the
Westminster Assembly's creeds, is that a certain liberty of will ad
ntruinvisj or the power of contrary choice, had belonged to the first
man, but had disappeared in the act of transgression, which brought
his will into bondage to evil. It was the common doctrine, too,
that in mankind now, while the will is enslaved as regards religious
obedience, it remains free outside of this province, in all civil and
secular concerns. In this wide domain the power of contrary choice
still subsists. But Edwards's conception of the will admits of no
such distinction. Freedom is as prcdicable of men now as of Adam
before he sinned ; of religious morality as of the affairs of worldly
business ; of man as of God. lie asserts most emphatically that he
holds men to be possessed now of all the liberty which it is possible
to imagine, or which it ever entered into the heart of any man to
conceive. * Of course, there can have been no loss of liberty, no
forfeiture of a prerogative once possessed. Philosophical necessity
belongs to the very nature of the will. Therefore, it binds all spirit-
ual beings alike. This is not the philosophy of Augustine or of the
Westminster divines. They held to a mutability of will once be-
longing to man, but now lost ; to a freedom pertaining at present to
men in one sphere of action, but not in another.

Refraining, for the present, from comments on the drift of this
philosophical creed, we follow this acute and powerful thinker into
another but adjacent field. Not satisfied with the timid, half-
hearted way in which Watts, Doddridge, and other English Calvin-
ists of that day, had attenuated the doctrine of original sin, in
deference to the attacks of the Arminians, Edwards undertook to
reclaim the ground which had been surrendered, and to put to rout
the confident assailants. For their " glorying and insults " he be-
lieved there was no foundation, f He took up a great theme, belong-
ing alike to philosophy and theology, the dominion of moral evil
in the race of mankind. It can not be said that he does not square-
ly grapple with his adversaries. He fully understood himself, and
had the courage which comes from undoubting conviction. He
invited for his arguments the closest scrutiny, and only deprecated
the objection that they were " metaphysical," as vague and imperti-
nent. " The question is not," he on one occasion remarks, " whether
what is said be metaphysics, physics, logic, or mathematics, Latin,
English, French, or Mohawk, but whether the reasoning be good

♦ Vol. ii., p. 293. t D wight's " Life," p. 569.

294 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

and the arguments truly conclusive." * His ardor is a white heat
which never moves him to substitute declamation for reasoning. In
this treatise on " Original Sin," he blinks no difficulties ; but, having
established by cogent reasoning and by Scripture, with appeals
to heathen as well as Christian authority, the tremendous fact of sin,
as a universal characteristic of mankind, he endeavors to prove that
men are truly, and not by any legal fiction, judged to be sinful
from the start, and literally guilty of the primal transgression. To
this end, he seeks to bring the continuance of sin in the individuals
of the race, onward from the beginning of their personal life, under
the familiar law of habit. It is analogous to the self-perpetuation
of any habit v/hich arises from an initial act. To prove that
Adam's act was our act, he launches out into a bold speculation on
the nature of identity. Personal identity, he asserts, is the effect
of the divine will and orlinance. If it consists in the sameness of
consciousness, that is kept up by divine acts from moment to mo-
ment. If it be thought to consist in the sameness of substance,
even this is due to the perpetual divine preservation ; and preserva-
tion is not to be distinguislied from constantly repeated acts of
creation. Our identity is a constituted identity, dependent upon
the creative will, and in this sense arbitrary, yet conformed to an
idea of order. So the individuals of the human race are the con-
tinuation of Adam ; they truly — that is, by the will and appoint-
ment of God — constitute one moral whole. It is strictly true that
all participated in the act by which "the species first rebelled
against God." f We are not condemned for another's evil choice,
but for our own, and the principle of sin within us is only the nat-
ural consequence of that original act. Time counts for jiothing :
the first rising of evil inclination in us is one and the same with
the first rising of evil inclination in Adam ; it is the members par-
ticipating in, and consenting to, the act of the head. The habit of
sinning follows upon this first rising of evil inclination, in us as in
Adam. Such is the constitution of things ; and on the divine con-
stitution, the persistence of individuality, of personal consciousness
and identity, equally depends. It is to be noticed that, in defense
of his realistic theory, Edwards does not lay hold of the traducian
hypothesis of the evolution of souls. He admits that souls are
created ; but so are consciousness and the substance of our individual
being at every successive instant of time. Like Anselm, and the

* Vol. ii., p. 474. t 'V'ol. ii., p. 643.

TUE PHILOSOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS, 295

schoolmen generally, he is a creationist. It is evident that Locke's
curious chapter on " Identity and Diversity " * put Edwards on the
track on which he advanced to these novel opinions. Locke there
attempts to prove that sameness of consciousness is the sole bond of
identity, and that identity would remain were consciousness dis-
joined from one substance and connected with another. Edwards's
opinion is peculiar to himself, but there is no reason to doubt that
the initial impulse to the reflections that issued in it was imparted
by the discussion of Locke.

We turn now to the ethical theory of Edwards. In his mas-
terly treatise on the " Nature of True Virtue," he does not content
himself, as philosophers before him had so often done, with the
inquiry, What is the abstract quality of virtue, or the foundation of
moral obli<^ation ? but he sets forth the nature of virtue in the con-
crete, or the princij)le of goodness. This he finds to be benevo-
lence, or love to intelligent being. It is love to the entire society
of intelligent beings according to their rank, or, to use his phrase,
"the amount of being" which belongs to them. It is thus a pro-
portionate love ; supreme and absolute as regards God, limited as
reganls inferior beings. Lender this conception, ethics and religion
are inseparably connected. True love to man is love to him as be-
ing, or as having being in himself, and is indissolubly connected, if
it be real and genuine, with a proportionately greater love to God.
This benevolence, which embraces in itself all goodness, is the
fountain and essence of specific virtues. It is described as a pro-
pensity to being, a union of heart to intelligent being, a consent to
being, which prompts one to seek the welfare of the objects loved.
It is not synonymous with delight in the happiness of others, but
is the spring of that delight. Now, he who actually exercises this
love delights in the same love when it is seen in others ; and this
delight induces and involves an additional love to them, the love of
complacency. There is a spiritual beauty in benevolence which is
perceived only through experience. The relish which this beauty
excites and gratifies is possible only to him who is himself benevo-
lent. There is a rectitude in benevolence, a fitness to the nature
of the soul and the nature of things ; and the perception of this
rectitude awakens the sense of obligation, and binds all men to be
benevolent. The natural conscience makes a man uneasy " in the
consciousness of doing that to others which he should be angry

* Book ii., c. 27.

296 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

with tliem for doing to him, if they were in his case, and he in
theirs." This feeling may be resolved into a consciousness of being
inconsistent with himself, of a disagreement with his own nature.
With the feeling of approbation and disapprobation, there is joined
a sense of desert, which consists in a natural agreement, proportion,
and harmony between malevolence or injury and resentment and
punishment. An essential element in Edwards's whole theory is
this double excellence of universal love : first, a rightness recognized
by all men, whether they be good or bad; and a peculiar, transcen-
dent beauty revealed only to the good, or on the condition of the
exercise of love as a practical principle. Of the natural conscience
in its relation to love he says : " Although it sees not, or rather
does not taste its primary and essential beauty, i. e., it tastes no
sweetness in benevolence to being in general, simply considered,
for nothing but general benevolence itself can do that ; yet this
natural conscience, common to mankind, may approve it from that
uniformity, equality, and justice, which there is in it ; and the
demerit which is seen in the contrary, consisting in the natural
agreement between the contrarj^, and being hated of being-in-gen-
eral."* The moral sense which is common to all men, and the
spiritual sense which belongs to the benevolent, may be called sen-
timents ; but not with the idea that they are merely subjective or
arbitrary, and not correspondent to the objective reality. The quality
of rightness and the quality of spiritual beauty inhere in love as in-
trinsic attributes. By means of this distinction between the intrinsic
rectitude and the spiritual beauty of the virtuous principle, Edwards
built up a foundation for his doctrine of spiritual light, or for that
mystical side which has been pointed out in his character and in
his conception of religion. The reaction of benevolence against its
opposite as being unrighteous and offensive to the sense of spiritual
beauty, and as an injury to the beings on whom benevolence fixes
its regard, is a form of hatred. This hatred on the part of God
and of all benevolent beings toward " the statedly and irreclaimably
evil " inspires a feeling of satisfaction in their punishment. Those
descriptions in Edwards of the sufferings of incorrigible evil-doers
in the future world, and of the contentment of the righteous at be-
holding them, which grate on the sensibility of most of the present
generation, he felt no difficulty in reconciling with the doctrine
that impartial and universal love is the essence of virtue.

* Vol. iii., p. 132.

TUE PUILO SOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 297

The disinterested love which is identical with virtue is the an-
tipode of self-love. If self-love signifies nothing but a man's loving
what is pleasing to him, this is only to say that he loves what he
loves ; since, with Edwards, loving an object is synonymous with
being pleased with it. It is " the same thing as a man's having a
faculty of will." * But the proper meaning of self-love is regard
to self in distinction from others, or regard to some private interest.
Edwards undertakes to resolve all particular affections which do not
involve a regard t<^ universal being, and a willingness that the sub-
ordinate interest should give way whenever it competes with the
rights and the interests of the whole, into self-love. This is true
of habits of feeling and actions that are done at the dictate of nat-
ural conscience, which may be looked upon " as in some sort arising
from self-love, or self-union," or the uneasy consciousness of being
inconsistent with one's self. The most questionable feature in Ed-
wards's whole theory is the position to which the natural perception
of right and sense of moral obligation are reduced, in order to ex-
alt the sense of spiritual beauty as the one necessary attendant of
true virtue. But he is not justly chargeable with displacing the
particular affections — love of family, patriotism, and the like — al-
though Robert Hall thinks that Godwin built up his ethical notions
on the reasoning of Edwards, as Godwin avowedly leaned upon
Edwards in his exposition of liberty and necessity.f

In the dissertation on " God's Chief End in Creation," which,
like the essay on the " Nature of True Virtue," was posthumous, Ed-
wards " overleaped these earthy bounds," and sought to unveil the
motive of the Deity in calling the universe into being. He rejects
every notion of an indigence, insufficiency, and mutability in God,
or any dependence of the Creator on the creature for any part of
his perfection or happiness. Every pantheistic hypothesis of this
nature he repels. God must be conceived of as estimating the sum
total of his own excellence at its real worth. This regard for his
glory, or his glorious perfections, not because they are his, but for
their o^^^l sake, is not an unworthy feeling or motive to action.
The disposition to communicate the infinite fullness of good which
inheres eternally in himself, ad extra, is an original property of his
nature. This incited him to create the world. That his attributes,
should be exerted and should be known and esteemed, and become

* Vol. iii., p. 118.

t Compare Hall's " Works " (Bohn's edition), p. 284 ; Godwin's " Political Justice,"
vol. i., p. 279 (Dublin, 1793).

298 TEE BOETH AMERICAN REVIEW.

a source of joy to other beings, is fit and proper. His delight in
his creatures does not militate against his independence, since the
creation emanates from himself, and this delight may be resolved
into a delight in himself. In God, the love of himself and the love
of the public are not to be distinguished as in man, " because God's
being, as it were, comprehends all." Nor is it selfish in him to seek
for the holiness and happiness of the creature, out of supreme re-
gard to himself, or from the esteem which he has for that excellence,
a portion of which he imparts to them, and which he reasonably
desires to see an object of honor, and the source of a joy like his
own. " For it is the necessary consequence of true esteem and love,
that we value others' esteem of the same object, and dislike the
contrary. For the same reason, God approves of others' esteem
and love of himself." The creature is intended for an eternally in-
creasing nearness and union to God. Under this idea, his " interest
must be viewed as one with God's interest," and is therefore not
regarded by God as a thing distinct and separate from himself.
Thus, all the activities of God return to himself as the final goal.

Edwards was acquainted with Hutcheson. " The calm, stable,
universal good-will to all, or the most extensive benevolence," and
"the relish and reputation of it," or "the esteem and good-will of a
higher kind to all in whom it is found," are phrases of this writer *
which remind us of the American philosopher. But the scientific
construction of the theory of virtue, especially in the place which
love to God finds in it, is original with Edwards. It is gratifying
to notice the admiration which the younger Fichte expresses for
this Essay, which is only known to him through the brief sketch of
Mackintosh. "What he reports of it," says Fichte," appears to
me excellent." f He speaks of the bold and profound thought that
God, as the source of love in all creatures, on the same ground loves
himself infinitely more than any finite being ; and therefore in the
creation of the world can have no other end than the revelation of
his own perfection, which, it is to be observed, consists in love. %
" So," concludes Fichte, " has this solitary thinker of North Amer-
ica risen to the deepest and loftiest ground which can underlie the
principle of morals : universal benevolence which in us, as it were,
is potentially latent, and in morality is to emerge into full conscious-

* " Moral Philosophy," vol. i., p. 69.

f " Was dieser von ihm berichtet finden wir vortrefflich." " System der Ethik,"
i., 544.

X Pp. 544, 545.

TEE pniLosopnr of Jonathan ed wards. 299

ness and activity, is only the effect of the bond of love, which in-
closes us all in God." The degree or amount of being is a some-
what obscure idea ; nevertheless the German critic considers it a
true and profound thought that the degree of the perfection of a
being is to determine the degree of love to him. Mackintosh, to
whom Fichte owed his knowledge of Edwards, apparently fails, in
one passage, to apprehend Edwards's distinction between love and
esteem, or benevolence and moral complacency.

In the interesting letter which Edwards wrote to the trustees of
Princeton College, he gives reasons for his reluctance to assume the
office of president of that institution, which he afterward accepted.
He explains that he had always been accustomed to study with pen
in hand, recording his best thoughts on innumerable subjects for
his own benefit. Among the results of this practice there had
grovrn up in his hands an unfinished work, " a body of divinity in
an entire new method, being thrown into the form of a history."
This was nothing less than a philosophy of the history of mankind,
contemplated with reference to the redemption of the world by
Christ, the center toward which the whole current of anterior events
converged, and from which all subsequent events radiate. There
were to be interwoven in the work " all parts of divinity," in such
a method as to exhibit to the best advantage their " admirable con-
texture and harmony." The conception was a grand one, resem-
bling that of Augustine in the " De civitate Dei." The treatise, in
its unfinished state, was published after the author's death, under the
title, *' A History of the Work of Redemption, containing the Out-
lines of a Body of Divinity, including a View of Church History in
a Method entirely new." In its incomplete form, and notwithstand-
ing the greater disadvantage of the author's limited leisure and
opportunity for the prosecution of historical investigation, it re-
mains an impressive monument of the variety of his powers and of
the broad range of his studies and reflections. He proposed to un-
fold the course of Divine Providence in all its successive stages,
from the decree of creation to the end of the world. The prepara-
tion of redemption, the accomplishment of it through the life and
death of Christ, and its effects, are the three divisions into which the
book is cast. He compares the work of redemption, which he under-
takes to delineate in its orderly progress, to " a temple that is build-
ing : first the workmen are sent forth, then the materials are gath-
ered, the ground is fitted, and the foundation laid ; then the super-
structure is erected, one part after another, till at length the top

300 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

stone is laid and all is finished." * Of course the acts of the drama,
which are still in the future, have to be learned from prophecy.

We have seen that Edwards believed in predestination in the
extreme or supralapsarian form. He incloses in the iron network
of philosophical necessity all intelligent beings. Verbal objections
to the term " necessity," and the ascription of " a natural ability "
to voluntary agents, do not subtract an iota from the real signifi-
cance of the dogma. The sovereignty of God in the realm of
choices, as in the realm of matter, and his omnipresent agency,
are fundamental in his creed. To the charge that their principles
are destructive of morality, the theological advocates of predestina-
tion have triumphantly appealed to facts. Where have the obli-
gations of morality been felt more than among the Calvinists of
Geneva and of Holland, the Huguenots of France, the Scottish Cov-
enanters, and the Puritans of England and of New England ? If
the doctrine of necessity has borne bad fruits in the lives of free-
thinkers who have espoused it, such is not the case as regards the
professors of the Calvinistic creed. It must be observed, however,
that it is not from their favorite dogma that extreme Calvinists
have drawn their ethics. Their moral sense has been invigorated
from other sources. The Stoics believed in fate, but were person-
ally upright and conscientious. They borrowed their ethics from
earlier philosophers, and their morals stood in no genetic relation to
their metaphysics. With Calvinists, predestination stands as the
correlate of the sense of absolute dependence, of faith in the con-
trol of Divine Providence, and of gratitude for grace as the source
of all that is good within them. Predestination is an inference
rather than a premise. Macaulay says of William III. : " The
tenet of predestination was the keystone of his religion. He even
declared that, if he were to abandon that tenet, he must abandon
with it all belief in a superintending Providence, and must become
a mere Epicurean." f Calvinists have not piled up tome upon tome
of theological controversy, they have not pined in dungeons and
faced death on the battle-field, for the sake of a merely speculative
notion. It is the moral truth for which it stands in their minds as
the logical equivalent that has made them so strenuous in the main-
tenance of it.

Julius Miiller, one of the ablest of recent theologians, has well

* Vol. iii., p. 171.

f " History of England," vol. ii., p. 149 (New York, 1849).

TUB rniLosornY of Jonathan bdwaeds. 301

remarked that' while the supralapsarian conception, by which the
will is held to be determined to good or to evil, in the first man as
in all others, by exterior causes, might have been held, and was
held, at a former day, in conjunction with a sincere theism ; such a
union of opposites at present would not be possible. Pantheism
would now be connected with such a philosophical tenet. The
power of God, acting in man through the machinery of motives,
would be held to be the sole efficient. Nay, all things would be
traced to impersonal agency. Personality would be considered
merely phenomenal. The idea of creative action would be sup-
planted by that of emanation.

The doctrine of Edwards, apart from all theological prejudice,
fails to satisfy the generality of mankind, when it is set up as a
complete and exclusive solution of the problem of liberty and neces-
sity, lie labors hard to prove that common sense is with him, but
he labors in vain. It is one thing, however, to utter a moral pro-
test, and another to furnish a logical answer or a valid rectification.

Certain eminent theologians of Kew England in later times have
asserted the j)ower of contrary choice as existing ever in connection
with a previous certainty of the determination of the will being
what it actually is. They have maintained that motives, the inter-
nal antecedents of choice, constitute a special order of causes, which
are distinguished from all others by giving the certainty, but not
the necessity, of the action which follows them. On this theory
they claim that a foundation is laid for the practical truth relative
to God\s providence and human dependence, at the same time that
freedom and responsibility are left untouched. Dr. Samuel Clarke,
in bis " Remarks " on Collins's book, presents the leading points of
this theory. Clarke asserts that there exists a principle of self-
motion in man, a power of initiating motion, or of voluntary self-
determination. This power is not determined as to the mode of its
exertion by anything but itself ; that would involve a contradic-
tion. It is self-moving. It is absurd to attribute efficiency to the
mental states which are called motives. If they had efficiency, man
would be like a clock, or a pair of scales, endowed with sensation or
perception. He would not be an agent. What we call motives are
bare antecedents, or occasional causes.* Clarke shows that the oppo-
site supposition involves an infinite regress of effects with no cause at
all. Moreover, uniformity of action does not imply a necessity in

* "Remarks," etc., p. 9 (London, 1111).

302 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the connection of the act with its antecedents. " The experience of
a man's ever doing what he judges reasonable to do, is not at all an
experience of his being under any necessity so to do. For concom-
itancy in this case is no evidence at all of physical connection." *
The argument for necessity from God's prescience, Clarke seeks to
confute by maintaining the previous certainty of acts, even on the
supposition that they are free, and by claiming for God " an infalli-
ble judgment concerning contingent truths," which is only a power
that we ourselves possess, carried to perfection. This power of
judging, however, Clarke subjects to no searching analysis ; and his
reasoning is hardly sufficient to meet the objections to the possibility
of foreknowing contingent actions, which are advanced by Edwards. f
The later New England philosophy postulates, however, a certainty
which is produced by the antecedent causes, taken in the aggregate.
Can we conceive of a causal influence which makes an event infalli-
bly certain, and yet not necessary ? On this question the validity
of the later New England theorem seems to hinge.

The Scottish philosophy of Sir "William Hamilton solves the prob-
lem by affirming the inconceivability of both freedom and neces-
sity, on the ground that the first implies a beginning of motion, and
the other an infinite regress of effects ; and it accepts the truth of
free-will on the basis of our moral feelings, the feelings of self-ap-
probation and remorse, praise and blame, which presuppose moral
liberty.

A middle position is that taken by able philosophers and theo-
logians, of whom the late Dr. Mozley is a leading representative.
We have an apprehension of two truths which appear irreconcilable
with one another ; but on this ground solely, that our idea or ap-
prehension, in either case, is obscure, imperfect, an incipient and
not a completed conception. These truths are therefore mysterious.
They are not a zero in our apprehension, nor are they fully com-
prehended. Hence our deductions from them are subject to a cor-
responding imperfection. They may serve us, up to a certain point,
as the groundwork of moral truth ; but neither can be used to sub-
vert that moral truth which is related to the other. When moral
truth is contradicted by logic, there is a flaw in the logic ; and this
is traceable to the imperfect character of the notions which enter
into the premises. Mozley would probably sanction the dictum of
Coleridge that, when logic seems to clash with moral intuitions,

* " Remarks," etc., p. 25 (London, \111).
t Treatise on the Will, Part II., § 12.

THE PHI LO SOPHY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS. 303

the superior authority belongs to conscience. It need hardly be
said that the problem belongs not exclusively to theology — it be-
longs to philosophy as well. The perplexities that pertain to it are
not escaped by those who renounce the Christian faith.

It is a growing conviction of students of Scripture and of philos-
ophy that, on the subject before us, there is more than one hemi-
sphere of truth. That which both the Calvinist and Arminian chiefly
prized was truth, not error. What each contended against was the
supposed implications of a proposition which was valued by his
opponent from its relation to a set of implications of a different
sort. Each connected with his antagonist's thesis inferences which
that antagonist repudiated. One hemisphere of truth Jonathan Ed-
wards saw with clearness, and upheld with a strength of argument
and a subdued but intense fervency which have never been sur-
passed.

Edwards died at the age of fifty-four, three months after he had
entereil upon the duties of president at Princeton. He was an inde-
fatigable student, working often for thirteen hours in the day. A
biographer says of him that perhaps there never was a man more
constantly retired from the world. He was never physically strong.
Not at all morose, but courteous and gentle in his ways, he was yet
taciturn, and he himself refers to what he calls " the disagreeable dull-
ness and stiffness of his demeanor, unfitting him for conversation
and contact with the world." * His countenance is not such as we
should expect a polemical theologian to wear, but is more like that
of St. John, according thus with the deep mystical vein of which
we have spoken. He is the doctor angellcus among our theologians,
and, had he lived in the thirteenth century instead of the eighteenth,
he would have been decorated by admiring pupils with such a title.
If it be true that, in the last century, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant,
are the three great names in philosophy, there might have been
added to the brief catalogue, had he chosen to devote himself ex-
clusively to metaphysics, the name of Jonathan Edwards. On the
memorial window in honor of him, in the chapel of Yale College, of
which he is the most illustrious graduate, stands the just inscription :
" lonathan Edwards : summi in ecclesia ordinis vates : fuit rerum
sacrarum philosophus qui saeculorum admirationem movet : Dei
cultor mystice amantissimus : hie studebat, docebat."

George P. Fisheb.

*Dwight*8"Life,"p. 668.

III.
THE INDIAN PROBLEM.

Strange as it may appear, it is nevertlieless a fact that, after
nearly four hundred years of conflict between the European and
American races for supremacy on this continent, a conflict in which
war and peace have alternated almost as frequently as the seasons,
we still have presented the question, What shall be done with the
Indians? If the graves of the thousands of victims who have
fallen in the terrible wars of race had been placed in line, the phi-
lanthropist might travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from
the Lakes to the Gulf, and be constantly within sight of green
mounds. And yet we marvel at the problem as if some new ques-
tion of politics or morals had been presented. Indeed, wise men
differ in opinion, journalists speculate, divines preach, and states-
men pronounce it still a vexed question.

The most amusing part of the quandary, however, is that it
should be regarded as something new and original. After every
generation has contended on deadly fields with the hope of settling
the question, the home governments enacted laws, the colonies
framed rules, every Administration of our Government forced to
meet the difficulty, and every Congress discussed the " Indian Ques-
tion," we are still brought face to face with the perplexing problem.

The real issue in the question which is now before the American
people is, whether we shall continue the vacillating and expensive
policy that has marred our fair name as a nation and a Christian
people, or devise some practical and judicious system by which we
can govern one quarter of a million of our population, securing and
maintaining their loyalty, raising them from the darkness of bar-
barism to the light of civilization, and put an end to these inter-
minable and expensive Indian wars.

The supposition that we are near the end of our Indian troubles
is erroneous, and the fact that a condition of affairs now exists over
an enormous area of our country, in which an American citizen

THE IXDIAN PROBLEM. 305

can not travel, unguarded and unarmed, without the danger of
being molested, is, to say the least, preposterous and unsatisfactory.

If, by a dispassionate and impartial discussion of the subject,
some measure may be devised that will eradicate the evil, and lead to
the adoption of a permanent improvement in the management of our
Indian matters, one object of this paper will have been accomplished.

In considering the subject, it might be well to first examine the
causes which have pro<lu(od the present condition of affairs, and, in
doing so, if the writer shall allude to some of the sins of his otsti
race, it will only be in order that an unbiased judgment may be
formed of both sides of the question.

It will be remembered that one class or race is without repre-
sentation, and has not the advantages of the press or the telegraph
to bring it into communication with the intelligence of the world,
and is seldom heard except in the cry of alarm and conflict along
the Western frontier. If we dismiss from our minds the prejudice
we have against the Indian, we shall be enabled to more clearly
understand the impulses that govern both races. Sitting Bull, the
great war chief of the Dakota nation, uttered one truth when he
said that *' there was not one white man who loved an Indian, and
not a true Indian but who hated a white man."

Could we but perceive the true character of the Indians, and
learn their dispositions, not covered by the cloak of necessity,
policy, and interest, we should find that they regard us as a body
of false and cruel invaders of their country, while we are too apt
to consider them as a treacherous and bloodthirsty race, that should
be destroyed by any and all means, yet, if we consider the cause of
this feeling, we might more readily understand the result.

The more we study the Indian's character, the more we appre-
ciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the
real savage, yet we shall find that the latter is governed by the
same impulses and motives that govern all other men. The want
of confidence and the bitter hatred now existing between the two
races have been engendered by the warfare that has lasted for cen-
turies, and by the stories of bad faith, cruelty, and wrong, handed
down by tradition from father to son until they have become second
nature in both. It is unfair to suppose that one party has invari-
ably acted rightly, and that the other is responsible for every wrong
that has been committed. We might recount the treachery of the
red-man, the atrocity of his crimes, the cruelties of his tortures,
and the hideousness of many of his savage customs ; we might un-
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 268. 30

306 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

dertake to estimate the number of his victims, and to picture the
numberless valleys which he has illumined by the burning homes
of hardy frontiersmen, yet at the same time the other side of the
picture might appear equally as black with injustice.

One hundred years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the
Spanish Government issued a decree authorizing the enslavement
of American Indians, as in accord with the law of God and man.
Later they were transported to France, to San Domingo and other
Spanish colonies, sold into slavery in Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Louisiana, and
hunted with dogs in Connecticut and Florida. Practically dis-
franchised by our original Constitution, and deprived either by war
or treaty of nearly every tract of land which to them was desirable,
and to the white man valuable, they were the prey to the grasping
avarice of both Jew and Gentile. Step by step a powerful and en-
terprising race has driven them back from the Atlantic to the far
West, until now there is scarcely a spot of ground upon which the
Indians have any certainty of maintaining a permanent abode.

It may be well in this connection to remember the fact that in
the main the Europeans were kindly treated by the natives, when
the former first landed on American shores, and when they came to
make a permanent settlement were supplied with food, particularly
the Plymouth and Portsmouth colonists, which enabled them to
endure the severity of long and cheerless winters. For a time dur-
ing the early settlement 6f this country, peace and good will pre-
vailed, but only to be followed by violent and relentless warfare.

Our relations with the Indians have been governed chiefly by
treaties and trade, or war and subjugation. By the first we have in-
variably overreached the natives, and we find the record of broken
promises all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, while many
of the fortunes of New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco
can be traced directly to Indian tradership. By war the natives
have been steadily driven toward the setting sun — a subjugated, a
doomed race. In council the Indians have produced men of char-
acter and intellect, and orators and diplomats of decided ability,
while in war they have displayed courage and sagacity of a high
order. Education, science, and the resources of the world have
enabled us to overcome the savages, and they are now at the mercy
of their conquerors. In our treaty relations most extravagant and
sacred promises have been given by the highest authorities, and
yet these have frequently been disregarded. The intrusions of the

THE INDIAN PROBLEM. 307

white race (occurring now more frequently than ever before), the
non-compliance with treaty obligations, have been followed by
atrocities that could alone satisfy a savage and revengeful spirit.
We need not dwell upon the original causes that have led to the
present condition of affairs. Facts that have been herein referred
to make it almost impossible for the two conflicting elements to
harmonize. No Administration could stop the tidal wave of immi-
gration that is sweeping over our land ; no political party could
restrain or control the enterprise of our people, and no man could
desire to check the march of civilization. Our progress knew no
bounds. The thirst for gold and the restless desire to push beyond
the horizon have carried our people over every obstacle. We have
reclaimed the wilderness and made the barren desert glisten with
golden harvest ; settlements now cover the hunting-ground of the
savages ; their country has been cut and divided in every conceiva-
ble form by the innumerable railroad and telegraph lines and routes
of communication and commerce ; and the Indians standing in the
pathway of American progress and the development of the wonder-
ful resources of this country have become the common enemy and
have been driven to the remote quarters of our territory.

During the time that this wonderful change has been wrought,
it may be asked. Have the Indians as a body made any progress to-
ward civilization ? and in the light of past history we would be
prompted to reply, Why should they have abandoned the modes
of life which Nature had given them to adopt the customs of their
enemies ?

In seeking to find the evidence of enlightenment, the results are
not satisfactory. It is presumed that there is not a race of wild
men on the face of the globe who worship the Great Spirit more in
accordance with that religion taught in the days of the patriarchs
than the natives of this country, and yet after many years of con-
tact with the civilized people we find the footprints of evil as plen-
tiful and as common as the evidences of Christianity. Again, in
early days the Indian tribes were to a considerable extent tillers of
the soil, but by constant warfare, in which their fields were devas-
tated and their crops destroyed, they have become entirely subju-
gated, the mere remnant of their former strength, or pushed out on
the vast plains of the West where they subsist upon wild fruits and
the flesh of animals. Could we obtain accurate statistics, we would
undoubtedly find that there were more acres of ground cultivated
by the Indians one hundred years ago than at the present time.

308 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

The white race has now obtained such complete control of every
quarter of the country and the means of communication with every
section are now so ample that the problem resolves itself down to
one of two modes of solution, viz., to entirely destroy the race by
banishment and extermination, or to adopt some humane and prac-
ticable method of improving the condition of the Indians, and in
the end make them part and parcel of our great population. The
first proposition, though it may be found to have thousands of ad-
vocates in different sections of the country, is too abhorrent to every
sense of humanity to be considered. The other method is regarded
as practicable, but its adoption is considered doubtful.

Looking at the purposes of our Government toward the Indians,
we find that after subjugating them it has been our policy to collect
the different tribes on reservations and support them at the expense
of our people. The Indians have in the main abandoned the hope
of driving back the invaders of their territory, yet there are some
who still cherish the thought, and strange as it may seem it is a fact
that the most noted leader among the Indians advanced such a prop-
osition to the writer within the last two years. They now stand
m the position of unruly children to indulgent parents, for whom
they have very little respect, at times wrongly indulged and again
unmercifully punished.

Coming down to our direct or immediate relations with them we
find that our policy has been to make them wards of the nation, to
be held under close military surveillance, or else to make them pen-
sioners under no other restraint than the influence of one or two indi-
viduals. Living without any legitimate government, without any
law and without any physical power to control them, what better sub-
jects or more propitious fields could be found for vice and crime ?

We have committed our Indian matters to the custody of an
Indian Bureau, which for many years was a part of the military
establishment of the Government ; but, for political reasons and to
promote party interests, this Bureau was transferred to the Depart-
ment of the Interior.

Whether or not our system of Indian management has been a
success during the past ten, fifty, or one hundred years, is almost
answered in the asking. The Indians, the frontiersmen, the army
stationed in the West, and the readers of the daily news in all
parts of our country, can answer that question. Another question
is frequently asked, 5^y is our management of Indian affairs less
successful than that of our neighbors across the northern boundary ?

THE IXDIAK PROBLEM. 309

and it can be answered in a few words. Their system is permanent,
decided, and just. The tide of immigration in Canada has not
been as great as along our frontier ; they allow the Indians to live
as Indians, and do not attempt to force upon the natives the customs
which to them are distasteful. In our own management it is the
opinion of a very large number of our people that a change for the
better would be desirable ; such a measure is now under considera-
tion, and we have the singular and remarkable phenomenon present-
ed of the traders, the contractors, the interested officials of the
West, and many of the best people of the East, advocating one
scheme, while a great majority of frontier settlers, the officers of
the army of long experience on the Plains, and many competent
judges in the East, advocating another. The question is one of too
grave imi)ortanco to admit interests of a personal or partisan na-
ture. It is one of credit or discredit to our Government, and of
vital importance to our people. A commission of eminent legisla-
tors have been for months investigating the subject, and the great-
est danger to be feared is that no good will result, or that a mere
makeshift will be a<l()ptcd by which neither party will be benefited.
The writer would deprecate any radical change without a clearly
defined plan for the government and gradual elevation of the In-
dian race, for such is believed to be both practicable and judicious.
Now, in order that peace may be secured, the Indians benefited,
and protection given to the extensive settlements scattered over a
greater area than the whole of the Atlantic States, it is believed
that a plan could be devised which would enlist the hearty ap-
proval and support of men of all parties. The object is surely wor-
thy of the effort. No body of people whose language, religion,
and customs are so entirely different from ours can be expected to
cheerfully and suddenly adopt our own. The change must be
gradual, continuous, and in accordance with Nature's laws. The
history of nearly every race that has advanced from barbarism to
civilization has been through the stages of the hunter, the herds-
[man, the agriculturist, and finally reaching those of commerce,
lechanics, and the higher arts.

It is held, first, that we as a generous people and liberal Govem-
lent are bound to give to the Indians the same rights that all other
len enjoy, and if we deprive them of these privileges we must
khen give them the best government possible. Without any legiti-
[mate government, and in a section of country where the lawless
'are under very little restraint, it is useless to suppose that thou-

310 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

sands of wild savages thoroughly armed and mounted can be con-
trolled by moral suasion. Even if they were in the midst of com-
fortable and agreeable surroundings, yet when dissatisfaction is
increased by partial imprisonment and quickened by the pangs of
hunger, a feeling that is not realized by one man in a thousand in
civilized life, it requires more patience and forbearance than sav-
age natures are likely to possess to prevent serious outbreaks.

The experiment of making a police force composed entirely of
Indians is a dangerous one, unless they are under the shadow and
control of a superior body of white troops, and, if carried to any
great extent, will result in rearming the Indians and work disas-
trously to the frontier settlements. There would be a slight incon-
gruity in a government out on the remote frontier, composed of a
strictly non-combatant for chief, with a 2^osse comitatus of red war-
riors, undertaking to control several thousand wild savages !

The available land that can be given to the Indians is being
rapidly diminished ; they can not be moved farther West ; and some
political party or administration must take the responsibility of pro-
tecting the Indians in their rights of person and property.

The advantage of placing the Indians under some government
strong enough to control them and just enough to command their
respect is too apparent to admit of argument. The results to be
obtained would be :

First. They would be beyond the possibility of doing harm, and
the frontier settlements would be freed from their terrifying and
devastating presence.

JSecojid. They would be under officials having a knowledge of
the Indian country and the Indian character.

Third. Their supplies and annuities would be disbursed through
an efficient system of regulations.

Fourth. Besides being amenable to the civil laws, these officers
would be under strict military law, subject to trial and punishment
for any act that would be " unbecoming a gentleman, or prejudicial
to good order."

It is therefore suggested and earnestly recommended that a sys-
tem which has proved to be eminently practicable should receive at
least a fair trial. As the Government has in its employ men who
by long and faithful service have established reputations for integ-
rity, character, and ability which can not be disputed — men who
have commanded armies, reconstructed States, controlled hundreds
of millions of public property, and who during years of experience

THE INDIAN PROBLEM. 311

on the frontier have opened the way for civilization and Christian-
ity — it is believed that the services of these officials, in efforts to
prevent war and elevate the Indian race, would be quite as judicious
as their employment when inexperience and mismanagement have
culminated in hostilities. Allowing the civilized and semi-civilized
Indians to remain under the same supervision as at present, the
President of the United States should have power to place the wild
and nomadic tribes under the control of the War Department.
Officers of known character, integrity, and experience, who would
govern them and be interested in improving their condition, should
be placed in charge of the different tribes. One difficulty has been,
tliat they have been managed by officials too far away, and who
knew nothing of the men they were dealing with. The Indians, as
far as possible, should be localized on the public domain, in sections
of country to which they are by nature adapted.

The forcing of strong, hardy, mountain Indians from the extreme
North to the warmer malarial districts of the South is regarded as
cruel, and should be discontinued.

Every effort should be made to locate the Indians by families,
for the ties of relationship among them are much stronger than is
generally supposed. By this means the Indians will become inde-
pendent of their tribal relations, and will not be found congregated
in large and unsightly camps, as are now usually met with about
their agencies.

Much of the army transportation now used in scouting for
Indians and clearing the country could be utilized in transporting
their stores, breaking the ground, and preparing the way for making
the Indians 8elf-su})porting.

All supplies, annuities, and disbursements of money should be
made under the same system of accountability as now regulates
army disbursements. The officers in charge should have sufficient
force to preserve order, patrol the reservations, prevent intrusions,
recover stolen property, arrest the lawless and those who take refuge
in Indian camps to shield themselves from punishment for crimes
or to enable them to live without labor, and to keep the Indians
upon their reservations and v^^ithin the limits of their treaties. The
officer in charge would be enabled to control or prevent the sale of
ammunition, as well as to suppress the sale of intoxicating liquors
among the Indians. Many thousands of the Indian ponies, useful
only for the war or the chase, should be sold and the proceeds used
in the purchase of domestic stock. A large percentage of the

312 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

annual appropriations should be employed in the purchase of cattle
and other domestic animals ; the Indians desire them, and the Plains
will support hundreds of thousands of them. They will replace
the buffalo, the elk, the deer, and the antelope. These cattle and
other animals should be branded and given to the Indians by fam-
ilies ; the surplus stock to be sold after three years under such -re-
stricted rules as would enable the Indians to receive full return for
their property. From a pastoral people the Indians should be in-
duced to become agriculturists ; taught the seasons to plant and to
harvest the variety of valuable products and the use of machinery as
a means of obtaining food. The step from the first grade to the sec-
ond would be easily accomplished provided the Indians were directed
by a firm hand. As they accumulate property and learn industry,
there would be a threefold incentive to their remaining at peace,
namely, occupation, the fear of confiscation of property, and the
loss of the comforts of life.

The above is no idle theory, as the writer has advocated such a
policy for years, and by actual and successful experience has demon-
strated that such was practicable even with the wildest tribes of the
Plains, a part of whom, eighteen months before, had never shaken
hands with a white man.

Two more important measures of improvements are also needed,
and should be authorized by Congress.

In all communities there will be found disturbing elements, and,
to meet this difficulty, courts of justice should be instituted. Fre-
quently outbreaks and depredations are prompted by a few mischiev-
ous characters, which could easily be checked by a proper govern-
ment. This is one secret of success with the Canadian system :
where disturbances occur, the guilty suffer, and not whole tribes,
including innocent women and children.

As a remark from Sitting Bull has been quoted, we will now
repeat the words of Joseph, who says that " the greatest want of
the Indian is a system of law by which controversies between Indi-
ans, and between Indians and white men, can be settled without
appealing to physical force." He says also that "the want of law
is the great source of disorder among Indians. They understand
the operation of laws, and, if there were any statutes, the Indians
would be perfectly content to place themselves in the hands of a
proper tribunal, and would not take the righting of their wrongs
into their own hands, or retaliate, as they now do, without the law."

Do we need a savage to inform us of the necessity that has

THE INDIAN PROBLEM. 313

existed for a century ? As these people become a part of our popu-
lation, they sliould have some tribunal where they could obtain pro-
tection in their rights of person and property. A dispmte as to the
rights of property between an Indian and a white man before a
white juror might not be decided in exact accordance with jus-
tice in some localities. Fortunately, our Constitution provides that
*' the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Su-
preme Cijurt, and such inferior courts as Congress may from time
to time ordain and establish" ; and it is believed that Congress has
power, at least in the Territories, to give such jurisdiction either to
the military courts, or the Territorial courts, or both, as will secure
justice to the Indians in disputes arising between the Indians and
the white men.

The warriors may be made to care for their flocks and herds,
and the industry of the Indians that is now wasted may be diverted
to peaceful and useful pursuits ; yet the great work of reformation
must be mainly through the youth of the different tribes. The
hope of every race is in the rising generation. This important work
might well enlist the sympathy and support of all philanthropic and
Christian people. As we are under obligation to support the tribes
until they become self-sustaining, it might be advisable to support
as many as possible of the children of the Indians at places where
they would be the least expensive to the Government, and where
they would be under the best influence. As the Government has
expended hundreds of thousands of dollars in building military
posts that are no longer occupied or required, and as there are at
these places excellent buildings and large reservations, it would be
well to utilize them for educational and industrial purposes. The
present school system is regarded as too expensive, and productive
of little good. The children are exposed to the degrading influence
of camp-life, and the constant moving of the tribes destroys the
best efforts of instructors. Several years ago the writer recom-
mended the use of several of our unoccupied military posts, and
that as many of the youth of the different tribes as could be gath-
ered voluntarily be placed at these establishments, particularly the
sons of chiefs, who will in a few years govern the different tribes.
These could soon be taught the English language, habits of indus-
try, the benefits of civilization, the power of the white race, and,
after a few years, return to their people with some education, with
more intelligence, and with their ideas of life entirely changed for
the better. They would in turn become the educators of their own

314 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

people, and their influence for good could not be estimated, while
the expense of educating them would be less than at present, and
thousands would be benefited thereby. The Indians, as they be-
come civilized and educated, as they acquire property and pay taxes
toward the support of the Government, should have the same rights
of citizenship as all other men enjoy.

The President of the United States should have power to trans-
fer from the War Department to the Interior Department any tribe
that shall become so far civilized and peaceable in its disposition as
to render it unnecessary to keep its members longer under the con-
trol of the military power.

Whenever an emergency arises which has not been foreseen and
provided for by Congress, such as failure or destruction of their
crops, the President should have power, on the recommendation of
the officer in charge or the Governors of the different Territories in
which they are living, to order the necessary supplies, as has been
done in several instances to white people, in order to prevent great
suffering or a serious disturbance of the peace ; such supplies to be
limited to the smallest necessity, and only until such time as Con-
gress could take action on the matter.

A continuation of the system which has prevailed for the past
twenty years will, it is believed, simply perpetuate a condition of
affairs the result of which is a chronic state of insecurity and hos-
tilities. The question may as well be met and decided. A race of
savages can not by any human ingenuity be civilized and Christian-
ized within a few years of time, neither will 250,000 people with
their descendants be destroyed in the next fifty years. The white
man and the Indian should be taught to live side by side, each
respecting the rights of the other, and both living under wholesome
laws, enforced with ample authority and exact justice. Such a gov-
ernment would be most gratifying and beneficial to the Indians,
while those men who have invested their capital, and with wonder-
ful enterprise are developing the unparalleled and inexhaustible
wealth that for ages has lain dormant in the Western mountains,
those people who have left the overcrowded centers of the East,
and whose humble homes are now dotting the plains and valleys of
the far West, as well as those men who are annually called upon to
endure greater exposure and suffering than is required by the troops
of any other nation on the globe, would hail with great satisfaction
any system that would secure a substantial and lasting peace.

Nelson A. Miles.

IV.

CRYPTOGRAPHY IN POLITICS.

Old as the art of cryptography is, it may be doubted whether
it lias made great advances in modern times. The need of it is not
so pressinir as it used to be. " How often," says Mr. Philip Thick-
nesse, an English writer on the art of deciphering, " do we not hear
of a courier being murdered and his dispatches carried off, and for
what other purpose but information ? and, Avithout the key to deci-
pher letters so written, to what purpose should they be intercepted
by such a deed ? " Mr. Thicknesse wrote only a hundred years
ago ; but already there has been so great an improvement in the
morals of governments that the custom of killing foreign-office
messengers for the sake of their dispatch-bags is practically obso-
lete in diplomacy, and statesmen have ceased to pillage post-offices
or rifle portmanteaus. If they wish for secret papers now, they
serve a writ. The telegraph, moreover, has made many of the most
difficult of the old codes of cipher unavailable. In this category
must be placed all those composed of arbitrary marks, or of words
or letters arranged in peculiar positions — in squares, parallelograms,
columns, etc. Dr. ^Villiam Blair, the author of an interesting
though now antiquated treatise on " Cipher " in Rees's " Cyclopse-
dia," gives many curious specimens of alj^habets constructed of ar-
bitrary signs. Charles I. used a code consisting of short strokes in
various positions on a line. The Marquis of Worcester invented a
cipher composed of dots and lines variously ordered within a geo-
metrical figure. Dr. Blair made one of three dots, placed over,
under, or on the line, by which he could represent no fewer than
eighty-one letters, figures, or words. Mr. Thicknesse explained
Avith much particularity, and also with a highly successful if not
strictly necessary demonstration of the usefulness of secret writing
in affairs of state, a plan of conveying information in the disguise
of music, the notes, rests, expression-marks, etc., standing for letters.

316 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

As cryptography is now used chiefly for telegraphing, modern
ciphers must belong to one of three classes : 1. Words or letters
having an arbitrary signification. 2. Numbers representing words
or letters. 3. Words or letters having their usual signification but
standing in a false order.

After all, the art of cryptography loses nothing by being re-
stricted to the ordinary letters and numerals. The ingenuity ex-
pended in devising new alphabets of dots, lines, mathematical and
astronomical symbols, and fantastic forms was wasted. One code
of this kind is as good or as bad as another, all such " plain ciphers,"
as they are called, in which the meaning of an arbitrary alphabetic
sign is invariable, being easily read by the exercise of a little pa-
tience. If a is always represented in the cipher by the same sym-
bol, it makes no difference to the translator whether that symbol is
an arrangement of dots, or the sign -F, or the note .^, or the figure
4, or the letter x. The method of solving a common alphabetic
cipher depends upon a knowledge of the relative frequency of cer-
tain letters and combinations of letters in ordinary writing. Count
how many times each cipher is repeated in the dispatch. The com-
monest is probably e, that being the letter most used in our lan-
guage. Next in order are likely to be t, a, o, to, i ; afterward r and
s / the rarest letters are cc, q,j, z. The double letters ss, tt, II, dd,
mm, 7in, oo, ee are frequent ; ee, II, and ss are common termina-
tions, so are s, ed, ty, ly, ing, Hon ; a and u are found as terminals
of a very few words — for instance, " sea " and " you " ; on and no,
to and \^ii]ot, of and fo [r] often come together in reversed posi-
tions ; and is very common, not only as a word in itself, but as a
part of a word ; that, this, there are also common j the definite and
indefinite articles, the, a, an, are generally suppressed in telegrams.
If the words are properly divided in the cipher the interpretation
will be child's play ; but in most cases all the words are run to-
gether, or else the divisions are purposely misplaced. At the begin-
ning of a word h, I, m, n, v, and y must always be followed by a
vowel ; ^ by ^, r, or a vowel ; q in any position requires after it a
vowel followed by one of the other vowels. Starting with these
principles, write opposite the cipher characters all the equivalents
which you think you can ^x ; if you have guessed right, you will
soon recognize fragments of words ; if you have guessed wrong,
some of the letters will be found in impossible combinations, and
you must try again. It should be observed that the rule as to the
relative frequency of the letters is only a statement of the average

CRYPTOGRAPHY IN POLITICS. 317

computed from a long passage, say of several pages, and it is often
at fault in short messages.

A transparent cipher is formed by shifting the alphabet one or
more steps forward or back, using </, for example, instead of a, h
for b, I for o, and so on. The only tolerably safe alphabetic cipher
is one in which the value of every character is constantly changing.
A convenient code of this kind is known as the key-word system.
It depends upon a table constructed as follows :

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
bcdefghi j klmnopq rs tuvwxyz a
cdefghi jklmnopqrstuvwxyzab
defghi j klmnopqrstuvwxyzabc
efghi j klninopqrstuvwxyzabcd

fghi i klmnopqrstuvwxyz abode

fnii klmnopqrstuvwxyz abcdef
i jklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefg

i i klmnopqrstuvw.xyzabcdefgh
j klmnopqrs tuvwxyz abcdefghi
klmnopqrstuvwxyz abcdefghi j
1 m n o p q r 8 t u V w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k
mnopqrstnvwxyz abcdefghi j kl
nopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghi j klm
opcjrstuvwxyzabcdefghi jklmn
pqrstuvwxyzabcdefghi j klmno
qrstuvwxyzabcdefghi jklmnop
rs tuvwxyz abcdefghi j klmnopq
Btuvwxyz abcdefghi j klmnopqr
tuvwxyz abcdefghi j klmnopqrs
uvwxyz abcdefghi j klmnopqrst
vwxyzabcdefghi j klmno pqrstu
wxyz abcdefghi j klmno pqrstuv
xyzabcdefghi j klmnopqrstuvw
yzabcdefghi j klmnopqrstuvwx
zabcdefghi j klmnopqrstuvwxy

A key-word is chosen, and written over the message which is to
be turned into cipher. For example, the message is, "Send me
money," and the key- word is " Fox " ; the words will then be pre-
pared in this manner :

Foxf ox foxfo
Send me money

Now find the first letter of the key- word (/) in the horizontal row
at the top of the table, and the first letter of the message {s) in the

318 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

first vertical column at the left. Follow the s line till it intersects
the f column, and take the letter which is found at the point of
junction (x) as the first letter of the cipher. Get the other letters
in the same way. The cipher will read : xski ah rckjm. To trans-
late it, the key- word must be written over the cipher —

Foxf ox foxfo
Xski ab rckjm

and the previous process reversed ; that is to say, find the first letter
of the key (/*) at the top of the table, run down the column until
you come to the first letter of the cipher (a^), and take for the trans-
lation the letter which stands in a line with that x in the first col-
umn at the left of the table, i. e., s. This cipher has one weak
point : If you guess any word in any part of the message, you can
readily discover the key-word from that, and then the whole secret
is out. Now, if you know4he subject of the correspondence, an
inference as to certain words likely to occur in it will not be diffi-
cult, and in any case there are some common words which are rare-
ly missing from dispatches of moderate length. Suppose you have
the cipher xski ah rcJcjm, and you suspect that it contains the word
" money " ; write that word over the first five letters, and see if the
table will yield a satisfactory result by the same process last de-
scribed. It will not. Try the word in connection with other let-
ters ; when it is placed at the end, you solve the enigma, the letters
rcJcjm being converted into foxfo. This method of interpretation,
however, demands so much time and patience, to say nothing of
a measure of good luck, that for ordinary purposes the cipher is
quite safe. The key- word system is a very old one, but it has re-
cently been improved and published with modifications for military
and commercial purposes.

A more convenient and secure cipher was devised by Mr. Robert
Slater, Secretary of the French Atlantic Telegraph Company. This
is much used by business men, 'and specimens of it were recently
published in the reports of a famous lawsuit. Mr. Slater's code
consists of a vocabulary of 25,000 words, numbered consecutively
from 1, and any number that may be agreed upon by the confeder-
ates is taken as a key. Suppose the message to be, " Send me
money," and the key to be 2,500. " Send " in the vocabulary is
numbered 20,364 ; add 2,500, and you have 22,864, opposite which
stands the word unbounded. By the same process of addition.

CRYPTOGRAPHY IN POLITICS. 319

"me" is converted into pianist, and "money" into precipitation.
If the key remains invariable, it may be discovered by the system
of trial-guessing already described ; but the danger of this could be
avoided by changing the key at every step — adding 2,500, for ex-
ample, to the first number, 2,G00 to the second, etc. The system
admits of countless variations.

In all important political campaigns the use of a telegraphic
cipher seems to be necessary. It would hasten the Reform millen-
nium, however, if such messages — being in no right sense of the
word private telegrams, but a part of the apparatus of popular elec-
tions — could always be collected by Congress after the close of the
contest, and exi)osed to public view, on the ground that the people
ought to know exactly how their business has been conducted. A
few of the secret messages of the Republican agents and managers
during the exciting days of November and December, 1876, have
been examined by various committees of Congress, but they are of
little importance, and their simple devices for concealment hardly
deserve to be called a cipher. The following is a part of one of
Mr. William P]. Chandler's dispatches from Florida ; the rest of it
being in plain English :

Noyes and Kasson will be here on Monday, and Robinson must go im-
mediately to Philadelphia, and then corae here. Can we also have Jones
apnin ? Rainy for not more than one tenth of Smith's warm apples. You
can imagine what the cold fellows arc doing.

Mr. Chandler explained that Bohinsoii meant $3,000 to be de-
posited in Philadelphia. Jones was $2,000. Rainy indicated
favorable prospects. SniitlCs warm applies represented two hun-
dred and fifty majority, and the cold felloics were the Democrats.
With a few dispatches for comparison, anybody acquainted with
the history of the Florida canvass could have read such a cipher.

The search for cipher dispatches on the other side yielded no
fewer than thirteen different codes, including in elaborate and in-
genious forms and combinations all the classes of ciphers mentioned
on a preceding page as being adapted to telegraphic correspondence
— letters standing for other letters, and used both with fixed and
shifting keys, two letters standing for one, numbers representing
letters, numbers representing words and phrases, two numbers
representing a single letter, words taken in an arbitrary sense, and
words transposed so that the message was unintelligible without a
key. In the most important dispatches two or more of these sys-

320 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

terns were combined to make a cipher within a cipher. A few
messages in Oregon were disguised by merely substituting b for a,
and so on through the alphabet ; thus, cf7ipsf fyqmjdju meant " Be
more explicit." This solution would occur to almost any intelli-
gent person at first sight ; but the cipher was difficult to translate
on account of the many blunders which occurred in transmitting it.
An alphabet in which every letter was represented by two other
letters arbitrarily selected, looked harder. Here is a specimen of
it:

Yeeiemnsppaissitpinsititaashshyypiimimnssspeenaaimaennsyisnpinsimimp-
eaaityyen.

The character of this cipher, however, was easily determined.
The abundance of double letters showed that it was not a common
alphabetic cipher in which each letter is represented by a single and
invariable symbol ; and the fact that it contained only ten of the
letters of the alphabet proved that it was not read by a shifting
key. It must therefore be based upon combinations of letters. This
being assumed, a translation was instantly made with the help of a
dispatch which was partly in plain English, proper names only be-
ing written in cipher. It began : " Gave ijpaishsli charge of ityyi-
tns / he sent to 'mapinsimyypUt but not to the other. Brevard
returns sent you to-day." The first cipher word was evidently the
name of a person ; the .second and third appeared to be names of
counties. If we suppose each cipher letter to be composed of two
characters, we should have for ityyitns a word of four letters, the
first and third of which are the same. The dispatch belongs to the
Florida correspondence, and the only Florida county which meets
these conditions is " Dade." The letters of Dade are repeated in
the next word, where they fit the interpretation " Brevard " ; and all
the conjectures so far made accord with the rules respecting the
average frequency of letters. Applying the alphabet thus begun to
the dispatch quoted above, we obtain the following fragment :
" . . V6 . . . dred d . . . ar.^'' which is readily converted into " five
hundred dollars " ; and the rest follows rapidly.

An alphabetic cipher composed entirely of double numbers gave
more trouble. There were not many specimens of it, and it hap-
pened that the general rule of the relative frequency of letters was
here at fault. The fact that the cipher was double having been de-
termined by the same circumstances observed in the double-letter
code, the interpretation was finally obtained by a series of trial-
guesses on the following dispatch :

CRYPTOGRAPnY IX POLITICS. 321

8455893 1 93276689272042663455

339320348955553993425533934844

55522766332020553131064227829696

93208266489352279344933482313127

9393S2 18396682203442824893448296

396642488284523166422766755552

4839668233932093395527824866

5248445542824889845596965233

8284664893208233993274893422066

89273193484893429655208268829320062766

7755879382339952338448825533C677()6

8233274S775587934233554284663387662727

82337793319384485542663187554893663320906633

20069652274855966625939684318233663320845534

778233068448829696932082664893318934823131

75932755527744484855965542425534

Tho (late, Higiiaturo, aii<l address led to the supposition that the
message might refer to a dispute about the powers of the Governor
in canvassing the Presidential returns. The word " canvass " was ac-
cordingly searched for, and at the end of the twelfth line the follow-
ing arrangement of numbers was found : 84, 66, 33, 87, 66, 27, 27.
This j)roved to be a fortunate guess, and, having six letters to
begin with, the alphabet was completed without further difficulty.

Three or four codes were studied in which words were used in
an arbitrary sense, or numbers substituted for certain "tell-tale"
words. These were read, with more or less assurance of correct-
ness, by collating several dispatches and considering the context ;
but whore the number of specimens is small the interpretation of
most of the words is no better than guess-work, and it can not
be depended upon. These ciphers, however, always excite sus-
picion, and they were not employed for communications of much
importance, except in combination with another system, to be
examined later. The " Dictionary Cipher " is a system in which
a substitute is found for every word in the message by turn-
ing a certain number of pages in a vocabulary previously chosen.
The greater part of the Oregon correspondence was conducted
in this cipher, the book \ised being a small " Household Eng-
lish Dictionary," published in London. The secret was betrayed
by somebody who had employed the same code in business trans-
actions, and the process of deciphering after that was little more
VOL. cxxviii. — xo. 268. 21

322 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

than a mechanical operation. A number of dispatches in a dic-
tionary cipher, however, were found in the Florida and South
Carolina bundles, without any clew to the book by which they were
made. It was assumed that the volume was a small one, handy to
carry in traveling, and that as a matter of convenience the number
of pages to be turned would not be more than six or seven. All
the small dictionaries accessible were accordingly tried with one of
the dispatches, and an easy translation was at last made with
" Webster's Pocket Dictionary." The key varied, being applied by
turning back sometimes one page, sometimes two, three, four, or
five pages. In Oregon the translation went forward instead of
back, and the number of pages was always four. The dictionary
cipher is clumsy to use, easy to detect, and liable to blunders which
are not readily corrected.

By far the largest as well as the most momentous part of the
recently disclosed correspondence was conducted by means of an
elaborate system of substitution and transposition cipher combined.
Arbitrary equivalents were first written in place of the important
or " tell-tale " words, and then the whole dispatch was transposed.
The substituted equivalents were sometimes proper nouns (gener-
ally geographical names, as America, France, Russia, Copenhageii)
and sometimes numbers. The transposition of the words was made ac-
cording to fixed rules or sequences of numbers, and the sentences were
rearranged for translation by the use of a duplicate key in the hands
of the person to whom the dispatch was addressed. Here is a speci-
men of a message from Columbia to New York ; it is only the begin-
ning of a long telegram, but the sense is complete as far as it goes :

Now bring safe river thing stuff river Warsaw man would as all Copen-
hagen to have on Warsaw for Scliuylkill through Kochester Schuylkill
receiving river the looks at Danube work received.

It is the combination of the transposition and substitution sys-
tems which makes this cipher difficult to interpret. Dislocated sen-
tences can be rearranged with a little patience when the meaning of
the words is known ; and a substitution cipher, if enough specimens
of it are at hand, can be readily interpreted by the context. But
here the significance of the most important words and the context
are both unknown. The problem, accordingly, is to rearrange a
transposed sentence without understanding all the words. The feat
would have been almost impossible if the translators had not been
supplied with a very large number of dispatches. The first step
was a fortunate guess at the meaning of one of the commonest of

CRYPTOGRAPHY IX POLITICS.

323

the subslitutiuii ciphers, Warsaic. This, after a few trials, was
aijsumed to be " telegram," and the following message of ten words
was then easily deciphered :

[Cipher.]
Warsaw they read all unchanj^ed last are idiots cant situation.

[Translation.]

Can't read last telegram. Situation unchanged. They are all idiots.

The same order of words was tried on other telegrams. It would
fit messages of just ten words, but no others. Hence the key evi-
dently varied with the length of the dispatch. It was now observed
that the number of words in a message was invariably a multiple of
five. There were a few telegrams of ten words, a few of fifteen,
many of twenty, twenty-five, and so on, and they ran up to two
hundred, always proceeding by fives. This showed that the con-
federates had taken an assortment of sequences, or blocks of num-
bers, arranged them in some arbitrary order, and adopted them as
the keys for transposing and rearranging the dispatches, the num-
ber of words in the message being the clew by which the receiver
knew what key or combination of keys he must use in the transla-
tion. To reconstruct these sequences by collating dispatches of
equal length was a work that demanded only time and patience.
Five thirty-word telegrams were first written in parallel columns,
and every word numbered, thus :

rint 4Up«lcb.

8«con(I dtipatch.

you
do

did

to
question

when

you

"you

to
morning

asked

want

where

po
supposed

this

until

cora«
to-ni(rht
important

and
answer

here

Warsawed

adjourned

to-morrow

London

you.

Very

news

say

Copenhagen

from

can
Florida

you

count

much

give

what
Louisiana

am
placed

mixed
Insure
London
Oregon

few
Intend
things

out
a
us

here.

'J6

'1%

Third dispatch.

Figure
France
capture
and
over
what
poe
answer
Europe
Moselle
Russia
shall
little
and
appearances
about
best
hope
Glasgow
wiU
up
keep
Oregon
America
be
can
Potomac
behind
Edinburgh
I.

Fourth dupatch.

situation

prospects

and

Africa

desperate

intend

Thames

soon

Europe

report

every

mischief

the
Warsaw

in
dispatch
in
acting
this
will
state
all
concert
morning
parties
France
in

and
received.

Fifth dlBpateh.

Rochester

answer

America

yesterday

to-day

understands

Thomas

Africa

about

but

first

avail

nothinsr

Bavaria

wiil

Copenhagen

once

fear

reported

small

and

satisfied

hope.

324 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

The task now was to find an order of the numbers which would
make sense in all five columns. To do this, little groups of words
were tried together, and tested by comparison with the parallel
columns. There were a few phrases which seemed to adjust them-
selves naturally ; in the first dispatch, for example, we have the
words " adjourned until to-morrow," and if we look for a nomina-
tive to adjourned we discover that there is no word in the column
that will do except London. This order of numbers, 29, 27, 19, 28,
gives in the second column " us out if a," and the words that pre-
cede " us out" are evidently " intend (25) to (5) count " (10). The
sequences thus begun are easily continued ; when the path is lost
in one column it is found in another ; and so the difiiculty about
disposing of the " blind words " is avoided.

The proper key for a message of 30 words being ascertained,
sequences of 15, 20, and 25 were next constructed in the same
manner. Keys of 35 and 40 were also made, but they proved to
be merely repetitions of shorter ones, and the work was therefore
supposed to be complete with the key of 30. But as the process of
translating went on, unexpected difficulties presented themselves.
The keys fitted so perfectly in many instances that there could be
no doubt of their correctness, but there were some dispatches which
they did not fit at all. It was soon discovered that for every one
of the five blocks of numbers there were tioo keys, or sequences,
either of which the confederates used -at pleasure, and still later it
appeared that the second set of keys was a mathematical correlative
of the first set, so that any dispatch could be translated by either
one of two keys. For example, key III. consists of the following
sequence of 15 numbers, 8, 4, 1, 7, 13, 5, 2, 6, 11, 14, 9, 3, 15, 12, 10,
and the correlative key IV. is 3, 7, 12, 2, 6, 8, 4, 1, 11, 15, 9, 14, 5,
10, 13. The beginning of a certain message is translated according
to key III. by numbering the words consecutively from 1 to 15, and
then picking them out in the order given above, thus :

1234 5 678 9

Too last do received answer night late Warsaw under-

10 11 12 13 14 15

stand me don't want to quite you, etc.

But precisely the same translation is obtained by writing over the
words the figures of the correlative key IV., and then picking out
the words in their natural numerical order, thus :

CRYPTOGRAPHY IN POLITICS. 325

3 7 12 2 6 8 4 1 11

Too last do received answer night late Warsaw under-

15 14 5 10 13

Btand me don't want to quite you.

The messages having been transposed, the next step was the
translation of the substitution ciphers, or " blind words." In most
cases this was easily done by the context. Words like London
(Returning Board), Rochester (votes), Syracuse (majority), Ithaca
(Democrats), Ilacana (Republicans), Copenhagen (money), were
so plain that there could not be a doubt as to their meaning.
Others {Anna, Charles, Jane, Thomas^ William, etc.) proved to
have no meaning at all ; they were " nulls," thrown in to fill out
the dispatch to the number of words requii'ed for the key, and,
when the transposition was effected, they always fell together at
the end. Numerals were represented by the names of rivers, and
zero by the word river. The precise equivalents of several of these
ciphers were clqarly fixed by the telegrams in which the figures of
votes and majorities were reported ; for example, a South Carolina
correspondent, after telegraphing the majority for the Hayes elec-
tors on the face of the returns, adds, "^ Iihi?ie of Tilden's within
Moselle llianies river of their lowest." Now, it is known that one
of the Democratic electors was only 230 votes behind the lowest
Republican elector. Tliat settles the meaning of Rhine, Moselle,
Thames, and river. The interpretation thus reached is confirmed
by numerous other instances. All the other numbers are equally
well ascertained ; and, in fact, there is hardly a " blind word " in
the whole vocabulary — there is certainly none of any importance —
of which the meaning is not capable of demonstration.

John R. G. Hassakd.

RUSSIAN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE DAY.

The Diary of a Sportsman,

and other Novels.
Smoke : A Novel.

Virgin Soil : A Novel.
Childhood and Youth.
War and Peace.

Anna Karenina : A Novel.

Since the time that Russia and Russian literature have ceased
to be an " unknown land," and the past development and possible
future of tlie Russian people have become an object of study and
interest for European and American observers, but tvro Russian
authors have succeeded in acquiring a world-wide fame. These
are Ivan Tm-genieff and Count Leo Tolstoy. In selecting them as
representatives of the Russian national literature, the critical judg-
ment of the public has been guided by a true sense of their talent,
their poetic force, and national importance.

Turgenieff and Tolstoy stand undisputedly at the head of the
Russian literature of fiction, and as fiction has for a long time been
the only and is still the most important form of Russian literature
in general, as well as one of the most powerful instruments of social
progress in Russia, both novelists may be considered the chief rep-
resentatives of the Russian national intellect, of its past and pres-
ent aspirations and developments. As to their creative poetical
genius both stand on a nearly equal level. Both are endowed with
that keenness of observation, that deep instinctive knowledge of
the human heart, that peculiar magnetic affinity between the poet
and the nation he belongs to, which the sacred flame of genius alone
confers on its elect. But they differ widely as to the character and
tendency of their works — so widely indeed, that a comparison be-
tween them becomes scarcely possible. Turgenieff is above and
before all the poet of Russian peasant-life, with all its pleasures
and woes. The plain, monotonous existence of daily toil led by

RUSSIA^r NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE DAY. 327

the Russian laborer in the midst of the boundless steppe inspires
our great novelist with the highest poetry, with the most touching
and pathetic feeling. Even nature, which he loves so passionately
and describes with such masterly art, assumes under his pen the
peculiar coloring which the simple imagination of the people sheds
on it. For the pictures of Russian peasant-life he has reserved his
brightest colors. To the healing of the sorrows and wTongs of the
peasant he has devoted all the power of his genius.

On the other hand, Count Leo Tolstoy may be called the liter-
ary representative of the higher classes of Russian society. In his
works we find a true and vivid picture of the Russian harstvo
(nobility), with all its peculiar characteristics, its poetry, its social
and moral i>hilosophy. Violently severed from the rest of the peo-
ple by a premature and artificial civilization imposed on them "by
order of the Czar," corrupted by the double influence of the powder
they exercised over their serfs and of the Czar's despotism under
which they were themselves compelled to bow their heads, natu-
rallv endowed with a passionate but inconsistent and somewhat
indolent disposition, the Russian nobles, or at least the most intel-
ligent and best educated among them, had at all times a marked
tendency toward a contemplative, brooding, melancholy mode of
life, devoid of action and full of a barren, self-consuming skepticism,
which gradually destroyed all passion and individuality of charac-
ter, and, to use the language of that Danish prince who might well
have passed for the forefather of the Russian harm, "o'ershad-
owed their resolutions with the pale cast of thought." Count Tol-
stoy is the historian, the physiologist, the poet of this peculiar type.
All his works, taken as a whole, present a complete natural history
of that type, but a natural history written by one w^ho himself be-
lonjrs to those whom he describes, who has felt in his own heart
all the pangs of their melancholy, who himself labors under their
faults and possesses their virtues. Social problems have little or
no interest for him. He touches them in his novels only so far as
their existence reflects in some manner on the development of his
fond type. lie dwells with preference on such subjects as arise out
of the complicated relations of civilized life, and which require
from the author the finest and most delicate psychological analysis.
In this sphere of fiction he is a thorough master, an artist of aston-
ishing creative power ; but to the life of the people he is a stran-
ger, his sympathy for its simple forms seems affected, and when he
does happen to draw a picture of peasant-life it gives us the impres-

328 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

sion as if a well-educated and benevolent nobleman told us wliat "he
had seen of country-life in passing through a village in his travel-
ing-carriage and four.

The same contrast existing in the character of their works
marks also the personal appearance of each of the great Russian
novelists. Turgenieff's tall, somewhat stooping figure, his long,
white hair and flowing beard, his mild blue eyes and broad features,
to which a good-natured smile gives a peculiarly benevolent and
dreamy expression — all suggest in him one of those village patri-
archs whom one occasionally meets in Russia, who have seen and
thought and suffered a good deal during their long, eventful life,
and who on their decline have acquired the practice, if not the
theory, of that great truth, that "to understand means to forgive."
Leo Tolstoy is a good deal younger than his great literary contem-
porary ; he is now some forty-five years of age. His features are
not handsome, but carry the marks of deep thought, of serious
study, and of tormenting inner conflicts of the heart and mind.
He is a perfect type of what the Germans call a *' Grtibler." In
his appearance, his demeanor, his way of speaking, he betrays a man
accustomed to subject each feeling, each step in life, to a subtile,
searching analysis. He is himself what he describes in his novels,
the " Russian Hamlet."

Of all the numerous novels Turgenieff has published, and every
one of which was looked upon as an event in the literary circles of
all civilized nations, it is his first works, " The Sportsman's Diary "
and a few other small novels which appeared about the same pe-
riod (1846-'54), for which he is especially entitled to an immortal
fame. Those early works are all positive creations of his genius.
Their subjects are taken from that Russian peasant-life for which
Turgenieff has always shown such heartfelt sympathy, and the
beauties and poetic interest of which he was the first to reveal to
the European public. " The Sportsman's Diary " consists of a
series of disconnected sketches, the result of observations made by
a sportsman during his rambles through the woods and steppes of
central Russia. This " sportsman " is in most cases undoubtedly
Turgenieff himself, who spent nearly all his early youth on his
family estates in the province of Orel. Each of these sketches is
a perfect gem of poetry and simple dramatic force. One idea per-
vades them all : the desire to show to Russian society all the base-
ness and injustice of serfdom, all the evil influences it exercised on
the naturally mild, tolerant, and eminently gifted nature of the

RUSSIAN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE DAT. 329

Russian peasant. Turgcnieff, in his " Sportsman's Diary," was one
of the foremost pioneers of emancipation in Russia, and this title
to immortality shall never fail him as long as a human heart still
beats for liberty and truth !

In one of these sketches the artist shows us an old peasant living
in the midst of pathless woods all alone. He is never seen in the
neiirhborinf villa*T^es. Some hold him for a sorcerer, others for a
highwayman, but nobody knows whence he came, nor what his past
life has been. Lost in the woods during a terrible storm, the
" sportsman " meets with that mysterious figure. While the wind
is howling around and flashes of lightning illumine the dark forest,
the okl man tells him his dreary story — how in his youth he had
had a beautiful wife, and how his master, the harin, fell in love
with her and took her away from him. Once on a hot summer day
the sportsman sees a peasant stretched nearly senseless on the road-
side. He approaches him and hears that he is ill and poor and un-
able to do the work for his master ; everything he possesses has
been sold to i)ay the taxes and he himself has been whipped nearly
to death. " Now," he exclaims, " all is indifferent to me ! There
is nothing to rob me of any more ; they can not make me more
miserable than I am ! "

And so in each of these sketches a vivid picture, awful in its
natural nimplicity, of all the horrors of slavery arises before us,
adorned with the magic beauties of nature Avith which the miserable,
down-trodden serf lives in constant communion. By far the most
remark:ii)le of these antislavery sketches is, however, the one enti-
tled " Mumu," which, though not forming a part of the " Sports-
man's Diary," belongs to the same period of Turgenieff's literary
career. It is the story of a deaf and dumb peasant and his dog, to
which the former is passionately attached and which he calls by the
only sounds he is able to pronounce, rnu-mu! The bark of this dog
once happens to disturb the slumbers of the mistress, the harynia,
a nervous old maid, who gives the order to drown the beast. The
poor deaf and dumb man obeys, and drowns his only friend
with his own hand. This plain story, the subject of which might
appear almost trivial in its simplicity, is told by Turgcnieff with
such a pathetic feeling and in a language so full of poetic force,
that it produces on the reader a powerful and lasting impres-
sion.

There can be no doubt as to the fact that the " Sportsman's Di-
ary," and especially " Mumu," contributed in a great measure toward

330 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

gaining tlie hearts of Russian society for the holy cause of eman-
cipation. With the accomplishment of this work Turgenieff seems
to have spent all he had of love and kindly feeling for his people.
He ceased to draw his subjects exclusively from Russian peasant-
life. The frame of his works became wider, and embraced the
whole Russian society. But at the same time the faculty of cre-
ating positive types seemed to forsake him. Emerging from the
sphere of the plain workingman's life, the poet perceived in all the
rest of society nothing but a dark crowd of unprincipled men or
of weak skeptics, incapable of any true feeling, devoid of a set pur-
pose and guiding rule in life. For them he has nothing but gall
and contempt in his heart, satire and mockery on his lips. The
only being whom he exempts from this sweeping verdict is the
Russian woman. She stands aloof from all the baseness of practi-
cal life — of that sham which is officially called " civilization " in
Russia. Her heart is whole and sincere in its passions as in its
faults, and is exalted far above the petty " Hamlets " who play the
first parts among the male portion of society. For this reason
woman is always the suffering party in Turgenieff's novels. She
suffers or perishes by the love of a man unworthy of her, standing
far below her in point of energy, honor, and courage.

This negative view of Russian society pervades all the larger
and smaller novels of Turgenieff, from " Rudin " to " Fathers and
Sons," and reaches its climax in " Smoke," where not one single
redeeming figure is to be found. Here the novelist seems utterly
to despair of his own country and of its future. " Smoke " is the
literary death-knell of the aristocratic, intelligent class of Russians,
such as the double influence of serfage and autocracy had shaped it.
Even the women of that class find no more pity at the poet's hands :
Irene, the heroine of "Smoke," is a designing adventuress who,
after having once had the " honor " to attract the attention of " a
very high personage " (by whom the Emperor himself is evidently
meant), avails herself of the prominent position thus afforded to
her for getting on in the world and forwarding her husband's ad-
ministrative career. The whole upper class of Russian society is
represented by Turgenieff as a set of hollow, conceited fools, or of
designing, corrupted, and unprincipled intrigants. As a biting and
merited satire on "liberal" Russia of modern days, "Smoke" has
a great social importance. Appearing as it did during the decay
of the aristocratic period of modern Russian history, it sums up the
results of the latter, and marks at the same time the beginning of a

RUSSIAN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF TEE DAY. 331

new national epoch, the awakening of the people itself to an inde-
pendent political and social life.

Turgenieff is, however, unable to understand rightly this new
feature in the intellectual development of modem Russia, as his
" Bazaroff " in " leathers and Sons," and especially his last novel,
" Virgin Soil," undoubtedly prove. The uncouth, energetic repre-
sentatives of " Young Russia " are utter strangers to the veteran
poet. In representing them as children of that same aristocracy
whom he sneers at in " Smoke," Turgenieff commits a grave error.
As it often happens vnih. the great men of literature or history,
Turgenieff fails to recognize a social event which he himself has
helped in bringing about ; he does not perceive that the men whom
he now treats as a set of turbulent, half -crazy children are but the
sons of that same people whose cause he formerly espoused with so
much ardor. The social importance of Turgenieff's writings in
the intellectual development of Russian society has ended with
"Smoke." But his fame as a poet, as a profound judge of the
human heart and its passions, will never die, for it belongs to all
nations, to all ages.

Count Leo Tolstoy is in this respect Turgenieff's equal, indeed,
in the subtileness of his psychological analysis, perhaps even his
superior. But in everything else both authors are, as we have al-
ready mentioned, the very antipodes of each other. The first of
Tolstoy's works, which appeared shortly before the Crimean war,
" Childhood and Youth," marked the place its author was to
occupy in Russian fiction. This strange book, Avhich can scarcely
be termed "a novel," contains a full and eminently poetic ac-
count of the education, moral and intellectual development of a
young Russian nobleman. The first part of it, " Childhood," is a
poem of Russian domestic life, of wonderful beauty and purity.
The author dwells with fond tenderness on every petty incident in
the early life of his hero. Prince Nechludoff. With a masterly art
and a profound knowledge of those mysterious laws by which from
a series of early impressions the nature and character of man are
gradually shaped, the author shows us how the idle and monotonous
country life in Russia, devoid of intellectual interests, works on the
mind and imagination of a naturally clever, impressible boy. Nech-
ludoff becomes a dreamer, utterly detached from the realities of
every-day life, thirsting for higher, metaphysical science. The
studies in abstract philosophy which he pursues at the university
with indefatigable ardor give a new direction to his morbid mind ;

332 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

he becomes a skeptic, an infidel, and thence rushes headlong into
the coarsest form of sensualism, into a life of dissipation and de-
bauchery of every kind, which ultimately leads him through a series
of the bitterest deceptions to — suicide.

This type of the Russian nobleman, created by Tolstoy, a type
we meet with in almost every one of his novels, and his method
of treating it, might lead to the conclusion that Tolstoy, as a por-
trayer of Russian society, is still more negative, still more discon-
solate than Turgenieff. Yet it is not so. While the latter finds
in the Russian aristocracy nothing but an artificial graft on the
nation's body, rotten to the core, and past any attempt at regenera-
tion, the former, on the contrary, though perfectly aware of the
vices and foibles of the class he describes, seeks to reviv^e it by an
ideal born out of its own life, by a philosophy corresponding to all
its peculiar characteristics.

This ideal is the family with all the feelings, duties, and plea-
sures it engenders, and severed, in order to preserve its entire purity,
from all interests and passions of public life. This philosophy is a
peculiar sort of fatalistic creed, somewhat similar to Schopenhauer's
pessimism, or Hartmann's " Philosophy of the Unconscious." Ac-
cording to this creed, the individual is utterly powerless in the
making of a nation's history. The progress of the human race is
the result of elementary forces working in and by the masses, un-
consciously for the latter, and the greatest wisdom on the part of
the individual consists in submitting passively to these mysterious
forces. To the expounding of this curious philosophy Tolstoy has
devoted his most important work, " War and Peace." For its sub-
ject he has selected one of the most eventful epochs of modem
Russian history — the great national struggle with Napoleon in
1812. In a series of masterly-drawn pictures he attempts to prove
that all the so-called great men of the time, from Napoleon himself
down to the last of the Russian generals, were nullities in them-
selves, and acquired their importance only from the fact of being
blind instruments of a mysterious Something which pushed them
forward. It must be confessed that this somewhat childish philoso-
phy often produces on the reader an almost ludicrous impression,
reminding him of the well-knoTVTi French adage, " II n'y a pas de
grand horn me pour son valet de chambre ! "

An illustration of Tolstoy's ideal of family life, which he but
slightly touches in "War and Peace," we find in his last novel,

RUSSIAN NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF TEE DAT. 333

finished a year ago, " Anna Karenina." As a true and artistic pic-
ture of " liigli lite " this novel is a masterpiece without an equal,
perhaps, in any literature. In one frame the author has combined
two love-stories — the one pure and quiet, the other passionate and
criminal. The latter, the love between the heroine, Anna, and
the brilliant aide-de-camp, Prince Vronsky, is conducted by Tolstoy
step by step to its tragical end with a pitiless logic, and a pro-
found knowledge of all the subtile instincts of the human heart, of
all the innumerable prejudices and peculiarities of Russian aristo-
cratic life. The scene of the heroine's suicide, which she commits
by throwing herself under the wheels of a railway-train, is in its
tragical grandeur one of the most remarkable dramatic effects in
modem literature. licside these two rebel hearts, who seek their
own way to love and happiness in open defiance of the decrees of
society, the author has placed another pair — the plain, unsophisti-
cated country gentleman Levin and the young girl who ultimately
becomes his wife. Their romance, disturbed for a moment by the
interference of the disorderly element in the person of Yronsky,
flows on quietly and peacefully. The young Mrs. Levin becomes
an utterly prosaic and even somewhat slovenly materfamilias ; her
husband remams what he always had been, a quiet country gentle-
man, ignoring entirely all manner of social "problems" or political
" questions," raising his corn and potatoes with the persistency, if
not with the civic courage, of a Cincinnatus. And at the close of
the book we seem to hear the author exclaiming, " Go and do like-
wise ! "

Such is the moral and social creed of this great poet of Russian
aristocracy. The reader will not be slow in detecting all its shal-
Ipwness. An author who says to the class he represents : " You are
estranged from the rest of the people— you are by nature lazy and
indolent, that is true, but no matter ; be still more indolent, retire
once for all from public life, bury yourselves in your families, on
your estates, and you shall be saved ! " — such an author is uncon-
sciously writing a bitterer satire on that class than any of its most
implacable enemies could have done.

Thus the two greatest novelists of modern Russia, both born
and bred in that class of Russian society which has until now held
undisputed the scepter of intellectual and political power — both,
the one with a set purpose, the other unconsciously, pass a death-
warrant against the present social organization of their country.

334 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

In their works, as in a mirror, the actual condition of Russian so-
ciety is reflected with a merciless accuracy. They are not only the
poets, they are the physiologists, the historians, of their people, and,
by the powerful influence they exert on the public mind, they may
yet prove to be, in defiance of the proverb, " prophets in then* own
land ! "

S. E. Shevitch.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Modem Fishers of Men among the Various Sexes^ Sects, and Sets of Chart-
ville Church and Community. Neu' York: D. Appleton & Co. IGmo,
pp. 179.

The House and its Surroundings. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
21m(», pp. 9G.

Premature Death : Its Promotion or Prevention. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. 24mo, pp. 94.

A Dream of Arcadia, and Other Verses. By Lawbence B. Thomas.
Baltimore: TurnbuU Brothers. 24nio, pp. 87.

Wine in the Word. An Inquiry concerning the Wine Christ made, the
Wine of the Supper, etc. By Abhauam Coles, M. D., LL. D. New York:
Nelson & Phillips. IGnio, pp. 48.

The Early Years of Christianity. By E. De Peessens^, D. D. Trans-
lated by Anxie IIakwood Holmden. New York: Nelson & Phillips. IGrao,
pp. 628.

TJie People's Commentary. Includijig Brief Notes on the Kew Testament,
icith Copious Pefercnces to Parallel and Illustrative Scripture Passages,
designed to aid Bible Students and Common Readers to understand the Mean-
ing of the Inspired Word. By Amos Binney and Daniel Steele, S. T. D.
New York: Nelson & Pliillips. 12mo, pp. 724.

Library of Theological and Biblical Literature. Edited by George R.
Crooks, D. D., and Joun F. IIuijst, D. D. New Y^ork : Nelson & Phillips.
Svo, pp. 738.

The Multitudinous Seas. By S. G. W. Benjamest. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. 24uio, pp. 132.

A History of American Literature. By Moses Coit Tyler. 2 vols.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Svo, pp. 292, 330.

Origin, Progress, and Destiny of the English Language and Literature.
By John A. Weisse, M. D. New York : J. W. Bouton. Svo, pp. 701.

Stanfield'^s Coast Scenery : A Series of Picturesque Views in the British
Channel and on the Coast of France. From Original Drawings talcen ex-
pressly for the WorTc. By Clarkson Stanfield. New York : J. "W. Bouton.
Svo, pp. 92.

Bryant among his Countrymen : The Poet, the Patriot, the Man. By
Samuel Osgood, D. D., LL. D. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Svo,
pp. 34.

336 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

Drift from YorTc Earbor^ Maine. By Geoege Houghton. Boston:
A. AVilliams & Co. Crown 8vo, pp. 48.

A Eistory of the City of San Francisco^ and incidentally of the State of
California. By John S. Hittell. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co.
Svo, pp. 498.

^Esthetics. By Eugene Yeenon. Translated by W. H. Aemsteong, B. A.
London : Chapman & Hall. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo,
pp. 423.

Marriage : As it was, as it is, and as it should he. By Annie Besant.
With a Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Besant. Edited by Asa K. Butts. New
York: Asa K. Butts. 16mo, pp. 52.

A Selection of Spiritual Songs, with Music for the Church and Choir.
Selected and arranged by Rev. Chaeles S. Robinson, D. D. 12mo, pp. 441.

Eampton Tracts for the People. Sanitary Series. Nos. I., II., III., lY.,
V. New York: Published for the Hampton Tract Committee, by G. P.
Putnam's Sons. 24mo, pp. 29, 23, 14, 36, 24.

Soldier and Pioneer: A Biographical SJcetch of Lieutenant- Colonel
Richard C. Anderson, of the Continental Army. By E. L. Andeeson.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 16mo, pp. 63.

A Glossary of Biological, Anatomical, and Physiological Terms. By
Thomas Dunman. 12mo, pp. 161.

The Commercial Products of the Sea; or, Marine Contributions to Food,
Industry, and Art. By P. L. Simmonds. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
12mo, pp. 484.

Gerrit Smith: A Biography. By Octavius Beooks Feothingham.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 12mo, pp. 371.

Demonology and Devil-Lore. By Moncuee Daniel Conway, M. A. 2
vols. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 8vo, pp. 428, 472.

Taxation Reform; or. The Best and Fairest Means of raising the Public
Revenue. By Professor A. Ceestadoeo. London : Longmans, Green & Co.
16mo, pp. 30.

THE

NORTH AMERICAN

REVIEW.

ArraL, 1879.

No. 269.

Tros Tyriusque raihi nullo discrimine agetur.

NEW YOEK:
D. APPLETOISr AND COMPANY,

649 k 551 BROADWAY.

1879.

COPTEIGnT BT
ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE.

1879.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

APRTL, 1879.

A»T. Paoi

I. Retribution in Politics. By Tuomas A. Hen-
dricks ....... 337

IL The Public Schools of England. By Thomas

Hughes, Q. C. . . . . . 352

IH. German Socialism in America . . . 372

rV. A Friend of Lord Byron. By Henry James, Jr. 388

V. The Census of 18b0. By George Walker . 393

VI. The Pronunciation of the Latin Language. Part

II. By W. W. Story . . . .405

VH. An Indian's Views of Indian Affairs. By Young
Joseph, Chief of the Nez Percys. With an In-
troduction by the Right Rev. W. H. Hare, D. D. 412

VIII. Hartmann's "Religion of the Future." By M.

A. Hardaker ...... 434

IX. Recent Miscellaneous Literature : Weisse's Ori-
gin, Progress, and Destiny of the English Language
and Literature ; Holmes's John Lothrop Motley ;
Conway's Demonology and Devil-Lore ; Mrs. Kem-
ble's Record of a Girlhood ; Tyler's History of
American Literature. By A. R. McDonough . 438

Publications Received .... 446

The Editor disclaims responsibility for the opinions
of contributors, whether their articles are signed or
anonymous.

Is^ORTII AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCLXIX.

APKIL, 1879.

RETRIBUTION IN POLITICS.

Nearly ten years ago the right of the colored man to vote was
made as firm and secure as a constitutional provision could establish
it. As a question of public policy and justice it was settled. The
people passed upon and decided that. There remained but the tests
and ordeal of experience. It was not to be disturbed or questioned
except for great and permanent evils. This was the condition of
the right of colored suifrage when two important facts attracted at-
tention. The first Avas, that the Congressional representation of
the Southern States had been greatly strengthened ; and the second
was, that the colored vote could no longer be relied upon by the
Republican party, but that it was rapidly passing into the Demo-
cratic party, resulting in a Congressional delegation from the
South almost entirely Democratic, and in a solid South. Confident
possession and control of that vote were followed by such disap-
pointment at its loss as attends the loss of property deemed most
secure.

The disappointment was intensified by the reflection that the
entire colored population is now to be counted in apportioning
representation among the several States, and that the political influ-
ence of the South is thereby increased. Dissatisfaction and a
spirit of resistance appeared among those who had looked upon the
colored vote as permanently secure to their party. They spoke
VOL. cxxvni. — NO. 269. 23

338 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

freely, sometimes harshly, about striking down the increased South-
em representation, and seemed willing to abandon colored suffrage,
if necessary to that end. It was because of this sentiment and feel-
ing that the discussion of negro enfranchisement in the last num-
ber of the " Review " was possible. Two or three years ago it
would have been welcomed neither by editor nor reader. And
from this it appears how little the sentiment of humanity, and how
much the consideration of party advantage, influenced and con-
trolled the action of many who at one time were most clamorous
for negro suffrage. Negro suffrage rests upon the natural right of
the citizen, or upon constitutional provision, or upon both. I was
opposed to its recognition and establishment in the Constitution of
the United States ; but, when declared to be so established, I recog-
nized it as fixed and permanent. And, in the article which I con-
tributed to the series, I thought it quite suflicient to maintain that
it was thus fixed and permanent ; and I endeavored to show that,
under favorable opportunities, its exercise need not be hurtful to
society.

In his article. Governor Hampton treats the question as settled,
and says that, whatever may have been the policy or the motives of
men, the right conferred by the Constitution is irrevocable, and that
it is now the part of statesmanship to give its exercise that direction
which will be most beneficial and least hurtful to the body politic.
Speaking for the people of Mississippi, Mr. Lamar, with great force
and directness, maintains that, being made a free man, a property-
holder, and a tax-payer, the negro could not be excluded from the
" privilege and duty," the " right and obligation " of the citizen to
vote. He mentions the striking fact that, in 1869, " the white
people of Mississippi unanimously voted at the polls in favor of
ratifying the enfranchising amendment. Mr. Stephens treats the
question of negro suffrage as settled, and not to be disturbed ; and
declares it the duty of all friends of humanity to give it a fair trial,
" with an earnest and hopeful effort for its success." I have grouped
the arguments of these three distinguished men of the South that
the justice and liberality of their views may distinctly and together
appear.

The most striking quality of General Garfield's argument is
that, while in set phrase he is for free suffrage, in tone and spirit
he makes an apology for failure. Conceding that the property
rights of the colored people are every year being more and more
respected, he yet asserts that it is a mockery to say that suffrage

EETPJBUTIOy m POLITICS. 339

has been free. With marked emphasis he declares that in many-
parts of the South the benefits of suffrage have been defeated by-
fraud, violence, and threats of loss of employment. Are we com-
pelled to take a view so discouraging ? Or is it but the language of
the partisan ? In respect to political rights, the races are equal.
Together they are now to conduct public affairs. Is there such in-
compatibility that the races can not harmonize in maintaining good
government ? Will the stronger race domineer over the weaker ?
This has been the prediction of many. The hopes of the people re-
jected the prediction. Now, however, a strong man, one who has ob-
served much, and whose hopes have all been for the success of what
Mr. Blaine speaks of as an experiment, declares it in a large degree
a failure. If the experiment has failed during these last ten years,
why has it failed ? During much of that time the army of the
United States was distributed throughout the South. It was used
to maintain the supremacy of the Republican party, through the
instrumentality of the colored vote. For like purpose the Federal
judiciary was used in many localities. It may not be claimed that
there was then good government in the South. It was bad — bad
for the colored man, as it was for the white man It was the sub-
stitution of force and fear for the constitutional government by the
people. That was the period of corruption, and strife, and blood-
shed. In such a period we can not judge of any attribute of free
government, or of the capability of any part of the people to main-
tain free government. That period passed away, and with it the
corrupting influence of the Freedman's Bureau. The political ad-
venturers who exercised power without right or merit, and enjoyed
wealth without labor, " sought safety in flight." Thus the malign
influences were removed that had sowed distrust and discord, and
excited hostility between the races. If General Garfield will only
consider the colored man's improved condition since this change
took place, his greater freedom in the exercise of his political
rights, his conceded security in the enjoyment of his civil rights,
and his more harmonious relations with the white race, he will
surely review and reconsider the opinion which he expressed, that,
in many parts of the South, the negro has been deprived of all the
benefits intended to be conferred upon and secured to him by the
suffrage.

Mr. Blaine thinks the negro is controlled, whatever way he may
vote. He attributes his conduct to some influence stronger than
that of his own conviction and will. What does he mean by " the

340 THE NOBTH AMERICAN- REVIEW.

persuasion of the Freedman's Bureau," at the period when the vote
was all one way ? To whom does he refer as " the men who con-
trolled the negro vote at the outset, in the interest of the Republi-
can party " ? They were the same " adventurers who exercised
power without right or merit, and amassed wealth without labor."
They were the coadjutors of the Freedman's Bureau. The com-
bined influence was pernicious. The officers and agents of the
Bureau were its emissaries. They were found everywhere. They
obtained and abused the confidence of the colored people. They
provoked and organized the strife of the races.

The control of the vote by these influences could not last. It
soon came to an end. The colored people could not be kept in ig-
norance of their real and true interests. They learned that the in-
crease of public indebtedness and the profligate expenditure of
public money would place burdens upon their own shoulders, and
impair the value of the products of their labor. Influenced by these
and other proper considerations, they united in large numbers with
the Democrats. The result was, as I have said, the restoration to
the Southern States of the right of local self-government, and a
purer and better administration of public affairs. Mr. Blaine is not
willing to concede to the colored voter a change of party relations
upon intelligent conviction. He attributes such a change to fraud
and violence ; for he says that, by " fraud, intimidation, violence,
and murder, free suffrage on the part of the negro in the South is
fatally impaired." For a statement so broad Mr. Blaine must rely
upon evidence " of the baser sort," much of which has long since
been rejected.

How is it that Mr. Blaine may claim much credit for his early and
continued support of negro suffrage, and yet deny to the negro the
capacity of free and uncontrolled action ? It may not be questioned
that, in the days of his political vassalage, the negro was under the
control of what Mr. Blaine describes as the " persuasion of the
Freedman's Bureau," and of the men who controlled his vote " in
the interest of the Republican party " ; but his capacity of intelli-
gent election is not to be questioned merely because he may become
a Democrat. Mr. Blaine makes the argument (or rather the claim)
that for emancipation, for citizenship, for civil rights, and for politi-
cal privileges, the negro is indebted to the Republican party, and
that therefore his allegiance is to that party ; and that so long as
he is allowed the freedom of choice he can and will vDt^ with no
other party. He declares it the " recklessness of assumption," " the

RETRIBUTION IN POLITICS. 341

very bravado of argument," to claim that, upon his own choice, he
would vote with the Democrats. That is the strongest statement
ever made against negro suffrage. The vote is nearly one million.
The claim is that it is not free — is never to be free, but belongs
to a party ; that, because of past obligations, it can not change.
In its membership and in its aggregate it can not change. It can
not consider questions of principle or questions of policy. It may
not listen to the demands of patriotism, nor the appeals of self-
interest, as opposed to the requirements of the party. Its obliga-
tion to party can never be discharged. Whether questions relate to
the honor of the country or the welfare of the people, it can exer-
cise no free and independent judgment. It would be a matter of
serious concern, could a party claim a vassalage so numerous and so
abject. But that claim is being repudiated by the colored vote
itself. In the demonstrations preceding the elections, and at the
polls, its independent action in many of the States has stamped the
claim of ownership as false and arrogant.

But Mr. Blaine asks the question, " \VTiy should the negro have
been disposed to vote with the Democratic party ? " Is that ques-
tion asked by one who sincerely believes in the capacity of the
negro to vote intelligently upon questions affecting the public wel-
fare, and that his action will be governed by an enlightened judg-
ment and a patriotic purpose ? Then I answer that the same con-
siderations should govern the negro that ought to govern any other
voter. He should vote upon his convictions of right and duty. If
Democratic policy is more likely to promote the public goad, then
it should be supported by the white and colored voter alike. He
who tells me how the white man should vote tells me as well how
the colored man should vote. When once in the box the ballot has
no color. Its only quality depends upon the fitness of the candidate
it may help to elect, and upon the views he may carry into legisla-
tion, or the measures he may adopt in the administrative service.
A full answer to the question would require a statement of the
reasons why any citizen should give that party his support. Such
reasons might be found in its devotion to constitutional obligations ;
in its atlherence to the "supremacy of the civil over the military";
in its maintenance of the separation and mutual independence of
church and state, "for the sake alike of civil and religious free-
dom"; in its hostility to a "corrupt centralism," which threatens
the destruction of the right of local self-government ; and in its
devotion to economy in public expenditures.

342 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

It may be said by many, both white and black, We do not adopt
all the dogmas of the Democratic party, nor approve its entire rec-
ord, but we will declare our condemnation of the centralism, the
extravagance, and the corruption of its powerful opponent. Our
record shall not be in approval of the frightful crimes that charac-
terized a late Administration. The taxes were not reduced, but the
revenues were impaired. Remorseless severity was the rule of col-
lection ; official favoritism the standard of accountability. We will
not help to establish such precedents. Is this not language which
the citizen ought to use ? Please tell me why it is not as becoming
and proper for the colored as for the white voter ? What obligation
does he owe to party that takes from him the right to use this, the
language of patriotism ?

Is the question repeated ? Then I say that the colored voter, if
intelligent to understand his duty, and honest to discharge it, could
not remain with the party that corrupted and destroyed the State
governments of the South. I will be pardoned for appropriating
and reproducing what Mr. Lamar has so well said on this subject :
*' Reference has been made to the great change which the election
returns show in the negro vote throughout the South. The phe-
nomenon is easily explained. Let any intelligent Northern man
review the history of the State governments of the South for the
last ten years under Republican rule — their gross and shameless
dishonesty, their exorbitant taxation, their reckless expenditure,
their oppression of all native interests, the social agonies through
which nhey have forced all that was good and pure to pass as
through a fiery furnace ; the character of the men — many of them
— they have placed in power ; and then say if such a state of things
in a Northern or Western State would not have been a sure and
natural precursor of a Republican defeat, so absolute and complete
that the very name of the party would have become in that State
a name of scorn and reproach. Then why should not that result
have occurred in the South ? Ai'e we to assume that the black race
have neither instinct nor reason — have no sense, no intelligence, no
conscience, no independence ; that in every Southern State the
thralldom of the negro vote to party leaders, even when abandoned
by them, is so unquestioning and abject that no amount of misrule
can cut him loose from them or teach him the advantage of a more
natural and wholesome political alliance ? To reason thus is simply
to say that the negro is unfit for suffrage, and to surrender the
argument to those who hold that he ought to be disfranchised."

BETRIBVTION IN POLITICS. 343

The influences that governed many of the colored people in aid-
ing the whites to place the Southern States under Democratic con-
trol were truly stated by one of themselves, the most prominent
man of the race. For the first time after reconstruction, the Demo-
crats carried Mississippi in 1875. Because the colored race had the
majority in that State, the fairness of the election was disputed.
In Compress and in the Northern press, with great bitterness and
positiveness, the result was altribute<l to fraud and violence. There
was then, as now, no difficulty in obtaining the testimony of willing
witnesses to establish violence.

The Rev. H. W. Revels, a colored man, had recently, before
that time, been a United States Senator from that State. He was
an observer of public events. On the 7th of November, 1875, a
few days after the election, and before the result was fully known,
he addressed the following letter to President Grant :

My dear Sib : In view of the results of the recent election in our State,
I have determined to write you a letter canva-ssing the situation, and gi\dng
my views thereon. I will preiaise by sayiog that I am no politician. Though
having been honored by a seat in the United States Senate, I never have
sought j)olitical preferment, nor do I ask it now, but am engaged in my call-
ing — a minister — and, feeling an earnest desire for the welfare of all the people,
irrespective of race or color, I have deemed it advisable to submit to you
for consideration a few thoughts in regard to the political situation in this
State.

Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, en-
slaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for the
country, were willing to stoop to anything, no matter how infamous, to secure
power to themselves and perpetuate it. My people are naturally Republicans,
but, as they grow older in freedom, so do they grow in wisdom. A great
portion of them have learned that they were being used as mere tools, and,
as in the lute elections, not being able to correct the existing evil among
themselves, they determined by casting their ballots against these unprinci-
pled adventurers to overthrow them.

My peo[)le have been told by these schemers, when men were placed upon
the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote
for them ; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man
who scratched the ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many
means these malignant demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual
bondage of my people. To defeat this policy at the late election men irre-
spective of race or party affiliations united and voted together against men
known to be incompetent and dishonest.

The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife have, in my opinion,
been obliterated in this State, except perhaps in some localities, and would

3M THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

have been long since entirely effaced were it not for some unprincipled men
who would keep alive the bitterness of the past and inculcate hatred between
the races in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office and the
emoluments to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them. I
give you my opinion that, had our State administration adhered to Republi-
can principles, and stood by the platform upon which I was elected, the State
would have been on the high-road to prosperity. If the State administration
had advanced only to patriotic measures, appointed only honest men to office,
and sought to restore confidence between the races, bloodshed would have
been unknown. Peace would have prevailed ; Federal interference would
have been unth ought of, and harmony, friendship, and mutual confidence
would have taken the place of the bayonet.

In conclusion, let me say to you, and to the Republican party of the
North, that I deem it my duty, in behalf of my people, that I present these
facts in order that they and the white people, their former owners, should
not suffer misrepresentation, which certain demagogues seem desirous to
encourage.

Respectfully,

H. W. Revels.

A stronger document can not be produced in favor of colored
suffrage. It is a plain statement of the cruel bondage that had
been maintained by " corrupt rings " over .both races, and of the
means used to " inculcate " hatred between them. Having a ma-
jority in the State, the colored people were able to continue the
strife of the races, and to perpetuate their own political power.
But intelligently and patriotically they united with the whites to
overthrow the power of the " unprincipled adventurers," to drive
them from the State, and to restore good government. The help
came like food and water to a starving and famished people. And
for it honorable and grateful return was made, at the next session
of the Legislature, in the enactment of laws providing extraordi-
nary security for the rights of labor in Mississippi.

Why confuse and cheapen a discussion like the present by
thrusting into it questions of personal consistency? Why turn
aside to consider one another's motives ? Who of the readers of
the " Review " cares for either ? But Mr. BTaine thinks it useful
to his argument to suggest that in my eyes the complexion of the
colored man depends upon his voting the Democratic ticket. Devo-
tion to truth compels me to say that my confidence in his judgment
as an independent voter is strengthened by the circumstance that I
do find him voting that ticket. Really, I could not respect him
very much if Mr. Blaine's opinion of him were correct, that he is a
political fixture, immovable under influences that control other and

RETRIBUTION IN POLITICS. 345

patriotic minds. Prior to tlie adoption of the Fifteenth Amend-
ment, but as late as September, 1805, Governor Morton, in a care-
fully prepared speech, used the following language : " Look at their
condition. As I said before, only one in five hundred that can read
— many of them, until within the last few months, never off the
plantation — most of them never out of the county in which they
live and were born, except as they were driven by the slave-drivers.
Can you conceive that a body of men, white or black, who have
been in this conditiojiy a?id their ancestors before them, are qualified
to be imm^ediately lifted from their presoit state into the full exer-
cise of 2^olitical jwicer, not only to govern themselves and their
neighbors, but to take part in the Government of the United States?
Can they be regarded as intelligent or independent voters? The
mere statement of the fact furnishes the answer to the question.'^'*

Because of a subsequent zeal, so extreme as to be questionable,
for the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, would Mr. Blaine
describe him as " a conspicuous convert," and attribute his zeal to a
desire to add to the voting strength of his party ? Since the adop-
tion of the amendment was declared, it has received that true sup-
port from the Democratic party Avhich each citizen owes to every
provision of the Constitution.

In the month of February, 18T0, I visited the city of New Or-
leans for the first time. Quite unexpectedly I was called upon to
speak at a Democratic meeting. AVithout note or preparation
whatever, I stepped upon the platform, decided upon one thing
only, and that was to say just what was becoming on my part to
speak, and proper for the men of Louisiana to hear. For no pur-
pose of self-vindication, but as expressing my present views, I will
quote from what I then said :

" It is a question for you to consider very carefully what atti-
tude you men of the South shall occupy toward the colored popu-
lation. There is a deliberate purpose on the part of adventurers
from the North — a class of men who are described as carpet-bag-
gers — to appropriate the entire colored vote of the South to their
cause. And what is their cause? It is not your cause ; it is not
the colored man's cause ; it is the cause of plunder. And the
question presents itself in this form : Are you men of the South
willing that these adventurers shall appropriate that large vote — in
some of the Southern States a majority of the entire vote ? . . . .
New relations have come to exist between you and the colored peo-
ple of the South. How will you place yourselves in regard to

34:6 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

these new relations ? They have not been of your seeking, and
they may, perhaps, not have been sought by the negro, but he is a
voter in Louisiana, as he will be in Indiana, if the Fifteenth Amend-
ment is declared adopted, and it is not worth your while, nor is it
worth my while, to go back on the fixed fact. These new relations
are upon you. How are you to conduct yourselves toward the col-
ored people ? Is it possible that the stranger can now come in and
make these ancient servants of yours his servants and your enemy ?
.... In my judgment, the colored people will be satisfied if you
assure them that you will give them just laws, fairly administered.
Do this, and then the outside adventurer can not turn their votes
against you. Let the colored man understand that the legislation
of your State is not being carried on to make a few men rich at the
expense of the great body of the people. . . . Appeal to the col-
ored man to stand by you in your fight for honesty, for justice, for
integrity, and for equal laws, and that appeal will reach his heart as
readily as it reaches the heart of the great body of the white peo-
ple."

Why does Mr. Blaine depart from the subject of his argument,
to arraign many of the States for their policy toward the colored
people ? He recites in much detail the provisions of statutes which
he attributes to the intention of reenslaving the race ; and he
charges the responsibility upon the Democratic party. A better
understanding of the responsibility that attaches to either party, in
that regard, requires a more exact statement of the steps by which
the States passed from the condition of war into practical relations
with the Union. The first period was that of the provisional gov-
ernments. The policy of establishing such governments had its
origin in Mr. Lincoln's amnesty proclamation of December 8, 1863.
Under its provisions the authority of the United States was de-
clared restored over portions of the State of Louisiana, and *'a
loyal State government was reinaugurated."

Mr. Blaine says, " It was reserved for Louisiana to outdo both
South Carolina and Mississippi in this horrible legislation," and he
specifies that, the contract once made, the negro laborer was not
allowed to leave his place of employment during the year, except
upon prescribed conditions ; deductions might be made from wages
for injuries done to animals and implements committed to his care ;
and for bad or negligent work ; and impudence, swearing, and in-
decent language, and quarreling and fighting with one another,
were prohibited and punished. What think you of this charge

RETRIBUTION IN POLITICS. 347

against the States, that it is an abridgment of the freedom of the
negro that he is forbidden to indulge in impudence, swearing, and
indecent language in the presence of the family where he is em-
ployed ?

Why were such regulations required or permitted ? At that
time the agricultural laborers of that State were exclusively col-
ored. They constituted a majority of the entire population. At
once, and without preparation, they were transferred from a condi-
tion of servitude to one of freedom. No one could predict what
would follow. It was soon apparent that their tendency was to
abandon the country, and crowd the cities, and follow the camps.
Men of both sections contemplated the possible results with anxiety.
Was freedom to mean exemption from labor only ? Congregating
in large numbers, and unemployed, were they to sink into vice, and
to degenerate into vagrancy ? The benevolent and the humane
were anxious about the result, for the sake of the colored people
themselves. Men in responsible and public positions had also to
consider the possible effect upon the material welfare of the coun-
try. Was an entire section to remain without labor ? Were the
lands to lie without cultivation ? Should we become the purchasers
from other lands, and not the producers of the great staples of the
South ? Mr. Lincoln seems to have considered all these questions ;
for in his amnesty proclamation, to which I have referred, there is
this remarkable paragraph : " I do further proclaim, declare, and
make known that any provision which may be adopted by such
State government in relation to the freed people of such State,
which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide
for their education, and which may yet be consistent, as a tempo-
rary arrangement, with their present condition, as a laboring, land-
less, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the national
Executive."

A State Constitution was soon thereafter adopted. It estab-
lished the permanent freedom and provided for the education of the
*' freed people." To carry out Mr. Lincoln's suggestion in the par-
agraph which I have quoted, it only remained to adopt such regula-
tions as were necessary and proper for the " freed people," as a
" laboring, landless, and homeless class."

General Banks was then in command in Louisiana. He gave
construction to the paragraph in the orders he issued and in the
regulations he adopted. In his General Order No. 23, February 3,
1864, he based his regulations of labor upon the assumption " that

348 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

labor is a public duty, and idleness and vagrancy a crime," and that
this law of labor should be enforced. He fixed the prices to be paid
at from three to eight dollars per month. He provided that wages
should be deducted in case of the sickness of the laborer, and that,
if the laborer feigned sickness, food also might be withheld. It
was also provided that " indolence, insolence, disobedience of or-
ders, and crime should be suppressed by forfeiture of pay, and such
punishments as are provided for similar offenses by army regula-
tions." Under that order the colored laborer of Louisiana was
placed under military rule ; and, if insolent or disobedient to his
employer, would suffer loss of pay, and other punishment such as
would be inflicted upon a soldier guilty of disobeying the orders of
his commanding officer. By other regulations, "no hand could
leave the place without written license," and " each hand will be
responsible for the loss or careless damage of tools, stock, or any
other property."

Mr. Blaine denounces these provisions as horrible, and as a " cause-
less and cruel oppression of a whole race." They are the product
of a provisional government, which rested for its authority upon
Mr. Lincoln's proclamation. And neither in their origin, their spirit,
nor their purpose can they truthfully be laid to the charge of the
Democrats. The fact that they may have passed into the subse-
quent legislation of the State can not change any responsibility
that did attach to their origin or purpose. And if any one were to
repeat that the enactment of such regulations of labor looks to its
reenslavement, I would find the complete vindication from such a
charge of the provisional government and its administration in the
fact that the adoption of the State Constitution was concurrent,
and that it provided for the immediate and unconditional emanci-
pation of the slaves. In the year 1865 provisional governments
were established over most of the other Southern States. The pro-
clamations issued by Mr. Johnson rested upon and were very similar
in their provisions to the proclamation issued by Mr. Lincoln. The
latter proposed "to reinaugurate loyal State governments within
and for their respective States," while the former proposed to re-
store the States to their " constitutional relations to the Federal
Government." At that time Mr. Johnson was in harmony with the
party that had elected him. It can not be truthfully said that for
his conduct in 1865, or for the action of the governments which he
established, the Democratic party is in any way responsible. In
many respects the Democrats opposed the policy of 1865.

RETRIBUTION IN POLITICS. 349

In 1867 the Republican party became bo powerful in Congress
as to be able to defy the Presidential veto. It overthrew the pro-
visional State governments, and substituted its iron policy of recon-
struction. That policy was embodied in the act of March, 1867, and
the two acts supplementary thereto. The rebel States were declared
to be without legal governments. They were divided into military
districts, and placed under the absolute authority of military com-
manders. The commanders were authorized to take steps for the
restoration of civil authority and the establishment of State govern-
ments. The work was supervised by the military. The negroes
were admitted to a full participation, while many of the whites were
excluded. The military and the negroes controlled the government.
The effect was, to excite strife and create bad blood between the
races. This was the beginning of the period of reconstruction. The
evil influences already mentioned promoted and intensified the an-
tagonism of the races. In such a strife the colored people became
an easy prey to the unscrupulous adventurers who assumed to be
their special friends. Bloodshed was frequent, and bad government
was universal. Under such control the States continued for periods
varying from six to nine years. I need not describe the condition
of the people during that time. They endured all the evils and
misfortunes that attend discordant society and bad government.
It was the period of evil influences. Its legislation and its admin-
istrative service have left no record that can gratify the patriot.
Neither race was as secure of any right of person or property as
before it came, or after it passed away. It is barren of all fruits
of good government. It is a plain over which the lava has flowed.

Then came this, the third period in the progress of restoration.
It is yet short ; in some of the States but two years, and in others
but three, four, and five years. But the work of restoration is com-
plete. ITie right of local self-government is now enjoyed in all the
States. The beneficent results of this period have been secured
through the cooperation of the colored voters. What advantages
have come to them, as a class, from the change from military rule
to local self-government ! In the periods of provisional government
and reconstruction Mr. Blaine has described the colored laborer as
almost a slave. How is it now ? He is better protected in his
wages by the laws of many Southern States than is the laborer in
any Northern State. By the act of April 14, 1876, the laborer in
Mississippi is given a lien for his wages upon the crop he helps to
raise, and for his portion of the crop when it is upon shares. The

350 TEE NORTE AMERICAN- REVIEW.

lien is prior to all others, and exists without record, and without
any written contract. Upon judgments for wages no property is
exempt from execution. These provisions were adopted at the first
session after the Democrats obtained the control in Mississippi. By
the act of February 24, 1873, the laborer in Georgia is given a lien
for his wages upon the property of the employer, first above any
other lien except for taxes, judgments, and decrees, and a special
lien upon the products of his labor, above every other lien, except
for taxes. In North Carolina the farm laborer is given a first lien
upon the crop he helps to produce. In 1865, under the provisional
government. South Carolina established and so regulated the domes-
tic relations among the colored people as to promote their moralitv,
virtue, and personal welfare. In the regulations of labor it was
provided that " wages due to servants shall be preferred to all other
debts or demands except funeral expenses, in case of the insuffi-
ciency of the master's property to pay all debts and demands
against him."

I know of no !N'orthern State that gives to the laborer such ex-
traordinary protection and security for his wages. It has been
sought, demanded, prayed for by the employees of great corpora-
tions, but it has been denied in many Northern States. The en-
gineer, whose life is every hour at hazard, and the miner whose
labor produces the wealth which others enjoy, have sought security
for their wages, but have been denied. It was a free-will and
cheerful offering by the people of the South, to place the wages of
the negro next in payment to taxes and funeral expenses. Am I
asked again why the colored man should vote with the Democrats ?
I answer, that it is a surer guarantee of his individual welfare, and
that the political association is better than with the men who seek
his confidence that they may use him for selfish ends.

Doubtless many acts of violence and wrong were done to colored
people during the years immediately succeeding the close of the
war. The contest had been long and bitter. The institution of
slavery was associated in the minds of the people as one of the
causes of the war. As a result of the war, the white man, impov-
erished in the struggle, was obliged to recognize the colored man,
who had been his hereditary bondsman, as his political equal. Who
could expect that tranquillity would at once settle down upon the
scenes of such violent disturbance ? The wildest optimist could not
hope for that. All history teaches that the spirit of violence exists
in more or less activity after the cessation of civil war. To look

RETRIBUTION IN POLITICS, 351

for anything else would be as vain as to expect the ocean, vexed to
its profoundest depths, to subside into instant tranquillity when the
roar of the tempest is hushed. The difficulties necessarily incident
to the condition of the country were aggravated by the unnatural
policy which sought to place the emancipated race, in political rule,
over the white race. Harmony could not at once follow. Indeed,
it is hardly possible, so long as the colored men, in large masses,
assume a position of distrust and hostility toward the w^hite voters.
The antagonism of race will disappear from our political contests
when the colored people shall declare their freedom from the parti-
san ownership that is asserted over them, throw off the influence of
the selfish adventurers who claim to control them, and assert their
rights as free and independent voters.

Now, that thirteen years have passed since the close of the war,
and the two races, during much of that period, have been living to-
gether as citizens equal before the law, while every year their politi-
cal relations are becoming more harmonious, can the statesman find
no better argument to show that the colored man holds his political
rights by precarious tenure, than that founded upon social disturb-
ances ?

If I may accuse Mr. Blaine, in any instance, of employing an argu-
ment not quite up to the highest plane of statesmanship, and of lead-
ing this discussion into the arena of mere party politics, yet I must
thank him for the closing paragraph of his last article. For patri-
otic sentiment, beauty of language, and grandeur of eloquence, it
merits a high place among the noblest productions of the English
language.

Thomas A. Hendricks.

II.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF EXGLAND.

" TVell, but will you tell me, after all, what is a public school ? "
The propounder of this was an American gentleman, of high culture
himself and deeply interested in the subject of education. He was
not satisfied with the state of things in his own country, and was
persuaded that the time had come when an effort must be made to
meet the demand for some other stepping-stone for their boys than
the common school or the private boarding-school, between the
home of the American gentry and the universities. He had read
such documents as he could lay hands on as to the English public-
schools system, and had convinced himself that there might be
something in it which would be of use to him in his search. At
any rate, he would run over and study it for himself. Accordingly,
ha\'ingj obtained such letters as he thousjht mig^ht be of use to him,
he saUed for England, and, after consultation with and under the
advice of some of those to whom they were addressed, made a tour of
inspection which comprised most of the English public schools. He
had been much pleased with his adventures : had seen a number of
fine buildings, some of them of rare historical interest ; had got much
information as to the methods of study and discipline ; had looked on
at any number of cricket matches and other games, and been much
impressed by the skill and activity of the boys, and the beauty of
their raiment ; had talked with masters, and prefects, and other
boys, big and little, and had come back full of all manner of facts
and figures. But in one thing he had failed, and in a matter, too,
which he not unreasonably held to lie at the very root of his in-
quiry ; and so, after his six weeks' wanderings, returned to his ori-
giual mentor in London, before starting on his return voyage, with
the above question, " What is a public school ? " Many replies,
indeed, he had heard, but none which had at all satisfied him. Thus
he had been told by a sixth-form boy in the Eton eleven, that the

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. 353

only public schools in England were those which played against
each other in a yearly match at Lord's cricket-ground ; according
to the captain of Westminster, a royal foundation was the true
test ; other authorities of equal weight had limited public schools
to those entitled to contend for the Elcho shield and Spencer cup at
the Wimbledon gatherings of the National Rifle Association. A
Liberal under-master at Rugby had defined public schools as those
which possessed a foundation controlled by persons in no way in-
terested in the profits of the institution ; while at Shrewsbury he
had been assured that a charter of some Plantagenet or Tudor sov-
ereign was of the essence of a true public school. From his own
observations and inquiries, however, he remained quite dissatisfied
with all and each of these definitions, and came back with steady
persistence to his starting-point, "^Vhat is a public school — in your
country ? "

The question is one of considerable difficulty. To some extent,
however, the answer has been furnished by the Royal Commission
appointed in 18G1 to inquire into the nature and application of the
endowments and revenues, and into the administration and manage-
ment of certain specified colleges and schools commonly known as the
Public Schools Commission. Nine are named in the Queen's letter
of appointment, viz., Eton, Winchester, Westminster, the Charter-
house, St. Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Harrow, Rugby, and Shrews-
bury. The reasons probably which suggested this selection were,
that the nine named foundations had in the course of centuries
emerged from the mass of endowed grammar-schools, and had made
for themselves a position which justified their being placed in a dis-
tinct category, and classed as " public schools." It will be seen as
we proceed that all these nine have certain features in common, dis-
tinguishing them from the ordinary grammar-schools which exist in
almost every country town in England. Many of these latter are
now waking up to the requirements of the new time and following
the example of their more illustrious sisters. The most notable ex-
amples of this revival are such schools as those at Sherborne, Gig-
gleswick, and Tunbridge Wells, which, while remodeling themselves
on the lines laid down by the Public Schools Commissioners, are to
some extent providing a training more adapted to the means and
requirements of our middle classes in the nineteenth century than
can be found at any of the nine public schools. But twenty years
ago the movement which has since made such astonishing progress
was scarcely felt in quiet country places like these, and the old en-
voL. cxxviii. — NO. 269. 23

354 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

dowments were allowed to run to waste in a fashion which is now
scarcely credible.

The same impulse which has put new life into the endowed
grammar-schools throughout England has worked even more re-
markably in another direction. The Victorian age bids fair to rival
the Elizabethan in the number and importance of the new schools
which it has founded and will hand on to the coming generation.
Marlborough, Haileybury, Uppingham, Rossall, Clifton, Chelten-
ham, Radlej^, Malvern, and Wellington College, are nine schools
which have taken their place in the first rank, and, while following
reverently the best traditions of the older foundations, are in some
respects setting them an example of what the public-school system
may become at its best, and how it may be adapted to meet new
conditions of national life.

In order, then, to get clear ideas on the general question, we must
keep these three classes of school in mind — the nine old foundations
recognized in the first instance by the Royal Commission of 1861 ;
the old foundations which have remained local grammar-schools
until within the last few years, but are now enlarging their bounds,
conforming more or less to the public-school system, and becoming
national institutions ; and, lastly, the modern foundations which
started from the first as public schools, professing to adapt them-
selves to the new circumstances and requirements of modern English
life. The public schools of England fall under one or other of these
categories. No one who understands the subject would question
the claim of the modern foundations named above to the title of
public schools, in the same sense in which it is applied to the nine.
Of the schools in the second category only a certain number can be
classed as public, as distinguished from local grammar-schools, and
perhaps the best rough method for ascertaining which these are is
furnished by the conferences of head masters, now held yearly, at
the end of the summer term. Where the governing bodies of
grammar-schools desire to conform to the public-school system, it
may be assumed that they will be represented by their head masters
on these occasions. Tried by this test there are in all some forty
foundations, which may fairly be called the public schools of Eng-
land, and which would have to be studied by any American educa-
tional reformer, desirous of satisfying himself what, if any, portion
of the system can be carried across the Atlantic to any useful pur-
pose.

We may now turn to the historic side of the question, dealing

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND, 355

first, as is due to their importance, with the nine schools of our first
category. The oldest, and in some respects most famous of these,
is Winchester School, or, as it was named by its founder, William
of Wykehara, the College of St. Mary of Winchester, founded in
1382. Its constitution still retains much of the impress left on it
by the great Bishop of the greatest Plantagenet King, five centuries
ago. Toward the end of the fourteenth century Oxford was already
the center of English education, but from the want of grammar-
schools boys went up by hundreds untaught in the simplest rudi-
ments of learning, and when there lived in private hostels or
lodging-housef, in a vaH throng, under no discipline, and exposed
to many hardships and temptations. In view of this state of things,
William of Wykeham founded his grammar-school at Winchester
and his college at Oxford, binding the two together, so that the
school might send up properly trained scholars to the university,
where they would be received at New College, in a suitable aca-
demical home, which should in its turn furnish governors and mas-
ters for the school. As might have been expected, the school itself
took a collegiate shape, and under the original statutes consisted
of a warden, ten fellows, seventy scholars, a head and second mas-
ter, three chaplains, three clerks, and sixteen choristers. All these
were amply provided for by the original endowments, but in addi-
tion the statutes provided for the admission of ten " filii nobil-
ium ac valentium personarum dicti collegii specialium amicorum,"
who were to be educated in college at their own charges. How
gently England deals with old institutions may be seen by compar-
ing the Winchester of to-day with that of William of Wykeham.
As time went on the college property increased enormously in
value, and long periods occurred in which a very different estimate
from that of the Bishop came to be put on the higher education.
And so, while the school never altogether failed in its work, great
abuses crept in. College and school were kept as a close borough ;
the fellowships, pleasant sinecures of some five hundred pounds a
year, and a good house, were monopolized by founders' kin and old
Wykehamists of quiet tastes and popular manners ; the splendid
scholarships, which carried their fortunate possessors to New Col-
lege, franked them through the university, and often provided for
them for life, were given without competition of any kind. All
this is changed. The old connection between school and college
has been preserved, but both have been thrown open, with the
result that England does not contain two more satisfactory places

356 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

of education. The governing body has been thoroughly reformed,
but it still consists of a warden and eleven fellows, of whom four
only, instead of ten, are stipendiary and seven honorary. The sti-
pendiary fellows are elected by the Avhole governing body, and must
be persons distinguished in literature or science, or who have done
long and eminent service to the school as masters. The honorary
fellows, except the Warden of New College, who is one ex officio^
have no payment from the college funds, and must be persons quali-
fied by position or attainments to be of use to the school. The col-
legers, or foundation scholars (who get a first-class education almost
free) have increased to one hundred, selected by open competition,
the cleverest boys being attracted from all parts of tbe country by
the value of these prizes. The ten " filii valentium personarum "
have increased, under the name of commoners, to upward of two
hundred, who are boarded in the masters' houses.

The salary of the warden is now fixed at £1,700 a year and a
house, and that of each of the four paid fellows at £700 (instead
of ten at the lower rate named above). The head master gets from
all sources about £3,000 a year, the second master £1,400, and the
under-masters according to the length and value of their service,
from £250 to £800, besides the profits of boarders in the case of
those who have houses. The college endowments consist of real
estate situate mainly in Hants and Wilts, producing an average
income of upward of £17,000, and of stock producing another
£2,000 or thereabouts in dividends. There are also thirteen church
livings in the patronage of the warden and fellows ranging be-
tween £100 and £600 a year.

We must now turn to the monitorial system, which is common
in principle to all public schools, though differing largely in detail.
Its origin may be traced to William of Wykeham's statutes, by
which it is provided that " in each of the chambers three scholars
of good character, and more advanced than their fellows in age,
discretion, and knowledge, shall be chosen to superintend their
chamber-fellows in their studies, to oversee them diligently, and to
certify and inform the warden and head master from time to time
respecting their behavior, conversation, and progress." There are
six chambers in college, and therefore eighteen prefects, to which
number twelve have since been added for commoners — of these,
eight have power only in chambers, while the remainder are full
prefects {plend potestate prcefecti), with power everywhere. Of
these, again, five " officers " have charge of the hall, schools, library,

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND, 357

and chapel, of whom the prefect of hall is the chief, being " the gov-
ernor of the school among the boys," and their organ of communi-
cation with the head master. The five officers are chosen by the
warden, in consultation with the head master, and all are invested
by him with their authority in a traditional form of words, of which
the operative ones are " pra^ficio te sociis concameralibus, praeficio te
aula?." llie system of fagging is connected with this government
by prefects. They and they only have power to fag, and the only
boys exempted from fagging are those in the fifth form. It is un-
necessary for our purpose to consider the somewhat elaborate details
of the traditional system, which at one time pressed heavily on the
liberty and studies of the lower boys. At present fagging is re-
duced to running on errands, attending at breakfast and tea, and
fielding for a certain time at cricket. The prefects' powers include
that ' of " tunding," or punishing corporally. We must defer any
remark on the general system for the present, but may just note
here that, in the milder form which it has taken of late years, fag-
ging is undoubtedly popular among the boys at Winchester who are
subject to it, and, strange as it may seem to transatlantic readers,
wouH not be abolished to-morrow were it put to the vote of the
forms below the fifth.

Winchester School, though under the snadow of the founder-
Bishop's own cathedral, has a fine chapel of its own, in which there
are daily morning prayers, conducted by a master, consisting of a
portion of the Liturgy with chanting. The hours of work in school
are on two days of the week between six and seven and on the
other days between four and five hours, besides which the boys in
the higher forms have composition and examination work to do out
of school-hours. A hard-working sixth-form boy will generally
study seven hours a day, and perhaps from nine to ten before ex-
aminations, and will give probably on an average three more hours a
day to cricket and other games. The boys are allowed to go where
they please during play-hours, except in the city, which is out of
bounds.

Our notice of the remaining schools must be even more meager
than the skeleton sketch we have given of the oldest of them.
Next in date comes the royal foundation of Eton, or " The College
of the Blessed Mary of Eton, near Windsor.", It wafe founded by
Henry VI., a. d. 1446, upon the model of Winchester, with a col-
legiate establishment of a provost, ten fellows (reduced to seven in
the reign of Edward IV.), seventy scholars, and ten chaplains (now

358 TEE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW,

reduced to two, who are called " conducts "), and a head and lower
master, ten lay clerks, and twelve choristers. The provost and fel-
lows are the governing body, who appoint the head master, and
claim the right to name the provost also, though this has always in
practice been done by the Crown. Around this center the great
school, numbering now a thousand boys, has gathered, the college,
however, still retaining its own separate organization and traditions.
Besides the splendid buildings and playing-fields at Eton, the col-
lege holds real property of the yearly value of upward of £20,000,
and forty livings ranging from £100 to £1,200 of yearly value.
The income of the provost is about £2,000 a year, and of the paid
fellows £850. The ofiices of vice-provost, bursar, precentor, sa-
crist, and librarian have until recently been also held by follows.
King's College, Cambridge, stands in much the same relation to
Eton as New College, Oxford, to Winchester, being fed by the
King's scholars year by year, and having had until recently the
practical monopoly of the masterships at the school. King's has
been now thrown open to all Eton boys, oppidans as well as schol-
ars. Besides the King's scholarships, there are sixteen other schol-
arships at the universities yearly competed for at Eton. TheP sys-
tem of private tuition prevails there more than at any other of the
public schools, and the school- work is consequently lighter. There
is daily chapel with choral service on saints' days, at which the con-
ducts, one of whom acts also as curator to the parish of Eton, offi-
ciate. The monitorial system scarcely exists at Eton, except m col-
lege, the sixth-form boys being, however, expected to preserve
order, and having the right to fag, which is shared also by the fifth
form. The river competes with the playing-fields at Eton, where
rowing is at least as popular as cricket, and the captain of the boats
even a greater personage than the captain of the eleven. The boys
are free to go where they please in play-hours, including the town
of Windsor ; but are expected to " shirk," or, in other words, to
run away, when they meet a master outside the playing-fields. The
prestige of Eton, arising from its royal foundation and proximity to
Windsor Castle, and its convenient distance from London, has made
it the fashionable school for many generations, and has attracted to
it large numbers of boys, the sons of rich parents, who look more
to pleasant surroundings than high intellectual culture, and desire
to provide them at an early age for their sons.

The school next in date stands out in sharp contrast to Winches-
ter and Eton. It is St. Paul's School, founded by Dean Colet, the

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. 359

friend of Erasmus, a. p. 1512, for the teaching of a hundred and
fifty-three boys " of all nations and countries." The number is
that of the miraculous draught of fishes, which is supposed to have
been the Dean's guide in fixing it. There is no distinction among
the boys, as at Winchester and Eton, between scholars and com-
moners or oppidans, every boy having his education free, subject
only to the payment at his admission of 4c/., " once and for ever,
for writing of his name." Dean Colet was before all things a citi-
zen (son of a famous Lord Mayor) and a radical reformer, and his
notions of school management stand out in sharp contrast to those
of Bishop and King. He will have no machinery of warden, fel-
lows, and the rest, or allied college at the university, and has little
confidence in clerical management. So he constituted the Mercers'
Guild, of which he was an hereditary member, the governing body
of his school, to whom he conveyed certain estates in Buckingham-
shire for its maintenance. By his statute the masters, wardens,
and assistants of the Mercers' Company arc to choose annually two
honest and substantial men of their fellowship as surveyors of the
school, who shall take the charge and management for the year.
The two surveyors, however, in practice only look after the ac-
counts and pay the masters' salaries, referring all questions of man-
agement to the court of assistants of the company. The Dean's
plan in its working contrasts in some respects favorably, in others
unfavorably, with those of Bishop and King : favorably as regards
the management of the estates. These in Colet's time produced an
income of less than £200, which, under the management of the
Mercers' Company, has now risen to £10,000. And while the war-
den, provost, and fellows have absorbed the lion's share of the en-
dowments at Eton and Winchester, the Mercers' Company have
never raised the salaries fixed for the surveyors in 1602 at £4 a
year apiece, while the expenses of the court of assistants in con-
nection with the school have been kept under £250 a year. On the
other hand, the nomination of the scholars has become a matter of
patronage, each member of the court of assistants taking them in
rotation. They have also jealously guarded their powers, so that
the head master has less control than in any other school, not being
allowed even the selection and appointment of his staff. This under
Colet's ordinances consisted of a head master, a sur-master, and a
chaplain, but has been enlarged to seven masters, with adequate
salaries, the head master's being £900, with the rents of two houses
at Stepney and a residence adjoining the school. There is no chapel

360 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

attached to St. Paul's School, the original one having been burned
in the great fire and never rebuilt ; but Latin prayers, two of which
were written by Erasmus, are read by the captain of the school
twice a day. The whole of the head form (the eighth) act as moni-
tors ; but, as the school is practically a day-school, their powers and
duties are limited. The school buildings still stand at the east end
of St. Paul's Churchyard, fronting on one of the noisiest thorough-
fares in the city. The suggestion of the Public Schools Commis-
sioners for their removal to some more retired part of the metropo-
lis, where a small playground or at least fives courts and a gymna-
sium might be provided, is still under the consideration of the
Mercers' Company. The exhibitions to the universities belonging
to the school are (in the opinion of the late head master) too numer-
ous and too easily obtained. No English school has a higher scho-
lastic tradition than St. Paul's. William Lely, the grammarian and
first teacher of Greek in London, was the first high master, and
Camden and Leland among the earliest scholars, who have been
followed by an illustrious succession from Milton to the present
Bishop of Manchester. But of late there has been (the Commis-
sioners remark) a growing tendency in the coui't of assistants to
narrow the sphere of its operations, and convert it from a public
school into a mere charitable foundation, useful to individuals, but
of little public importance.

Shrewsbury School, which follows next in order of seniority,
claims a royal foundation, but is in reality the true child of the
town's folk. The dissolution of the monasteries destroyed also the
seminaries attached to many of them, to the great injury of popular
education. This was specially the case in Shropshire, so in 1551
the bailiffs, burgesses, and inhabitants of Shrewsbury and the neigh-
borhood petitioned Edward VI. for a grant of some portion of the
estates of the dissolved collegiate churches for the purpose of found-
ing a free school. The King consented, and granted to the peti-
tioners the appropriated tithes of several livings and a charter, but
died before the school was organized. It was in abeyance during
Mary's reign, but opened in the fourth year of Elizabeth, 1562, by
Thomas Aston, who soon drew to it not only the sons of citizens of
Shrewsbury, but those of the gentry of Shropshire and the neigh-
boring counties. Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville, and Robert
Devereux, afterward Earl of Essex, were among his pupils. Dis-
cussions which at once arose as to the government of the school
between the corporation of Shrewsbury and Mr. Aston, represent-

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. 361

ing the Crown, were settled in 1577, temporarily, when the school
ordinances were passed by which the Bishop of Litchfield was
named visitor, the appointment of head master was vested in the
master and fellows of St. John's, and the practical control and man-
agement in the town bailiffs and head master. There has been a
long struggle over the foundation, the town contending for a prac-
tical monopoly of its emoluments and benefits, which, if successful,
would have degraded Shrewsbury from the rank of a public school.
It has ended by the adoption of the scheme of the Public Schools
Commissioners, and the governing body now consists of thirteen
members — three named by the corporation of Shrewsbury, three by
the Crown, one by each of the colleges of Christ Church, Oxford,
and St. John's and Magdalen, Cambridge, the remaining four being
elected by the governing body itself. The right of gratuitous edu-
cation is limited to forty free scholars. The thirty-four scholar-
ships and exhibitions to the universities have been thrown open.
The monitorial system is carried out by twelve praepostors, who,
upon entering oflice, engage in writing on the part of the school
with the head master to do and prevent certain things. They read
the lessons in chapel, call over the names, and represent the school
before the head master. They have the power of setting imposi-
tions within certain limits, but none of caning. Four fags are al-
lotted to the praepostors' room, who serve by weekly rotation, laying
breakfast and tea and running messages ; but there is no individual
fagging, or fagging at games. The revenues of the school amount
to £3,100 a year, arising almost entirely from tithe-rent charges.
The head master's emoluments, including profits of his boarding-
house, are about £2,000 a year. The school attends Sunday-morn-
ing service at the church of St. Mary's, but otherwise the services
are held in the school-chapel.

We have now reached the great group of Elizabethan schools,
to which indeed Shrewsbury may also be said to belong, as it was
not opened until the Queen had been three years on the throne.
The two metropolitan schools of Westminster and Merchant Taylors'
were in fact founded in 1560, two years before the opening of
Shrewsbury. Westminster as a royal foundation must take prece-
dence. It is a grammar-school attached by the Queen to the colle-
giate church of St. Peter, commonly called Westminster Abbey,
and founded for the free education of forty scholars in Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew. The Queen, with characteristic thriftiness, provided
no endowment for her school, leaving the costs of maintenance as

362 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

a charge on the general revenues of the dean and chapter, which
indeed were, then as now, fully competent to sustain the burden.
Other boys have always been taught with the foundation scholars,
the number being fixed by statute at eighty ; but this limit has not
been observed. The scholars are elected by a system of competi-
tion called the challenge, of the nature of the old academical dis-
putations. The candidates, generally about thirty in number com-
peting for ten vacancies, come up by twos before the head master,
beginning from the lowest. The junior proceeds to challenge the
other to translate some portion of Greek epigram or Ovid's Meta-
morphoses prepared for the occasion. If he can correct any fault
he takes the other boy's placo, who becomes challenger, and attacks
in his turn. Their " helps," senior boys who have prepared them,
stand by and counsel their " men," and the head master moderates,
deciding the point in issue when there is any doubt as to the cor-
rectness of an answer. The boy who remains successful now chal-
lenges the candidate next in seniority, and so the struggle goes on
for some six or eight weeks, the boys who are highest at its close
getting the vacant Queen's scholarships. These carry them either
to Christ Church, Oxford, or Trinity, Cambridge, the heads of which
colleges are on the governing body of the school, with the dean and
chapter, and six laymen, four named by the Crown and two by
the governing body. The monitorial system is in force in college.
The four head boys, as captain and monitors, are formally intrusted
with the maintenance of discipline by the head master before the
whole school. The system of fagging was onerous until quite re-
cently, so much so that its severity was noticed by the Commission-
ers in their report in 1864. It has since been lightened by the
appointment of servants to do part of the work (such as calling in
the early mornings, providing hot water, and making up fires.
There is no school chapel, the boys attending the Abbey services.
The hall is the room in which Henry IV. is lying sick in Shake-
speare's play, and the dormitories and schools form the southern
side of Dean's Yard. The playground is in Vincent Square, half a
mile from the school, and the neighborhood is not a healthy one in
any sense for boys to frequent. Moreover, the headquarters of
rowing, for which the school was justly celebrated, have migrated
of late years to quieter and safer waters at Putney, six miles up
the river. Having regard to which facts, and the constant closing
in of the city, efforts have been made to remove the school out of
town. These, however, have failed through the opposition of old

TEE PUBLIC SGEOOLS OF ENGLAND. 363

Westminsters, fearful of breaking the school traditions and the
connection with the abbey, and of abandoning the privilege which
the upper boys possess of entrance to the galleries of the Houses of
Parliament to hear the debates. Up to the last generation West-
minster was the school of several of the great political families.
Two premiers, Lords Aberdeen and Russell, were educated there,
and many other statesmen ; and, though this is no longer the case,
the old tradition gives way so slowly that it will probably take at
least another generation to transplant the school to a healthier and
more eligible site.

Merchant Taylors', the other metropolitan school founded in
1560, owes its origin to Sir Thomas White, a member of the Court
of Assistants of the company, and founder of St. John's College,
Oxford. It was probably his promise to connect the school with
his college which induced the Company to undertake the task, and
to declare by the statutes, taken in great part from Dean Colet,
that their school should " have continuance by God's grace for ever."
Sir Thomas White redeemed his promise by endowing the school
with thirty-seven fellowships at St. John's College. The fellow-
ships have been thrown open by an ordinance of the Privy Council
founded on an act of Parliament, but the school still retains twenty-
one scholarships at St. John's, of £100 each, and tenable for seven
years. The school is a day-school of 250 boys, the vacancies being
filled by the nominees of the Merchant Taylors' Company. The
boys now pay £10 a year for their education, all the surplus cost,
amounting to about £2,000 a year, being borne by the company,
in whose hands the management and government of the school ex-
clusively rest. The only trace of the monitorial system is that
some of the elder boys assist in the school- work. There is no fag-
ging, the boys never being together out of school-hours. Merchant
Taylors', it will thus be seen, is a grand foundation, of the highest
value as a place of education to the sons of professional men and
clerks living in London ; but as a pure day-school, without the
monitorial system, and belonging to (or at any rate claimed as be-
longing to) a city company, would scarcely have been classed as a
public school but for the fact that it is so included in the Public
Schools Commission of 1861. Its inclusion tends to show how
broad the authoritative interpretation of the term is with the Privy
Council and the legal advisers of the Crown.

Rugby, or the free school of Lawrence Sheriff, follows next in
order, having been founded in 1567 by Lawrence Sheriff, grocer,

364 THE NORTH AMERICAN' REVIEW.

and citizen of London. His " intent " (as the document expressing
his wishes is called) declares that his lands in Rugby and Browns-
over, and his " third of a pasture-ground in Gray's Inn Fields, called
Conduit Close," shall be applied to maintain a free grammar school
for the children of Rugby and Brownsover, and the places adjoin-
ing, and four poor almsmen of the same parishes. These estates,
after providing a fair schoolhouse and residences for the master
and almsmen, at first produced a rental of only £24 135. Ad. In
due time, however. Conduit Close became a part of central London,
and Rugby School the owner of eight acres of houses in and about
the present Lamb's Conduit Street. The income of the whole trust
property amounts now to about £6,000, of which £255 is expended
on t^e maintenance of the twelve almsmen. There is no visitor,
and the foundation consists simply of a board of trustees, a school-
master, assistant masters, a chaplain, and the boys. The trustees
have from the first been country gentlemen of Warwickshire and
the neighboring counties, who have used the school for many gen-
erations for theu' own children. They were until lately self -elect-
ing, and the same names, those of the Warwickshire landed gentry,
appear again and again ever since the creation of the board in
1614. The trustees possess legally almost unlimited powers over
the management of the school, but in practice have left very large
discretion to the head master, who in internal administration, ap-
pointing assistant masters, regulating studies, and the like, has
practically done what he thought best, always, however, with the
knowledge that the power of review and correction rests with those
to whom he is responsible for the discipline and instruction of the
school. This responsibility has, however, been shared by the assist-
ant masters for the last fifty years, since Arnold on his appoint-
ment introduced the practice of holding a "levy of masters," as
it is called, monthly, for consultation on school business. The prac-
tice has been attributed to his love of equality and well-known
opinions on government ; but, whatever the origin, the custom has
worked well, and is not likely to be disturbed. The tutorial sys-
tem of Eton was introduced at Rugby toward the end of the last
century by Dr. James and Dr. Ingles, Eton men who were successive-
ly head masters. As modified by Arnold it still prevails. Rugby has
no special connection with either university, but provides five exhi-
bitions annually, ranging from fifty to eighty pounds, which are open
to free competition. At Rugby the school close is thirteen acres
in extent, and the games played in it are regulated by an assembly

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. 365

called " big side levy," consisting of all boys in the upper school,
another democratic arrangement not in use in any other of the nine
schools. The monitorial system exists in a carefully guarded form.
The sixth form, or praepostors, exercise it over the whole school,
for the purpose of enforcing rules and preserving order. They
have the power of fagging all boys below the fifth form. The du-
ties of the fags are limited to dusting the sixth-form studies, mak-
mg toast at breakfast and tea, running messages, and attendance
at games. Attendance at football, hare and hounds, and brook-
leaping is compulsory, except for those who are excused by a medi-
cal certificate ; in fact, as the Commissioners report, fagging at
games has been reduced almost " to a system of making physical
education compulsory in all cases in which there is no reason to
apprehend evil effects upon the health from compulsion." The
chapel is only used on Sundays, Good Friday, Ash Wednesday,
Ascension and All-Saints', and on Founders' Day, October 19th. On
other days there are short morning prayers in the big school and
evening prayers in the boarding-houses. There are sixty-one foun-
dationers, or boys living in or within ten miles of Rugby, who get
a free education, except in tutorial work, for which they pay like
the other boys. The head master's emoluments, including profits
on boarders in the schoolhouse, amount to between £3,000 and
£4,000 a year ; those of the thirteen classical assistant masters
range from £340 to £1,020 ; those of the three mathematical from
£580 to £1,410, while the two modern language masters get £1,284
and £286 respectively. Of all the nine schools, it is the one which
has made the greatest advance toward grafting a new curriculum
of modem studies upon the old classical system, though it has
stopped short in this respect of the best schools of the Victorian
era.

Harrow school was founded in 1571, four years later than Rug-
^7> by John Lyon, a yeoman of the parish. He was owner of cer-
tain small estates in and about Harrow and Barnet, and of others
at Paddington and Kilburn. All these he devoted to public pur-
poses, but unfortunately gave the former for the perpetual educa-
tion of the children and youth of the parish, and the latter for the
maintenance and repair of the highways from Harrow and Edgware
to London. The present yearly revenue of the school estates is
barely over £1,000, while that of the highway trust is nearly £4,000.
But, though the poorest in endowments, Harrow, from its nearness
to London, and consequent attractions for the classes who spend a

366 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

large portion of their year in the metropolis either in attendance in
Parliament, or for pleasure, has become the rival of Eton as a fash-
ionable school. The governors are a corporation under charter, and
were six in number until increased to twelve, on the recommenda-
tion of the Public Schools Commissioners. They are accustomed to
interfere even less than the Rugby trustees with the administration
of the head master, who himself appoints all assistant masters, gives
leave to open boarding-houses, and is responsible for the financial
arrangements of the school.

The custom, however, of masters' levies exists at Harrow as at
Rugby, having been introduced by Dr. Vaughan, the late head
master and a distinguished pupil of Arnold. Harrow, like Rugby,
has no special connection with either university, but, unlike Rugby,
has few exhibitions open to yearly competition. Two " John Lyon "
scholarships are given yearly, of the value of £30, and tenable for
four years, and there is also a scholarship of £100 a year tenable
for three years, becoming vacant every fourth year. On the other
hand, in prizes of medals and books for the best examinations in
special subjects, the school is unusually rich. The monitorial and
fagging systems are similar to those of Rugby, the chief difference
being that the monitors are only ten in number ; each monitor may
exempt four fags from football if he is playing himself, while the
head of the school may exempt any number, and that cricket fag-
ging is more completely organized, the whole number of fags being
taken in rotation, so that each boy's turn comes only once a week.
After three years boys are exempt from fagging, though they may
not have reached the fifth form. Private tuition on the Eton sys-
tem is universal. The chapel services are confined to Sundays and
a few great festivals. The choir is composed of boys who meet for
practice twice a week. The masters in orders preach by turns on
Sunday, a custom found to be of great value both to themselves
and to the boys. The foundations are boys resident in Harrow,
and are exempt from all charges except fifteen guineas for private
tuition and £2 lO^. for school charges. The head master and sev-
eral of the senior assistant masters have large boarding-houses, while
others are allowed to keep smaller boarding-houses in which higher
rates are paid, amounting on an average to an extra cost of £50
a year. These are intended for boys whose health is such as to
render them unfit for the rougher discipline and more bracing at-
mosphere of large houses. The emoluments of the head master,
after making deductions for exceptional expenses falling on him in

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. 367

respect of repairs of the buildings and otherwise, the result of the
want of endowments, considerably exceed £4,000 a year, those of
the assistant masters range between £500 and £1,500.

Last on the list of the nine schools comes the Charterhouse
(the Whitefriars of Thackeray's novels). It may be fairly classed
with the Elizabethan schools, though actually founded in 1609, after
the accession of James I. In that year a substantial yeoman,
Thomas Sutton by name, purchased from Lord Suffolk the lately
dissolved Charterhouse, by Smithfield, and obtained letters patent
empowering him to found a hospital and school on the old site.
In the patent sixteen persons are named and incorporated as gov-
ernors, which number, consisting always of persons eminent in
church and state, remained unaltered until increased by four under
the advice of the Public Schools Commissioners. The governors
meet twice a year to view the state of the hospital, make election
of poor men and poor scholars, and do other business. The old
Charterhouse, though situated in one of the most crowded and un-
suitable quarters of London, had this great advantage over the
other metropolitan schools, that it had a playground of ^yq acres
adjoining the buildings. The whole premises, including school
buildings and hospital, residences for the masters of each, cloisters
and playground, were surrounded by a high wall pierced by only
one gateway. In this inclosure the boys lived, side by side, with
the " poor, aged, maimed, needy, and impotent people," the poor
brothers of the hospital, and worshiping in the same chapel, a
pathetic juxtaposition brought out with exquisite delicacy and hu-
mor in Thackeray's sketch of the last days of Colonel Newcome.
The property of the corporation, apart from the Smithfield site,
produced an income of about £23,000, of which about £8,000 was
spent on the school. The boys were of three classes, sixty founda-
tioners, named by the governors in rotation, and entitled to free
maintenance and education, clothes, and a gown and trencher-cap,
with an exhibition of £80 a year at either university upon passing
a satisfactory examination at the age of eighteen ; boarders, who
lived in the masters' houses, and day boys paying £18 I85. for their
education. The monitorial and fagging systems were much the
same as at Westminster, except that all boys in and above the fourth
form were exempt. But the old school in Smithfield is a thing of
the past. Since the visit of the Public Schools Commissioners in
1862, the governors, acting in the spirit of their recommendations,
have transplanted the school to one of the most beautiful parts of

368 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

England, in the neighborhood of Guildford. The great value of
the site of the old school has enabled them to proceed in the most
liberal manner, and the new school buildings, boarding-houses, and
arrangements of all kinds are equal, if not superior, to those of any-
other school in the kingdom. This experiment, the first of the kind,
has been eminently successful, and its results have by this time
reconciled most old Carthusians to the partial break in the school
traditions and the severance of their school from the hospital and
the poor brethren.

The above sketch, though necessarily meager, will, it is hoped,
help to put our readers on the right road toward an understanding
of the English public-school system, which undoubtedly furnishes
one more example of the curious anomalies which are found in every
department of the many-sided life of the country, and also of the
strong practical sagacity which underlies the national character,
and enables the nation, with all its strange wastefulness and indif-
ference to logical methods, to achieve its ends and get what it
needs, practically if not scientifically. We have only to look at
the names of the founders to see how the need for such institutions
as these schools must have been felt in all parts of the nation before
and at the time of the revival of learning. The Crown, great
churchmen, municipalities, commercial guilds, city tradesmen, yeo-
men of the counties, are all there ; in fact, the only class conspicu-
ous by its absence is that of the great nobles and landed gentry —
the very class which has in the long run made most use of the
schools. The main object of the founders seems in all cases to
have been the promotion of the best learning then obtainable ; the
next, the benefit of certain specified localities and of the poor. The
two objects proved in the end incompatible, and one or other had
to give way ; time would show which it was to be. It soon ap-
peared that there was no demand for the best learning among the
poor, and so scores of Tudor grammar-schools gave up offering it
at all, and fell gradually into decay and paralysis, from which they
are only now awakening. On the other hand, there was and con-
tinued to be a fair demand for "the best learning" among the
landed gentry and the professional and mercantile classes, and this
demand the nine schools which remained comparatively faithful to
their highest trust were there to meet with more or less success.
And so (as the Commissioners declare in their report) "public-
school education as it exists in England, and in England only, has
grown up chiefly within their walls, and has been propagated from

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. 369

them ; and, though now surrounded by younger institutions of a
like character, and of great and increasing importance, they are
still in common estimation its acknowledged types, as they have
for several generations been its principal centers."

We are quite conscious, however, that, after having gone with
us so far, the American inquirer in whose company we started will
still be entitled to repeat his question in a slightly modified form,
and to say : " You have only told me that certain specified institu-
tions, differing widely in their constitutions and methods of teach-
ing and discipline, are public schools in your sense, and that they
are so because they give a public-school education. Now, then,
what is this public-school education which they give ? " The same
question confronted the Public Schools Commissioners whom we have
so often cited, and is adverted to by them in the introduction to
their report. They, speaking to an English audience, were able to
a certain extent to give it the go-by, and, in their report, to treat
public-school education as " a phrase which is popular and sufii-
ciently intelligible," without attempting to define its precise mean-
ing. But this, at any rate, is not so in America, and their example
can not be followed in these pages. What gives the subject such
interest as it possesses for Americans is the almost entire absence,
even in the Eastern States, of educational constitutions answering
the purposes w^hich the nine schools, and their modern rivals, serve
in the United Kingdom. However democratic a nation may be in
spirit and character, and in its political and social constitution and
organization, the time must come when it will breed a gentry,
leisure class, aristocracy, call it by what name you will, as certainly
(as Mr. Emerson has said) as it will breed women. The more vig-
orous and prosperous the nation, the sooner -will the class arise ; and
the more healthy the class, the more certain will it be to insist on
the highest culture attainable for its boys and girls.

But the highest culture can not be brought to every man's door.
However good your common-school system may be, you can not
have a thoroughly satisfactory school, so far as instruction is con-
cerned, except in great centers of population ; and, in those great
centers, though the school- work and teaching may be as good as
you require, the conditions of life are not the best for boys (leaving
girls out of the question) from twelve to eighteen, the years be-
tween the home schoolroom and the university. Besides, a large
portion of the class in question live too far from the great centers
to make use of the best common schools, without sending their
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 269. 24

370 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,

boys for long periods from under their own roofs. Some system of
boarding-schools, therefore, must be established ; and the problem
is how it can be best done, what conditions of government, disci-
pline, and instruction, will suit the national character and habits
best, and turn out the kind of men whom the commonwealth needs
most.

That the English public-school system, with all its faults and
shortcomings, has done this work for the old country in a fairly
satisfactory manner is an unquestioned fact, and might perhaps be
safely assumed here. We prefer, however, to cite the highest testi-
mony on the point. The Public Schools Commissioners in their
report, after a very searching criticism on many parts of the sys-
tem, confess the obligations which England owes to the schools,
" which, were their defects far greater than they are, would entitle
them to be treated with the utmost tenderness and respect " ; and,
after speaking of the service they have rendered in the maintenance
of classical literature as the staple of English education, " a service
which far outweighs the error of having clung to these studies too
exclusively," continues : " A second and greater service still is the
creation of a system of government and discipline for boys, the ex-
cellence of which has been universally recognized, and which is ad-
mitted to have been most important in its influence on national
character and social life. It is not easy to estimate the degree in
which the English people are indebted to these schools for the
qualities on which they pique themselves most — for their capacity
to govern others and control themselves, their aptitude for combin-
ing freedom with order, their public spirit, their vigor and manli-
ness of character, their strong but not slavish respect for public
opinion, their love of healthy sport and exercise. These schools
have been the chief nurseries of our statesmen ; in them, and in
schools modeled after them, men of all the various classes that
make up English society, destined for every profession and career,
have been brought up on the footing of social equality, and have
contracted the most enduring friendships and some of the ruling
habits of their lives ; and they have had perhaps the largest share
in molding the character of an English gentleman. The system,
like other systems, has had its blots and imperfections ; there have
been times when it was at once too lax and too severe — severe in its*
punishments, but lax in superintendence and prevention ; it has per-
mitted if not encouraged some roughness, tyranny, and license, but
these defects have not seriously marred its wholesome operation ;

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. 371

and it appears to have gradually purged itself of them in a remark-
able degree. Its growth, no doubt, is due to those very qualities in
our national character which it has itself contributed to form, but
justice bids us add that it is due likewise to the wise munificence
which founded the institutions under whose shelter it has been en-
abled to take root, and to the good sense, temper, and ability of the
men by whom, for successive generations, they have been governed."
In the case of nations of the same race, and so nearly identical
in character and habits as the people of the United States and the
English, it may reasonably be assumed that a system which has
borne such fruits in the one is at least worth the careful examina-
tion of the other. AVe propose, therefore, in a future number to
recur to the subject, and consider what is of the essence and what
are the mere accidents of the English public-school system, in the
assurance that, whether it may or may not approve itself to the
American people, an intelligent understanding and appreciation of
it will greatly help them in determining how to deal best with their
own boys at the age when the mind is " wax to receive and marble
to retain," and the characters of most men take the bent and impress
which they never lose in after-life.

Thomas Hughes.

m.
GERMAN SOCIALISM IN AMERICA.

" No one who watches events which are now happening
can doubt that, if Socialism should continue to advance with
80 much rapidity as it has lately shown in Germany and the
United States, the day is not far distant when the Socialists
will be able to control the legislations of these countries."

Such were the warning words recently uttered at the English
University of Cambridge by the eminent economist and member of
Parliament, Mr. Henry Fawcett. There is little doubt that*most
Americans who have chanced to notice this prophecy have summa-
rily dismissed it with the consoling reflection that there is no dan-
ger, because there is no truth in Mr. Fawcett's fears. Yet the mere
partial fulfillment of these forebodings would mark a change more
momentous than any that is recorded in the history of our race.
To examine in detail, however, the origin and progress of modern
Socialism, or the certain consequences which the triumph of its
principles would involve, is no purpose of the present paper. But,
in order to fulfill the object in view, it will be necessary to cast a
cursory glance at the growth and doctrines of the new creed, before
approaching a subject which is but a branch of the parent tree that
has fastened its roots in the countries of the Old World.

In studying the operations of surrounding society the conclu-
sions of the modern mind are ordinarily determined by certain
antecedent conditions. Results are predicted by certain rules or
laws, fixed and formulated by the light of repeated and recorded
experience. While science has become a history, history has be-
come a science. Given to the modern historian certain premises,
his conclusions are at hand, and his inferences are ordinarily derived
with the same certainty with which the chemist forecasts the com-

GERMAN SOCIALISM IK AMEBIC A. 373

bination of atoms. So it became possible for Edmund Burke to
predict the effects of the French Revolution, and thus the powerful
mind of Pitt foresaw the inevitable fall of Napoleon. Men so
short-sighted as Jefferson may have seen in the outburst of the
French Revolution the da\vn of an era of universal happiness.
But, by the calmer and more observing exponents of history, the
salient and inevitable results of the people's reign could be predicted
with the same precision with which Leverrier foretold the existence
of a new planet. And why ? For the simple reason that in vari-
ous guises "all this had been before." From time immemorial
modern society had formed two great camps. The men who had all
to fijain had striven with the men who had all to lose. The one side
formed the defensive, the other the offensive party. The one be-
came the party of conservatism, the other the party of reaction. No
sooner had the democrats reached the coveted goal of wealth than,
like Juno, a goddess in pursuit but a cloud in possession, the prin-
ciples of the pursuer vanished with the attainment of his end.
The ardent democrat of yesterday became the stanch conservative
of to-day. The democracy of one era became the conservatism of
the succeeding one. The dream of one age was the science of the
next. Again and again the mass of the people had watched this
evolution with alarm and apprehension. Repeatedly society was
declared not sufficiently elastic to meet the strain. Each fresh gen-
eration had asked itself the question. How far can radicalism ad-
vance without bursting the bonds of society ? And each time the
question was solved by repeating it.

But the cause of strife — the summiwi honum — had been wealth
alone. And there could be no radical displacement of the funda-
mental fabric of society, so long as all parties stood on the one
ground of the supreme value of property. The aim and the object
of all classes were identical. They all bowed down to Mammon.

Suddenly, within the memory of men still living, there sprang into
existence, in full panoply, a counter party — a counter revolution,
nominally endowed with public and universal aims, and destined to
redeem the great mass of human sufferers by organized and orderly
confederation. Hitherto our civilization had been one of property.
It was now proposed to make it one of competency. Universal co-
operation was to take the place of universal competition. The capi- 1
talist and the poor man alike were to vanish from the face of soci-
ety. State effort was to supplant individual effort, and the central
Government to be controlled and governed by universal and united

374 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

cooperation. It was for the first time proposed to Swedenbor-
gianize society by investing every man with a dynamic value in
the mechanism of state. Never before had this doctrine been ad-
vanced. Never had it been known to cast before it even the faintest
shadow. Neither the republican society of Plato, of Fourier, or of
Babeuf ; nor the hierarchical and aristocratic of Saint Simon ; nor
the theocratic of the Essen es ; nor the despotic of the Peruvians or
Jesuits ; nor the polygamous of the the Mormons ; "nor the material-
istic of Robert Owen ; nor the terrorism of Robespierre, had ever
contemplated universal and equal distribution of property, coupled
with a general and coercive recruiting of its members.

In Germany, the classic land of modern Socialism, the new creed
was first proclaimed. Hardly twenty-five years have elapsed since
it first found expression in the person of its great tribune, Ferdinand
Lassalle, a leader at once endowed with the fanaticism of Robes-
pierre, the philosophic mind of Kant, and the personal magnetism
of O'Connell. His numerous apostles, stronger than the great
prophet himself in their denunciation of the " cruel, brazen law of
wages," soon built up the party now known as the party of German
Socialism. If we are to believe the words of the great GeiTaan
Chancellor, this man, despite his professions, detested the burgher
because he was not sufficiently imbued with admiration for his lead-
er, while he despised the workman because he bargained too closely
for submission ; and, " in revenge," says Prince Bismarck, " he wor-
shiped Lassalle." But however this may be, Lassalle, " thinker and
man of war," as his epitaph reads, will remain the first high priest of
the new social creed, and the prophet of a social system which has
made all Europe quake and brought the most powerful minister of
modern times to declare that " in all the great German Empire his
dog alone remains unshaken in his allegiance." It is indeed due
to such leaders as Lassalle and Karl Marx, and the great learning
which they brought to the cause, that the intellectual classes of
Germany were permeated with the new principles of Socialism, and
it is to them that it owes its growth and success in the fatherland.
How different from France, where the remnants of feudalism had
provoked the anarchic attack of the great Revolution, and finally
spent its untutored forces in the after-birth of the July Revolution
and the Commune ! For neither the Commune nor communism
could endure so long as the first Napoleon went do^Ti to posterity
with the Code in his hand, and so long as discontent was confined
to the lowest orders. Indeed, most traces of Socialism have now

GERMAN SOCIALISM IN AMERICA. 375

vanished from French soil, and the fact would seem partly due to the
slow and silent operation of the Code Napoleon, which imposes upon
all testators an equal distribution of property, and partly to the dis-
tribution of a great debt among the masses of the people.

If, on the other hand, we turn to the eastern neighbor of the
German confederation, we find quite another picture. It is not from
the working classes that the ranks of nihilism are recruited in the
great empire of the Czars. The Russian moujik is content with the
poverty and obscurity that fall to his lot. It is only when roused
by agitators like Serge Netchaieff, an ex-professor of Moscow Uni-
versity, that he is moved from the lethargy of his passive condition.
In Russia, Socialism, as the recent and alarming students' riots at-
test, is confined almost wholly to the intellectual classes which
struggle in sympathy with the movement in Germany. Within the
last eight years the Russian nihilists have quadrupled their num-
bers, and the existence of Socialism may well be considered ominous
and dangerous to an autocracy where the intellectual classes wield
the powers of state, and number in their own ranks secret mem-
bers of the new persuasion. Indeed, the wave of liberalism and
nihilism which has lately passed over the dominions of the Czar
is not viewed without concern by the German Chancellor himself,
whose powerful and forecasting intellect has even crossed the sea
to watch and promote the progress now making by his enemies in
the greatest republic of modern times.

It is the present purpose to consider the advance of Social-
ism in America, and especially the importation to this country of
German Socialism with its measures and its men. We have reason
to believe that few Americans perceive the danger that is daily
growing in their presence under the shrewd and fostering protec-
tion of Prince Bismarck. Not many months ago, when Europe
was panic-stricken by four successive attempts in one year upon
the lives of three monarchs. Prince Bismarck, by the famous bill
passed in the Reichstag, laid low the Socialist propaganda in Ger-
many. By the repressive measures of this bill two million Germans
were deprived of their constitutional rights. Of these two mil-
lions, the German Government, supremely conscious of its own
best interests, is now making attempts, direct and indirect, to
drive a large jDortion to this country. It is here proposed to show
how far this element of German Socialism has already fixed its
fangs in the most susceptible portion of our people, and threat-
ens, with a larger increase of representatives and loquacious agita-

376 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

tors, to diffuse its poison into all classes sufficiently indigent and
sufficiently ignorant to join the great caravan of the discontented.

It seems indeed curious that Socialism, a movement so menacing
to the peace of the military despotisms of the Russian and German
Empires, should have reached our shores, and found foothold in this
land of freedom and of plenty. It was long believed that neither
discord nor discontent could ever cross the threshold of the young
republic. She was the home of the oppressed, the asylum of the
outcast. In a land flowing with milk and honey, where fortune and
nature had vied with each other in their gifts, men thought to see
and to foresee the realization of humanity's fondest hopes. En-
dowed with wealth, with all the fundamental principles of political
liberty, a boundless and exhaustless territory, it seemed as if Amer-
ica were destined to dispel the night of ages, and to regenerate
mankind. With earnest solicitude the wisest heads of Europe
watched the progress of the great experiment. But the outbreak
of the war of secession, foreseen and predicted by De Tocqueville,
brought all calculation to a standstill, and modified and convulsed
the whole condition of our social fabric. It introduced caste. It
made of the republic a plutocracy. It altered and remolded our
commercial and economic systems. It fostered protection. It cre-
ated speculation, extravagance, an immense debt, and poverty. It
was through the operation of these changes and innovations that the
prevalence of Socialistic principles became possible in the United
States ; and while we have been discussing the possibility of a Mon-
gol invasion, and the incapacity of the negro for responsible gov-
ernment, we have failed to notice the new enemy who may at no
distant day plunge capital and labor into a conflict calculated to
test the strength of a weak government even more severely than
the late civil war.

To the ninety-nine out of every hundred of our people, Socialism
in this country means nothing more than an empty name applied
to strange and visionary radicals. To such it will be surprising if
not alarming to learn that there are, in the leading and most popu-
lous States of the Union, thousands upon thousands of enrolled mem-
bers of the regular Socialist organization, and that in numbers they
largely exceed the organization which first elicited attention in Ger-
many. We do not include the " Butlerites " and " Kearneyites "
and other children of discontent, ever ready to give ear to their
tempters, and to follow in the wake of the first successful dema-
gogue or party that may lead the crusade against capital. Such

GERMAN SOCIALISM IN AMERICA. 377

demagogues are already at hand, and dare to-day to raise their
voice in the supreme councils of the nation. Not many months
have passed since a United States Senator declared in debate at
"Washington that the combat of the future lay between the men
who own the public debt and those who are to pay it, " if it is
to be paid at ally Nor does this estimate include the unnum-
bered thousands who have signified their allegiance to the cause
of Socialism, without affixing their signatures as enrolled mem-
bers of the brotherhood. The large number of self-supporting So-
cialist newspapers alone attests the existence of an immense sym-
pathizing (though for the present silent) mass of men. And the
success and extent of the movement are the more appreciable after a
careful comparison of the relative increase of the Socialist vote,
recently polled in the large cities of the Union, with that cast in
Berlin during late years. By this it appears that the result at the
polls of our large political centers, such as New York and Chicago,
shows a more rapid growth of the Socialist vote than that cast at Ber-
lin, when the increase was considered sufficiently alarming to call for
restrictive measures. And the wonder grows greater when upon
investigation it is ascertained that the moving spirits of our Social-
ist party are German agitators — many of them recently imported
from the fatherland. These men lend to the cause all their knowl-
edge, pertinacity, and experience. We speak of such men as F.
Leib and Paul Grottkau, convicted and condemned, some time
since, by the tribunals of Berlin, and Gustav Lyser and Henry
Eude — both escaped from the prisons of Frankfort, the latter having
since taken a prominent part in the Paris Commune. Indeed, the
sympathy and the union of the American party with the German
movement may be seen from the fact that, previous to the last
election in Germany, a considerable sum was raised in the United
States to aid the Socialists in defraying election expenses in Prus-
sia. There these funds were instrumental in swelling the majority
against a friendly Government.

Mr. Seward once declared that of all the elements which entered
into our national composition the German was the element which he
most feared. The discontented and revolutionary spirit which
characterizes the German mind, coupled with the little learning
which every citizen of the fatherland brings with him, and the
clannishness of his race, seemed to Mr. Seward a danger menacing
to the existing order of things. It is indeed true that the German
combines in his nature traits dangerous to the fundamental princi-

378 TEE FORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

pies of the present system of our society. Abject in adversity and
minority, he becomes aggressive when favored by fortune and num-
ber. We have seen these features developed in Europe and even
in our own country. We have witnessed the abject degradation of
the German, when at the beginning of the century so-called Dutch
slaves were sold in cargoes to the highest bidder. In the year
1817 six thousand German redemptioners were landed in Pennsyl-
vania, where whole families were purchased by free negroes, of
which there were then large numbers in Maryland.* That the
German, despite the quality of infection that characterizes his doc-
trines, is of a clannish nature which with difficulty loses all traces
of German origin, may be easily seen in Pennsylvania, the State
which has suffered most from the ravages of Socialism. In that
State there may be found at the present day whole communities of
these people who have preserved the mother tongue to the exclusion
of the Engish language. There can indeed be little doubt that
German colonization, wherever it goes, is apt to illustrate the dic-
tum of Lamartine when he said of the Turks that they were camped
in Europe. As the Turk brings with him all the peculiarities of
barbarism, so the German imports all the characteristics of the
fatherland, and hands them down to succeeding ages without the
Balkans for a barrier or the Koran for a curb.

Mr. Seward's fears apply pertinently to a large part of the
six million Germans who now form a portion of the American
Union. Of these the Socialists justly claim large numbers, and,
if we examine the first acts and constitution of the Socialistic Labor
party, it will appear that from its very foundation the chief offi-
cials and ringleaders of the organization were and still are Germans,
not a few of whom have been expelled or have fled from their
native country because of conspiracy against society. Nevertheless,
these men have become the leaders of a great national and Ameri-
can movement.

At the first National Convention of Socialists, held at Philadelphia
July 19, 1876, the year preceding the great railway strikes, three-
fourths of the delegates present bore German names. A previous
convention had been held at Pittsburg, the hotbed of the railway
strikes, but no regular constitution was there adopted. At the Union
Congress of Philadelphia, however, lasting some days, the party first
received from its sponsors the name of the " Workingmen's Party

* See official report (p. 27) of Herr von Fiirstenvarthcr, Stuttgart and Tubingen,
1818.

GERMAN SOCIALISM IN AMERICA. 379

of the United States." Here a constitution was finally formulated
and adopted amid excitement and exhortations to keep cool, and
here the first appeal was made to the great working classes of the
United States. In these seditious words did Messrs. Sorge and
Gabriel, two German delegates to the Union Congress, make their
api)eal to the country : " Rise, then, ye sons and daughters of labor !
Rally round its flag, and carry it to the heights of humanity ! Alter
and amend whatever we did wrong or may be impracticable, but join
hands with us for the establishment of that fraternal union of the
disinherited and down-trodden wages-laborer which will relieve us
from the evils of capitalistic society." These words strengthened the
faithful, and the strikes grew with their growth and strengthened
with their strength.

At the National Congress of the workingmen held at Newark,
New Jersey, at the end of December, 1877, the year of the great labor
strikes, the name of the party Avas changed to the " Socialistic Labor
Party," and most of the clauses of the platform and constitution
adopted at Philadelphia were retained. Here, however, all the
principles were duly discussed and adopted by an assembly consid-
erably larger than the Union Congress. It comprised among its
members representatives from the remotest States of the Union.
In this large assembly, again, over one half of the representatives
were German, and the dlected chairman, as well as two thirds
of the committees chosen, could boast a German origin. Indeed,
at this meeting the inconvenience attending the presence of so many
German agitators, but lately arrived from the mother country and
totally ignorant of the English language, became so apparent that
a resolution was passed recommending each section to send to future
conventions of the party delegates familiar with the English tongue.
The following platform was adopted. We give it as it appeared
in the last election bulletins. To any reader familiar with the writ-
ings of Lassalle and Karl Marx, it will present but an abstract
from their works :

" The earth is man'Sy and the fullness thereof."

TEE NATIONAL PLATFORM AND PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIAL-
ISTIC LABOR PARTY.

"Labor being the source of all wealth and civilization, aiid useful labor
being possible only by and through the associated eiforts of the people, the
results of labor should^ therefore, in all justice, belong to society. The sys-
tem under which society is now organized is imperfect and hostile to the

380 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW,

general welfare, siuce through it the directors of labor, necessarily a small
minority, are enabled in the competitive struggle to practically monopolize
all the means of labor — all opportunities to produce for and supply the wants
of the people — and the masses are therefore maintained in poverty and de-
pendence.

" The industrial emancipation of labor, which must be achieved by the
working classes themselves, independent of all political parties but their own,
is consequently the great end, to which every political movement should be
subordinate as a means.

" Since the ruling political parties have always sought only the direct inter-
est of the dominant or wealthy classes, endeavored to uphold their industrial
supremacy, and to perpetuate the present condition of society, it is now the
duty of the working people to organize themselves into one great Labor
party, using political power to achieve industrial independence. The material
condition of the working people in all civilized countries being identical, and
resulting from the same cause, the struggle for industrial emancipation is in-
ternational, and must naturally be cooperative and mutual; therefore the
organization of National and International Trade and Labor Unions upon a
socialistic basis is an absolute necessity. For these reasons the Socialistic
Labor party has been founded. We demand that the resources of life — the
means of production, public transportation and communication, land, ma-
chinery, railroads, telegraph lines, canals, etc., become, as fast as practicable,
the common property of the whole people through the Government — to
abolish the wage system and substitute in its stead cooperative production,
with a just distribution of its rewards.

"The Socialistic Labor party presents the following demands as measures
to ameliorate the condition of the working people under our present competi-
tive system and to gradually accomplish the entire removal of the same :

" 1. Eight hours for the present as a legal working day, and prompt pun-
ishment of all violators.

" 2. Sanitary inspection of all conditions of labor, means of subsistence
and dwellings included.

" 3. Bureaus of Labor Statistics in all States as well as in the National
Government. The officers of the same to be elected by the people.

" 4. Prohibition of the use of prison labor by private employers or cor-
porations.

" 5. Prohibition of the employment of children under fourteen years of
age in industrial establishments.

" 6. Compulsory education of all children under fourteen years of age.
All materials, books, etc., necessary in the public schools, to be furnished
free of charge.

" 7. Prohibition of the employment of female labor in occupations detri-
mental to the health or morality, and equalization of women's wages with
those of men, where equal service is performed.

" 8. Strict laws making employers liable for all accidents resulting through
their negligence to the injury of their employees.

GERMAN SOCIALISM IN AMERICA. 381

" 9. All wages to be paid in the lawful money of the nation and at inter-
vals of time not exceeding one week. Violations of this rule to be legally
punished.

"10. X)l\ conspiracy laws operating against the right of workingmen to
strike or induce otliers to strike shall be repealed.

"11. Gratuitous administration of justice in all courts of law.

" 12. All indirect taxation to be abolished, and a graded income tax col-
lected in its stead.

" 13. All banking and insurance to be conducted by the Government.

" 14. The right of suffrage sliall in no wise be abridged.

" 15. Direct popular legislation, enabling the people to propose or reject
any law at their will, and introduction of minority representation in all legis-
lative elections.

" 16. Every public oflBcer shall be at all times subject to prompt recall by
the election of a successor.

" 17. The importation of coolies under contract must be immediately pro-
hibited, and those now in America under similar obligations shall be released
from the same.

" The ignorance of the workingman as to his rights and wrongs is the
cause of his enslavement by the intelligent ruffians of the age.

" Production belongs to the producer ; the tools belong to the toiler.

" Economical, political, and religious liberty constitute the Holy Trinity of
Human Freedom."

It was decided at Newark to conduct the affairs of the party by
conventions, executive committees, and a board of supervision, the
National Convention to assemble at least once in every two years,
and the organization to be divided into sections embracing the
whole of the United States. Tlie following extracts from rules and
regulations prescribed by the Newark Convention will give some
conception of the care and minuteness with which the society is
organized :

" Ten persons may form a section, providing they acknowledge the plat-
form and constitution and resolutions of the National and State Conventions,
and belong to no other political party. They shall demand admission to the
party by sending a list of members to the National Executive Committee, and
both list of membership and dues for the year to the State Executive Commit-
tee. Each section shall send each month a report of its numerical and finan-
cial condition, also its progress and prospects, to the National and also the
State Executive Committee. It shall establish proper connections with the
trades-unions, and endeavor to organize new ones upon the Socialistic basis.

" Only one main section shall be established in each city or town. When
necessary, however, additional sections may be formed by those unable to
take part in business meetings conducted in the English language. But in

382 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

matters of local importance, especially in political campaigns, all tlie sections
shall be as one body.

" The section shall be the judge of its own members and responsible for
their actions.

" Sections of different localities may propose the calling of a special State
Convention. Ten sections are necessary to form a State organization. All
ward and district organizations, including all branches and suburbs, shall be-
long to the main section. No ward or district organization shall conduct
business of an important local character independently of the main section.
Each section shall hold an agitation meeting at least once every two weeks,
and a regular business meeting at least once a month. Three fourths of the
members of a section must be wages- workers. The names of all persons ap-
plying for admission to the party must be voted upon at the regular business
meeting of the main local section. Every section belonging to the party for
three months prior to the National Convention, and which has fulfilled all its
obligations, is entitled to representation therein by oue delegate for each one
hundred members or fraction thereof."

The National Convention frames the national platform, decides
the form of organization, nominates the national candidates, and
directs the national agitation, selects the place where the next
National Convention will be held, and where the National Executive
Committee and the Board of Supervision will be located. It fixes
the salaries of party officers. It selects the corresponding and finan-
cial secretaries, and investigates and decides all difficulties within the
party.

" The State Conventions will assemble at a proper time where the State
elections are held. Each section is entitled to representation in the State
Convention by one delegate for every fifty members or fraction thereof.

" The State Convention frames the State platform, nominates the State
candidates, and decides where the State Executive Committee shall be located.
All State and local platforms must be based upon the national platform, and
shall not conflict with the principles therein declared. There is a National
Executive Committee, and in each State a State Executive Committee. It is
the duty of the National Executive Committee to carry out the resolutions of
the National Convention, to organize and centralize the movement, to conduct
and manage the agitation generally, and to establish proper relations and
communication with the trades-unions of our own country and with the Social-
istic parties of Europe. It is further incumbent upon it to issue semi-annu-
ally a report of the party, stating definitely the condition of every section and
of the party's finances.

" The State Executive Committees are required to send every three months
a full report showing the condition of their sections to the National Executive
Committee. There is a board of supervision whose duty it is to watch over
the acts of the National Executive Committee and of the whole party.

GEIiMAN SOCIALISM IX AMERICA. 383

" In each State organization the sections pay five cents per month for each
member of the State Executive Committee, from which funds the State Ex-
ecutive Committee pays to the Xational Executive Committee the sum of
three cents per month. In case of need the National Executive Committee
may with concurrence of the Board of Supervision call for the collection of
voluntary contributions to the national funds.

All members, in acknowledging the platform and constitution,
take upon themselves the obligations to assist each other to the
extent of their ability in case of need. Each section elects from
its midst an organizer, agitator, or, in other words, " a drummer,"
whose business it is to recruit as many members as can be enticed
to join the ranks of the party.

"It is incumbent upon every member to pay, as monthly dues, at least ten
cents, of which sum five cents is sent to the State Executive Committee. In-
valids or unemployed members are excused from these payments.

" Tiie emancipation of women is to be accomplished with the emancipa-
ti(m of men, and the so-called woman's rights question to be solved with
the labor question.

*' Every member is expected to subscribe for at least one of the party or-
gans."

We now come to the measures adopted for the regulation of
the press. These very clearly demonstrate not only the essentially
German character of the Socialistic Labor party, but they offer the
conclusion in one sense encouraging, that Gennan Socialism is not
initiative with the people of the United States, although their minds
have proved singularly receptive to foreign influences. It has thus
come to pass that we have to deal with a national movement led by
German agitators.

The regulations prescribe that the party shall maintain but one
official organ in each language, namely, the " Arbeiterstimme " (Ger-
man) of New York, the " Delnicke Listy " (Bohemian) of New
York, and the " Socialist " (American) of Chicago.

We are told in the regulations that the party organs shall repre-
sent the interests of the working people, and spread among them a
knowledge of social economy, or in other words a knowledge of
the beneficent results accruing to all indigent people by the equal dis-
tribution of property. Although the " Arbeiterstimme " is declared
the official German organ of the party, there is now published in
New York the " Volks-Zeitung," another German journal, which
boasts a daily circulation of ten thousand copies ; yet a year has not
elapsed since its foundation. All Socialistic newspapers espousing

384 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the interests of the party are conducted on the cooperative plan,
and are said to be mostly self-sustaining— a significant fact when it
is considered that enormous sums have been sunk in numerous
efforts to establish party organs in this country, and that for the
first time in the United States journals hostile to the law of the
land have met with sufficient encouragement to prosper. It also is
significant to note that, out of twenty-seven journals published in
the interests of the party, fifteen are edited by German agitators.
By the light of these facts it may be seen how perfect is the organi-
zation of the Socialist Labor party in the United States, as recon-
structed since the strikes. The following extract from a letter writ-
ten in the month of May last by an influential American Socialist,
and recently published in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," will
serve to indicate the opinions prevailing in the ranks of the party
itself concerning the progress now making :

" We are at work not only in the great cities but in many others, and are
gaining ground with a rapidity at which even we are astonished. Since July
last, in ten months, the number of our followers has quadrupled, and we have
every reason to believe that the progress will continue in the same ratio. In
Cincinnati the recruits are drilled every week, and from week to week the
number of volunteers under arms increases from five to eight per cent."

We have given a somewhat elaborate account of the laws
formulated for the Labor party in this country under the auspices
of German agitators, that, with these hitherto unpublished facts be-
fore him, it may be within the power of the reader to judge of the
extent and ability of an organization which, if at any moment
swelled by numbers and stimulated by industrial depression, might
burst upon us as a mighty torrent, perhaps too powerful to stem at
the outset, and calculated to threaten the best social and business
interests of a country vast in extent of territory and fairly destitute
of military protection.

To the indigent and ignorant laborer, indeed, we must confess
that the whole scheme of the new social order wears a most allur-
ing aspect. It is easy to picture the Arcadian Utopia which rises in
his ravished fancy. Universal brotherhood, comfort and plenty,
free railways, free telegraphs, free theatres and amusements, gra-
tuitous instruction, an end to imprisonment, an end to caste, ma-
terialism to replace religion, "the mere opinion of nations," the
state the universal, sole proprietor and administrator of the entire
industry of the country ; state help in every direction, all men to

GERMAN SOCIALISM IN AMERICA. 385

feed and fatten at the public crib ; in fact, an end to care and
trouble, and an era of competency and contentment, such as dis-
tinf^uished the home of Evangelme, where ''the richest was poor,
and the poorest lived in abundance."

These hopes are indeed bright and alluring. They are often, no
doubt, presented by sincere and good men, free from the blood of
the Commune, and actuated by pure motives. But the obverse of
the medal which reason forces upon thoughtful men offers barriers
insurmountable in practice. It is not our purpose to show, save
incidentally, that the programme of modern Socialism aims at the
destruction of the best interests of society, or that it is devoid of
those possibilities or enduring characteristics which mark every suc-
cessful innovation. Able and dispassionate disquisitions to this effect
are to be found in many current w^orks of the day. In one light
alone, however, the case must appear impracticable. Granted, a7'gu'
mentl causa, that the difference existing between the workingman's
knowledge and necessities is now greater than in former times ;
that machinery, over-products, and the growing concentration of
capital must finally bring the capitalist and the laborer to a dead-
lock ; that the majority of our States are bankrupt ; that the ex-
penses of our complex Government, embracing State, municipal, and
central administration, exceed those of England, France, or any
other proportionate population, and that these combined evils must
finally produce a crisis, placing in the hands of the laborer all the
wealth and control of the country — granted all this, then, what
would ensue ?

According to all Socialist authorities in America, eight hours'
work will, with the present perfection of machinery, create a slight
over-production. In this case the American Socialist would be
driven in self-defense to establish a protective policy. This w^ould
exclude the product of the capital-ridden wretches of other lands,
although the result would be that we should be enjoying our wel-
fare at their expense, thus excluding from redemption the great
majority of suffering humanity. For, w^here in former times we
helped them with some of our custom, the increased cost of our
labor would compel us to altogether exclude tKe products of our
" kin beyond sea." For it must be manifest even to the dullest
Socialist, in his moments of more sober reflection, that if the work-
men of other nations work twelve hours a day, our own people
working but eight, the foreign producer could manufacture for a
price with which the American could not compete. On the other
VOL. cxxviiL — NO. 269. 25

386 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

hand, if the American producer should work much less than eight
hours per day, American society becomes bankrupt, and if again he
prolongs the working-day beyond eight hours, he abandons the
very prize so long coveted and demanded, whereas to secure this
prize he would have contributed to the upheaval of our present
civilization. Could, therefore, the Socialists effect their aims in this
country, the toiling and unredeemed millions in Germany, Russia,
France, England, and other lands would, because of our own selfish
motives, be reduced to the same plight in their relations to us as the
laborer to-day stands to the proprietor. The reverse would of course
hold good in the case of any other nation which might first attain
the great end. For no Socialist is surely so sanguine as to believe
that his plans, by a single stroke of the magician's wand, can be
simultaneously put into practical and universal operation through-
out the civilized world. Thus without united, universal, and simul-
taneous action, which is impossible, the plans of the Socialist become
impracticable.

It is possible that Socialism in a modified form will be tried in
some of the older countries of Europe. There an already dense
population, increasing in geometrical proportion and overloaded
with vast and ever-growing debts, may demand some experiment to
relieve the poor. In England, where an overcrowded population
more than doubles itself in thirty years, despite an enormous emi-
gration, the danger is especially great. But it is improbable that
Socialism, even in an amended form, should, at an early date, meet
with any permanent success in the United States, where the unim-
proved resources of nature offer an almost unlimited field for the
restless energies of the people. The restrictions which Socialism
would impose would be intolerable to the activity of any class in
the Union ; for he who enters the portals of the social El Dorado
leaves behind him hope, that most human of human emotions, and
with it all emulation, all ambition, and therefore all progress. Still,
whatever might be the result of the second sober sense which would
ultimately characterize our people, it must yet not be ignored
that even a momentary craze of any extended nature would be
fraught with incalculable mischief to the best interests of society.
That in moments of distress and discontent the idtima ratio regum
becomes the first resort of our people, has been abundantly revealed
by the great civil war, the strikes of 1877, and by the late troubles
in California, where German agitators moved and incited the rioters
to acts of violence. We are besides daily reminded of this fact by

GERMAN SOCIALISM IK AMERICA. 387

events which pass almost unnoticed. Within a few weeks a gang
of organized tramps have seized part of a railroad in Michigan, with
the purpose of appropriating and administering the entire line, and
many other incidents of the day point in the same direction. It is
stated by Monsieur Charles de Varigny, a recent French observer
of the Socialist movement in America, that there exists in almost
every State of the Union a contingent of Socialist volunteers. In
Pennsylvania alone he estimates the number at from sixty to ninety
thousand men. The Western States are remarkable for the pros-
perous condition of their Socialist sections. Here, as in other parts
of the Union, the leaders are German, while a good proportion of
the rank and file of the party are recruited among native Americans.
At the last general election a number of Socialists were elected to
the Legislature of Illinois. Some of the towns of Ohio number
Socialists even among their municipal officers. In Youngtown, for
example, the recently elected mayor and corporation were all avowed
members of the Socialist party, and many other instances of the
growth and strength of the organization could be cited had we not
already exceeded our limits.

In conclusion, it may be well to say that no spirit of pessimism
or sensation has prompted this task. In first directing his attention
to Socialism in America the writer was moved by motives of pure
curiosity. No one could have been more surprised at the discovery
of so perfect an organization, the fanatic earnestness of its followers,
and the strength of its numbers. Nor can we view without grave
apprehension the fact that Prince Bismarck is at present secretly
encouraging the emigration to the United States of proscribed Ger-
man agitators, and defraying their expenses from the enormous
secret service fund at the command of the Imperial Chancellor.
For the present we must part with our subject, postponing for
final consideration, in a succeeding paper, the protective measures
necessary to shield American society from the schemes of the Ger-
man Government and the menacing confederation which honey-
combs the Union from sea to sea.

IV.

A FRIEND OF LORD BYRON.*

Me. Hodgson has written his father's life upon a very unusual
plan, for which he makes apologies in his preface. The apologies,
however, were not strictly necessary, for the book is an interesting
one, more so, perhaps, than if it had been composed in the manner
usually followed in such cases. The late Archdeacon Hodgson
was a genial and accomplished scholar, a man of the world, and an
indefatigable versifier ; but he was not a brilliant writer, and our
loss is not great, in the fact that his letters have for the most part
not been preserved. His son and biographer lays before us, in de-
fault of any specimens of his own share in his correspondence, a
selection from the letters that he received from his friends. These
were numerous, for Francis Hodgson had the good fortune to in-
spire a great deal of affection and confidence. His chief claim to
the attention of posterity resides in the fact that he was an early
and much-trusted intimate of Lord Byron. A good many of By-
ron's letters to him were printed by Moore, to whom, however,
Hodgson surrendered but a portion of this correspondence. His
son here publishes a number of new letters, together with a great
many communications from Mrs. Leigh, the poet's sister, and two
or three from Lady Byron. All this portion of these volumes is
extremely interesting, and constitutes, indeed, their principal value.
It throws a clearer, though by no means a perfectly clear, light
upon the much-discussed episode of the separation between Byron
and his wife, and upon the character of his devoted sister. The book
contains, besides, a series of letters from Hodgson's Eton and Cam-
bridge friends, and in its latter portion a variety of extracts from

* Memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson, B. D., with Numerous Letters from Lord
Byron and Others. By his Son, the Rev. T. P. Hodgson, M. A. London : Macmillan,
IS19.

A FPJEND OF LORD BYRON. 389

his correspondence with such people as Lord Denman (Chief Justice
of England, who presided at the trial of Queen Caroline, and in-
curred the bitter animosity of George IV.), James Montgomery, the
late Herman Merivale, the late Duke of Devonshire, and the charm-
ing Mrs. Robert Arkwright, who figures in the lately published
memoirs of Fanny Kemble. The picture of Hodgson's youth and
early manhood, with his numerous friendships, his passion for lit-
erature, his extraordinary and unparalleled fecundity in the produc-
tion of poetical epistles, his good spirits, good sense, and great
industry, is an extremely pleasant one, and gives an agreeable idea
of the tone of serious young Englishmen, sixty or seventy years
ago, who were also good fellows. Hodgson's first intention on
leaving Cambridge had been to study for the bar ; but after some
struggles the literary passion carried the day, and he became an
ardent " reviewer." He worked a great deal for the critical peri-
odicals of the early years of the century, notably for the " Edin-
burgh Review," and he produced (besides executing a translation
of Juvenal) a large amount of satirical or would - be satirical
verse. His biographer give.? a great many examples of his poetical
powers, which, however, chiefly illustrate his passion for turning
couplets a propos of everything and of nothing. The facility of
these effusions is more noticeable than their point. In 1815 Hodg-
son went into the Church, and in 1836, after having spent many
years at Bake well, in Derbyshire, in a living which he held from
the Duke of Devonshire, he was appointed Archdeacon of Derby.
In 1840 he was made ProA^ost of Eton College, a capacity in which
he instituted various salutary reforms (he abolished the old custom
of the " ]Montem," which had become a very demoralizing influence).
Archdeacon Hodgson died in 1852.

Mrs. Leigh wrote to him at the time of Byron's marriage, in
which she felt great happiness,,that her brother had " said that in
all the years that he had been acquainted with you he never had
had a moment's disagreement with you : * I have quarreled with
Hobham, with everybody but Hodgson,' were his own words." By-
ron's letters and allusions to his friend quite bear out this dec-
laration, and they present his irritable and passionate nature in the
most favorable light. He had a great esteem for Hodgson's judg-
ment, both in literature and in life, and he defers to it with a do-
cility which is touching in a spoiled young nobleman who, on occa-.
sion, can make a striking display of temper. Mr. Hodgson gives
no definite account of the origin of his father's acquaintance with

390 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Byron — he simply says that their intimacy, which in 1808 had
become complete, had " doubtless been formed previously, during
Hodgson's visits to London and Cambridge and to the Drurys at
Harrow." In 1808 Hodgson was appointed tutor in moral philoso-
phy at King's College, Cambridge, and in this year " Byron came
to Cambridge for the purpose of availing himself of his privilege
as a nobleman, and taking his M. A. degree, although he had bnly
matriculated in 1805. . . . From this time until early in 1816 the
friends constantly met, and when absent as constantly correspond-
ed." Hodgson was completely under the charm of Byron's richly-
endowed nature ; but his affection, warm as it was (and its warmth
is attested by the numerous copies of verse which he addressed to
his noble friend, and which, though they exhibit little poetical in-
spiration, show great tenderness of feeling), was of that pure kind
which leaves the judgment unbribed. Byron's letters have always
a great charm, and those quoted by Mr. Hodgson, whether pub-
lished for the first time, or anticipated by Moore, are full of youth-
ful wit and spontaneity. In 1811, while the second canto of " Childe
Harold " (Hodgson was helping to revise it) was going through the
press, the poet's affectionate Mentor had, by letter, a religious dis-
cussion with him. Hodgson's side of the controversy has disap-
peared, but Byron's skeptical rejoinders are full of wit, levity, and
a cynicism which (like his cynicism through life) was half natural
and half affected. " As to your immortality, if people are to live,
why die ? And any carcasses, which are to rise again, are they worth
raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs
than I have moved on these two-and-twenty years, as I shall be
sadly behind in the squeeze into paradise." The letters which
throw light upon Byron's unhappy marriage are all, as we have
said, of great interest. Hodgson's correspondence with IVIi's. Leigh,
which became an intimate one, began in 1814 and lasted for forty
years. Staying with Byron at Newstead in the autumn of that
year, she first writes to him as a substitute for her brother, who,
" being very lazy," has begged her to take his pen. It was at this
moment that he became engaged to Miss Milbanke, and one of the
few extracts from his father's own letters, given by Mr. Hodgson,
is a very sympathetic account of a meeting with Byron in Cam-
bridge while the latter was in the glow of just having completed
his arrangements for marrying " one of the most divine beings on
earth." There are several letters of jVIrs. Leigh's during 1815, after
the marriage had taken place, going on into the winter of 1816,

A FRIEND OF LORD BYRON, 391

when they assume a highly dramatic interest. It is interesting, in
view of the extraordinary theory which in the later years of her
life Lady Byron was known to hold on the subject of the relations
between her husband and his sister, and which were given to the
world in so regrettable a manner not long after her death, to observe
that Mrs. Leigh's letters afford the most striking intrinsic evidence
of the purely phantasmal character of the famous accusation, and
place the author's character in a highly honorable and touching
light. This is the view taken, in the strongest manner, by the edi-
tor of these volumes, who regards Mrs. Leigh as the most devoted
and disinterested of sisters — as the good genius, the better angel,
of the perverse and intractable poet. She appears to have been a
very sympathetic and conscientious woman, not very witty or very
clever, but addicted to writing rather expansive, confidential, lady-
like letters, and much concerned about the moral tone and religious
views of her brother, whose genius and poetic fame inspire her with
a quite secondary interest. She appeals to Hodgson, as her brother's
nearest and most trusted friend, to come up to town and intercede
with either party to prevent the separation. Hodgson obeyed her
summons, and did his best in the matter, but his efforts were una-
vailing. His son quotes a remarkable letter which he wrote to Lady
Byron, urging her to the exercise of patience and forbearance ; and
he quotes as well Lady Byron's reply, which on the whole does less
credit to her clemency than his aj^peal had done to his tact and wis-
dom. There is an element of mystery in the whole matter of her
rupture with her husband which these letters still leave unsolved ;
but, putting this aside, they leave little doubt as to her ladyship's
rigidity of nature.

" I believe the nature of Lord B.'s mind to be most benevo-
lent," she says in answer to Hodgson's appeal. " But there may
have been circumstances (I would hope the consequences^ not the
causes of mental disorder) which would render an original tender-
ness of conscience the motive of desperation, even of guilt, when
self-esteem had been forfeited too far,^"* And in reply to Hodg-
son's request, made on Byron's behalf, that she would specify those
acts of his which she holds to have made a reconciliation impos-
sible, she says, " He does know, too well, what he affects to in-
quire." Mrs. Leigh says to Hodgson, in writing of her brother : " If
I may give you mine [my opinion], it is that in his own mind there
were and are recollections fatal to his peace, and which would have
prevented his being happy with any woman whose excellence

392 TEE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

equaled or approached that of Lady B., from the consciousness of
being unworthy of it. Nothing," she adds, " could or can remedy
this fatal cause but the consolation to be derived from religion, of
which, alas ! dear Mr. H., our beloved B. is, I fear, destitute." In
such allusions as these some people will always read the evidence
of some dark and definite wrong-doing on the part of one who de-
lighted in the appearance of criminality, and who, possibly, simply
by overacting his part, in the desire to mystif}^, rather viciously, a
woman of literal mind, in whom the sense of humor was not
strong, and the imagination was uncorrected by it, succeeded too
well and got caught in his own trap.

Even if the inference we speak of were valid, it would be very
profitless to inquire further as regards Byron's unforgivable sin ; we
are convinced that, if it were ascertained, it would be, to ingenuous
minds, a great disappointment. The reader of these volumes will
readily assent to Mr. Hodgson's declaration that they offer a com-
plete, virtual exoneration of Mrs. Leigh. The simple, touching,
pious letters addressed to her brother's friend at the time of Byron's
death and of the arrival of his remains in England, strongly con-
tribute to this effect ; as does also the tone in which she speaks
of Lady Byron's estrangement from her, which took place very
suddenly some years after the separation. The tone is that of a
person a good deal mystified and even wounded.

Henry James, Je.

THE CEXSUS OF 1880.

TnE period is approaching when, for the tenth time since the
organization of the Government of the United States, the enumera-
tion of the inliabitants required by the Federal Constitution to be
made once in every ten years is again about to be entered upon.
The constitutional purpose of the census was a very simple one,
being merely to fix the apportionment of representatives and of
direct taxes between the States. In the course of a century it
has assumed a far greater importance, and, though heretofore much
less comprehensive than would be desirable, it has come to embrace
many of the most important facts which mark our material progress
as a nation.

The ten years just closing have been marked by greater changes
of material condition than any similar period since the beginning
of our national history. The vast extension of the railway system
and of ti'legraphy, the steady pushing forward of the frontiers of
civilization to and beyond the Rocky Mountains, the discovery of
new and rich deposits of the precious metals and the enlarging of
the areas of all mining industry, the increase in the number of oc-
cupations and the greater development of established industries,
would seem to demand of the approaching census an enlargement
of the plans heretofore pursued, and a greater variety of details,
than has characterized any of its predecessors. The census bill of
1870, which passed the House of Representatives, but failed to be-
come a law, proposed to add very largely to the range of statistical
inquiry. The fullest detailed information was required to be ob-
tained respecting railways, canals, and river improvements, coast-
wise and inland navigation, express companies, telegraphs, life, fire,
and marine insurance, newspapers and periodicals, and State, mu-
nicipal, and corporate debts. The failure of the bill left the census
to be taken under the act of 1850, which, though it considerably

394 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

enlarged the scope of previous censuses, left it still much narrower
than was proposed by the contemplated legislation. Up to 1850,
nothing had been added to the population tables required by the
Constitution, except some manufacturing schedules of an indeter-
minate character and of slight statistical value. These were first
included in the census of 1810, continued in 1820, wholly omitted
in 1830, renewed, but not materially added to, in 1840.

In his report, made to the Secretary of the Interior in January,
1870, General Walker, the experienced and very capable Superin-
tendent of the Census, did not propose any increase in the number
of schedules required by the act of 1850, but he made several valu-
able suggestions as to the obtaining of completer and more accurate
information under the several schedules heretofore used.

These schedules were five in number, and related respectively
to population, mortality, agriculture, industrial pursuits, and to
social statistics, which included all that relates to churches, schools,
libraries, newspapers, wealth, taxation, pauperism, crime, wages, etc.
The slave schedule, which formed the sixth and last under the act
of 1850, is now happily obsolete.

As we are writing, information comes to us that the more elab-
orate statistics required by the proposed law of 1870 have been
grafted as an amendment on the original bill now passing through
Congress, although opposed by General Garfield, the chairman of
the committee on the ninth census, whose elaborate report, present-
ed to the House of Representatives in January, 1870, is one of the
most valuable of American state papers on the whole subject. The
grounds of General Garfield's objection are stated to be that " he
feared the schedules would be overloaded, and that the statistics on
these subjects, gathered in the manner indicated, would be of little
value."

We are now far behind most European countries in the com-
pleteness of our statistical annals, and the materials are wanting to
any exhaustive study of our political and social economy. It mat-
ters little what theory of political economy or of sociology is enter-
tained by the studious inquirers ; exact facts, arranged for con-
venient comparison, are alike necessary to him. Whether political
economy be a deductive science, resting on certain fundamental
principles, as the English economists insist, or is, on the other hand,
an inductive science, as is, with equal confidence, claimed by the
new historical school of the Continent, the fullest statistical data
are necessary to support it and give it practical value. The disciples

THE CENSUS OF 1880. 395

of Adam Smith and Ricardo invoke the evidence of facts to support
their a priori propositions, and the disciples of Roscher require
them even more, in order to show their modifying influence on laws
and institutions at different periods, in different countries, and in
different states of society.

But the importance of statistics and of statistical deductions has
never been properly appreciated in this country. For this there are
several reasons. Chief among them is the fact that we occupy a
new country, and are, practically speaking, a new race. Our nat-
ural resources are so exuberant that we have hitherto been careless
of those minute calculations and close economies to accomplish
which statesmen in older and less favored countries are constantly
interrogating the past. The average American feels very little
interest in knowing the number of births and deaths, the rates of
mortality in different places, the diseases which are most prevalent
and most fatal, the average period of longevity, the occupations of
the people, or the places of their birth. lie does not see what uses
this knowledge could be put to if he acquired it, and he is very apt
to look upon the whole thing as so much rubbish. He is somewhat
more alive to the importance of agricultural, manufacturing, and
other industrial statistics, because some of the facts included in
these fall within his experience, or touch his particular trade or oc-
cupation. So far as it goes, this desire for particular and partial
information is good, and works toward the right end. If every
man in his own calling were to demand of the Government full and
exact information about matters which concerned him, the aggre-
gate of those demands would create a public sentiment by which a
very complete and progressive body of statistics would ultimately
be created.

Considered in the light of their natural intelligence, average
education, and reputed inquisitiveness, there is no people in the
world so competent as the American people to communicate the
facts which a census should include, and at the same time under-
stand the practical uses to which statistical information can be put.
But educational training in that direction is almost wholly wanting.
In his annual report for 1872, the Secretary of the Interior recom-
mended the publication of the excellent statistical atlas compiled
under the direction of General Walker, and urged an appropriation
for that purpose, " with a view to promote that higher kind of
political education which has hitherto been so greatly neglected in
this country, but toward which the attention of the general public,

396 THE NORTH AMERIGAF REVIEW.

as well as of institutions and students, is now being turned with
the most lively interest. The exact knowledge of our country
should be the basis of this education, and it is in the power of Con-
gress, by authorizing such a publication as is here recommended, to
practically inaugurate the study of political and social statistics in
the colleges and higher schools of the land."

The importance of this class of studies has recently been pre-
sented with great ability by Mr. White, the President of Cornell
University, in an address delivered on the 22d of February last
before the trustees and alumni of the Johns Hopkins University,
at Baltimore. The special subject of this address was " the proper
provision for higher instruction in subjects bearing directly upon
public affairs." Its opening proposition is that " the demand of
this nation for men trained in history, political and social science,
and general jurisprudence, can hardly be overstated."

It will be greatly to the honor of these two younger among
American universities if they shall, in advance of more venerable
and more distinguished institutions of learning, occupy this new
field of instruction. Until studies of this character form a part of
all higher education, it is in vain to expect that statistics will have
their proper weight, either in legislative bodies or in common life.
There is at present a lack of educators to instill a proper respect
for statistical learning and to point out its practical uses. In most
enlightened countries the two classes of men who best perform that
office are statesmen and publicists. The conditions both of public
and of private life in this country are not favorable to the creation
of either of those classes. Public life is too short and too precari-
ous to offer any inducements to a special preparation for it. It is
an accident or an episode rather than a career. In England young
men make choice of it as they would of any other profession, and
begin at the universities to study public questions and to exercise
themselves in public speaking. There is very little of this now to
be found in American colleges — much less, we incline to belie ve^
under the regime of the prevailing fashion of secret societies than
when whole colleges were divided into two or three great debating
clubs, such as existed at Yale College forty years ago. A young
and clever man just out of college could hardly do anything more
likely to defeat its object than to avow an intention of making
political life a career.

The too frequent and regular recurrence of elections has much
to do with the diversion of politics from its higher ends in the

THE CENSUS OF 1880. 397

United States. There is no rest either for the elector or the elected.
The smoke of one party battle has hardly cleared away before an-
other one begins. The member of Congress is always looking back-
ward at his constituency, and his anxieties are deepened by the
knowledge that there is but one constituency open to him. If he
grows out of accord with its dominant sentiment, if its local inter-
ests seem to him to clash with higher national considerations, he has
to make the painful choice between the sacrifice of his convictions
or his place. Thus the constituency, the nominating convention,
and the ever-impending election are to public men a constant night-
mare, diverting them from the business of legislation, and, still
more, from those habits of study and reflection which are so neces-
sary to the maturing of statesmanlike opinions.

A very diiferent state of things prevails in Great Britain, where
the septennial act, the principle of responsible government, and the
freedom to represent any constituency, without regard to the ques-
tion of domicile, are the bulwarks of a Parliamentary career.

While the possible life of a Parliament is seven years, the period
of its actual duration is determined by causes acting within its own
body. Governments are carried on not by a bare majority, but by
a largely predominating fraction of the House of Commons. With-
in the limits of such a majority there is room for independence and
a measurable degree of dissent from the policy of the governing
party taken as a whole. Without the recognized division into
Kight and Left and Right and Left Centers, which prevails in the
French Assembly, the British House of Commons has its Liberal
Conservatives and its Conservative Liberals — men who sit below the
gangway on either side of its Parliamentary chamber.

The last published article of the lamented Walter Bagehot
(" Fortnightly Review" for December, 1878) gives a clear definition
of the place held by these intermediate bodies.

Holding its place by the ability of its administration to com-
mand the votes of its party within and the sympathy of the people
outside of Parliament, an English Ministry is compelled to frame
a policy and to legislate in harmony with it. Hence the presenta-
tion of Parliamentary business is not left to chance, nor to the
caprices of individuals or committees, but is the constitutional duty
of ministers as the chosen party leaders. It is to legislation ma-
tured under these conditions that a well-authenticated and digested
body of statistics is especially necessary.

We can not have in this country the machinery nor the political

398 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

and social conditions which make the British Parliament what it is ;
we can not substitute the system of Parliamentary government for
what Mr. Bagehot calls the Presidential form. It is extremely doubt-
ful whether we can even mix the two systems to any advantage,
though this has sometimes been proposed. Of what use would it
be to the House of Representatives to record a vote of want of con-
fidence in a Cabinet not nominated by itself, but chosen by the
nation through its choice of the President who appoints them, when
such a vote would not lead to their resignation ? Being the per-
sonal advisers of the President, they must stay by him during his
term of office, or the whole character of that office is changed. One
feature of the English system might, however, as it seems to us, be
safely and wisely ingrafted on our own ; that is, the giving to Cabi-
net officers seats without votes in the House of Representatives. It
would promote a closer union between the legislative and execu-
tive branches of the Government, and it would give the heads
of departments a much better opportunity to explain and defend
measures than they now have through the clumsy medium of writ-
ten annual reports. It would certainly add to the dignity as well
as to the usefulness of Cabinet officers, who, at present, occupy
a much less influential position than the members of the British
Cabinet.

The things which are now lacking to an intelligent use of sta-
tistics by American statesmen are a more thorough educational
training, greater permanence in public life, more power in the hands
of party leaders to shape and control legislation, and a better civil
service, by means of which the departmental offices might come
gradually to be filled by persons of education and technical experi-
ence. In the hands of such persons the value of statistics, in the
work of legislation, would very soon be recognized. The excellent
recommendations of the Secretary of the Interior with regard to
statistical education, already quoted, have as yet borne no impor-
tant fruits. There are chairs of Political Economy (generally in
connection with history) in most of our better colleges ; but none,
so far as we are aware, of political science in the broader accepta-
tion, as that science was presented by President White in his Bal-
timore address. The treatment of Political Economy is generally
technical, and from one or other of the two partisan standpoints —
protection or free trade. There is ground for hope that the recent
publication of an American translation of Roscher, the founder of
the Historical School in Germany, may open the way to a broader

THE CENSUS OF 1880, 399

consideration of Political Economy as one of the most important
branches of human history.

The very conditions and shortcomings of oui* public life, as we
have indicated them, make it the more necessary that there should
be greater attention paid to political studies in our systems of higher
education. We can not depend, as in England, upon the services of
a Parliamentary class, and must therefore endeavor to make more
general and popular the study of those subjects which lie at the
bottom of a statesman's education ; there is no reason why they
should not form a part of the elective studies running through a
considerable portion of a college course. If this were the case, a
body of competent teachers would soon spring up, such as are to be
found at all the great universities of Continental Europe, and the
word publicist would become a recognized one in our national vo-
cabulary.

The importance of statistical studies was lately very well pre-
sented in an address of Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, a leading member of the
British Parliament, on assuming the presidency of the Statistical
Society of London. That Society was formed on the 15th of March,
1834, and was an outgrowth of the statistical section of the British
Association. Among its founders were Charles Babbage, inventor
of the calculating machine, and Henry Hallam, the historian. The
true founder, however, of statistical science was Adolphe Quetelet,
a Belgian Professor of Mathematics in his native city of Ghent.
" By a masterly application of the inductive system to moral and
social problems, he educed, from a vast collection of isolated facts,
generalizations which amazed the world of his day to the full as
much as the conclusions of physical philosophers had startled and
terrified preceding generations." The Royal Academy of Belgium
owes its existence, in its present form, chiefly to the influence of
Quetelet ; and from him, also, the British Association borrowed the
germs of what is now the London Statistical Society.

Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, in the address referred to, stated the objects
of that Association to be, " the study of the conditions and prospects
of society. The state or condition of society is the simultaneous
state of all the greater social facts or phenomena ; and the progress
of society is the succession of those facts or phenomena considered
in relation to one another. ... In the life or progress of a country
like ours, with its vast empire, its extended interests, and its endless
points of contact with other countries, there must be a continuous
succession of subjects of vital interest to the community, pressing

400 THE NORTH AMERICAX REVIEW.

upon the heels of one another, and requiring the investigation of im-
partial thinkers, statists, philosophers, and experts, before they are
ripe for practical dealing by statesmen in Parliament, or before they
can be understood in all their bearings by the public."

It is much to be regretted that there are so few similar associa-
tions in this country. Most European countries have them, and
they are there regarded as indispensable auxiliaries to public statis-
tical work. Except the American Social Science Association, we
have no corresponding body in the United States. That society is
doing good and improving work ; and, if some provision can be
made for the wider distribution of the papers read before it, a de-
cided progress in several departments of sociology may be expected
to show itself in all parts of this country.

The study of comparative statistics is one of the secondary and
higher growths resulting from the cultivation of statistical science.
The English race has not been hitherto remarkable for a patient
and exhaustive study of foreign statistics. Exception ought, how-
ever, to be made in favor of the reports sent to the British Foreign
Office by its diplomatic and consular agents in other countries on
subjects affecting British industry and commerce. But scholars
and publicists in England have not, for the love of science only,
nor out of respect for what foreign nations are capable of teaching
Great Britain, pushed their researches into the material history of
those nations. On the Continent, however, both Governments and
individuals have been at great pains to bring important foreign
statistics to the attention of their own people. Some recent in-
stances of this may be mentioned. The " Documents Monetaires,"
published by the Belgian Government, under the late ministry of
M. Malou, is a collection containing the text of all the important
legislation and of leading reports and state papers on monetary
subjects which have appeared in Europe or America since 1865.*
The Italian Government has also published a valuable series of re-
ports illustrative of the banking and forced paper-money systems
of the United States, France, Russia, and Austria, under the title
of " Notizie interno all' Ordinamento Bancario, e al Corso Forzato,
negli Stati Uniti di America, in Russia, nelP Impero Austro-Un-
garico e in Francia." Baron Karl von Hock, of Austria, published,
more than ten years ago, the most compact and intelligible account

* In this connection we ought not to omit to give credit to the British Government
for the valuable statistical information contained in the appendices to Mr. Goschen's
"Silver Report" of 18'76.

THE CEXSUS OF 1880. 401

of the financial system of France ever -written, and still more re-
cently an exhaustive treatise on the finances of the United States
during the civil war.

Maurice Block and M. A. Legoyt, in France, have made invalu-
able contributions to statistical science ; the former by his " L'Eu-
rope Politique et Sociale," published in 1869, and the latter by his
*' Forces Mat^rielles de I'Empire d'Allemagnc," published in 1877.

It will be a long time, we fear, before American scholars will add
anything to statistical history of a kindred nature.

The census bill now before Congress, and which will doubtless
be a law before this article goes to press, enlarges the constitutional
scope of the census by making it apply to the " wealth and indus-
try " of the United States, as well as to its population. It henceforth
takes its place as a statistical inquiry of the broadest character.
With the proposed new schedules of 1870 added, of which we have
already given the particulars, there would seem to be scarcely any-
thing wanting to its completeness. In view of this enlargement of
its scope, certain changes in the method of obtaining information
became absolutely necessary. Hitherto the enumeration has been
made by United States marshals, men holding their offices by politi-
cal appointment and directly attached to the Federal courts. The
only possible ground for selecting them has been, that they are the
least objectionable Federal officers for the work, who live in the
several States and Territories where the census is to be taken.
Neither judges nor custom-house officials nor postmasters would
have answered the purpose as well. So long as the single fact of
the number of people residing in a State or district was to be ascer-
tained, United States marshals and their deputies were competent
enough for the task, but they were as a class not at all competent
to prosecute the higher branches of a statistical inquiry.

Under the new law, the Secretary of the Interior is to appoint
one or more supervisors of census for each State or Territory, the
whole number not to exceed one hundred and fifty. The super-
visors are to recommend to the Superintendent of Census a sub-
division of the territory assigned to them, into suitable districts,
and an enumerator for each district. Such enumerators must have
the approval of the Superintendent, and be chosen for their fitness,
and without reference to party affiliations.

The Superintendent is not, however, obliged to employ the
official enumerators for the whole work ; but may, at his discretion,
use the mortality statistics to be obtained from city registrations,
VOL. cxxviii. — NO. 269. 26

402 TEE NORTH AMERICAN- REVIEW,

where such registrations are kept. He may, in like manner, entire-
ly withdraw from the enumerators the manufacturing and social
schedules, and charge the collection of these statistics upon experts
and special agents, to be employed without reference to locality.
He may also employ similar experts and agents to investigate, in
their economic relations, the manufacturing, railway, fishing, min-
ing, and other industries of the country, and to gather the statis-
tics relating to telegraph, express, transportation, and insurance com-
panies ; framing, in all cases, such additional schedules as he may
think desirable.

With this wide discretion, it will be in the power of an experi-
enced Superintendent to make the tenth census a far more complete
and valuable document than any of its predecessors.

Provision is made in the law for utilizing and harmonizing with
the Federal system the intermediate censuses now taken by many
of the States, the Federal Government agreeing to pay half the
cost of such censuses if taken in conformity with that law.

An important question, which has been considered in connection
with the new census, was the practicability and expediency of tak-
ing the enumeration of the people in a single day, as is done in
England. General Walker discussed this question at some length
in his report made to the Secretary of the Interior in January, 1878,
and advised