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THE

NOETH AMERICAN
REYIETT.

VOL. CXI.

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

BOSTON:
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.

1870.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,
CAMBRIDGE.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

No. CCXXVIIL W(IJ

JULY, 1870.

ART. I. — AMERICAN ART MUSEUMS.

WHEN we note the active interest in the improvement of
industrial art which has led, of late years, to the formation
of museums in so many foreign cities, and estimate the pro
gress made in English and Continental taste through their
influence, we are tempted to hope that there is a future in
reserve when conformity to the laws of beauty will again be
obligatory, not only in buildings, pictures, and statues, but
also in all objects of daily use. The rich heritage of beautiful
forms of every kind and shape which the past has left us is
now made to minister to the enjoyment and education of the
people, and thus taste, which formerly could only be cultivated
by the great and wealthy, will gradually permeate the masses,
and bring about the time when the artist and the artisan shall
once more join hands and raise its standard to a generally high
level. In antiquity and the Middle Ages this was accom
plished in other ways ; for although there were no public mu
seums, and the .people had no access to works of art in the
halls and porticos of private dwellings, the temple and the
cathedral, the squares and streets of great cities, teemed with
masterpieces which, though not collected together for that pur
pose, were active agents in cultivating public taste.

The Greek temple, where all the arts of design were united
for a common end, was a complete and harmonious entity,

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 1

2 American Art Museums. [July?

whose component parts were form, ornament, and color.
Sculpture gave life to the whole edifice and told its story
through speaking forms, which kindled enthusiastic reverence
in the worshipper as his eye wandered from the pediment to
the metopes, followed the circling frieze, and at last rested
upon the majestic figure of the titular deity within the cella,
which looked, says a Greek poet, " as if the god had come down
to earth to reveal himself to the sculptor, that he might repre
sent him as he is." Painting brought .out the varied lines of
the architecture, gave relief to the groups between the tri-
glyphs, marked the folds of the draperies, and rendered every
detail of ornament distinct and clear ; while architecture, hold
ing the decorative arts in its firm grasp, served as a framework
to display their beauties to advantage, and borrowed from them
a grace which enhanced their special perfections. The warrior's
shield suspended to a column, the embroidered " peplos," the
great silver bowl made out of the tithes of the spoils of a battle
field, and the painted vase placed within the sanctuary, though
detached from the building, were yet a part of its organism as
consecrated offerings, and contributed their quota to the general
charm ; for, in accordance with a high standard of perfection,
they were all beautiful in form and in ornament. As the tem
ple in antiquity, so the cathedral in the Middle Ages, taught
the multitude to appreciate art through the many forms of
beauty which were brought together for its embellishment.
The altar was resplendent with utensils precious in material
and beautiful in shape ; the walls glowed with frescos ; the
pulpit and the font were storied with bas-reliefs ; the pave
ment was enriched with mosaics, the windows with colored
glass ; the roof was fretted with rich carvings, and even the
topmost pinnacle above it, which shot up into the blue sky
like an arrow suspended in its flight, bore upon its summit
the statuette of an angel or a saint, often finished with the
same care as if its details were to be daily scanned by mor
tal eye.

Time and iconoclasts of every creed and nation have com
bined to break up and deface many of these glorious units.
The gems of art which adorned them are torn from their
settings, and like living members of a dead organism are

1870.] American Art Museums. 3

gathered together in galleries and museums, where they serve
an end foreign to that for which they were created by cunning
hands long since stiffened and still. Once priests and servants
of religion, they are now our masters in aesthetic cultivation,
and grouped in strange company with a thousand objects made
for military and household use, whose only common element
with them is that of beauty and fitness, serve to imbue men's
minds with correct principles of tas.te, and to raise the decora
tive and industrial arts to a higher level than they could ever
reach without such aid. Where they are seen this is fully rec
ognized, and where they are not, the low standard of taste and
attainment in art proves how impossible it is to advance with
out them. Those who feel this would hesitate to believe that
any highly civilized nation could long remain indifferent to
their acquisition, especially if that nation should show itself
peculiarly alive to the importance of all other educational influ
ences ; and yet such is the case in America, for the simple rea
son that appreciation of such objects has not been cultivated
by familiarity with them.

Men naturally ignore the value of things to which they are
unaccustomed. " Experientia docet" is a trite proverb of
universal application. Creatures of habit, with but few long
ings for the unknown, we seldom recognize the narrowness of
our habitual range of thought and sympathy until, perchance,
some higher and nobler field of activity is opened to us ;
then as we gain glimpses of an upper life hitherto shut out
from our range of vision we look back with wonder at our pre
vious state of indifference. A single example will suffice to
show that this is as true of communities as it is of individuals.
Twelve years ago the citizens of New York lived contentedly
without the Central Park, and those of Boston without the
Public Library, just as they are living at the present' day with
out such Art Museums as have been lately projected in both
cities. Years hence, when they shall have learnt their value
by experience, we may safely predict they will feel about the
last as they now feel about the first. How did we live without
them ? they will say, and how vigorously would we resist any
attempt to deprive us of them !

In view of the great progress made in public taste as regards

4 American Art Museums. [Ju^7>

music, we may fairly believe that appreciation of the sister
arts would follow upon a similar course of effort in their behalf.
If we compare, for example, the Boston of thirty-five years
ago with the Boston of to-day, we find that solid musical
progress has been made. Then some of the Symphonies of
Beethoven were first played by an ill-drilled orchestra to
a handful of willing but unenlightened listeners in a small
theatre, now they and kindred compositions are regularly per
formed before large audiences in a fine Music Hall. Then
good organists and pianists were rare, now they are many, and
public musical instruction, which was then unknown, is now well
systematized. Through these means a standard of taste in music
has been formed, and the public has gradually learnt to distin
guish the noble from the ignoble, — the music which satisfies the
highest cravings of the spirit from that which addresses itself
only to the sensuous part of man's nature. As it has learnt to
estimate the relative value of Mozart and Bellini, why should it
not learn to estimate that of Raphael and Carlo Dolci ? As it
can now assign their right places in the scale of excellence to
Beethoven and Donizetti, why not then to Phidias and Pra-
dier ? There is evidently no reason for our knowledge of
music, but the simple one that our taste for it has been culti
vated in the right way, nor any reason for our ignorance about
other forms of art, except that we have been cut off from all
means of enlightenment about them. We say other forms, for
art is a unit, not a multiple, acting upon a unit, the spirit of
man ; and forms of art are but different manifestations of one
and the same thing. The question is only one of different
modes of action on the one hand, and of different avenues of
reception on the other ; music, architecture, poetry, sculpture,
and painting are but palpable modes of transmitting the
thoughts of one mind to other minds, and whether these be
conveyed through sounds or stones, verse, marble, or color,
the object of art is to move, raise, and instruct us, to take us
out of ourselves, and thus make us share for a time in the
lofty dreams of the privileged few who are called the sons of
genius.

Some of us are by virtue of special aptitudes more open to
the influence of music, others to that of sculpture or of paint-

1870.] American Art Museums. 5

ing, and yet none will claim that the art which speaks most
forcibly to his nature is greater than any other or more
worthy pf cultivation in the abstract. We must seek to look
at art in a broad way, not from the subjective but from the
objective point of view, and value all arts as alike means to a
noble end. Something has been done for music in America,
now we must do as much and more for other arts, both
because of their elevating effect upon us as a nation, and
because through them we may give a hitherto unknown value
to our industrial products. This can only be done by the
organization of comprehensive museums, which will raise the
standard of taste, furnish materials for study to artists and
archaeologists, affect industry, and provide places of resort for
the general public where amusement and unconscious instruc
tion will be combined.

All will agree that these aims are highly laudable, and that
such institutions are the only possible agents for their accom
plishment, but there is a great difference of opinion as to the
objects with which Art Museums should be filled. The pur
pose of this article is to suggest what these should be, and to
show how they can be so efficiently organized as best to accom
plish the great work to be done, their office being, as it seems
to us, before all else educational.

Human judgment being fallible, we often miss the right road
towards a desirable end, even with the best intentions, but
there are some cases, of which the -present appears to be one,
when it lies so plainly marked out before us that we have our
selves only to thank if we blunder and go wrong. If muse
ums are to be made invalid hospitals for poor pictures and
many other sorts of rubbish bestowed upon them by persons of
doubtful judgment, their action will be highly deleterious ; but
if, on the contrary, they are what they ought to be and can be
made by the exercise of judgment, firmness, and common sense,
they cannot but be in the highest degree beneficial in their
effects upon all classes of the community.

Many persons when .talking about an American Museum
have a dim idea of another Louvre or National Gallery, whose
walls are by some miraculous process to be speedily covered
with Raphaels and Correggios, and whose sculpture galleries

6 American Art Museums.

are to be lined with ancient and mediaeval masterpieces ;
others again think that, as it is a good thing to encourage
native talent, it ought to be for the most part filled with
American pictures and statues. Now, however much we may
admire the high aims of the first and the patriotic motives
of the second, we agree with neither party. Not that we
undervalue Raphaels, Correggios, and Greek marbles, or that
we are incapable of appreciating the solid qualities of a Hunt
or a Kensett, or wanting in esteem for so excellent a group as
Ball's equestrian statue of Washington, or Story's Cleopatra,
our reasons are simply, that the first are entirely out of our
reach, and that, whatever their merits, the second are not fit
implements for the instruction of a nation in art.

Have the ambitious spirits who propose to us the nectar
and ambrosia of art any conception of what sums we should
have to pay for such celestial food ? Are they aware that
the English, French, and Bavarian governments have gained
their marbles, bronzes, terra-cottas, and vases by fitting out
expeditions to Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, under the
direction of men trained from their youth up in archaeology
and art, and empowered to hire excavators, and bribe princes,
paying them sums which would make Wall Street or State
Street shudder ? Do they know that the sale of a real Ra
phael is an event in Europe whose probability is known long
beforehand, so that on the appointed day the privilege of
buying it is eagerly disputed by the directors of all the great
galleries north of the Alps ? Do they know that the Na
tional Gallery paid seven thousand pounds for the Suermondt
Rembrandt, and eight thousand pounds for the Garvagh Ra
phael ; that the- Delessert Raphael was considered by many
to have been given away to the Due d'Aumale at one hun
dred and sixty thousand francs ; that the Louvre paid six
hundred thousand francs for 'the Assumption of the Virgin
by Murillo ; that the Congress of Munster by Teniers — a lit
tle picture about a foot and a half long by a foot high — was
bought in at the Hotel de$ Yentes after a well-known direc
tor had bid it up to one hundred and eighty thousand francs ?
And if they know these facts, and fifty more equally tell
ing, how do they propose to raise the money for purchases

1870.] American Art Museums. 7

of equal magnitude, in a country which has as yet no large
class of persons who value art sufficiently to be willing to
give immense prices for masterpieces ? Where will they find
the means (even if they could find the men capable of do
ing what Botta and Layard did at Nineveh, Newton at Hali-
carnassus, Lepsius in Egypt, or Sir Charles Fellows in Lycia)
to fit out expeditions in the service of art and archaeology to
distant countries ?

Let us imagine for a moment the distinguished Senator from
Massachusetts, who has more than once courageously opposed
the wasting of the public money upon persons manifestly unfit
to be charged with the execution of national art projects, rising
from his seat to propose the appropriation of a large sum for
an expedition to the buried cities of Central America, with
the purpose of bringing back to Washington casts of those
curious temple bas-reliefs which are fast perishing in the
green wilderness. What answer would he inevitably receive ?
Certainly a very different one from that given to Mr. Fergusson
in England when, after he had drawn attention to the curious
sculptures which had long lain neglected at the India House in
London, he asked for a grant to be used in sending out fit per
sons to India to take casts of the Budhist Tope at Sanchi, and
of other valuable monumental sculptures in the interior of the
country. And yet the sculptures at Palenque are of the high
est value as examples of the art of an unknown period and
people, and as such would long ago have been rescued from
destruction had they been within the reach of any European
government. Or again, what would Congress say if it were •
asked to spend a tithe of the sums granted last year by Par
liament for the support of art institutions in Great Britain ?
as, for example, £ 53,095 to the South Kensington Museum ;
£ 113,203 to the British Museum (which sum, it is true, was
spent upon all its departments) ; £ 15,978 to the National Gal
lery, and £ 49,724 to numerous art schools scattered over the
three kingdoms ; making a total of £ 232,000, — considerably
over a million of our money. Congress would say No, and
very rightly, because the nation whoss will they execute would
consider any such appropriation illegal and absurd. That
there are persons in all parts of the Union who have a love of

8 American Art Museums. [July,

art, and who know what good art is and estimate its mission
rightly, is certain ; but we may safely say that as a nation we
should be totally indifferent if all the works of art in the world
suddenly vanished into space, provided a few chromo-lithographs
were left to hang upon our walls, and a few French bronzes to
put on our mantel-pieces.

Americans are well known in Europe as purchasers of rare
and costly books, but they have no such reputation in regard
to works of art, nor will they gain it until they have Art Mu
seums in their own country to refine and elevate their taste.
That we shall have them, and without the expenditure of im
mense sums of money, there can be no doubt. Not, indeed, ideal
and impossible museums., filled with masterpieces of original
art, but museums mainly composed of reproductions of statues,
architectural fragments, monuments, gems, coins, inscriptions,
&c., &c. These will answer our purpose, as we aim at collecting
material for the education of a nation in art, not at making
collections of objects of art. That must be done at a later
stage of national development, when we are willing to pay for
them. As our museums must be filled with reproductions,
pictorial art can for the present be but scantily represented in
them, for good copies of pictures are rare and very costly. A
good cast of an antique statue, the impress of a coin or a gem
in plaster or sulphur, is a fac-simile as far as form is con
cerned, but the copy of a picture is an image of the original
reflected through the mind of the copyist, and more or less
imbued with his personality, — either it is defective in ex
pression, drawing, or coloring, and in some of these par
ticulars likely to lead the student into error. We had far
better purchase small water-color copies of celebrated paintings
and frescos, or sketches made in the fresh enthusiasm of an
hour spent before them by some clever artist, or photographs
which faithfully reproduce their composition and spirit, than
any labored copies which aim at identical repetition in size and
material.

In saying that casts and metallic reproductions must form
the staple of our collections, we do not mean that they are to be
chosen hap-hazard from the originals in tjie Vatican or British
Museum, and ranged without system. This would greatly lessen

1870.] American Art Museums. 9

their utility. What we want is a representative collection which
shall illustrate the rise and progress of the arts and their grad
ual decadence. For this purpose the examples in each depart
ment must be arranged chronologically, so that the professor of
art and archaeology may use them to point out the broad dif
ferences between the sculpture of Egypt and Assyria, may
demonstrate in what measure each influenced early Greek
sculpture without stifling its innate freedom beneath their
own hieratic or courtly systems, and may show the differ
ences between Pre-Historic, Archaic, and Phidian art, art
of the Macedonian and Roman periods, pointing out as he
proceeds how and why sculpture steadily progressed until it
culminated in the age of Pericles, and as steadily declined
until it almost died out in the Dark Ages, then rose again
in the Middle Ages from Niccola Pisano to Donatello, and
fell away through the splendid extravagances of Michael An-
gelo and the corrupt principles of his successors.

So also by means of a progressive series of architectural
casts the professor should be enabled to explain the history of
the five orders, here pointing out to the student the Proto-Doric
columns from Beni Hassan, and the progressive changes in
Greek Doric from the temple at Corinth to the Parthenon,
and there tracing back the graceful Ionic to the Lycian tombs.
By like means the numismatist should be enabled to discuss
the coins and medallions of peoples, cities, and kings, and point
out their variations in Greek and Roman examples ; while the
ethnographer should have casts of Persian, Egyptian, and As
syrian bas-reliefs and statues at hand as material for the com
parative study of races, and the palasologist the inscriptions
gathered from many parts of the world to explain the distinc
tive peculiarities of monumental writing.

The eminent German professor of archaeology, Dr. Heinrich
Brunn, who has the precious collection of marbles at the Glyp-
tothek under his charge, has been lately urging upon the Bava
rian government the importance of forming a complete collec
tion of casts at Munich, and but for the inopportune death of
King Louis would before now have succeeded in his object. In
the pamphlet which contains an exposition of his views upon this
subject, the learned Professor says that, " Solid and thorough

10 American Art Museums.

study is impossible without an acquaintance with works of all
kinds, the originals of which are widely scattered. This ac
quaintance can only be obtained through plaster casts, which
in most respects supply the place of originals, and cannot be
dispensed with even in presence of the originals. Without
them the professor of archaeology cannot illustrate his lec
tures, and their importance is so generally felt, that since
Welcker founded the collection at Bonn every German uni
versity has at least partially followed the example." Among
the many studies which are facilitated by casts is that of
mythology, for only when we see all the most remarkable rep
resentations of gods and heroes placed side by side, can we
estimate the sum of qualities which were required to make up
the ideal of deities and deified men, and trace the progress
made towards a perfect and final type both in character and
in technical quality. Again busts and portrait statues of emi
nent men are useful, not only to the archaeologist, the philol
ogist, and the ethnographer, but also to the classical scholar,
since through the outward form the inner man is revealed.
While he is thus enabled to enter more completely into the
spirit of an author's works, he can at the same time study the
characteristic differences of race and outward types of genius,
and better comprehend the relation between periods of time
(as, for instance, between the age of Pericles and that of Alex
ander) and the physical and spiritual antagonism of Hellenism
to Romanism.

In casts of statues and busts the technical differences be
tween the method of working in marble or in bronze can be
studied ; while in architectural fragments, such as columns,
bases, capitals, and ornament, the arts of building and decora
tion in different countries can be traced, variations in taste
followed up, and power to distinguish between excellent and
vicious styles be attained.

In order to give an idea of a good collection of Greek
casts, intended to illustrate the history of sculpture in Greece,
we subjoin a list of casts classified under seven heads, pre
mising that, as it is framed upon the apothegm of Seneca,
" Primus habere quod necesse est, proximus quod sat est," it
is simply representative, andjn no wise aims at completeness.

1870.] American Art Museums. 11

1st Class. — Pre-Historic, i. e. composed of works prior to
the first Olympiad (B. C. 776) ; and Dcedalic, i. e. of the
period embodied in the name of Daedalus, when the first signs
of progress appeared. The colossal Lions from the gate at
Mycenae illustrate the first ; the Apollo of Thera and the
Apollo of Tenea from the Theseion at Athens, the second.
These statues are certainly not later than the middle of the
sixth century before Christ.

2d Class. — Examples of early Greek or Archaic works,
showing study of the human form in action, elaboration of
drapery, and attention to anatomical detail, such as : 1. The
bas-relief of Agamemnon and his heralds, found in the island
of Samothrace, now in the Louvre. This is the oldest Greek
bas-relief known. Judging by the inscription, it belongs to
the seventh century B. C. 2. The stele of Aristion, commonly
called the soldier of Marathon ; 3. A seated Minerva. 4. A
Goddess mounting a chariot, now in the Theseion at Athens.

5. The earlier reliefs from the temples at Selinus in Sicily.

6. Sculptures from the temples and tombs at Assos, Miletus,
and Xanthus. These works represent Greek sculpture up to
the fifth century B. C. 7. The far-famed ^Egina marbles from
the temple of Zeus Panhellenius, made in the early part of
the fifth century B. C., which may be regarded as the basis
of all future progress in sculpture.

3o? Class. — The age of Pericles, i. e. the second half of
the fifth century B. C., when sculpture under Phidias and his
scholars attained its highest point of excellence. Examples :
the pediment statues, metopes, and frieze of the Parthenon ;
the caryatides of the Pandroseion ; the bas-reliefs of the Tem
ples of Theseus and Nike Apteros at Athens ; the alto-reliefs
from Phigalia and Olympia ; the Discobolus and Marsyas
of Myron, the Doryphorus and Diadumenos of Polycletus,
of which copies exist ; and numerous Attic steles and votive
reliefs.

4th Class. — The age of Alexander, fourth century B. C.
Examples : Casts from the originals, and Greco-Roman copies
of the works of Scopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus, such as the
bas-relief of the marriage of Neptune and Amphitrite in the
Glyptothek, the Halicarnassian and Xanthian marbles, the

American Art Museums. [«My>

Flute-player, the Apoxyomenos, the reliefs from the Choragic
monument of Lysicrates, &c., &c.

6lh Class. — Greco-Roman period, comprising works made
by Greeks under Roman influence, such as the Toro Farnese,
the Laocoon, the Knife-Grinder, the Augustus, &c., <fcc.

6th Class. — Roman works, such as reliefs from the Column
of Trajan and the Arches of Titus and Septimius Severus and
Constantine.

1th Class. — Supplementary, composed of Egyptian, As
syrian, and Etruscan works, important for the comparative
study of styles and schools, as bearing upon the development
of Greek art.

It is hardly necessary to say that a complete collection of
casts comprehending all Greek works known to us by origi
nals or through copies would be very much more extensive
than this, which is hardly more than typical. By typical;
we mean composed of such works as give a sufficient idea of
the style of an epoch which, reduced to a minimum, could be
illustrated by an architectural fragment (be it cornice, capital,
or frieze), a bas-relief, a statue, a bust, and a certain number of
coins and inscriptions.

In an American museum we should have examples of archi
tecture, sculpture, coinage, and palaeography, in ancient and
modern times, from the Pyramids, B. C. 4235, down to A. D.
1700. The ancient world of art should be represented by
casts of works from Egypt, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Assyria,
Asia Minor, Greece, and the Greek islands, Etruria, Rome and
her colonies, as also of those produced by the Teutonic, Celtic,
Scandinavian, and Gallic races ; the mediaeval and modern
world by casts of art works in Italy, France, Germany, and
England. Of architecture in these four countries we should
have casts from parts of Gothic and Rennaissance buildings
down to Palladio's time ; of sculpture, casts of Italian works
as late as John of Bologna ; of French down to Jean Goujon ;
of German to Peter Vischer and Adam Krafts ; and of English
to the end of the Gothic period.

The great European collections furnish us with examples of
the best modes of lighting, placing, and classifying casts. The
two largest are at Berlin in the New Museum, and at Paris

1870.] American Art Museums. 13

in the £cole des Beaux Arts; the best arranged is that at
Dresden.

The Berlin casts completely fill the first story of the New
Museum, with the exception of the great hall in the centre of
the building. They comprehend an immense number of an
tique and medieval works which, if arranged chronologically,
would constitute an almost perfect model for an American
museum of the same kind. The catalogue, which is well enti
tled by its author, Dr. Friedrichs, Ba-usteine zur geschichte
der griechish-romischen Plastik, contains the names of about
one thousand antique works, with a short historical, archae
ological, and critical notice of each, forming a history of
Greek and Greco-Roman sculpture of the most instructive
kind.

The Dresden collection, though much smaller and far less
comprehensive, as it contains only casts from the antique, af
fords better opportunity for study because its arrangement is
chronological. In the Preface of its excellent catalogue the
director, Dr. Hettner, truly says " that he who wanders from
statue to statue follows the history of sculpture from its be
ginnings. He passes from Assyrian, Egyptian, and Etrus
can sculptures to early Greek works ; then comes to those
which illustrate the acme of the art in the age of Pericles,
sees the first signs of decay in the still splendid productions
of the Macedonian epoch, and its consequences in the Greco-
Roman decadence." Thus sculpture may be studied histori
cally, archaeologically, mythologically, and artistically, with
profit and pleasure in proportion to the knowledge and taste of
the visitor.

Neither at Berlin nor at Dresden are there any architectural
casts, and in this respect the collection of the Ecole des Beaux
Arts at Paris surpasses its rivals, as also in that it contains
many casts of early Greek works not known out of Athens.
The architectural casts of the same size as the originals pro
duce an admirable effect ; among them are the portico of the
Pandroseion, with the cornice, the base, and the four Caryatides,
and the whole of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates. When
this collection, which has lately been greatly enriched by a series
of casts brought together by M. Ravaisson, is catalogued and

14 American Art Museums, [July?

placed chronologically it will undoubtedly stand at the head of
all others, and the effect produced by the casts placed in the
great central hall, which is of immense height and lighted
from above, will be in every respect admirable.

We may here remark that a vertical light, unless it fall
from a great height into a court of very exceptional size, is
less favorable for the display of casts than an upper side light,
by which in a long, low gallery the light is more equally dif
fused. The color of the walls should be a warm gray, into
which the outlines of the casts will melt softly away. Pom-
peian red, which is the most agreeable of all hues as a back
ground to pictures, forms too sharp a contrast with the crude
white of a plaster cast. This should be toned down by any of
the substances employed by plaster casters, except paint, which
masks the delicate shades of modelling, and destroys all sharp
ness of detail. Linseed oil very much boiled down hardens
plaster, and gives it a golden tone somewhat like that of old
Attic marbles long exposed to the sun and air. A preparation
of stearine is also excellent for this purpose, being perfectly
transparent, and like linseed oil allowing the cast to be washed
without injury.

The sculpture galleries at Berlin and Dresden, which are very
inferior to those at Paris and London, needed to be supplement
ed by proportionately large and comprehensive collections of
casts. Even in Paris, where the Louvre is so rich in original
marbles of every age and country, a student of art has con
stant occasion to visit the casts at the ficole des Beaux Arts
in order to trace the shades of progress through styles and
schools. The collection of casts at Sydenham is not compar
able to the great Continental collections, but this is a matter
of comparatively little importance, considering the wonderful
and unrivalled facilities offered in the galleries of the British
Museum for the study of ancient originals in every form of art.
For mediaeval works the student must betake himself to South
Kensington, where many marbles and casts of great interest
are collected.

It will be seen that no one of the museums of which we have
been speaking offers a perfect example of what the American
museum should be. Some contain only casts from the antique,

1870.] American Art Museums. 15

others only casts from works of the Middle Ages. Some
are without architectural casts, inscriptions, coins, and gems,
and this because they are generally supplementary to galleries
of original works. As we have none of these, we must do
wholly what European governments have done partially, and
make up in completeness for our poverty in other respects.
Nor when we have done so can we be called poor, since we
shall Jiave what we need, and shall have shaped our desires to
attainable objects. " Non qui parvum habet sed qui plus cupit
pauper est."

In our day the universal aim is to make art bear upon in
dustry, and how it may best be done is everywhere the object
of study. In England, all* over Germany, and in Russia, mu
seums of industrial art and art schools have been founded,
and though it is only nineteen years since England took the
lead in this great movement, the most astonishing effects have
resulted, and France trembles lest her long-acknowledged su
periority in all those branches of industry which are affected
by the arts of design should soon be among the things of
the past.

A late French writer, in speaking of the inferiority which
ignorance of art gives to the products of a nation, points out
the one acknowledged remedy, namely, the intellectual culti
vation of the workman-, and his special instruction in profes
sional schools of design. This conviction, which had been
forced upon public attention at the first Great Exhibition in
1851 by the manifest inferiority of English and Continental pro
ducts to those of France, led to the foundation by Prince Albert
of the South Kensington Museum, as a centre of education in
the arts of design for teachers and pupils throughout the whole
kingdom. Four years later English goods were signalized in
M. du Sommerard's Report to the French Jury " as worthy of the
highest praise for their sobriety of ornament." In the Report
upon the Exhibition held at Paris in 1861, M. Merimee stated
that " English industry has made prodigious strides within the
last ten years," and his fellow-jurors acknowledged that this
progress was due to the action of the Kensington Museum.
They furthermore declared that if France would keep her
place at the head of other nations as the mistress of taste,

16 American Art Museums. [Jutyj

the system of instruction hitherto prevalent in the schools of
design at Paris must be completely reorganized. This reor
ganization was effected in 1863, when there were only three
thousand pupils in these schools, towards whose support the
city contributed three thousand francs a year ; four years later
the number of students had increased to twelve thousand, and
the sum contributed to three hundred and twelve thousand
francs. That France had need to strain every nerve in the
cause cannot be doubted in face of the fact that, owing to
the improvement of taste in the manufacture of earthenware,
porcelain, glass, and carpets, the export trade of England in
these objects had increased to the amount of seventy millions
of .dollars between 1855 and 1866. •

As our object in this article is to give such information upon
the subject of museums as may be useful to those who are
called upon to organize similar institutions in this country,
we shall now proceed to give some account of the organi
zation and aims of the most remarkable European examples,
as well as of the character of the objects with which they are
filled.

To begin with the South Kensington Museum, which is the
prototype of the Continental museums, and the model upon
which most of them have been formed.

An annual sum, which last year amounted to fifty thou
sand pounds, is voted by Parliament for the support of this
institution, and administered by the Minister of Science and
Art, with the advice of a Committee of the Council of Educa
tion. The chief officers of the Council are a President, a Vice-
President, a Secretary in chief, and a Director. There are also
general inspectors connected with the Museum, as well as exam
iners of different grades, professors of both sexes to teach me
chanical and architectural drawing, perspective, ornamental and
figure drawing, anatomy, modelling, etching, mosaic, &c., &c.,
and agents for the sale of models. Gratuitous instruction
is given, and in some cases pupils are even paid for their
attendance upon courses of teaching. Examinations are held
and followed by the distribution of recompenses, diplomas, and
dotations. Encouragement is also given to the formation of
schools of art in cities, towns, and villages throughout the

1870.] American Art Museums. 17

United Kingdom, on the single condition that they shall sub
mit to the occasional visits of inspectors and examiners sent by
the Science and Art Department, and larger or smaller sub
ventions are given according to the progress made by the
pupils. Ambulatory collections, composed of reproductions of
statues, drawings, and enamels, and of engravings and photo
graphs, together with circulating libraries of books calculated
to develop the taste and knowledge of artisans, are sent from
Kensington to towns which would otherwise be out of the reach
of works of art. The professors are educated in the National
Art Training School at Kensington, for side by side with the
most elementary instruction superior instruction is also given.
After submitting to certain examinations they receive a cer
tificate of the second or third Grade from the Science and Art
Department.

The Committee subsidizes instruction in elementary drawing
in the schools for poor children, as well as in special schools,
in its own Normal School, and in gratuitous night classes for
artisans. It gives fifty per cent upon the cost of models for art
schools, and pays about fifteen shillings a head towards the
instruction of beginners, which sum is doubled to those who
profit by it, and tripled to those who pass a good examina
tion. If "the artisan has paid for instruction, he receives from
the Committee the sum of ten shillings for every drawing exe
cuted within a fixed time and favorably reported. After four
examinations he gets a diploma of the second degree, and is
allowed to teach in the poor and night schools. Every pupil
who executes a good drawing of a useful or ornamental object
in the school within the year receives a prize of sixteen shil
lings. Once a year a national competition, in which all the
schools in the kingdom take part, is organized at South Ken
sington. Ten medals of gold, twenty of silver, and fifty of
bronze are distributed among the authors of the best drawings,
and pensions from the Princess of Wales' Fund are given to
the two best female pupils.

The Museum is so well known to the American public,
through the many descriptions that have been given of it, that
it will not be necessary to enter here into any minute account
of it. Its able Director, Mr. Cole, in an introductory address

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 2

18 American Art Museums.

delivered thirteen years ago, happily characterized it as " a book
with its pages always open." " By the system of labelling," he
says, " everything has been made instructive, and what would
have been otherwise passed unheeded or despised has become
a subject of interest. Thanks to this system, the poor man is
not obliged to provide himself with catalogues in order to
understand what he is looking at."

The living organism of which we have been speaking is
indeed a wonderful creation. We say " living " with intention,
for when there we see its directly productive 'agency in the
frescos and mosaics by English artists which decorate its inner
walls, and in the terra-cotta ornaments with which its facade
is enriched. We see, in short, the seed, the tree, the flower,
and the fruit. Year by year it grows with fabulous rapidity,
for it is constantly receiving into its ever-increasing area new
treasures of art, either on loan or through purchase, all of
which when multiplied by the many processes of reproduction,
are sent forth in plaster, electrotype, or photograph, to enrich
the minds and cultivate the tastes of men who might else
have remained ignorant of beauty as revealed in art. Nobly
planned and wisely carried out, it stands the worthiest of
monuments to the high-minded Prince who founded it, and
when time shall have done its work upon all other Albert
memorials, will still remind the English people of his many
claims to their grateful remembrance. The fruits of the initia
tory step which he there took are also found in every part of
the Continent. The Exhibition of 1862, and the Great Exhibi
tion of 1867, which brought the products of all nations face
to face, and gauged their relative value, taught the Continental
nations the important lesson that institutions like the Ken
sington Museum have power to bring industry up to a high
artistic level. France, which had opened gratuitous schools of
design nearly a century before England, felt compelled in self-
defence to reorganize them completely, and many leading
manufacturers, artists, and connoisseurs were induced to found
the Central Union of Fine Arts applied to Industry. This
institution is not an acknowledged agency for the develop
ment of industrial art through schools of design throughout
the empire, and exercises no supervision over those superior

1870.] American Art Museums. 19

and professional schools at Lyons, Mulhouse, St. Etienne,
Rheinis, and Limoges, whose aim is to influence certain spe
cial fabrications. It operates indirectly, nevertheless, upon
the whole country by periodical exhibitions, which are of two
kinds ; the first consisting of premiated productions of the
chief schools of design in Paris and the departments, and of
articles of modern manufacture which directly illustrate the
effect already produced by foreign art upon native industry ;
the second, of works of art borrowed from private collections ;
of this kind was the splendid Oriental Museum opened for a
short time last autumn in the " Palais de 1'Industrie," where
eight great galleries were filled with the choicest specimens
of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Persian art and manufac
ture.

We note among the last items of art news from Paris, that
the " Union Centrale " now proposes to further the cause of
industrial art by public lectures, courses of study, publica
tions, prizes, international exhibitions, and by aiding provin
cial committees in the organization of exhibitions. During
the above-mentioned Oriental Exhibition it organized an In
ternational Congress, which passed several important resolu
tions concerning public instruction in the arts of design. One
among these aims at making preparatory studies in drawing a
part of primary instruction, and drawing obligatory in the
public schools; another at developing the sentiment of art
through the formation of educational museums in cities, towns,
and villages, and the establishment of Normal Schools in
which professors could be formed.

The need of some such body as the English Science and Art
Department, charged to recognize and reward provincial schools
and to impose a system of instruction, has been also felt in Ger
many, and shows itself there amongst other ways in the dis
agreement between professors as to the best methods of instruc
tion, and in the consequent substitution of personal systems.
Thus in one school the graphic model is esteemed, in another
pupils are allowed to draw only from the round and to model
after drawings. The system set forth in the programme of the
Paris International Committee is, that the young pupil should
learn the alphabet of forms from elementary geometrical mod-

20 American Art Museums. [July*

els, and from the most simple and common objects ; that oral
explanation by trained professors should be given, and that
the reduction or amplification of the model (i. e. f interpret**
tion raisonee), drawing from memory, and facultative choice
of means of execution, should take the place of a servile and
textual imitation of the graphic model. The Committee also
wisely deprecated the copying of engravings or lithographs, as
likely to lead the pupil to the study of picturesque effect, that
is, the accidental character, rather than to that of form, which
is the permanent character. At Molenbeck Saint Jean, a sub
urb of Brussels, there is a school frequented by three hundred
artisans, who begin by drawing for several months upon the
blackboard. When they have learnt to draw in a broad style
without consideration of detail, they are allowed to use paper.
The great object to be attained is to educate the eye, to train
the hand, and to strengthen the memory. Where primary in
struction is concerned, we know of no better system than that
of Professor Louis Bail, of the Scientific School at New Haven,
whose drawing charts carry the pupil on from the dot and the
straight line to complicated forms of ornament, teaching him
to measure correctly by his eye whatever object is placed be--
fore him, and requiring him to reproduce it again by memory
when it has been removed.

The country where the South Kensington model has been
most directly imitated is Austria, once the land of everything
retrograde, and now in the vanguard of progress, as she has
proved in regard to the cause of industrial art, by making
drawing obligatory in all her public schools and by creating a
People's Museum at Vienna. It was at the Exhibition of 1862
that Austria perceived her weakness and learnt the remedy
for it. The report made by M. d'Eitelbergher, her commis
sioner to England, and his articles in the leading journals im
mediately awakened public attention, impressed all classes
with the necessity for active measures, and induced the Em
peror, on the 7th of March of the following year, to decree the
formation of a Museum of Industrial Art.

As no building fit for the purpose then existed, his Majesty
placed a portion of the Imperial " Ball Haus" at the disposal
of the Provisional Committee. Three rooms on the ground-

1870.] American Art Museums. 21

floor were appropriated to contain the objects loaned by the
Emperor and by public institutions, together with those pur
chased ; a fourth was reserved for a library, and a fifth for
readers and draughtsmen. Photographic and modelling stu
dios were established on the first story. Since the 21st of
May, 1864, when the public was first allowed to avail itself of
these new sources of pleasure and instruction, the collections
have increased out of all proportion with their temporary place
of deposit, and their importance will not be fully estimated
until they are removed to a new and splendid building, which
will be ready to receive them in the spring of 1871. Among
the permanent objects now exhibited are a portion of the Bock
collection of textile fabrics illustrating the history of weaving
from the seventh century up to the present time ; the Fried-
land collection of French faiences dating from the seventeenth
century ; two hundred vases found in the Necropolis at Caere ;
twelve hundred fragments of ancient glass, and a large num
ber of Venetian and German glasses, from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth century. There are also many Limoges and Chi
nese enamels, Oriental arms, &c. The objects exhibited in the
Loan Museum are retained for six weeks, a portion being re
moved from it at the end of each week. While they remain
there they are grouped together so as to illustrate as far as pos
sible phases and schools of art. But what concerns us most in
the matter is the excellent practice of the directors to have all
these loaned objects reproduced, together with those in the per
manent collections, in order to make them universally useful
through ambulatory museums which are sent to different parts
of the empire, together with books upon decorative art. These
are features directly borrowed from the Kensington Museum,
which the Austrian also imitates in keeping up a general super
vision over provincial schools of art. The Vienna Museum is
administered by a protector, a council, and a director. The
protector names the members of the council out of all classes
of amateurs. The council forms plans for the development of
the museum, and gives advice to the director concerning pur
chases for It, &c., <fec., without fettering him in its immediate
administration.

The Museum at Moscow is, like that at Vienna, a child ovf

American Art Museums. [July,

the Exhibition of 1862. It was projected in the same year,
decreed by the Emperor two years later, and inaugurated in
April, 1868. We learn from an article by M. Natalis Rondot
to the Revue des Deux Monde s, that it was established on
the plan which he had traced some years earlier for an indus
trial museum at Lyons. Its aims are analogous to those of
the institutions of which we have already spoken. One of
its most interesting and peculiar features is a collection of
old Russian objects of art, the greater part of which have
been reproduced by casts and drawings, and explained by M.
de Boutowski, Councillor of State and Director of the Strogo-
noff School, in his grammar and history of Russian ornament,
which, according to M. Rondot, " springs from two different
sources, the one national and invariable, the other western,
that is, French or German, and consequently unstable and
subject to the caprices of fashion. Old Russian art, which has
certain analogies with Byzantine and with Asiatic art, is origi
nal and little known in Europe."

The Museum at Moscow is divided into three departments,
— Art proper, Industry, and History. The Art Department is
filled with copies of the finest works, classed by nations and
epochs, chosen with a view to show the style and system of
ornament of each nation and period in what it has produced
of the best quality.

The Industrial Department is divided into three sections ;
the first is consecrated to artistic industries, sculpture upon
wood, ivory, and stone, goldsmiths' work, pottery, enamel, fur
niture, &c.,&c. ; the second to stuffs and fabrics, and the third
to machines. Each section is subdivided into ancient products
and modern products.

The Historical Department offers examples of Russian orna
ment from the tenth to the eighteenth century ; some are repro
duced by casts or galvano-plastic, others by colored draw
ings, engravings, and photographs of manuscripts, enamels,
" nielli," personal ornaments, cups, plates, arms, trappings,
stuffs, and furniture, as also of reliquaries, vestments, and vases
for church services, taken from the originals preserved in the
ancient cathedrals of Vladimir, Novgorod, and Souzdal. T^e
collections have been increased by purchases made in all parts

1870.] American Art Museums. 23

of Europe and by donations, of great value. The Museum
possesses a valuable library of books upon ornamental art, a
cabinet of drawings and engravings, and collections of flowers,
plants, birds, and insects, remarkable for beauty of form or color.
This latter feature is, so far as we know, peculiar, and assuredly
very worthy of imitation in museums which aim at developing
taste in industrial art. From the nature of the country to which
it belongs, the Moscow Museum is limited in its action. Am
bulatory exhibitions, circulating libraries, and dependent in
dustrial schools are well adapted to England and Austria,
but not at all suited to such half-civilized countries as Russia.
For other reasons these features have not been adopted by
the administrators of the National Museum at Munich and
the German Museum at Nuremberg. The industrial schools at
Munich are preparatory for admission to the Munich Academy,
and, like the famous Kreling school at Nuremberg, are quite
independent of the Museum. While the Austrian Museum ac
knowledges the common origin of the fine and the industrial
arts, and thus proclaims the unity of art, it separates general
and special instruction, considering the first to be sufficient for
artisans and the public, and the second, that is, a more com
plete and higher system of training, to be necessary for those
who aim at invention. In Bavaria, on the contrary, says M.
Muntz, the aim of the industrial pupils " is rather . to invent
and create new forms than to gain inspiration from the master
pieces of the past."

The Bavarian museums are both historical ; that at Munich
illustrates the arts, manners, and customs of Bavaria, that at
Nuremberg those of all Germany. The first, which was pro
jected in 1853 by M. d'Aretin, the eminent historian and
archaeologist who devoted the last thirteen years of his life
to its formation, was to have been named the Wittelbach
Museum, but as the king desired that it should not be confined
to antiquities connected with the royal house, it was called the
National Bavarian Museum, in order more clearly to indicate
its universal character. All objects not absolutely needed for
the use of the court were removed to it from the royal castles ;
original monuments were bought up throughout the kingdom,
and where these were not to be obtained casts were taken of

24 American Art Museums.

them, that the chain of illustration might be complete. Begin
ning with Roman antiquities, such as a mosaic pavement, mile
stones, " cippi," altars and terra-cotta lamps found in Bavaria,
the visitor passes on to the Celtic and Carlovingian remains,
weapons and household articles of the bronze period, gold and
silver ornaments found in tombs, ivory caskets, fragments of
glass, and figures of saints and symbolic animals in wood and
stone. He then visits the Romanesque department, where
reliquaries, ivory caskets, crucifixes, ecclesiastical vestments,
such as the splendid Da'lmatica of the Emperor Henry II.
(formerly at Bamberg), statues and fragments from Wesso-
brunn, illuminated manuscripts, and some Byzantine paintings
of the twelfth or thirteenth century (given to the Crown Prince
Maximilian by the Patriarch of Constantinople), are collected.
In the Gothic division, which is extremely rich in all sorts of
works in stone, metal, and ivory, he will not fail to admire the
stained glass windows, upon one of which, from the monastery
of Seligenthal at Landshut, the donatrix, Elizabeth of Bavaria
(who died there " in the odor of sanctity," A. D. 1314), is
represented with Saints Andrew and John. In the upper
story he will find carved ceilings of great beauty, especially
that from the Town Hall of Augsburg, built in 1385, and
an immense collection of suits of armor, pieces of furniture,
weapons, portraits of celebrated personages, besides divers
objects of artistic and historical interest belonging to the
Renaissance epoch. Lastly, if he desire to study history in
pictorial illustrations, he can wander through the long suite of
rooms upon the first floor, where the walls are covered with
modern paintings representing all the most remarkable events
which have occurred in this small kingdom whose capital,
through the cultivated taste and enlightened connoisseurship of
the late King Louis, has now become one of the most noted
places of resort for lovers of art in Europe. At Munich, every
thing was to be done when he ascended the throne, and upon
his abdication, like another Augustus, he left a city of marble
where he had found one of brick.

Unlike Munich, Nuremberg needed no princely patron to
make it a museum of art. The builders, carvers, and artists
of the Middle Ages had fashioned the quaint old home of Al-

1870.] American Art Museums. 25

bert Diirer and Peter Vischer, and here the king's, task was to
preserve existing monuments from destruction, not to create
new ones. One more source of attraction was, however, to be
added to the already richly endowed city. At the Archaeolog
ical Congress held at Dresden in 1852, the Baron d'Aufsess
exposed his long-cherished scheme of establishing a collection
of material relating to German history, literature, and the fine
arts, from the earliest times down to the middle of the seven
teenth century, including an archaeological and artistic library,
and of rendering these treasures useful by publications, man
uals, and other means. He offered to loan his own vast
collections to the museum for a period of ten years. This
noble project was received with enthusiasm, and Nuremberg
was selected as the city in which it should be carried out.
The next year Bavaria approved the resolution, and the Diet
at Frankfort decreed that the museum should be called u Na
tional." Four years after its foundation it had become so
prosperous, through the liberal gifts of King Louis and the
kings of Bavaria and Prussia, that its directors were enabled
to purchase the noble old Carthusian convent, where its collec
tions, including those purchased from Baron d'Aufsess in 1864,
are now arranged. Here are pictures, engravings, tissues, fair
ences, goldsmiths' work, medals and seals, the most remark
able of which have been reproduced in a series of drawings,
photographs, and engravings, already 100,000 in number ;
60,000 tracings and drawings illustrate secondary classes of
art (as, for instance, all forms of the bed from Roman times to
the present day), and the history of eminent persons is followed
up through portraits, coats of arms, seals, and medals. At
present such laudable enterprises are subordinate to the pur
chase of the masterpieces of the past, which are becoming
more and more rare. The directors wisely spend their avail
able funds in this way, because they know, to borrow the words
of M. Muntz, that when America shall enter into the lists, they
will no longer have the opportunity.

This reflection is one which, as Hamlet says, "should give
us pause," at least long enough to express the hope that Amer
ica will not wait until Europe shall have gathered all the har
vest of the past into her museums. It strikes us the more,

26 American Art Museums. [July?

because we have lately met with it elsewhere even more forcibly
expressed. As, for example, in the Chronique des Arts, which
counsels France to secure all French masterpieces for her
' national and municipal museums before America, recognizing
the necessity of forming museums, shall compete for them and
increase their already enormous value. " The day cannot be
far distant," says the writer, " when the United States will de
sire to form collections, for it is impossible to admit that so
intelligent a people can long continue to ignore the fact that
the fine arts make men moral by raising them to a compre
hension of the beautiful, and that they increase the wealth of
nations by developing good taste in their artisans."

Accustomed to a central authority which has the power to
lead, decree, and foster such institutions, we cannot wonder
that Europeans are unable to comprehend our backwardness in
imitating their example. They forget that individual exertion
must here take the place of government action ; that the will
of many must be first influenced instead of the will of one, and
that when this is accomplished we have no palaces and castles
to supply us with works of art. They do not recognize that
we are called upon to solve a new problem, and to discover
some way of overcoming the obstacles which are created by
our position.

The history of many ancient and mediaeval cities governed
by democratic forms, and actively engaged in commercial pur
suits, proves that these are compatible with the utmost splen
dor of art attainment. Athens, Argos, and Samos in anti
quity, Florence, Venice, and Genoa in the Middle Ages, were
all commercial and all republican. They were led by men who
gave the impulse to popular taste and fostered its growth ;
Pericles made Athens the artistic glory of Greece, and Cosmo
de' Medici decked Florence with art's brightest jewels. Being
themselves monarchs in disguise, they formed a radiating
centre which illuminated the whole body politic in matters to
which democracy and trade are necessarily indifferent. In
avowed monarchies we find always the same cause of artistic life
or death ; namely, the presence or absence of a central direct
ing spirit, whether inspired by selfish motives, and patronizing
art to enhance the splendor of a reign, or by noble motives,

1870.] American Art Museums. 27

with that it is one of the most elevating and civilizing influ
ences which can be brought to bear upon a people. In either
case the leader must impose it upon his subjects until they
have learned to love it, an4 can no longer exist without it.
Munich would still be the insignificant and unattractive capital
of a second-rate European kingdom, had not King Louis been
filled with an enthusiastic love of art, and a consequent deter
mination to make it one of the richest centres of art upon the
Continent. While still Crown Prince of Bavaria he employed
agents to point out and obtain for him all available mas
terpieces, and thus the marbles from ^Egina, the Barberini
Faun, and many other treasures found their way to the Glyp-
tothek instead of to the British Museum. So also in Eng
land all the growth of industrial art may be traced back to
the action of Prince Albert. So also the power vested in
the Emperors of Russia and Austria, and the King of Bavaria,
has been made use of by enlightened men in their domin
ions to create the new museums of which we have spoken
in these pages.

But where are Americans to find a substitute for this appar
ently necessary centre of action ? This is a question which
we have not hitherto been called upon to answer, and which
demands our gravest consideration. We cannot hope to find
it at Washington, nor in our State governments (though these
may eventually aid us by making the study of drawing obliga
tory in the public schools), nor can we look for it in unassisted
individual action, which must be limited and comparatively
feeble. Our only hope lies in the stronger action of universi
ties and educational institutes. Harvard and Yale, by found
ing art professorships, and by aiding art projects to the extent
of their ability, may put into willing hands the lever with
which to move the American world. We look to them for aid
as we look to no other source, because we know that they can
most reasonably be expected to understand the importance of
the work which art museums and schools of design are capa
ble of accomplishing. Our hope for the success of the proposed
Museum of Art in Boston, for instance, is mainly grounded upon
the consent of its educational institutions to take an active part
in its government, and to loan it their art collections. If art

American Art Museums. [July?

is a unit, so is education ; the cause of cultivation is one, and
whether we labor for it through letters or through art, we are
equally serving the same noble end.

If European speculators upon future art collections in Amer
ica cannot fairly estimate how the absence of a central author
ity is felt when the attempt is made to found them, neither
can they sufficiently enter into our national character to know
our dislike of taking such slow, well-calculated steps as are
necessary to insure their success. The course taken at Ken
sington and at Vienna, of planting an acorn with hope that it
may grow into an oak, does not tally with our impatient desire
to realize our ideas at once in full splendor. We need art in
America, and some one immediately proposes to purchase the
Villa Albani, transport its matchless bas-reliefs from the spot
where Winckelman's fostering care united them, and turn the
Casino into an American Academy which shall at once stand
on a par with the French Academy at the Villa Medici. We
want museums, and our tendency is to spend all our money in
erecting a huge building whose empty halls will do but little to
help us towards the end we have in view. What we shall do
if we are wise is to begin by building only for the purpose of
placing collections already bought or given ; or better yet, by
hiring for this purpose some vacant rooms, where they can be
kept until we have matured our plans and found out exactly
what we want. The Kensington Museum began in " the
Brompton Boilers," and iron sheds were added to cover new
acquisitions ; so also the collections at Vienna have been for
years kept in the rooms of the Imperial " Ball Haus " awaiting
the completion of a building fitting their present importance.
So again the collections of the Nuremberg Museum were tem
porarily placed for eleven years before its directors purchased
the Carthusian convent to receive them.

All these examples teach us that our motto should be, " Fes-
tina lente." Given that we start with a few rooms full of
really good objects, — a collection of Chinese or Japanese lac
and enamels, for instance, which it would always be easy to
form in this country, — and with works of art loaned for a time
by public institutions or private persons, supplemented with as
many originals and reproductions as our funds will allow us

1870.] The Session. 29

i

to purchase, we cannot fail, if we open our doors freely by day
and in the evening to the public, to excite an ever-increasing
interest which will lead to gifts of money and works of art,
and eventually to the erection of such a building as will be an
honor and an embellishment to any city.

No man ever regretted the time spent upon a work which
when finished was pronounced perfect, and no one ever gauged
a result, whether bad or good, by the hours or the years
spent over it. The only important thing is that when done
there should be no cause for regret. Better never have museum
buildings than have bad ones, for if they are so, they will give
the lie to that clause of our programme which professes to
serve the cause of art through architecture, the oldest and
one of the noblest of arts.

CHARLES C. PERKINS.

ART. II. — THE SESSION.

To say that the government of the United States is passing
through a period of transition is one of the baldest common
places of politics. This transition, which few persons deny, is,
from a scientific point of view, an intensely interesting illustra
tion of the manner in which principles are established. The
generation which framed the American form of government
meant it to be, not only in mechanism, but in theory, a clear
and outspoken contradiction to opinions commonly accepted in
Europe. The men who made the Constitution intended to make
by its means a distinct. issue with antiquity, and they had the
most precise conception of the issue itself and of their own pur
poses in raising it. These purposes were perhaps chimerical.
The hopes- then felt were almost certainly delusive. And yet
even the persons who grant the probable failure of the scheme,
and expect the recurrence of the great problems in government
which were then thought to be solved, cannot but look with
satisfaction at the history of the Federal Constitution as the
most convincing and the most interesting experiment that has

30 The Session.

ever been made in the laboratory of political science, even if it
only demonstrates the impossibility of success through its
means.

The great object of terror and suspicion to the people of the
thirteen provinces was Power ; not merely power in the hands
of a president or a prince, of one assembly or of several, of
many citizens or of few, but power in the abstract, wherever it
existed and under whatever name it was known. " There is
and must be," said Blackstone, " in all forms of government,
however they began or by what right soever they exist, a su
preme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which
the jura summi imperil, or the rights of sovereignty, reside " ;
and Parliament is the place " where that absolute despotic
power which must in all governments reside somewhere is
intrusted by the constitution of the British kingdoms." Su
preme, irresistible authority must exist somewhere in every
government, was the European political theory, and England
solved her problem by intrusting it to a representative assem
bly to be used according to the best judgment of the nation.
America, on the other hand, asserted that the principle was not
true ; that no such supreme power need exist in a government ;
that in the American government none such should be allowed
to exist, because absolute power in any form was inconsistent
with freedom ; and that the new government should start from
the idea that the public liberties depended upon denying un
controlled authority to the political system in its parts or in
its whole.

Every one knows with what a rigid and admirable logic this
theory was worked out in framing the mechanism of the new
republic. Not only were rights reserved to the people never to
be parted with, but rights of great extent were reserved to the
States as a sacred deposit to be jealously guarded. And even
when it came to constructing the central government, the
three great depositories of power were made independent of
each other, checks on each other's assumption of authority,
separately responsible to the people, that each might be a
protection and not a danger to the public liberties. The
framers of the Constitution did not indeed presume to pre
scribe or limit the powers a nation might exercise if its exist-

1870.] The Session. 31

ence were at stake. They knew that under such an emergency
all paper limitations must yield, but they still hoped that the
lesson they had taught would sink so deep into the popular
mind as to cause a re-establishment of the system after the
emergency had passed. The hope was scarcely supported by
the experience of history, but, like M. Necker in France, they
were obliged to trust somewhat to the " virtues of the human
heart."

The two great theories of government stood face to face
during three quarters of a century. Europe still maintained
that supreme power must be trusted to every government,
democratic or not, and America still maintained that such a
principle was inconsistent with freedom. The civil war broke
out in the United States, and of course for the time obliter
ated the Constitution. Peace came, and with it came the
moment for the final settlement of this long scientific dispute.
If the constitutional system restored itself, America was right,
and the oldest problem in political science was successfully
solved.

Every one knows the strange concurrence of accidents, if
anything in social sequence can be called accident, which
seemed to prevent a fair working of the tendency to restora
tion during the four years that followed the close of actual war.
With the year 1869 a new and peculiarly favorable change
took place. Many good and true Americans then believed that
the time had come, and that the old foundation on which
American liberties had been planted would now be fully and
firmly restored. There was, in fact, a brilliant opportunity for
the new administration, not perhaps to change the ultimate
result, but to delay some decades yet the actual demonstra
tion of failure. The new President had unbounded popular
confidence. He was tied to no party. He was under no
pledges. And, above all, he had the inestimable advantage
of a military training, which, unlike a political training, is
calculated to encourage the moral distinction between right
and wrong.

No one could fail to see with amusement the mingled feel
ings of alarm and defiance with which Senators and politicians
waited the President's first move. Nor was it they alone, but

32 The Session. [July,

almost the entire public, that expected to see him at once grasp
with a firm hand the helm of government, and give the vessel
of state a steady and determined course. It was long before
the more conservative class of citizens, who had no partisan
prejudices, could convince themselves that in this respect they
had not perhaps overrated so much as misconceived the charac
ter of the President, and that they must learn to look at him in
a light entirely unlike any they had been hitherto accustomed
to surround him with. This misconception or misunderstand
ing was, however, perfectly natural, and can be no matter for
surprise when it is considered that even to the President's
oldest and most intimate associates his character is still in
some respects a riddle, and the secret of his uniform and
extraordinary success is still a matter of dispute. Indeed, it
may be doubted whether he himself, if he ever fell into the
mischievous habit of analyzing his own mind, could answer
his own questions in a manner that would satisfy his own
curiosity. Nothing could be more interesting to any person
who has been perplexed with the doubts which the Presi
dent's character never fails to raise in every one who ap
proaches him, than to have these doubts met and explained
by some competent authority; by some old associate like Gen
eral Sherman, with an active mind ever eager to grapple with
puzzles ; by some civil subordinate such as a civil subordinate
ought to be, quick at measuring influences and at unravel
ling the tangled skein of ideas which runs through the brains
of an administration. As a rule, however, the reply to every
inquiry comes in the form of confessed ignorance : " We do
not know why the President is successful ; we only know that
he succeeds."

"Without attempting to explain what is evidently so compli
cated an enigma, one may still form a partial idea of General
Grant's civil career from the facts which are now open to all
the world. It seems clear at the outset that the President's
mind rarely acts from any habit of wide generalization. As a
rule, the ideas which he executes with so much energy, appear
to come to him one by one, without close or rapid logical
sequence ; and as a person may see and calculate the effect of
a drop of acid on an organic substance, so one may sometimes

1870.] The Session. 33

almost seem to see the mechanical process by which a new idea
eats its way into the President's unconscious mind, — where its
action begins and where its force is exhausted. Hence arise
both advantages and misfortunes. This faculty for assimilation
of ideas, this nature, which the Germans would call thoroughly
objective, under ordinary circumstances, and when not used by
selfish men for corrupt purposes, gives elasticity, freedom from
inveterate prejudices, and capacity for progress. It would be
likely to produce a course of action, not perhaps strictly logical,
nor perfectly steady, nor capable of standing the sharper tests
of hostile criticism, but in the main practical, sensible, and in
intention thoroughly honest. But when used by Jay Gould
and Abel Rathbone Corbin with the skill of New York stock
brokers for illegitimate objects, the result is all the more
disastrous in proportion to the energy of execution for which
the President is so remarkable.

Most persons, however, and especially those who had formed
their ideas of the President from his Vicksburg campaign,
entertained a very different notion of his intellectual qualities.
The Vicksburg campaign has puzzled equally the enemies and
the friends of the President. General Sherman's frank expres
sion of this feeling of surprise found its way into print in the
form of a sincere tribute of admiration spoken by a man con
scious of having underrated his superior officer. The public,
on the strength of this brilliant campaign, assumed with rea
son that a general capable of planning and executing a mili
tary scheme such as Napoleon himself might have envied,
must possess an aptitude for elaboration of idea and careful
adaptation of means to ends such as would in civil administra
tion produce a large and vigorous political policy. Yet it is
quite certain that such refinement of conception was not in
General Grant's nature. No such ambition entered his head.
He neither encouraged it nor believed in its advantages. His
own idea of his duties as President was always openly and
consistently expressed, and may perhaps be best described as
that of the commander of an army in time of peace. He was
to watch over the faithful administration of the government ;
to see that the taxes were honestly collected ; that the dis
bursements were honestly made; that economy was strictly

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 3

34 The Session.

enforced; that the laws were everywhere obeyed, good and
bad alike ; and as it was the duty of every military comman
der to obey the civil authority without question, so it was the
duty of the President to follow without hesitation the wishes of
the people as expressed by Congress.

It is scarcely necessary to say that this is not the range of
duties prescribed to an American President either by the Con
stitution or by custom, although it may be that which Congress
desires and to which the system inevitably tends. More than
this, it could not be realized. The President may indeed in
one respect resemble the commander of an army in peace, but
in another and more essential sense he resembles the com
mander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a
course to steer, a port to seek; he must sooner or later be
convinced that a perpetual calm is as little to his purpose as a
perpetual hurricane, and that without headway the ship can
arrive nowhere. The President, however, assumed at the out
set that it was not his duty to steer ; that his were only duties
of discipline.

Under these circumstances, with a President who, while dis
believing in the propriety of having a general policy, must yet
inevitably be compelled to assume responsibility ; with one,
too, whose mind, if not imaginative nor highly cultivated, was
still curiously sensitive to surrounding influences, the neces
sity was all the greater that the gentlemen on whose advice
and assistance he would be compelled to lean should be calcu
lated to supplement his natural gifts. From him personally
the public had not required high civil education. Rulers have
always the right to command and appropriate the education
and the intelligence of their people. But knowledge some
where, either in himself or in his servants, is essential even to
an American President, — perhaps to him most of all rulers, —
and thus, though it was a matter of comparatively little impor
tance that the President's personal notions of civil government
were' crude, and that his ideas of political economy were those
of a feudal monarch a thousand years ago, it was of the high
est possible consequence that his advisers should be able to
supply the knowledge that he could not have been expected to
possess, and should develop the ideas which his growing expe-

1870.] The Session. 35

rience would give him. And as it was clear at the outset that
questions of finance would assume overruling importance, it
was evident that a responsibility of the most serious character
would rest on the Secretary of the Treasury.

The official importance of the Secretary of the Treasury can
hardly be over-estimated. Not only is his mere political power
in the exercise of patronage far greater than that of any other
cabinet officer, but in matters of policy almost every conceiv
able proposition of foreign or domestic interest sooner or later
involves financial considerations and requires an opinion from
a financial stand-point. Hence in the English system the head
of administration commonly occupies the post of premier lord
of the Treasury. In the American form of government the
head of the Treasury is also the post of real authority, rivalling
that of the President itself, and almost too powerful for har
mony or subordination. The Secretary's voice ought to have
more weight with the President than that of any other ad
viser. The Secretary's financial policy ought to be the one
point on which each member of the administration is united
with every other. At a time like the summer of 1869 when
old issues were passing away and a new condition of things
was at hand ; when the public was waiting to be led or mildly
kneeling to take up its master ; it was more than ever impor
tant that the President should have in the Treasury a man who
could command and compel respect.

In a former number of this Review,* in a passage sharply
criticised at the time, an opinion of Mr. Boutwell's character
was expressed, formed from a special stand-point, implying
theories at which Mr. Bout well would probably smile, and
which he would disregard as springing from an unpractical
and unprofitable mode of thought. Now that it becomes
necessary to speak of him again, and this time from a stand
point more nearly identical with his own, there is danger of
being again thought to say more than is strictly just. Un
fortunately, no review of the year could be written which, in
regard to the most important branch of the administration,
should undertake to say nothing at all.

Mr. Boutwell was not a person to make good the wants of

* October, 1869. Article, "Civil Service Reform."

36 The Session.

the President. General Grant wanted civil education, but in
return he was peculiarly open to new ideas, and had in a
marked degree the capacity to learn from any one who had the
faculty to teach. Mr. Boutwell had no faculty whatever for
teaching, and very little respect for knowledge that was not
narrowly practical. He believed in knowledge just so far as
it was convenient for him to justify his own theory that knowl
edge was a deception. .He believed in common schools, and
not in political science ; in ledgers and cash-books, but not in
Adam Smith or Mill ; as one might believe in the multiplica
tion-table, but not in Laplace or Newton. By a natural logic
he made of his disbelief in the higher branches of political
science a basis for his political practice, and thus grounding
action on ignorance he carried out his principle to its remotest
conclusions. He too, like the President, announced that he
had no policy, and even more persistently than the President
he attempted to govern on the theory that government was no
concern of his. Other persons in a similar position would
commonly have leaned either to the theorists on one side, or
to so-called practical men on the other, but Mr. Boutwell
treated both with the same indifference. He had all the theo
rists in Europe and America to choose from, but he did not
listen to their teachings. He had all the practical men in the
country at his service, but he did not follow their advice. He
had all the best members of the Legislature to depend upon,
but he did not desire their assistance. He had a costly and
elaborate machinery maintained by the country to furnish him
with any information he might require, but Mr. Boutwell never
required information. Nay, it seems from published papers
almost certain that Mr. Boutwell, sitting twice a week in con
sultation with his colleagues in the cabinet, cannot have con
trolled their measures nor even discussed his own. The Pres
ident himself at the time of his Message could hardly have
been consulted by the Secretary.

To analyze a policy which does not 'exist, — to trace the
adaptation of means to ends where no adaptation was intended,
is a mere waste of time and ingenuity. Yet there is no man
in existence, however much he may aspire to it, who can suc
ceed in absolutely obliterating all ideas from his mind, or can

1870.] The Session. 37

prevent his acts from showing some trace of intelligence. This
relation between ideas and acts, commonly known as a policy,
was distinctly visible in Mr. BoutwelPs course, although it was
visible only within an extremely limited range. Of most polit
ical leaders it might have been foretold with certainty that
they would expend their whole energy on a restoration of the
currency, or on a reduction of the taxes, confident that if these
were once settled the financial situation would be secure. Mr.
BoutwelPs passion was different. He had only a single object of
enthusiastic ambition, but this was to redeem the national debt.
To do this from day to day, — to collect more and more -mil
lions from the people, no matter by what devices ; to cut down
the expenses to their lowest point ; to accumulate the surplus
in the Treasury ; to buy with it, month by month, more and
more of the government's own debts, and thus to see the huge
mass of indebtedness slowly • dwindle and diminish in his
hands, — this was a positive, tangible, self-evident proof of suc
cess, which appealed directly to the lowest order of intelli
gence, and struck with the greatest possible force the mind of
the voting public. To this idea Mr. Boutwell sacrificed cur
rency reform, revenue reform, and every hope of relief from
taxation, and to this idea he subordinated even his own next
ambition, that of lowering the rate of interest on the debt.
Beyond this he abnegated ideas. He did nothing, said noth:
ing, heard nothing, except when necessity compelled.

Although it is no doubt true that the policy thus embraced
by Mr. Boutwell was neither broad nor deep, and certainly not
that of a great statesman, yet it is by no means impossible
that in pursuing this easy and simple course Mr. Boutwell
may have taken the most direct path to an apparently brilliant
success, such as it was his nature to desire, — a success far
better calculated for his purposes than though he had strayed
aside into the vast and comprehensive reforms, which would
have dazzled the imaginations of Turgot, of Pitt, or of Hamil
ton. But the success which is gained by so meagre and sterile
a conception is of little permanent value, even when compared
with a bold and generous failure. If a critic were called upon
to name the most unfortunate of all the financiers who have
ever controlled the resources of France, he might, from Mr.

38 The Session. [July>

Boutwell's point of view, find difficulty in discovering a more
conspicuous failure than the administration of Turgot. If he
applied the same process to British finance, he might probably
be compelled at last to fix upon no less illustrious a career
than that of William Pitt. But if he were to test his theory
by the opposite experiment of selecting from English history
the nearest approach to Mr. Boutwell's ideal of financial suc
cess, he would certainly be compelled to pass in silence over
the names of Montagu and of Walpole, of Pitt, of Peel, and of
Gladstone, in order to draw from its almost forgotten resting-
place the memory of some third-rate Chancellor of the Exche
quer, some Nicholas Yansittart, whose very name is a blank
even to the students of biographical cyclopedias. Mr. Vansit-
tart, indeed, would in most respects, except for his curious
financial knowledge, and his reverence for the financial teach
ings of his great master, Pitt, serve well as the ideal of Mr.
Boutwell. A Chancellor of the Exchequer who, coming into
office in 1812, at almost the darkest moment of England's strug
gle with the world, had remained at the head of the finances
through the war ; had met and triumphantly stood the shock of
the return from Elba, and of Waterloo ; had carried England
back to specie payments after twenty years of paper money;
had at a single operation reduced the interest on a capital of
.nearly $ 800,000,000, at that time the largest sum ever dealt
with in a mass ; and who, to crown all, had arrived at the height
of his ambition in 1823 by raising the surplus, applicable to the
reduction of debt, to the unprecedented point of $25,000,000,
in spite of the opposition of the whole body of liberal and edu
cated politicians, — a Chancellor of the Exchequer with twelve
years of such triumphs as these could scarcely be denied the
credit of supreme and unrivalled success. Yet such is the
perverseness of history, and so unreasonable is human preju
dice, that not only the contemporaries of Mr. Vansittart, al
though attached to him by his genial and good-natured man
ners, but also posterity, to which his name is so little familiar,
have combined with one accord in agreeing that as a financial
minister he was a conspicuous example of incompetence, who
for years hung like a clog on the progress of England, and
his name is now only mentioned with a smile of passing
contempt. ^

1870.] The Session. 39

But, so far as finance was concerned, Mr. Boutwell's policy
might have been poorer even than it was, and yet the vigor
of the country would have made it a success. The greatest
responsibilities of a Secretary of the Treasury are not finan
cial, and an administration framed upon the narrow basis of
mere departmental activity must be always, except under the
strongest of Presidents, an invitation to failure. The storm
iest of cabinets, the most venturesome of advisers, the boldest
of political rivals for power, are likely to produce in combina
tion a better result than that unorganized and disjointed har
mony, that dead unanimity, which springs from divided re
sponsibility. Mr. Boutwell had neither the wish nor the scope
to assume the functions or to wield the power of his office, and
instead of stamping upon the President and his administration
the impress of a strong controlling mind, he drew himself back
into a narrow corner of his own, and encouraged and set the
example of isolation at a time when the most concentrated
action was essential to the rescue of the Executive.

Even in the quietest of times and under the most despotic
chief such a departmental government is at best a doubtful
experiment, but in the summer and autumn of 1869 it was
peculiarly ill-timed. Every politician felt that the first year of
the new administration would probably fix the future character
of the government. The steady process by which power was
tending to centralization in defiance of the entire theory of the
political system ; the equally steady tendency of this power to
accumulate itself in the hands of the Legislature at the expense
of the Executive and the Judiciary ; the ever-increasing en
croachments of the Senate ; the ever-diminishing efficiency of
the House ; all the different parts and processes of the great
general movement which indicated a certain abandonment of
the original theory of the American system, and a no less cer
tain substitution of a method of government, which promised
to be both corrupt and inefficient, — all these were now either
to be fixed upon the country beyond recall, or were to be met
with a prompt and energetic resistance. To evade the contest
was to accept the revolution. In order to resist with success,
the President must have slowly built up his authority upon
every side, until the vigor and success of his administration

40 The Session. [July,

overawed the Senate, and carried away the House by the sheer
strength of popular applause. That such a result was possible
' no one can doubt who had occasion to see how much it was
dreaded by the Washington politicians of the winter and spring
of 1869, and how rapidly they resumed confidence on discover
ing that the President had no such schemes.

By the time Congress came together, in December, 1869,
the warm hopes which had illuminated the election of Novem
ber, 1868, had faded from the public mind. It was clear that
the administration was marked by no distinctive character.
No purpose of peculiar elevation, no broad policy, no com
manding dignity, indicated the beginning of a new era. The
old type of politician was no less powerful than under other
Presidents. The old type of idea was not in the least im
proved by the personal changes between 1861 and 1870. The
administration was not prepared for a contest with Congress,
and at, the last moment it was still without a purpose, without
followers, and without a head.

Under these circumstances the President's Message was sent
to the Capitol. It was studied with all the more curiosity
because it was supposed to reflect the internal condition of the
government. Nothing could well have presented a less reas
suring prospect. The want of general plan and of unity of
idea was so obvious that it was scarcely necessary to be assured
of the harmony of the administration. An administration
which did not care enough about its own opinions to quarrel
about them was naturally harmonious. The President and
the Secretary of the Treasury were discovered expressing opin
ions and offering recommendations diametrically opposed to
each other, and apparently unconscious that, under all ordinary
theories of government, it is usual that there should be a head.
Nor was this all. The absence of a strong mind in the Treas
ury was as conspicuous in what was omitted as in what was
said. Not only was the political economy, both of the Message
and of Mr. BoutwelPs Report, a subject into which the ridicule
of the foreign press cut with easy facility, to the mortification
of every friend of the government, but even where simpler
declarations, not requiring previous knowledge of principles,
would have satisfied every purpose, their absence was almost

1870.] The Session. 41

as marked as was the presence of Mr. Boutwell's famous
barrels of flour. In regard to the currency alone was the
President at the head or in advance of public opinion, and in
regard to the currency his Secretary offered him no active
support. Other reforms shared a worse fate. The reduction
of taxes was discouraged, the civil service was not noticed,
and tariff reform was distinctly opposed. Had it not been for
the good sense of the remarks on reconstruction and foreign
affairs, the President's first appearance before Congress would
have hazarded the reproach of absurdity.

The result, already a foregone conclusion, was at once
apparent when Congress took up its work. So far as the Pres
ident's initiative was concerned, the President and his Cabinet
might equally well have departed separately or together to
distant lands. Their recommendations were uniformly disre
garded. Mr. Sumner, at the head of the Senate, rode rough
shod over their reconstruction policy and utterly overthrew it,
in spite of the feeble resistance of the House. Mr. Conkling
then ousted Mr. Sumner from his saddle, and headed the Sen
ate in an attack upon the Executive as represented by Judge
Hoar, the avowed casus belli being the fact that the Attorney-
General's manners were unsatisfactory to the Senate. But
Mr. Conkling's most brilliant triumph was over the Census
bill. Here he had a threefold victory, and it would be hard
to say which of the three afforded him the keenest gratifica-*
tion. Single-handed he attacked Mr. Sumner, the House, and
the Executive, and routed them all in most disastrous confu
sion. Never was factiousness more alluring or more success
ful than under Mr. Conkling's lead. Then again Mr. Sumner
came to the front and obtained a splendid triumph over the
President in regard to San Domingo. Mr. Sherman was less
vigorous and less fortunate in regard to the currency and fund
ing measures, but Mr. Boutwell asked so little it was difficult
to do more than ignore him. And even in the House Mr.
Dawes, the official spokesman of the government, if the gov
ernment has an official spokesman, startled the entire country
by a sudden and dashing volunteer attack on the only point of
General Grant's lines on the absolute security of which he had
prided himself, — his economy, and to this day no man under-

42 The Session. [July*

stands how Mr. Dawes's foray was neutralized or evaded, or
whether Mr. Dawes was right or wrong.

The principal subjects of the Session, within the scope of the
present Review, have been reconstruction, finance, and foreign
affairs.

On the subject of reconstruction little will be here said.
The merits or demerits of the system which has been adopted
are no longer any essential element of the situation. The
resistance to these measures rested primarily on the fact that
they were in violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitu
tion as regarded the rights of States, and the justification
rested, not on a denial of the violation, but in the overruling
fact of necessity. The measures were adopted with extreme
reluctance by a majority of Congressmen ; they were approved
with equal reluctance by a majority of the people ; but they
have become law, and whatever harm may ultimately come
from them is now beyond recall, and must be left for the com
ing generation, to which the subject henceforth belongs, to
regulate according to its circumstances and judgment. At the
same time the last year has left no doubt that, so far as legal
principles are involved, the process of reconstruction has
reached its possible limits. The powers originally reserved
by the Constitution to the States are in future to be held by
"them only on good behavior, and at the sufferance of Congress.
They may at any time be suspended or assumed by Congress.
Their original basis and sanction no longer exist, and if they
offered any real protection against the assumption of supreme
and uncontrolled power by the central government, that pro
tection is at an end. How far Congress will, at any future
day, care to press its authority, or how far the States them
selves may succeed in resisting the power of Congress, are
questions which must be answered by a reference to the general
cburse of events. Something may be judged of the rate of
progress from the theory so energetically pressed during the
past season by Senator Sumner, that the New England system
of common schools is a part of the Republican form of govern
ment as understood by the framers of the Constitution, an idea
that would have seemed to the last generation as strange as

1.870.] The Session. 43

though it had been announced that the electric telegraph was
an essential article of faith in the early Christian Church.
Something also may be judged from the condition of New
York City and the evident failure of the system of self-govern
ment in great municipalities. Something more may be guessed
from the rapid progress of corruption in shaking public confi
dence in State legislatures. Finally, something may be in
ferred from the enormous development of corporate power,
requiring still greater political power to control it. But under
any circumstances the first decisive, irrevocable step towards
substituting a new form of government iii the place of that on
which American liberties have heretofore rested, has now been
taken, and by it the American people must stand.

The financial questions, if not so important as those of re
construction, had at least the advantage of greater freshness
and novelty. Reduction of taxation was the popular cry.
Reform of taxation was equally essential. Secretary Boutwell,
and with him, though less positively the President, resisted at
the outset either reduction or reform. The process of bond-
buying supplied in Mr. BoutwelPs mind the want of any more
difficult intellectual conception, while in regard to free-trade
ideas the Secretary, like all political New England, sympa
thized with the President in his cold indifference to them. The
revenue reformers had not expected such a result. They were
not prepared for the hostility they met from the administration,
and they were thus placed in a position of great difficulty and
embarrassment.

Whatever was the reason that the President leaned to high
protectionist ideas, no one was more surprised or less gratified
than many of his warmest friends when they found the fact
announced in his Message. Undoubtedly the reformers had
hoped and expected to have his sympathy in their efforts for
revenue reform, as they had hoped it in regard to civil-service
reform, and as they received it in the case of the currency ;
nor is there any reason to suppose* that the President, even on
so important a. subject as this, acted from any very firm convic
tion, or considered the matter in reference to any general class
of. political ideas. Nor can the responsibility for the Presi
dent's course be thrown upon his Secretary of the Treasury,

44 The Session. [July,

since Mr. Boutwell on this subject, as on all others, except
one, abnegated influence. The difficulty was that the adminis
tration, without any active hostility, blocked the path of the
reformers. It would consent to no absolute war upon them,
but its practical influence was more mischievous than the bit
terest warfare. To break down the huge monopolies which
the central government had created and was now engaged in
supporting, and whose corrupt influence was felt at every step,
blasting all attempts at honest legislation, seemed the first and
most pressing necessity to those who believed that a purer polit
ical and moral atmosphere was only to be found by freeing the
country from them. But to do this by mere disjointed, unor
ganized effort, without support from the administration, and in
face of a large party majority ; to do this against the sneers and
contempt of every Republican Congressman from New England,
without a single voice of open or secret encouragement ; and
at the same time to meet and overcome the virulent bitterness
of Pennsylvania and her organized body of allies ; to do it all
by means of the Republican party when the Republican party
in Congress dreaded nothing so much as the necessity of meet
ing this issue, seemed a project of hopeless temerity. Neverthe
less, there was nothing left to choose. Since the administration
refused to lead, the reformers were compelled to advance alone.
The small body of men in and out of Congress who were
determined to force the issue upon it began the winter under
every influence of discouragement. Not only had the President
abandoned them, but Congress was wholly in the hands of
their opponents, and the Committee of Ways and Means, en
tirely controlled by the protectionist influence, had prepared an
ingenious bill, calculated to reduce taxation and to check pop
ular complaint, but still more carefully constructed to maintain
and increase the protecting duties wherever special interests
had asked it. The readers of this Review probably under
stand the general argument on the subject of tariff reform
sufficiently well to need no dissertation upon principles of tax
ation. It is enough to say that the present Congress had been
considered as more thoroughly devoted to protectionist ideas
than any of its predecessors, and that about fifty Democratic
votes were all that could be classed as determined for free

1870.] The Session. 45

trade, with the exception of three or four Western Republicans.
Tariff reform, as advocated by Mr. D. A. Wells, commanded
a certain amount of sympathy, but its friends in the House
were few and timid, while the suspicion of free trade sounded
to the ears as terrible a charge as that of having worn a rebel
uniform or having been out with the Ku-klux clan. To convert
such a body of men from their early principles, by such small
means as the reformers could command, was a desperate under
taking. The friends of reform, therefore, quitting in despair the
President and his Cabmet with their stolid inertia and cold
neutrality, and Congress with its bristling hostility, turned back
to ask counsel of the great popular masses. They had worked
throughout the summer and autumn with all the energy they
possessed, and they continued to work throughout the winter,
not in the lobbies of the Capitol nor in the ante-chambers of the
departments, but directly and earnestly upon popular opinion.
As spring approached they began to resume confidence. The
little body of political leaders in Washington, whose interest
was sharpened by their anxiety to maintain, their control of
their constituencies, received from every quarter beyond the
Alleghanies, with few exceptions, assurances of popular sympa
thy and support, so vigorous and so universal, that their tone
began insensibly to change from depression to boldness, and
they already felt themselves strong enough to do without the
administration if the administration could do without them.
From every great organ of public opinion in the Western coun
try they poured out a volume of argument and appeal that no
possible popular influence could for a moment resist. Party
lines were broken under their incessant attrition. Members
of Congress began to hesitate, to consult, and to seek in
formation. The formal opening debate upon the new tariff
developed the existence of a feeling such as no one had ex
pected, and such as had rarely if ever been known even in the
days of Henry Clay. And when the bill went into committee
to be taken up in detail, it is hard to say who were more aston
ished, protectionists or reformers, to learn that in the very first
division the reformers carried the reduction on sugar by a
majority of two.

Then ensued a struggle which utterly dumbfoundered the

46 The Session. [July>

friends of the tariff, who at first refused to credit their defeat,
and insisted on considering it as an accident due to the absence
of their allies. But when the same result occurred again and
again, while the resistance to the bill became more and more
general instead of diminishing, they slowly began to compre
hend their danger. General Schenck, who made every effort
to force his measures through the House, with far more suc
cess than any other member could possibly have obtained, soon
lost his temper, having at best no very considerable supply of
temper to lose, and described his difficulties in graphic lan
guage. " There is nobody in this House," said he, " upon
either side, there is nobody anywhere that has watched the
progress of the Tariff Bill through the Committee of the Whole,
who does not know that peculiarly, and beyond perhaps the
manifestation of hostility and attack upon any other measure
in this or almost any former Congress, it has been fought inch
by inch, step by step, line by line, persistently, with heavy at
tacks and with light attacks, — and most frequently light. I
defy a denial of that." The fact was not one which the re
formers proposed to deny. Not only did they intend to resist
all increase of protective duties, but they meant to lower the
duties wherever they could. They urged their amendments to
every line and word with a persistency which astonished them
selves, and, what was still more surprising, the House in Com
mittee of the Whole supported their efforts, and drove the
Committee of Ways and Means to amend its own bill. Nor
did their success end here. The whole subject was forced
before the public attention, and the political issue for the com
ing elections was marked out beyond the possibility of evasion.
It remains to be seen what course parties will think proper to
adopt, but the experience of the winter warrants the belief
that party lines have, in this long struggle, been so rudely
shaken that the Republican leaders will do well to consider the
advantages of accepting some positive policy.

Meanwhile Mr. Boutwell yielded so far to the popular outcry
that he unwillingly accepted the necessity of reduction, if not
of reform, of the taxes, and the President showed signs of
yielding to both demands. Their acceptance of the principle
of reform, though too late to give any real aid to reformers,

1870.] The Session. 47

might perhaps have served to save a few Republican Congress
men from defeat in the autumn elections, but it was a sign of
weakness rather than of strength, and indicated a want of sta
bility which had scarcely been expected. As for Mr. Bout-
well's persistent efforts to obtain authority to fund a portion of
the debt, the subject is somewhat too technical for ordinary
readers, and is fortunately very subordinate in importance.
Whatever respect Mr. BoutweH's policy deserved, it received
extremely little, and may be dismissed without further com
ment. In regard to the currency, where reform ought prop
erly to have begun, no approach to agreement could be made.
The subject was amply discussed, both formally and infor
mally. Every method of contraction, both direct and indirect ;
every process of acting on the national greenback circulation
through the national banking currency, or on the banking cur
rency through the greenback circulation, on either separately
or on both at once ; every theory, no matter how new or how
old; every objection, no matter how frivolous, — all in turn
were argued and laid aside, because public opinion was not yet
ripe for action. As usual, nothing could be done by the gov
ernment, which invariably fails to govern. It was necessary
to go back to the people.

In the midst of this universal deadlock on every issue except
reconstruction, the Supreme Court on the 7th of February pro
nounced its decision that the Legal-Tender Act, so far as it
applied to debts contracted before its passage, exceeded the
authority of Congress, and assumed powers forbidden by the
Constitution.

To any one who places himself on the stand-point assumed
at the outset of these remarks, it is obvious that the de
cision of the Supreme Court must have appeared not only
sound in itself, but the single step which had been taken by
any department of the government since the close of the war,
towards the restoration either of a solid basis to the currency
or of a solid foundation to the republic. It was a moderate
and cautious reassertion of the fundamental principle on which
the private liberties of the American citizen had been originally
based. It was the only indication yet seen that Hamilton and
Madison might have been right in hoping that their system of

48 The Session. [July,

checks and balances would operate to restore an equilibrium
once disturbed by the exigencies of a troubled time. As such
it received universal popular acquiescence. Hardly a murmur
was raised against it by the press. Only in Congress, where
opposition might naturally have been expected, was there any
sign of hostility to a movement which indeed was threatening
to the usurped power of Congress alone, and only in the Sen
ate, which has always been, as it always must be, the furnaee
of intrigue and aggression, was it expected that there would be
any actual attack upon the Court.

The public naturally assumed that the administration would
be glad to accept and support this decision, not only because
the interests of the Executive and the Supreme Court are iden
tical, nor only because this special decision tended to check the
arrogant and domineering congressional power, which had been
felt in a manner so humiliating by the present Cabinet, but
because the decision strengthened the declared policy of the
President in regard to the currency, and was in itself a partial
withdrawal of the entire government from the f;:lse position
into which it had confessedly been forced by the exigencies of
war. Hence, although it was no matter of surprise that Sena
tors instantly declared that the decision should be reversed,"
and that no candidate favorable to the decision should be con
firmed to either of the vacant seats on the Supreme bench, yet
a very strong feeling of surprise and astonishment was per
ceptible when gentlemen supposed to be thoroughly well in
formed asserted that the President, the Secretary of the Treas
ury, and the Attorney-General were agreed in considering the
decision as an attack upon the policy of the war, a denial of
necessary powers to Congress, and a Democratic electioneer
ing trick. And the incredulity was great when authority above
any ordinary doubt further asserted, on direct information
from the White House, that neither Judge Bradley nor Judge
Strong would have been nominated to the bench, had it been
supposed that either of them favored the legal-tender decision.
These nominations, whether influenced by such a considera
tion or not, were such as to remove all doubt from Senators'
minds in regard to this particular difficulty, while at the same
time little doubt could remain in the public mind that a re-

1870.] The Session. 49

/• '

versal obtained by introducing on the bench two gentlemen
occupying the position of Messrs. Strong and Bradley would
establish beyond dispute a precedent for packing the Court
whenever it suited Congress to do so, and thus destroying for
ever the independence of the Judiciary as a co-ordinate branch
of the American government.

Judge Strong took his seat on the 14th of March. Judge
Bradley was confirmed by the Senate a week later, and sum
moned by telegraph to Washington. He took his seat on the
23d of March. Two days later, at the earliest possible mo
ment, the Attorney-General surprised the Court by moving to
take up and argue two cases formerly passed over, which
involved the principle of the legal-tender decision.

In the course of the Attorney-General's remarks he spoke
as follows : —

"This Court, at a time when by law it consisted of nine judges,
did by a majority of four to three enter its judgment, with two vacan
cies upon the bench, and it stands therefore, reducing it to its es
sence, that upon the judicial opinion of a single man, whose voice
turned the majority, that great question is adjudicated. And if (which
is a supposable case) it turned out that it was an opinion about which
even the deciding judge of the Court had entertained a different opin
ion at some other time, it would come down to the point that on the
differing opinions at different times of his life of a single man, the
whole constitutional power of Congress .... was to be subverted."

"What answer this personal attack on the Chief Justice
would have received had it been made by an Attorney-General
of Massachusetts before the Supreme bench of that State,
with Hoar, C. J., presiding, must be a mere matter of opinion,
only to be decided by an appeal to that high tribunal under
the specified conditions. He would, however, have been a rash
Attorney-General who attempted to browbeat a court so con
stituted, Nor is it a question worth discussing whether the
opinions of the Secretary of the Treasury in 1861 were the
same as those of the Chief Justice in 1870, unless the Attor
ney-General meant to impute dishonest and culpable motives
as the cause of change ; and if this were in fact the intention,
the Chief Justice might probably have been satisfied with
pointing out, not to the Attorney-General, but to the Court,

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 4

50 The Session. [July,

the passage in the Secretary's official Report of 1862, the next
expression of opinion made by him to Congress after the adop
tion of legal tender, where he took occasion distinctly to avow
his opinion that " gold and silver are the only permanent basis,
standard, and measure of values recognized by the Constitu
tion." But though these points are rather matters of taste
than of reasoning, in some other respects the assertions of the
Attorney-General went to the verge of fair dealing, especially
from an officer who was appealing to two new judges created by
himself, and asking them to overthrow existing law. Strictly
speaking, he was no doubt correct in saying that judgment was
entered while there were two vacancies on the bench, and by a
majority of four to three. Judgment was entered on the 7th
of February. But the Attorney-General must surely have been
aware of the fact, which has since been made public by the
appearance of the 8th Wallace's Reports, that the decision in
the case of Hepburn against Griswold was settled so long be
fore as November 27, 1869, and that the decision itself was
read and adopted by the Court on the 29th of January, by a
majority of five to three, at a time when the Court by law con
sisted of eight judges, and there was no vacancy on the bench.
If the actual entry was postponed another week, it was prob
ably only because the minority opinion was not yet fully pre
pared, so that the Attorney-General, by using this argument,
was in fact running extreme danger on the one hand of sub
jecting Justice Miller to the unfounded suspicion of having
purposely delayed the entry, in order to lay the Court open to
this precise attack, and, on the other hand, of subjecting him
self, in the minds of persons who were not familiar with his
absolute and unconditional honesty, to the charge of acting in
collusion with Justice Miller.

What occurred when the Court retired for consultation might
be guessed from the subsequent scene in open Court on the
llth of April, with clearness enough to leave little doubt as to
the suspicions the public, with or without reason, would cer
tainly entertain if the Attorney-General carried his purpose.
Chief Justice Chase, and Justices Nelson, Grier, and Field,
appear to have agreed in the statement that the two cases
referred to by the Attorney-General had been passed over by

1870.] The Session. 51

the Court with the understanding that they should abide the re
sult in the case of Hepburn against Griswold, and that counsel
had been so ordered. There would seem to have been no rea
sonable doubt as to the fact, and both Mr. Carlisle, counsel for
the/ appellants in these cases, and Mr. Norton, the solicitor for
the Court of Claims, from which the appeal had been taken,
subsequently informed the Court that they had both so under
stood, and had received the order as stated. The ground
taken by Justices Miller, Swayne, and Davis is not clearly
understood, but these judges must have either rested on the
fact that the order was not recorded, or they must have pleaded
want of memory. It does not appear that they actually denied
the order, and it is scarcely possible that they can have taken
such a position, since it would have been extremely embar
rassing to them to maintain it. It remained for the new judges
to decide the dispute, and they did accordingly decide that the
order had not been given. As the public might probably put
the issue, the two new judges decided that the understanding
of the Court, made long before they came upon the bench, was
exactly the reverse of what it had undoubtedly been.

The Court therefore determined, by a majority of five to four,
that the cases should be argued, and already, on the motion for
further delay, a scene was presented to the public such as had
rarely, if ever before, been offered by this dignified tribunal. It
was evident that the four dissenting judges, the late majority,
felt that they were in the position of criminals, to be tried by
their own colleagues at the order of the Executive and the
Senate, and it was equally evident that they had made up their
minds to resist the attack with all their energy. If the ad
ministration, even with all the overgrown power of Congress
behind it, imagined that the Supreme Court could quietly sub
mit to such humiliation as awaited it, the administration
was mistaken ; but if, as was naturally inferred, the govern
ment was prepared for and invited the most desperate resist
ance of the minority, there was reason for the deepest pub
lic anxiety. Unquestionably the minority must have resisted
with desperation, and unquestionably it would have been
crushed by the President and Congress. The most memorable
example in American history of partisan attack on the Judi-

52 The Session. [July?

ciary was the impeachment of a judge whose name and family
suggested an ominous precedent for a similar political outrage
at the present day. And although the time has probably passed
when impeachments were popular, the chance of the present
Chief Justice before the present Congress would even now be
a subject of speculation far too delicate for a hasty opinion.

Whether the administration as a whole would have allowed
itself t<o be drawn into such a struggle may well be doubted,
but the determined character of the Attorney- General leaves
no doubt that he would have begun nothing which he did not
feel it his duty to press to the extremest logical conclusions,
and he had at this moment the Senate behind him. The ad
ministration might have broken to pieces, but could not have
stopped a struggle pnce begun. Hence many persons began to
watch the course of events with great uneasiness, and although
little was known of the personal feelings of the contending par
ties, yet it was obvious that the Executive was pressing with
extreme severity on the Court, and the Court was already
split into two hostile camps. Even among the people this
struggle had begun to rouse deep interest. Perhaps the only
point on which all men and all parties are agreed is that the
independence of the Judiciary ought to be preserved, and it
must be remembered that the dominant political party was
now on the point of giving this cry to its antagonist. What
the result would have been on the popular verdict was not for
an instant doubted by those who had occasion to feel the force
of the rising current of opinion.

Fortunately for the Court, for the administration, and for
the country, the danger, which for a moment seemed inevi
table, was evaded. On the morning of the 20th April, the day
fixed for the hearing, the judges and the counsel went to the
Capitol ready to face the issue. It was an occasion of extraor
dinary interest, a practical struggle between the dignity of the
Court and the power of Congress, — an unequal match, in
which public sympathy could not but cluster about the four
arraigned judges. Ordinary observers could only think with
terror of the irreparable harm that would result if these
four judges, dragged into a political contest, should be held up
by popular enthusiasm as the noble objects of a miserable per-

1870.J The Session. 53

secution, while the two new justices became the mark of vio
lent popular hatred, and the Court itself, torn to pieces by
party passions, became the centre of Apolitical strife. At this
moment such a result was almost reached. There seemed to
be no hesitation on any side, either among the three dissent
ing judges, or the two new judges, or the four judges of the
old majority, and least of all in the Attorney-General, whose
mind appeared to be bent with that peculiar intensity which
is the historical or traditional ideal of New England character,
on converting, as he would say, or, as others might think, on
crushing the obnoxious Court.

All these separate actors, their internal anxieties or passions
concealed as well as might be under the calm and serious ex
terior which belongs to the presence of justice, arrived at the
Capitol only to be confronted by what had the appearance of a
stupendous practical joke. The appellants had that morning
withdrawn their appeal, and the cases were no longer before
the Court. Probably every man of the whole party breathed
freer after his first moment of surprise, and yet the effect of
the sudden change was to cover the whole proceeding with
ridicule. Even the Attorney- General, whose dignity was most
impaired by this trick of his opponents, must, after the first
impulse of annoyance, have enjoyed the humor of the situation,
and confessed that for once the wit was not all on his side.
But whether he accepted his fate with good temper or not, it was
soon evident that his whole plan of procedure was hopelessly
disarranged, and although he struggled against defeat and
pressed another motion to reopen the case of Hepburn against
Griswold, the point seemed to have been reached beyond
which none of the judges were willing to go in straining the
rules of the Court, and as neither of the four who made the
decision desired it to be reopened, the Attorney-General's
motion was without dissent refused.

Thus this great peril was, by a mere trick, happily escaped,
and the Court was saved from almost certain destruction. But
its rescue was due to no strength of its own, to no aid from
the Executive, to no mercy from either branch of Congress.
It was a momentary relief from a pressing danger, but there
was nothing to indicate that the danger had passed away, and

54 The Session.

whenever the Court was again placed under the necessity of
asserting the law as declared in the Constitution, it was little
likely to be again preserved by a trick of counsel.

If now from the confused arena of internal politics the
reader turns to the region of foreign affairs, he will find only a
repetition of the same class of phenomena, offering little evi
dence of political progress, but strongly pointing to some politi
cal change that cannot be avoided in a no distant future.

Foreign affairs, so far as they have had immediate impor
tance during the last year, may be divided under two heads.
In regard to each of these divisions the single controlling inter
est has been found in the extension of the national territory.
There is no other real point at issue than this, in the foreign
relations of the United States, whatever individuals may sup
pose, and the two heads into which this general subject of ter
ritorial enlargement divides itself are only distinct ip so far
as one embraces all possible extension to the north ; the other,
all movement towards the tropics.

Of all the departments of the government, that of foreign
affairs has been, on the whole, most steady and uniform in its
policy since the earliest days of the republic. It has acted
upon a single general principle, which has slowly developed
itself with the national progress until now it is rapidly ap
proaching its possible limits, — the steady absorption of all
the neighboring territory. The policy of Mr. Seward was
based upon this fixed idea, which, under his active direction,
assumed a development that even went somewhat too far and
too fast for the public, and, in consequence, although it was
understood that President Grant was in general sympathy
with Mr. Seward, yet the new administration came into power
under influences that amounted to a reaction.

Little need here be said in regard to the questions in dispute
with England, except that time has only made the fact more
and more clear that the only essential obstacle to a settlement
is the English occupation of Canada. The effort of Mr. Sew
ard to settle the claims by arbitration, and to leave the Cana
dian question to seek a settlement in the natural course of
events, was rejected by the Senate mainly because the Senate
meant that the first issue should be retained as an instrument

1870.] The Session. 55

to force the solution of the last. Without any comment upon
the dignity or elevation of this policy, or upon the manner and
spirit in which it has been carried out in practice, it is. enough
to say that the new administration on assuming office found
the policy already determined by the Senate, and accepted it
as a matter in regard to which the Executive was not con
sulted and had ,no voice. The entire subject may be here dis
missed with the general remark, which time may be trusted to
verify, that every separate item of American relations with
England or her colonies, large or small, — whether it was a
question of treaties, of claims, of boundaries, of neutrality, of
Fenians, or of coal and lumber, — whether treated by the Ex
ecutive, by the Senate, by the House, or by individual members
of the entire government, — under every form and every dis
guise, has been primarily and principally considered, subject to
the rules of international custom, in its separate bearing on the
subject of annexation. Thus at least some progress has been
made towards simplifying the issues, and although the Ameri
can government can scarcely say in so many words that it is
willing to settle its claims on these terms, and on these terms
alone, and although if it did say this, there is no power in the •
government upon which England, since her last year's experi
ence and the failure of the St. Thomas treaty, could rely for
a pledge that the engagement would be kept, yet at least, even
though no distinct path out of the difficulty has thus far been
discovered, it is clear in what direction the path must lie, and
that sooner or later, probably pacifically, but at any rate inevit
ably, the end will be reached by its means. This opinion is
based upon no private sources of information, on nothing that
is secret or unknown to all the world. He would be a poor
observer who could not catch the general drift of personal as
well as public influences from indications which are as public
as the press itself.

The Northern policy was, therefore, simple enough, and Mr.
Fish, who was personally not responsible for its creation, car
ried out his share of it with a tact and good temper which
gained for him and for the administration general and even
universal credit. But the issues involved on the side of the
tropics were far more difficult, and the variance of opinion was

56 The Session.

far more strongly marked. From the first moment of the new
administration the policy of active interference in the Antilles
was forced upon its attention in a manner which left no chance
of escape. The St. Thomas treaty, under which a popular
vote had already been taken and the island formally trans
ferred to an authorized agent of the United States government,
had been for some six months reposing on the table of the
Senate Committee of Foreign Relations. If the government
meant /to pursue a policy of annexation in the Antilles, it was
peculiarly bound, by every obligation of international decency
and of common self-respect, to begin with the ratification of
this treaty. Indeed, there may be a grave doubt whether the
obligation to ratify was not absolute and irrespective of condi
tions, but in any case the refusal to ratify this treaty was only
to be excused on the understanding that it implied a reversal
of the policy of annexation. Whether this excuse was ever
actually offered to the Danish government as a bar to its
remonstrances is a fact which could be ascertained only by ref
erence to the Danish government itself, nor is it a question of
real importance. The essential point is that a government
should act with self-respect and honest intentions. The refu
sal to ratify the St. Thomas treaty was a strong measure which
gravely compromised the dignity of the government and found
its only excuse in the firm conviction that any annexation to
the southward of the continent was a danger and a mistake.
Moreover, it is absurd to suppose that the Senate can have one
policy and the Executive another. For the policy that prevails
the whole government must be held responsible, and the Exec
utive cannot throw off this responsibility.

If a new tendency to check the national extension was
brought to light by this treatment of the St. Thomas treaty, it
was made still more conspicuous in regard to Cuba by the vol
untary action of the Executive. It was well known that the
President personally leaned towards interference in Cuban
affairs, and that his Secretary of War, General Rawlins, was
earnest in his support of the Cuban insurgents. Nevertheless
it was evident that the influence of Mr. Fish had succeeded in
checking this bent of the Executive, and that the Secretary
had, with his usual good sense, saved the country from a very

1870.] The Session. 57

embarrassing complication. Further, it was understood that,
in order to obviate the want of a harbor in the West Indies,
the St. Thomas treaty being practically rejected, the Bay of
Samana would be permanently leased and occupied as a naval
station. All these movements indicated that a new policy had
been adopted by the government in regard to its southern rela
tions, and that after mature deliberation it had been finally
decided that the present administration would assume as the
basis of all its future connection with the Antilles the princi
ple which was soon to find utterance in the concise formula :
" No annexation within the tropics."

Suddenly the San Domingo treaty made its appearance.
Whence it came, why it was made, what influences supported
it, are matters which no one has hitherto explained. One
point alone was clear, and this was that the San Domingo
treaty stood in flat opposition to the entire policy pursued
down to that moment by the administration towards the West
Indies, and it is as certain as anything resting on mere a priori
reasoning can be, that neither Mr. Fish nor his colleagues a$ a
body could possibly have sympathized in the proposed annexa
tion, which was contrary to all their modes of thought and to
their political education. No one would have believed them
had they asserted their approval. No one did believe in Mr.
Fish's earnestness, even though he loyally and energetically
supported the treaty. The inference was only too obvious,
and it is one which the public had a right to draw, that as
heretofore Mr. Fish and his colleagues had succeeded in
bringing the President over to their point of view in regard
to Cuba and St. Thomas, so the President had now broken
through the restraint and overruled Mr. Fish in regard to San
Domingo.

A foreign policy so unsteady as this could scarcely be ex
pected to command respect, although respect was precisely
what the Cabinet most needed to command. Whatever the
administration might choose to do, it was little likely that the
Senate would follow its changes of opinion, and it must be
allowed that for once the Senate had the strength of argument
as well as of power on its side, while the administration put
itself in a position where success or failure was almost equally

58 The Session.

disastrous. Senator Sumner again stood forward to assume
the control and direction of foreign affairs. He again wielded
the power of the Senate and declared the policy of the govern
ment. The President and Mr. Fish struggled in vain against
this omnipotent senatorial authority, although the President
went so far as td make the issue one of personal weight, and
condescended to do the work of a lobbyist almost on the very
floor of the Senate Chamber, using his personal influence to an
extent scarcely ever known in American experience, and offer
ing a curious commentary on his own theory of executive duties.
Mr. Sumner flung them both aside and issued liis orders with
almost the authority of a Roman triumvir.

What is to be the ultimate result of this contest, so far as re
gards the foreign policy, is a subject which may be left for future
annual Reviews to discuss, as the situation of affairs becomes
more clearly determined. There is room for more than a doubt
as to the possibility of checking the growth of the country by
the adoption of any arbitrary law in regard to the tropics, and
it seems most probable that the resistance now made to this
annexation of countries little fitted to enter into the duties of
American States will ultimately yield to the growing public
indifference to the States themselves. But from another point -
of view this whole affair had a still deeper significance, as show
ing an unsteadiness and a spasmodic irregularity of action in
the Executive which, when contrasted with the opposite quali
ties displayed by the Senate, indicate clearly enough that the
regular diminution of executive authority which was first
clearly marked under Andrew Johnson, has not been checked,
but on the contrary has been aggravated by the appearanpe of
some internal weakness never before known in the history
of American administrations. The success of any executive
measure must now be bought by the use of the public patron
age in influencing the action of legislators. The Executive has
yielded without a protest to this necessity which it has helped
to establish. Senators already claim special executive offices
as their private property, and their claim is conceded. A
Senator from Michigan claims a consulate in India ; a Senator
from Maine claims a consulate in England ; a Senator from
Kansas claims the mission to the Hague, and as proof of his

1870.] The Session. 59

right of property nominates the Clerk of his Committee to the
post. A Senator who desires the removal of an excellent
officer does not scruple to accuse a member of the Cabinet of
interference with his patronage if his request is denied. Sena
tors do not hesitate to insult the President by rejecting one
nomination to the Supreme Court because the candidate as
member of the Cabinet has failed to reach their own standard
of polished manners ; nor to intimate their firm intention of
rejecting any required number of others unless the candidates
are prepared to reverse, as judges of the Supreme Court, the
established constitutional law which limits the powers of Con
gress. Notwithstanding the exceptional case of San Domingo,
the Executive has practically abandoned to the Senate the
treaty-making power. The Executive has joined with Congress
in assuming the powers reserved to the States, and in attack
ing the authority of the Supreme Court, while the precedent of
the legal tender action appears to warrant the belief that Con
gress and the Executive have also established the principle that
they hold between them the power to suspend private rights,
not merely during war, but during will.

But this is not all. Not only has the whole internal fabric
of the government been violently wrenched from its original
balance until Congress has assumed authority which it was
never intended to hold, but as the country grows and the press
ure of business increases, the efficiency of the machine grows
steadily less. New powers, new duties, new responsibilities,
new burdens of every sort, are incessantly crowding upon the
government at the very moment when it finds itself unequal to
managing the limited powers it is accustomed to wield. Re
sponsibility no longer exists at Washington. There is not a
department of the Executive which does nofc say, with truth, that
it cannot deal with the questions before it because Congress
neglects legislation. If members of Congress are charged with
responsibility for the neglect, they reply that the fault is not
theirs ; that the action of Congress is wholly in the hands
of committees which constitute small, independent, executive
councils ; that some of these committees are arbitrary, some
timid ; some overpoweringly strong, some ridiculously weak ;
some factious, some corrupt. The House has little or no

60 The Session.

practical control over the course of business. The rules have
become so complicated as to throw independent members
entirely into the background. The amount of business has
become so enormous as to choke the channels provided for it.
In the Senate there is greater power, less confusion, and more
efficiency, but on the other hand there is more personal jeal
ousy and factiousness. In both Houses all trace of responsi
bility is lost, and while the Executive fumes with impatience
or resigns itself with the significant consolation that it is not
to blame, that this is the people's government and the peo
ple may accept the responsibility, the members of the lower
House are equally ready with the excuse that they are not
responsible for the action of Senators, and Senators, being
responsible to no power under Heaven except their party
organizations, which they control, are able to obtain precisely
what legislation answers their personal objects, or their indi
vidual conceptions of the public good.

Under the conditions of fifty years ago, when the United
States was a mere child among nations, and before railways
and telegraphs had concentrated the social and economical
forces of the country into a power never imagined by past gen
erations, a loose and separately responsible division of govern
ment suited the stage of national growth, and was sufficiently
strong to answer the requirements of the public. All indica
tions now point to the conclusion that this system is outgrown.
The government does not govern ; Congress is inefficient, and
shows itself more and more incompetent, as at present consti
tuted, to wield the enormous powers that are forced upon it,
while the Executive, in its full enjoyment of theoretical inde
pendence, is practically deprived of its necessary strength by
the jealousy of the Legislature. Without responsibility, direct,
incessant, and continuous, no government is practicable over
forty millions of people and an entire continent, and no respon
sibility exists at Washington. Every one who has the least
acquaintance with the process of American government knows
that the public business is not properly performed.

Meanwhile, reformers are straining every nerve to carry such
a reform in the tariff as may make the system, not indeed
good, — they cannot even hope this, — but a shade less fla-

1870.] The Session. 61

grantly absurd, less ridiculously mediaeval, less abominably
dishonest, than it now is. Perhaps, as the result of unremitted
labor extended over a period of years, they may ultimately
succeed in carrying their point. The national government
may at last be obliged to drop the unhealthy children whose
precocious birth and growth it has stimulated by drugs and
drams, and their corrupt political influence may vanish from
the Capitol. But while the whole reforming strength is labori
ously concentrated on the people, with no further object than
to obtain the physical force to contest the possession of the
national government with a single creature of the govern
ment's own creation, the government all the while continues
to call into being other creatures far more fatal to its integrity
than those which already control it. While the reformers in
Congress rejoice at their victory in carrying a small reduction
on pig-iron, or regret the omnipotence of the steel lobbyists,
they turn about in their seats and create by a single stroke of
special legislation a new Pacific railway, an imperishable cor
poration, with its own territory, an empire within a republic,
more powerful than a sovereign State, and absolutely incon
sistent with the purity of republican institutions, or with the
safety of any government, whether democratic or autocratic.,
While one monopoly is attacked two are created ; while old
and true believers in republican purity and simplicity are en
gaged with desperate earnestness in resisting a single corrup
tion, they are with their own hands stimulating the growth of
many more. Nor is the fault theirs. The people require it,
and even if the people were opposed, yet, with the prodigious
development of corporate and private wealth, resistance must
be vain.

Two points, separate and distinct to outward appearance, but
closely connected in reality, have forced themselves upon the
discussion proposed by this Review. The first has consisted
in the general evidence which tends to show that the original
basis of reserved powers on which the Constitution was framed
has yielded and is yielding to natural pressure1, and the grad
ual concession of power to the central government has already
gone so far as to leave little doubt of the conclusion that the

62 Competitive Examinations in China. [Juty?

great political problem of all ages cannot, at least in a commu
nity like that of the future America, be solved by the theory
of the American constitution. The second has rested on the
correlative evidence which points sharply to the conviction
that the system of separate responsibility realized in the
mechanism of the American government as a necessary conse
quence of its jealous restriction of substantial powers, will
inevitably yield, as its foundation has yielded, to the mere
pressure of necessity. The result is not one on which it is
pleasant to look. It is not one which the country is prepared
to accept, or will be soon in a temper to discuss. It is not one
which it will hear announced by its professional politicians,
who are not greatly accustomed to telling unpleasant truths.
Nor is it here intended to point out, or even to suggest, the prin
ciples of reform. The discussion of so large a subject is mat
ter for a lifetime, and will occupy generations. The American
statesman or philosopher who would enter upon this great
debate must make his appeal, not to the public opinion of a
day or of a nation,, however large or intelligent, but to the
minds of the few persons who, in every age and in all coun
tries, attach their chief interest to the working out of the
great problems of human society under all their varied con--
ditions.

HENRY BROOKS ADAMS.

ART. III. — COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS IN CHINA.

THE reform proposed in the organization of our civil service,
which contemplates the introduction of a system of competi
tive examinations, makes an inquiry into the experience of
other nations timely. England, France, and Prussia have each
made use of competitive examinations in some branches of
their public service. In all these states the result has been
uniform, — a conviction that such a system, so far as it can
be employed, affords the best method of ascertaining the quali
fications of candidates for government employment. But in

1870.] Competitive Examinations in 'China. . 63

these countries the experiment is of recent date and of lim
ited application. We must look farther East if we would see
the system working on a scale sufficiently large and through
a period sufficiently extended to afford us a full exhibition
of its advantages and defects.

It is in China that its merits have been tested in the most
satisfactory manner ; and if in this instance we should profit
by their experience it would not be the first lesson we have
learned from the Chinese nor the last that they are capable of
giving us. It is to them that we are indebted, among other
obligations, for the mariner's compass, for gunpowder, and
probably also for a remote suggestion of the art of printing.
These arts have been of the first importance in their bearing
on the advancement of society, — one of them having effected
a complete revolution in the character of modern warfare,
while the others have imparted a mighty impulse /to intellec
tual culture and commercial enterprise. Nor is it .too much to
affirm, that, if we should adopt the Chinese method of testing
the ability of candidates, and of selecting the best men for the
service of the state, the change it would effect in our civil
administration would be not less beneficial than those that
have been brought about by the discoveries in the arts to
which I have referred.

The bare suggestion may perhaps provoke a smile ; but does
any one smile at the idea that we might improve our polity by
studying the institutions of Egypt, Rome, or Greece ? Are,
then, the arrangements of a government that arose with the
earliest of those states, and still exists in undecaying vigor, to
be passed by as undeserving of attention ? The long duration
of the Chinese government and the vast population to which
it has served to secure a fajr measure of prosperity are phe
nomena that challenge admiration. Why should it be consid
ered derogatory to our civilization to copy an institution which
is confessedly the masterpiece in that skilful mechanism, — the
balance-wheel that regulates the working of that wonderful
machinery ?

In the arts which we have borrowed from the Chinese we
have not been servile imitators. In every case we have made
improvements that astonish the original inventors. We em-

64 - Competitive Examinations in China.

ploy movable type, apply steam and electricity to printing,
use the needle as a guide over seas which no junk would have
ventured to traverse, and construct artillery such as the invent
ors of gunpowder never dreamed of. Would it be otherwise
with a transplanted competitive system ? Should we not be
able to purge it of certain defects that adhere to it in China
and to render it productive of good results which it fails to
yield in its native climate ? I think, therefore, that I shall
serve a better purpose than the simple gratification of curios
ity if I devote a brief space to the consideration of the most
admirable institution of the Chinese empire. «

Its primary object was to provide men of ability for the ser
vice of the state, and, 'whatever else it may have failed to
accomplish, it is impossible to deny that it has fulfilled its spe
cific end, in a remarkable degree. The mandarins of China
are almost without exception the choicest specimens of the edu
cated classes. Alike in the capital and in the provinces, it is
the mandarins that take the lead in every kind of literary
enterprise. It is to them the Emperor looks to instruct as
well as to govern his people ; and it is to them that the pub
lishers look for additions to the literature of the nation, —
nine tenths of the new books being written by mandarins.
In their social meetings, their conversation abounds in clas
sical allusion ; and instead of after-dinner speeches, they are
accustomed to amuse themselves with the composition of im
promptu verses, which they throw off with incredible facility.
It is their duty to encourage the efforts of students, to preside
at the public examinations, and to visit the public schools, —
to promote, in short, by example as well as precept, the inter
ests of education. Scarcely anything is deemed a deeper dis
grace than for a magistrate to be found incompetent for this
department of his official duties. So identified, indeed, are the
mandarins with all that constitutes the intellectual life of the
Chinese people, that foreigners have come to regard them as
a favored caste, like the Brahmins of India, or as a distinct
order enjoying a monopoly of learning, like the priesthood in
Egypt.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those stately offi
cials for whom the people make way with such awe-struck

1870.] Competitive Examinations in China. 65

deference, as they pass along the street with embroidered robes
and imposing retinue, are not possessors of hereditary rank,
neither do they owe their elevation to the favor of their sover
eign, nor yet to the suffrages of their fellow-subjects. They
are self-elected, and the people regard them with the deeper
respect, because they know that they have earned their position
by intellectual effort. What can be more truly democratic
than thus to offer to all " the inspiration of a fair opportunity " ?
In this genuine democracy China stands unapproached among
the nations of the earth ; for whatever imperfections may
attach to her social organization or to her political system, it
must be acknowledged that China has devised the most effect
ual method for encouraging effort and rewarding merit. Here
at least is one country where wealth is not allowed to raise its
possessor to the seat of power ; where the will even of an em
peror cannot bestow its offices on uneducated favorites ; and
where the caprice of the multitude is not permitted to confer
the honors of the state on incompetent demagogues.

The institution that accomplishes these results is not an in
novation on the traditional policy of the empire. It runs back
in its essential features to the earliest period of recorded history.
The adherence of the Chinese to it through so many ages well
illustrates the conservative element in the national character ;
while the important changes it has undergone prove that this
people is not by any means so fettered by tradition as to be
incapable of welcoming improvements.

The germ from which it sprung was a maxim of the ancient
sages, expressed in four syllables, K'd hienjin neng-, — " Employ
the able and promote the worthy " ; and examinations were
resorted to as affording the best test of ability and worth. Of
Yushun, that model emperor of remote antiquity, who lived
about B. C. 2200, it is recorded that he examined his officers
every third year, and after three examinations either gave them
promotion or dismissed them from the service. On what sub
jects he examined them, at a time when letters were but newly
invented, and when books had as yet no existence, we are not
told ; neither are we informed whether he subjected candidates
to any test previous to appointment ; yet the mere fact of such
a periodical examination established a precedent which has con-

VOL. exi. — NO. 228. 5

66 Competitive Examinations in China.

tinued to be observed to the present day. Every third year the
government holds a great examination for the trial of candi
dates, and every fifth year makes a formal inquisition into the
record of its civil functionaries. The latter is a poor substitute
for the ordeal of public criticism to which officials are exposed
in a country enjoying a free press ; but the former, as we shall
have occasion to show, is thorough of its kind, and severely
impartial.

More than a thousand years after the above date, at the com
mencement of the Chan dynasty, B. C. 1115, the government
was accustomed to examine candidates as well -as officers ; and
this time we are not left in doubt as. to the nature of the ex
amination. The Chinese had become a cultivated people, and
we are informed that all candidates for office were required to
give proof of their acquaintance with the five arts, — music,
archery, horsemanship, writing, and arithmetic ; and to be
thoroughly versed in the rites and ceremonies of public and
social life, — an accomplishment that ranked as a sixth art.
These " six arts," expressed in the concise formula li, yo, shay,
yu, shu, su, comprehended the sum-total of a liberal education
at that period, and remind us of the trivium and quadrivium
of the mediaeval schools.

Under the dynasty of Han, after the lapse of another thou
sand years, we find the range of subjects for the civil- service
examinations largely extended. The Confucian Ethics had
become current, and a moral standard was regarded in the
selection of the competitors, — the district magistrates being
required to send up to the capital such men as had acquired a
reputation for hiao and lien, — " filial piety " and " integrity," —
the Chinese rightly considering that the faithful performance
of domestic and social duties is the best guaranty for fidelity
in public life. These hiao-lien, these " filial sons and honest
subjects," whose moral character had been sufficiently attested,
were now subjected to trial in respect to their intellectual quali
fications. The trial was twofold, — first, as to their skill in
the " six arts " already mentioned ; and, secondly, as to their
familiarity with one or more of the following subjects : the
civil law, .military affairs, agriculture, the administration of the
revenue, and the geography of the empire with special reference

1870.] Competitive Examinations in China. 67

to the state of the water communications. This was an im
mense advance on the meagre requirements of the more ancient
dynasties.

Passing over another thousand years, we come to the era of
the Tangs and the Sungs, when we find the standard of literary
attainment greatly elevated, the graduates arranged in 'three
classes, and officials in nine, — a classification which is still
retained.

Arriving at the close of the fourth millennium, under the
sway of the Mings and the Tsings of the present day, we find
the simple trials instituted by Shun expanded into a colossal
system, which may well claim to he the growth of four thou
sand years. It still exhibits the features that were prominent
in its earlier stages, — the u six arts," the u five studies," and
the " three degrees " remaining as records of its progressive de
velopment. But the " six arts " are not what they once were ;
and the admirers of antiquity complain that examinations are
sadly superficial as compared with those of the olden time,
when competitors were required to ride a race, "to shoot at a
target, and to sing songs of their own composition to the ac
companiment of their own guitars. In these degenerate days
examiners are satisfied with odes in praise of music and essays
on the archery and horsemanship of the ancients.

Scholarship is a very different thing now from what it was
in those ruder ages, when books were few, and the harp, the
bow, and the saddle divided the student's time with the oral
instructions of some famous master. Each century has added
to the weight of his burdens ; and to the " heir of all the ages "
each passing generation has bequeathed a legacy of toil.
Doomed to die among the deposits of a buried world, and
contending with millions of competitors, he can hardly hope for
success without devoting himself to a life of unremitting study.
True, he is not called upon to extend his researches beyond the
limits of his own national literature ; but that is all but infinite.
It costs him at the outset years of labor to get possession of the
key that unlocks it; for the learned language is totally dis
tinct from his vernacular dialect, and justly regarded as the
most difficult of the languages of man. Then he must commit
to memory the whole circle of the recognized classics, and

68 Competitive Examinations in China. [JUV>

make himself familiar with the best writers of every age of a
country which is no less prolific in books than in men. No
doubt his course of study is too purely literary and too exclu
sively Chinese, but it is not superficial. In a popular u Stu
dent's Guide," we lately met with a course of reading drawn
up for thirty years ! We proposed putting it into the hands of
a young American residing in China, who had asked advice
as to what he should read. " Send it," he replied, " but
don't tell my mother."

Bat it is time to take a closer view of these examinations
as they are actually conducted. The candidates for office, —
those who are acknowledged as such, in consequence of sus
taining the initial trial, — are divided into the three grades
of siu-t&ai, chi'-jin, and tsin-shi, — " Budding Geniuses," " Pro
moted Scholars," and those who are " Ready for Office." The
trials for the first are held in the chief city of each district
or hie.n, a territorial division which corresponds to our county
or to an English shire. They are conducted by a chancel
lor, whose jurisdiction extends over an entire province, con
taining, it may be, sixty or seventy such districts, each of
which he is required to visit once a year, and each of which is
provided with a resident sub-chancellor, whose duty it is to
examine the scholars in the interval, and to have them in
readiness on the chancellor's arrival.

About two thousand competitors enter the lists, ranging in
age from the precocious youth just entering his teens up to the
venerable grandsire of seventy winters. Shut up for a night
and a day, each in his narrow cell, they produce each a poem
and one or two essays on themes assigned by the chancellor,
and then return to their homes to await the bulletin announ
cing their place in the scale of merit. The chancellor, assisted
by his clerks, occupies several days in sifting the heap of manu
scripts, from which Tie picks out some twenty or more that are
distinguished by beauty of penmanship and grace of diction.
The authors of these are honored with the degree of u Budding
Genius," and are entitled to wear the decorations of the lowest
grade in the corporation of mandarins. The successful stu
dent wins no purse of gold and obtains no office, but he has
gained a prize, which he deems a sufficient compensation for

1870.] Competitive Examinations in China. 69

years of patient toil. He is the best of a hundred scholars,
exempted from liability to corporal punishment, and raised
above the vulgar herd. The social consideration to which
he is now entitled makes it a grand day for him and his
family.

Once in three years these " Budding Geniuses," these picked
men of the districts, repair to the provincial capital to engage in
competition for the second degree, — that of chu-jin, or " Pro
moted Scholar." The number of competitors amounts to ten
thousand, more or less, and of these only one in every hundred
can be admitted to the coveted degree. The trial is conducted
by special examiners sent down from Pekin ; and this exami
nation takes a wider range than the preceding. No fewer
than three sessions of nearly three days each are occupied
instead of the single day for the first degree. Composi
tions in prose and verse are required, and themes are as
signed with a special view to testing the extent of reading and
depth of scholarship of the candidates. Penmanship is left
out of the account, — each production, marked with a cipher,
being copied by an official scribe, that the examiners may have
no clew to its author and no temptation to render a biased
judgment.

The victor still receives neither office nor emolument ; but
the honor he achieves is scarcely less than that which was won
by the victors in the Olympic games. Again, he is one of a
hundred, each of whom was a picked man ; and as a result of
this second victory he goes forth an acknowledged superior
among ten thousand contending scholars. He adorns his cap
with the gilded button of a higher grade, erects a pair of lofty
flag-staffs before the gate of his family residence, and places a
tablet over his door to inform those who pass by that this
is the abode of a literary prize-man. But our " Promoted
Scholar " is not yet a mandarin, in the proper sense of the
term. The distinction already attained only stimulates his
desire for higher honors, — honors which bring at last the
solid recompense of an income.

In the spring of the following year he proceeds to Pekin to
seek the next higher degree, the attainment of which will prove
a passport to office. The contest is still with his peers, that is,

70 Competitive Examinations in China. [July,

with other " Promoted Scholars," who like himself have come up
from all the provinces of the empire. But the chances are this
time more in his favor, as the number of prizes is now tripled,
and if the gods are propitious his fortune is made. Though
ordinarily not very devout, he now shows himself peculiarly
solicitous to secure their favor. He burns incense and gives
alms. If he sees a fish floundering on the hooks, he pays its
price and restores it to its native element. He picks struggling
ants out of the rivulet made by a recent shower, distributes
moral tracts, or, better still, rescues chance bits of printed
paper from being trodden in the mire of the, streets. If his
name appears among the favored few, he not only wins him
self a place in the front ranks of the lettered, but he plants his
foot securely on the rounds of the official ladder by which, with
out the prestige of birth or the support of friends, it is possi
ble to rise to a seat in the grand council of state or a place in
the Imperial Cabinet. All this advancement presents itself in
the distant prospect, while the office upon which he imme
diately enters is one of respectability, and it may be of profit.
It is generally that of mayor or sub-mayor of a district city,
or sub-chancellor in the district examinations, — the vacant
posts being distributed by lot, and therefore impartially,-
- among those who have proved themselves to be "ready for
office."

Before the drawing of lots, however, for the post of a magis
trate among the people, our ambitious student has a chance of
winning the more distinguished honor of a place in the Impe
rial Academy. With this view, the two or three hundred sur
vivors of so many contests appear in the palace, where themes
are assigned them by the Emperor himself, and the highest
honor is paid to the pursuit of letters by the exercises being
presided over by his Majesty in person. Penmanship reap
pears as an element in determining the result, and a score or
more of those whose style is the most finished, whose scholar
ship the ripest, and whose handwriting the most elegant, are
drafted into the college of Hanlin, the " forest of pencils," a
kind of Imperial Institute, the members of which are recog
nized as standing at the head of the literary profession. These
are constituted poets and historians to the Celestial Court, or

1870.] Competitive Examinations in China. 71

deputed to act as chancellors and examiners in the several
provinces.

But the diminishing series in this ascending scale has not
yet reached its final term. The long succession of contests
culminates in the designation by the Emperor of some individ
ual whom he regards as the C/iuang-Yuen or model scholar of
the empire, — the bright consummate flower of the season.
This is not a common annual like the Senior Wranglership of
Cambridge , nor the product of a private garden like the valedic
tory orator of our American colleges. It blooms but once in
three years, and the whole empire yields but a single blossom,
— a blossom that is culled by the hand of Majesty and
esteemed among the brightest ornaments of his dominion.
Talk of academic honors such as are bestowed by Western
nations, in comparison with those which this Oriental empire
heaps on her scholar laureate ! Provinces contend for the
shining prize, and the town that gives the victor birth becomes
noted forever. Swift heralds bear the tidings of his triumph,
and the hearts of the people leap at their approach. We have
seen them enter a humble cottage, and amid the flaunting of
banners and the blare of trumpets announce to its sta,rtled
inmates that one of their relations had been crowned by the
Emperor as the laureate of the year. And so high was the
estimation in which the people held the success of their fellow-
townsman, that his wife was requested to visit the six gates of
the city, and to scatter before each a handful of rice, that the
whole population might share in the good fortune of her house
hold. A popular tale, La Bleue et La Blanche, translated from
the Chinese by M. Julien, represents a goddess as descend
ing from heaven, that she might give birth to the scholar
laureate of tLe empire.

All this has, we confess, an air of Oriental display and exag
geration. It suggests rather the dust and sweat of the great
national games of antiquity than the mental toil and intel
lectual triumphs of the modern world. But it is obvious that
a competition which excites so profoundly the interest of a
whole nation must be productive of very decided results.
That it leads to the selection of the best talents for the ser
vice of the public we have already seen ; but beyond this — its

72 Competitive Examinations in China. [July,

primary object — it exercises a profound influence upon the
education of the people and the stability of the government.
It is all, in fact, that China has to show in the way of an edu
cational system. She has no colleges or universities, — if we
except one that is yet in embryo, — and no national system of
common schools ; yet it may be confidently asserted that China
gives to learning a more effective patronage than she could
have done if each of her emperors were an Augustus and every
premier a Maecenas. She says to all her sons, " Prosecute your
studies by such means as you may be able to command,
whether in public or in private, and when you are prepared,
present yourselves in the examination hall. The government
will judge of your proficiency and reward your attainments."

Nothing can exceed the ardor which this standing offer in
fuses into the minds of all who have the remotest prospect of
sharing in the prizes. They study not merely while they have
teachers to incite them to diligence, but continue their studies
with unabated zeal long after they have left the schools ; they
study in solitude and poverty ; they study amidst the cares
of a family and the turmoil of business ; and the shining goal is
kept steadily in view until the eye grows dim. Some of the
aspirants impose on themselves the task of writing a fresh
essay every day ; and they do not hesitate to enter the lists as
often as the public examinations recur, resolved, if they fail, to
continue trying, believing that perseverance has power to com
mand success, and encouraged by the legend of the man who,
needing a sewing-needle, made one by grinding a crowbar on a
piece of granite.

We have met an old mandarin, who related with evident
pride how, on gaining the second degree, he had removed
with his whole family to Pekin, from the distant province of
Yunnon, to compete for the third ; and how at each triennial
contest he had failed, until, after more than twenty years of
patient waiting, at the seventh trial, and at the mature age of
threescore years, he bore off the coveted prize. He had worn
his honors for seven years, and was then mayor of the city of
Tientsin. In a list now on our table of ninety-nine successful
competitors for the second degree, sixteen are over forty years
of age, one sixty-two, and one eighty-three. The average age

1870.] Competitive Examinations in China. 73

of the whole number is above thirty ; and for the third degree
the average is of course proportionally higher.

So powerful are the motives addressed to them, that the
whole body of scholars who once enter the examination hall
are devoted to study as a life-long occupation. We thus have
a class of men, numbering in the aggregate many millions,
who keep their faculties bright by constant exercise, and whom
it would be difficult to parallel in any Western country for
readiness with the pen and retentiveness of memory. If these
men are not highly educated, it is the fault, not of the com
petitive system which proves its power to stimulate them to
such prodigious exertions, but of the false standard of intel
lectual merit established in China. In that country letters are
everything and science nothing. Men occupy themselves with
words rather than with things ; and the powers of acquisition
are more cultivated than those of invention.

The type of Chinese education is not that of our modern
schools ; but, when compared with the old curriculum of lan
guages and philosophy, it appears by no means contemptible.
A single paper, intended for the last day of the examination for
the second degree, may serve as a specimen. It covers five
subjects, — criticism, history, agriculture, military affairs, and
finance. There are about twenty questions on each subject,
and whilst they certainly do not deal with it in a scientific
manner, it is something in their favor to say that they are
such as cannot be answered without an extensive course of
reading in Chinese literature. One question under each of the
five heads is all that our space will allow us to introduce.

1. " How do the rival schools of Wang1 and Ching differ in
respect to the exposition of the meaning and the criticism of
the text of the Book of Changes ? "

2. " The great historian Sze-ma-ts'ien prides himself upon
having gathered up much material that was neglected by other
writers. What are the sources from which he derived his in
formation ? '

3. " From the earliest times great attention has been given
to the improvement of agriculture. Will you indicate the ar
rangements adopted for that purpose by the several dynasties?"

4. " The art of war arose under Hwangte, 4400 years ago.

74 Competitive Examinations in China.

Different dynasties have since that time adopted different regu
lations in regard to the use of militia or standing armies, the
mode of raising supplies for the army, etc. Can you state
these briefly ? "

5. " Give an account of the circulating medium under differ
ent dynasties, and state how the currency of the Sung dynasty
corresponded with our use of paper money at the present day."

In another paper, issued on a similar occasion, astronomy
takes the place of agriculture, but the questions are confined
to such allusions to the subject as are to ,be met with in the
circle of their classical literature, and afford but little scope
for the display of scientific attainments. Still, the fact that a
place is found for this class of subjects is full of hope. It in
dicates that the door, if not fully open, is at least sufficiently
ajar to admit the introduction of our Western sciences with all
their progeny of arts, a band powerful enough to lift the Chinese
out of the mists of their mediaeval scholasticism, and to bring
them into the full light of modern knowledge. If the examiners
were scientific men, and if scientific subjects were made suffi
ciently prominent in these higher examinations, millions of
aspiring students would soon become as earnest in the pursuit of
modern science as they now are in the study of their ancient
classics.* Thus reformed and renovated by the injection of
fresh blood into the old arteries, this noble institution would
rise to the dignity of a great national university, — a univer
sity not like those of Oxford or Cambridge, which train their
own graduates, but — to compare great things with small —
like the University of London, promoting the cause of learn
ing by .examining candidates and conferring degrees. The
University of London admits to its initial examination annu-

* As a sample of the practical bearing which it is possible to give to these
examination exercises we take a few questions from another paper : —

"Fire-arms began with the use of rockets in the Chan dynasty (B. C. 1100) ;
. in what book do we first meet with the word for cannon ? What is the difference
in the two classes of engines to which it is applied? (applied also to the catapult.)
Is the defence of K'aifungfu its first recorded use? Kublai Khan, it is said, ob
tained cannon of a new kind; from whom did he obtain them? The Sungs had
several varieties of small cannon; what were their advantages? When the
Mings, in the reign of Yungloh, invaded Cochin-China, they obtained a kind of
cannon called the 'weapons of the gods'; can you give an account of their
origin ? "

1870.] Competitive Examinations in China. 75

ally about 1,400 candidates, and passes one half. The gov
ernment examinations of China admit about 2,000,000 candi
dates every year, and pass only one per cent.

The political bearings of this competitive system are too im
portant to be passed over, and yet too numerous to be treated in
detail. Its incidental advantages may be comprehended under
three heads.

1. It serves the state as a safety-valve, providing a career
for those ambitious spirits which might otherwise foment dis
turbances or excite revolutions. Whilst in democratic coun
tries the ambitious flatter the people, and in monarchies
fawn on the great, in China, instead of resorting to dishon
orable acts or to political agitation, they betake themselves
to quiet study. They know that their mental calibre will be
fairly gauged, and that if they are born to rule, the competi
tive examinations will open to them a career. The competi
tive system has not, indeed, proved sufficient to employ all
the forces that tend to produce intestine commotion ; but it
is easy to perceive that without it the shocks must have been
more frequent and serious.

2. It operates as a counterpoise to the power of an abso
lute monarch. Without it the great offices would be filled
by "hereditary nobles, and the minor offices be farmed out
by thousands to imperial favorites. With it a man of tal
ents may raise himself from the humblest ranks to the dig
nity of viceroy or premier. Tsiatig siang pun wu chung, —
" The general and the prime minister are not born in of
fice," — is a line that every schoolboy is taught to repeat.
Rising from the people, the mandarins understand the feel
ings and wants of the people, though it must be confessed
that they are usually avaricious and oppressive in proportion
to the length of time it has taken them to reach their ele
vation. Still, they have the support and sympathy of the
people to a greater extent than they could have if they were
the creatures of arbitrary power. The system, therefore, in
troduces a popular element into the government, — a check
on the prerogative of the Emperor as to the appointment of
officers, and serves as a kind of constitution to his subjects,
prescribing the conditions on which they shall obtain a share
in the administration of the government.

76 Competitive Examinations in China. [July,

3. It gives the government a hold on the educated gen
try, and binds them to the support of existing institutions. It
renders the educated classes eminently conservative, because
they know that in the event of a revolution civil office would
be bestowed, not as the reward of learning, but for political
or military services. The literati, the most influential por
tion of the population, are for this reason also the most
loyal. It is their support that has upheld the reigning house,
though of a foreign race, through these long years of civil
commotion, while to the " rebels " it has been a ground of
reproach and a source of weakness that they, have had but
few literary men in their ranks.

Jn districts where the people have distinguished themselves
by zeal in the imperial cause, the only recompense they crave
is a slight addition to the numbers on the competitive prize
list. Such additions the government has made very fre
quently of late years, in consideration of money supplies. It
has also, to relieve its exhausted exchequer, put up for sale
the decorations of the literary orders, and issued patents ad
mitting contributors to the higher examinations without pass
ing through the lower grades. But though the government
thus debases the coin, it guards itself jealously against the
issue of a spurious currency. Seven years ago Peiching, first
president of the Examining Board at Pekin, was put to
death for having fraudulently conferred two or three degrees.
The fraud was limited in extent, but the damage it threat
ened was incalculable. It tended to shake the confidence of
the people in the administration of that branch of the govern
ment which constituted their only avenue to honors and office.
Even the Emperor cannot tamper with it without peril. It
is the Chinaman's ballot-box, his grand charter of rights ;
though the Emperor may lower its demands, in accordance
with the wishes of a majority, he could not set it aside with
out producing a revolution.

Such is the Chinese competitive system, and such are some
of its advantages and defects. May it not be feasible to graft
something of a similar character on our own republican institu
tions ? More congenial to the spirit of our free government, it
might be expected to yield better fruits in this country than in

1870.] Competitive Examinations in China. 77

China. In British India it works admirably. In Great Britain,
too, the diplomatic and consular services have been placed on
a competitive basis ; and something of the kind must be done
for our own foreign service if we wish our influence abroad to
be at all commensurate with our greatness and prosperity at
home. When will our government learn that a good consul
is worth more than a man-of-war, and that an able minister
is of more value than a whole fleet of iron-clads ? To secure
good consuls and able ministers we must choose them from
a body of men who have been picked and trained.

In effecting these reforms, Mr. Jenckes's bill might serve as
an entering wedge. It would secure the acknowledgment of
the principle — certainly not alarmingly revolutionary — that
places should go by merit. But it does not go far enough.
u It does not,'* he says, " touch places which are to be filled •
with the advice and consent of the Senate. It would not in
the least interfere with the scramble for office which is going
on at the other end of the Avenue, or which fills with anxious
crowds the corridors of the other wing of the Capitol. This
measure, it should be remembered, deals only with the inferior
officers, whose appointment is made by the President alone, or
by the heads of departments."

But what danger is there of infringing on the rights of the
Senate ? Is there anything that would aid the Senate so much
in giving their " advice and consent " as the knowledge that
the applicants for confirmation had proved their competence be
fore a Board of Examiners ? And would not the knowledge of
the same fact lighten the burdens of the President, and relieve
him of much of the difficulty which he now experiences in the
selection of qualified men ? Such an arrangement would not
take away the power of executive appointment, but regulate
its exercise. Nor would it, if applied to elective offices, inter
fere with the people's freedom of choice further than to insure
that the candidates should be men of suitable qualifications.
It may not be easy to prescribe rules for that popular sovereign
ty which follows only its own sweet will, but it is humiliating
to reflect that our u mandarins " are so far from being the
most intellectual class of the community.

WILLIAM A. P. MABTIN.

78 Our Currency, Past and Future.

ART. IV. — 1. Money. By CHARLES MORAN. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. 1863.

2. Principles of Currency. By EDWIN HILL. London : Long
man, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1856.

3. Principles of Currency. By BONAMY PRICE. Oxford and
London : James Parker & Co. 1869.

OF all the numerous and violent changes produced in the
United States by the war of the Rebellion, the most important
is the change in the distribution of wealth consequent upon the
creation of a great national debt. As a result of this change
fiscal and financial problems have assumed with us an im
portance never before experienced, — an importance intensi
fied by the absence of that study of such problems, which is
scarcely ever undertaken except at the demand of practical
necessity. We are thus face to face with problems of the
utmost, national importance, some of which have never yet
been solved, and others have received only solutions which are
not applicable to our situation ; while to all of them we have
as a nation heretofore been profoundly indifferent, and con
cerning their precise nature are consequently to a correspond
ing degree ignorant.

Our position is rendered more difficult even than is at first
sight apparent from the fact that all our fiscal and financial
problems have, through previous faulty legislation, become so
thoroughly interlaced and interwoven with one another that it
is utterly impossible to separate them, while at the same time
our method of practical legislation does not admit of their
being dealt with otherwise than separately, nor has as yet the
master-mind appeared capable of dealing with them in the
aggregate. So intimate is the relation between these different
problems, that every effort to furnish a practical solution of
either one of them has invariably been defeated by the influ
ence of persons or classes interested in the others. The
problem of taxation — without reference even to its methods
— cannot be practically considered without first fixing the
amount of revenue required. The amount of revenue required
depends to a large extent upon the1 ultimate disposition to be

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 79

made of the national debt, its rate of interest, the methods of its
reduction or final payment. No disposition can be made of the
debt without widely affecting the national banks, whose very
existence is based upon the debt. No change can be made in
the national banks, without interfering with the currency, and
with the currency is bound up the question of specie pay
ments, while on the latter again both taxation and the fund
ing of the debt are largely dependent. While in this view
of the case we need no longer feel surprise at the chaotic
condition of legislation on these subjects, we cannot but rec
ognize that the currency problem, which is more intimately
connected with all the other problems than they are with one
another, is really the key to the situation.

No wonder that the other problems are little understood,
when the one upo'n which all others depend for their solu
tion is that profound mystery which, ever since the creation
of political economy, has puzzled the wisest of economists, —
the currency. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that, since
the search after the philosopher's stone, no one subject has more
thoroughly occupied the minds of able thinkers than the
search after an acceptable theory of the nature of money.
No abler minds have been occupied with any science for the
last century than those which have devoted themselves to the
study of economic science. In all other branches of this
science conclusions have been reached which have been, if
not universally approved, yet widely accepted. On the subject
of money alone no two original thinkers have yet been found
to agree. And where profound thinkers fail to agree, how
can the thoughtless public be expected to form intelligent
opinions ?

Indeed, on no subject of universal interest does such utter
want of knowledge exist as on this subject of money, while
at the same time on no subject does every one express
his opinion with equal confidence. We are as a nation pecu
liarly identified with money. The vulgar European belief in
our worship of the " almighty dollar " is undoubtedly more or
less well founded. As a people we unquestionably do think
more of money than any other people of modern times. We
love the possession of money in ourselves ; we honor it in

80 Our Currency, Past and Future.

others. Our principal object in life is to make money, and for
the last ten years we have made more money, and have made
it of more different kinds than ever nation did before. We
are the largest producers of gold and silver in the world, and
have been led to believe that our Pacific States are the great
money-box -of the nineteenth century. It was, therefore, not
unnatural for us to think that, if ever people understood money,
the people of the United States understood it. .

It was this general belief, that the question is so simple and
so thoroughly understood, which until recently has deterred
many of our best thinkers from seeking to answer it ; for in the
intensely practical nature of our life we are too apt to shun
labor which promises no result, and to avoid saying what may
not be listened to. As Bastiat well said in his little pamphlet,
" Maudit Argent," " I curse money, because I feel myself in
capable of wrestling with the errors to which it has given birth,
without a long and tedious dissertation to which no one will
listen." But the extremely pressing nature of the national
demand for a settlement of the practical questions connected
with money has very materially changed the public temper
with regard to the scientific discussion of its nature, and
so great has been the reaction, that, for some time past,
scarcely any topic has excited more universal attention.
It now seems time to give the subject that thorough dis
cussion which a few years since would not have been lis
tened to.

All writers on money have assumed that, originally, all trade
consisted of barter, and that barbarous peoples exchanged one
kind of goods for another kind of goods without the use of any
money whatever, and indeed without thought or knowledge
of money ; that for a long period of time people found it per
fectly convenient to transact their business in that manner, and
got along very well without money ; but that at some time or
other they discovered the inconvenience of this method of
doing business, that then somebody invented money, and that
everybody recognized the advantages of its use, and its use
consequently became general.

This assumption is utterly unfounded, and is itself the foun
dation of many subsequent errors. In examining carefully the

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 81

historic or contemporary accounts of barbarous nations, it will
be found that, even where barter flourished, money of some
kind was almost always known, and that trade was carried on
by barter only between strangers or those whose money was
of different kinds. In fact, barter is a very complicated trade,
which presupposes an advanced state of civilization- admitting
of trade between peoples very wide apart in their natural pro
ductions, or else requiring a decided progress in the division
of labor, so as to cause individuals of the same people to be
engaged in very various occupations.

A far more natural assumption is, that trade originally con
sisted exclusively of loans. The strongest and most skilful
individual of a tribe had killed an animal larger than he
needed for his food ; he would lend a portion of it to those
less successful than himself, to be returned to him from the
proceeds of their next chase. He had made a stronger, bet
ter bow, which he would lend when not using it. He had
made larger crops and saved more, and of his savings he
would lend. We are, unfortunately, unacquainted with the
history of any people that had not advanced beyond this
stage ; but we do possess knowledge of peoples who are still
in the very next stage beyond. And of these Mr. Du Chaillu's
recent work on " Equatorial Africa " furnishes so striking an
illustration that we cannot refrain from quoting it entire : —

" Let me here give the reader an idea of African commerce. The
rivers, which are the only highways of the country, are of course the
avenues by which every species of export and import must be con
veyed from and to the interior. Now, the river banks are possessed
by different tribes. Thus, while the Mpongive held the mouth and
some miles above, they are succeeded by the Shekiani, and these again
by other tribes, to the number of almost a dozen, before the Sierra del
Cristal, or Crystal Mountains, are reached. Each of these tribes acts
as a go-between or middle-man to those next to it, and charges a
heavy percentage for this office. Thus, a piece of ivory or ebony
may belong originally to a negro in the far interior, and if he wants
to barter it 'for white man's trade,' he intrusts it to some fellow in the
next tribe nearer to the coast than his own. He, in turn, disposes of
it to the next chief or friend ; and thus ivory, or ebony, or bar-wood, or
whatever, is turned and turned, and passes through probably a dozen
hands ere it reaches the factory of the trader on the coast.

VOL. CXI. — NO. 228. 6

82 Our Currency, Past and Future.

" When the last black fellow disposes of this piece of ebony or ivory
to the white merchant or captain on the coast, he first retains a liberal
percentage of the returns, and then hands the remainder over to his
next neighbor above. He, in turn, takes a commission for his trouble,
and passes on what is left, until finally the remainder — often little
enough — is* handed over to the original owner of the ivory tusk or
ebony log."

It is very evident that this large and important trade among
the Mpongive and Shekiani negroes is carried on without bar
ter and without money, by the simple process of lending the
article until the article itself is returned, or some other ar
ticle brought in exchange. In other words, the trade of the
Mpongive and Shekiani negroes is carried on, without barter
and without money, by means of a system of trust or credit.
So entirely natural and reasonable, so entirely in harmony with
all a priori conclusions does this method of trade seem to us,
that we do not hesitate to accept it as the criginal form of trade
among barbarous peoples, entirely discarding the generally ac
cepted theory of barter. We accept the theory all the more
readily, because out of it the practice of using money develops
itself in the most natural and orderly manner, and because
it furnishes the only true explanation of money in all shapes
and under all disguises.

Only a few pages beyond the quotation just given may be
found a vivid description of the evils naturally growing out
of this u credit" system, which Mr. Du Chailiu, in the inter
est of the trade on the coast, seeks to abolish. The negro in
the far interior who first starts the ivory tusk on its voyage
down the Gaboon finds one day that he gets no return at all ;
the fellow of the tribe next below him, to whom he had lent it,
is seized by his creditors and the property taken from him ; or
he falls in with enemies and is killed, or taken prisoner and
sold to slave-traders, or his canoe is upset by the rapids or by
a startled rhinoceros, and his cargo lost. Even if the original
beginner of the trade, — the man who killed the elephant or
felled the tree, — even if he is not entirely deprived, by fraud
or violence or accident, of the proceeds of his merchandise, he
yet finds himself so often deceived, — finds so often that his
returns of u white man's goods," received in exchange for his

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 83

own, are entirely out of proportion to his just anticipations, that
he becomes at last unwilling to lend his goods, unless he can get
some reasonable security that he will receive a fair return.

Now what security can a savage offer ? His wealth consists
in his arms, his trifling household utensils, and — hts orna
ments : the beads or shells around his neck, the gold or silver
or copper rings on his arms or in his ears. These he pledges
as security for the merchandise he borrows. Like Balafrd, the
Scotch archer in Quentin Durward, type of a different savage
among more civilized nations, he bites the links off his golden
neck chain, and pledges them wherever he is in debt. The
pretty sea-shells, the cowrie of the East African, the wampum
of the North American Indian, the copper rings of the West
African, the golden and silver rings of the West Indian and of
the Mexican and Central American are all used by them as
ornaments, and as ornaments are pledged by them as security
for borrowed merchandise.

Accordingly, when the negro in the interior of Africa ac
cepts his neighbor's personal ornaments as security for the
merchandise he has lent him, it is not the ornaments which he
wants; it is "white man's trade," — powder, shot, knives,
hatchets, and the like, but he takes the beads and shells or
brass and golden rings because he knows that the original
owner will want them back, and that in order to get them
back he will bring the powder and ball and rum which he has
promised in exchange for the ivory tusk. As soon as he
brings these he receives back his ornaments, and the trade is
completed.

Far-fetched as this illustration may seem at first sight, it is
in reality the most natural that can be imagined, and is based
upon actual facts. To us it offers the most complete solution
of the problem : What is money ?

Money is a personal ornament temporarily pledged as secu
rity for merchandise borrowed.

All gold and silver have value only as ornaments. It is only
when they are temporarily perverted from their original pur
pose that they become money. Among savages we readily
recognize this truth, but we find it difficult to admit it among
ourselves. Yet it is precisely as true to-day, in our highly

84 Our Currency, Past and Future. [July,

advanced civilization, as it ever was among the Aztecs, or as it
is among the Mpongive negroes, By far the smallest portion
of the gold and silver in existence is in the shape of money.
By far the largest is in the shape of ornament. One needs only
to reflect for one moment. Every man, woman, and child in the
United States owns some trifling ornament of gold or silver.
Think of the ear-rings and finger-rings, which everybody
wears ; think of the other ornaments worn by the more weal
thy, the buttons and bracelets and breastpins, the gold and
silver watches, the gold and silver pencil-cases ; think of the
gold and silver and plated table-ware, — the thousand and one
things in every 'household that make up the nation's wealth of
silver and gold, — and it will be evident that, with us at least,
every individual owns more gold and silver in the shape of
ornament than in the shape of money. The probabilities of
the case evidently support our assertion. But we have better
authority.

Jacob, in his elaborate " Historical Inquiry into the Produc
tion and Consumption of the Precious Metals, " estimates (in
1831) " the quantity of gold and silver in actual existence [in
England], including utensils, ornaments, jewelry, trinkets, and
watches, as three or four times as great as the value of those
metals which exists in the form of money." And McCulloch
estimates the annual consumption of gold in the arts, which is
almost all used for ornaments, as sixty millions of dollars a
year, against only fifty millions of dollars used for coin. It is
notorious, likewise, that a large amount of coin is every year
melted down for use by jewellers, which would swell the propor
tion devoted to ornament, and pro tanto diminish that devoted
to coin. Besides, McCulloch considers the amount annually
absorbed by the East, amounting to over fifty millions, as an
entirely separate thing, although all authorities agree that
only a very small portion of this amount is ever converted
into coin. If we take these two last items into considera
tion, we shall probably be near the truth in assuming that
of the precious metals produced annually two thirds are con
verted into ornaments, and only one third, or perhaps less,
into coin.

We cannot but think that reflection on these figures will

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 85

place the question of money in a somewhat novel light for
most readers^ and will make our comparison of our complicated
money system with that of the Mpongive negroes seem less
startling. The fact is, that of the precious metals now in ex
istence and annually produced by far the largest proportion con
sists of, or is converted into, ornaments, and that from this
storehouse, this reservoir as it were, of ornament, a portion is
being constantly withdrawn for temporary use as security for
merchandise borrowed. Personal ornaments constitute the
great reservoir, the parent lake. Into that ever flows the
great river of supply ; from that is ever drawn the irrigating
rivulet of coin, and into that flows back the coin rivulet when
it has done its work elsewhere. When the Mpongive negro
takes off his golden anklets, he takes a drop from the great
lake of ornament, and when he pledges it with his Shekiani
neighbor, he turns it into the stream of money. When he
brings back the " white man's trade " from the coast and re
deems his pledge, he takes back the drop from the stream of
money, and replaces it in the lake of ornament. As long as
his ornament is pledged as security it is money. The moment
it ceases to be pledged as security it ceases to be money, and
again becomes ornament. The essential transaction is the
borrowing of the merchandise. So long as ornament is
pledged as security for borrowed merchandise, it is money.
So soon as the borrowed merchandise, or the equivalent agreed
upon, is returned, the money, become ornament again, ceases
to exist.

Money exists only as a security for borrowed merchandise.

Return once more to the Mpongive negro. When he accepts
his neighbor's personal ornaments for the merchandise he has
lent him, it is not the ornaments which he wants. What he
does want is " white man's trade." He knows the original
owner will bring the " white man's trade," in order to get his
ornaments back ; but he also knows that if the first neighbor
fails to redeem his pledge, the very pledge will procure him
from some other neighbor the articles which he desires, for the
reason that all men are continually striving to possess them
selves of an increasing supply of personal ornaments. In this
manner the brass or gold ring pledged in his hands as security

86 Our Currency, Past and Future. [July,

for one negro's debt becomes a means of collecting that debt
from anybody else, enables him to borrow from any one else
the merchandise for which the original owner first pledged it.
It thus makes no difference who it was that originally pledged
the gold ring for the merchandise ; the holder of the pledge
knows that on that pledge he can borrow the same merchan
dise from any one else, and every owner of merchandise will
lend his goods against that pledge, without inquiring who origi
nally owned it. In this manner every one's desire to acquire
personal ornaments induces every one to accept them as secu
rity for the loan of every kind of goods ; in other words, money
is everywhere accepted as security for borrowed goods, be
cause it is immediately convertible into personal ornament, if
no longer required as security.

. But whoever may have first pledged the ring, in whoseso
ever hands the ring may be, it never is anything else but
the security for the first original lot of merchandise bor
rowed. The original borrower of the ivory tusk is the origi
nal owner of the ring. When he returns the ivory tusk or its
equivalent, the ring reverts to him. As it ma^es no difference
to the original owner of the tusk who gives him " the white
man's trade " in exchange for his tusk or in exchange for the
trader's ring, so it makes no difference to the trader from
whom he gets back his ring, so long as he gets it. So long as
the trader holds the tusk his ring is money in somebody else's
hands. So soon as he returns the tusk, or its equivalent, some
one returns him his ring, or another like it, to wear as orna
ment ; no matter through how many hands the ivory tusk
may pass, there is only that one tusk borrowed against that
one ring ; no matter how many ivory tusks may have been
borrowed, only one ring was pledged for each ; no matter how
many rings there may be pledged, each one was pledged for
one tusk only ; no matter through how many hands each ring
may pass, there is only one tusk pledged for each one ring.
At this stage of civilization the money in existence is precisely
equal to the total value of all the merchandise at that moment
borrowed.

So far we have spoken of money only as " ornament "
pledged. It is very easy to understand how these ornaments

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 87

gradually assume the shape -of " coin." Rings of brass or
silver or gold of unequal size and weight are occasionally
marked by the owner as weighing so many pounds or ounces,
in order to establish their comparative value as ornaments.
When once thus marked they become more desirable for use as
security than other rings, and hence certain rings get grad
ually and insensibly set apart for purposes of trade, and are
no longer generally used as ornament. When once a certain
number of these rings is thus set apart, it is found more con
venient some day to have them all of regular size and weight,
and some rich owner smelts them down, and recasts them of
equal size. Again, it is found that a flat, round piece of gold
is more suitable than the hollow ring, and then some are recast
in that shape. Again, some petty chieftain stamps his mark
upon the pieces, to show to all men that each one is of a cer
tain weight, and thus by slow, successive, almost inappreciable
steps, gold bracelets and anklets develop into pillar dollars and
double eagles, which pass current over half the globe, which
everybody now calls coin, which nobody ever looks upon as or
nament, but which everybody regards as something mysterious,
incomprehensible, and of unknown origin.

But this slight change of the anklet and bracelet into pillar
dollars and double eagles, of ornament into coin, does not
change the essential nature of the thing in the least degree.
Coin in no respect differs from uncoined money, except
that it is not in precisely the best shape for use as orna
ment. Coin is precious metal, in a shape slightly more val
uable for use as money, slightly less valuable for use as
ornament. But, with this trifling difference, coin is in every
respect precisely the same thing as the money we have hereto
fore spoken of.

Coin is a personal ornament, temporarily pledged as security
for merchandise borrowed.

Coin exists only as a security for borrowed merchandise.

In a certain stage of civilization the coin in existence is
precise/?/ equal to the total value of the merchandise at that
moment borrowed.

We assume that all trade consists originally in the loan of
property or merchandise. We know that among certain bar-

88 Our Currency, Past and Future.

barous peoples trade does consist simply in the loan of prop
erty or merchandise. We see these barbarous peoples carry
ing on a trade of considerable importance by precisely that
method, by lending merchandise without acknowledgment,
without security. We see these same peoples emerging into a
somewhat higher sphere of development, still carrying on
their trade by lending their merchandise, but now demanding
an acknowledgment, a security, and giving as their security
personal ornaments, which we see in the course of time grad
ually develop into coined money. In what essential aspect
does the trade of these peoples differ from the trade of our
European forefathers of the Middle Ages? In none what
ever. The trade of Northern Europe five centuries ago was
carried on almost exactly as here described. Merchandise
was borrowed and coin given as security, and trade was
limited to the limited amount of existing coin which could
be given as security. Up to, and for many years after, the
time of the discovery of America, the increase of wealth among
European nations was far more rapid than the increase in
the supply of precious metals. Gold, silver, diamonds, and
other precious things cannot be produced to order. The
quantity produced depends very largely upon the accidental
discovery of the hidden sources of supply, and for centuries
scarcely any addition was made to the stock of gold and silver
at the world's disposal. At the same time that the wealth of
Europe rapidly increased without any corresponding increase
in the supply of the precious metals, the existing supply was,
in ever-increasing proportions, absorbed for ornament by the
wealthy. The celebrated Raymond Fugger could show to his
liege lord, the Duke of Augsburg, " a little turret filled with
chains and trinkets and jewelry, and strange coins and pieces
of gold as large as heads, which he himself said were worth
more than a million florins." On the other hand, the entire
village of Volknatshofen with all its inhabitants was sold for
only two hundred florins. So extraordinary was then the dis
proportion between the amount of gold and silver used as
ornament and that in use as coin !

This condition of the coin supply was a source of extreme
difficulty in the prosecution- of trade, the desire to trade, to

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 89

borrow merchandise, being far in excess of the supply of
precious metals required as security for the merchandise so
borrowed. It was in this deficient supply of the precious
metals that paper money, in all its forms, had its origin.*

The increasing wealth led to an ever-increasing desire, an
ever-increasing necessity of trade. There was a constantly
increasing supply of surplus products, which the producers
were anxious to exchange for the surplus products of other
peoples and other climates. It was this growing desire to find
new markets for products that, more than any other single in
ducement, led to the great geographical discoveries of that
age. But those discoveries and the trading out of which
they grew, were hampered, delayed, and diminished by the
extremely limited supply of precious metals which the extrav
agant desire for ornament had left for the uses of commerce.
There absolutely was not coin enough to carry on even ordi
nary trade, still less to carry on the unusual trade which grew
out of the new opening of entire continents. Either the trade
must be abandoned, or the owners of merchandise must accept
other security for the loan of their goods than coin. First, as
a rare exception, for slight amounts, to men of the most un
bounded credit, and afterwards, occasionally for larger sums,
and to men of good standing, owners of goods were willing to
lend them without requiring' coin security. A simple written
acknowledgment from the borrower that he was indebted for
goods to the amount of the coin security which he would other
wise have given, was then accepted as sufficient security in
place of the coin. And this acknowledgment was the first
beginning of paper money. Whatever form paper money after
wards assumed, in whatever disguises it appears, it never, as
will soon appear, is or can be anything else but what we have
just described it, — a written acknowledgment given as security
for merchandise borrowed.

To the thoughtful reader who has followed us so far it must

f * The theory of money here enunciated furnishes at the same time the only
explanation possible of the cause of price, a subject on which no political econo
mist has, as yet, reached satisfactory conclusions. The price of every article is
the amount of precious metal that a person is willing to give for the article in
preference to holding the same amount of precious metal as ornament

90 Our Currency , Past and Future. [July?

now be plain why this long introduction hns been necessary.
It is only by establishing clearly the nature of money that we
can arrive at a clear understanding of the nature of paper
money, or currency.

Money is a personal ornament temporarily pledged as security
for merchandise borrowed.

Paper money is a written acknowledgment given as security
for merchandise borrowed.

The general idea of paper money is apt to become confused
by the belief that it has some necessary connection with bank
ing. The connection of banks with paper money is entirely
accidental, and has nothing whatever to do with the nature of
paper money itself. When a borrower of merchandise found
that his own written acknowledgment would not be accepted
as security therefor, he procured, for a consideration, the
guaranty of some other wealthier person to his written ac
knowledgment. This practice of guaranteeing other persons'
written acknowledgments gradually grew into a regular busi
ness for wealthy individuals, principally bankers, or incorpo
rated companies, and instead of guaranteeing other persons'
acknowledgments, the banks gradually adopted the system of
lending to these other persons their own (the banks') acknowl
edgments. So that the paper money issued by a bank in no
essential respect differs from the original paper money, but
is still a written acknowledgment given as security for mer
chandise borrowed.

If these views of the nature of money, of coin and of paper
money, are correct, there are certain conclusions to be derived
from them, which, if rightly deduced, must have the force of
economic laws, and be at the same time of the utmost impor
tance in their practical application.

I. As no coin can exist except as security for borrowed mer
chandise (since the precious metals, when not used as coin, are
immediately converted back into ornament) ; as no paper money
can exist except as a substitute for coin, in other words, as a
security for borrowed merchandise ; as no bank can issue paper
money except as a substitute for the paper money of individuals,
in other words, as a security for borrowed merchandise, — it
follows that the amount of paper money required by a nation is

1870.] Our Currency ) Past and Future. 91

measured solely and exclusively by the amount of merchandise
borrowed for which the lender of the merchandise may choose to
exact paper money as security. In other words, the supply of
acknowledgments for borrowed merchandise will always be
equal to the merchandise borrowed, unless, by law or other
wise, people are prohibited from giving acknowledgments.
The essential fact always is the borrowing of the merchandise.
This alone is trade ; by this alone is progress possible. The
merchandise, the plough, the seed-corn that lies idle in the
New York warehouse is dead and useless ; but when lent to
the Western farmer it becomes a waving field of grain. The
timber, lying idle on the farm, is dead and useless, but when
lent to the ship-builder becomes a noble vessel, that carries the
grain where it is exchanged for tea and coffee and spices and
salt. The essential fact, the inevitable fact, which always
remains, is the borrowing of the merchandise. The giving
an acknowledgment therefor is but an incident, a condition.
But if that incident is not permitted to develop itself, if
that condition is prevented from being fulfilled, the essential
fact itself is undone. To prohibit the giving of an acknowl
edgment for merchandise borrowed is to prohibit the borrow
ing itself. To prevent the issuing of paper money is to pre
vent trade.

The prevention, of course, is not absolute ; for trade is itself
so entirely absolute a necessity that it cannot be prevented.
Means are still found to trade, but they are inconvenient sub
stitutes. Practically, the deficient supply of paper money com
pels merchants to do a large amount of business by means of
what is commonly called "credit"; that is, by lending their
merchandise without any security whatever, virtually returning
to the absurd and barbarous practices of the Mpongive and
Shekiani negroes on the Gaboon. If it were not for the absurd
restrictions on the issue of paper money, there would be no
need whatever for this injurious, hazardous, wasteful, demoral
izing system of commercial credits.

II. The amount of paper money required by a nation is con
stantly fluctuating, and fluctuates precisely in inverse ratio to
the fluctuations in the two principal causes which are gen
erally supposed to regulate it. The amount of paper money

92 Our Currency, Past and Future.

required depends — in this country especially — mainly upon
the crops. Contrary to the general belief, good crops call for
less money than bad crops, because bad crops make high prices,
and high prices swell the amounts, in dollars and cents, of
the daily business transactions of the country ; good crops
make low prices, small nominal transactions, and less paper
money.

Next to the crops, — leaving aside wars, pestilence, etc. —
the most powerful cause in influencing the amount of paper
money required is the amount of the precious metals in use
as coin. A large amount of trade is still done everywhere for
coin. The more coin there is in existence or in use (which is
practically always the same thing), the less paper money is
required to be substituted for it. The less coin there is in
existence or in use, the more paper money is required to be
substituted for it. Nothing could show more clearly than
this the utter fallacy of the theory, that the issues of paper
money must or can be regulated by the amount of coin re
serve held by banks, over which they have no control.

Very little attention has as yet been paid to the extraordi
nary changes produced by the conversion of coin into ornament,
or the corresponding increased consumption of bullion for orna
ment and diminished supply thus left for coinage. Only very
imperfect statistics on this subject are in existence, but they
are so extraordinary in their teachings, that it is scarcely too
much to say that the great money panics of the last sixty
years have been, if not actually produced, certainly largely
influenced, by the amount of the precious metals converted
into ornament. We have already given the authority of Jacob
and McCulloch in support of the assertion that by far the
larger portion of the precious metals exists in the shape of
ornament ; we can now adduce the English revenue returns to
show the nature of the fluctuations in the annual additions to
the stock of ornament. These returns are, in the nature of
things, highly imperfect, but are too striking to be disregarded.
They show, in the first place, that throughout the Napoleonic
wars the annual consumption of gold and silver for ornament
steadily increased, owing undoubtedly to the great wealth ac
cumulated by army contractors, etc., increasing nearly sixty

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 93

per cent from 1800 to 1810, and falling off again after the
peace. The years from 1815 to 1825 show no material change,
but in 1824 and 1825 England was visited by the great Mexican
and South American mining excitement, by which many fools
and rogues grew suddenly rich, or at least thought they did,
and the consumption of gold and silver rose over sixty per cent
above what it had been in 1820, and to nearly double that of
1800. It must be remembered that during this time the total
gold and silver production of the world was very small. In
December, 1825, occurred the great " December panic," prob
ably the severest England has ever known, during which
nothing but the accidental discovery of a box of unused one-
pound notes saved the Bank of England from total collapse.
From that year the consumption steadily declined, until in
1831 it was less than one half that of 1825, and had fallen
below even that of 1800. From 1831 to 1836 a steady rise
again took place, until in the latter year the consumption had
risen over fifty per cent above that of 1831, and in 1837 the
financial world was once more convulsed. From that year to
1843 is another period of steady decline, the latter year falling
almost as low as 1831. Then follows another rise to 1846, show
ing an increase of nearly thirty per cent, followed by the great
crisis of 1847, and a decline in the gold consumption of 1848 far
below that even of 1800.* These figures show conclusively that
the supply of gold of which banks can obtain control — apart
even from the annual production — is influenced by causes ut
terly beyond their reach and beyond the reach of legislation.
The object of paper money is to neutralize these causes, and to
supply the place of coin withdrawn, not to be withdrawn with it,
nor to intensify the public need by taking away the substitute at
the very time that the real thing is being taken away. In this
view it is impossible to imagine a greater folly than to attempt to
regulate the supply of paper money by the supply of coin. The
supply of paper money can be regulated solely and exclusively
by the wants of trade. If legislation will refrain from inter
fering, no one will issue one dollar of paper money that is not
wanted, because no one will give an acknowledgment of bor
rowed merchandise unless he has actually borrowed it.

* There are no later figures accessible.

94 Our Currency, Past and Future.

III. There should be no legal ^restriction on, the amount of
paper money issued. — The practical objections to an unlimited
paper currency are only two. One, the doubtful safety of the
notes, will be considered further on ; the other, their supposed
influence on prices, is a delusion so often refuted that it seems
unnecessary to discuss it at great length. If our view of the
nature of paper money is correct, — that it is not, and never
can be, anything but an acknowledgment of merchandise bor
rowed, which borrowing of merchandise will and does proceed
in spite of every difficulty and hindrance, so that the refusal of
the permission to issue paper money is simply a denial of the
right to give an acknowledgment for the merchandise bor
rowed, — it is utterly impossible to conceive how restoring the
right to give that acknowledgment can even remotely affect
the price of the merchandise. All the unlimited issues of
paper money that the world has yet seen have been made in
times of war and revolution, when property was being rapidly
destroyed and wasted, when property was being taken by force,
not borrowed, and when the possible doubt of the return of
the property taken or borrowed rapidly grew into a certainty
that it could not possibly be returned. Such issues of paper
money have been accompanied by, and have even caused, great
and violent fluctuations in the prices of merchandise. But
though qrdinar.ly called paper money, these issues were in no
true sense of the word paper money ; the property which they
acknowledged was not borrowed, it was taken by force, either
actually, by levy, or more insidiously, by making the notes
legal tender. It is evident that any advance in price result
ing from such issues of so-called paper money has no applica
tion to real paper money, which is, of course, only given as an
acknowledgment of merchandise borrowed ivith the consent of
the lender. Until owners of merchandise lend their merchan
dise merely for the sake of lending it, and borrowers borrow
merely for the sake of borrowing, it is impossible to conceive
how the permission to acknowledge the borrowing can lead to
one single additional act of borrowing. And if the permission
to issue paper money cannot increase the number or amount
of transactions, how can it possibly increase the price of the
merchandise ?

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 95

IV. A paper money redeemable in coin is nonsense, is an
impossibility. — As all the precious metals in existence are con
stantly in active demand for ornament, and as all the coin in
existence is constantly in active use in trade (otherwise it
would immediately be converted back into ornament, a process
which always takes place largely, for example, during a suspen
sion of specie payments) ; and as all the coin in use is sufficient
only to carry on the very smallest part of the trade of a country,
and as paper money had to be created to take the place of coin
that did not exist, where, in the name of logic, is the coin to
come from to redeem the paper money ? It should not need a
reference to facts to prove that paper money cannot be, as it is
called, redeemed. Paper money, though nominally reading,
" I promise to pay," etc., dollars and cents, is nevertheless, if
we have rightly described it, no promise to pay money at all.
Its real meaning is, I owe this man as much merchandise as
so many gold dollars and cents will buy. To demand the gold
dollars is virtually a perversion of the contract, sanctioned by
law and enforced by ignorance and selfish greed. But the
facts show more clearly than anything else that paper money
cannot be redeemed. There is not in the world gold enough
to redeem the paper money, even if the whole of -the gold were
not at all times wanted for other and better purposes. As long
as no one wants to redeem paper money it can always be
redeemed. As soon as any one wants to redeem paper money,
redemption becomes either absolutely impossible or else is
accomplished only at the expense of universal injustice and
national misery. The history of all the great banks that the
world has known shows that as soon as redemption in coin is
demanded it becomes impossible. Paper money redeemable
in coin is one of the delusions of the past, like the squaring of
the circle or the philosopher's stone. The sooner it is aban
doned the better for all peoples.

V. There is no such thing' as redeeming paper money. Pa
per money is cancelled, not redeemed. — The Western mer
chant who comes to New York in the spring to buy ploughs
and harnesses to sell to Western farmers knows that his indi
vidual acknowledgment will not be accepted by the New York
manufacturers' agent as security. He goes to the bank of his

96 Our Currency, Past and Future.

town, and there procures, for a consideration, and against
security, the acknowledgments of that bank for the amount
that he expects to buy in New York. The acknowledgments
of the bank are acceptable to the New York dealer, and he sells
the ploughs. So far it is clear that the New-Yorker holds
the acknowledgments of the Western bank for the ploughs sold
or loaned. Practically the New-Yorker does not retain those
acknowledgments ; he pays them into his own bank, or buys
other ploughs with them, or spends them for his living. But
wherever the acknowledgments (the Western bank-notes) go,
they always are and remain simply the acknowledgments for the
ploughs borrowed. Suppose, for simplicity's sake, the New-
Yorker did retain those identical bank-bills in his safe, or in
his bank (as he really does at all times retain some bank-
bills) ; in the summer the farmers who bought the ploughs
send in to the Western merchant their wheat; he in turn
sends it to the New-Yorker, who thereupon hands him back
his bank-notes, his acknowledgments for the ploughs; the
Westerner returns the notes to his bank, and takes out the
security he had left for them. Now, what becomes of those
notes, those acknowledgments for ploughs borrowed in New
York? They have virtually ceased to exist. The acknowl
edgment of an obligation has no existence the moment the
obligation itself is complied with. The ploughs, or their equiv
alents, have been returned to the original lender, the transac
tion is closed, the acknowledgment has no meaning, is virtu
ally cancelled. The notes themselves, it is true, the pieces of
paper, are not destroyed. They lie safe in the vaults of the
Western bank, where they are no more money than the anklets
of the Mpongive trader on the Gaboon. They are to all in
tents and purposes cancelled ; they become notes again only
when issued again as acknowledgments of some fresh trans
action.

This is really the true nature of the course which a bank
note takes, though in practice it is less simple. In practice
the New-Yorker uses the notes to pay the manufacturer from
whom he bought the ploughs, or to buy a new stock ; the man
ufacturer pays it to the lumber-dealer and to the workmen he
employs, and so on, until it gets into the hands of the grain-

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 97

dealer, who in due time takes it to the West and pays it
to the farmer, who hands it over to the Western merchant,
who finally pays it back into the bank. In the ordinary course
of trade bank-notes are never redeemed in coin, but redeem
themselves, as it were, by the transactions of trade, and are
cancelled.

VI. Redemption is required only to settle balances and to
test the solvency of the issuers. — If the New York seller of the
ploughs, or the bank with whom he deposited the Western
notes, had felt doubtful about the security of these acknowl
edgments, they would have sent them to the Western bank,
and demanded their redemption; not Bother wise, because as
long as the Western merchant's engagement remains unful
filled, as long as he has not sent the grain of the West to the
East in actual payment of his ploughs, the notes are required
at the East to represent that engagement, and they are more
desirable for the time than any other property, provided there
is no doubt of their safety. But should a doubt as to the latter
arise, they would then be sent for u redemption." Supposing,
then, the Western bank said, " I gave these notes in place of
the notes or acknowledgments of the man to whom you sold
your ploughs ; if you do not wish my acknowledgments, take
his " ; of course this would not suit the New York banker. His
answer would be, " I need something that will be acceptable
everywhere as an acknowledgment ; the Western merchant's
acknowledgment may be good enough, but no one will take it
from me in payment of debts " ; and of course he would be
right. The only reason for which redemption can be desired
is fear for safety. The only redemption which can be required
is redemption with some other acknowledgment more safe than
that of the issuer. We have already seen that redemption in
coin is an impossibility. What other redemption is possible ?
Evidently only that which, in a very imperfect, half-developed
form, exists now: redemption in securities of the United States.

VII. The only redemption practicable is redemption in United
States securities. — Virtually, this redemption already exists.
The notes of National Banks are secured by a deposit in the
Treasury Department of a corresponding amount of United
States Bonds, which are sold for the benefit of the note-holders

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 7

98 Our Currency, Past and Future. [Juty>

in case of the failure of the bank. But between the bill-holder
and this redemption in bonds intervenes a cumbrous and sense
less redemption in something else. The National Bank Act
was really one of the first steps toward the emancipation of the
world from the barbarous specie redemption. But it was only
an unconscious step in that direction, for it sought to perpetu
ate the very evil which it is destined ultimately to cure. It
provided that the notes of the banks should be redeemable in
greenbacks, repeating precisely the exploded folly of coin re
demption, first furnishing a substitute to take the place of the
insufficient original, and then demanding that the insufficient
original shall be made still more insufficient by being kept on
hand to redeem the substitute ! If this intermediate redemp
tion were removed, the national bank-notes would be far more
nearly a true currency than they are now. If the national
banks could at any time redeem their bonds from the Treasury
by presenting a corresponding amount of any national bank
notes, the notes of the national bank would approach more
nearly to a perfect paper money than any that has ever before
existed.

VIII. Redemption is prevented by making the bank currency
free. — We have seen that when the Western merchant sends
his grain to the New York plough-dealer, and brings back the
notes of the Western bank, these notes are virtually cancelled.
But the notes themselves, the pieces pf paper, are not de
stroyed. They lie in the vaults of the Western bank. Now
it is precisely as they Lie there that they do all the mischief that
paper money is ever capable of accomplishing. While the New
York plough-dealer held those notes in his safe, the Western
merchant was paying the Western bank interest on them. As
soon as he no longer absolutely requires them, he immediately
returns them to the bank, in order to stop the interest he is
paying. He receives back from the bank the security which he
had given and his own acknowledgment which accompanied
the security, and then destroys his own acknowledgment, which,
like a paid note, has no longer any meaning. He destroys his
acknowledgment, because its use cost him interest. The bank
does not destroy or cancel its acknowledgments. Why ? Be
cause it receives them from the government for nothing ! If
the bank had to pay for its notes the same, or nearly the same

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 99

interest as the merchant does, it would immediately cancel
them as soon as they ceased to earn more interest than they
cost. But as the bank gets the notes for nothing, everything
it earns with them is clear gain. While the notes lie in its
vaults, they earn nothing. The temptation is irresistible to
make them earn something. Every trick, scheme, and device
is resorted to " to keep the notes out," that is, to induce some
body to enter into some transaction which will cause him to
require the acknowledgment or notes of the bank in place of
his own. Now, as by the foolish limitation of the law only
certain amounts of notes can be issued, and as this amount is
never sufficient to perform all the transactions which take place
at busy seasons of the year, and as many transactions are thus
rendered difficult and unprofitable at those times, owing to the
impossibility of procuring the necessary acknowledgments for
them, many persons who do not understand the nature of
money and its origin think that those transactions which were
unprofitable when " money was scarce " will become profitable
when " money is easy," and are frequently, nay, constantly,
tempted to enter into wild schemes and speculations, and all
sorts of absurd combinations, as soon as they find it possible
to procure the acknowledgments which they could not obtain
when they were more urgently needed for the legitimate
business of the country. This would, in itself, be a compara
tively light evil. But in its consequences it is a grave one.
These acknowledgments, once lent by the banks to specula
tive customers, can scarcely ever be recovered in time when
they are wanted by the merchant to buy his ploughs. In this
way the legitimate business of the country is deprived of even
the limited amount of paper money permitted by law, when it
most needs it, solely because that paper money, costing the
bank nothing, is not cancelled, as it should have been, the mo
ment its real duty has been performed, and as it would have been
had it not been obtained by the bank free of cost. If paper
money could at all times be obtained in sufficient quanti
ties to enable trade to carry on its transactions by means of
paper money, that is, to give paper acknowledgments for all
merchandise borrowed, there never would be any temptation to
enter into any transaction merely on account of the ease with

100

which the money could be obtained, and thus one of the great
est evils anticipated from an unlimited issue would, on the con
trary, be actually corrected by it. If the banks did not get
their currency for nothing they would not be tempted to lend
it for fictitious schemes that ultimately involve everybody in
loss, and deprive legitimate trade of its necessary instruments.
If the banks, like the merchant, had to pay interest for the
paper money which the government issues to them, they would
themselves at all times be only too anxious to redeem it the
moment they could not lend it at a better rate of interest than
that which they pay the government for it. It is thus simply
the fact that the banks obtain the currency for nothing, which
at the very same time induces reckless speculation and violent
fluctuations in the rate of interest, and prevents the notes from
being redeemable when not required.

Paper money, or true currency, is an acknowledgment of in
debtedness for merchandise borrowed. There should be no
limit to every one's right to borrow as much merchandise as he
pleases, and to give acknowledgments therefor. If his own ac
knowledgments are not acceptable as security, there should be
no limit to the right of everybody else to give acknowledgments
for him. If this is the business of banks, there should be no limit
to their right to issue such acknowledgments, such paper money.

Redemption of paper money in some way is necessary for
the settlement of balances, and as a test of the solvency of the
issuers. Redemption in coin is impossible. The only redemp
tion possible is a redemption in United States bonds, which
must be simple, direct, accessible to all, and self-acting. t •'

Self-acting redemption is obtainable only by making it the
interest of the issuer to redeem. It can become his interest to
do so only when the currency is a source of expense to him
self, — when the issuer has himself to pay interest for it.

Self-acting redemption is an absolute cure for all speculation
and reckless enterprise based upon cheap money, the same as
an unlimited supply is an absolute cure for high rates of inter
est and currency panics.

If the entire United States debt were funded into a four per
cent coin bond, there would be in round numbers two thousand
millions of four per cent coin bonds in existence. Suppose,

1870.] Our Currency, Past and Future. 101

then, it were settled by law, that every individual or corpora
tion could, on application to any sub-treasurer of the United
States, obtain all the greenbacks that he desired, in lots of ten
thousand dollars, in exchange for these United States four per
cent coin bonds, — receiving the par value of the bonds and
the interest accrued at the time of depositing them, — and that
every individual or corporation could in the same way receive
any amount of United States four per cent coin bonds that he
desired, against the deposit of greenbacks, paying for them the
par value of the bonds and the interest accrued at the time of
receiving them. Should we not then have a currency as nearly
perfect as it is possible to make it, according to the views just
given of what currency really is ?

Such a currency would be practically unlimited ; for as soon as
money came to be worth more than four per cent in coin, every
owner of bonds could obtain all the money he wanted at four per
cent coin interest, with the certainty of getting back his bonds at
par whenever he wanted them. Such a currency would be self-
redeeming, for so soon as money should cease to be worth more
than four per cent in coin the holders of the currency would
immediately exchange it for bonds, with the certainty of getting
back their currency at any moment they might want it.

Such a currency would materially reduce the interest charge
upon the public debt. The very condition necessary to make
it self-redeeming — that it should be. costly to the owner —
would constitute a source of large national revenue without
creating fresh taxes of any kind. For, as long as the bonds
were deposited with the Treasury as security for greenbacks,
they would not, of course, bring the owner any income, — he
would derive his income from the lending of the greenbacks,
— and the Treasury would save the interest during the whole
of this time. Nor would this gain to the Treasury involve a
loss to any one. It simply causes the Treasury — or really
the people — to derive the benefit of a saving which hereto-
ore was entirely lost to the country by the idle hoarding and
enforced uselessness of large amounts of capital, held for the
delusive purposes of redemption, or unemployed from want of
the necessary " money " facilities.

Such a currency, we believe, is the currency of the future.

JAS. B. HODGSEJN.

102 Jjuther and German Freedom.

ART. V. — LUTHER, AND THE EARLY GERMAN STRUGGLES FOR

FREEDOM.

SOME months ago, much astonishment was created in Ger
many by a decree of the King of Prussia, issued from that
saintly place, Baden-Baden, ordaining a commemoration of
the anniversary of Luther's birthday by making it a " day of
special prayer." The reason for such a commemoration was
not very obvious. The wording of the decree only alluded
in vague terms to the " great movements which at the pres
ent time agitate the religious life of nations and individuals,
and which are pressing forward to a serious decision."
Some thought they could detect in these words an allusion
to the (Ecumenical Council, which was then on the point
of assembling. Others objected to this that it was scarcely
likely that official notice would be thus taken by a Protes
tant government of the solemn farce which was to be en
acted at Rome. To add to the mystery, a Berlin paper,
influential at court, distinctly declared that this was not a
time when Protestants ought to urge their differences with
the Roman Church, but that both should combine against the
common enemy.

The public were thus left in the dark as to the real meaning
of King William's decree. An opportunity has, however, been
given for defining more precisely, according to the results of
modern inquiry, the position occupied by Luther in that gigan
tic struggle which is known as " The Reformation," about
the original aim and scope of which so many misunderstand
ings prevail. . The popular view of it is, that it was an exclu
sively religious movement, and to many the names of Luther
and the German Reformation have merely a theological sig
nificance. As this, however, is a mistake, than which it
would be impossible to commit a greater, I purpose, in this
article, to point out the wider range wkich the German move
ment of the sixteenth century had. In doing so I shall be
obliged, for the better understanding of it, to treat of some
previous popular movements which aimed at a great national
transformation.

1870.] Luther and German Freedom. 103

In considering what is usually called the German Reforma
tion Epoch, we must remember, in the first place, that it was,
properly speaking, a time of national revolution in a three
fold sense, — political, social, and religious. In Europe a cus
tom long prevailed, though it is now visibly on the decline,
of regarding the French Revolution as the starting-point of
modern popular history. The principles of that Revolution of
'89 and '92 no doubt agitate the European world to this day ;
but it was preceded by the American Revolution, with its noble
declaration of the rights of man, whilst the English had carried
out a glorious revolution in the seventeenth century. Many,
however, are not aware that the English Revolution was pre
ceded by a German Revolution, — or rather, by two successive
movements of a revolutionary character in the fourteenth and
sixteenth centuries. I allude to the Eidgenossen rising and
the so-called Bauern krieg, or " War of the Peasants," which
was involved in the general Reformation movement. As typi
cal names, I may mention those of Stauffacher and Winkelried ;
of Konrad Besserer ; of Hutten and Sickingen ; of Luther, Me-
lancthon, and Zwingli ; of Wendel Hipler, Thomas Miinzer,
and Florian Geyer.

A word on the early German constitution will not be out
of place here. In its earlier days, the German Empire was
undoubtedly an indivisible Union ; not a mere confederacy of
sovereign states, but a real Union. It had provincial divis
ions, with the principle of autonomy very largely and irregu
larly developed in their component parts ; but the principle of
imperial unity was laid down clearly. A German king (or
kaiser) stood at the head of a number of governors, or counts
of the shire, who were removable at will. He himself was
not a ruler by the law of succession, not a monarch by
" right divine " ; but he obtained his position by election, and
could be removed by judicial trial. In accordance with the
social condition of the time, political power was mainly vested
in the aristocracy, though a substratum of ancient republican
liberties was yet visible here and there. The king, or kaiser,
consequently might be looked upon as the crowned foreman of
the aristocracy, which he, on his part, was bound by the Con
stitution to hold in check.

104 Luther and (German 'Freedom.

The arrangement was not a very philosophical one, but in a
rough way it served, for a while, to maintain national union,
and to protect a few popular liberties. The German king, or
kaiser, being a ruler by contract, had to swear fidelity to the
laws of the land before entering upon his office. If he broke
the Constitution, the Estates of the Realm had the right to op
pose him by force of arms, and to bring him before a court of
justice. Even the penalty of death could be inflicted upon him,
but only after he had been deposed from his office. This is
stated in unmistakable terms in the ancient codes of law, the
" Sachsen spiegel " and the "- Schwabenspiegel." Thus in the
text of the latter we find: "Dem Kunige mac nieman an den
lip gesprechen, im werde dar riche e wider teilet mit der fiirsten
urteile" This provision is the more remarkable, because in
our earliest German law the penalty of death did not exist for
any misdeed, except in the case of a prince or duke who had
committed a crime against the rights of the Commonwealth.
That was the compromise which the Germans made between
two contending principles of criminal jurisprudence.

The German King or Emperor then did not hold his sceptre
" by the grace of God." If I may make a comparison which,
like all comparisons, limps a little, I should say that Germany
at first was a Commonwealth, with a rudimentary substratum
of republican liberties, with aristocratic powers superposed, and
with a crowned President at the head, — the latter elected for
life, but deposable, by his peers, for misdemeanors. It was,
as I have said, a somewhat unphilosophical Constitution ; but
there are, even now, constitutions glorying in a labyrinth of
checks and counter -checks, and people living under them
who are so accustomed to the oddity of such systems that
they consider them perfect, and strive to extend them to
other lands.

The central authority of the German Empire, then, was the
Konig, or Kaiser, as he Was called, after he had been consecrated
at Rome. The centrifugal force was found in the " princes," *
or provincial governors, who constantly aspired to sovereignty,
and endeavored to set up particular dynasties, though this idea
was at first utterly repugnant to the German mind. It was

* Fiirsten; literally, "first," — overseers, prefects : not hereditary sovereigns.

1870.] ; Jjuiher and German Freedom. 105

only by a gradual usurpation of power, chiefly accomplished
by acts of treachery in the hour of common danger, that the
" princes " succeeded first in undermining, and then virtually
in overthrowing, the central authority. Such is the rise and
origin of all the ruling houses of Germany. Such was the
significance of the contest between the Ghibellines and the
Guelphs. When a kaiser, in his ambition, went to gather
laurels in sunny southern climes, the provincial governors or
dukes of the Empire made use of the difficulties into which he
not infrequently fell to extort from him the grant of sovereign
attributes> which afterwards were used against national sover
eignty itself.

The Imperial power thus fell into decay. As a means of
resisting the process of disintegration, some of the German
(monarch s made feeble efforts to convert the elective German
Empire into an hereditary one. Thus, Henry VI., in the twelfth
century, offered to the various dukes a right of succession in their
own government ; in exchange, he demanded an Imperial right
of succession for his own offspring. The plan failed. Many
dukes said that they already practically possessed what was
offered to them. The Pope was against it, because he wanted
to keep a footing in Germany through the priestly element
in the Electorates. Lastly, the cities looked coldly upon the
scheme, because the republican spirit was coming up strongly
among them. The struggle thereafter lay between the cities,
which aimed at a reconstruction of Germany in the republican
sense, and the ducal families, that strove to annihilate at once
imperial power and civic freedom. Here I come to the first
great revolutionary movement, which arose out of a League
of Towns, and is known under the name of the Eidgenos-
sen, or men banded together by oath for the overthrow of
tyranny.

As early as the beginning of the thirteenth century we find
a remarkable agitation going on in many German towns. Until
then, their government had been mainly vested in patrician
families, who were generally prevented by imperial charter
from taking part in trade and commerce, being held equal to
the Ritter class, or nobility. ' This state of things kept down
the handicraftsmen, or middle and working classes, in the

106 Luther and -German Freedom. [July?

matter of political privileges ; but it allowed them to obtain
importance through industry, and in time they demanded a
Reform. The Geschlechter, or patrician families, looked, how
ever, with such disfavor upon that plebeian craving, that at
Brunswick, at Magdeburg, and in many other places, they re
peatedly had the masters of the trade-guilds decapitated or
burnt, — this being the conservative method in those days of
supporting respectability against popular claims. " The Re
spectability " — die Ehrbarkeit — was in fact the dist'nct tech
nical term for the noble government of those, patricians.

In the long run, however, the patricians had to submit to
see the suffrage enlarged, — " degraded/' as we have heard it
styled by the Tories in- England during the late Reform agita
tion. In not a few instances, in the course of the fourteenth
century, the middle and plebeian classes of Germany obtained
the control of the town constitutions by regular insurrection,
and established a government which gave them equality before
the law. It would be interesting to have the history of all
those early town revolutions fully written. But perhaps we
must wait for that until the Germany of our days has worked
her institutions into greater sympathy with the principle which
was the mainspring of those early aspirations.

Generally the victory of the plebeians over the patricians
had the effect of bringing about an enlargement of a town,
and the extension of its walls. Owing to the widening of the
basis of suffrage, more men became interested in the defence
of the country, and they took part in it heartily. The sturdy
burghers were now all trained in the use of arms. Their
guilds were arranged with a view to military defence, and
their towns were built with a strategic purpose. When one
looks about him in those ancient cities there rises before one's
vision the picture of a time when industrious citizens, hard
pressed by rapacious knights, had to think out a system, not
only of city walls, but, in case of the worst, also of street
defence. This condemned them to a rather confined life,
as described in Goethe's Faust, when the pent-up citizens
issue forth " from the cramping narrowness of streets," out
into the fragrant country, with its brooks and meadows and
mountain air. With them handicraft and agriculture went

1870.] Luther and (Herman ^Freedom. 107

often together. Nor was the sense of artistic beauty undevel
oped among them. I need not speak here of Nuremberg,
Augsburg, Regensburg, Strasburg, Cologne ; of the towering
domes reared there, and the encouragement given to great
masters in architecture and painting ; of the combined civic
spirit and artistic inclinations visible in the guild and trade
halls, as well as in private dwellings. Nor need I describe
how, in the place of the minnesanger, or chivalrous poets of
love, a school of civic meisters"nger arose, whose lyre was
somewhat more harshly tuned, indeed, but who yet proved
that Poetry had a hold upon their hearts. It was an age in
which the pursuit of wealth was made subservient to higher
aims. And however much we may be tempted to look down
upon that bygone generation of men, after centuries of ad
vancing civilization they may still serve us in some ways as an
example.

Between the citizens of those towns and the ducal families
the contest had at last to be fought out. The latter sapped
national union at its basis. The former, battling for popular
freedom, seemed destined to restore it under a new garb. A
general League of Cities presented itself as a practical means
for obtaining that desirable end.

The first League, or Eidg-enossenschaft as it called itself, of
which we find a trace in ancient records, was formed between
the towns of Mayence, Worms, Spires, Frankfort, and several
others. It soon spread to Cologne and Aachen in the north,
to Colmar, Basle, and Zurich in the south, which were then all
German towns. The League kept up a strong establishment
of civic militia, both foot and horse, and a considerable array
of war-ships on the Rhine and the Moselle. Gradually, as it
grew, it enlarged its field of political and social reconstruction.
Whereas they occupied themselves formerly only with town
interests, the citizens now began to promote the emancipation
of the peasantry from serfdom. That serfs were received into
the freedom of the towns was the standing complaint of the
nobles, — an " underground railway," if I may use such an
anachronism, being even then established in some cases by
venturesome burghers for the benefit of the white slave. .

Even in religious matters the free towns were often imbued

108 Luther and German Freedom.

with the same spirit which later we see bursting out in the
Reformation. On this point, too, much misconception pre
vails. The general notion is, that " you cannot expect to
meet with the Reformation spirit in the epoch of the Cru
sades." Yet the very chronicles of the Abbot of Ursperg —
who as a priest is surely a witness whom we need not suspect —
declare in so many words that, under Konrad III., the Crusad
ers were laughed at everywhere, as they marched through the
different towns of Germany, nearly the whole German people
(omnis pene populus teutonicus) believing them possessed by
an unheard-of folly {quasi inaudita stultilia delirantes.) It
was at that time also that the fables of Reynard the Fox and
of Isegrim — those biting satires against kingcraft, aristocracy,
and priesthood — began to influence powerfully the popular
mind. In the opinion of Gervinus the various works of the
" Reynard " kind paved the way for the Reformation ; and
when we remember that many of them proceeded from the
pens of monks, we may conclude that the Romish Church had
not a few clever enemies within its own precincts. Again, the
violent anti-Popish poems of Walther von der Vogelweide, and
the similar passages in the Freidank, all show that the Reforma
tion tendency was pretty well spread throughout all classes of
Germany fully three hundred years before Hutten and Luther.
Had there been an emperor willing to use these strong anti
clerical forces, he might have achieved a success for the na
tion and for himself; but even free-thinking emperors, like
Frederick II., were afraid of wounding the priestly element
too deeply. In every respect, therefore, the towns remained
the sole representatives of the new spirit.

Now when the popular party, by a series of class insurrec
tions, had gained the upper hand in a great number of cities,
the moment was at hand for a final uprising of the1 United
Eidgenossen along the Rhine and the Danube, as well as in
the Alpine districts, which to-day are called Switzerland, and
which alone have preserved the Eidgenossen name, because to
them the fortune of battle was more favorable than to other
parts of the fatherland. The Eidgenossen^ however, did not
form the only republican force then in existence in Germany.
Whilst their influence spread in the west and the south, the

1870.] Luther and German Freedom. 109

Hansa, another league of free cities, grew up in the north.
Its tendency, however ^ was of a less pronounced democratic
character. The great traders — the Kaufherren — held sway
in it ; and their government' partook largely of the patrician
character. Still, in its basis, the Hansa was republican, and
its influence had a wide range. In its best period that League
extended along the shores of the German Ocean and the
Baltic ; the easternmost associate of the Hanseates being Nov
gorod, then a free Russian town, governed by the Liibeck law.
The Hansa, in those days, constituted the great naval power of
the north, and German admirals swept the sea with their squad
rons. They fought the Scandinavian powers, and occasion
ally even disposed of a crown. It was not, however, exclusively
a maritime league. It included inland towns even in Central
Qermany and along the Rhine ; for the highway of trade from
India to the north lay, in those days, through Germany, and
this trade formed a great link between the industrial south and
the trading north.

The Eidgenossen and the Hansa might have wrought a
great transformation of Germany. To that end their efforts
indeed tended ; but whilst the Eidgenossen of Upper Aleman-
nia were triumphant in the ever-memorable battles of Mor-
garten, Sempach, and Nafels, the fortune of war, after some
successes, turned against the other members of that League.
It was a nobleman, made a traitor by a bribe of one thousand
florins, who brought about the loss of the battle of Doffingen.
That battle proved a turning-point in German history. It was,
if I may say so, the Hastings of mediaeval German Democracy.

" Had the citizens," says Wirth, " obtained the victory also
there, the Swiss Constitution would have been spread over all
Southern Germany ; and later, it would equally have extended
over all the lower countries through the action of the Han-
seatic League. As it was, civic freedom fell ; the last obsta
cles to unlimited princely sovereignty were removed ; and,
together with Liberty, Union vanished. This was a terrible
national misfortune." Again he says : " The defeat of the
citizen warriors at Dcffingen was decisive in this sense, that
Germany now entered upon the road of becoming- a medley of
monarchies claiming separate existence Our wretched

110 Luther and German Freedom. [Juty?

condition at home, the loss of our power abroad, sprang from
this source. The genius of the Fatherland covered its face in
sorrow when the body of Konrad Besserer (the heroic burgo
master of Ulm) was enshrouded in the banner of freedom.
The Republican movement succeeded only in what now is Swit
zerland. Separation from Germany the Swiss did not, at first,
intend, and they remained true to the national bond as long as
possible. Their final withdrawal from all connection with the
General Empire was not settled until 1648.

I now come to the second great revolutionary movement of
Germany, which is known as the " Reformation " and the
" War of the Peasants."

Some, as I have said, take an exclusively theological view
of the Reformation ; but there is a larger and more truthful
view, according to which the Reformation movement was
originally a very complex one, proceeding from tendencies in
both Church and State towards religious, political, and social
progress, — the two latter elements even predominating at
one time under cover of the former. In the end, the polit
ical and social Reformation, which was contemporary with,
and at first largely involved in, the movement of religious
emancipation, miscarried, and the Church Reformation alone
triumphed. It is nevertheless true that the two or three
movements, as will presently be shown, cannot be separated
from each other with justice. The very writings of Luther
are full of this threefold character of the Reformation. No
wonder that, under the late King of Prussia, an extract from
Luther's works was actually seized by the police authorities,
and its circulation prohibited.

There may be distinguished, in the Reformation, a re
ligious, a humanistic, a national or patriotic, and a demo
cratic element. If we bear this in mind, the Luther monu
ment at Worms, which was uncovered in 1868 in the presence
of the King of Prussia, will be seen to give but a one-sided and
imperfect view of that troublous but hopeful period of German
history. Planned by Rietschel, the masterly delineator of the
Goethe and Schiller group at Weimar, the monument at Worms
is a vast and powerful conception. Yet, with all its variety of
figures, — including, as it does, the statues of Luther's pre-

1870.] Luther and German Freedom. Ill

decessors, Wycliffe, Waldo, Savonarola, and Huss, — it lacks
completeness. We see Frederick, called the Wise, Elector of
Saxony, and Philip, called the Generous, Landgrave of Hesse,
standing in front ; Melancthon and Reuchlin behind. But who
that knows the history of the Reformation is not aware that
one of those princes acted the part of a trimmer, whilst the
other proved a deadly enemy to the popular claims which were
then brought forward on the strength of what the peasantry
called the " true reading of the Gospel " ? And if Melancthon
and Reuchlin have their proper place in the Reformation group
of the monument at Worms, why are the great humanists,
Celtes, Hesse, Bebel, Pirkheimer, and even Erasmus, alto
gether left out ? They might, at least, have been indicated
by medallions, as Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen
were on the upper bronze cube; the political aspect .of the
Reformation having, by this latter device, been suggested in
some slight degree. But then, if Hutten and Sickingen found
a place, however small in the design, why was none given to
those prominent leaders on the popular side, who, fired with a
vision of Puritan and independent sentiment, sturdily did bat
tle, though with ill-success, for the principles of a combined
religious, political, and social reformation ?

Some might think that their misfortune shuts them out from
commemoration. If that were the case, neither the mail-clad
man of letters who died as an exile at Ufnau, nor that adven
turous knight who'saw, wounded and dying, the enemy carry
by storm his castle, could have been represented on the monu
ment ; nor could a place have been found for the " sorrowing
Magdeburg," — the melancholy symbol of an heroic but de
feated town. Nor is the plea that Luther never had any
thing to do with the popular movement at large valid. In
the beginning, on the contrary, he readily recognized the jus
tice of some of its demands ; and though afterwards he joined
the other side, he did not cease to denounce what, in his blunt
language, he openly called the " mad tyranny " of princes and
lords.

The original aims of the Reformation were manifold. A
national Church was to be established. Landed property,
held in mortmain to an incredible extent, was to be recon-

112 Luther and German Freedom.

verted into freehold. The fetters were to be struck from an
enslaved agricultural class. The political representation of the
people was to be made a reality, the German Parliament, or
Reichstag, being then a mere house of princes and lords, secular
and spiritual, with a sprinkling of the representatives of cities.
Lastly, the most energetic section of the reformers strove for
the abolition of all petty dynastic powers, some of which were
found under the Imperial, some under the Republican flag.
Many learned men, vast numbers of the middle class, the mass
of the peasantry, many priests, and even the 'better section
of the aristocracy were in the movement, as moderate re
formers, or as levelling Imperialists, or as adherents of the
principle of a popular Commonwealth. Hutten, in spite of his
trenchant style, represented among the upper classes — whom
he wished to lead on to a national policy in spite of them
selves — the type of a moderate reformer in Church and State.
His friend Sickingen had the material in him for an aristocratic
Lord Protector of Germany. Probably he had something like
the ancient Swedish and Polish Constitution in view. Some
of the chiefs of the peasantry, such as Hipler and Florian
Geyer, who had formerly occupied higher stations in life,
were Democratic statesmen of considerable ability. Thomas
Miinzer, who in religion preached, under mystic forms, a sort
of Deism, was in political creed a revolutionary Socialist. If
Martin Luther, the ex-monk, that gigantic wrestler, had joined
the political reformers, he would have given a still grander
impress to our history, and the double or triple aim of the
national cause would, probably, have been attained.

All Germany, in fact, took part in that movement. It was
not a sectional one, — not one opposing south to north, but the
different parties were to be found everywhere. Countries to
day the most Catholic were then full of the Evangelical and
Reformation spirit. There was Reformation even in the Tyrol,
which fire and the sword were required to put down. In such an
age the Imperial interest had a great opportunity. Charles V.
might have done what Henry VIII. of England did, and have
thereby stopped the process of national disintegration. But that
brooding monarch, who was only half German (he could not
even converse properly in German, while the Spaniards said he

1870.] Luther and German Freedom. 113

spoke their own tongue imperfectly), and whose mind was cast
in the narrow mould of bigotry, missed one of the greatest of
historical opportunities. In vain Hutten admonished, prayed,
entreated him to come forward as the champion of the Refor
mation. There is a u Wail " (Klagelied) by Hutten extant,
touching in its earnest simplicity, in which he says that he
could willingly die in poverty and misery, if the king (Charles
Y.) would let the Imperial eagles fly against Popery, and place
himself truly at the head of all " free Germans." To the
" proud nobility," to the " valiant towns," Hutten addresses
his admonition, that they " should take pity on the Fatherland >:
and " battle for liberty." It is impossible, I fear, to render in
English the quaint strength of the original text. It is enough
to say that the patriotic knight, who was not wanting in pride,
prostrated himself before the monarch, in order to induce him
to adopt a large Reformation policy, but without avail. Charles
remained deaf to these urgent appeals.

There was a general deafness then among rulers. Luther,
who understood the political signs better, foresaw the coming
of the storm several years before its outbreak. Already in
1522 he predicted a general revolt in German lands, — " eine
grosse Empdrung in deutschen Landen" Personally, with all
his stormy energy, and with all the prejudices that clove to him
from his monkish training, he was of a kindly disposition, well
disposed to the people's welfare, no flatterer of princes, honest
and outspoken, and of a genial temper. He clearly saw and
denounced the tyranny with which the nation was burdened,
through the misrule of that superior aristocracy which had
gradually risen into a position almost sovereign. He said in his
unparliamentary way, that " princes had mostly been the great
est blockheads and the wickedest rascals" ! He called them
" God's jailers and hangmen," who " had hearts of stone and
heads of brass."

So late as a year before the outbreak of the great Bauern
krieg Luther thus expressed himself: " The laboring man, tried
beyond all endurance, overwhelmed with intolerable burdens,
will not, and cannot, any longer tamely submit, and he has
doubtless good reasons for striking with the flail and the club,
as John Pitchfork threatens to do / am delighted so

YOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 8

114 Luther and German Freedom.

far to see the tyrants trembling" In the same " Sincere Ex
hortation," whilst warning against the spirit of rebellion, he
admonished the Imperial government and the nobles to put
their hand to the work of doing away with grievances, as
" that which is done by the regular powers cannot be looked
upon as sedition!"

I think in this, as in other writings of the same time, a state
of doubt may be traced in Luther's mind. He saw the great
ness of the coming movement ; he had sympathy with it, yet
he could not place himself decidedly on the one side or the
other. Still he spoke out strongly against the government
and against privileged castes. Even when the rising of the
peasants and their allies in the towns had actually begun
he wrote : " For such insurrection we have to thank you, ye
princes and lords, ye purblind bishops and mad monks ! . . . .
You fleece and skin the people until they can bear it no
longer. But the sword is now at your throat ! . . . . You still
think you are in the saddle ; you will be lifted from it ! ....
If these peasants cannot do it, others will. And though ye
beat them all, they yet are unbeaten. God will raise up
new ones, for he means to destroy you, and destroy you he
will ! It is not peasants that rise against you, my dear lords,
it is God himself who will punish your tyrannic madness ! r'
He then continued : " See you not that if I desired revenge,
I should only have to stand silently by, laughing in my sleeve,
and look on at the peasants carrying out their work ? I might
even, by making common cause with them, make still deeper
your wounds. God ever preserve me, as now, from such

thoughts Dear lords, in the name of God ! retire before

the anger of God, which you see let loose against you ! . . . .
Cease your exactions, cease your cruel despotism ! . . . . Use
gentle means, lest the spark now lighted, extending itself
gradually all round, and catching at point after point, should
produce throughout Germany a conflagration which nothing
can extinguish. You will lose nothing by gentleness, and even
though you were to lose some trifling matter, the blessings of
peace would make it up to you a hundred-fold. Resort to war,
and you may be all of you swallowed up, body and goods.
The peasantry have drawn up Twelve Articles, some of which

1870.] iMther and German Freedom* 115

contain demands so obviously just, that the mere cir
cumstance of their requiring to be brought forward dishon
ors you before God and man. I myself have many articles,
even still more important ones, perhaps, that I might pre
sent against you in reference to the government of Ger
many, such as I drew up in my book addressed to the
German nobility. But my words passed unheeded by you
like the wind."

On the different grievances of the insurgent population Lu
ther said in the same " Exhortation to Peace," addressed to
princes and lords : " As to the first article, you cannot refuse
them the free election of their pastors. They desire that these
pastors should preach the gospel to them. Now authority must
not and cannot interpose any prohibition of this, seeing that of
right it should permit each man to teach and to believe that
which to him seems good and fitting, whether it be gospel or
whether it be false. All that authority is entitled to prohibit
is the preaching up of disorder and revolt. Again, the articles
which have reference to the material condition and welfare of
the peasants — to the fines, inheritance, imposts, the exaction
of harsh feudal services, and so forth — are equally founded in
justice ; for government was not instituted for its own ends,
nor to make use of the persons subject to it for the accomplish
ment of its own caprices and evil passions, but for the interests
and the advantage of the people. Now the people have be
come fully impressed with this fact, and will no longer toler
ate your shameful extortions. Of what benefit were it to a
peasant that his field should produce as many florins as it does
grains of corn, if his aristocratic master may despoil him of
the produce, and lavish, like dirt, the money he has thus
derived from his vassal, in fine clothes, fine castles, fine eating
and drinking ? "

It will be seen from these few quotations, which might be
multiplied a hundred-fold, that Luther knew what were the
sufferings . of the down- trodden people ; that he wished for a
reformation of the government of Germany as well as for that
ft£ the Church; that he considered the rising against lordly
and princely misrule a formidable one, which, if he only
" stood silently by, laughing in his sleeve, and looking on at

116 iMther and German Freedom. [July,

the peasants carrying out their work," might have become
uncontrollable.

What, then, would have occurred, had he thrown his influ
ence persistently on the people's side ? At one time he had
the nation at his command. His power of speech which wells
up in the slightest talk, such as has been preserved in the
Tischreden, his combative energy, and his force of persuasion
were extraordinary. Unfortunately, when the contest grew
hottest, he went over to the side of the governing classes, and
became the adversary of the political and social parts of the
Reformation programme. He stood aghast at the loudness
and many-tongued confusion of the popular aspirations. The
theologian came up too strongly in him. A parallel to this
conduct may be found in the fact that Luther, after having
been, as he said himself, a " rabid Papist," ein rasender, un-
sinniger Papist, ersoffen in des Pabstes Lehre, had once passed
through a very free-thinking stage ; to such an extent, indeed,
that he stopped himself by saying that he must " strangle
his reason" in order to return to his former belief! In this
manner, certainly, he strangled his political reason. He now
attacked every Reformation idea not directly connected with
Church affairs. He called all armed resistance to galling
oppression the " work of Satan." He wrote denunciations
against the more advanced men ; for instance, his " Letter to
the Princes in Saxony against the Revolutionary Spirit." He
denounced bitterly all the Rumpelgeister and Schwarmer.
He put his hope in some prince that would carry through his
Church cause. He preached the doctrine that all government
was by " right divine," which was until then a doctrine not
to be found in Germany, where all princely power was held to
rest on a covenant with the people. The new doctrine, it need
not be said, was very acceptable to those princes who, under
the mask of religion, wished to establish separate sovereign
ties, independent of Pope and Kaiser alike.

Luther now wrote : " Christians must suffer torture ! They
must suffer wrong ; suffer , suffer ! They must bear the cross t
the cross ! That is a Christian's right ; he has no other ! "
He spoke of Christians as flocks of sheep, not to bo tended,
but to be slaughtered, one after the other. " Nicht Weideschaf

1870.] Luther and German Freedom. 117

— Schlachtschaf ! nur so kin; eins nach dem anderen!" That
was not the spirit of the humanists, or liberals, much less of
the ardent Democratic reformers of his time. He even de
clared himself for the continuance of serfdom ! He said there
must be serfs because Abraham had had serfs! Such doc
trines jarred on the popular ear ; and the great champion of
the Church Reformation was sometimes called a lackey of
monarchs, — wrongly, certainly, for of the lackey spirit there
was nothing in that unbending man.

But of fierceness thereNwas enough in him when once he
went astray, and he, the poor miner's son, went cruelly astray
in that Peasant affair. This was the advice he gave as to the
manner in which the insurgents should be dealt with : " Let
them be destroyed, strangled, stabbed, secretly or publicly, by
whosoever is able to do it, even as a mad dog is killed right
away. I call upon you, dear lords, come hither to the rescue !
strike ! Ay, strike, strangle, all ye that can lift a hand ! If
thou losest thy life in the affray, a blessing upon thee, —
thou art saved thereby ! A more blissful death thou canst not
have ! . . . . Let the guns be turned upon them ; or else their
wickedness will grow a thousand-fold greater ! >:

The political and social insurrection against which Luther
raised such a cry was not a mere servile revolt, but an attempt
at changing radically the German Constitution. It was pre
ceded by conspiracies, known as the Bundschuh and the Arme
Kqnrad. The " bundschuh," or laced shoe, was worn by the
people ; high boots, by the nobles. " Poor Konrad " the peasants
were nicknamed from the frequency of that name among them.
The first demands of the peasants, embodied in their Twelve Arti
cles, were moderate enough. They asked for a reformation of
the Church, a diminution of tithes, the abolition of serfdom, of
the oppressive game laws, etc. Soon they went farther. In
some of the secret associations the password by which the
members knew each other was this. One asked, " What do you
think in the main ? " The other had to answer, " Priests,
nobles, and princes are the people's bane ! >! I may observe
here that the German character, as a rule, lends itself with
great difficulty to the work of conspirators ; but in times of
great public danger secret associations have sprung up even

118 Luther and German Freedom. [July,

among the Germans, from the time of Hermann, the Cherus-
can leader, who threw off the Roman yoke, down to the
Tugendbund, which was formed during the intolerable Napo
leonic domination, and to the many other secret societies which
at the beginning of this century endeavored to unite free-minded
men in opposition to the. reactionary profligacy of the German
princes.

There were three political camps in Luther's time: the
Catholic or reactionary one ; the camp of moderate Liber
alism ; and that of Democracy. In the peasants' insurrec
tion two currents can be distinguished, — one directed mainly
to the suppression of harsh feudal customs ; the other to the
formation of a Republican Commonwealth. The papers of
the " Constitutional Committee," which the insurgents estab
lished at Heilbronn, are still extant ; and they contain undeni
able proofs of the sagacity of some of the leaders. When a
popular rising is defeated a mass of calumny is often the only
monument which the victors raise over the grave of the van
quished ; and it is the merit of Zimmermann to have been the
first to trace from those original documents the true character
of the insurrection. He chose the motto of his work from the
Antigone of Sophocles, — " I dare to raise a tomb to my dearly
beloved brother ! "

The rising extended over all Southern Germany, from the
Rhine into Austria ; it reached up also towards the north
through the insurrection in Thuringia. In the latter country
were the head-quarters of Miinzer, the revolutionary preacher,
— a Savonarola and Rienzi combined. The main army of the
insurgents in the south was not badly equipped. It possessed
ordnance and three thousand guns, — a good armament for
that time. But the Thuringian insurgents were ill assorted
and badly armed. The great defect of the movement was 'its
want of a central direction, a scattered agricultural population
being always difficult to organize for action. It is true, as the
peasantry rose, they were joined by a number of towns, by noble
men, even by several princes, who either willingly entered the
League, or were forced into it ; but the presence of worthless
marauders and the absence of good military leaders made
themselves sorely felt. Gotz von Berlichingen, with the Iron

Luther and Cf-erman Freedom. 119

1870.]

M, whom the insurgents pressed into

Hand, the Suabian Kmfe^ .. The aid which the peasants

their service, played them faib. «'* neutralized through the
received from the towns was genera^ ^ired within city

firm hold which the patricians had reaci^ ;dable that

walls. Nevertheless, the insurrection was so foiw. -n]jy
the princes, before meeting it by force of arms, gent^,.
thought it necessary to employ the most disgraceful perjury, in
order to lull the people into a sense of security, and then beat
them in detail.'

More than a thousand feudal "robbers'" nests — for such
they actually were, according to contemporary testimony — were
destroyed during that upheaval ; and a great number of them
were never rebuilt. Many of the aristocratic dwellers in those
fortified castles were alike rebellious to Imperial authority, and
hostile to the prosperity of the towns, while towards the tillers of
the soil they frequently acted like fiends in human shape. Ru
dolf von Habsburg, the German emperor, had those noble high
waymen hanged by dozens. The townspeople, when they could
get hold of them, dealt with them as common criminals ; and
after the towns came the peasants. When now we see in Ger
many so many ruined castles and halls we should remember
that not a few of them are records of the maddened feelings of
a people driven by oppression to despair. However, after many
sanguinary contests the Peasant Revolution failed, as, a little
more than a century before, the Republican rising of the towns
had been defeated. Princely orgies marked the downfall of
the popular cause. Germany was covered with scaffolds and
gibbets ; but revenge was to come through the Thirty Years'
War, which gave a tremendous shock to the Empire, and pre
pared the way for its later disruption.

I have shown that a great political and social turmoil oc
curred in Luther's time, in the very midst of the religious Refor
mation movement, and that the leaders who headed the masses
mostly took their cue from Bible texts, interpreted or twisted
into a sense favorable to the people's cause. Luther himself
at first carried on his agitation almost in co-operation with the
political movement, but when a certain point was reached a
divergence occurred. He would no longer hear of what he
called a " carnal reading of the Gospel." After the defeat of

120 Luther and German Freedom.

[July,

the rising of 1525 the Reformation bec*»-
ligious one. It remained political "-' -me exclusively a re-
princes who went over to it »- ' -1A7 in this sense> that tnose
breaking up the EmPlV' -ideavored to use it as a means of
the cloak of *"' ^e for their individual advantage. Under
separate ^eiigion they exerted themselves to establish

f^- ^ sovereignties, — Luther's doctrine, that all existing
ojvernment is by " right divine," being considered by them as
equivalent to a doctrine of monarchical irresponsibility. In
the peculiar position of Germany this was a tenet which be
came destructive of national cohesion. Yet the majority of
the people, filled with deep hatred of priestly corruption, re
mained faithful to the Reformation cause, even in this form,
though it now carried with it the seeds of political dissolution.
For a short time the direction of the Reformation movement
remained still in the hands of a Towns' League, then it passed
entirely under the control of the princes, and the latter gener
ally exhibited their selfishness and treachery alike against the
people and amongst themselves.

The Germans have often prided themselves on having con
quered the right of free thought, even though it was at the cost
of their existence as a nation. The French historian Michelet,
who confesses that his own sympathies are not with the relig
ious revolution of the sixteenth century, yet says of the great
German Reformer : " Luther was, in point of fact, the re
storer of spiritual liberty to the ages which followed his era.
He denied it theoretically, indeed, but he. established it in
practice ; if he did not absolutely create, he at least coura
geously signed his name to the great revolution which legalized
in Europe the righ£ of free examination. To him it is in great
measure owing that we, of the present day, exercise in its plen
itude that first great right of the human understanding, to
which all the rest are attached, and without which all the rest
are naught. We cannot think, speak, write, read, for a single
moment, without gratefully recalling to mind this enormous
benefit of intellectual enfranchisement. The very lines I here
trace, to whom do I owe it that I am able to send them forth,
if not to the Liberator of modern thought ? "

But the sacrifice the German nation made in this cause
ought not to be forgotten. The armed struggle which fol-

1870.] Luther and German Freedom. 121

lowed in the wake of the restricted Reformation movement
lasted, with short intervals, not, as is often stated, a gener
ation merely, but fully a century. "What we call the Thirty
Years' War was only the crisis of Germany's martyrdom.
She was then literally trampled down under horses' hoofa.
Armies, formed of the scum of Europe, held a series of riot
ous Walpurgis nights over her mangled body. Her life-blood
ebbed out whilst her soul was panting for spiritual freedom.
In some of the old chronicles it is described how, in the de
serted villages, wolves with their litters were found in the
beds of the massacred or exiled inhabitants. The springs of
pity seemed to be frozen in the hearts of men. Year by year
war cut down hundreds of thousands, whilst famine and pesti
lence swept over the land, bearing with them crowds of vic
tims. Hunger made men cannibals, and even the graveyards
had to be guarded. In this fashion the Reformation was
achieved.

I have striven to give, within a short compass, a sketch of
the earlier national struggles of Germany. It is, I believe, of
importance to remember that the aspirations of the German
popular party are not of yesterday ; that, widened as its aims
are now, it has something to look back upon ; that there is an
ancient tradition, however full of sad remembrances, for Ger
man unity as for German freedom ; and I trust that the long
battle for the people's rights will end in the establishment of a
New Germany, comprising all its members, great in liberty,
and strong in self-defence.

KARL BLIND.

122 The Labor Question. [July,

ART. VI. — THE LABOR QUESTION.

THE most thankless service which can be rendered to man is
that of showing him what he cannot do. When he has set
his heart upon an object, and is striving after its accomplish
ment, in what seems to him the most promising way, he does
not like to be told either that tjie object itself is unattainable
or that the way he has adopted does not lead to it. No matter
how conclusive the demonstration may be, he is pretty sure to
regard him who presents it as an enemy. And yet it is a
serious question whether modern scientific investigation has
not done more for us in this indirect way than in any other.
When an end is to be attained many ways of doing it present
themselves to the mind. If the impracticability of any one is
demonstrated, the labor of trying it is saved, and the atten
tion may be confined to those which are more practicable.
The establishment of the simple fact that power cannot be
generated by machinery, or, in common language, that per
petual motion is impossible, has alone kept an amount of
mechanical ingenuity from being wasted on an unattainable
object which can hardly be over-estimated.

The present labor party stands greatly in need of such help.
We see a vigorous effort on the part of a class of laborers to
improve their condition by the instrumentality of legislation.
This class has attained a certain middle stage of moral and
intellectual development. Its members are fully conscious of
possessing rights which the rest of the world is bound to
respect, and are quite ready to enforce their rights by every
proper means, but they are still deficient in that thorough
understating of the complicated machinery of modern society
which alone can enable them to foresee the ultimate effect upon
their own interests of the measures they wish to adopt. It
would not, therefore, be strange should we find them engaged
in pushing forward measures which must ultimately be preju
dicial to their own interests. In so far as this is the case, no
greater kindness can be done them than to point out to them
wherein their exertions must fail to accomplish their object.

The term " laboring classes "is so vague that we shall be

1870.] The Labor Question. 123

led into confusion unless we define with greater precision the
class whose interests are to be considered. In the widest
sense of the term every man who exerts his faculties in satis
fying the wants of his fellow-men is a laborer, no matter
whether those faculties are physical or intellectual, whether
the wants are those of body or mind. The opposing class of
capitalists consists of the owners of the machinery, tools, and
raw materials on which and with which labor is employed.
Their income consists of the interest paid them for the use of
their capital. The distinction between the services rendered
by these two classes is well defined, but it is hard to draw a
line between the individual members of the two classes. Every
carpenter who owns the tools he works with is, to that extent,
a capitalist, and every man actively. engaged in business is a
laborer, however large may be the capital he employs. The
class of capitalists proper, that is, of men who live on the
interest of their money, without exertion, is quite small in this
country.

The impossibility of drawing a sharply defined line between
the laborer and the capitalist need not, however, cause us any
difficulty in our present discussion, since it is easy to consider
separately the interests of each man as laborer and as capital
ist. Laborers, in the wide sense of the term just now adopted,
may be roughly divided into three classes.

(1.) Unskilled laborers, or those whose occupation requires
the use of no faculty except muscular strength.

(2.) Skilled laborers, whose occupation requires a special
training of the hand or of the senses, more especially of the
eye, the ear, or the touch. This class, including mechanics of
every kind, is that from which trades unions are formed.

(3.) Intellectual laborers, whose occupation requires mainly
mental ability. This class includes not only professional men,
but all whose business consists in planning, directing, or man
aging.

The present army of labor is recruited almost entirely from
the second class. Among its emblems we find the plane, the
trowel, and the hammer, but not the hod or the shovel. Farm
hands are never found in labor conventions. Diggers on rail
roads sometimes strike, but they receive no pecuniary aid from

124 The Labor Question.

labor unions. If teamsters or hod-carriers ever marched in
an eight-hour procession it was not in the hope of any other
spoils than such as their superiors might choose to leave them.
Yet if we are to consider the feasibility of dividing the products
of human labor among the producers in proportion to the ex
ertions of each, the neglected class of unskilled laborers will
first claim our attention. From this point of view that class
has more cause of complaint than any other. If we watch
the erection of a building we find employed on the work hod-
carriers, bricklayers, master-workmen, and an architect. If
all these classes were equally well paid, and any one equally
capable of performing the duties of any class were called on
to choose to which he would belong, his first choice would
undoubtedly be the duties of the architect, and his last those
of the hod-carrier. From the ethical point of view we have
suggested the occupation of the hod-carrier, being most dis
agreeable, should be the best remunerated, and that of the
architect the least well paid. But we find the actual scale of
remuneration to increase in the opposite direction. The brick
layer receives from two to three times the wages of the hod-
carrier, the master-workman more than the bricklayer, and the
architect more than both together. The same law will be
recognized as extending almost universally through society.
It would be easy to show that this is a necessary result of cir
cumstances over which society has no control, were it not
foreign to our present object. That object is to make it clear
that the class actively engaged in the present labor movement
forms but a fraction of the laboring population, and by no
means that fraction which, from its own point of view, has
most cause of complaint.

The class whose interests ought to be kept in sight in this
discussion includes all who are unable to live upon the
interest of their capital, and who are therefore obliged to
labor with head or hand. This class, with their families, which
belong to it, numbers, no doubt, more than forty-nine out of
every fifty of our population. If we include only those who,
from insufficiency of income, are unable to supply their current
wants, and so feel themselves under constant pecuniary press
ure, we shall probably include nine tenths of the whole popu-

1370.] The Labor Question. 125

lation. In round numbers, there are thirty-six millions of peo
ple in this country whose interests we are now to consider.

When we try to view so large a field from the stand-point of
every-day life our horizon is too limited to see things in all their
bearings. Let us then, in imagination, raise ourselves to a posi
tion whence we can comprehend the interests of these thirty-six
millions in a single view. We find them all in want of things
which may be classified under the general heads of food, cloth
ing, shelter, and home comforts. The ultimate object of all
organized movements among laborers is to secure a better su-
ply of these necessaries, or, which amounts to the
to keep up their present supply with a less
Let us now see how this object can be sec

We begin with shelter. The classes;/^ consideration oc_
cupy perhaps three millions of hj^BeBi. But the houses are
neither so spacious nor so^coErenient as js desirable. Some
are in need of repairs, others are too small, and need en
larging. New families a-e forming, and new houses are
wanted for them. Tne most urgent want of the laboring
classes is to hayG their houses repaired, improved, or rebuilt.
How can this be done ? The answer 13 a truism, but one of
that large class of truisms which we constantly overlook. We
must have more mechanical work done on houses. We 'must
set more carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers, and painters at
work, or those whom we already have must work more indus
triously or more effectively. If our present supply of mechanics
cannot keep the entire population supplied with good houses,
no legislation will enable them to do so. It takes a certain
number of days' work to build or repair a house, and when we
multiply the number bf house-builders by the three hundred
we have the entire nunber of days' work which can be spent on
houses in the course orthe year. As an increased expenditure
of labor on houses is nWssary to supply the first want of the
laborer, so, if universal^ applied, it is sufficient. If the size
and convenience of all tfe houses in the country were doubled,
they would still have to \e occupied by the same classes who
now occupy them, and thilaborers would enjoy their full share
of the advantage. Event all the additional labor were spent
in building new houses forthe wealthy, laborers would still get

The Labor Question. [July,

a good share of the benefit. The old houses vacated by the
owners of the new ones would now be for sale or rent to the
class which came next in wealth; the latter would vacate
houses for the class below them, and this operation would con
tinue to the bottom of the scale.

The results of this survey may be summed up by saying that
it is a physical impossibility for laborers to enjoy better shelter
unless the present houses are rebuilt or improved ; that they
cannot be rebuilt or improved without expending more me
chanical labor, and that if more mechanical labor is expended
^^ Bouses, the laborers will enjoy their full share of the benefit.
Such be/*1** the Case> Jt might naturall7 be supposed that a
general orgam^d e??r* on the Part of the Borers to improve
their condition wou^ have for lts first obJect to increase in
every possible way the sizv? and number of houses to be built,
and therefore to increase as n?uch as possible the number of
house-builders, and the amount £f work each builder should do
in a day, the^e being necessary prerequisites to the enjoyment of
better houses. Singular as it would seem ic one not acquainted
with their history, we find all the efforts of labor unions exerted
in the opposite direction.

We find among their rules one which limits the number of
apprentices who shall be allowed to learn how to build any part
of the house, the object being to keep the number of house-
builders as small as possible. Tliis rule is enforced by each
individual pledging himself to 'work for no master who takes
more than the prescribed number of apprentices. We also find
that, whenever there is a strike of the bncklajers, carpenters,
or any other class of men engaged in builiing houses, the labor
unions, instead of being impatient at thestoppage of work upon
houses, and the consequent injury to ther prospect of improved
houses to live in, always give every encouragement to the strjk-
ers, and support them with liberal graits of money. We also
find that when trades unions have reguated the amount of work
their members may do, their object ha( not been to increase this
amount, but to diminish it. No bricklayers' union has, we be
lieve, ever required that its membes should come up to any
standard of efficiency. But rules prohibiting members from
laying more than a certain numbr of bricks — generally a

T-abor Question. 127

1870.] The ±

"^ universal. Finally, we

thousand — per day are common, if n^ ^-nt labor party is
know very well that the object of the pre^ - that can be

still further to limit the amount of house-buildinfo
done by diminishing the number of hours that
shall be allowed to. work. It is clear that if the community is
insufficiently supplied with houses when builders work ten hours
a day, the case will be yet worse under the eight-hour system.

Next to shelter better clothing is perhaps the greatest want
of the laboring classes. Probably four fifths of our laborers
are in want of a Sunday suit for themselves or of a decent
wardrobe for their wives and children. To furnish the Sunday
suits for the heads of families alone, about thirty million yards of
cloth are absolutely necessary. Before this cloth can be got new
factories must be built or the old ones must be enlarged, new
machinery must be set going, more freight cars or ships must
be employed to transport the cloth, and new warehouses must
be built to store it until each laborer is ready to buy his share.
When all this is done there must be tailors enough to make it
up. And all the factories, cars, warehouses, and tailors must
be additional to what was necessary to keep up the old supply
of ordinary clothes, else the latter will fail.

Yet we find the labor unions, as a rule, ready to obstruct
every one of these processes by every device in their power. If
a combination of European paupers and capitalists offers to fur
nish the cloth at a price so low that the laborer can well afford
it, government will try to stop the purchase by a protective duty,
and the very laborers who want the cloth generally support this
policy. If the bricklayers who are erecting the factory which
is to make the cloth, or the masons who are building a ware
house -to store it, happen to stop work through a quarrel with
their employers, every trades union in the country will con
tribute money for their support, and will prohibit their mem
bers from taking their places on the work. If the tailors
strike, they also are sure of liberal support from the hard-
earned wages of the very men who most want the clothes they
might be making.

The present labor movement thus presents us with the para
dox of a network of organizations, extending over the country,
actively engaged in obstructing the measures most necessary

128 The Labor '

^ Question.
for supplying the wa^ '
five millions o* .^cs of their individual members. Thirty-
and hor^' -* people are in want of houses, clothing, food,
i^J ^w comforts, and the most active of them are organized
,^t,o trades unions whose principal object is directly or indi
rectly to limit in every practicable way the production of
houses and clothing, and of some home comforts. The con
clusion seems inevitable that the efforts of these organizations
do not tend to improve the condition of their members. This
improvement can be effected only by a policy which shall have
for its object to increase the number of skilled laborers, to keep
them constantly employed, and to make their labor as effec
tive as possible. Unhappily, the strife after the highest wages
stands in the way of any such policy, and the question of the
exact benefit of high wages next demands our attention.

It is commonly thought that, if the laborer can only succeed
in getting better wages, he is necessarily better off. If the
increase is confined to a single class the opinion is quite cor
rect. Common sense shows that the condition of an individ
ual laborer is improved when he gets higher wages, provided
always that he can purchase everything he wants at the same
rate as before. But if he has to give more for everything he
buys in the same proportion with his increase of wages, — if,
for instance, having his weekly wages increased from fifteen to
twenty dollars, he has to give one-third more for everything he
wants, — common sense shows equally that he is no better off
than before. Now it is a proposition susceptible of mathe
matical demonstration, that, if every one receives an increase
of compensation in a fixed ratio for everything he does, and
every service he renders, the cost of everything one has to buy
will be increased in the same ratio, and no one will gain any
thing. To illustrate this principle, let us begin with the class
of carpenters. If all the carpenters in the country have their
wages increased one third, without doing any more work than
before, the cost of all the houses built will be increased by one
third the value of the carpenters' work. This increased cost
must finally come out of the pockets of all occupants of houses,
laborers included, in the form of increased rent if they be ten
ants, or increased cost of purchase if they be owners. If only
the carpenters received the increase of wages, the burden of

1870.] The Labor Question. 129

the increased cost, being divided among the whole mass of
their fellow-citizens, will be light. But if the lumbermen, the
brickmakers, the bricklayers, the painters, and every one else
engaged in house-building, get a similar increase of wages, the
cost of everything which goes into a house will be increased
one third, and the entire population, laborers included, must
pay one third more for their houses.

The same rule applies to everything which the laborer has
occasion to buy. The price we pay for any article is divided
amongst the several producers of it in the shape of wages or
profits. If every one engaged in the production of food has his
compensation increased a third, all the food bought must cost
one third more. Continuing the same course of reasoning
throughout the community, we see that when every one has
his income increased by one third no one is any ^better off
than before.

Corresponding to this proposition is another of equal impor
tance. If every one in the community performs one third more
abor for his present wages, the entire community will be one
third better off than before. Houses one third more valuable
can then be built for the same money, and, in consequence,
every one who occupies a house will be able to get one a third
better at the present rent, or for the present price. The same
effect will extend through everything the laborer wants to eat,
drink, or wear. He will be able to command one third more of
articles, or articles one third better, for the same money he now
pays. This verifies the conclusion to which we were first led
from our review of the wants of the country. The laboring
classes can have their condition improved, not by a general
I n crease of wages, but only by a general increase in the effec
tiveness of their labor.

An objection may be raised to this conclusion, that it is
reached only by carrying the increase of wages a great deal
farther than the advocates of labor reform propose. We have,
i n fact, supposed that every one, laborer, tradesman, and capi
talist, gets one third more money for whatever service he ren
ders the community. For instance, according to our hypothe
sis, when the carpenter goes to market with one third more
money in his pocket, he finds that everything costs one third

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 9

130 The Labor Question.

more, because the huckster, the farmer, the wagoner, and the
farm laborer all have an increase of one third in their wages
and profits. But the labor party may say that they intend to
confine the increase to the wagoner and the farm laborer, to
the exclusion of the farmer and the huckster ; that then the
cost of the vegetables will be increased only by the third of
the wages of the laborers proper, which will perhaps make an
increase of not more than one sixth of the entire cost ; and
that, if this can be effected, the carpenter will gain by the
amount of one half his increase of wages.

Let us see how far this objection is valid. And, first, let us
see what ground it does not cover. It does not diminish the
absurdity we have commented upon in the efforts of the labor
unions to restrict production. An organized effort to have as
little house-building done as possible is one thing ; an effort
to obtain an increase of wages for doing the same amount
of building is quite another thing. The former works evil
to everybody who wants a house to live in, be he laborer or
capitalist ; the latter benefits those who get the increase of
wages at the expense of those who do not, by making the
latter pay more for the same service. The benefit received
by the increase of wages will keep growing smaller as the
increase is extended to other classes, and will vanish entirely
when extended to all. If any member — and the same is true
of any class — of the community thinks himself insufficiently
paid, he has a perfect right to get more if he can. If the labor
movement is a general effort on the part of the laboring classes
to benefit themselves at the expense of their fellow-men, by
getting an increase of wages, it is one on which they have a
perfect right to enter. We propose next to inquire whether
this object is attainable, and, if so, what will be the conse
quences of success.

In the contest we are now to review, the class of intellectual
laborers may be considered as simple spectators, having no in
terest in it beyond that which every member of the community
has, — that is, an interest in having everything necessary to
his comfort produced as cheaply as possible. Skilled laborers,
working on their own account and with their own capital,
may be included in the same category. Leaving out these

1870.] The Labor Question. 131

and all other neutrals, the contest is narrowed down to one
between the employers and the employed, or between the
laborer and the capitalist. There is a certain division of the
combined product of labor and capital between these classes.
The laborer is dissatisfied with his share, and is trying to
increase it. What will be the ultimate effect on his own
interests if he succeeds ? This question involves some of the
most intricate and least understood principles of political econ
omy, and must therefore be approached with some consider
ations of a general nature. These considerations have especial
reference to the interest of the laborer in the capital of others ;
to the conditions under which capital is accumulated ; and to
the effect of the absence of conditions favorable to that accu
mulation.

How are we to define capital ? Usually it is defined as that
part of the wealth of a country which is kept, not for its own
sake, but to be employed further in production. This definition
suffices to give a general idea of what capital is. But when we
examine it closely we find it impossible to make a distinction
between wealth kept for its pwn sake and wealth kept to aid
in the production of more wealth. Indeed, if we take the
term " production " in its widest sense, the definition will in
clude everything in the shape of material wealth, since the
object of all such wealth is the production of that immaterial
wealth termed " gratification of desires." And if we suppose the
term " .production " to mean production of material objects only,
this will leave capital to mean all wealth except that which
comes last in the chain of material causes leading to the grati
fication of desire. We shall thus frequently be troubled to say
which is the last link. Take the winter's supply of coals for
our dwellings. This is designed for the production of heat,
and if we regard heat as a product, then the coal falls under
the head of capital. But we apprehend that few economists
would consider it such.

The complex nature of political economy, its peculiar asso
ciation of things so spiritual as hopes, fears, and desires with
things so material as ploughs, ships, and steam-hammers ren
ders an accurate classification of the objects about which it
reasons very difficult. Any classification founded on the ex-

132 The Labor Question.

ternal qualities of objects will be worse than useless. For the
science in question is essentially moral. The cause with which
it begins is human desires ; the effect with which it ends is
the gratification of those desires. 'Its definitions should, there
fore, be founded on moral considerations, physical objects
being classified with reference to the mental states with which
they are connected. Under this system an object which be
longs to one class when you own it, may belong to another
when you sell it to your neighbor, and thus distinctions are
introduced which, on a superficial view, seem fanciful. This
defect, if it is a defect, inheres in the very nature of the science.

The essential properties of capital are, we conceive, best ex
pressed when we define it as all those products of past labor
from the enjoyment of which the owners are abstaining for the
sake of a future profit. We do not pretend that this definition
affords an infallible touchstone by which to determine imme
diately whether any known object is or is not capital, but only
that it involves the essential idea of capital. In every-day lan
guage, a man's capital Consists of all the money he has saveti
from his income, and put out at interest, or otherwise invested,
so as to yield him a profit. The interest, or other profit, is
the only inducement to save and invest. Unless his investment
increases it will never yield him any greater advantage than it
would if he should spend and enjoy it now, and the risk of
losing it .would prompt him to enjoy his money while he could.

It may not at first sight be evident that the wealth from
the present enjoyment of which the owners are abstaining for
the sake of future profit is identical with the mills which make
our clothes, the warehouses which hold them, and the dwell
ings which the laboring classes rent, ani indeed with that vast
system of industrial machinery by which the community is
housed, clothed, and fed. To make this clear, let us consider
how a factory came to be 'built. To fix the ideas, we will
suppose that it cost its owner $ 100,000. Then, at the time of
building, its owner must have been in possession of this sum
of money, with the right to spend it as he chose. The case in
which it was borrowed will be considered presently. Had he
chosen he might have spent it on expensive furniture for
his house, costly pictures, rare wines, and sumptuous dinners

1870.] The Labor Question.

for himself and his friends. Had he consulted only his tem
porary gratification, without care for the future, he would thus,
as long as his money lasted, have derived much more pleasure
from it than from the erection of a factory which would be of
no service to him for several years to come. But since he could
not with the same money obtain these articles of temporary
gratification, and also build the factory, he has denied himself,
and chosen the factory, giving up the temporary good of the
present for the sake of a more enduring good in the future.
]STot, indeed, that the factory afforded him no gratification until
he began to draw dividends from it, but that the gratification
was only that which arose from a prospective good. What is
true of the factory is true of every railroad, every warehouse,
every stock of goods for sale, and every house built for rent.
The money paid for all these, and other forms of capital, has
been saved by the owners from expenditure upon their current
wants, otherwise not one of them would ever have existed. If
the projectors of any of these enterprises did not own the
money themselves they must have borrowed it from some one
else, and then it was the lender who denied himself the use
of it upon his current wants, for the sake of the interest he
expected to receive from it.

The profit on capital is Nature's reward for self-denial.
From this point of view we see one reason why an uncivilized
people never accumulates capital to any great extent. To the
savage, a year hence is as distant as eternity. He may take
thought of the literal morrow, but he feels little concern for
the self of next year. The only object of saving capital being
to benefit a future self, for whom he has no consideration, he
never saves. In illustration of the depth of this defect, we
may cite the difficulty of introducing agriculture among such
tribes, arising from their persistent consumption of the grain
which should be kept for seed.

The laborer has a direct interest in the increase of capital to
the greatest possible extent. The destruction or diminution of
capital inflicts more injury upon him than upon the capitalist.
We have already shown that it is for the interest of the laborer
to have the greatest possible number of comfortable houses
built, and the greatest possible quantity of good and cheap

134 The Labor Question. [July,

clothes manufactured. It can now be shown that everything
the capitalist saves the laborer directly or indirectly gets the
advantage of, in the shape of better houses, food, and clothes,
and more articles of comfort or luxury. There is sound sense
in the remark attributed to John Jacob Astor, that all he really
got from his wealth was his food and clothing. All that the
capitalist really takes as his share of the joint product of cap
ital and labor is what he spends on his current wants. We
shall prove this by showing that if he spends nothing on his
current wants, but employs all his money as new capital as fast
as he makes it, his laborers will have the benefit of his capital
as completely as if they owned it themselves.

For this purpose let us return to the consideration of the
factory. Its operatives and its machinery are employed in the
production of clothes and other articles conducive to the well-
being of the laborers. By building the factory the capitalist
has increased the production of those articles, and cheapened
their price, and so brought them within the reach of a larger
number. But, it will be objected, he does not divide the cloth
among the laborers, but makes all pay full price for it. This
is true ; only, as just now intimated, he does not get quite as
much for it as it would have cost, had his factory not existed.
But let us see what he does with the money received for the
cloth. A large part of it is spent in paying the wages of the
operatives. Another portion goes to keep the building and
machinery in repair, and to form a fund for replacing every
thing as fast as it shall wear out. What is left after paying
all expenses and keeping everything whole is the profit of the
capitalist, and this is usually but a small annual percentage
on the original cost. This profit is all the capitalist really
makes by his enterprise, and, by hypothesis, he turns it all
into new capital. If, then, we follow it into his pocket and out
again, we may find him using it to build a block of dwellings
which will be occupied by the operatives employed in his fac
tory. So long as the latter occupy the houses, they get the
benefit of them as completely as if they owned them. But in
the latter case they would pay no rent, which they now have
to do. To see whether this rent is lost to the labor of the
country we must follow it, as we did the profit of the factory,

1870.] The Labor Question. 135

into the owner's pocket and out again. Population increasing,
more cloth is required to clothe it, and more laborers are seek
ing employment. Accordingly the capitalist finds it for his in
terest to expend his surplus profits and rents in enlarging his
factory and improving his machinery so as to make cloth of a
better quality, and to make such other articles of comfort as
the operatives and the public may wish to buy. We may con
tinue the process indefinitely, and find the entire energies of
the factory, including all the profits derived from it, constantly
employed in ministering to the wants of the public, and espe
cially to those of the laboring class.

To complete our demonstration it is only necessary to show
that, if the factory were made over to the operatives in fee
simple, they could hardly manage it better for their own inter-
,ests, and might easily manage it a great deal worse. Suppose,
then, that they come into absolute ownership. They may do
what they please with the entire proceeds. They may, if they
choose, spend them all on their personal wants, enjoying more
expensive food, clothing, and houses, but reserving nothing
to repair and replace the machinery. Should they continue
in this way for a few years, the machinery would wear out.
Then they would be worse off than ever. They must apply to
capitalists for the means of replacing their boilers and engines.
But if the entire capital of the country has been made over to
the workmen in the same way, and all have been equally im
provident, the condition of all will be deplorable. Expensive
and complicated machinery is necessary to make engines and
boilers, and if all the machinery of the country has deterio
rated in the same way with that of the factory, then the latter
can be replaced only at an enormous disadvantage, and all
would be glad to purchase the use of a new outfit at a rate far
exceeding that formerly paid to the capitalist as his profit.

But common prudence and foresight would warn the new
owners of the factory against this improvident course, and in
duce them to lay up for the future. What portion of their net
proceeds should they lay up ? Just that portion which formerly
went to the capitalist as owner. That is, when they come into
possession of the factory, they must not, at first, try to better
their condition, but must make the same division of the pro-

136 The Labor Question.

ceeds of the factory between their present and their future
wants which was formerly made between themselves and the
capitalist. What was before the share of the capitalist is
now the reserved fund of the laborer. Following up our
inquiry to see how this reserved fund shall be employed, we
shall find it disposed of substantially as when the capitalist
owned it, that is to say, one part will go to repair and replace
the machinery, and another to build new and better houses for
the operatives and their increasing families. But the opera
tives will not have to pay rent for their houses. True ; but if
they do not pay the equivalent of the rent into their reserved
fund, they will riot have the means the capitalist had to enlarge
the factory for the supply of an increasing population. We
have seen the capitalist employing all his surplus rents and
profits in this way, and if the laboring owners do not save as
much to be employed in the same way, they will soon find
themselves worse off than before they came into ownership.
Since the same amount they once paid for rent must now go
into the reserve fund, they will have nothing more to spend on
their current wants than when the capitalist was owner. This
process of paying the capitalist's share into a reserve fund
would have to go on indefinitely, so that the laborers, by own
ing the factory, could never enjoy any more of the products of
their labor than when they were employed by a thrifty capital
ist, who spent all his profits in the increase of his capital.

A careful examination of our premises will make plain the
limitations under which the results of our reasoning are to be
accepted. We have supposed the capitalist to put the entire
income from his factory into the form of more capital, whereas,
of course, he does this only in part, since he must live, and will
be likely to spend more on his wants than he could gain by his
mere skill, unaided by capital. The amount he thus spends is
all he takes from the reserve fund of the laborer. Again, we
have supposed that when he built houses for rent, they were let
to laborers. But he may let them to men not usually accounted
laborers, — physicians or lawyers, for instance. Here we simply
use the term " laborer" in a wider sense than is usual, including
under it all who are not capitalists, or do not own houses for
themselves. Again, when the capitalist enlarges his factory,

1870.] The Labor Question. 137

it may be to make fabrics which the laborers do not want, —
fine silks, for instance. In this case the factory will tend only
indirectly to make clothing abundant for the laborer by fur
nishing the wealthy with a substitute. The position we can
take and maintain may, by these considerations, be reduced to
this : If the non-capitalists, laborers included, owned the entire
manufactured wealth of the country, their condition could be
permanently improved only to a very slight extent, and it is
very likely that it would not be improved at all. In fact, the
proposition that any improvement at all in the laborer's condi
tion would be thus effected can, we conceive, be maintained
only on the questionable assumption that the business affairs
of the factory or other form of capital would be as well man
aged under the new regime as under the old. This question
will be considered further on. We may, however, in illustra
tion of the preceding argument, cite the case of communities
such as those formed by the Shakers. Here there is no cap
italist, and no profits to be absorbed by him, but the entire
product inures to the benefit of the laborer. Yet it is, ex
tremely doubtful whether the actual benefit that each indi
vidual receives from his labor comes up to the average received
by the farmers and mechanics of society. In making the
comparison it must be remembered, too, that no eight-hour rule
prevails in these societies, but that all their members labor
with a persistence and industry which most men would find
irksome.

One more proposition, and we shall be ready to conclude this
intricate subject of capital. Every non-capitalist, whether la
borer or professional man, has an interest in his neighbor's
being provident, and in his saving all the capital he can.
This follows logically from the principle already laid down,
that every increase of capital tends to the advantage of the
non-capitalist. But the proposition is at the same time so im
portant and so frequently ignored, that a further illustration of
it is desirable.

While it makes little difference to John Smith, who occupies
a rented house, whether that house burns down or not, it is of
great importance to him that all the houses should not burn
down, though they belong entirely to others. If only his

138 The Labor Question. [July?

own burns down, he can soon rent another ; if all burn down,
he must go houseless. The destruction of a single cotton fac
tory is a small thing to any individual who is not an owner.
But the total loss inflicted on the world is about as great as
that inflicted on the owner, since the production of cotton is
diminished by an amount equal to the total product of the
factory.

The great point we wish kept clearly in view is this : while, as
has been already shown, capital is the result of the exercise of
individual self-denial, and while every member of the commu
nity, with the possible exception of the most wealthy capital
ists, has an interest in the exercise of this self-denial on the
part of his neighbors, there is no law which requires that exer
cise. Every member of the community is at liberty to spend
all his income on his personal wants, and so do nothing
to keep the public from that destitution which is the neces
sary lot of an improvident people. The only motive he has
to pursue the opposite course is found, as we have seen,
in the profit or interest which the less provident or less
wealthy members of the community are always ready to
pay him for whatever he can save. Deprive him of this,
and the factories may decay, the spindles wear out, and the
railroad cease its operation. We need say nothing more to
illustrate the fatuity of that policy which would reduce the
profits on capital by laws or industrial combinations. The pol
icy of giving perfect freedom to the operation of the law of sup
ply and demand, of allowing every one who can save capital to
employ it in the most profitable way he can, and every one who
desires to use it to borrow it in the cheapest market, is the
easiest and best solution of the problem of dealing with capital.

A curious fact is to be noted in this connection. The hope
of profit being the only inducement to save which acts on the
great mass of mankind, there must be a certain minimum rate
below which saving and investment will not be generally prac
tised. This point, wherever it is, is the lowest to which the
rate of interest can fall. The lowest average rate it has been
actually known to reach for any considerable period is about
three per cent, that is, such a rate that the accumulated inter
est will equal the principal in about thirty-three years. It ap-

1870.] The Labor Question. 139

pears, therefore, that, so far as the experience of the world has
yet extended, men in general do not choose to make invest
ments which will not pay for themselves out of the profits in
thirty-three years, or in the average duration of the life of the
investor, and thus that providence in money matters does not
extend far beyond the life of the individual.

It is sometimes claimed that the great improvement in the
condition of the laborer within the past century is due to com
binations and strikes. It is true that strikes are frequently
successful in gaining the terms demanded ; but, in the opinion
of the soundest thinkers, any terms gained by a strike could
have been gained without it, only perhaps not so soon. And
the grounds for this opinion seem quite tenable. A capitalist
or employer will not be able to pay increased wages, unless he
is making more than the usual profit in his business. Other
capitalists will then be ready to step in and compete with him,
and, in order to secure a profitable business, will bid higher for
labor. This competition will continue until the wages bid will
be as high as could have been obtained by a strike. We can
therefore - say this, and no more, for strikes : if every strike
were immediately successful, the workmen would command an
increase of wages sooner than if they had not struck.

To balance the account, we must debit the striking system
with what it costs the laborers themselves. Could this be cal
culated, the figures would excite astonishment. The items
would be divided under the following three heads : —

(1.) The money cost of the strike shown by the advances
made by trades unions to sustain the strikers. There are, of
course, no statistical data for estimating the total amount thus
expended, but it probably includes a large fraction of the con
tributions levied by the unions on their members.

(2.) The loss and distress to the strikers arising from the
absence of their usual wages during the strike, this loss being
only partly made up by the contributions just mentioned. These
two items combined make the sum-total of the wages during the
strike, or its total money cost. If the sufferings frequently
undergone by the workmen and their families are taken into
account, it will be conceded that the mere money cost of the
strike does not give any adequate idea of what those who take
part in it undergo to enforce their rights.

140 The Labor Question. [July,

(3.) The indirect loss to the entire laboring community
arising from the higher price and greater scarcity of the arti
cles that the strikers were engaged in producing. This item
might be a large or a small one according as these articles were
mainly consumed by the poorer or the more wealthy classes.
In the former case, after the strikers were all victorious, they
might find their dearly bought increase of wages entirely ab
sorbed by the increased cost of houses, clothing, and food aris
ing from a general strike. A fair balancing of the account will,
we conceive, show a large balance against the strikes.

We have endeavored in this review to trace the efforts of the
present labor organizations to their ultimate effect upon the true
interests of the laboring community. We have found that, in
stead of tending to improve the condition of the laborer, they
tend to make it worse. They wage war against capital' and pro
duction, while it is for the interest of the laborer that both shall
be increased as much as possible. If they ever succeed in get
ting a general increase of wages it is at great cost, and is then
in great part paid out of their own pockets in the form of an
increased cost of the necessaries of life. We have found that
the restrictive system works no better when operated by a vol
untary association of men than when enforced by a government.
Having thus completed the thankless task of showing that the
laboring classes will not be bettered by the success of the pres
ent labor party, let us next inquire how their condition may be
improved.

, Taking into account all the circumstances of the problem, we
conceive that the more extended introduction of the system of
co-operation is the most practicable method. Under this system
the workmen combine, not to fight the employer, but to com
pete with him on his own ground. If they can command the
necessary capital they dispense with the services of the employer
entirely, the same number who under the hiring system might
be working for one employer now working in copartnership. If
the business requires machinery too expensive for them to com
mand they work in copartnership with the capitalist, receiving
in lieu of a part of their wages a share in the profits. A remark
able instance of the success of the latter plan has occurred in
South Yorkshire, England, within the last few years. The col-

1870.] The Labor Question. 141

liery of Briggs & Co. had been peculiarly unfortunate in its rela
tions to the miners, war having been waged for years by strikes
on one side and "lock-outs*' on the other. Mr. Briggs resolved
to try an experiment. The property in the colliery, valued at
<£ 90,000, was divided into nine thousand shares of £ 10 each,
and a joint-stock company was formed on this basis. Three
thousand shares were offered to the miners and the public. To
fix the share of the workmen in the profits, an imaginary capital
was formed, of which the wages of the workmen were considered
as the interest. The rate of interest to be allowed on both the
real and fictitious capital was ten per cent ; this fictitious capi
tal was, therefore, ten times the annual wages of the workmen.
Whatever could be gained above the interest was to be divided
annually between the workmen and the shareholders as profits.
If the proceeds of the colliery did not divide ten per cent, the
loss fell entirely on the owners proper. The success of the
project was almost magical. Every miner, now feeling himself
a stockholder, exerted himself for the common good. For two
or three years the surplus profits sufficed to add a considerable
percentage to the wages of the laborer, as well as to form &
reserve fund against a time of business depression. Equally
great was the improvement of the personal relations between
the laborers and the owners. The former sentiments of the
laborers were expressed by the declaration of one of their
number in a public harangue, that " Mr. Briggs wanted only
horns and hoofs to be the very Devil." With the success of
the new arrangement the opposite sentiment was expressed in
nearly as extravagant a manner.

We are far from maintaining that success such as this, or
great success of any kind, is to be expected as a general rule.
In fact, we conceive that the chief danger to the new system
comes from the extravagant expectations of its ardent friends.
To the enthusiastic reformer no movement which will do less
than revolutionize society, or prove an infallible panacea for
some social ill, seems worth supporting. Therefore, having
taken up the plan of co-operation, he lauds it as that which
may put every workingman on the high-road to wealth. If
the projectors set out with such an idea as this they will be
sure to meet with disappointment. To guard against this

142 The Labor Question. [July*

misfortune, our inquiry into what good may be effected by
co-operation must be prefaced by some statements of what
co-operation will not succeed in doing.

No system yet discovered will lead to that Utopia of the
labor reformers, in which every workman in the land shall
indulge himself in the daily consumption of commodities
requiring two days' labor to produce. No community will
ever enjoy more or better houses than can be built and kept
in repair by its bricklayers and carpenters, better clothes than
can be made by its op3iatives and tailors, or more food than
can be produced by its farmers. Labor will never effect any
thing without capital, and it will never command capital with
out paying for it, either directly or indirectly. The combined
efforts of labor and capital will effect no more than they now
do, unless the laborer works with more steadiness, and prac
tises more economy than now. Until these efforts are more
effective, the laborer will enjoy no more wealth than now.

To see what a co-operative association cannot do in a partic
ular case, let us consider the management of a printing-office.
An association of printers, before undertaking such an enter
prise, will wisely inquire into the amount of money yielded by
such an office under the old system, and the distribution of
that money among the several parties interested in the office.
The result may be put into such a form as the following : —

In a well-managed Office.

Total sum received for printing .... $100,000

Wages paid printers and laborers . . $ 70,000

Services of proof-readers . . . 5,000

Loss and wear of type, .... 3,000

Wear and tear of machinery, etc. . . 4,000

Rent of office ... • •- • • 10,000

Office expenses and small losses arising

from bad management . . . 1,000

Manager's and capitalist's profit . . 7,000

$ 100,000

In a badly managed office the receipts will be a little less,
and the items of loss and wear of type and machinery a little
greater, while the small losses will be largely increased. The

1870.] The Labor Question. 143

difference may not only absorb the $ 7,000 profit, but may
make the office lose money.

If the printers themselves run the office , they will have this
prospect before them. If they work no more effectively than
before, they will be able to earn only the f 100,000. Out of
this they will have to pay the same amounts as the capitalist
for the services of proof-readers, the wages of foreman, the
wear of type and of machinery, and the rent of office ; for
we may be sure that he got everything at the cheapest rate.
Subtract these expenses from the gross receipts, and the share
left for the society will vary between $ 70,000 and $ 77,000, ac
cording to their managing ability. Out of this they must still
pay the interest of borrowed capital, which may absorb what
was before the profit of the capitalist. Therefore, unless the
society possesses the business ability to manage the establish
ment well, the receipts of the individual members may easily
be less than under the wages system. If this is the only result
of the change of system, to what advantage, it may be asked, can
the co-operative system lead ? If the laborer, working as indus
triously as now, and spending as much on his wants as now, can
reap no advantage, why propose the change ?

It must be admitted that no advantage whatever will follow,
as a matter of course. The gain is not necessary and direct,
but mainly incidental, indirect, and dependent on accidental
circumstances. "We have seen that the frequent cessations of
labor from disagreements between the workmen and their em
ployers about the rate of wages is a source of loss to all parties
by diminishing the supply and increasing the price of those pro
ducts the workmen who have become idle might be producing,
as well as causing the latter the loss of wages during the term
of disagreement. Under the new system there would be no
such disagreements, unless the co-operative association should
refuse to work for such prices as the public might be able and
willing to pay. Such a course would seldom or never be re
sorted to, because its injurious effects would have become more
obvious than when the members were working for an employer,
and also because, being capitalists as well as laborers, they would
sustain the loss upon idle capital as well as that upon idle labor.
The producers being always at work for the public on the best

144 The Labor Question. [July?

terms they could command, their products would be cheaper
and more abundant, which would be for the advantage of the
public, and the price of the product being varied to meet the
varying demand, the latter would be kept up, and the producers
would always find employment, which would be in like manner
fpr their advantage.

The steady employment of every producer in the way most
advantageous for production being the first object of every wise
system of labor, it may be advisable to glance at some causes
which interfere with its attainment, and to show that they
will not operate so strongly under the system of co-operation.
Prominent among these causes is a certain benevolent trait in
human nature itself, which makes it repugnant to our feelings
to " drive a hard bargain " with one whose services we desire.
If we felt equal repugnance in refusing his services entirely
this trait would be less injurious in its effects. Unfortunately,
such is not the case. An employer feels no compunction in
telling a workman he has no occasion for his services, however
great the needs of the workman may be. So he will sometimes
refuse to employ him, when, by employing him at less than the
regular wages, a bargain advantageous to both parties might be
made. The consequence is that the workman is driven to seek
employment of some one who has no compunction in employing
him on the hardest terms to which his necessities may compel
him to submit. Thus, in our cities when business in a trade is
very dull, it sometimes happens that the more needy workmen
in that trade are employed by the less reputable class of em
ployers at half the usual wages, and large numbers of others
are out of employment, when employment could be found by
all, if their wages were reduced one fifth.

It may be asked, Does not this very state of things show the
expediency of having a fixed rate of wages for each class of
workmen, from which none shall depart ? We reply yes, if
that rate is always adjusted to the varying state of the market.
When the demand for laborers of any particular class falls off,
their true interest, or, to speak more precisely, the true interest
of the laboring classes generally, will be found in a voluntary
reduction of the rate of wages of the particular class referred
to. When the demand is restored the rate should be increased

1870.] The Labor Question. 145

again. The criterion by which to determine that the true rate
is fixed is, that all who desire work at the fixed rate shall be
able to find it ; in other words, that the demand shall be made
to correspond with the supply. We say, all who desire work ;
because, if any one conceives the wages too low to make it for
his individual interest to accept them, it is his right to refuse,
and either remain idle until the demand is restored, or to enter
some other employment.

Under the system of working for hire such an adjustment
would be subject to the inconvenience that in many cases a
reduction of wages would inure entirely to the benefit of con
tractors, and a rise of wages would come entirely out of their
pockets. In our cities contracts for building are usually con
cluded in the spring, though they may not be filled until au
tumn or later. Indeed,T whenever made, they must be founded
on an estimate of the price of labor several months in advance,
and if this estimate proves erroneous, the contractor is generally
the sole gainer or the sole sufferer. Now, as we have already
shown, when each laborer, or association of laborers, sells its pro
ducts in the public market on the most advantageous terms, all
the inconveniences attending the alteration and adjustment of
the rate of wages are avoided.

Another incidental advantage of the co-operative system is
the stimulus it will necessarily give to the cultivation of econ
omy and business habits on the part of the workmen engaged
in it. The want of business ability xm the part of the laboring
classes is perhaps the most serious obstacle in the way of the
new system. Indeed, it might be argued with great force that
its general introduction into this country is impracticable for
this very reason. It might be said that our people are so ver
satile, the field for the employment of skill and capital so large,
and the opportunities of becoming an employer of labor so nu
merous, that no one possessed of the ability to manage any busi
ness need remain a laborer for hire. Consequently, the very
fact that one belongs to the latter class is evidence that he
does not possess business ability, and it is useless to expect
skilful business management on the part of any association
of laborers for hire.

If the premises of this argument are granted, the conclusion

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 10

146 The Labor Question. [July?

is unavoidable. But the question whether there is any latent
managing ability on the part of our laborers is one that can be
decided only by trial. The data for forming an intelligent judg
ment of the question are extremely meagre. Strange as it may
appear, the seeker after such knowledge finds it much, easier
to inform himself of the condition and doings of the laboring
classes of England and Germany, and even of France, than of
those of our own country. Within the last few years a great
many books have appeared in Europe, giving detailed accounts
of the labor organizations in those countries, their efforts and
their prospects. A commission to inquire into this subject
was appointed by the British Parliament, and its report may
be considered as exhausting the subject, so far as the facts
are concerned. In this country we have nothing, or next to
nothing, in a permanent form. We have labor unions in all
our principal cities, but of the details of their organization and
internal management the public knows nothing. They are
rarely heard of except when some agitating subject, like a strike
or the admission of a colored member, is under discussion, and
when the subject is disposed of they again fall back into ob
scurity. A few years since the Congress of the United States
enacted a law that eight hours should be a legal day's work for
laborers in the employ of the government, but for what reason
can only be guessed at. A search through the Congressional
Globe for the speeches made on the occasion would probably
lead to no information more satisfactory, and to no better rea
son, than that eight hours is enough for a man to work.

With a field so uncertain to work in, it is all-important that
the first trials of the system of co-operation shall be made in
those branches of business which require the least amount of
business ability or of special training. Such are most of the
mechanical trades in which the chief value of the thing produced
arises from the labor expended on it by a single set of mechanics.
In the manufacture of the coarser articles of furniture, for in
stance, the business could be successfully conducted without
much training ; the skill principally required being that of the
mechanic himself, and the amount of capital to be invested in
raw material being so small that fluctuations in price would not
be ruinous to the producer. Not dissimilar are most of the

1870.] The Labor Question. 147

branches of house-building. In building a house one must now
employ at least five contractors, the bricklayer, carpenter, paint
er, plasterer, and plumber. The principal business of each con
tractor, as such, is to s.ee that his men do their work properly.
Why should not the services of four out of the five be dispensed
with, and the responsibility for the general excellence of the
work rest upon a single contractor, the workmen themselves,
under a supervision of their own choice, being trusted for the
proper execution of the details ? Only because now there is no
trustworthy association among the workmen, and the latter are
in this respect profoundly indifferent to their own interests. The
present unions are organized on the idea that they are exclu
sively laborers for hire, and discourage rather than encourage
any such independent action as that which we have spoken of.

The business of buying and selling is the least favorable for
the introduction of co-operation, because capital and business
skill are the principal requisites to success, and mere labor,
skilled or unskilled, an element of comparatively little impor
tance. Ttye brilliant success of the Rockdale co-operative store
proves nothing except what may be accomplished by industry,
frugality, and good management under favorable circumstances.
We hear of the successes of such attempts, but not of the failures.
Many years ago the system was tried in Massachusetts on a large
scale, under the very common impression that the retail grocers
were making enormous profits, and that the consumers could save
a large part of the profits by having " union stores'* of their own.
The success of the attempt was anything but brilliant. We have
no statistics from which to draw an accurate conclusion, but we
believe the cases of failure were far more numerous than those
in which more than ordinary business profits were made.

The fact is that in these schemes, and in most schemes of trad
ing now urged upon the working classes, the mistake is made
of aiming at two objects, which have no necessary connection
with one another. These are, buying and selling for a profit by
dealing with the general public, and supplying the members
themselves with goods at a rate cheaper than that at which
they now purchase by retail. The proposed mode of carrying
out these objects is to set up a store, owned by a large associa
tion, for the sale of goods to members of the association and

148 The Labor Question. [July,

to the public. If the members receive no favors in dealing
with it, which is the proper course, the profits will be the same
as in the case of a similar store equally well managed by a
private individual. But such a store does not, on the average,
yield more than the regular profit on capital, the owner some
times failing entirely, sometimes making a moderate profit, and
sometimes growing rich, according to his judgment and skill in
managing his business. Therefore, to succeed, the association
must exercise this judgment 'and skill in the same degree with
the regular dealer. If the members receive favors, the cost of
these favors will necessarily come out of the profits to be di
vided, thus diminishing them, and increasing the chance of fail
ure. Accordingly, the establishment of co-operative stores can
not result in supplying an association with cheap goods, unless
in very unusual cases. It is simply an attempt to do by a
large association what can be better done by an individual.

If we compare the wholesale and retail prices of the same
goods in the same market, we shall frequently find a difference
which seems quite unreasonable. Iri the cases of books and
market produce the retail price exceeds the wholesale by from
thirty to sixty, and even one hundred per cent. It may well
be asked, Is there no way in which the poor can supply them
selves with articles of daily consumption at something near
wholesale prices ? Undoubtedly, if they will take the proper
course. To judge what is the proper course it is necessary to
know the cause of the evil. If we inquire into this cause, we
shall find that the advance of the retail on the wholesale price
is what is paid by the consumer for certain advantages and
accommodations, namely, the privilege of getting his goods, —

(1.) At any time that he may want them ;

(2.) In any quantity that he may desire ;

(3.) Of any quality that he may desire ;

(4.) At some convenient place ;

(5.) On credit, when he desires it.

To fulfil the first condition it is necessary to maintain a
supply of goods, and to have some one to attend to them. This
costs interest on the investment in goods, rent of building,
insurance against fire, water, and burglars, and wages of store
keeper. The second condition involves the labor of measuring

1870.] The Labor Question. 149

or weighing the goods in parcels to suit purchasers,' and a cer
tain amount of waste. The third condition requires that the
supply should be very large and varied, in order that every one
shall be able to suit himself. A large and expensive store is
therefore necessary, and a large amount of labor has to be ex
pended in showing the goods to customers. The fourth condi
tion requires the store to be situated in some place where rents
are exceptionally high. The fifth condition involves a risk of
bad debts, which must be met by an addition to the price of
the goods. The necessary cost of fulfilling these different con
ditions makes up the entire difference between the wholesale
and retail prices. Consequently the only way to get goods
cheaper than under the present system is to give up some or
all of the accommodations which that system is designed to se
cure us. The store and storekeeper must be dispensed with
entirely. The members of the association must agree upon
some particular designation or quality of goods, with which all
are to be satisfied ; they must contribute cash for the purchase
in advance ; and when the goods arrive in bulk they must di
vide them, among themselves. If there is anything impracti
cable in such a plan of operation, it is simply that human
nature will not permit men to submit to all these restrictions,
and that the difficulty of agreeing upon any definite quantity of
a designated article would be insurmountable, or at least would
cost more to surmount than the system would save. The ques
tion of practicability can be settled only by actual trial.

We cannot expect much from the co-operative system unless
it shall include the employer as well as the laborer in its asso
ciations, and thus command capital and skill as well as mere
labor. The case of the Briggs Colliery, already cited, furnishes
an example of the success of this plan. We see no reason,
even in human nature, that foe of ideal perfection, why the
capitalist, the master-workman, and the laborers should not
work together as members of a co-operative union. The la
borers would then have an opportunity to learn something
about business, and to acquire business habits in all cases where
such habits were possible. The nature, duration, and condi
tions of the associations should be determined by the exigen
cies of each particular case, and the few general rules which

150 The Labor Question. [July?

can be laid down respecting them are mainly negative. Among
the most important is this, — no restrictions should be placed on
the independent action of each association. The members of
each association should be allowed to work six, eight, ten, or
twelve hours per day, according to their individual necessities,
or the briskness of the demand for labor. When the different
members of any one association chose different hours of labor,
each should share in the proceeds in proportion to the amount
of labor he furnishes. When the demand for labor is unusu
ally great, and the price which can be obtained unusually high,
the members will naturally work harder than when the oppo
site is the case, and they will thus provide themselves with
means to meet the recurrence of dull times. Instead of having
every workman bound down to an invariable standard, which
has no connection with his necessities or the state of the labor
market, each will be nearly as independent as if working ex
clusively on his own account.

The unavoidable conclusion of our extended inquiry into the
existing state of things is that no sudden and universal improve
ment in the condition of the laboring classes is possible. But
it does not follow that there is nothing to be done by those who
have the interests of the laborers at heart. If no sudden im
provement is possible, a gradual one may be. If we compare
the comforts enjoyed by every class of society now with those
which were possessed a hundred years ago, we shall see an im
mense improvement. With the increase of the means of pro
duction, and the opening of new fields of industry, we may
hope for continued progress in the same direction. But we
must not disguise the fact that there is another cause which
not only tends to retard this progress, but operates in the con
trary direction. We refer to the necessary diminution in the
supply of certain of the raw materials necessary to production.

If we trac,e back the steps in the production of any article of
utility, we shall find ourselves ultimately dependent on certain
natural agencies and materials for all our means of subsistence.
Such are the heat and light of the sun, the soil which furnishes
the growth of the vegetable world, the rocks and minerals hid
den in the earth, the streams which flow over its surface. De
prived of these, the human race would cease to exist. Now,

1870.] The Labor Question. 151

when we enter upon a close inquiry, we find that while certain of
these agencies are unlimited in amount, and equally free to all,
there are others of which the supply is limited, or of which all
cannot equally avail themselves. The heat and light of the sun,
for instance, belong to the first class. But there are only fifty
millions of square miles of land on the surface of the globe, and
the surface of productive soil is much smaller. In a densely
populated community the amount of land within reach of any one
individual is very small indeed. Again, navigable rivers run
by the doors of very few. The total amount of water-power in
any State of the Union is extremely small, while coal, iron,
lead, and copper are found only in certain favored localities.

The inevitable consequence of this state of things is a con
tinual diminution, as population increases, of the amount of these
agencies which is at the command of each individual. If this
were all, it would affect all classes nearly alike. But it is well
known that these materials and agencies, as fast as they become
available, are in the main appropriated by individuals, through
the agency or consent of government, and are then held as pri
vate property. Such is the case with the soil and the minerals
beneath it. The owners of this property charge as much for the
use of it as if it were their own creation, and not that of nature.
The price thus charged, termed " Rent " by the English econo
mists, necessarily increases with the increase of population. In
England, where nearly all the land is held by a small fraction of
the population, rent is an important element in the cost of that
portion of the food of the people which is raised in that country.
Against this policy the laboring class has reasonable ground of
complaint. The doctrine that the soil is of natural right the
common property of the human race, and that each individual
should be allowed to enjoy his share, is now tacitly admitted by
many eminent economists of England and France. If this right
could be enforced, the rent of all the land of any country —
England, for instance — would be divided among the inhabi
tants, and the poorer classes would be made wealthier by the
amount thus distributed. It must be borne in mind that the
right here referred to is only that to the soil itself, in a state of
nature, and not to the improvements which have been made by
labor. Unfortunately, the soil and the improvements are practi-

152 The Labor Question. [July,

cally inseparable. It has even been claimed by some that the
soil never has any value apart from the improvements, — a
proposition which can be accepted as true, we conceive, only
through a misunderstanding, of the question. That lands on
which the owners have never bestowed a day's labor are
every day sold at prices ranging from $1.25 per acre to $10
per foot ; that every portion of land brought into market is
owned by some one to the exclusion of every one else ; that
the number of acres is limited by Nature herself ; and that the
productiveness of land is not proportional to the labor expended
on its improvement, are incontrovertible propositions.

In view of these facts, and of the importance of land to the
future laborer, our laboring classes have just cause of complaint
in the wasteful spirit with which Congress is always ready to
"donate" the public lands to railroad corporations. Since the
decadence of the whiskey ring, the railroad rings are perhaps
the most powerful in Washington. Their relative success illus
trates that peculiar feature of congressional political economy
which encourages enterprises in proportion to their inability to
pay. For many years past Congress has been besieged for
authority to build a railroad from Washington to New York,
no charge whatever being made for the service. The projectors
have hitherto been successfully opposed, really on the ground
that the usefulness of the road would be so great that the own
ers would make an inordinate profit. On the other hand, a com
pany proposing to build a road in the new States can get a bonus
of a thousand acres of the public lands for every mile or two of
road built, by simply trying to show that otherwise their road
will not pay for itself. In every such gift the government parts
with what may be of the utmost importance to the laboring
classes in future generations. While we cannot agree with the
extreme views of those who would give every one a free home
stead, and make it inalienable, we do hold that Congress should
do everything in its power to prevent the aggregation of immense
landed estates in the hands of individuals or of corporations.

In the course of this review we have glanced at some of the
efforts now making by the laboring classes to improve their
condition. We have shown wherein some must fail, and
pointed out the obstacles which stand in the way of the best-

1870.] The Labor Question. 153

directed efforts. The thoughtful reader will not fail to notice
that the most serious obstacle was found in human nature it
self, and this in the nature of the laborer himself, rather than in
that of the men with whom he has to deal. We have no diffi
culty in showing how every other obstacle may be removed.
The secret of success lies in organizing the labor of all who in
any way work together so as to make their combined efforts
the most effective possible. But if they do not know how to
organize successfully, it is useless to make the effort. The
general intellectual improvement of the laboring classes is
therefore the first condition of their physical improvement. It
may be said that this is one reason for lessening their hours of
labor, since the fewer hours they are engaged in physical exer
tion, the more energy they will have left for mental improve
ment. Unfortunately, it is only in rare and exceptional cases
that an uneducated man can be educated intellectually. He
may learn a great deal, but learning is not education. The
mode of thought of nearly every human being is fixed before
he attains- his majority, and a correct mode of thought is the
very thing which is wanted. There is, besides, no reasonable
probability that a mechanic who does not improve himself in
tellectually when working ten hours per day will succeed any
better when his hours of labor are reduced to eight. It is a signi
ficant fact that it is only in Germany^ — the country which enjoys
the best system of universal education — that the co-operative
system has ever gained much ground, or been generally suc'cess-
ful. In France fully half the attempts have been failures.

One important want is the introduction into our public
schools of the study of political economy. We do not mean
the science as developed by McCulloch and Mill, but the ele
mentary principles which may be illustrated by the facts of
e very-day life. The views of the pupil should be so expanded
that he can see the fallacies of that popular system of political
economy which seems to grow in every uneducated mind as nat
urally as does the notion that the earth is flat and immovable.
The works of Bastiat contain an admirable and, we regret to say,
unique collection of illustrations of those fallacies. In the ab
sence of any work designed for common schools we may cite
some principles which we conceive capable of being taught to

154 The Labor Question.

the majority of youth. Half at least of the boys between the
ages of fifteen and twenty might be made to see that the com
munity is a co-operative association in which each one, while
having only his own good in view, does still work for every
one else ; that labor is the only source of wealth ; that the
amount of wealth which the community enjoys can be in
creased only by increasing the amount or the effectiveness of
labor ; that the money paid for every product of labor is
divided among those producers ; that the income of every
member of the community is equally spent in giving employ
ment to others, whether he be a spendthrift or a miser, wheth
er the immediate object of expenditure be clothing or bank-
stock ; that the man of wealth, when he invests his money, em
ploys it in the way most advantageous to the laboring poor. A
large proportion might be carried a little further, so as to see
some of the relations between capital and labor, and some of
the causes of the great inequality in the wealth of individuals.
The notion that the capitalist takes what belongs to the laborer
might also be met by showing that the latter is quite at liberty
to dispense with the help of the former, and that it was only
because the former chose to save his money that he became able
to employ labor at all. The necessity of skill and knowledge
to organize labor and make it effective, and the rightfulness of
allowing the possessors of that knowledge and skill to get
whatever share they are able of the profit which comes from
them, and the impossibility of their getting more than the
benefit they themselves confer might complete the course.

These principles, we repeat, seem to us capable of compre
hension by youths whose minds are not preoccupied by false
theories. Those who do master them would be able to judge
better of the action and the capacities of the social, wealth-pro
ducing machinery of the country than the majority even of our
legislators now are. We are aware that it is the fashion to
decry all such instruction on the ground that it is of no practi
cal use. We believe, on the contrary, that instruction in gen
eral principles, irrespective of any special application, is just
that which is most needed. It is about these mainly that men
differ. What makes the difference between a Republican and
a Democrat, between a free-trader and a protectionist ? Is it

1870.] Chaucer. 155

that the one possesses any practical knowledge of facts, or any
practical experience in life which the other does not ? Clearly
not. The difference between them lies much deeper, and is to
be looked for in their general views of the principles of social
organization and the objects and effects of industrial activity.
What makes the proposed instruction more necessary is that
each one conceives the general principles from which he rea
sons so obvious that he seldom or never takes the trouble to ex
amine them critically. Not only the will, but even the power
to make such an examination seems reserved to the educated
few. Yet, if it is from such principles that the great differences
of opinion flow, all discussion which is not directed to the ex
amination of these must fail of its object. It is therefore only
to the more thorough education of the masses in such general
laws of wealth as those which we have pointed out that we can
look for great improvements in our social policy.

SIMON NEWCOMB.

ART. VII. — 1. Publications of the Chaucer Society. London.
1869-70.

2. Etude sur Gr. Chaucer consider e comme imitateur des Trou-
veres. Par E. G. SANDRAS, Agr£ge de 1'Universite'. Paris :
Auguste Dusand. 1859. 8vo. pp. 298.

3. G-eoffrey Chaucer s Canterbury -G-eschichten, uebersetzt in den
Versmassen der Urschrift, und durch Einleitung und Anmer-
Tmngen erldutert. Von WILHELM HERTZBERG. Hildburg-
hausen. 1866. 12mo. pp. 674.

4. Chaucer in Seinen Beziehungen zur italienischen Liter atur.
Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doctorwilrde. Von
ALFONS KISSNER. Bonn. 1867. 8vo. pp. 81.

WILL it do to say anything more about Chaucer ? Can any
one hope to say anything, not new, but 'even fresh, on a topic
so well worn ? It may well be doubted ; and yet one is always
the better for a walk in the morning air, — a medicine which
may be taken over and over again without any sense of
sameness, or any failure of its invigorating quality. There is

156 Chaucer. [July?

a pervading wholesomeness in the writings of tins man, — a
vernal property that soothes and refreshes in a way of which
no other has ever found the secret. I repeat to myself a thou
sand times, —

*
•

" Whan that Aprile with his showres sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour
Of which vertue engendered is the flour, —
When Zephyrus eek with his swete breth
Enspired hath in every holt and heth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his half£ cors yronne,
And smale foules maken melodic,'' —

and still at the thousandth time a breath of un contaminate
springtide seems to lift the hair upon my forehead. If here
be not the largior ether , the serene and motionless atmosphere
of classical antiquity, we find at least the seclusum nemus, the
domos placidas, and the oubliance, as Froissart so sweetly calls
it, that persuade us we are in an Elysium none the less sweet that
it appeals to our more purely human, one might almost say do
mestic, sympathies. We may say of Chaucer's muse, as Over-
bury of his milkmaid, " her breath is her own, which scents
all the year long of June like a new-made haycock." The most
hardened roue of literature can scarce confront these simple and
winning graces without feeling somewhat of the unworn senti
ment of his youth revive in him. Modern imaginative liter
ature has become so self-conscious, and therefore so melan
choly, that Art, which should be " the world's sweet inn,"
whither we repair for refreshment and repose, has become
rather a watering-place, where one's own private touch of the
liver-complaint is exasperated by the affluence of other suf
ferers whose talk is a narrative of morbid symptoms. Poets
have forgotten that the first lesson of literature, no less than
of life, is the learning how to burn your own smoke ; that the
way to be original is to be healthy ; that the fresh color, so
delightful in all good writing, is won by escaping from the fixed
air of self into the brisk atmosphere of universal sentiments ;
and that to make the common marvellous, as if it were a
revelation, is the test of genius. It is good to retreat now and
then beyond earshot of the introspective confidences of modern

1870.] Chaucer. 157

literature, and to lose ourselves in the gracious worldliness
of Chaucer. Here was a healthy and hearty man, so genuine
that he need not ask whether he were genuine or no, so sin
cere as quite to forget his own sincerity, so truly pious that he
could be happy in the best world that God chose to make,
so humane that he loved even the foibles of his kind. Here
was a truly epic poet, without knowing it, who did not waste
time in considering whether his age were good or bad, but
quietly taking it for granted as the best that ever was or could
be for him, has left us such a picture of contemporary life as
no man ever painted. The pupil of manifold experience, —
scholar, courtier, soldier, ambassador, who had known poverty
as a housemate and been the companion of princes, — his was
one of those happy temperaments that could equally enjoy both
halves of culture, — the world of books and the world of men.

" Unto this day it doth mine herte boote,
That I have had my world as in my time ! "

The portrait of Chaucer, which we owe to the loving regret of
his disciple Occleve, confirms the judgment of him which we
make from his works. It is, I think, more engaging than that
of any other poet. The downcast eyes, half sly, half medita
tive, the sensuous mouth, the broad brow, drooping with weight
of thought, and yet with an inexpugnable youth shining out of
it as from the morning forehead of a boy, are all noticeable,
and not less so their harmony of placid tenderness. We are
struck, too, with the smoothness of the face as of one who
thought easily, whose phrase flowed naturally, and who had
never puckered his brow over an unmanageable verse.

Nothing has been added to our knowledge of Chaucer's life
since Sir Harris Nicholas, with the help of original records,
weeded away the fictions by which the few facts were choked
and overshadowed. We might be sorry that no confirmation
has been found for the story, fathered on a certain phantasmal
Mr. Buckley, that Chaucer was " fined two shillings for beating
a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street," if it were only for the allit
eration ; but we refuse to give up the meeting with Petrarch.
All the probabilities are in its favor. That Chaucer, being at
Milan, should not have found occasion to ride across so far as
Padua, for the sake of seeing the most famous literary man of

158 Chaucer. [July?

the day, is incredible. If Froissart could journey on horse
back through Scotland and Wales, surely Chaucer, whose curi
osity was as lively as his, might have ventured what would
have been a mere pleasure-trip in comparison. I cannot easily
bring myself to believe that he is not giving some touches of
his own character in that of the Clerk of Oxford : —

" For him was liefer have at his bed's head
A twenty bookes clothed in black and red
Of Aristotle and his philosophic
Than robes rich, or fiddle or psaltrie :
But although that he were a philosopher
Yet had he but a little gold in coffer :
Of study took he moste care and heed ;
Not one word spake he more than was need :
All that he spake it was of high prudence,
And short and quick, and full of great sentence ;
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach."

That, himself as plump as Horace, he should have described
the Clerk as being lean, will be no objection to those who re
member how carefully Chaucer effaces his own personality in
his great poem. Our chief debt to Sir Harris Nicholas is for
having disproved the story that Chaucer, imprisoned for com
plicity in the insurrection of John of Northampton, had set
himself free by betraying his accomplices. That a poet, one
of whose leading qualities is his good sense and moderation,
and who should seem to have practised his own rule, to "

" Fly from the press and dwell with soothfastness ;
Suffice unto thy good though it be small,"

should have been concerned in any such political excesses, was
improbable enough ; but that he should add to this the base
ness of broken faith was incredible except to such as in a
doubtful story

" Demen gladly to the badder end."

Sir Harris Nicholas has proved by the records that the fab
ric is baseless, and we may now read the poet's fine verse,
" Truth is the highest thing a man may keep,"

without a pang. We are thankful that Chaucer's shoulders
are finally discharged of that weary load, " The Testament of

1870.] Chaucer. 159

Love."* The later biographers seem inclined to make Chau
cer a younger man at his death in 1400 than has hitherto been
supposed. Herr Hertzberg even puts his birth so late as 1340.
But, till more conclusive evidence is produced, we shall adhere
to the received dates as on the whole more consonant with the
probabilities of the case. The monument is clearly right as to
the year of his death, and the chances are at least even that both
this and the date of birth were copied from an older inscrip
tion. The only counter- argument that has much force is the
manifestly unfinished condition of the Canterbury Tales. That
a man of seventy odd could have put such a spirit of youth into
those matchless prologues will not, however, surprise those who
remember Drydeii's second spring-time. It is plain that the
notion of giving unity to a number of disconnected stories by
the device which Chaucer adopted was an afterthought. These
stories had been written, and some of them even published, at
periods far asunder, and without any reference to connection
among themselves. The prologues, and those parts which in
ternal evidence justifies us in taking them to have been written
after the thread of plan to string them on was conceived, are
in every way more mature, — in knowledge of the world, in
easy mastery of verse and language, and in the overpoise of
sentiment by judgment. They may with as much probability
be referred to a green old age as to the middle-life of a man
who, upon any theory of the dates, was certainly slow in
ripening.

The formation of a Chaucer Society, now four centuries and
a half after the poet's death, gives suitable occasion for taking
a new observation of him, as of a fixed star, not only in our
own, but in the European literary heavens, " whose worth 's
unknown although his height be taken." The admirable work
now doing by this Society, whose establishment was mainly
due to the pious zeal of Mr. Furnivall, deserves recognition

* Professor Child, the highest authority on such a question, doubts also the au
thenticity of the " Romaunt of the Rose," the " Court of Love," and the " Assembly
of Foules." Mr. Bradshaw's judgment had arrived independently at the same result.
To these doubtful productions there is strong ground, both moral and esthetic,
for adding the Parson's Tale.

160 Chaucer. [July?

from all who know how to value the too rare union of accu-
arte scholarship with minute exactness in reproducing the text.
The six-text edition of the Canterbury Tales, giving what is
practically equivalent to six manuscript copies, is particularly
deserving of gratitude from this side the water, as it for the
first time affords to Americans the opportunity of independent
critical study and comparison. This beautiful work is fittingly
inscribed to our countryman, Professor Child, of Harvard,
a lover of Chaucer, " so proved by his wordes and his werke,"
who has done more for the great poet's memory than any
man since Tyrwhitt. We earnestly hope that the Society
may find enough support to print all the remaining manuscript
texts of importance, for there can hardly be any one of them
that may not help us to a valuable hint. The works of M.
Sandras and Herr Hertzberg show that this is a matter of
interest not merely or even primarily to English scholars.
The introduction to the latter is one of the best essays on
Chaucer yet written, while the former, which is an investiga
tion of the French and Italian sources of the poet, supplies us
with much that is new and worth having as respects the train
ing of the poet, and the obstacles of fashion and taste through
which he had to force his way before he could find free play for
his native genius or even so much as arrive at a consciousness
thereof. M. Sandras is in every way a worthy pupil of the
accomplished M. Victor Leclerc, and, though he lays perhaps
a little too much stress on the indebtedness of Chaucer in
particulars, shows a singularly intelligent and clear-sighted
eye for the general grounds of his claim to greatness and
originality. It is these grounds which I propose chiefly to
examine here.

The first question we put to any poet, nay, to any so-called
national literature, is that which Farinata addressed to Dante,
Chi fur li maggior tui ? Here is no question of plagiarism, for
poems are not made of words and thoughts and images, but of
that something in the poet himself which can compel them to
obey him and move to the rhythm of his nature. Thus it is
that the new poet, however late he come, can never be fore
stalled, and the shipbuilder who built the pinnace of Columbus
has as much claim to the discovery of America as he who sug-

1870.] Chaucer. 161

gests a thought by which some other man opens new worlds to
us has to a share in that achievement by him un conceived and
inconceivable. Chaucer undoubtedly began as an imitator, per
haps as mere translator, serving the needful apprenticeship in
the use of his tools. Children learn to speak by watching the
lips and catching the words of those who know how already,
and poets learn in the same way from their elders. They im
port their raw material from any and everywhere, and the
question at last comes down to this, — whether an author have
original force enough to assimilate all he has acquired, or that
be so overmastering as to assimilate him. If the poet turn out
the stronger, we allow him to help himself from other people
with wonderful equanimity. Should a man discover the art of
transmuting metals and present us with a lump of gold as large
as an ostrich-egg, would it be in human nature to inquire too
nicely whether he had stolen the lead ?

Nothing is more certain than that great poets are not sudden
prodigies, but slow results. As an oak profits by the foregone
lives of immemorial vegetable races that have worked-over the
juices of earth and air into organic life out of whose dissolution
a soil might gather fit to maintain that nobler birth of nature,
so we may be sure that the genius of every remembered poet
drew the forces that built it up out of the decay of a long suc
cession of forgotten ones. Nay, in proportion as the genius is
vigorous and original will its indebtedness be greater, will its
roots strike deeper into the past and grope in remoter fields for
the virtue that must sustain it. Indeed, if the works of the great
poets teach anything, it is to hold mere invention somewhat
cheap. It is not the finding of a thing, but the making some
thing out of it after it is found, that is of consequence. Ac
cordingly, Chaucer, like Shakespeare, invented almost nothing.
Wherever he found anything directed to Geoffrey Chaucer, he
took it and made the most of it. It was not the subject
treated, but himself, that was the new thing. Cela m'appar-
tient de droit, Moliere is reported to have said when accused of
plagiarism. Chaucer pays that " usurious interest which gen
ius," as Coleridge says, " always pays in borrowing." The
characteristic touch is his own. In the famous passage about
the caged bird, copied from the " Romance of the Rose," the

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 11

162 Chaucer. [July,

" gan eten wormes " was added by him. We must let him, if he
will, eat the heart out of the literature that had preceded him,
as we sacrifice the mulberry-leaves to the silkworm, because he
knows how to convert them into something richer and more last
ing. The question of originality is not one of form, but of sub
stance, not of cleverness, but of imaginative power. Given your
material, in other words the life in which you live, how much can
you see in it ? For on that depends how much you can make of
it. Is it merely an arrangement of man's contrivance, a patch
work of expediencies for temporary comfort and convenience,
good enough if it last your time, or is it so much of the surface
of that ever-flowing deity which we call Time, wherein we catch
such fleeting reflection as is possible for us of our relation to
perdurable things ? This is what makes the difference between
^Eschylus and Euripides, between Shakespeare and Fletcher,
between Goethe and Heine, between literature and rhetoric.
Something of this depth of insight, if not in the fullest, yet in
no inconsiderable measure, characterizes Chaucer. We must
not let his playfulness, his delight in the world as mere spec
tacle, mislead us into thinking that he was incapable of serious
purpose or insensible to the deeper meanings of life.

There are four principal sources from which Chaucer may be
presumed to have drawn for poetical suggestion or literary cul
ture, — the Latins, the Troubadours, the Trouveres, and the
Italians. It is only the two latter who can fairly claim any im
mediate influence in the direction of his thought or the forma
tion of his style. The only Latin poet who can be supposed
to have influenced the spirit of mediaeval literature is Ovid. In
his sentimentality, his love of the marvellous and the pictu
resque, he is its natural precursor. The analogy between his
Fasti and the versified legends of saints is more than a fanciful
one. He was certainly popular with the poets of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. Virgil had wellnigh become myth
ical. The chief merit of the Provencal poets is in having been
the first to demonstrate that it was possible to write with ele
gance in a modern dialect, and their interest for us is mainly
as forerunners, as indications of tendency. Their literature is
prophecy, not fulfilment. Its formal sentiment culminated in
Laura, its ideal aspiration in Beatrice. Shakespeare's hundred

18701] Chaucer. 163

and sixth sonnet, if, for the imaginary mistress to whom it was
addressed, we substitute the muse of a truer conception and
more perfected utterance, represents exactly the feeling with
which we read Provencal poetry : —

" When in the chronicle of wasted Time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,

I see their antique pen would have expressed

Even such a beauty as you master now ;

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring,

And, for they looked but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing."

It is astonishing how little of the real life of the time we learn
from the Troubadours except by way of inference and deduc
tion. Their poetry is purely lyric in its most narrow sense,
that is, the expression of personal and momentary moods.
To the fancy of critics who take their cue from tradition, Pro-
ven^-e is a morning sky of early summer, out of which innumer
able larks rain a faint melody (the sweeter because rather half
divined than heard too distinctly) over an earth where the dew
never dries and the flowers never fade. But when we open
Raynouard it is like opening the door of an aviary. We are
deafened and confused by a hundred minstrels singing the
same song at once, and more than suspect that the flowers
they welcome are made of French cambric spangled with dew-
drops of prevaricating glass. Bernard de Veutadour and Ber-
trand de Born are wellnigh the only ones among them in whom
we find an original type. Yet the Troubadours undoubtedly
led the way to refinement of conception and perfection of form.
They were the conduit through which the failing stream of
Roman literary tradition flowed into the new channel which
mediaeval culture was slowly shaping for itself. Without them
we could not understand Petrarca, who carried the manufacture
of artificial bloom and fictitious dew-drop to a point of excellence
where artifice, if ever, may claim the praise of art. Without
them we could not understand Dante, in whom their sentiment
for woman was idealized by a passionate intellect and a profound

164 Chaucer. [3u}y,

nature, till Beatrice becomes a half-human, half-divine abstrac
tion, a woman still to memory and devotion, a discmlcdied sym
bol to the ecstasy of thought. The Provencal love-poetry was
as abstracted from all sensuality as that of Petrarca, but it stops
short of that larger and more gracious style of treatment which
has secured him a place in all gentle hearts and refined imagina
tions forever. In it also woman leads her servants upward, but
it is along the easy slopes of conventional sentiment, and no
Troubadour so much as dreamed of that loftier region, native
to Dante, where the woman is subtilized into das Ewig-Wei-
bliehe, type of man's finer conscience and nobler aspiration
made sensible to him only through her.

On the whole, it would be hard to find anything more tedi
ously artificial than the Provencal literature, except the repro
duction of it by the Minnesingers. The Tedeschi lurchi cer
tainly did contrive to make something heavy as dough out of
what was at least light, if not very satisfying, in the canorous
dialect of Southern Gaul. But its doom was inevitably pre
dicted in its nature and position, nay, in its very name. It
was, and it continues to be, a strictly provincial literature,
imprisoned within extremely narrow intellectual and even geo
graphical limits. It is not race or language that can inflict
this leprous isolation, but some defect of sympathy with the
simpler and more universal relations of human nature. You
cannot shut up Burns in a dialect bristling with archaisms, nor
prevent Beranger from setting all pulses a-dance in the least
rhythmic and imaginative of modern tongues. The healthy tem
perament of Chaucer, with its breadth of interest in all ranks
and phases of social life, could have found little that was sym
pathetic in the evaporated sentiment and rhetorical punctilios
of a school of poets which, with rare exceptions, began and
ended in courtly dilettantism.

The refined formality with which the literary product of
Provence is for the most part stamped, as with a trademark,
was doubtless the legacy of Gallo-Roman culture, itself at best
derivative and superficial. I think, indeed, that it may well
be doubted whether Roman literature, always a half-hardy
exotic, could ripen the seeds of living reproduction. The
Roman genius was eminently practical, and far more apt for

1870.] Chaucer. 165

the triumphs of politics and jurisprudence than of art. Su
preme elegance it could and did arrive at in Virgil, but, if I
may trust my own judgment, it produced but one original poet,
and that was Horace, who has ever since continued the favorite
of men of the world, an apostle to the Gentiles of the mild cyni
cism of middle-age and an after-dinner philosophy. Though in no
sense national, he was, more truly than any has ever been since,
till the same combination of circumstances produced Beranger,
an urbane or city poet. Rome, with her motley life, her formal
religion, her easy morals, her spectacles, her luxury, her subur
ban country-life, was his muse. The situation was new, and
found a singer who had wit enough to turn it to account.
There are a half-dozen pieces of Catullus unsurpassed (unless
their Greek originals should turn up) for lyric grace and fanciful
tenderness. The sparrow of Lesbia still pecks the rosy lips of
his mistress, immortal as the eagle of Pindar. One profound
imagination, one man, who with a more prosperous subject
might have been a great poet, lifted Roman literature above its
ordinary, level of tasteful commonsense. The invocation of
Venus, as the genetic force of nature, by Lucretius, seems to
me the one sunburst of purely poetic inspiration which the
Latin language can show. But this very force, without which
neque fit Icstum neque amabile quicquam was wholly want
ing in those poets of the post-classic period, through whom
the literary influences of the past were transmitted to the
romanized provincials. The works of Ausonius interest us as
those of our own Dwights and Barlows do. The " Conquest
of Canaan " and the " Columbiad " were Connecticut epics no
doubt, but were still better than nothing in their day. If not
literature, they were at least memories of literature, and such
memories are not without effect in reproducing what they re
gret. The provincial writers of Latin devoted themselves with
a dreary assiduity to the imitation of models which they deemed
classical, but which were truly so only in the sense that they
were the more decorously respectful of the dead form in propor
tion as the living spirit had more utterly gone out of it. It is, I
suspect, to the traditions of this purely rhetorical influence, indi
rectly exercised, that we are to attribute the rapid passage of
the new Provencal poetry from what must have been its origi-

166 Chaucer. [July,

nal popular character to that highly artificial condition which
precedes total extinction. It was the alienation of the written
from the spoken language (always, perhaps, more or less ma
lignly operative in giving Roman literature a cold-blooded turn
as compared with Greek), which, ending at length in total
divorce, rendered Latin incapable of supplying the wants of new
men and new ideas. The same thing, I am strongly inclined
to think, was true of the language of the Troubadours. It had
become literary, and so far dead. It is true that no language is
ever so far gone in consumption as to be beyond the great-poet-
cure. Undoubtedly a man of genius can out of his own super
abundant vitality compel life into the most decrepit vocabu
lary. But it is by the infusion of his own blood, as it were, and
not without a certain sacrifice of power. No such rescue came
for the langue d'oc, which, it should seem, had performed its
special function in the development of modern literature, and
would have perished even without the Albigensian war. The
position of the Gallo-Romans pf the South, both ethical and
geographical, precluded them from producing anything really
great or even original in literature, for that must have its root in
a national life, and this they never had. After the Burgundian
invasion their situation was in many respects analogous to our
own after the Revolutionary War. They had been thoroughly
romanized in language and culture, but the line of their his
toric continuity had been broken. The Roman road, which
linked them with the only past they knew, had been buried
under the great barbarian land-slide. In like manner we, in
heriting the language, the social usages, the literary and politi
cal traditions of Englishmen, were suddenly cut adrift from our
historical anchorage. Very soon there arose a demand for a
native literature, nay, it was even proposed that, as a first step
toward it, we should adopt a lingo of our own to be called the
Columbian or Hesperian. This, to be sure, was never accom
plished, though our English cousins seem to hint sometimes that
we have made very fair advances toward it ; but if it could have
been, our position would have been precisely that of the Proven-
^als when they began to have a literature of their own. They
had formed a language which, while it completed their orphan
age from their imperial mother, continually recalled her, and

1870.] Chaucer. 167

kept alive their pride of lineage. Such reminiscences as they
still retained of Latin culture were pedantic and rhetorical,*
and it was only natural that out of these they should have
elaborated a code of poetical jurisprudence with titles and sub
titles applicable to every form of verse and tyrannous over
every mode of sentiment. The result could not fail to be arti
ficial and wearisome, except where some man with a truly
lyrical genius could breathe life into the rigid formula and
make it pliant to his more passionate feeling. The great ser
vice of the Provencals was that they kept in mind the fact that
poetry was not merely an amusement, but an art, and long
after their literary activity had ceased their influence reacted
beneficially upon Europe through their Italian pupils. They
are interesting as showing the tendency of the Romanic races
to a scientific treatment of what, if it be not spontaneous, be
comes a fashion and erelong an impertinence. Fauriel has
endeavored to prove that they were the first to treat the me
diaeval heroic legends epically, but the evidence is strongly
against him. The testimony of Dante on this point is ex
plicit,! and moreover not a single romance of chivalry has
come down to us in a dialect of the pure Provencal.

The Trouveres, on the other hand, are apt to have something
naive and vigorous about them, something that smacks of race
and soil. Their very coarseness is almost better than the Trou
badour delicacy, because it was not an affectation. The differ
ence between the two schools is that between a culture pedanti
cally transmitted and one which grows and gathers strength
from natural causes. Indeed, it is to the North of France and
to the Trouveres that we are to look for the true origins of our
modern literature. I do not mean in their epical poetry, though
there is something refreshing in the mere fact of their choos-

* Fauriel, Histoire de la Gaule Meridionale, Vol. I. passim.

t Allegat ergo pro se lingua Oil quod propter sui faciliorem et delectabiliorem
vulgaritatem, quicquid redactura sive inventum est ad vulgare prosaicum, suum est;
videlicet biblia cum Trojanorum, Romanorumque gestibus compilata et Arturi regis
ambages pulcherrimse et quamplures alise historise ac doctrine. That Dante by
prosriicum did not mean prose, but a more inartificial verse, numeros leg" solulos, is
clear. Cf. Wolf, Ueber die Lais, pp. 92 seq. and notes. It has not, I think, been
remarked that Dante borrows }\\s facifiorem et delectabiliorem from the plus diletable et
comune of his master Brunetto Latini.

168 Chaucer. [July,

ing native heroes and legends as the subjects of their song.
It was in their Fabliaux and Lais that, dealing with the
realities of the life about them, they became original and de
lightful in spite of themselves. Their Chansons de Geste are
fine specimens of fighting Christianity,- highly inspiring for
men like Peire de Bergerac, who sings

" Bel m'es can aug lo resso
Que fai Pausbercs ab 1'arso,
Li bruit e il crit e il masan
Que il corn e las trombas fan " ; *

but who after reading them — even the best of them, the Song
of Roland — can remember much more than a cloud of battle-
dust, through which the paladins loom dimly gigantic, and a
strong verse flashes here and there like an angry sword ?
What are the Roman (Tavantures, the cycle of Arthur and his
knights, but a procession of armor and plumes, mere spectacle,
not vision like their Grecian antitype, the Odyssey, whose pic
tures of life, whether domestic or heroic, are among the abid
ing consolations of the mind ? An element of disproportion j
of grotesqueness,f earmark of the barbarian, disturbs us, even
when it does not disgust, in them all. Except the Roland,
they all want adequate motive, and even in that we may well
suspect a reminiscence of the Iliad. They are not without a
kind of dignity, for manliness is always noble, and there are
detached scenes that are striking, perhaps all the more so
from their rarity, like the combat of Oliver and Fierabras,
and the leave-taking of Parise la Duchesse. But in point of
art they are far below even Firdusi, whose great poem is of
precisely the same romantic type. The episode of Sohrab and
Rustem as much surpasses the former of the passages just al
luded to in largeness and energy of treatment, in the true
epical quality, as the lament of Tehmine over her son does the
latter of them in refined and natural pathos. In our revolt
against pseudo-classicism we must not let our admiration for
the vigor and freshness which are the merit of this old poetry

* " My ears no sweeter music know

Than hauberk's clank with saddlebow,
The noise, the cries, the tumult blown
From trumpet and from clarion."

t Compare Floripar in Fierabras with Naubikiia, for example.

1870.] Chaucer. 169

tempt us to forget that our direct literary inheritance comes to
us from an ancestry who would never have got beyond the Age
of Iron but for the models of graceful form and delicate work
manship which they found in the tombs of an earlier race.

The great advantages which the lanscue d'oil had over its
sister dialect of the South of France were its wider distribution,
and its representing the national and unitary tendencies of the
people as opposed to those of proyincial isolation. But the
Trouveres had also this superiority, that they gave a voice to
real and not merely conventional emotions. In comparison
with the Troubadours their sympathies were more human, and
their expression more popular. While the tiresome ingenuity
of the latter busied itself chiefly in the filigree of wiredrawn
sentiment and supersubtilized conceit, the former took their
subjects from the street and the market as well as from the
chateau. In the one case language had become a mere ma
terial for clever elaboration ; in the other, as always in live
literature, it 'was a soil fr6m which the roots of thought and
feeling unponsciously drew the coloring of vivid expression.
The writers of French, by the greater pliancy of their dialect
and the simpler forms of their verse, had acquired an ease
which was impossible in the more stately and sharply angled
vocabulary of the South. Their octosyllabics have not seldom a
careless facility not unworthy of Swift in his best mood. They
had attained the highest skill and grace in narrative, as the
lays of Marie de France and the Lai de V Oiselet bear witness.*
Above all, they had learned how to brighten the hitherto monot
onous web of story with the gayer hues of fancy.

It is no improbable surmise that the sudden and surprising
development of the more strictly epical poetry in the North of
France, and especially its growing partiality for historical in
preference to mythical subjects, were due to the Normans. The
poetry of the Danes was much of it authentic history, or what
was believed to be so ; the heroes of their Sagas were real men,
with wives and children, with relations public and domestic,
on the common levels of life, and not mere creatures of imag
ination, who dwell apart like stars from the vulgar cares
and interests of men. If we compare Havelok with the

* If internal evidence may be trusted, the Lai de I'Espine is not hers.

170 Chaucer. [July,

least idealized figures of Carlovingian or Arthurian romance
we shall have a keen sense of this difference. Manhood has
taken the place of caste, and homeliness of exaggeration.
Havelok says, —

" Godwot, I will with thee gang
For to learn some good to get;
Swinken would I for my meat;
It is no shame for to swinken."

This Dane, we see, is of our own make and stature, a being
much nearer our kindly sympathies than his compatriot Ogier,
of whom we are told,

" Dix pies de lone avoit le chevalier.'*

But however large or small share we may allow to the Danes
in changing the character of French poetry and supplanting
the Romance with the Fabliau, there can be little doubt either
of the kind or amount of influence which the Normans must
have brought with them into England. I am not going to at
tempt a definition of the Anglo-Saxon element in English liter
ature, for generalizations are apt to be as dangerous as they
are tempting. But as a painter may draw a cloud so that we
recognize its general truth, though the boundaries of real
clouds never remain the same for two minutes together, so
amid the changes of feature and complexion brought about by
commingling of race, there still remains a certain cast of phys
iognomy which points back to some one ancestor of marked
and peculiar character. It is toward this type that there is al
ways a tendency to revert, to borrow Mr. Darwin's phrase, and
I think the general belief is not without some adequate grounds
which in France traces this predominant type to the Kelt, and
in England to the Saxon. In old and stationary communities,
where tradition has a chance to take root, and where several
generations are present to the mind of each inhabitant, either
by personal recollection or transmitted anecdote, everybody's
peculiarities, whether of strength or weakness, are explained
and, as it were, justified upon some theory of hereditary bias.
Such and such qualities he got from a grandfather on the spear
or a great-uncle on the spindle side. This gift came in a right
line from So-and-so ; that failing came in by the dilution of the
family blood with that of Such-a-one. In this way a certain

1870.] Chaucer. 171

allowance is made for every aberration from some assumed
normal type, either in the way of reinforcement or defect, and
that universal desire of the human mind to have everything
accounted for — which makes the moon responsible for the
whimsies of the weathercock — is cheaply gratified. But as
mankind in the aggregate is always wiser than any single man,
because its experience is derived from a larger range of ob
servation and experience, and because the springs that feed it
drain a wider region both of time and space, there is com
monly some greater or smaller share of truth in all popular
prejudices. The meteorologists are beginning to agree with
the old women that the moon is an accessary before the fact in
our atmospheric fluctuations. Now, although to admit this
notion of inherited good or ill to its fullest extent would be to
abolish personal character, and with it all responsibility, to ab
dicate freewill, and to make every effort at self-direction futile,
there is no inconsiderable alloy of truth in it, nevertheless. No
man can look into the title-deeds of what may be called his per
sonal estate, his faculties, his predilections, his failings, — what
ever, in short, sets him apart as a capital I, — without some
thing like a shock of dread to find how much of him is held in
mortmain by those who, though long ago mouldered away to
dust, are yet fatally alive and active in him for good or ill.
What is true of individual men is true also of races, and the
prevailing belief in a nation as to the origin of certain of its
characteristics has something of the same basis in facts of
observation as the village estimate of the traits of particular
families. Interdum vulgus rectum videt.

We are apt, it is true, to talk rather loosely about our Anglo-
Saxon ancestors, and to attribute to them in a vague way all
the pith of our institutions and the motive power of our progress.
For my own part, I think there is such a thing as being too
Anglo-Saxon, and the warp and woof of the English national
character, though undoubtedly two elements mainly predomi
nate in it, is quite too complex for us to pick out a strand here
and there, and affirm that the body of the fabric is of this or that.
Our present concern with the Saxons is chiefly a literary one ;
but it leads to a study of general characteristics. What, then,
so far as we can make it out, seems to be their leading mental

172 Chaucer. [July,

feature ? Plainly, understanding, common sense, — a faculty
.which never carries its possessor very high in creative litera
ture, though it may make him great as an acting and even
thinking man. Take Dr. Johnson as an instance. The Saxon,
as it appears to me, has never shown any capacity for art, nay,
commonly commits ugly blunders when he is tempted in that
direction. He has made the best working institutions and the
ugliest monuments among the children of men. He is want
ing in taste, which is as much as to say that he. has no true
sense of proportion. His genius is his solidity, — an admi
rable foundation of national character. He is healthy, in no
danger of liver-complaint, with digestive apparatus of amazing
force and precision. He is the best farmer and best grazier
among men, raises the biggest crops and the fattest cattle,
and consumes proportionate quantities of both. He settles
and sticks like a diluvial deposit on the warm, low-lying
levels, physical and moral. He has a prodigious talent, to
use our Yankee phrase, of staying' put. You cannot move
him ; he and rich earth have a natural sympathy of cohe
sion. Not quarrelsome, but with indefatigable durability of
fight in him, sound of stomach, and not too refined in ner
vous texture, he is capable of indefinitely prolonged punish
ment, with a singularly obtuse sense of propriety in acknowl
edging himself beaten. Among all races perhaps none has
shown so acute a sense of the side on which its bread is but
tered, and so great a repugnance for having fine phrases take
the place of the butyraceous principle. They invented the
words " humbug," " cant," " sham," " gag," " soft-sodder,"
" flapdoddle," and other disenchanting formulas whereby the
devil of falsehood and unreality gets his effectual apage Satana !
An imperturbable perception of the real relations of things
is the Saxon's leading quality, — no sense whatever, or at best
small, of the ideal in him. He has no notion that two and two
ever make five, which is the problem the poet often has to solve.
Understanding, that is, equilibrium of mind, intellectual good
digestion, this, with unclogged biliary ducts, makes him men
tally and physically what we call a very fixed fact ; but you
shall not find a poet in a hundred thousand square miles, — in
many prosperous centuries of such. But one element of incal-

1870.] Chaucer. 173

culable importance we have not mentioned. In this homely
nature, the idea of God, and of a simple and direct relation
between the All-Father and his children, is deeply rooted.
There, above all, will he have honesty and simplicity ; less
than anything else will he have the sacramental wafer, —
that .beautiful emblem of our dependence on Him who giv-
eth the daily bread ; less than anything will he have this
smeared with that Barmecide butter of fair words. This is the
lovely and noble side of his character. Indignation at this will
make him forget crops and cattle ; and this, after so many cen
turies, will give him at last a poet in the monk of Eisleben, who
shall cut deep on the memory of mankind that brief creed of
conscience, — u Here am I : God help me : I cannot otherwise."
This, it seems to me, with dogged sense of justice, — both
results of that equilibrium of thought which springs from clear
sighted understanding, — makes the beauty of the Saxon nature.

He believes in another world, and conceives of it without
metaphysical subtleties as something very much after the
pattern of 'this, but infinitely more desirable. Witness the
vision of John Bunyan. Once beat it into him that his
eternal well-being, as he calls it, depends on certain condi
tions, that only so will the balance in the ledger of eter
nity be in his favor, and the man who seemed wholly of
this world will give all that he has, even his life, with a su
perb simplicity and scorn of the theatric, for a chance in the
next. Hard to move, his very solidity of nature makes him
terrible when once fairly set agoing. He is the man of all
others slow to admit the thought of revolution ; but let him
once admit it, he will carry it through and make it stick, —
a secret hitherto undiscoverable by other races.

But poetry is not made out of the understanding ; that is
not the sort of block out of which you can carve wing-footed
Mercuries. The question of common sense is always, " What is
it goqd for ? " — a question which would abolish the rose and be
answered triumphantly by the cabbage. The danger of the
prosaic type of mind lies in the stolid sense of superiority
which blinds it to everything ideal, to the use of anything that
does not serve the practical purposes of life. Do we not
remember how the all-observing and all-fathoming Shakespeare

174 Chaucer. [July?

has typified this in Bottom the weaver ? Surrounded by all the
fairy creations of fancy, he sends one to fetch him the bag of a
humble-bee, and can find no better employment for Mustard-
seed than to help Cavalero Cobweb scratch his ass's head be
tween the ears. When Titania, queen of that fair ideal world,
offers him a feast of beauty, he says he has a good stomach to
a pottle of hay !

The Anglo-Saxons never had any real literature of their
own. They produced monkish chronicles in bad Latin, and
legends of saints in worse metre. Their earlier poetry is essen
tially Scandinavian. It was that gens inclytissima Northman-
norum that imported the divine power of imagination, — that
power which, mingled with the solid Saxon understanding, pro
duced at last the miracle of Stratford. It was to this adventur
ous race, which found America before Columbus, which, for the
sake of freedom of thought, could colonize inhospitable Iceland,
which, as it were, typifying the very action of the imaginative
faculty itself, identified itself always with what it conquered,
that we owe whatever aquiline features there are in the na
tional physiognomy of the English race. It was through the
Normans that the English mind and fancy, hitherto provincial
and uncouth, were first infused with the lightness, grace, and
self-confidence of Romance literature. They seem to have
opened a window to the southward in that solid and somewhat
sombre insular character, and it was a painted window all
aglow with the figures of tradition and poetry. The old Gothic
volume, grim with legends of devilish temptation and satanic
lore, they illuminated with the gay and brilliant inventions of
a softer climate and more genial moods. Even the stories of
Arthur and his knights, toward which the stern Dante himself
relented so far as to call them gratissimas ambages, most
delightful circumlocutions, though of British original, were first
set free from the dungeon of a barbarous dialect by the French
poets, and so brought back to England, and made popular
there by the Normans.

Chaucer, to whom French must have been almost as truly a
mother tongue as English, was familiar with all that had been
done by Troubadour or Trouvere. In him we see the first re
sult of the Norman yeast upon the home-baked Saxon loaf.

1870.] Chaucer. 175

The flour had been honest, the paste well-kneaded, but the in
spiring leaven was wanting till the Norman brought it over.
Chaucer works still in the solid material of his race, but with
what airy lightness has he not infused it ? Without ceasing to be
English, he has escaped from being insular. But he was some
thing more than this ; he was a scholar, a thinker, and a critic.
He had studied the Divina Commedia of Dante, he had read
Petrarca and Boccaccio, and some of the Latin poets. He calls
Dante the great poet of Italy, and Petrarch a learned clerk.
It is plain that he knew very well the truer purpose of poetry,
and had even arrived at the higher wisdom of comprehending
the aptitudes and limitations of his own genius. He saw
clearly and felt keenly what were the faults and what the
wants of the prevailing literature of his country. In the
Monk's Tale he slyly satirizes the long-winded morality of
Gower, as his prose antitype, Fielding, was to satirize the prolix
sentimentality of Richardson. In the rhyme of Sir Thopas he
gives the coup de grace to the romances of Chivalry, and in his
own choice of a subject he heralds that new world in which the
actual and the popular were to supplant the fantastic and heroic.
With the single exception of Piers Ploughman, the English
poets, his contemporaries, were little else than bad versifiers of
legends classic or mediaeval, as happened, without selection and
without art. Chaucer is the first who broke away from the
dreary traditional style, and gave not merely stories, but lively
pictures of real life as the ever-renewed substance of poetry.
He was a reformer, too, not only in literature, but in morals.
But as in the former his exquisite tact saved him from all
eccentricity, so in the latter the pervading sweetness of his
nature could never be betrayed into harshness and invective.
He seems incapable of indignation. He mused good-naturedly
over the vices and follies of men, and, never forgetting that he
was fashioned of the same clay, is rather apt to pity than con
demn. There is no touch of cynicism in all he wrote. Dante's
brush seems sometimes to have been smeared with the burning
pitch of his own fiery lake. Chaucer's pencil is dipped in the
cheerful color-box of the old illuminators, and he has their
patient delicacy of touch, with a freedom far beyond their
somewhat mechanic brilliancy.

176 Chaucer. [July,

English narrative poetry, as Chaucer found it, though it had
not altogether escaped from the primal curse of long-windedness
so painfully characteristic of its prototype, the French Romance
of Chivalry, had certainly shown a feeling for the picturesque, a
sense of color, a directness of phrase, and a simplicity of treat
ment which give it graces of its own and a turn peculiar to itself.
In the easy knack of story-telling, the popular minstrels cannot
compare with Marie de France. The lightsomeness of fancy,
that leaves a touch of sunshine and is gone, is painfully missed
in them all.. Their incidents enter dispersedly, as the old
stage directions used to say, and they have not learned the art
of concentrating their force on the key-point of their hearers'
interest. But they sometimes yield to an instinctive^ hint of
leaving-off at the right moment, and in their happy negligence
achieve an effect only to be matched by the highest successes
of art.

u That lady heard his mourning all
Right under her chamber wall,
In her oriel where she was,
Closed well with royal glass ;
Fulfilled it was with imagery
Every window, by and by ;
On each side had there a gin
Sperred [closed] with many a divers pin ;
Anon that lady fair and free
Undid a pin of ivory
Arid wide the window she open set, —
The sun shone in at her closet."

It is true the old rhymer relapses a little into the habitual
drone of his class, and shows half a mind to bolt into their com
mon inventory style when he comes to his gins and pins, but he
withstands the temptation manfully, and his sunshine fills our
hearts with a gush as sudden as that which illumines the lady's
oriel. Coleridge and Keats have each in his way felt the charm
of this winsome picture, but have hardly equalled its hearty hon
esty, its economy of material, the supreme test of artistic skill.
I admit that the phrase "had there a gin" is suspicious, and sug
gests a French original, but I remember nothing altogether so
good in the romances from the other side of the Channel. One
more passage occurs to me almost incomparable in its simple
straightforward force and choice of the right word.

1870.] Chaucer. 177

" Sir Graysteel to his death thus thraws,
He welters [wallows] and the grass updraws ;

A little while then lay he still,
(Friends that saw him liked full ill,)

And bled into his armor bright."

»

The last line, for suggestive reticence, almost deserves to be
put beside the famous

" Quel giorno piii non vi leggemmo avante "

of the great master of laconic narration. In the same poem*
the growing love of the lady, in its maidenliness of unconscious
betrayal, is touched with a delicacy and tact as surprising as they
are delightful. But such passages, which are the despair of poets
who have to work in a language that has faded into diction, are
exceptional. They are to be set down rather to good luck than
art. Even the stereotyped similes of these fortunate illiterates,
like " weary as water in a weir," or " glad as grass is of the rain,"
are new, like nature, at the thousandth repetition. Perhaps our
palled taste overvalues the wild flavor of these wayside treasure-
troves. They are wood-strawberries, prized in proportion as
we must turn over more leaves ere we find one. This popular
literature is of value in helping us toward a juster estimate of
Chaucer by showing what the mere language was capable of,
and that all it wanted was a poet to put it through its paces.
For, though the poems I have quoted be, in their present form,
later than he, they are, after all, but modernized versions of
older copies, which they doubtless reproduce with substantial
fidelity.

It is commonly assumed that Chaucer did for English what
Dante is supposed to have done for Italian and Luther for Ger
man, that he, in short, in some hitherto inexplicable way, created
it. But this is to speak loosely and without book. Languages
are never made in any such fashion, still less are they the
achievement of any single man, however great his genius,
however powerful his individuality. They shape themselves
by laws as definite as those which guide and limit the growth
of other living organisms. Dante, indeed, has told us that he
chose to write in the tongue that might be learned of nurses

* Sir Eger and Sir Grim in the Percy Folio. The passage quoted is from Ellis.

VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 12

178 Chaucer.

and cliafferers in the market. His practice shows that he knew
perfectly well that poetry has needs which cannot be answered
by the vehicle of vulgar commerce between man and man.
What he instinctively felt was, that there was the living heart
of all speech, without whose help the brain were powerless to
send will, motion, meaning, to the limbs and extremities. But
it is true that a language, as respects the uses of literature, is
liable to a kind of syncope. No matter how complete its
vocabulary may be, how thorough an outfit of inflections and
case-endings it may have, it is a mere dead body without a soul
till some man of genius set its arrested pulses once more athrob,
and show what wealth of sweetness, scorn, persuasion, and pas
sion lay there awaiting its liberator. In this sense it is hardly
too much to say that Chaucer, like Dante, found his native
tongue a dialect and left it a language. But it was not what he
did with deliberate purpose of reform, it was his kindly and plas
tic genius that wrought this magic of renewal and inspiration.
It was not the new words he introduced,* but his way of using the
old ones, that surprised them into grace, ease, and dignity in
their own despite. In order to feel fully how much he achieved,
let any one subject himself to a penitential course of reading in
his contemporary, Gower, who worked in a material to all intents
and purposes the same, or listen for a moment to the barbarous
jangle which Lydgate and Occleve contrive to draw from the
instrument their master had tuned so deftly. Gower has posi
tively raised tediousness to the precision of science, he has
made dulness an heirloom for the students of our literary his
tory. As you slip to and fro on the frozen levels of his verse,
which give no foothold to the mind, as your nervous ear awaits
the inevitable recurrence of his rhyme, regularly pertinacious as
the tick of an eight-day clock and reminding you of Words
worth's

" Once more the ass did lengthen out
The hard, dry, seesaw of his horrible bray," •

you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this inde
fatigable man. He is the undertaker of the fair mediaeval
legend, and his style has the hateful gloss, the seemingly un
natural length, of a coffin. Loye, beauty, passion, nature, art,

# I think he tried one now and then, like " even columbine."

1870.] Chaucer. 179

life, the natural and theological virtues, — there is nothing be
yond his power to disenchant, nothing out of which the tremen
dous hydraulic press of his allegory (or whatever it is, for I am
not sure if it be not something even worse) will not squeeze all
feeling and freshness and leave it a juiceless pulp. It matters
not where you try him, whether his story be Christian or pagan,
borrowed from history or fable, you cannot escape him. Dip in
at the middle or the end, dodge back to the beginning, the patient
old man is there to take you by the button and go on with his
imperturbable narrative. You may have left off with Clytem-
nestra, and you begin again with Samson ; it makes no odds,
for you cannot tell one from tother. His tediousness is omni
present, and like Dogberry he could find in his heart to bestow it
all (and more if he had it) on your worship. The word lengthy
has been charged to our American account, but it must have
been invented by the first reader of Gower's works, the only
inspiration of which they were ever capable. Our literature
had to lie by and recruit for more than four centuries ere
it could give us an equal vacuity in Tupper, so persistent a
uniformity of commonplace in the Recreations of a Country
Parson. Let us be thankful that the industrious Gower
never found time for recreation!

But a fairer as' well as more instructive comparison lies be
tween Chaucer and the author of Piers Ploughman. Langland
has as much tenderness, as much interest in the varied picture
of life, as hearty a contempt for hypocrisy, and almost an equal
sense of fun. He has the same easy abundance of matter. But
what a difference ! It is the difference between the poet and
the man of poetic temperament. The abundance of the one is
a continual fulness within the fixed limits of good taste ; that of
the other is squandered in overflow. The one can be profuse on
occasion ; the other is diffuse whether he will or no. The one
is full of talk ; the other is garrulous. What in one is the re
fined bonhomie of a man of the world, is a rustic shrewdness in
the other. Both are kindly in their satire, and have not (like too
many reformers) that vindictive love of virtue which spreads
the stool of repentance with thistle-burrs before they invite the
erring to seat themselves therein. But what in Piers Plough
man is sly fun, has the breadth and depth of humor in Chaucer ;

180 Chaucer. [July?

and it is plain that while the former was taken up by his moral
purpose, the main interest of the latter turned to perfecting
the form of, his work. In short, Chaucer had that fine literary
sense which is as rare as genius, and, united with it, as it was
in him, assures an immortality of fame. It is not merely what
he has to say, but even more the agreeable way he has of say
ing it, that captivates our attention and gives him an assured
place in literature. Above all, it is not in detached passages
that his charm lies, but in the entirety of expression and the
cumulative effect of many particulars working toward a com
mon end. Now though ex ungue leonem be a good rule in
comparative anatomy, its application, except in a very limited
way, in criticism is sure to mislead ; for we should always bear
in mind that the really great writer is great in the mass, and
is to 'be tested less by his cleverness in the elaboration of parts
than by that reach of mind which is incapable of random effort,
which selects, arranges, combines, rejects, denies itself the
cheap triumph of immediate effects, because it is absorbed by
the controlling charm of proportion and unity. A careless
good-luck of phrase is delightful ; but criticism cleaves to the
teleological argument, and distinguishes the creative intellect,
not so much by any happiness of natural endowment as by the
marks of design. It is true that one may sometimes discover
by a single verse whether an author have imagination, or may
make a shrewd guess whether he have style or no, just as by
a few spoken words you may judge of a man's accent ; but the
true artist in language is never spotty, and needs no guide-
boards of admiring italics, a critical method introduced by
Leigh Hunt, whose feminine temperament gave him acute per
ceptions at the expense of judgment. This is the Breotian
method, which offers us a brick as a sample of the house, for
getting that it is not the goodness of the separate bricks, but
the way in which they are put together, that brings them within
the province of art, and makes the difference between a heap
and a house. A great writer does not reveal himself here
and there, but everywhere. Langland's verse runs mostly like
a brook, with a beguiling and wellnigh slumberous prattle,
but he, more often than any writer of his class, flashes into
salient lines, gets inside our guard with the home-thrust of a

1870.] Chaucer. 181

forthright word, and he gains if taken piecemeal. His im
agery is naturally and vividly picturesque, as where he says

of Old Age,—

" Eld the hoar

That was in the vauntward,
And bare the banner before death," —

and he softens to a sweetness of sympathy beyond Chaucer
when he speaks of the poor or tells us that Mercy is " sib of
all sinful " ; but to compare Piers Ploughman with the Can
terbury Tales is to compare sermon with song.

Let us put a bit of Langland's satire beside one of Chau
cer's. Some people in search of Truth meet a pilgrim and ask
him whence he comes. He gives a long list of holy places,
appealing for proof to the relics on his hat : —

"'I have walked full wide in wet and in dry
And sought saints for my soul's health.'
1 Know'st thou ever a relic that is called Truth ?
Couldst thou show us the way where that wight dwelleth ? '
'Nay, so God help me,' said the man then,
' I saw never palmer with staff nor with scrip
Ask after him ever till now in this place.' "

This is a good hit, and the poet is satisfied ; but, in what I am
going to quote from Chaucer, everything becomes picture, over
which lies broad and warm the sunshine of humorous fancy.

" In olde daye's of the King Artour
Of which that Britouns speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of fayerie :
The elf-queen with her joly compaignie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede :
This was the old opinion- as I rede ;
I speke of many hundrid yer ago :
But now can no man see none elves mo,
For now the grete charite and pray e' res
Of lymytours and other holy freres
That sechen every lond and every streem,
As thick as motis in the sonnebeam,
Blessyng halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castels hihe and toures,
Thorpes and bernes, shepnes and dayeries,
This makith that ther ben no fayeries.
For ther as wont to walken was an elf
There walkith none but the lymytour himself,
In undermeles and in morwenynges,

182 Chaucer. [July,

And sayth his matyns and his holy thinges,
As he goth in his lymytatioun.
Wommen may now go saufly up and doun ;
In every bush or under every tre
There is none other incubus but he,
And he ne wol doon hem no dishonour."

How cunningly the contrast is suggested here between the Elf-
queen's jolly company and the unsocial limiters, thick as motes
in the sunbeam, yet each walking by himself! Even Shake
speare, who seems to come in after everybody has done his best
with a " Let me take hold a minute and show you how to do
it," could not have bettered this.

Piers Ploughman is the best example I know of what is called
popular poetry, — of compositions, that is, which contain all the
simpler elements of poetry, but still in solution, not crystallized
around any thread of artistic purpose. In it appears at her
best the Anglo-Saxon Muse, a first cousin of Poor Richard, full
of proverbial wisdom, who always brings her knitting in her
pocket, and seems most at home in the chimney-corner. It is
genial ; it plants itself firmly on human nature with its rights
and wrongs ; it has a surly honesty, prefers- the downright to
the gracious, and conceives of speech as a tool rather than a
musical instrument., If we should seek for a single word that
would define it most precisely, we should not choose simplici
ty, but homeliness. There is more or less of this in all early
poetry, to be sure ; but I think it especially proper to English
poets, and to the most English among them, like* Cowper,
Crabbe, and one is tempted to add Wordsworth, — where he
forgets Coleridge's private lectures. In reading such poets as
Langland, also, we are not to forget a certain charm of dis
tance in the very language they use, making it unhackneyed
without being alien. As it is the chief function of the poet to
make the familiar novel, these fortunate early risers of litera
ture, who gather phrases with the dew still on them, have
their poetry done for them, as it were, by their vocabulary.
But in Chaucer, as in all great poets, the language gets its
charm from him. The force and sweetness of his genius
kneaded more kindly together the Latin and Teutonic ele
ments of our mother-tongue, and made something better than

1870.] Chaucer. ' 183

either. The necessity of writing poetry, and not mere verse,
made him a reformer whether he would or no ; and the in
stinct of his finer ear was a guide such as none before him
or contemporary with him, nor indeed any that came after
him, till Spenser, could command. Gower had no notion of
the uses of rhyme except as a kind of crease at the end of
every eighth syllable, where the verse was to be folded over
again into another layer. He says, for example,

" This maiden Canacee was bight,
Both in the day and eke by night,"

as if people commonly changed their names at dark. And he
could not even contrive to say this without the clumsy pleo
nasm of both and eke. -Chaucer was put to no such shifts of
piecing out his metre with loose-woven bits of baser stuff. He
himself says, in the Man of Law's Tale, —

" Me lists not of the chaff nor of the straw
To make so long a tale as of the corn."

One of the world's three or four great story-tellers, he was also
one of the best versifiers that ever made English trip' and sing
with a gayety that seems careless, but where every foot beats
time to the tune of the thought. By the skilful arrangement
of his pauses he evaded the monotony of the couplet, and gave
to the rhymed pentameter, which he made our heroic measure,
something of the architectural repose of blank verse. He found
our language lumpish, stiff, unwilling, too apt to speak Saxonly
in grouty monosyllables ; he left it enriched with the longer
measure of the Italian and Provencal poets. He reconciled, in
the harmony of his verse, the English bluntness with the dig
nity and elegance of the less homely Southern speech. Though
he did not and could not create our language (for he who writes
to be read does not write for linguisters), yet it is true that he
first made it easy, and to that extent modern, so that Spenser,
two hundred years later, studied his method and called him
master. He first wrote English; and it was a feeling of this,
I suspect, that made it fashionable in Elizabeth's day to " talk
pure Chaucer." Already we find in his works verses that
might pass without question in Milton or even Wordsworth,
so mainly unchanged have the language of poetry and the
movement of verse remained from his day to our own.

184 Chaucer. [July,

" Thou Polymnia

On Pernaso, that, with * thy sisters glad,
By Helicon, not far from Cirrea,
Singest with voice memorial in the shade,
Under the laurel which that may not fade."

" And downward from a hill under a bent
There stood the temple of Mars omnipotent
Wrought all of burned steel, of which th' entree
Was long and strait and ghastly for to see :
The northern light in at the doores shone
For window in the wall ne was there none
Through which men mighten any light discerne ;
The dore was all of adamant eterne."

And here are some lines that would not seem out of place in-
the' Paradise of Dainty Devises : —

" Hide, Absolom, thy gilte [gilded] tresses clear,
Esther lay thou thy meekness all adown.

Make of your wifehood no comparison ;
Hide ye your beauties Ysoude and Elaine,
My lady cometh, that all this may distain."

When I remember Chaucer's malediction upon his scrivener,
and consider that by far the larger proportion of his verses
(allowing always for change of pronunciation) are perfectly
accordant with our present accentual system, I cannot believe
that he ever wrote an imperfect line. • His ear would never
have tolerated the verses of nine syllables, with a strong ac
cent on the first, attributed to him by Mr. Skeate and Mr.
Morris. Such verses seem to me simply impossible in the
pentameter iambic as Chaucer wrote it. A great deal of mis
apprehension would be avoided in discussing English metres,
if it were only understood that quantity in Latin and quan
tity in English mean very different things. Perhaps the best
quantitative verses in our language (even better than Cole
ridge's) are to be found in Mother Goose, composed by nurses
wholly by ear and beating time as they danced the baby on
their knee. I suspect Chaucer and Shakespeare would be sur
prised into a smile by the learned arguments which supply
their halting verses with every kind of excuse except that of

* Commonly printed hath.

1870.] Chaucer. 185

being readable. When verses were written to be chanted, more
license could be granted, for the ear tolerates the widest
deviations from habitual accent in words that are sung.
Segnius irritant demissa per aurem. To some extent the
same thing is true of anapaestic and other tripping measures,
but we cannot admit it in marching tunes like those of
Chaucer. He wrote for the eye more than for the voice, as
poets had begun to do long before.* Some loose talk of Cole
ridge, loose in spite of its affectation of scientific precision,
about " retardations " and the like, has misled many honest
persons into believing that they can make good verse out of
bad prose. Coleridge himself, from natural fineness of ear,
was the best metrist among modern English poets, and, read
with proper allowances, his remarks upon versification are
always instructive to whoever is not rhythm-deaf. But one
"has no patience with the dyspondaeuses, the paeon primuses,
and what not, with which he darkens verses that are to be
explained only by the contemporary habits of pronunciation.
Till after the time of Shakespeare we must always bear in
mind that it is not a language of books but of living speech
that we have to deal with. Of this language Coleridge had
little knowledge, except what could be acquired through the
ends of his fingers as they lazily turned the leaves of his hap
hazard reading. If his eye was caught by a single passage
that gave him a chance to theorize he did not look farther.
Speaking of Massinger, for example, he says, " When a speech
is interrupted, or one of the characters speaks aside, the last

* Froissart's description of the book of traite's amoureux et de moralite, which
he had had engrossed for presentation to Richard II. in 1394, is enough to bring
tears to the eyes of a modern author. " Et lui plut tres grandement ; et plaire bien
lui devoit car il etait enlumine', ecrit et historic et couvert de vermeil velours a dis
cloux d'argent dores d'or, et roses d'or au milieu, et a deux grands fremaulx dores
et richement ouvre's aa milieu de rosiers d'or." How lovingly he lingers over it,
hooking it together with et after et ! But two centuries earlier, while the jongleurs
were still in full song, poems were also read aloud.

" Pur remembrer des ancessours
Les faits et les dits et les mours,
Deit Ten les livres et les gestes
Et les estoires lire afestes."

Roman du Rou.

But Chaucer wrote for the private reading of the closet.

186 Chaucer.

syllable of the former speech and first of the succeeding Mas-
singer counts for one, because both are supposed to be spoken
at the same moment.

* And felt the sweetness oft

' How her mouth runs over.' "

Now fifty instances may be cited from Massinger which tell
against this fanciful notion, for one that seems, and only
seems, in its favor. Any one tolerably familiar with the
dramatists knows that in the passage quoted by Coleridge,
the how being emphatic, " how heir " was pronounced how V.
He tells us that " Massinger is fond of the anapa3st in the
first and third foot, as : —

.* To your more | than mas'culine rea]son that | commands 'em ||.'

Likewise of the second paeon (_ _ _ J) in the first foot, followed
by four trochees (-~), as : —

'So greedily [ long for, | know their | titill|ations.' "

In truth, he was no fonder of them than his brother dramatists
who, like him, wrote for the voice by the ear. " To your " is
still one syllable in ordinary speech, and " masculine " and
" greedily " were and are dissyllables or trisyllables accord
ing to their place in the verse. Coleridge was making ped
antry of a very simple matter. Yet he has said with per
fect truth of Chaucer's verse, " Let a few plain rules be given
for sounding the final e of syllables, and for expressing the
terminations of such words as ocean and nation, &c., as dis
syllables, — or let the syllables to be sounded in such cases
be marked by a competent metrist. This simple expedient
would, with a very few trifling exceptions, where the errors
are inveterate, enable any one to feel the perfect smoothness
and harmony of Chaucer's verse." But let us keep widely
clear of Latin and Greek terms of prosody ! It is also more
important here than even with the dramatists of Shakespeare's
time to remember that we have to do with a language caught
more from the ear than from books. The best school for learn
ing to understand Chaucer's elisions, compressions, slurrings-
over and running-together of syllables is to listen to the habitual
speech of rustics with whom language is still plastic to mean
ing, and hurries or prolongs itself accordingly. Here is a con-

1870.] * Chaucer. 187

traction frequent in Chaucer, and still common in New Eng
land:

" But me were lever than [lever 'n] all this town, quod he."

Let one example suffice for many. To Coleridge's rules an
other should be added by a wise editor ; and that is to restore
the final n in the infinitive and third person plural of verbs,
and in such other cases as can be justified by the authority of
Chaucer himself. Surely his ear could never have endured the
sing-song of such verses as

" I couthe telle for a gowne-cloth,"
or

" Than ye to me schuld breke youre trouthe."

Chaucer's measure is so uniform (making due allowances) that*
words should be transposed or even omitted where the verse
manifestly demands it, — and with copyists so long and dull
of ear this is often the case. Sometimes they leave out a
needful word : —

" But er [the] thunder stynte, there cometh rain/'
" When [that] we ben yflattered and ypraised,"
" Tak [ye] him for the greatest gentleman."

Sometimes they thrust in a word or words that hobble the

verse : —

" She trowed he were yfel in [some] maladie,"

" Ye faren like a man [that] had lost his wit,"

" Then have I got of you the maystrie, quod she,"

(Then have I got the maystery, quod she,)

" And quod the juge [also] thou must lose thy head."

Sometimes they give a wrong word identical in meaning : —

" And therwithal he knew [couthe] -no proverbes."

Sometimes they change the true order of the words : —

" Therefore no woman of clerk e's is [is of clerkes] praised '
" His felaw lo, here he stont [stont he] hool on live."

" He that coveteth is a pore wight
For he wold have that is not in his might ;
But he that nought hath ne coveteth nought to have."

Here the " but " of the third verse belongs at the head of the
first, and we get rid of the anomaly of " coveteth " differently
accented within two lines. Nearly all the seemingly unmetri-
cal verses may be righted in this way. One often finds such
changes made by ear justified by the readings in other texts,

Chaucer. [July,

and we cannot but hope that the Chaucer Society will give us
the means of at last settling upon a version which shall make
the poems of one of the most fluent of metrists at least read
able. Let any one compare the Franklin's Tale in the Aldine
edition with the text given by Wright, and he will find both
sense and metre clear themselves up in a surprising way. A
careful collation of texts, by the way, confirms one's confidence
in Tyrwhytt's good taste and thoroughness.

I will give one more example of his verse, again making my
selection from one of his less mature works. He is speaking
of Tarquin : —

" And ay the more he was in despair
The more he coveted and thought her fair ;
His blinde lust was all his coveting.
On morrow when the bird began to sing
Unto the siege he cometh full privily
And by himself he walketh soberly
The image of her recording alway new :
Thus lay her hair, and thus fresh was her hue,
Thus sate, thus spake, thus span, this was her cheer,
Thus fair she was, and this was her manere.
All this conceit his heart hath new ytake,
And as the sea, with tempest all toshake,
That after, when the storm is all ago,
Yet will the water quap a day or two,
Right so, though that her forme were absent,
The pleasance of her forme was present."

And this passage leads me to say a few words of Chaucer
as a descriptive poet ; for I think it a great mistake to at
tribute to him any properly dramatic power, as some have
done. Even Herr Hertzberg, in his remarkably intelligent
essay, is led a little astray on this point by his enthusiasm.
Chaucer is a great narrative poet ; and, in this species of
poetry, though the author's personality should never be ob
truded, it yet unconsciously pervades the whole, and com
municates an individual quality, — a kind of flavor of its
own. This very quality, and it is one of the highest in its
way and place, would be fatal to all dramatic force. The
narrative poet is occupied with his characters as picture, with
their grouping, even their costume, it may be, and he feels for
and with them instead of being they for the moment, as the

1870.] Chaucer. 189

dramatist must always be. The story-teller must possess the
situation perfectly in all its details, while the imagination of
the dramatist must be possessed and mastered by it. The
latter puts before us the very passion or emotion itself in its
utmost intensity ; the former gives them, not in their primary
form, but in that derivative one which they have acquired by
passing through his own mind and being modified by his re
flection. The deepest pathos of the drama, like the " prithee,
undo this button " with which Shakespeare tells us that Lear's
heart is bursting, is sudden as a stab, while in narrative it is
more or less suffused with pity, — a feeling capable of pro
longed sustention. This presence of the author's own sym
pathy is noticeable in all Chaucer's pathetic passages, as, for
instance, in the lamentation of Constance over her child in the
Man of Law's Tale. When he comes to the sorrow of his
story, he seems to croon over his thoughts, to soothe them
and dwell upon them with a kind of pleased compassion, as
a child treats a wounded bird which he fears to grasp too
tightly, and yet cannot make up his heart wholly to let go.
It is true also of his humor that it pervades his comic tales
like sunshine, and never dazzles the attention by a sudden
flash. Sometimes he brings it in parenthetically, and insinu
ates a sarcasm so slyly as almost to slip by without our notice,
as where he satirizes provincialism by the cock

" Who knew by nature each ascension
Of the equinoctial in his native town."

Sometimes he turns round upon himself and smiles at a trip
he has made into fine writing : —

" Till that the brighte sun had lost his hue,
For th' orisont had reft the sun his light,
(This is as much to sayen as ' it was night.')"

Nay, sometimes it twinkles roguishly through his very tears, as

in the

« « Why wouldest thou be dead,' these women cry,
4 That haddest gold enough — and Emily ? ' "

that follows so close upon the profoundly tender despair of
Arcite's farewell: —

" What is this world ? What asken men to have ?
Now with his love now in the colde grave
Alone withouten any company ! "

190 Chaucer. [July,

The power of diffusion without being diffuse would seem to be
the highest merit of narration, giving it that easy flow which
is so delightful. Chaucer's descriptive style is remarkable for
its lowness of tone, — for that combination of energy with sim
plicity which is among the rarest gifts in literature. Perhaps
all is said in saying that he has style at all, for that consists
mainly in the absence of undue emphasis and exaggeration,
in the clear uniform pitch which penetrates our interest and
retains it, where mere loudness would only disturb and irritate.
Not that Chaucer cannot be intense, too, on occasion ; but it
is with a quiet intensity of his own, that comes in as it were by
accident.

" Upon a thicke palfrey, paper-white,
With saddle red embroidered with delight,
Sits Dido :

And she is fair as is the brighte morrow
That healeth sicke folk of nightes sorrow.
Upon a courser startling as the fire,
JEneas sits."

Pandarus, looking at Troiliis,

" Took up a light and found his countenance
As for to look upon an old romance."

With Chaucer it is always the thing itself and not the descrip
tion of it that is. the main object. His picturesque bits are in
cidental to the story, glimpsed in passing ; they never stop the
way. His key is so low that his high lights are never ob
trusive. His imitators, like Leigh Hunt, and Keats in his
Endymion, missing the nice gradation with which the mas
ter toned everything down, become streaky. Hogarth, who
reminds one of him in the variety and natural action of his
figures, is like him also in the subdued brilliancy of his color
ing. When Chaucer condenses, it is because his conception is
vivid. He does not need to personify Revenge, for personifica
tion is but the subterfuge of unimaginative and professional
poets ; but he embodies the very passion itself in a verse that
makes us glance over our shoulder as if we heard a stealthy
tread behind us : —

" The smiler with the knife hid under the cloak." *
* Compare this with the Mumbo-Jumbo Revenge in Collins's Ode.

1870.1 Chaucer. 191

j «

And yet how unlike is the operation of the imaginative faculty
in him and Shakespeare ! When the latter describes, his epi
thets imply always an impression on the moral sense (so to
speak) of the person who hears or sees. The sun " flatters
the mountain-tops with sovereign eye " ; the bending " weeds
lacquey the dull stream " ; the shadow of the falcon u couch eth
the fowl below " ; the smoke is " helpless " ; when Tarquin
enters the chamber of Lucrece " the threshold grates the door
to have him heard." His outward sense is merely a window
through which the metaphysical eye looks forth, and his mind
passes over at once from the simple sensation to the complex
meaning of it, — feels with the object instead of merely feel
ing it. His imagination is forever dramatizing. Chaucer gives
only the direct impression made on the eye or ear. He was
the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the
source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour
hailed the return of spring ; but with him it was a piece of
empty ritualism. Chaucer took a true delight in the new-
green of the leaves and the return of singing birds, — a de
light as simple as that of Robin Hood : —

" In summer when the shaws be sheen

And leaves be large and long,
It is full merry in fair forest
To hear the small birds' song."

He has never so much as heard of the " burthen and the mys
tery of all this unintelligible world." His flowers and trees
and birds have never bothered themselves with Spinoza. He
himself sings more like a bird than any other poet, because it
never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he ought to do so.
He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. When
we compare Spenser's imitations of him with the original pas
sages we feel that the delight of the lat(er poet was more in the
expression than the thing itself. Nature with him is only good
to be transfigured by art. We walk among Chaucer's sights and
sounds ; we listen to Spenser's musical reproduction of them.
In the same way, the pleasure which Chaucer takes in telling his
stories has in itself the effect of consummate skill, and makes
us follow all the windings of his fancy with sympathetic inter
est. His best tales run on like one of our inland rivers, some-

192 Chaucer. [July?

times hastening a little and turning upon themselves in eddies
that dimple without retarding the current; sometimes loiter
ing smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a tender
feeling, a pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly
as a water-lily, to float on the surface without breaking it into
ripple. The vulgar intellectual palate hankers after the titil-
lation of foaming phrase, and thinks nothing good for much
that does not go off with a pop like a champagne cork. The
mellow suavity of more precious vintages seems insipid ; but
the taste, in proportion as it refines, learns to appreciate the
indefinable flavor, too subtile for analysis. A manner has pre
vailed of late in which every other word seems to be under
scored as in a school-girl's letter. The poet seems intent on
showing his sinew, as if the power of the slim Apollo lay in
the girth of his biceps. Force for the mere sake of force ends
like Milo, caught and held mockingly fast by the recoil of the
log he undertook to rive. In the race of fame, there are a
score capable of brilliant spurts for one who comes in winner
after a steady pull with wind and muscle to spare. Chaucer
never shows any signs of effort, and it is a main proof of his
excellence that he can be so inadequately sampled by detached
passages, — by single lines taken away from the connection in
which they contribute to the general effect. He has that con
tinuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, and that de
lightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of
mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness
that made the Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never
importunate. His simplicity is that of elegance, not of poverty.
The quiet unconcern with which he says his best things is
peculiar to him among English poets, though Goldsmith, Addi-
son, and Thackeray have approached it in prose. He prattles
inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the
story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece
of good luck to be natural ! It is the good gift which the fairy
godmother brings to her prime favorites in the cradle. If "not
genius, it is alone what makes genius amiable in the arts. If
a man have it not, he will never find it, for when it is sought
it is gone.

When Chaucer describes anything it is commonly by one of

1870.] Chaucer. 193

those simple and obvious epithets or qualities that are so easy
to miss. Is it a woman ? He tells us she is fresh ; that she has
glad eyes ; that " every day Jier beauty newed " ; that

" Methought all fellowship as naked
Withouten her that I saw once,
As a cordne without the stones."

Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where the
Friar, before setting himself softly down, drives away the cat.
We know without need of more words that he has chosen the
snuggest corner. In some of his early poems he sometimes, it
is true, falls into the catalogue style of his contemporaries ;
but after he had found his genius he never particularizes too
much, — a process as deadly to all effect as an explanation to
a pun. The first stanza of the Clerk's Tale gives us a land
scape whose stately choice of objects shows a skill in com
position worthy of Claude, the last artist who painted nature
epically : —

" There is at the west ende of Itaile,

Down at the foot of Vesulus the cold,

A lusty plain abundant of vitaile,

Where many a tower and town thou may'st behold

That founded were in time of fathers old,

And many another deh'table sight ;
And Saluces this noble country hight."

The Pre-Raphaelite style of landscape entangles the eye among
the obtrusive weeds and grass-blades of the foreground which,
in looking at a real bit of scenery, we overlook ; but what a
sweep of vision^ is here ! and what happy generalization in the
sixth verse as the poet turns away to the business of his story !
The whole is full of open air.

But it is in his characters, especially, that his manner is
large and free ; for he is painting history, though with the
fidelity of portrait. He brings out strongly the essential traits,
characteristic of the genus rather than of the individual. The
merchant who keeps so steady a countenance that

" There wist no wight that he was e'er in debt,"

the Sergeant at Law, " who seemed busier than he was,"
the Doctor of Medicine, whose " study was but little on the
Bible," — in all these cases it is the type and not the person-
VOL. cxi. — NO. 228. 13

194 Chaucer.

age that fixes his attention. William Blake says truly, though
he expresses his meaning somewhat clumsily, " the characters
of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all
ages and nations. Some of the names and titles are altered
by time, but the characters remain forever unaltered, and con
sequently they are the physiognomies and lineaments of uni
versal human life, beyond which Nature never steps. Names
alter, things never alter. As Newton numbered the stars, and
as Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the
classes of men." In his outside accessaries, it is true, he
sometimes seems as minute as if he were illuminating a mis
sal. Nothing escapes his sure eye for the picturesque, — the
cut of the beard, the soil of armor on the buff jerkin, the rust on
the sword, the expression of the eye. But in this he has an
artistic purpose. It is here that he individualizes, and, while
every touch harmonizes with and seems to complete the moral
features of the character, makes us feel that we are among liv
ing men, and not the abstracted images of men. Crabbe adds
particular to particular, scattering rather than deepening the im
pression of reality, and making us feel as if every man were a
species by himself ; but Chaucer, never forgetting the essential
sameness of human nature, makes it possible, and even probable,
that his motley characters should meet on a common footing,
while he gives to each the expression that belongs to him, the
result of special circumstance or training. Indeed, the ab
sence of any suggestion of caste cannot fail to strike any reader
familiar with the literature on which he is supposed to have
formed himself. No characters are at once so broadly human
and so definitely outlined as his. Belonging, some of them,
to extinct types, they continue contemporary and familiar for
ever. So wide is the difference between knowing a great
many men and that knowledge of human nature which comes
of sympathetic insight and not of observation alone.

It is this power of sympathy which makes Chaucer's satire
so kindly, — more so, one is tempted to say, than the panegyric
of Pope. Intellectual satire gets its force from personal or
moral antipathy, and measures offences by some rigid conven
tional standard. Its mouth waters over a galling word, and it
loves to say Thou, pointing out its victim to public scorn.

1870.] Chaucer. 195

Indignatio facit versus, it boasts, though they might as often
be fathered on envy or hatred. But imaginative satire,
warmed through and through with the genial leaven of humor,
smiles half sadly and murmurs We. Chaucer either makes
one knave betray another, through a natural jealousy of com
petition, or else expose himself with a naivete of good-humored
cynicism which amuses rather than disgusts. In the former
case the butt has a kind of claim on our sympathy ; in the
latter, it seems nothing strange if the sunny atmosphere
which floods that road to Canterbury should tempt any one to
throw off one disguise after another without suspicion. With
perfect tact, too, the Host is made the choragus in this diverse
company, and the coarse jollity of his temperament explains,
if it does not excuse, much that would otherwise seem out of
keeping. Surely nobody need have any scruples with him.

Chaucer seems to me to have been one of the most purely origi
nal of poets, as much so in respect of the world that is about
us as Dante in respect of that which is within us. There had
been nothing like him before, there has been nothing since.
He is original, not in the sense that he thinks and says what
nobody ever thought and said before, and what nobody can ever
think and say again, but because he is always natural, because,
if not always absolutely new, he is always delightfully fresh,
because he sets before us the world as it honestly appeared to
Geoffrey Chaucer, and not a world as it seemed proper to cer
tain people that it ought to appear. He found that the poetry
which had preceded him had been first the expression of indi
vidual feeling, then of class feeling as the vehicle of legend
and history, and at last had wellnigh lost itself in chasing the
mirage of allegory. Literature seemed to have passed through
the natural stages which at regular intervals bring it to decline.
Even the lyrics of the jongleurs were all run in one mould,
and the Pastourelles of Northern France had become as arti
ficial as the Pastorals of Pope. The Romances of chivalry
had been made over into prose, and the Melusine of his con
temporary Jehan d' Arras is the forlorn hope of the modern
novel. Arrived thus far in their decrepitude, the monks en
deavored to give them a religious and moral turn by allegorizing
them. Their process reminds one of something Ulloa tells us

196 Chaucer.

of the fashion in which the Spaniards converted the Mexicans :
" Here we found an old man in a cavern so extremely aged as
it was wonderful, which could neither see nor go because
he was so lame and crooked. The Father, Friar Raimund,
said it were good (seeing he was so aged) to make him a
Christian ; whereupon we baptized him." The monks found
the Romances in the same stage of senility, and gave them
a saving sprinkle with the holy water of allegory. Perhaps
they were only trying to turn the enemy's own weapons
against himself, for it was the free-thinking Romance of the
Rose that more than anything else had made allegory fashion
able. Plutarch tells us that an allegory is to say one thing
where another is meant, and this might have been needful for
the personal security of Jean de Meung, as afterwards for that of
his successor, Rabelais. But, except as a means of evading the
fagot, the method has few recommendations. It reverses the
true office of poetry by making the real unreal. It is imagina
tion endeavoring to recommend itself to the understanding by
means of cuts. If an author be in such deadly earnest, or if
his imagination be of such creative vigor as to project real
figures when it meant to cast only a shadow upon vapor ; if the
true spirit come, at once obsequious and terrible, when the con
jurer has drawn his circle and gone through with his incanta
tions merely to produce a proper frame of mind in his audi
ence, as was the case with Dante, there is no longer any ques
tion of allegory as the word and thing are commonly understood.
But with air secondary poet's, as with Spenser for example, (the
allegory does not become of one substance with the poetry, but
is a kind of carven frame for it, whose figures lose their mean
ing, as they cease to be contemporary. It was not a style
that could have much attraction for a nature so sensitive to
the actual, so observant of it, so interested by it as that of
Chaucer. He seems to have tried his hand at all the forms
in vogue, and to have arrived in his old age at the truth, es
sential to all really great poetry, that his own instincts were
his safest guides, that there is nothing deeper in life than life
itself, and that to conjure an allegorical significance into it
was to lose sight of its real meaning. He of all men could
not say one thing and mean another, unless by way of humor
ous contrast.

1870.] Chaucer. 197

In thus turning frankly and gayly to the actual world, and
drinking inspiration from sources open to all ; in turning away
from a colorless abstraction to the solid earth and to emotions
common to every pulse ; in discovering that to make the best of
nature, and not to grope vaguely after something better than
nature, was the true office of Art; in insisting on a definite pur
pose, on veracity, cheerfulness, and simplicity, Chaucer shows
himself the true father and founder of what is characteristically
English literature. He has a hatred of cant as hearty as Dr.
Johnson's, though he has a slier way of showing it; he has the
placid commonsense of Franklin, the sweet, grave humor of
Addison, the exquisite taste of Gray ; but the whole texture
of his mind, though its substance seem plain and grave, shows
itself at every turn iridescent with poetic feeling like shot silk.
Above all, he has an eye for character that seems to have
caught at once not only its mental and physical features, but
even its expression in variety of costume, — an eye, indeed,
second only, if it should be called second in some respects, to
that of Shakespeare.

I know of nothing that may be compared with the prologue
to the Canterbury Tales, and with that to the story of the
Chanon's Yeoman before Chaucer. Characters and portraits
from real life had never been drawn with such discrimination,
or with such variety, never with such bold precision of outline,
and with such a lively sense of the picturesque. His Parson is
still unmatched, though Dryden and Goldsmith have both tried
their hands in emulation of him. And the humor also in
its suavity, its perpetual presence and its shy unobtrusiveness,
is something wholly new in literature. For anything that
deserves to be called like it in English we must w'ait for
Henry Fielding.

Chaucer is the first great poet who has treated To-day as if it
were as good as Yesterday, the first who held up a mirror to
contemporary life in its infinite variety of high and low, of
humor and pathos. But he reflected life in its large sense as
the life of men, from the knight to the ploughman, — the life of
every day as' it is made up of that curious compound of human
nature with manners. The very form of the Canterbury Tales
was imaginative. The garden of Boccaccio, the supper-party of

198 Chaucer.

Grazzini, and the voyage of Giraldi make a good enough thread
for their stories, but exclude all but equals and friends, exclude
consequently human nature in its wider meaning. But by
choosing a pilgrimage, Chaucer puts us on a plane where all
men are equal, with souls to be saved, and with another world
in view that abolishes all distinctions. By this choice, and by
making the Host of the Tabard always the central figure, he
has happily united the two most familiar emblems of life, — the
short journey and the inn. We find more and more as we
study him that he rises quietly from the conventional to the
universal, and may fairly take his place with Homer in virtue
of the breadth of his humanity.

In spite of some external stains, which those who have
studied the influence of manners will easily account for with
out imputing them to any moral depravity, we feel that we can
join the pure-minded Spenser in calling him " most sacred,
happy spirit." If character may be divined from works, he
was a good man, genial, sincere, hearty, temperate of mind,
more wise, perhaps, for this world than the next, but thoroughly
humane, and friendly with God and men. I know not how to
sum up what we feel about him better than by saying (what
would have pleased most one who was indifferent to fame) that
we love him more even than we admire. We are sure that
here was a true brother-man so kindly that, in his House of
Fame, after naming the great poets, he throws in a pleasant
word for the oaten-pipes

" Of the little herd-grooms
That keepen beasts among the brooms."

No better inscription can be written on the first page of his
works than that which he places over the gate in his Assembly
of Fowls, and which contrasts so sweetly with the stern lines
of Dante from which they were imitated : —

" Through me men go into the blissful place
Of the heart's heal and deadly woundes' cure;
Through me men go unto the will of Grace,
Where green and lusty May doth ever endure ;
This is the way to all good aventure ;
Be glad, thou Reader, and thy sorrow offcast,
All open am I, pass in, and speed thee fast ! "

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

1870.] Comparative Grammars. 199

ART. VIII. — CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. — 1. The Students' Handbook of Comparative Grammar. Applied
to the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Eng
lish Languages. By REV. THOMAS CLARK, M. A., late Head Master
of the Proprietary School, Taunton. London. 1862. 12mo. pp.
xii, 335.

2. A Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. By
WILLIAM HUGH FERRAR, M. A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity Col
lege, Dublin. London. 1869. 8vo. pp. vii and 341.

3. Grammaire Comparee des Langues Classiques, contenant la Tfieorie
elementaire de la Formation des Mots en Sanscrit, en Grec et en Latin,
avec References aux Langues germaniques. Par F. BAUDRY, ler
Partie : Phonetique. Paris. 1868. pp. vi, 212.

4. An Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology. BY JOHN PEILE,
M. A., Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Christ's College, Formerly
Teacher of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge. London.
1869. 8vo. pp. xxiv, 324.

THAT the historical or comparative study of languages is making
rapid progress is sufficiently shown, not merely by the appropriation of
the results of the study -in the grammatical treatment of individual
tongues, but also by the appearance of various works intended as intro
ductions to its pursuit. As two or three such works have been quite
recently laid before the English public, it seems a not unsuitable time
to pass in brief review the literature of the subject, especially its later
literature. Of the older (or rather the less recent, for it is not proper
to use the word old in reference to a science barely fifty years out of its
cradle) it is hardly necessary to speak at all. Every one who has heard
of comparative philology at all has heard of the work which laid its
foundation ; namely, " Bopp's Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Eu
ropean Languages." Its first edition was begun in 1833, and completed
in 1849. A second edition, with important additions and alterations,
having the value almost of an independent work, passed pretty rapidly
through the press some years later (1857 — 61). A third edition was in
process at the time of Bopp's death, two years ago ; but it was hardly
more than a reprint of the second ; and, considering the advanced age
and infirmities of the author, its loss of his supervising mind and eye is
the less to be regretted. An English translation has also gone through
three editions, — the last appeared after the completion of the second edi
tion of the original, and represented it ; and a French version is also

200 Comparative Grammars.

now nearly finished (three volumes out of four have appeared). This
last is under the charge and resp&nsibility of M. Breal, the most learned
and judicious of French scholars in this department ; and it is enriched
by him with critical prefaces, which add not a little to its value. M.
Bre'al's representation of Bopp is to be warmly commended to the at
tention of those (of whom there are not a few) who are not so versed
in German as not to prefer an easier language as the medium of their
study.

The other classical work, to which all will, as a matter of course, re
sort who intend to go below the surface of the subject, is Schleicher's
" Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Lan
guages." Its first edition appeared in 1861 - 62 ; its second, in a single
stout octavo of 856 pages, in 1866. This, too, is a work on which the
seal of completion has been set by its author's untimely and deeply
lamented death, at the end of 1868, when only forty-eight years old ;
his last additions and corrections to it are given in an appendix to his
" Indo-European Chrestomathy," which was but just finished (October,
1868) when he was taken away.

The style and method of these two works are exceedingly different.
Bopp writes with a flowing and attractive simplicity, and explains the
workings of his own mind with reference to the points under treatment
in a manner which is as instructive as it is engaging. . Schleicher is
curt and dogmatic, rarely discusses, and rarely mentions views dis
cordant with his own, or gives the impression that he is dealing with
matters respecting which doubts are deep, or controversy runs high.
This is partly due to the character of his mind, partly to the require
ments of his plan ; he aimed at preparing a text-book, to be used by
both teacher and pupil in the lecture-room.

There seems to be every reason why Schleicher's grammar, as well
as Bopp's, should be put within the reach of English readers ; and we
can hardly believe that sale enough might not be found for an English
version to remunerate both translator and publishers, if the enterprise
were so conducted as to reach the English and the American public
together. A translation is the more desirable, inasmuch as Schleicher
has, quite unjustifiably, adopted in the original an orthography of his
own devising, which makes many of the most familiar German words
look strange enough, and renders some almost unrecognizable by one
who is not a practised scholar in the language. To a beginner this
peculiarity doubles the difficulty of the text-book. We would not have
such a translation, if undertaken, content itself with being a translation
merely. It would be valuable in proportion to the independence (and
competency) with which it criticised and amended and suggested, men-

1870.] Comparative Grammars. 201

tioned opposing views and gave references to where they might be found
' stated and discussed with more fulness. Upon almost every single point,
in every department of the subject, there is now a whole literature, to
which a guide-book is greatly needed.

Beside these comprehensive works, covering the entire field of the
Indo-European languages and their history, there is room and call for
those of a more limited character, dealing with such tongues of the
family as lie nearer to our interests and are more studied by us, — like
the two classical languages and the Germanic or Teutonic ; along, of
course, with the Sanskrit, as the nearest representative of the common
mother of all. The want thus indicated more than one attempt has
been made to relieve, within no long time past ; and we have to inquire
here with what success the attempts have met.

As long ago as 1862 a " Students' Handbook of Comparative Gram
mar," etc. was produced in London by Rev. Thomas Clark. It is a
brief work (335 pages duodecimo, large and open print), and does not
appear ever to have attracted much attention, nor has it any special
merits which should entitle it to attention. At the outset, indeed, it
repels us by a portentous blunder : in stating the primary branches of
the Indo-European family, it sets the High-German down as a separate
branch, apart from the Low-German, Scandinavian, and Gothic ; and
then, as if to maintain, out of superstitious reverence, the current seven
fold division, it runs together into one .the Latin and the Greek ! No
one can feel inclined to trust an author who is capable of such work as
that ; however faithful and laborious the latter may be, there is no tell
ing where the ground may drop away under one's feet. It is fair to say,
however, that what we have referred to is by far the worst point in the
volume, which is in general distinguished neither by particular ability
nor by unusual blundering ; some may find it a convenient first intro
duction to the study, although no one would think of quoting it as an
authority.

More recent and much more pretentious is the " Comparative Gram
mar of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin," by William H. Ferrar (not to be
confounded with Frederic W. Farrar). Of this the first volume was
issued last year, and the second and concluding one is promised for the
beginning of 1872. The part published includes the subjects of phonet
ics, roots and stems, and declension, leaving conjugation and the inde-
clinables to be treated hereafter. We cannot say much in favor of this
work, in any respect. Its type and paper, to be sure, are unexception
able ; but the author's part, even of its getting up, is highly exception
able ; there is no index ; the table of contents fills eleven lines ; and,
instead of running headings, we have the words " Comparative Gram-

202 Comparative Grammars. [July?

**

mar " thrust before our eyes at the top of every page, as if we could
not otherwise retain the knowledge of what book we have in our hands.
Such captions are always and everywhere an impertinence, but espe
cially when we ought to have in them that help to the convenient use
of the volume which has been unjustly denied us elsewhere. Then the
author's plan is not to our mind, in that he professedly leaves alto
gether out of account the branch of language to which our English
belongs, — the Germanic. A partial comparative grammar for English
students, with the English element omitted, will never have our ap
proval, and will, generally, we are confident, be pronounced to have
fallen short of its true aim. Mr. Ferrar, to be sure, does not stick to
his plan throughout. He has a whole chapter on " Grimm's Law " (of
the progression of mutes in the Germanic languages), which he intro
duces without a word of explanation or apology, as if the special pho
netic phenomena of Germanic speech formed a natural part of a San
skrit-Greek-Latin grammar, and were always to be looked for in it.
And he adds at the end, in an appendix, a very full abstract of the
essay by which Dr. Biihler attempts to show that the Sanskrit " cere
brals " were not due to the influence of the aborigines of India. Now
Dr. Biihler is a scholar of high rank, and his essay is an able one,
though not perhaps quite so convincing as Mr. Ferrar believes it ;
but some scores of other articles, upon very special points in the his
tory of this and that Indo-European language, have been published
during the past twenty years, which have an equal or superior claim
to insertion in Mr. Ferrar's volume ; and we would gladly have seen
the space it occupies filled with something more about the Ger
manic tongues, or with twenty other things we could mention. The
explanation of the insertion seems to be that Dr. Biihler was formerly
a colleague (or perhaps instructor ?) of the author at Dublin ; and the
latter shows clearly in other points, as well as here, the influence of
local considerations.

The execution, also, of Mr. Ferrar's treatise leaves much to be
desired. He has been an industrious student of the best authorities
(together with some which are not so good), and has gotten together,
of course, in his 340 octavo pages, a good deal of valuable matter ; but
it seems to be by a kind of mechanical and outside process. He has
not assimilated his material, and then evolved it organically ; even
< when he does not tell us that in treating this and that subject he fol
lows such and- such a teacher, we feel the composite nature of what is
put before us, — we see the seams. Of real profound learning and crit
ical insight we discover few traces. The very first sentence is almost
enough to make us lay down the book in hopelessness. It runs thus :

1870.] Comparative Grammars. 203

" The physiology of the human voice is the true basis upon which all
inquiries into the- origin of language and the mutual connection of lan
guages should be built." A most narrow basis, surely ! and a very thin
and shaky structure were that which should be raised upon it ! Prob
ably, if the author were pressed a little, he could be made to acknowl
edge that he meant nothing more than that a thorough comprehension
of the physical acts of utterance is necessary in order to the full under
standing of the processes of phonetic change in language ; and that, as
phonetics assume the initial place in a comparative grammar, it is
proper to begin, first of all, with, a physical account of the alphabet.
There have been great students of language whose basis has been ex
ceedingly defective in this particular regard ; and, on the other hand,
men strong in vocal anatomy who were poor enough linguists. Judged
by his own rule, the author cannot have built up his inquiries very
solidly, for his description of sounds is open to criticism in a host of
particulars. It is, as we have already said of the work in general,
made up by a process of combination : here Briicke is followed, there
Lepsius, and again Miiller is the authority relied on ; but Ferrar,
except as their mouthpiece, we see little of; and what we see, it may
be added, does not make us long for more. For example, the theory
of diphthongs is certainly his own. It is this : " When two vowels fol
low each other so rapidly as to melt into one sound, we obtain a. diph
thong. Now, we know that a is formed at a point in the mouth before
t and M, and therefore it alone of the three primary vowels can form a
true diphthongal base." Who can point out the sequitur here ? It
seems to be meant that, as the point in the mouth where i or u is pro
duced is farther forward, or "later," in the mouth than that where a is
produced, therefore i or u cannot be uttered before a. No ; we retract
that suggestion, and give up the matter as impenetrable. What, again,
is the sense, and what the pertinence in a phonetical discussion, of this
remark ? " The consonantal signs were originally marks for syllables,
as the Devanagari and Semitic -alphabets prove." Then, when we
come to another grand department of the subject, we are told that the
vocative case " is not properly a word, being only an interjection."
And is not, then, an interjection a word ? When one says " O my
lord ! " what does he use if not words ? Mr. Ferrar may maintain, if
he chooses, that the vocative is not a case, nor the interjection a part of
speech, in the same sense with the other cases and parts of speech ; but
we challenge him to give an acceptable definition of a word which shall
not include both.

It would be easy to quote other characteristic statements of the same
calibre with these without doing any real injustice to the volume or

•
.

204 Comparative Grammars.

its author, even while acknowledging that no small part of its con
tents is of a different character. It is not prepared with that degree
of mastery of its subject which we have the right to require of one
who attempts to make a text-book for our instruction, and we do not
desire ever to see the undertaking completed.

Another industrious compilation, of nearly the same general style
and grade, has been recently made by a Frenchman, M. Baudry, of
whom we know nothing save that he is an assistant of M. Breal in the
work of translation of Bopp, already referred to. It is to occupy three
volumes, of which the first (Paris, 1868, 8vo, pp. 212) is already
out, and treats of the subject of phonetics. The second is to deal with
roots and with declension ; the third, with conjugation. Writing, as he
does, for a French public, the author takes all the notice of the Ger
manic that can fairly be required of him; and he is able to bring in,
without violating (like Mr. Ferrar) the plan of his work, that exposi
tion of Grimm's Law which no treatise on any part of Indo-European
phonology seems capable of foregoing. We wish that he had spared
us the tedious refutation which follows it, of attempted explanations of
that remarkable phenomenon which no one has ever found acceptable,
and which are in themselves quite unworthy of notice. Upon the
whole, we have a higher opinion of M. Baudry's volume than of Mr.
Ferrar's ; yet the two are to be classed together as of a secondary
order of merit. M. Baudry, also, is far from having gained such a
comprehension of the processes of utterance as should give an indepen
dent value to his expositions of phonetic phenomena, or even as should
enable him to distinguish always a good opinion from a bad one. We
have not space to enter into details, but would simply refer to his dis
cussion of the subject of quantity (pages 9-13), which is wanting, to a
very discreditable degree, in an understanding of the facts it is dealing
with. The author appears to imagine that " position," or the being fol
lowed by two consonants, alters the actual pronunciation of a vowel, mak
ing the vowel itself long, instead of merely changing the value of the syl
lable, in virtue of the accumulation within its limits of consonant quan
tity, — which, ofx course, is just as real, requiring expenditure of time,
as vowel quantity. And he points it out as a remarkably antagonistic
phenomenon, wellnigh inexplicable in its diversity, that the Germanic
languages usually shorten a vowel, instead of protracting it, before a
combination of consonants. He quotes, indeed, the true explanation of
the whole matter from Benloew and Corssen, with unquestioning ap
proval, and with much commendation of those gentlemen for their
acuteness in suggesting what we hope that few save himself have not
been sharp enough to see -without help from others, — what, for ex-

1870.] Comparative Grammars. 205

ample, the oldest Hindoo grammarians were perfectly clear about ;
yet, after all, he adheres to his own view, and continues to believe in
the reality of the difficulty which he has conjured up. There is noth
ing else so unfortunate as this, we believe, in the whole volume ; but it
is merely an extreme example of a certain deficiency of insight, which
is a general characteristic of M. Baudry's work, and which deprives
the latter of all claim to the honor of being a contribution to philo
logical science.

The only other book of which we shall need to speak, at this time,
is that of Mr. Peile. It is in the form of a series of fourteen lectures,
successively treating of the principle of phonetic change (i), the rela
tionship of the Indo-European peoples (ii), the Indo-European alpha
bet (iii, iv), dynamic change (v), phonetic change (vi-xiii), and
indistinct articulation (xiv). Its design is to introduce classical schol
ars to the methods and results of the scientific study of language, and
to correct the unscientific and hap-hazard style of etymologizing which
is still too current among them (as instanced by him in the preface
from the case of one of his own colleagues). And it is excellently
adapted to its purpose ; better, as appears to us, than any other work
in the English language. It is a production of much higher character
than those which we have thus far been noticing. The author ac
knowledges his indebtedness to the great German masters of com
parative philology, — as Curtius, Schleicher, Benfey, Corssen, etc., —
which, indeed, no one who at the present time executes such a work as
it should be executed can honestly avoid doing ; they have laid the
foundations of the study so deep and strong that those who come after
must build upon them. But he has studied them in a free and in
dependent spirit, and has thoroughly worked their results into himself,
so that his exposition is his own, brought forth from within, instead of
being put together from without. The British universities have hardly
produced anything before so fully in the. spirit of a continuation and
promotion of modern philology.

Mr. Peile's work, unlike the three already reported, tempts to de
tailed criticism, because it contains so much that is good, and so little
to which one need take exception. But we must limit ourselves to
noticing a point or two in it. In the first place, it is evident that the
author has mastered the subject of the physical constitution and rela
tions of the alphabet much less completely than that of the general
theory and the historical details of phonetic change. Now a sound and
instructive account of the phonetic phenomena of speech may undoubt
edly be made out by one who has only a superficial knowledge of the
processes of articulation ; only he will be liable to err here and there

206 Comparative Grammars.

in the theoretic explanation of phenomena; and may even have his
understanding of the latter warped by a false phonetic theory. Both
these errors Mr. Peile has here and there fallen into. Thus, he says
(p. 32), when treating of vowel-intensification, "by simply allowing
a stronger current of air to pass from the lungs before sounding the
radical vowel of a word, they [our forefathers] produced in effect a new
vowel a before each such vowel," — as if a were a mere intensified i or
w, instead of a sound produced by a perfectly distinct position of the
organs, different from that of either of the others. This is, indeed, a
very trivial matter (though not without a bearing upon the author's
fundamental views) ; much more important is his constant designation
of b and v, for example, as " soft" sounds, as compared with p andy,
which are " hard " ; and his assumption that the relations of the two
classes are thus truly expressed, and that accordingly the change of p
to b is a weakening process, and that of b to p a strengthening one.
Probably Max Miiller is chiefly to blame for this. Mr. Peile, in fact,
at the point where it was incumbent on him to explain and defend the
assumed relation of his " hards " and " softs," declines to enter into the
question, and refers " any one who wishes to understand this part of
the subject " to Miiller. The reference sounds to us somewhat like a
joke ; we should have said that any one who wishes to be taught two
or three inconsistent views, and to be led finally to abide by the wrong
one, should resort to Miiller. The true relation has been defined a
hundred times, and the best phonologists are now agreed about it.
The mouth-organs being fixed in a certain position, if simple breath
be emitted, the articulation is " hard " ; if breath that is converted into
sound on its way through the throat, by the vibration of the vocal
cords, it is " soft." There is no real question of hardness or softness
here ; in fact, if those terms are to be used at all, they ought' to be ap
plied in just the opposite way to that in which Mr. Peile uses them.
Unless voice is softer than whisper, unless audible utterance is less
hard than mere breathing, unless to set in action one part only of
the apparatus of speech is less easy than to do the same by two, then
b and v are really harder than p and f. We would not, of course,
advocate seriously the reversal of the terms, because it would still
amount to using an analogical or fanciful term in place of a truly
descriptive or scientific one, — a proceeding wholly to be rejected in
scientific etymology. It is true that, in the historical development of
language, p passes into b more often than the contrary ; but that does
not prove b an easier sound per se than p ; nor, when we actually find
b changed to p, — as by the German, who says kalp for kalb, — are we
to give the speaker credit for a strengthened utterance ; the matter

1870.] Comparative Grammars. 207

needs to be argued and explained on quite different grounds. Indeed,
we think Mr. Peile's whole basis of phonetic explanation a little too
narrow and rectangular ; there is too much of " hard and soft " and
" heavy and light " in it. We are tired of hearing even of " heavy " a,
and " light " i and u. There is a valuable element of truth in these
designations, but also a decided mythological element, which turns a
fancy into a fact, and uses an analogical epithet as if it were a scientific
definition.

A yet more serious fault in Mr. Peile's general system is, we are
convinced (although he certainly has high authorities on his side), his
admission of the increase or intensification of vowel sounds (the con
version of a to «, of i to e and di, of u to 5 and au) as a primary or
organic means of expression in Indo-European language ; as having
been applied directly, in a kind of symbolic way, to the usps of t gram
matical or radical distinction. A marked tendency in the best modern
research, if we are not mistaken, is toward the entire elimination of the
symbolical element from the history of the languages of our family, and
the recognition of all internal change, whether of vowel or of consonant,
as at first only the accidental accompaniment of external accretion, or
its remoter euphonic consequence ; even though sometimes seized upon
later by the language-making faculty and turned to account in a sec
ondary way, or inorganically. This is no place to enter into any de
tailed discussion of the subject ; we would only point out that Mr. Peile
does not always show his usual fairness and soundness when he touches
upon it. In one place (p. 112), after a brief exposition of a part of
the view opposed to his own, he turns it off summarily as plausible
enough indeed, but incapable of being proved. A deliberate balancing
of the evidence on the one side and on the other would, we are sure,
have shown him a great preponderance in its favor. Again (p. 110)
he tells us that " from vid, ' to know/ comes by regular ascent the well-
known word Veda ; and the second step (together with the suffix -ika
which is purely formal) gives us Vaidika" This strikes us as very bad
etymologizing, — this depreciation of the suffix of derivation as some
thing " purely formal " ; a thing subordinate to the internal vowel
change, and insignificant in comparison with it. Is that the ordi
nary value of suffixes in Indo-European language ? We must pre
sume, then, that the essential distinction between vedmi, " I know," and
vidmds, " we know," is the difference of radical vowel, the endings mi
and mas being " purely formal." And where is the intelligible symbol
ism, either in Mr. Peile's examples or in our own, of which the varia
tion of towel can be imagined to serv.e the uses ? These two facts —
that vowel change comes along with the ordinary means of external

208 Lea's Studies in Church History.

derivation, and that it is not to be brought into any definable relation
with ideas or classes of ideas, as their expression — compel us to re
gard this instrumentality as no essential part of the means of deriva
tion ; and change, therefore, the point of view from which we have to
regard many of the phenomena set forth so clearly and attractively by
our author.

Mr. Peile has had faith enough in the usefulness of his volume to be
willing to take pains that it be made easily usable. It has a careful
and detailed analysis at the beginning, and a good index at the end,
with both running headings and marginal indications of the subject
under treatment all the way through. For all these, every reader, of
whom we wish him many, will be truly grateful. We heartily com
mend the work to all who are capable of an interest in its subject.

2. — Studies in Church History. The Rise of the Temporal Power. —
Benefit of Clergy. — Excommunication. By HENRY C. LEA.
Philadelphia : Henry C. Lea. 1869. 12mo. pp.515.

MR. LEA'S books — especially the one now before us — demonstrate
what we have too willingly suffered to be called in question, — the
possibility of thorough, exhaustive research and truly erudite author
ship on this side of the Atlantic. It is a common belief that here we
must at best content ourselves with second-hand authorities, and that
the most that we can do is to decant and dilute the choicer vin
tages of European scholarship and learning. It is true that no pub
lic library in America would furnish materials for an extended or
ramified research in any department, and this will continue to be
the case until there is a systematic tabulation of books wanted and
needed in our libraries, with an organized and prolonged siege of
the sources of supply which might be made richly available ; but it
is an error to suppose that books, which are rare in Europe are un
attainable here. In works not originally costly, but made precious by
their antiquity, and needed only for specialties in research, the ag
gregate wealth of private libraries in Europe is probably very much
greater than that of public libraries ; and in the breaking up and sale
of the former there is perpetual opportunity for procuring books that
have long since passed away from trade catalogues. Indeed, it is not
uncommon to find in some obscure London shop or stall, or on the
parapets on the left bank of the Seine, and at fabulously low prices,
defaced, yet not mutilated, copies of works commonly regarded as
beyond reach.

1870.] Lea's Studies in Church History. 209

Mr. Lea has written on subjects that demanded for their study an
ample supply of books, antique, rare, and precious ; and he has been un
willing to enter seriously into any subject till he had provided himself
with a competent apparatus for its investigation. He indeed has
made liberal pecuniary outlays, and has had correspondents and agents
wherever there was any hope of capturing a stray volume that might
serve his purpose ; but so entire has been his success that he can hardly
be less fully furnished with original authorities in his own library
than he would be were he to confine himself to any one of the great
European libraries. His books, therefore, have it' for the prime ele
ment of their value that they contain authentic history, drawn directly
from its sources. The author has, indeed, his historical theories ; he
marks with care the development of ideas and tendencies, and traces
with delicate skill the filaments that bind seemingly isolated events and
give unity to the collective movement of a race or an age ; yet he
never generalizes till he has all the facts within his grasp, — his con
clusions never furnish him his premises, he never picks over his mate
rials to select only such as will sustain his theories.

Still less does he subordinate history to rhetoric. He is guiltless of
all attempts at fine writing. It is perfectly evident that he writes,
not to attract but to instruct readers. He makes no drafts upon his
imagination, dresses up no scene, pieces out no imperfect narrative
with the anachronisms which often make historical pictures at once
vivid and grotesque, lifelike, yet the reverse of truthful. He relates
no more than he finds recorded, and gives his story the coloring of its
times, and not of his. But while Mr. Lea's style lacks ornament it
is by no means wanting in grace. His diction never offends the se
verest taste, and indicates a scholarly precision in the choice of words
and phrases. His sentences are simple in their construction, and
always perspicuous. While there is no useless verbiage, there is
nothing of that dense compression which makes some historical works
as dry as a chronological table. Whatever of interest is inherent in
the subject treated or in the events recorded is fully retained in
the narrative ; while there is no attempt to magnify what is in itself
trivial and insignificant, or to elevate mere anecdote into history.
Equally little is there of irrelevant discussion. History is made to
give its own lessons, and is not used to sustain the author's precon
ceived opinions. In fine, these essays are models in their kind, —
the simple, orderly presentation of facts, events, and movements in
their bearing on their respective subjects, — each a complete and ex
haustive monograph, containing, with ample means of verification in
references and extracts, all that the reader needs to place himself

VOL. cxi. •. — NO. 228. 14

210 Lea's Studies in Church History. [July?

at the point of view which the author has attained by the most pains
taking and elaborate research.

The volume before us, though consisting of three separate essays,
has a virtual unity. The three titles represent the several stages,
logically consecutive, though coincident in time, by which the Romish
Church established its sovereignty over Christendom. The assump
tion of authority in things temporal preceded by many centuries the
concession of temporal power. Hardly had Christianity become the
recognized religion of the Roman Empire, when its bishops and coun
cils claimed, and were often suffered to exercise, dictatorship in mat
ters properly under the jurisdiction of the secular authorities ; and
numberless usurpations, pretensions, and forgeries prepared the way
for the division of power between the Church and the Empire under
Charlemagne, and for the supremacy which ensued under his successors,
and which suffered no serious infraction till the age of Luther. Con
current with the claim of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was that of immu
nity on the part of the clergy from the secular tribunals. This last
claim — believed to have had its origin in the Council of Nicaea — was
sometimes partially recognized, sometimes entirely repudiated, by the
Eastern emperors. On the disruption of the empire it became the
common law of Christendom ; and for centuries afterward ecclesiastics
enjoyed a criminal license, which rendered them the pest and bane of
every land, desecrated the ritual of devotion, made the Church de
pendent for its very existence on the superstition and ignorance of
the people, and contributed more than all things else to the Protestant
Reformation. Excommunication was a necessary incident of the ex
istence of the Church ; for the power of exclusion inheres wherever
membership is contingent on express or implied conditions. While the
Church remained a purely spiritual corporation, no wrong was done
by denying its privileges to those who showed themselves unworthy
of its fellowship, nor even by proclaiming penalties purely spiritual
against such as made themselves amenable to its censures. Moreover,
so fast and so far as the Church obtained possession of temporal power,
it was impossible, however unjust, that it should not employ against its
disobedient or recusant members all the weapons in its armory. Ex
communication thus became the chief instrument of ecclesiastical tyr
anny, the terror of monarchs and of nations, the power which made the
bishop of Rome the king of kings.

The volume under review places before us Christianity, the ecclesi
astical hierarchy, and the laity, in their respective relations. Chris
tianity in the teachings and life of its Author is purity and love. Its
records contain not a trace of any design on his part that it should

1870.] Tongas English- Greek Lexicon. 211

have any functionaries other than ministers: that is, servants who
should owe their position, as he owed the name above every name,
to lowly service and willing sacrifice. The assumption of authority
and power by these ministers involved in itself all possibilities of cor
ruption, wrong, and evil, converted his benign gospel into an instru
ment of oppression, and made his peace-speaking cross an ensign of
carnage and devastation. The lesson of this volume is that hierarchy,
in whatever form or under whatever pretence, is a wrong and an evil ;
that Christianity has no privileged order of men ; that its true priest
hood is that of philanthropic labor and self-abnegation ; and that its
purity can be preserved and its growth insured only under the charter
conveyed in the words of its Founder: "One is your Master, even
Christ, and all ye are brethren."

3. — An English- Greek Lexicon. By C. D. YONGE. With many
new Articles, an Appendix of Proper Names, and Pillorfs Greek
Synonyms. [To which is prefixed an Essay on the Order of Words
in Attic Greek Prose, by CHARLES SHORT, LL. D.] Edited by
HENRY DRISLER, LL. D. New York: Harper and Brothers.
1870. Large 8vo. pp. cxv, 663.

THE appearance of a book like this gives evidence that classical
studies are not expected either by scholars or by publishers to succumb
under the pressure for a so-called " practical " education. As to the
Latin, indeed, its study offers advantages which the most practical
minded are obliged to recognize. To him who has not studied it the
nomenclature of modern science is an unintelligible jargon. He is
shut out from reading many most important works in science, philos
ophy, and history. He fails of the best help to a ready acquisition
and a thorough understanding of the modern languages which come
from the Latin, and even of the English, which in half its vocabulary
is a Latin language. For the Greek, these obvious " practical " utilities
can be claimed, if at all, only in a much inferior degree. If Greek
shall continue to be studied, it will be mainly for the intrinsic qualities
of the language and literature. The perfection of literary art, shining
through the most perfect medium of expression, — this it is which
Greek presents to the student, and in this it offers him the finest
instrument of culture. To put modern literature, however excellent,
in its place, is to give an imperfect education. The modern we have
always with us ; the student cannot, if he would, escape from its
influence ; to correct and supplement it, he needs to dwell on the

212 Yonge's English- Cf-reek Lexicon. [July,

special excellences of ancient art, its simplicity, harmony, distinctness,
and nobleness. But aside from its literature, the Greek language
furnishes an unequalled pal&stra for mental training. The intelligent
and persistent effort to gain a true appreciation of its richness, subtlety,
pliancy, its grace of form and delicacy of shading, is an education in
itself. The study of Greek may be subject to some fluctuation ; for
there are fashions in pedagogy, as in other things ; but it can never
cease to be an element in the highest education. There will always
be an enlightened and influential opinion in its favor; and the student
will be warned that he cannot safely neglect it, if he wishes to obtain
for himself the fullest and finest culture.

That Greek composition should have a place in the study of the
language is generally admitted. It is not enough that the learner
should be taught to recognize the forms of inflection and the principles
of syntax as he comes upon them in the course of his reading. To
make him thoroughly familiar with them, he must be made to use
them for his own purposes, to find the words and the modes of com
bination which are required for the expression of given ideas. The
necessity of doing this will render him watchful in his reading, and he
will notice and remember many points of idiom which would other
wise be overlooked or forgotten. It is impossible, however, for the stu
dent to draw from his own reading all that he needs for the success
ful cultivation of this exercise. A good English-Greek dictionary is
an indispensable necessity ; the entire want of such a help for Ameri
can students is the principal reason that Greek composition has been
so little attended to among us. The work now given to the public can
hardly fail to bring about a great change in this respect. About two
thirds of the volume is occupied with a revised and enlarged reprint
of Yonge's English-Greek Dictionary, which was published in England
in 1849, and came to a second edition in 1856. Immediately on its
appearance, Professor Drisler saw that it was fitted to supply the
want so long felt in our schools and colleges. His first proposals for
an American republication were issued nearly twenty years ago. He
was not satisfied, however, with merely reprinting the English book :
he wished to make it a more complete and trustworthy aid to the
student of Greek. To one heavily burdened with duties of instruction
such a task was necessarily slow, and especially so to one who could
not content himself with hasty or imperfect execution. But the work
has been delayed also by other causes ; among them, the well-remem
bered fire on Franklin Square, which destroyed a whole library in
stereotype-plates.

The American editor, speaking in his preface of the English work?

1870.] Yong J s English- Greek Lexicon. 213

lavs a just emphasis on the fulness and consistency with which it
gives authorities for all the Greek expressions that appear in it. If a
Frenchman writing English should use a vocabulary drawn without
distinction from Chaucer, Spenser, Addison, Burns, Scott, and Ma-
caulay, the result would be a strange medley of styles and dialects ;
but it would not be stranger than a Greek composition, the words of
which were taken with the same freedom from Homer, Pindar,
Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Theocritus. When Charles James
Fox was amusing his leisure with efforts at writing Greek, his friend,
Dr. Parr, would not allow him to introduce Homeric words where
an Attic style was required ; and though the great orator thought it
rather hard that he should be forbidden to draw upon the Greek
author with whom he was most familiar, every scholar must admit
the reasonableness and necessity of the restriction. It is essential
that the student who uses an English-Greek dictionary should know,
in regard to every word set before him, whether it was current in
Athenian use, or was peculiar to the Epic, Ionic, or Doric dialects ;
whether it belonged to the prose language, or was confined to the
idiom of poetry ; whether it was known in the best times of Greek
literature, or is to be found only in later and inferior writers. So
obvious is this necessity, that one is surprised to learn from the editor's
preface, that Yonge's work was the first of the kind to give it prac
tical recognition by assigning authorities for every Greek word or
phrase admitted into it.

It is hardly necessary to say that the American editor, in his own
additions to the work, has conformed strictly to the same rule. These
additions are carefully distinguished by brackets, and are very numer
ous and important. Taken together, they amount, as we judge, to
about a seventh of the original book. Thus, at the very outset, the
indefinite article a or an, which was omitted by Yonge, is treated at
some length. Though generally not expressed in Greek, it is often
represented by r\s, and not seldom by the definite article 6, 9, TO. The
usage on these points is clearly and happily stated. As we turn over
the first pages, we meet with many words which were wholly wanting
in the English work. Among these are ecclesiastical and religious
words, such as abbey, abbot, advent, alms, anabaptist, anathema,
anchoret, archangel, archbishop, ark, ascension, etc. Grammatical
words, such as ablative, accentuation, accusative, adjective, antepenul
timate, antibacchius, apposition, archaism, augment, etc. Words of
natural science, medicine,*and other arts, such aS abdomen, acanthus,
afterbirth, agate, alchemist, alchemy, alembic, aloes, amaranth, animal
cule, antimony, aorta, apothecary, aquarius, arc, astrologer, astrology,

214 Yonge's English- Greek Lexicon. [Juty*

asbestos, axis, etc. And many other words of a miscellaneous character,
such as A, B, G ( for alphabet ), abbreviation, aborigines, academic,
accountant, account-book, accretion, ace, acerbity, acquittance, acrostic,
actuary, adaptation, adieu, adjournment, administrator, ado, adventurer,
advertisement, affidavit, afflictive, afflux, afield, afresh, agape, agri
cultural, ah, aha, ajar, akimbo, alcove, alderman, ale, alias, allitera
tion, allowable, allusion, almanac, etc. Further, there are many new
words inserted without Greek equivalents, the student being referred
for these to other English words of the same meaning, but of more
frequent use, thus abstinent, abstract (subst.), accommodation, accouche
ment, acropolis, acumen, admittance, affiliation, afloat, aft, etc. For
many words which were inserted in the English book, the American
editor has taken notice of meanings which were overlooked or disre
garded by the English compiler : thus abiding (= permanent), above
(of number), absolute (in philosophical use), absolution (of sins), abuse
(== wrong use), etc. And in very many cases, where no addition is
made to the English meaning, the editor has added to the Greek
words given by Yonge other words, found in good authors, which ex
press the same meaning, or has added English phrases in which that
meaning admits of peculiar idiomatic Greek expression : thus in abate,
abatement, abdicate, aberration, abet, abhor, abhorrence, abide, abject,
ably, aboard, abode, abomination, abortive, abound, abridgment, abrQad,
abrogation, abrupt, absence, absent, absolutely, absolve, abstinence, ab
stract (verb), abstraction, absurd, abundance, etc. Many articles —
such as abatement, ability, able-bodied, ablution, abortion, about, above,
abscess, abscond, absorb, abstemious, abstruse, etc. — have been great
ly enlarged by the additions made to them. These statements will
suffice to show that no small amount of editorial labor has been be
stowed upon the book, which has thus gained largely in fulness and
value.

It is, of course, often necessary or desirable in Greek composition to
introduce names of persons or places. But the Greek forms for such
names are not always accessible to the student, who has only the ordi
nary helps at his disposal. How is he to know that France should be
rendered by KeXriKq or TaXarta, and Spain by 'ifirjpia ? the Seine by
SrjKodvas, and the Adige by 'AnVtoj/? Mt. Jura by 'lopas, and the Harz
Mountains by 'ApKiwa 0/377 ? To meet these difficulties, Professor Drisler
has added an appendix of about sixty pages, containing " a List of
some of the more important Greek Proper Names." The student will
find here how to Hellenize the ordinary personal names, Christian
names, of modern times ; that, for instance, Charles is represented by
Kdpov\os, Robert by 'Po/wre'proy, Louis by AoSoi'xpos, Henry by 'Eppfjs, a

1870.] Yonge1 s English- Greek Lexicon. 215

form which Greek euphony has brought into a singular resemblance
to our Harry. For such names of Teutonic origin, the authorities
can only be late Byzantine writers. Is no similar authority to be
found for the name William, which, we observe, is omitted from the
list?

The prefixed essay by Professor Short, on the " Order of Words in
Attic Greek Prose," occupies more than a hundred large double-column
pages, and supplies a serious defect in the grammatical treatment of the
language. It is strange that a branch of Greek syntax so important
as this should have received hitherto so little attention from the gram
marians. Professor Short mentions a number of commentaries on
Greek authors which contain detached observations of more or less
value ; but he has himself made the first attempt to treat the subject in
a systematic and thorough-going way. The result will be a lasting
monument to his ability and energy. It would be difficult to point out
any considerable product of scholarly research the credit of which is
more entirely due to the author whose name it bears. He has taken
much pains to collect the remarks of others, and has rendered them full
justice in his preface ; but they could do little more than serve as hints
for the guidance of his own investigations. How extended and labo
rious these have been may be inferred from the fact that the citations
given here — of course, only a selection from the whole mass — are
about fifteen thousand in number. The author's conclusions are not
founded upon recollections of a few passages which have chanced to
attract his special attention. They are inductions drawn from a very
wide range of carefully collected observations, and are thus fitted to in
spire confidence in their correctness. Nor need the student fear, when he
hears of fifteen thousand citations, that he will find the essay a forest of
learning, in which it will be hard to make out his position and bearings.
The industry with which this immense mass of material has been
brought together is less remarkable than the perfect order with which
it is arranged and presented. Only a mind singularly gifted with an
organizing power could have reduced this multitude of particulars to a
harmonious and intelligible system. So strong is the systematizing
tendency that it has led him to minute uniformities of arrangement, for
which his readers will be the more thankful, as few writers would have
taken the pains that they require. Thus, in presenting his illustrations
for each statement, he follows a constant order. " In matters involv
ing the Verb, he has first given cases of the Finite Verb, then of the
Infinitive, and then of the Participle and Verbal Adjective ; in matters
involving the Adverb, he has given first the Adverb of Place, then that
of Time, then that of Manner, and lastly that of Degree ; in matters in-

216 Yonge's English-Greek Lexicon. [July?

volving the Prepositions, he has given them in the following order : eV,
eiy, irpos, «n, irapd, di/a, Kara, OTTO, eic, o-ui>, fiera, a//ev, Trept, d/x$i, Trpo, dm',
fita, wcp, VTJ-O, eW/ca ; and where a Preposition takes two or three cases
under regimen, these cases are put in the order of Declension ; in matters
involving Conjunctions and Conjunctive Words, he has first given those
of Place, then of Time, then of Manner, then of Cause, then of Purpose
or Result, then of Addition, then of Opposition, and lastly of Contingency.
And in giving exceptions to general laws he has in very many in
stances brought forward again the same phrase or clause with the order
changed. He hardly need add how much additional research and care
it has cost him to give these features to the Essay."

The copious and clear analysis prefixed to this treatise, and filling
nearly eleven pages, will be a valuable aid to all who use it. It will
serve the purpose of an index map, giving a view of the whole ground,
showing the position and relations of the different parts, and making it
easy for the reader to strike any particular point that he wishes to ex
amine.

On a broad survey of the treatise, one is strongly impressed with the
freedom of the Greek language in respect to the collocation of words.
The conceptions may be expressed in almost any order which is natural
for the thinking mind, or which may serve to give a desired prominence
to any element of the proposition. It is among the most valuable re
sults of Professor Short's researches, that by demonstrating the usual
or normal order of words he has enabled us in many cases to perceive
the emphatic force which lies in deviations from it. Thus, he shows
that the participle of manner or means regularly follows the verb with
which it is connected ; where this order is inverted, as in ^axo^fvoi
a-neOavov vnep Kvpov, there is an emphasis on the participle. But in
many cases the order of words is determined by an invariable usage.
The student who should write olvOa TTJV r^av dwap.iv could find no
authority to defend him against a charge of solecism, and in many cases
where the order is not quite invariable, the exceptions are so few that
the student in his exercises should be held to conformity with the pre
vailing usage. Thus, he should not be allowed to write ola-Ba o-favroC
TTJV dvvapiv, though examples of such an arrangement are not wholly
wanting.

It must not be supposed that the volume before us will be of service
only to those who are exercising themselves in Greek composition. To
all earnest students of the language it offers instruction and assistance of
the highest value. The essay of which we have been speaking is essen
tial to a complete mastery of Qreek syntax ; it fills a gap which is hardly
less sensible in the large Grammars of Buttmann, Kiihner, and Krtiger

1870.] Hettners Literature of the Eighteenth Century. 217

than in the smaller manuals ordinarily used in our schools and colleges.
In like manner, the appended treatise on Greek Synonyms translated
from the French of Alex. Pillon, is the only full and comprehensive work
on the important subject which it treats. It is the only systematic at
tempt to bring together Greek words of nearly identical meaning, and to
trace out the differences of sense or use by which they are distinguished.
One excellent feature of it is the constant separation of poetic usage
from that of prose, a separation marked by difference of type, and thus
impressed on the eye as well as the understanding. Even as regards
the English-Greek vocabulary, it would be a mistake to consider it as
of use only in composition. In the reading of authors, it is often a
matter of interest to see in what way or ways a given idea may be ex
pressed by the language. As the result of such an inquiry, one may
be led to give up what had before seemed a plausible interpretation, by
finding that the sense at first thought of would require some different
form of expression.

Looking on the volume as a whole, we do not hesitate to pronounce
it a most welcome and important addition to the means of classical
study in this country. It is a work which every college student should
have at hand for consultation and reference. We may add that the
typographical execution is singularly clear and beautiful, and that great
pains have evidently been taken with the proof-reading.

4. — Literaturgeschichte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Von HERMANN
HETTNER. In drei Theilen. Erster Theil : Geschichte der eng-
lischen Literatur von 1660 Us 1770. 8vo. pp. x, 537. Zweiter
Theil: Geschichte der franzb'sischen Literatur im -18. Jahrhundert.
8vo. pp. ix, 553. Dritter Theil : Geschichte der deutschen Litera
tur im 18. Jahrhundert. In drei Buchern. 8vo. pp. viii, 430 ; vi,
631; vi, 416. Braunschweig: Friedrich Vievveg und Sohn. 1869.

" IF it should be asked," says Kant, " whether we are now living in
an enlightened age, I should answer, No, but in an age of enlighten
ment." It is this Zeitalter der Aufklarung, this transitional, clearing-
.up period, that Herr Hettner, in his " History of the Literature of the
Eighteenth Century," aims to describe and to analyze. His work
has, therefore, a much wider scope than its title indicates, and is
nothing less than an attempt to sketch the most salient features of the
great intellectual revolution, which followed as a corollary to the Refor
mation, and, by a broader assertion of the sovereignty of individual
reason in opposition to tradition and authority, enfranchised modern

218 Hettner's Literature of the Eighteenth Century. [July,

thought and gave to the human mind the full consciousness of its
dignity and freedom. In the first volume he traces the origin and
development of this general movement through its incipient stages
in England, where the political and religious liberty secured by the
overthrow of the Stuarts, the permanent triumph of constitutionalism
in the accession of William of Orange, the brilliant scientific discover
ies of Newton and the clear and comprehensible empirical philosophy
of Locke prepared the popular mind for a favorable reception and
a rapid germination of the ideas which Bayle, Descartes, Spinoza,
Leibnitz, Thomasius, Lessing, and Reiinarus had endeavored to sow
here and there on the Continent, but which had fallen too often on
hard and stony soil and soon withered away, because they had no
deepness of earth in which to take root. The condition of France,
which forced Descartes to find an asylum in Stockholm, and compelled
Bayle to write his Philosophical Dictionary at Rotterdam, is pithily
and truthfully described by La Bruyere when he says : " Un homme
ne chretien et Frangais se trouve contraint dans la satire ; les grands
sujets lui sont defendus." But although England was the nursery
of these principles, she was too isolated, not only in geographical po
sition, but also in language and manners, to be an efficient expositor
of them to the rest of the world. She needed an interpreter between
herself and mankind in order to make her discoveries in science, poli
tics, metaphysics, ethics, and theology cosmopolitan. This medium
of communication she found in France. Voltaire and Montesquieu
visited England and became inspired with the most ardent enthusiasm
for English ideas and English institutions ; and while the former fa
miliarized his countrymen with the theories of Newton and Locke,
the latter expounded and extolled to them the spirit of the British
constitution. Thus began the period of the French eclaircissement,
to the history and criticism of which Hettner devotes the second
volume of his Liter aturgeschichte. He divides it into three epochs.
The first is the epoch of English deism (die Epoche des aus England
'uberkommenen Deismus), of which Voltaire was the chief represent
ative and exponent, directing his attacks against supernatural revela
tion and ecclesiasticism, but holding fast to the doctrines of a personal
God and of personal immortality. As a religious polemic,. Voltaire
only continued, with keener weapons and bolder strategy, the warfare
which Bayle, Tindal, Toland, and Shaftesbury had waged before him.
Frederick the Great defined the historical position of Voltaire very con
cisely in a letter written to him February 10, 1767, in which he says :
" Bayle began the conflict ; a number of Englishmen followed him ;
you are called to finish it." No man ever possessed a more deep and

1870.] Hettner's Literature of the Eighteenth Century. 219

abiding conviction of the existence of a God. To the atheists he
replied, " Vous existez, done il y a un Dieu." As he reduced all
metaphysics to ethics, so he reduced all ethics to theism : " without
God, no morality." In the Profession de Foi des Theistes he says,
" We condemn atheism, detest superstition, love God and man, this is
our creed." And finally it was not mere verbal wit and rhodomon-
tade, but an expression of the same profound belief when he wrote
to Prince Henry of Prussia the well-known words : u Si Dieu n'exis-
tait pas, il faudrait 1'inventer ; mais tbute la nature nous crie, qu'il
existe." Meanwhile Montesquieu, who sympathized with these opin
ions, wrote his Causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de leur De
cadence and his Esprit des Lois, in which he developed a philosophy
of representative government and theories of political liberty that
turned the heads of all Frenchmen from the savant to the petit-
ma/itre and produced an entire revolution in the spirit of the nation.
He also directed attention to the industrial condition of the country,
and declared that the productivity of the land depended less on the
fertility of the soil than on the freedom of the inhabitants. Thus
by the side of Voltaire and Montesquieu grew up a school of econ
omists of whom Quesnay was the coryphaeus, and who asserted agri
culture to be the sole and exclusive source of national wealth, all
other occupations, mechanical, commercial, and professional, being re
garded as unproductive and parasitical. The zeal of this school of
" physiocrats " (as they called themselves) was untiring and their
success brilliant. " The nation," says Voltaire, " weary of verses,
tragedies, comedies, operas, romances, and theological wranglings, be
gan finally to reflect upon the importance of grain." Princes and
statesmen became interested in the cultivation of the soil and the
elevation of the peasantry. And although the fundamental principle
of physiocratie has been demonstrated by Adam Smith to be scien
tifically untenable, and although the political theories of the economists
resulted logically in a democratic despotism, with the abolition of all
proprietary rights and the complete absorption of the personality of
the citizen into the state, yet the beneficent influence of Quesnay's
doctrine as a reaction against the so-called mercantile system with
its privileges and monopolies, and the relief which he brought to the
over-taxed and down-trodden agricultural classes, cannot be too highly
estimated. The system of checks and balances, which prevents one
branch of government from encroaching upon the others and thus
secures the maximum of liberty and order, was an abomination in the
eyes of the economists : "Lesystemede contreforces" says Quesnay, "est
une idee funeste." The aesthetics and criticism of this period are em-

220 Hettner's Literature of the Eighteenth Century. [July,

bodied in the works of Dubos and Batteux. The second epoch of the
eclaircissement is that of avowed atheism and materialism, of which
Diderot and the Encyclopaedists were the foremost representatives.
Voltaire had asserted the existence of an extraneous immaterial es
sence underlying and animating all material substance (toute matiere,
qui agit, nous mohtre un etre immateriel, qui agit sur elle). Diderot
and his disciples affirmed that life and movement were inherent in
matter itself; no substance without force, no force without substance ;
theology and metaphysics reduced to natural science. Through the
salons of Madame Necker, Madame Quinault, Madame d'Epinay, the
Countess d'Houdetot and Baron Holbach, whom Galiani called Le
vnaitre d'hotel de la philosophic, the principles of the encyclopedia
became the general theme of conversation in fashionable life. The
king was delighted to find in these volumes a full account of the manu
facture of gunpowder, and the Marquise de Pompadour could discover
nowhere more accurate information concerning the preparation of po
made. Free-thinking pervaded the atmosphere of the Tuileries and
Versailles ; it was a badge of aristocracy to be sceptical in religion and
progressive in politics ; the nobleman declaimed against despotism and
the abbe against fanaticism. The ethics of this period find their ulti
mate expression in the unmitigated sensualism of Helvetius and La
Mettrie ; the poetry and art, in Sedaine's Le Philosophe sans le savoir,
in the landscapes of Claude Joseph Vernet and especially in the charm
ing genre pictures of Greuze, whose na'ive and voluptuous village maid
ens (as, for example, in L'Accordee du Village and La Cruche cassee
in the Louvre) look as though they might have been designed for
illustrations to Diderot's romances. The third and last epoch is that
of Rousseau and sentimentalism. It consisted in a reaction and revolt
of the heart against the tyranny of the understanding, a return to spir
itualism, God, and immortality, not on the ground of revelation, but
in obedience to a4 longing of the soul, an impulse of the emotions.
Thus Rousseau was at once the heir and the antagonist of the eclair
cissement. This self-assertion of the heart, of which the vague Ge-
fuhlsphilosophie of Hamann, Herder, and Jacobi was an echo, ex
pressed itself critically and polemically in Rousseau's two prize-essays
on the influence of the arts and sciences and on the origin of inequal
ity among men, constructively and positively in Emile and Du Con-
trat social. Out of the same root grew the socialistic speculations of
Mably, Raynal, and Morelly, the idyllic dreams of Bernardin de Saint
Pierre, and the caustic dramas of Beaumarchais. The whole literature
of this period is either a sentimental longing after nature or a satirical
warfare against conventionality, resulting in both cases from the same

1870.] Hettner^ s Literature of the Eighteenth Century. 221

painful sense of incongruity between right and law, feeling and tra
dition, aspiration and prejudice. Most of the pastorals and romances,
in which this melancholy and quiescent mood found utterance, showed
neither vigor of thought nor vitality of any kind, and may be fittingly
described by the term which Marie Antoinette applied to Florian's
Numa Pompilius, " sweetish milk-pap." But the genius of Bernardin
de Saint Pierre exerted a deep and permanent influence, as is evident
from the impression which it made upon the mind of Alexander von
Humboldt, who in the " Kosmos " pays a just tribute to his faithful
descriptions of nature, and is reminded of Paul et Virginie whenever
he looks up at the brilliant cross of the southern sky. The three
volumes in which Hettner treats the " History of German Literature in
the Eighteenth Century," follow the Avfklarung through all the stages
of its logical and chronological development in German philosophy,
theology, politics, science, and art. The first volume gives a brief pre
liminary survey of German culture during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and then traces its continuous growth from the Peace of West
phalia to the accession of Frederick the Great (1648 — 1740) ; it is the
age of Thomasius, Leibnitz, Wolff, Gottsched, Bodmer, and Breitinger,
of pietism and dawning rationalism in religion and philosophy, of morbid
renaissance and frigid and fantastic rococo in art. The second volume
describes the age of Friedrich the Great, the triumph of rationalism and
the so-called Popularphilosophie, and the historical position and intellect
ual activity of Klopstock, Wieland, Nicolai, Mendelssohn, Lessing, and
Winckelmann ; whilst in the third volume we have a delineation of the
classic age of German literature, beginning with the storm and stress
period (which originated in an effort to enlarge the limits of the Auf-
klarung, as the Aufkldruug itself had resulted from resistance to the
narrow, dogmatic Lutheranism into which the Reformation degen
erated), and closing with the reconciliation of the antithesis of nature
and culture in the productions of Schiller and Goethe. " The real root
of the German storm and stress period," says Hettner, " is Rousseau's
gospel of nature." Indeed, his influence has always been far greater
in Germany than in France. Even Kant, who was the foe of all fanat
icism, and had little sympathy with enthusiasts, could not escape the
magic of the Genevan sentimentalist, in whose writings he became
one day so deeply absorbed that he forgot to take his usual walk, a
neglect of which he was never guilty before nor afterwards. Herder
as student at Konigsberg and afterwards as teacher in Riga, and
Goethe, in Strasburg, were zealous adherents of Rousseau, although,
perhaps, Hettner is somewhat extravagant in affirming that " without
Rousseau, Werther and Faust are inconceivable." Heinse character-

222 Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. [July,

izes himself as a " verfeinerten Rousseauisten" In the plays and
novels of Klinger, the most manly and versatile of the Sturmer und
Drdnger^ Rousseau reappears on every page ; and the same inspira
tion works in all the earlier dramas of Schiller, from " The Robbers "
to " Don Carlos." Niebuhr, too, tells us in his lectures on history how
in his youth " Rousseau was the hero of all who were struggling after
freedom." Even English parks (englische Garten) became popular
in Germany chiefly because their charms had been so warmly praised
in La Nouvelle Ueloise, and soon there was hardly a pleasure-ground
laid out that did not contain a retired grove or an artificial island
adorned with the bust of the illustrious Genevese. This influence
of Rousseau on the German mind in the directions indicated is one
of the most curious and interesting facts in literary history. But we
have no space to discuss it here. In calling attention to this work,
we have endeavored to give the reader a general idea of its scope and
tendency. An adequate conception of its rich contents and of the
author's clear and terse style can be obtained only from the volumes
themselves. Herr Hettner writes with a directness of thought and
language and a freedom from syntactic involutions as rare as they
are refreshing in German books. As a critic he is keen and often
severe, yet comprehensive and discriminating. Very seldom do his
sympathies bribe or obscure his judgment. Although positive in his
opinions, he is in no sense a partisan or a one-sided theorist, but every
where a high-minded and broad-minded man of letters. What Lessing
prized as " the one inward impulse after truth " is the inciting and
guiding principle of his investigations.

5. — An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. By JOHN HENRY
NEWMAN, D. D., of the Oratory. New York. 1870. pp. 479.

UNDER this title, carefully avoiding the suggestion of a treatise on
logic or metaphysical science, we have in fact a discussion, by one of
the acutest of living reasoners, of the fundamental question of modern
philosophy, — the question of Descartes, of Hume, of Kant, — namely,
What is the real' ground of Belief? The Catholic theologian is no
scholastic, but shares the tendency of his time towards science and
psychological analysis, and stands on the same philosophical ground
with his countrymen, Mill, Bain, and Spencer. Like them he is a
man of facts and a despiser of abstractions, and he brings to these
difficult discussions a precision and tenacity of mental grasp and a skill
in statement which give to the Essay, apart from its theological merits,

1870.] Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. 223

a high value as illustrating from an independent point of view of the
metaphysical substratum which underlies English thought in its most
various manifestations. His motto is, "Not by dialectics did it please
God to save his people " ; not by the careful manipulation of proposi
tions, nor by any process which we can fully explain, or of which we
are fully conscious, do we apprehend truth, but by a direct personal
sense of it, — a perception without assignable media of perceiving.
The common starting-point of these philosophers is the finality, the
unconditional truth of direct consciousness. " Whatever is known to
us by consciousness," says Mr. J. S. Mill, "is known beyond possibility
of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one
cannot but be sure that one sees or feels." " If we feel hot or chilly,"
says Dr. Newman, " no one will convince us to the contrary by insist
ing that the glass is at 60°." This direct certitude is a question of
fact, not of logic ; either we have it or we have it not. When we
have it, it is necessarily unconditional and final. Inference, on the
other hand, is always conditional, because it does not deal directly
with thing?, but with notions, previous judgments, from which a fur
ther conclusion is inferred. In my assertion that I feel hot or chilly
there is no room for mistake, for the premises and the conclusion are
identical. But if I go on to infer that the weather is hot or cold, I go
beyond the momentary feeling, of which I am certain, and assert some
thing of which there can be no direct experience, — -1 something which
has indeed no existence, no counterpart out of the mind, an abstrac
tion created by an act of the mind itself. Thus inference always comes
short of proof in concrete matters, because it has not a full command
over the objects to which it relates. It deals with abstractions, not
with realities. When people speak of degrees of certainty in our
assent it is inference they are thinking of, not assent. Certitude, or
real assent in its normal completeness, is in its nature absolute and
indefectible. It can neither be discredited, lost, nor reversed. For cer
titude is only the normal act of the mind as soon as it stands in a cer
tain position towards a fact, — like the striking of the clock when the
hands reach the hour. The clock may be wrong ; but it is not wrong
that it should strike. It may turn out that my certitude is unfounded ;
but then it is my reasoning that is at fault, not my assent to it. The
indefectibility of certitude does not mean its infallibility. It is not a
gift or faculty for knowing the truth as to all possible propositions in a
given subject-matter, nor does it regard the relation of a given con
clusion towards its premises, but only the relation of the conclusion
towards the mind of a particular individual. The only test! of certitude
is the feeling itself, a specific sense of intellectual satisfaction and

224 Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. [July,

repose that accompanies it ; and this is not proved to be irrational by
showing that it is founded on a mistake. " Suppose I am walking out*
in the moonlight, and see dimly the outlines of some figure among the
trees ; — it is a man. I draw nearer, — it is still a man ; nearer still,
and all hesitation is at an end, — r I am certain that it is a man. But
he neither moves nor speaks when I address him ; and then I ask my
self what can be his purpose in hiding among the trees at such an hour.
I come quite close to him, and put out my arm. Then I find for cer
tain that what I took for a man is but a singular shadow, formed by the
falling of the moonlight on the interstices of some branches or their
foliage. Am I not to indulge my second certitude because I was
wrong in my first ? Does not any objection, which lies against my
second from the failure of my first, fade away before the evidence on
which my second is founded ? "

The obvious criticism upon this reasoning is that it leaves truth out
of the question, and looks only to the impression made on the mind of
a particular person. Belief is in this view a psychological phenomenon
which begins and ends in the individual, and is not to be measured by
any common standard. The strength of our assents, Dr. Newman tells
us, does not vary with the evidence, but with the effect upon the im
agination. Their validity then will be equally restricted. Our per
ception of truth is only a personal affection, which is, indeed, in each
instance complete, final ; but, for that very reason, of no account for
other people. Truth should be true for all ; but our private im
pressions cannot have this extent. The more total and absorbing the
impression, the more unique and incommunicable. What Dr. New
man calls our real assents — in other words, our feelings - — are indeed
unconditional ; but this is because they assert only their own existence.
If they asserted anything more, they would no longer be direct assents ;
they would be inferences. That I feel hot or chilly is certain, because
in saying this I assert nothing more than my own sensation. But if
my assertion is to have any meaning, if it is to be intelligible, it must
contain something more than this ; it must imply that the object of the
sensation exists independently of my momentary feeling. This involves
an inference ; the conclusion is not already given in the premises by
direct consciousness, and therefore is no longer unconditional. More
over, since my feelings are only my feelings, I cannot assume that they
will agree with the feelings of another. We may fancy that we under
stand each other, and that our words mean the same thing ; but in
reality we are talking at cross-purposes. It is the same difficulty
which occurs to the reader of Mr. Mill's " Logic," when he is told
that the premises of all our knowledge are furnished by direct con-

1870.] Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. 225

sciousness, without any admixture of reasoning, and at the same time
that the meaning of all the names we give to objects resides not in
what the names directly denote, but in what they connote, — that is,
in the results of reasoning about them. Dr. Newman is not insensible
to this difficulty, which touches him in Locke's proposition that the
love of truth cannot carry any assent above the evidence there is to
one that it is true, and that all assent beyond the degrees of this evi
dence is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of truth. It
follows then, that, since in our reasonings about matters of fact we can
have for the most part only probable evidence, unconditional assent to
any proposition which is not supported either by intuition or demon
stration is irrational and wrong. This is a conclusion which seems to
Dr. Newman, as it does to us, inadmissible. He avoids it by saying
that Locke's view of the human mind, in relation to inference and
assent, is " theoretical and unreal " ; that " he consults his own ideal
of what ought to be. instead of interrogating human nature, as an ex
isting thing, as it is found in the world. Instead of going by the testi
mony of psychological facts, and thereby determining our constitutive
faculties and our proper condition, and being content with the mind as
God has made it, he would form men, as he thinks they ought to be
formed, into something better and higher; and calls them irrational
and immoral if (so to speak) they take to the water instead of remain
ing under the narrow wings of his own arbitrary theory."

If Locke's theory is arbitrary, let us replace it by one more in ac
cordance with the facts, — let us not content ourselves with simply
denying his conclusions. The fact alleged is that many truths neither
intuitive nor demonstrative are yet unconditionally accepted by us. We
are sure beyond all hazard of mistake that there is an external world, a
universe carried on by laws, and that the future is affected by the past.
We know that the earth contains vast tracts of land and water; that
there are really existing cities on definite sites, though neither of these
things is demonstrable nor a matter of direct consciousness. We know
that we were born and shall die, though we have no memory of our
birth and no experience of the future. We feel that we can trust our
friends, and we are aware of hostility and injustice towards us. We
may have an overpowering sense of our moral weakness, and of the
precariousness of life, health, wealth, position, and good fortune. We
may have a sense of the presence of the Supreme tieing which has
never been dimmed, and we may be able so to realize the precepts
and truths of Christianity as deliberately to surrender our life rather
than transgress the one or deny the other. That on all these truths we
have an immediate and unhesitating hold, although we cannot reach them

VOL. CXI. — NO. 228. 15

226 Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. [July,

through a series of intuitive propositions, as a general fact is undeniable.
The question is how this unconditional assurance of truth, the existence
of which nobody denies, can be justified on the hypothesis that all
things in the world are, as Dr. Newman says they are, unit and indi
vidual ? Our relation to the objects of our experience, in Dr. New
man's opinion as in Locke's, is that of individual things to each other.
" Each thing has its own nature and its own history. When the his
tory and the nature of many things are similar, we say that they
have the same nature ; but there is no such thing as one and the
sarnie nature ; they are each of them itself, not identical, but like."
So are men* units. " John, Richard, and Robert are individual things,
independent, incommunicable. We may find some kind of common
measure between them, and we may give it the name of man, man as
such, the typical man, the auto-anthropos. We are justified in so do
ing and in investing it with general attributes, and bestowing on it
what we consider a definition. But we go on to impose our definition
on the whole race and to' every member of it, to the thousand Johns,
Richards, and Roberts who are found in it. Each of them is what he
is in spite of it. Not any one of them is man, as such, or coincides
with the auto-anthropos. Another John is not necessarily rational be
cause ' all men are rational/ for he may be an idiot ; nor because
' man is a being of progress ' does the second Richard progress, for he
may be a dunce ; nor because * man is made for society ' must we go
on to deny that the second Robert is a gypsy or a bandit, as he is found
to be. There is no such thing as a stereotyped humanity ; it must
ever be a vague, bodiless idea, because the concrete units from which
it is formed are independent realities." " Each is himself and nothing
else, and though regarded abstractedly, the two may fairly be said to
have something in common, namely, that abstract sameness which does
not exist at all ; yet, strictly speaking, they have nothing in common,
for they have a vested interest in all that they respectively are . . .
so that instead of saying, as logicians say, that the two men differ only
in number, we ought rather to say that they diifer from each other in
all that they are, in identity, in. incommunicability, in personality."
Thus every one who reasons is his own centre, must speak for him
self, and can speak for no one else ; and no expedient for attaining a
common measure of minds can reverse this truth. Now this is just
what Locke asserts, and Dr. Newman only pushes the same reasoning
further. Likeness is a vague word, and when we say that things
are like, or. that men have something in common, we are describing
only hypotheses of our own, not anything definite or belonging to the
nature of these objects. No wonder that from this point of view it

1870.] Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. 227

should appear that inference in the concrete never reaches more than
probability. Rather, we should say, every inference is unfounded.
In spite of the want of evidence, however, we are constantly receiving
propositions as true and universal of which the truth is neither intui
tive nor demonstrated, and none of us can think or act without doing
so. All human speech and intercourse presuppose a common meas
ure of individual feelings, a universal for every unit. " Let units
come first," says Dr. Newman, " and (so-called) universals, second ;
let universals minister to units, not units be sacrificed to universals."
This is easier said than done. Every word we use is the name of a
thought, a universal. Our acts constantly refer to a universal standard
of action, and would be absurd without it. The barrel of flour which
we order at the shop is not the same barrel we ordered last month, but
something of which neither buyer nor seller has any immediate ex
perience. "A barrel of flour "is the name of every barrel. What
we order is then an abstraction, which has no existence, no counterpart,
out of the mind. In morals the matter stands yet worse, for if man
does not exist, the precepts of morals and humanity are baseless hy
potheses and mistaken analogies. But if then, " treating the subject,
not according to a priori fitness, but according to the facts of human
nature, as they are found in the concrete action of life," we resign
ourselves to the view that our assents have no assignable relation to
the evidence, that we assent without evidence or against it, from an in
definable instinct which may be habit or the effect of accident, what
is this but a theory, namely, Hume's theory that belief is an act of
the sensitive rather than of the cogitative part of our natures? "What
is left to us," says Dr. Newman, " but to take things as they are, and
to resign ourselves to what we find ? that, is, instead of devising, what
cannot be, some sufficient science of reasoning which may compel
certitude in concrete conclusions, to confess that there is no ultimate
test of truth besides the testimony borne to truth by the mind itself?"
Reasoning and reflection, Hume said, only weaken our conclusions, by
showing us that the evidence on which we suppose them to rest is
inadequate, or, rather, irrelevant. The evidence of direct conscious
ness, that is, of feeling, owes all its force to its directness and immedi-
ateness ; as soon as we attempt to use it as a ground of inference all
its authority is gone. My feeling bears with it unconditional and inde
fectible certitude of its own existence at this moment. To this extent
it is the best possible evidence. But beyond this it is no evidence at
all. It may happen that another person feels as I do, or that I my
self may have the same feeling at another moment, that is, my feel
ing may be not merely unit and individual, but also universal. But

228 Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. [July,

I cannot know this from the feeling itself, for that gives me no hint
as to my future feelings or the feelings of other people. That I am
at this instant hot or chilly, hungry or vexed, gives me no reason to
conclude that another person is so, or that I shall have the same
sensation at any other given moment. If I am able to predict its
recurrence, or assume its existence in another, or to use it in any way
as a general ground for reasoning, this is because it is not a mere in
dividual feeling, complete and ended in itself, but implies as its basis
and condition a universal, of which it is only an instance. Were it
not so, any inference from one feeling to another would be groundless,
and although we perhaps could not help making the inference, yet the
less said about it the better, for it would be impossible to justify it on
rational grounds. Hume's scepticism goes no further than this. He
did not in the least seek to discredit the maxims of common sense
and experience, or to deny moral distinctions, he only pointed out that
these generalizations cannot be justified from experience, since our ex
perience is only of particulars. There is nothing irrational or absurd,
he thought, in our assenting to these abstractions as if they were real
ities; for they are, some of them, the foundation of all our thoughts
and actions, so that upon their removal human nature must imme
diately perish and go to ruin. But they cannot be supported by rea
soning, that is, by legitimate inference from the data furnished by
sensation. Dr. Newman's result is substantially the same. " Acts of
assent," he says, " require previous acts of inference, but they require
them not as adequate causes, but as sine qua non conditions/' That is
to say, we find that our inferences go beyond the original data, and
as we have assumed once for all that these data are final, unalterable,
that they are ultimate truths, we are forced to suppose that our con
clusions, considered as results of reasoning, are untenable. And since
we cannot bring ourselves to renounce them, there seems to be no
other course open to us but to adhere to our conclusions, in spite of
their unreasonableness.

Surely this is a deplorable result for philosophy to arrive at. Ob
viously there is another alternative, namely, to consider Hume's argu
ment not as a demonstration of the frailty of human reason, but as a
reductio ad absurdum of his premises, namely, of the assumption th&t
Truth is only a personal sensation. If it were indeed true that our be
liefs are merely personal, and that they are given to things and not to
notions or ideas, our inability to establish them by reasoning would not
be astonishing, for reason knows nothing of private and personal truths,
but only universal truth. Reasoning is nothing else but the removal
from the present fact of all that is private and personal, all that be-

1870.] Newman's Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. 229

longs to the circumstances under which it is observed. In this process
the sense of immediate certitude is necessarily disturbed ; the fact is de
tached and looked at as something independent of the particular feel
ing which it excites in the mind of this or that observer. If it will

O

not bear detaching without losing its original force, we have the choice,
either to abide by our private impression without regarding any argu
ments that may be brought against it, or to confess that it was a mistake.
But the test of truth is to bear this contradiction, this disturbance of the
primary certainty, without loss, with only gain to the security of the
conclusion. It is thus that our experience becomes established. Ex
perience does not mean having something happen to us, but it means
the winnowing out from the mass of casual events what is universal
and normal, what concerns us therefore as men. Experience in this
sense means the progressive refutation and rejection of that experience
which is given by merely being alive and awake. The two are not the
same, but contradictories of each other, yet the sense of certainty be
longs to both alike. No man, says Dr. Newman, is certain of a truth
who can endure the thought of its contradictory existing or occurring,
or whose mind does not spontaneously and promptly reject in their
first suggestion, as idle, as impertinent, as sophistical, any objections
which are directed against it. But it is to be observed the certitude
is the same when the object of it is a falsehood. What is distinctive
of the apprehension of truth is not the positive certitude, the mere
exclusion of everything beyond the present fact, but the implication
the inclusion, of the contradictory. The savage is just as certain of
the divinity of his fetish as the Christian is of the being of God.
But his certitude attaches to a thing, unit and individual, and not to
an idea, and does not include and dispose of the equal claims of other
things, other beliefs, but merely denies them. The object of Chris
tian worship, on the other hand, does not exclude or characterize as
idle or impertinent any of the reverence which the other feels. The
Christian, therefore, justly considers his assurance the more valid, just
because it does not contradict, but welcomes and affirms everything in the
other's belief which belongs to it as belief and not merely as effect of
accidental circumstance and position. It is by this perpetual inclusion
of the contradictory that Truth grows, and the primary unit of sensation
becomes universal, valid, and intelligible. The simplest of our judg
ments, those implied in sensation, rest on a foregone acceptance of
contradictories to yet earlier unremembered judgments. If we be
lieved our eyes we should see all objects in one vertical plane. "We
have, as Dr. Newman says, no immediate discernment of the individ
ual beings which surround us, but only of certain impressions, and an

230 Bracket's Historical French Grammar. [July,

instinctive certitude that these impressions represent them. In other
words, we feel an immediate certainty that what we immediately dis
cern is not the truth, the thing itself, but something from which we can
learn what it is. The obvious conclusion from this reasoning seems to
be, not that our assents are independent of inference, but that our in
ferences do not leave their data where they found them, but transform
the fact started with, as soon as the inference is complete, into a new
fact, which so completely obliterates the old that the inference is seem
ingly left without premises. Vision, for example, is a series of infer
ences so rapidly concluded that we remain unconscious of them until
one happens to be erroneous, as when we mistake an insect close to the
eye for a bird at a distance. By Inference is usually meant conscious
Inference, and Inference is conscious usually only so long as it is incom
plete. But the position that Inference is necessarily incomplete, or can
Jead only to probable conclusions, not to truth, is not a psychological
fact, but merely a consequence (and a legitimate one) of the primary
assumption of the Inductive Philosophy, that all concrete realities are
particulars, units ; that each thing has its own nature. For then, our
knowledge of them is, of course, piecemeal, and 'even supposing it could
in some way be accumulated, would still be dependent upon the chances
of contact, and far short of truth, or knowledge of the whole. Holding
the premises he does, philosophical scepticism, distrust of reason, atad
the need of replacing it by some more trustworthy authority, is neces
sarily Dr. Newman's conclusion. But in coming to this conclusion he
is, with all his professed disregard of logic, more logical than his in
ductive brethren.

6. — A Historical Grammar of the French Tongue. By AUGUSTS
BRACKET. Translated by G. KITCHIN, M. A. Oxford, at the
Clarendbn Press. 1869.

i f

A SLIGHT examination of recent college catalogues will show that,
while the modern languages have been introduced into the curriculum
of many of our higher institutions of education, they have been intro
duced generally as elementary studies. Their admission has been a
double concession, — on the one hand to the public demand for practi
cal studies, and on the other to the theory that the college ought to
teach a little of everything. The friends of the classics, whose obliga
tions to German scholarship are so great, have regarded the term or
two which they surrendered to French and German as a sort of sop to
the public Cerberus ; and the advocates of a broader training, feeling
the importance of introducing these languages somewhere in our sys-

1870.] Brackets Historical French Grammar. 231

tern of education, have forced the university to make room for them.
At the same time all friends of severe training have felt that, in the
way in which they are usually taught, they do not compare as means
of mental discipline with the studies which they displace. French,
especially, is a language which he that runs may read ; and it is not
strange that wise men have been reluctant in consenting to allow our
best colleges to do in this one department the work of the nursery or
the primary school. It is extravagant, they justly say, to employ the
complicated machinery and the over-crowded time of a great institution
to teach a young man at the age of twenty what he would have learned
with less friction and with more thoroughness at the age of twelve, if
he did not learn it from his nurse. It cannot be denied that it is an
incongruous system which makes a lesson in Fasquelle follow a chorus
in Prometheus, and sets a man who has been solving problems in the
Calculus at work with grammar -and dictionary over a page of Tele"-
maque. But the remedy lies not in excluding from the college course
these languages, whose only fault is that they are so easy, but in im
proving our methods of teaching them. The tedious drill in grammati
cal forms and in the first principles of syntax, which is so intolerably
irksome to both teacher and scholar at the university stage, should be
left, as it is left in the classical languages and in English, to the pre
paratory schools. At college the student should learn that the litera
tures to which he has thus been introduced contain something more
substantial than simple stories and light comedies, and that the gram
mar which has teased him with its blind rules and its frequent excep
tions is not a mere bundle of tangled and irrational idioms. At this
stage of his progress he should be made acquainted with the treasures
of history, biography, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, for the sake
of which only the languages are worth learning, by means of inspiring
lectures and a critical study of authors and of epochs. Such study is
beyond the mental reach of school-boys ; but it is fit work, and it may
be made fascinating work, for the college class-room.

There is another way, also, in which the modern languages may be
made to do equally .good service in the cause of mental discipline, and
in which the Romanic languages have perhaps the advantage over those
of the Germanic family, — namely, by a method of study which shall
trace their history and exhibit the principles of their growth. The
comparative grammar of these languages, which is not older than the
distinguished German scholar, Diez, who is still lecturing to a handful
of students at Bonn, but which has already attained the proportions of
a science, ought to be taught and must soon be taught in every col
lege into which the French language is admitted. Its outlines are so

232 Bracket's Historical French Grammar. [July,

sharply defined, its rules so few and so clear, its results so curious and
yet so sure, that it cannot justly be excluded from a course of study
in which language has a place. The day is coming when a knowledge
of its principles and the ability to apply them will distinguish that ac
quaintance with French, which forms a part of the capital of an edu
cated man, from that which has been picked up in boarding-schools or
in a year on the Continent ; when no one can claim to have mastered the
language whose studies do not enable him to follow back the words
of Moliere and Clement Marot, through their older forms in the oaths
of Strasburg and the rondelets of the trouveres, to Petronius, whose
style with this clew becomes easy, and further still to the Augustine
poets. And we are confident that a brief experiment of this course of
study, judiciously conducted, would show that it may be made as enter
taining as it certainly would be instructive ; when once a student
has mastered its principles he can go on etymologizing to almost any
extent.

We have been led to make these remarks by the appearance of the
best handbook of this science which we have yet met with, and which
will in a measure supply a want that all teachers of French, who are at
the same time scholars, must have felt. It is a translation, in a neat
little volume of two hundred pages, of the Grammaire Historique
Francaise of M. Auguste Brachet. Its author is probably little
known in this country, though this is not his first publication. He
belongs to the small circle of young French scholars — in which the
names of Michel Breal, Paul Meyer, and Gaston Paris have won dis
tinction abroad as well as at home — who are laboring to introduce
among their own countrymen the historical method of grammatical
study which has accomplished such brilliant results in Germany. He
first appeared before the public as the author of an Etude sur Bru-
neau de Tours, a trouvere of the thirteenth century, and afterward of
an essay on the " Office of Atonic Vowels in the Romanic Languages,"
both of which were warmly praised in the Revue Critique, the organ of
the group of scholars to which we have referred. More recently he
has issued a brief Dictionnaire des Doublets de la Langue francaise, and
by virtue of these modest but valuable contributions to modern phi
lology he has been chosen one of the editors of the JRevue, and he is
now engaged, in connection with M. Gaston Paris, upon a French
translation of the Comparative Grammar of Diez. His position is
thus a sufficient guaranty both of the scientific method and the gen
eral accuracy of this popular manual, in which he aims to bring the
main facts and the general principles of French etymology before a
larger number of students than those who listen to M. Paris at the

1870.] Bracket's Historical French Grammar. 233

College of France, or read the scholarly essays of M. Littre*. In the
present translation, which has had the benefit of Professor Max Miil-
ler's revision, the book is equally deserving of the careful attention of
English and American students ; and we may say to teachers of French
in this country, what has been said by an able French critic, that, " thanks
to M. Brachet, the first principles of true French grammar can no
longer be ignored, and we shall have a right to demand of all persons
who presume to talk about the French language that they at least
know this little volume by heart."

The work is divided into three books, which treat of (1) Phonet
ics, or the study of letters, (2) Inflection, or the study of grammatical
forms, and (3) the formation of words. An introduction of thirty-eight
pages comprises a clear thotfgh somewhat discursive sketch of the
history of the language, in which the important distinction is made
between Low Latin, or the barbarous imitation of the classical idiom
in use among public personages, from the Merovingian invasion to
the time of Francis I., and Vulgar Latin, the idiom spoken by the peo
ple under the Roman emperors, and the parent of modern French.
The author then traces rapidly the history, and points out the mutual
relations of the different dialects, and touches on some of the prin
cipal influences which have slowly changed the structure of the lan
guage from synthetic to analytic, and the violent attempts which have
been made at different times, as, for example, by the Pleiad, to mod
ify its character. In the second section of the introduction he states
and illustrates three great laws of French derivation : (1) the contin
uance of the Latin accent, by which we are able to distinguish words
of ancient and popular formation, like porche, from words more re
cently coined by the learned, like portique, from the Latin porticus ;
(2) the suppression of a short vowel, in the syllable preceding the ac
cent, as bonte, from bon(i)tatem, and (3) the loss of a consonant be
tween two vowels, as in Her from li(g}are.

The subject of phonetics, which lies at the foundation of the whole
study, but which is generally made unnecessarily perplexing and dry,
is treated in Book I. with great clearness and brevity, under the heads
of (1) the Permutations of letters, (2) Transposition, addition, and sub
traction, (3) Prosody. Why the first two of these divisions should
not have been united in one does not appear to us. Permutation in
cludes transposition, and by combining the two the author would have
obtained the not inconsiderable advantage of presenting the history of
each letter at a single view, instead of dividing it among a number of
sections on as many different pages. He has, however, wisely followed
the example of Diez in tracing separately the history of each letter of

234 Bracket's Historical French Grammar. [July,

the French alphabet back to the Latin letters from which it arises, and
of each Latin letter down to the French letters into which it has been
changed. But he gives no reason for reversing the order which the
German grammarian observed, and which certainly appears the natural
one, and for placing the history of the Latin letters after instead of before
that of the French letters. Some omissions in this portion of the work
are the more noticeable on account of its general excellence. Thus,
for instance, the author has overlooked the nasal vowels and the vowel
y. He « has also omitted to notice and account for the difference of
quantity in, e, e, and e, a and a, o and o, and has given only a partial ex
planation — and that not in its proper place — of the origin of these ac
cents. If we were disposed to find fault, we should object also to the
too absolute manner in which rules are laid down which admit of nu
merous and important exceptions ; it must be remembered, however,
that his work is one of introduction and popularization, and that it
would have been impossible to attain strict accuracy without a loss of
that simplicity and clearness which are striking characteristics of this
part of the volume.

In Book II. Part I. treats of the Declension (1) of the Substantive,
under which are discussed case, number, and gender, (2) the Article,
(3) the Adjective, (4) the Pronoun. The processes by which the six
cases of the Latin noun have been reduced, first to two and then to
one, and by which the sibilant, which marked a single case of one
number in Latin, has come to be the plural sign for almost all nouns
and adjectives in French, are plainly stated and well illustrated, though
with some repetition in what concerns number. In treating of Gender
the author has fallen into the common error of speaking of the en
tire absence of the neuter in French, whereas in two pronouns, ce and
guoi, it still exists.

The pages on the verb, which are, on the whole, admirable, are not
altogether free from errors, and do not set in its final form the compli
cated subject of conjugation. Thus it would not be strange if some
confusion should arise in the mind of the student from the double divis
ion into irregular and anomalous of the verbs which do not readily fall
within the three conjugations. The former epithet especially should
not be applied in a scientific grammar to verbs which are regular in
their inflection, but which have a strong form in the perfect. There
is, too, in this division a singular contradiction between two statements
in regard to the formation of the conditional. On page 139 we read,
"•The future and conditional are compound tenses, made up of the
infinitive of the verb and the auxiliary avoir (aimer-ai, aimer-ais}"
But on page 120 it is stated that " the French language has created

1870.] Bracket's Historical French Grammar. 235

the conditional under the form of the infinitive, which indicates the
future, and a termination which indicates the past"; and the author
adds in a note " -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient, represent the Latin
-abam, -abas, -abat, etc." Here of course the first' statement is the
correct one ; aimerais is from amare habebam as aimerai from amare
habeo.

Part III. of this book is occupied with a list of the principal Parti
cles, such as adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, with
the derivation of each. We notice here the statement that the adverbs
of affirmation and negation are six in number, while only four are men
tioned.

Book III. on the formation of words contains, under the heads of
Composition and Derivation, a summary of the most common methods
of word-formation and lists of the principal prefixes and suffixes. An
Appendix on the rules to be observed in testing derivation closes the
volume.

It will be seen from this sketch of M. Brachet's work, that, though
it is not in all respects what such a book should be, its plan is excellent,
and its execution, on the whole, free from serious errors, while it fills a
gap in the study of the French language of which the authors of the
grammars in general use seem to have been unaware. Its utility is im
paired by two important defects, — the absence of all reference, except
in the introduction, to the other sources besides the Latin, especially to
the Germanic languages, from which the French vocabulary has derived
very many of its most common and useful words; and the entire omission
of the subject of syntax, in which the practical results of the historic
method are most palpable. One gets from an examination of the work,
also, the impression that the author regarded it as an experiment, and
that he has not always judged wisely when to enter into details and
when to restrict himself to general statements. Its great merit is that it
presents a remarkably clear exhibition of a novel and complex subject.
That the want which it is designed to meet has begun to be felt is
sufficiently shown by the publication of the Palaestra Gattica of Pro
fessor Meissner, of -Belfast, the only other book which we have met
with in English, covering the same ground. But though much more
thorough in its treatment of some branches of the subject, such as, for
instance, the dialects and word formation, the latter work is so defi
cient in clearness of arrangement and often of statement, that without
the lectures of its author, which it was intended to accompany, it does
not seem to us likely to be of much service to a beginner.

236 Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. [July,

7. — The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of
the Massachusetts Bay, to which are Prefixed the Charters of the
Province, with Historical and Explanatory Notes and an Appendix.
Published under Chapter 87 of the Resolves of the General Court of
the Commonwealth for the Year 1867. Vol. I. Boston: Wright
and Potter. 1869. 8vo. pp. xxix, 904.

IN the year 1639, nine years after the setting up of the framework
of Massachusetts, there was heard a muttering about the insecurity of
living under a government not administered according to written and
known rules. " The people had long desired a body of laws, and
thought their condition very unsafe while 'so much power rested in the
discretion of Magistrates." One would say that this was not unwise,
but the wisdom of Winthrop and some of his colleagues concluded
otherwise. " Two great reasons there were which caused most of the
Magistrates and some of the elders not to be very forward in this
matter. One was, want of sufficient experience of the nature and dis
position of the people, considered with the condition of the country and
other circumstances, which made them conceive that such laws would
be fittest for us which should arise pro re nata upon occasions, etc.
And so the laws of England and other States grew, and therefore the
fundamental laws of England are called customs, consuetudines. 2. For
that it would professedly transgress the limits of our charter, which
provides we shall make no laws repugnant to the laws of England ; and
that we were assured we must do. But to raise up laws by practice
and custom had been no transgression; as in our church discipline,
and in matters of marriage, to make a law that marriages should not be
solemnized by ministers is repugnant to the laws of England, but to
bring it to a custom by practice for the Magistrates to perform it, is no
law made repugnant, etc." * So the Magistrates, avoiding as far as
might be an invidious attitude of opposition, put in action their familiar
policy of embarrassment and delay.

John Cotton, from a Committee raised by the General Court " to
make a draft of laws agreeable to the Word of God, which might be
the fundamentals of this Commonwealth " tried his ready hand at the
agitated moment of the Pequot war and the Antinomian controversy
and " did present a copy of Moses his judicials, compiled in an exact
method." This code was obviously so far from being what was wanted,
as to afford an easy opportunity for giving the whole thing the go-by
for the time.

After two years more the General Court " ordered that the freemen

* Winthrop, History of New England, Vol. I. pp. 322, 323.

1870.] Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. 237

of every town, or some part thereof chosen by the rest, shall assemble
together in their several towns, and collect the heads of such necessary
and fundamental laws as may be suitable to the times and places where
God by his providence hath cast us, and the heads of such laws to
deliver in writing to the Governor for the time being," to be " pre
sented to the General Court for confirmation or rejection as the court
shall adjudge." * This scheme, too, came to nothing, and others like
it.

To make a long story short, the undertaking was baffled till the
course of time and events had broken the force of the objections which
had lain against it. On the one hand, in the experience of a few years
the characteristics of a useful jurisprudence had disclosed themselves,
and on the other, the English Parliament was crowding hard upon the
King, and in consequence the fear of impending interference from Eng
land was dying out in Massachusetts. In 1641 the cautious guides
of public action had become disposed to gratify the popular wish for
a legal code. The General Court committed the business to the Gov
ernor, — Bellingham, a learned lawyer, — and in December of that year
the Court, with unanimous consent, " established the hundred Jaws
which were called The Body of Liberties" t This code, the basis of
the Statute Law of Massachusetts, and indeed of all New England,
was drawn up by Nathaniel Ward, author of the very witty, and once
very famous book, the " Simple Cobbler of Agawam." J He was now
minister of Ipswich, but had in England been " a student and prac-
ticer in the courts of the common law."

The Body of Liberties was, on the one hand, the proper foundation,
and, on the other, the beginning of a superstructure, of the full system
of legal provisions which was desired. In the fifth year after its
adoption, Bellingham and Ward were authorized to prepare a volume
of Statutes, which was accordingly published in 1648. The General
Court had " found by experience the great benefit that doth redound
to the country by putting of the law in print." § There were two more
publications of the Statutes in the time of the old charter, namely, in
1658 and in 1672, j| in which latter year also Plymouth printed its
code.

After the vacating of the colonial charter by a decree of the Lord
Chancellor in 1684, came the lawless government of the Council, with
Joseph Dudley for its President ; then the despotism of Sir Edmund
Andros ; then the provisional administration, with Bradstreet at its

* Palfrey, History of New England, Vol. II. p. 22, note 3.

t Winthrop, History, Vol. II. p. 55. § Palfrey, Vol. IT. p. 260.

| Ibid. || Ibid., p. 394, Vol. III. p. 40.

238 Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. [July,

head; and lastly, the provincial charter of "William and Mary in 1692,
from which was taken a new departure on the voyage that was to
terminate at Lexington and Bunker Hill. Of the Statutes of the
Province of Massachusetts, that is, of the laws enacted between the
Revolution of 1C89 and the Revolution of 1775, eight collections were
published, besides the publications of laws of single courts ; namely, in
1699, 1714, 1724, 1727, 1742, 1755, 1761, and 1763. There would
have been another in 1773, but Governor Hutchinson arrested the
action of the General Court to that effect. In 1729 there was also
published a volume exhibiting the series of past legislative proceedings
bearing on the controversy still pending at that time, about the grant
ing of stated salaries to the governor, lieutenant-governor, and judges.

Five years ago the Legislature of the Commonwealth authorized the
appointment by the governor of three or more commissioners " learned
in the law and in the history of Massachusetts to prepare for publica
tion a complete copy of the Statutes and Laws of the Province and
State of Massachusetts Bay from the time of the Province charter
to the adoption of the Constitution of the Commonwealth"; a work
which was diligently executed by those eminent lawyers, Ex-Governor
Clifford, Mr. Ellis Ames, of Canton, and Mr. Abner C. Goodell, of
Salem. This preliminary work being done, the General Court, three
years ago, authorized the printing and publication of the series of
Provincial Statutes, of which accordingly the first volume is now before
us, covering the period between the charter of William and Mary and
the death of Anne (1692-1714).

The book has been edited by Mr. Ames and Mr. Goodell, with the
skill and diligence promised by the reputation of those distinguished
jurists. It contains all the public acts known to have been passed
within the period, except four which have not yet been found, but
which are known to have related only to grants of pay to the
Governor and the county commissioners and to assessments of taxes.
It is furnished with a complete apparatus for the facilitating of refer
ence ; with an elaborate index of subjects, with a table of names of
persons and places, and with lists of the titles of public acts, private
acts, joint resolves and orders, and separate resolves of each branch of
the legislature. It presents the marginal notes of the old impressions, as
a sort of nearly contemporaneous commentary by competent persons, and
thus, " nearly of equal authority with the laws themselves." Against
each act subsequently referred to in any reported decision of the
Supreme Court it inserts a memorandum to that effect; and against
each act disallowed by the English government by virtue of a clause
in the new charter, the fact, the date, and generally the alleged reasons

1870.] Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. 239

of such disallowance are recorded. Finally, the record of the acts of
each General Court is followed by notes relating to their history and
policy, the objections made against them, whether here or in England,
and the manner in which they were affected by later legislation, the
materials for these comments being largely drawn from the journals
and files of the English Privy Council and of its Committee for Trade
and Plantations.

Nothing need be said to show how great is the interest of this work
alike for the general student of history and for the professional jurist.
To the former it is especially attractive from its relation to that so
cial revolution which was brought about in Massachusetts by the sub
stitution of the provincial charter for the primitive charter of King
Charles the First. Our attention is arrested on the opening of the
book, where, on the first page, instead of the plain old phrase, redolent
of the corporation origin, " it is ordered," or " the Court does order," we
have an enacting clause in the adopted form, " Be it ordered and
enacted by the Governor, Council, and Representatives convened in
General Assembly, and it is hereby ordered and enacted by the
authority of the same." We are apt to speak in a loose way of
the franchise of citizens of the colony of Massachusetts. The fact
is, that whoever possessed and used the franchise, whoever voted, in
colonial times, did so by virtue of his having been admitted to be a
member of the corporation created by King Charles's charter under
the style and title of "The Governor and Company of the Massa
chusetts Bay in New England." That Corporation had, it is true,
since 1643, transacted its business by means of a legislative depart
ment, consisting of two branches. But only one branch — the Magis
trates or Council — had been expressly created by the charter, which
provided that it should be elected by the body of freemen, who were
also to exercise other powers when assembled in their General Court.
The other branch was created by a straining, at all events, — if we
will not say by a fiction, — of law. The freemen, having become
numerous, and being so scattered among dangerous Indian neighbors
that it was inconvenient for them to come often together, said that it
was not unreasonable, and would do no harm to anybody, for them to
exercise by proxy — that is, by elected agents — some of the powers
vested in them by the charter, and other powers made necessary by
what had come to be their situation, instead of all travelling down to Bos
ton, and leaving their families unprotected, and their fields unploughed ;
and hence arose the House of Deputies in its rudimentary state. The
later charter given by the elected Dutch King of England knew
nothing of any " Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay."

240 Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay . [July,

Henceforward the dwellers in this country were " our good subjects
the inhabitants of our province or territory of the Massachusetts Bay,"
and the freemen, or voters, were as many of those good subjects as
possessed a freehold to the value of forty shillings per annum, or other
estate to the value of forty pounds sterling. They could no longer
choose a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Secretary, as the free
men of the Corporation had done. The King was henceforward to
provide them with these officers. They had no longer an unrestricted
choice of a Council. Their Deputies, with the last year's Council,
nominated Counsellors from year to year, but the King's Governor
might, if he pleased, say that he would have none of them. They
could not, by their Representatives, appoint Judges as of old ; Judges
were to be nominated by the Governor, subject to a negative by the
Council. They were not free to legislate by functionaries empowered
by themselves. The lower House continued to represent them as of
old. But not as of old, any action of the House, to be effective, must
now get the favor first of a Council not absolutely of their own mak
ing ; secondly, of the King's Governor, whose veto was conclusive ;
and lastly, of the King's Privy Council, who, by virtue of a clause in
the new charter, might repeal and annul any law of Massachusetts at
any time within three years from its passing.

It is a study to observe the attempts of the local leaders to keep,
under the new charter, as much as might be of the liberty and self-
government enjoyed under the old. The imported King of England,
perhaps not the less because royal prerogative was a new luxury to
him, loved prerogative not much less than his unlucky father-in-
law, and any Calvinistic enthusiasm on his part which his subjects m
New England may have supposed would bring him and them into
sympathy, they soon found they had counted on too sangu'^ly. H"
first Governor, Sir William Phipps, was well known to '•>• Massa
chusetts patriots, among whom he was born and lived, a a thick
headed person, and on that knowledge they may have founded some
flattering hopes. But the surly and business-burdened king on the one
hand, and the dull and well-disposed Governor on the other, were not
the only potential parties they had to deal with. The English Board
of Trade was jealous by constitution and habit. The crown lawyers,
Sawyer and Treby, had been mixed up in the old colonial controversy,
and had its story by heart, from title to colophon. The Attorney-
General was watching them like a lynx. There were not wanting
witty people in Massachusetts in those days, but they needed to be
wittier than they were, if they would outwit John Somers. He was
in no hurry about setting right their disagreeable legislation. He knew

1870.] Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. 241

better than that. They had accepted the new charter with reluctance
and misgivings. Many of them had taken it as simply unavoidable,
and yielded to it with much indignation and discontent. It was not
worth while to contradict and disappoint them while they were in such
a sore mood. The influence of time and habit is soothing, and after
a little while they would be more tractable and patient, while on the
other hand no great advantage would be lost on the King's part by a
little delay, and something material would even be gained by having it
seen that if he procrastinated he did not forget, and that his long
silence was not to be construed as giving consent. So not until near
ly the end of the three prescribed years of the King's privilege in
respect to legislation in Massachusetts did the disallowances of his
Privy Council begin to come over. The first Governor under the
new charter arrived in Boston from England, where, with President
Mather, he had been treating about it, in May, 1692. The newly con
stituted legislature came together in the following month. Its first en
actment was "that all the local laws respectively ordered and made
by the late Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay and the
late government of New Plymouth, being not repugnant to the laws
of England, nor inconsistent with the present constitution and settle
ment by their Majesties' royal charter, do remain and continue in full
force in the respective places for which they were made and used,
until the tenth of November next." When November came the pro
vision was indefinitely extended as to time. Both enactments were
duly certified to England, and the Province rejoiced in the quiet of.its
ancient administration, and looked for that completion of three years
' which would confirm it past recall. But the Privy Council counted
the months as attentively as they, and just before the three years were
-ut (A> -1st, 1695) it broke its delusive silence. "How is this, gen-
tlemer < ihe General Assembly of Massachusetts ? " said the King's
managfc ^ ; " you legislate compendiously. Have the goodness to inform
us with ' express and particular specification ' what were ' ail the local
laws,' established during seventy years, which you have been re-enact
ing in a single sentence, and we will let you know what the King will
do about it. Meanwhile your re-enactment is disallowed, and of no
effect, and you must begin again."

So the unjust Navigation Laws of England were extremely hurtful
to Massachusetts, and how to escape or relieve their operation in the
Province was a standing problem. The government at home was ex
cessively tenacious of them. The Board of Trade had scarcely an
eye for anything else. Day by day the Royal Exchange was noisy
with stories of their evasion by the cunning traffickers of New
England. Decorum and prudence alike required of the newly con-

VOL. CXI. — NO. 228. 16

242 Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. [July,

stituted government of the Province to look to this important matter,
and the way they took was, in their first session, to pass an "Act for the
erecting of a Naval Office." The object of this law, as set forth in
the Preamble, was, " the due and more effectual observation of said
Act of Parliament, and that all undue trading, contrary to the said
Act, may be prevented in this their Majesties' Province of the Massa
chusetts Bay," and the method was to appoint nine revenue officers in
the Province for so many different ports. The King's Privy Council
did not see this adaptation of means to ends in the same light as it was
viewed here, and the law was set aside on the ground that the func
tions assigned by it to collectors of local appointment, were, " by divers
Acts of Parliament, reserved to such officer or officers as shall be
appointed by the Commissioners of his Majesty's customs." Of the
ten acts passed at this session the last related to Harvard College.
With the annulling of the charter of the " Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay," it was held that the corporations that had been
created by it — that of the college among the rest — had fallen (vitulus
in matris venire mortuus). Dr. Increase Mather, the Governor's pas
tor, and joint negotiator of the Provincial Charter, got an Act passed
creating a governing corporation for the College to consist, in the first
instance, of himself as President, and a Treasurer, and eight Fellows
(mostly his friends), with perpetual succession by its own election, and
dispensed from the former responsibility to a Board of Overseers. The
King's advisers had no favor for such independent institutions for the
training of the young. " Whereas," they wrote, " no power is reserved
to his Majesty to appoint visitors for the better regulating the said
College, the said Act hath been repealed, that the General Assembly
may renew the same with a power of visitation reserved both to his
Majesty and the Governor or Commander-in- Chief of that Province."

The first Act of the next session, consisting of nine sections, was in
the nature of a Bill of Rights. It contained the following memorable
provision, which, had it become law, would have removed the occasion
for the War of Independence : " No tax, tallage, assessment, custom,
loan, benevolence, or imposition whatever, shall be laid, assessed, im
posed, or levied on any of his Majesty's subjects, or their estates, on
any color or pretence whatsoever, but by the act and consent of the
Governor, Council, and Representatives of the people, assembled in
General Court." But the Privy Council disallowed the Act, assigning
as one of two reasons for so doing, that it allowed " bail to be taken in
all cases except treason and felony," which " with other privileges pro
posed by the said Act had not been as yet granted by his Majesty in
any of the plantations."

It would take too much space to present even a general view of

1870.] Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. 243

the legislation of Massachusetts in that transition period -of twenty-two
years which is covered by this volume. The incapable administration
of the first of King William's governors, and the careless and friendly
rule of the other were of short duration. The recreant son of Mas
sachusetts, Joseph Dudley, governor for Queen Anne, opened the game
which was not to be played out till ten years after the Stajnp Act.
Dudley brought urgent instructions to make the Province provide stated
salaries for the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Judges. This
was a demand to which the Province could say No, if it would, tak
ing of course the responsibility of denial, and the peril of such dis
pleasure on the sovereign's part as it might provoke. By the terms
of the charter, it belonged to the " Great and General Court or As
sembly " to raise and dispose of money for "the necessary defence and
support of the government of the Province." Without its free grant,
no money could be had from it. If by establishing stated and perma
nent salaries it should release from dependence upon it the Governor
and Judges (creatures as these were of the King, the one immediately,
the other indirectly), those officers would become the uncontrolled in
struments of the arbitrary designs of the court. The Province would
do nothing of the sort. From that position neither wheedling nor men
aces ever moved it. Dudley, energetic and astute and plausible, pressed
the claim stubbornly through more than half of his fourteen years
administration, but he gained not an inch of ground. Governor
Burnet, the genial Bishop's son, tried his deft hand at it, and perhaps
the story of the time was true, that his disappointment broke his heart.
At all events, however it might be about the impracticable knot's
strangling him, he did not loose or cut it. The popular Governor
Belcher, grandson of the Cambridge inn-keeper, got on no better,
though he had it in charge to say that unless there was a reformation,
" his Majesty would find himself under the necessity of laying the undu-
tiful behavior of the Province before the legislature of Great Britain."
The Province persisted in its refusal, and the next Governor and his
successors desisted from the hopeless movement. The question out
lived by several years the time of Queen Anne and Governor Dud
ley. But the fencing upon it during the early stage is a noticeable
feature of this volume.

A smaller but by no means unimportant matter related to the right
of appeal by disappointed suitors from the local courts to the King in
Council. In the "Act for the establishing of judicatories and courts of
justice within this province," passed by Governor Phipps's first General
Court, this right was secured to dissatisfied parties " in personal actions
not exceeding £300, and no other." The Privy Council set it aside,
the limitation " not being according to the words of the charter, and

244 Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. [July,

appeals to the King in Council in real actions seeming thereby to
be excluded." The next year Massachusetts tried again to establish
the same principle, and with the same ill-success, in the institution
of a Chancery Court ; and the experiment was repeated, and once
more defeated two years later. A law of 1697 "for establishing of
Courts " ordained " that all matters -and issues of such should be tried
by a jury of twelve men." The Privy Council said No, inasmuch as
Admiralty Courts knew nothing of juries, and it belonged to the Ad
miralty Courts, " at the pleasure of the officer or informer," to admin
ister the precious Navigation Laws. An "Act establishing of Sea
ports within the Province," and designating eight ports of entry and
clearances, had to undergo the same ordeal, and was rejected for the
reasons that it was a function of the royal commissioners of the customs
to designate ports of collection, and " that the establishing of so many
ports in such inconsiderable places " would be " a great means to en
courage and promote clandestine and illegal trade." The Provincial
legislature set about " encouraging a Post-Office," but the movement
appeared to. the Privy Council " to be prejudicial to the office of the
Postmaster-General," whose patent included " the Post-Office in Amer
ica"; accordingly they were "humbly of opinion that the said Act be
repealed," and their humble opinion prevailed. An " Act for the better
securing the liberty of the subject " gave a right to the writ of habeas
corpus. Even the bigoted Tory historian Chalmers says they were
wrong in this proceeding, as, if the right needed to be supported by a
statute, they ought simply to have assumed it as belonging indefeasibly
to every subject of the English realm. But King William's Privy Coun
cil took advantage of the false step, and reviving one of the most insolent
doctrines of the despotism of Andros, snuffed out the law, because the
" privilege " which it bestowed had " not as yet been granted in any of
his Majesty's Plantations." Another Act in 1697 "for incorporating
Harvard College " gave a power of visitation to the Governor and his
Council ; but this sharing of the visitatorial power did not come up to
the demands of the home government, and the Act was thrown out ac
cordingly. It was one of the last formal Acts which met that fate.
As far as we have observed, no Act of a later date than 1698 — that is,
no Act of the time of Lord Bellamont, or of Dudley, or of the interval
between them, when Stoughton was at the head of the administration
— was disallowed by the powers at home. Either they had become
less wary or less fastidious, or the Massachusetts people had come
better to understand how much they might undertake for their own
benefit, with a reasonable prospect of carrying it through.

The operation of the new charter, with its conditions for the fran
chise and other provisions, led to a relaxation of the ancient religious

1870.] Provincial Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts Bay. 245

severity, and of what remained of the ancient connection of the clergy
with the government, — a change which had its indications among
others in the establishment of the church in Brattle Street on prin
ciples of some novelty, and in the controversies which were beginning
to be stirred in and about the college. One is the more surprised to
find, as late as 1695, a law abridging the powers of non-communicant
members of churches in the choice of their minister. An act passed
three years before had recognized the right of all inhabitants of a town
to participate in the election of the pastor whom all had to aid in sup
porting. It was now provided that if a majority of the inhabitants dis
approved a choice made by the church-members the church should
" call in the help of a council consisting of the elders and messengers
of three or five neighboring churches " ; and if this council should ap
prove the church's action the election should be held to be complete,
and the town must provide for the maintenance of the minister so
elected and confirmed.

The tax-bills of the time show the relative wealth <3f the towns. In
1694 the ten richest towns stood in this respect in the following order;
namely, Boston, Ipswich, Salem, Newbury, Charlestown, Dorchester,
Watertown, Marblehead, Lynn, Cambridge. Twenty years after this
order was but little changed, except by the division of municipal terri
tories, as, for instance, the separation of Lexington from Cambridge,
though some towns, as Springfield and Hingham, had been growing
into importance. With only two or three exceptions, and that for
small amounts, Boston had paid a tax through the whole time not less
than four times as great as that of Ipswich, the next richest town.

To undertake to comment on the contents of a thick statute book
would be something like attempting to make an abstract of a diction
ary. A thoughtful reader of this volume will see reason to apply to
many and many a page the remark forced from the unfriendly but
able and knowing Chalmers when he compared New England with the
colonies of the South. In cases where the legislation of Massachusetts
did not cross the higher powers at home, he was clear-sighted and fair
enough often to see and praise its wisdom. Writing nearly a century
after the enactment of some laws which he named of the early provin
cial period, he said that they " not only marked the spirit of the people,
but were probably the cause of the most lasting consequences," and that
" to these salutary regulations much of the pppulousness and of the com
merce of the Massachusetts is owing." The course of nearly another
prosperous century has now added its testimony to the wholesomeness
and durable efficacy of those primitive regulations, and this, too, in re
spect to matters more vital than were dreamed of in the philosophy of
that juiceless economist.

246 Bowen's Political Economy. [July,

8. — American Political Economy ; including Strictures on the Man
agement of the Currency and the Finances since 1861, with a Chart
showing the Fluctuations in the Price of Gold. By FRANCIS BOW-
EN, Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and
Civil Polity in Harvard College. New York : Charles Scribner &
Co. 1870. pp. 495.

PROFESSOR BOWEN'S new work on Political Economy (for such,
although nominally a new edition, he declares it in effect to be) comes
at a time when our people much need to be reminded of the existence
of such a science ; though it is at the same time unfortunate in this
respect, that there has seldom been a more widely spread disposition
to deny the fact. The national stomach has been so nauseated with
the multiplicity of doctors and of remedies, that it leans strongly to
the expectant system of laissez-faire, in the somewhat ludicrous sense,
perhaps, which Mr. Bowen gives to the phrase, — that of securing
the freedom of the individual by tying the hands and feet of everybody
else lest he should be interfered with.

The book appears to us to be unusually readable. The English
works on the subject are in a great degree theoretical and, therefore,
dry. Professor Bowen charges them with being written mainly on the
deductive principle ; and in the attempt to change the method to induc
tion he certainly adds materially, by practical illustrations, to the in
terest of the subject. The term " American " savors slightly of con
gressional rhetoric, and we do not remember having seen an English
or a French Political Economy. It is not, however, an unmeaning
phrase. Mr. Bowen adduces the conditions of property and population
in this country to show that the principles underlying the reasoning of
English economists are based upon the peculiar form of English society,
and that much of human suffering, charged by the writers of that nation
upon the necessary conditions of social existence, is in reality attribu
table to unjust social arrangements. Malthus on population, and Ri-
cardo on rent, are the great dragons against which he feels bound to
do vigorous battle. On the other hand, Mr. Bowen certainly cannot
be charged with socialistic tendencies.

The subject of free-trade is one upon which Mr. Bowen will give
least satisfaction to the English mind. Having read a good deal upon
this question, with an impartial mind as we trust, we confess that the dis
putants seem to us to resemble the two knights who were fighting about
the golden and silver shield. In the artificial condition of modern so
ciety, absolute free-trade is a chimera. So long as England, the cham
pion of the doctrine, raises any revenue from customs, or subsidizes a

1870.] Bowerfs Political Economy. 247

single line of steamships, she does not stand above reproof. In this
sense Mr. Wells, who has served as a bone of much contention of
late, is no more a free-trader than he is a Jew. He admits that, not
withstanding a tariff of over forty per cent on the average, there is
hardly an article which during the last five years could not be im
ported cheaper than it could be manufactured in the United States.
But, while urging reform of the tariff, he by no means advocates its
abolition. At a time when even this high tariff is nearly offset by
internal taxation and the vicious state of our currency, and when the
state of our foreign trade is such that we are running into debt
abroad at a rate of fully two hundred millions a year, it seems hardly
judicious to talk of taking off all check upon foreign importations. The
fact appears to be that it is a question entirely of expediency, and that
the evil in our case consists in the varying adjustment of the tariff by
private interests working in secret committees. The remedy is, we
think, to be found, not in declamations upon free-trade, but in treating
the tariff in connection with the whole scheme of finance to be intro
duced into Congress by the executive, and discussed in public in the
interest of the whole people.

The nature and operation of money form the rock upon which politi
cal economists are most apt to split. It is unfortunate for this branch
of the science that the practical experiments are almost wholly con
ducted by men who have little interest in general principles, and less
knowledge of them, while theorists have usually but little opportunity
for practical observation. If Mr. Bowen could pass five years in a
broker's office in Wall Street he might learn much upon this subject
that he will never reach through books alone. The labors of Mr. J.
Stuart Mill in this department have produced very little fruit, while
those of Lord Overstone have resulted in the establishment of the pres
ent Bank of England system, — a system which has done very much
for the establishment of a sound currency, and which, though not un
tainted with evil that demands a similar mind to secure its elimination,
cannot be too much recommended as a subject of study for our finan
ciers. We are sure that Mr. Mill, and we believe that Mr. Bowen,
has but a very imperfect comprehension of the principles on which that
system is based.

It is Mr. Bowen's great error with regard to money — one which he
shares with other theorists — that he greatly undervalues its impor
tance. Treating money merely as a medium of exchange, he regards
it simply as an agent for facilitating the operations of commerce, and
through it, as the shadow, he seeks to pass to the substance behind.
We, on the contrary, believe that money, as distinct from credit, is

248 Bowerfs Political Economy. [July,

one of the most positive and powerful of forces for good and for evil.
Mr. Bowen defines money as consisting in strictness only of specie.
Currency he defines as the current substitute for money, including under
it notes payable on demand, promissory notes, bonds, bank deposits, etc.
This definition we hold to be vitally erroneous, and would rather de
fine money or currency — believing them to be equivalent terms — as<
including everything which will pay debts, make purchases, etc., with
out introducing any question of its own price. This definition applies
to specie, notes payable on demand to bearer, and bank deposits. It
does not apply to promissory notes or other obligations payable at a
future time, because with them there is a question of interest, that is,
of price. The paper money of Great Britain and that of this country
before the war, being both convertible into specie, were equivalent to
specie and therefore to each other, and were actual additions to the
money of the world. They were not substitutes for money, but money
itself. A gold dollar possesses an intrinsic value ; but if a paper dol
lar can be made to do the same work, and also be exchangeable at
pleasure for the gold dollar, the paper has for the time exactly the
same value as the gold. That this value may be diminished or de
stroyed by over-issue is no refutation of this view. When, therefore,
the' economists set themselves to estimate the decline in the value of
gold, from excessive production, they overlook the fact that the in
crease of money in the form of bank-notes and deposits in the last
half-century is at least twice or three times as great as that in the
form of specie. Yet so enormous has been the expansion of the com
merce of the world, and the consequent increased uses for money, that
its value has probably not declined more than about one half.

Mr. Bowen defines floating capital as " the aggregate of merchan
dise of all sorts directly exposed for sale." We believe that money —
even paper money — as the measure of value and the instrument of
exchange, is capital just as much as, though not more than, a yard-stick,
a plough, or a factory ; though as the latter are used only for limited
purposes, while money enters into almost every transaction of our lives,
its value as capital is exaggerated in the popular view. Mr. Bowen is
occasionally led into contradictions by the clashing of facts with his
arbitrary definitions. On page 248 h"e says : " To increase the stock
of money in a country is not thereby to augment the fund available
for loans, or to diminish the difficulty of borrowing, or to lower the
rate of interest." On page 305 : " The great addition to the stock of
precious metals will appear, at first, in the form of floating capital
seeking investment. Thus, until the prices of commodities begin to
be sensibly affected, there will be more lenders than borrowers, and

1870.] Bowen9 s Political Economy. 249

money will be offered at a lower interest." We agree with the latter
of the two views. An increase of money makes it abundant, until a
rise of prices or a new development of business absorbs the surplus.
Were it possible for the increase of money to be steady and constant
there seems to be no reason why business should riot have a steady
prosperity and development. Unfortunately the increase of bank
money has a limit ; and sooner or later, under the existing system
at least, a contraction follows, which is generally sudden and se
vere. Commercial crises, which Mr. Bowen attributes almost wholly
to speculation, we believe to be mainly chargeable to fluctuations in
the quantity and value of money produced by the voluntary, though
perhaps unconscious, action of banks.

We have differed from Mr. Bowen as to deposits being money. He
may probably be still more incredulous at the statement that deposits
are money created by the banks exactly as their notes on demand are.
But we make the statement with confidence, though we have not now
space to enter upon the proof of it. In view of this, any system which
shall attempt to regulate bank-notes without also reaching the deposits
must fail of its purpose.

There is another popular error into which Mr. Bowen seems to have
fallen, — that of measuring the depreciation of our currency by the
price of gold, and supposing that a fall of the latter indicates improve
ment of the former. It is undoubtedly true that this must, in the long
run, be the test ; but it may be altogether falsified for the time. The
demand for our securities in Europe has for some years been such as
to offset an adverse foreign trade with but little export of gold. And,
as there was no use for gold at home, even the small amount upon the
market has been sufficient to depress the price. If, as we believe, our
general prices are much higher, the fall in gold is simply a premium
upon imports, and these will continue in excess till, the demand for se
curities being satiated, a drain of gold must take place ; the price will
then probably rule as much too high as it is now too low.

The history of our greenback currency, the National Bank system,
the creation and form of our own and foreign debts, with our own and
foreign systems of taxation, — all these are subjects which Professor
Bowen treats at length, and into which we should be glad to follow
him. We yield to the lack of space, however, with the less regret
from the conviction that what the country needs is, not so much a
sound exposition as the practical application of any principles. It
is doubtful if the theory of finance has ever been so extensively
discussed as in the publications of this country for the last few
years. Yet when one looks at the utter confusion in the debates and

250 List of some Recent Publications. [July.

action of Congress, the total want of plan, and defiance of all settled
principle, it makes one look with anxiety for the mind which is to bring
order out of this chaos. And the extraordinary feature about it is that
this recklessness has hitherto been attended with apparent success.
Diminution of debt and the approach of gold to par, these are the
popular tests of improving finance. It needs no very keen observa
tion, however, to perceive — and indeed the depressed and expectant
attitude of business shows a growing consciousness of the fact — that
financial laws are silently working out their mission, and that the
recoil must sooner or later be the more violent from the long and severe
tension with which they have been resisted.

LIST OF SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

1. Systems of Land Tenure. in Various Countries: A Series of Essays
published under the Sanction of the Cobden Club. London : Macmillan &
Co. 1870. 8vo. pp. 420.

2. Alaska and its Resources. By William H. Dall. Boston : Lee and
Shepard. 1870. 8vo. pp. 640.

3. The Invitation Heeded : Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity. By
James Kent Stone, S. T. D., late President of Kenyon College, and of Hobart
College. New York : The Catholic Publication Society. 1870. 12mo.
pp. 341.

4. Poems. By Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1870.
12mo. pp. 280.

5. The History of English Poetry, from the Eleventh to the Seven
teenth Century. By Thomas Warton, B. D. From the last London Edi
tion. New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons. 1870. 8vo. pp. 1032.

6. The Diary of John Evelyn, Esq., from the Year 1641 to 1705-6, and a
Selection of his Familiar Letters. From the last London Edition. New
York : G. P. Putnam and Sons. 1870. 8vo. pp. 783.

7. A Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language ; in which its
Forms are illustrated by those of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old
Saxon, Old Friesic, Old Norse, and Old High German. By Francis A. March,
Professor of English and of Comparative Philology in Lafayette College. New
York: Harper and Brothers. 1870. 8vo. pp.253.

8. The Bible in the Public Schools. Arguments and Opinions in the Case
of the Cincinnfc : Board of Education, before the Superior Court of Cincin
nati. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. 1870. 8vo. pp.418.

9. The First Book of Botany. Designed to Cultivate the Observing Powers
of Children. By Eliza A. Youmans. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1870.
12mo. pp. 183.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

•

No. CCXXIX.

OCTOBER, 1870.

ART. I. — A Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Brit"
ain during the American Civil War. By MOUNTAGUE BER
NARD, M. A., Chichele Professor of International Law and
Diplomacy in the University of Oxford. London : Longmans,
Green, Reader, and Dyer. 1870.

THE late war of the Rebellion suddenly brought the United
States into a very novel position. We had enjoyed almost
unbroken peace since the acknowledgment of our indepen
dence by Great Britain, in 1782 ; and the single important war
of the present century to which we were parties had had its
rise in violations of our rights of neutrality. But now, all
of a sudden, we became belligerents, before either the country
or the government was fully acquainted with the new part we
had to act. Would it be strange if a nation so situated should
abandon its old ground, should stretch belligerent and contract
neutral rights, or should even make claims which it had con
tested when they were advanced by others ? Then another pe
culiarity of our situation lay in the nature of our institutions.
Such a federal union had not been known before at all, and a
disruption on so vast a scale was new to history and to inter
national law. The organizing power, so strikingly cultivated
under our forms of liberty, and the proximity to one another of
States having a common interest and common apprehensions,
made it easy for them to secede and form a new union, — as

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 17

252 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

easy, in fact, as it is, under the facile divorce laws of some of the
States, for a wife to rid herself of her husband and take another.
This sudden birth of a new confederation, ready for defence or
aggression, gave to the foreigner an impression of a want of co
herence between the parts of the Republic, of a fatal weakness
at the centre of our system, which augured a vain attempt to re
press revolution either by force, or by concession which would
forever enfeeble the general government. And as soon as the
struggle began, it seemed, when looked at from abroad, like a
full-blown war, — a war, too, over so vast a territory, and against
a foe so well organized and so determined, that the issue was
not doubtful. Who would not call the parties to the revolt bel
ligerents ? On the other hand, from our point of view, the
movement at the South appeared like one of the many threats
that had been made before : it meant no permanent withdrawal
from the Union ; it would need marshals and district judges,
rather than generals and commanders of ships ; a few months .
would bring wisdom back into feverish minds, especially when
they found that at the North no active help was to be hoped
for. The government, therefore, was unwilling to admit that
a war was upon us, while it took war measures ; the enemy
was not a belligerent ; and if we had had ships enough to set
on foot a rigorous blockade of all the Southern coasts, scarcely
any levies of troops would be needed. The courts and district
attorneys would soon do their work in the restoration of civil
order. If we add the consideration that civil war grows from
small beginnings, without announcing itself or revealing what
it is to be, it is evident that a difference of opinion on various
questions touching the conflict might arise, according as it was
watched from near at hand or from across the ocean.

Another point deserving attention, in regard to the contest,
Was the new questions to which the progress of society during
the last half century might give birth. Since the downfall of
Napoleon, there had been but short and local wars in Europe.
Neutral interest had vastly increased in importance, when
weighed against belligerent interests. The Declaration of
Paris in 1856 had put a new face for nearly all the nations of
Europe on most of the relations of belligerents and neutrals,
about which there had been no agreement. The new way of

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 253

navigating by steam would render it easier to break blockade,
and would spread belligerent vessels over the world, if they
could only have a supply of coal. What liberties would neu
trals concede in regard to such supplies ? Would they change
their policy as it respected bringing prizes into their ports?
Questions never asked before would now have to be asked and
answered.

It was not strange that a war so remarkable in its origin and
in its nature, and waged at such an epoch of the world, fastened
upon it the attention of the publicists of Europe, some of whom,
in their discussions of questions that arose during its progress,
have contributed not a little to the science of international law.
Soon after the affair of the Trent was known in Europe, a pro
fessor in an inland university of Germany — Marquardsen of
Erlangen, in Bavaria — gave to the world what is, perhaps, the
most satisfactory essay on the points of law involved in that
transaction. The speculations of Hautefeuille are better known
arid less valuable. The essays of k< Historicus," especially on the
recognition of revolting provinces, were timely and serviceable
to the cause of order. Our author, also, who had been for a
number of years the Chichele Professor of International Law and
Diplomacy at Oxford, gave promise, so to speak, of a larger
treatment of the subject by publishing, in 1861, two lectures on
the war in America. He had been before known by his valu
able contribution on the laws and usages of war, which ap
peared in the Oxford essays of 1856, and has since published a
small work on diplomacy in general, and more especially as
illustrated by the peace of Westphalia. In his present work he
has performed a service for which the students in his science,
will be grateful ; he has gone over the whole field of claims and
questions to which our civil war gave birth. In most of these
questions England, as the leading neutral and the principal
commercial country, was directly and mainly concerned. A
work, therefore, entitled "A Historical Account 6f the Neutrality
of Great Britain during the American Civil War," if faithful to
its subject, must be a history of international law, so far as its
rules were discussed between the United States and the other
states of the Christian world.

A work of such a kind must be estimated by its spirit, by its

254 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

plan, and by the success of the execution. Of the spirit we will
let Mr. Bernard speak for himself: —

"A writer who undertakes to deal with questions lately disputed,-—
some of them still in dispute, — between a foreign government and his
own, can scarcely hope to be perfectly impartial. But he is bound, be
fore expressing any opinion, to clear his mind from any conscious bias,
and he has a right to expect the same sincerity from others. America
has many jurists, especially in the department of international law,

•whom it would be an impertinence to praise They will feel as

I do, that, divided as we are, and must be, by our national sympathies,
we yet owe, as jurists, the highest candor to one another. If I fail in
that duty, — if I attempt to apply to America any rule which I should
hesitate to apply, under like circumstances, to England, — I am justly
to blame, and what I write deserves no attention. International law
knows no ^country ; in aim and intention, at least, its rules are uni
form and universal, though the conception of them has varied more or
less in different places, according to differences of national policy, of
local jurisprudence, or of the traditions in which statesmen and lawyers
are bred. What it prescribes to any one state, that it imposes on all ;
and the body of opinion which it represents, and the judgment to which
in cases of controversy it appeals, are those, not of England or of
America, of Germany or France, but of the whole civilized world."

We bear our testimony, after a careful examination of Mr.
Bernard's work, to his upright intention and his prevailing
spirit of candor and impartiality. And this will be regarded
as very high praise by all who are familiar with the history of
opinions on international law ; above all, by those who have
noticed the sharp lines which formerly separated the jurists of
the Continent from those of England, as it regards certain
maritime relations between belligerents and neutrals. The
example of our author is indeed a model for those on this side
of the water who cultivate the same field of science. It is
harder for us to be impartial, because we were de facto the in
jured party in the war, which owed its wearisome length and
its immense cost in no small degree to the ship-builders and
blockade-runners of neutral powers, or rather of a single neu
tral power. We imputed the injury which we suffered to moral
wrong, of which the state or states from within whose borders
the evil proceeded were guilty, forgetting that international
law, like municipal, must allow much evil to go orf for the sake

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 255

of a greater good, and forgetting also that our own principles
and example when we were neutrals furnish precedents to
other neutrals when we became belligerents. If the fairness
and coolness of a writer like Mr. Bernard should influence the
spirit of American discussion, there would be hope of a speed
ier solution "of certain questions between belligerents and neu
trals which must arise hereafter in every important war.

Mr. Bernard's plan is indicated by the title of his work, " A
Historical Account of British Neutrality," etc. No other method
would have been equally satisfactory. The questions discussed
between the two governments grew out of particular cases, and
the application of particular rules of law; these questions
changed during the progress of the war ; they could be best
understood after a somewhat detailed recital of the circum
stances ; it was important to give the leading arguments
of diplomacy on both sides. In fact, the historical method is
alone competent to answer the great question whether, with
the progress of intercourse between all parts of the world,
the interests of neutrals and belligerents must not be harmon
ized on somewhat new principles ; whether the experience of a
vast war like our recent one, as looked at by dispassionate
jurists, will not lay a foundation for important reforms in
this branch of jural science.

For one thing we are sure that many will be thankful to Mr.
Bernard, — for the extracts from state papers in which the
leading questions of interest are discussed. Certainly those
who know what a weariness to the flesh it is to rummage
through volumes of diplomatic correspondence, to go from
book to book without finding the passage desired, or to fail of
finding it because the volume is missing in an imperfect library
of political science, — and all public libraries in this country
are imperfect, — will appreciate the labor and the service of
our author in making so many important documents accessible
to all.

Professor Bernard introduces his work by a series of chap
ters in which the causes of the war, near and remote, and its
first events until after the battle of Bull Run, are succinctly,
but very clearly and fairly, described. One extract will show
his estimate of the nature of the revolt, as well as of the dim"-

256 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

cutties with which the United States had to contend in putting
it down : —

" The revolt of the Confederate States has some characteristic fea
tures. We cannot fail to be "struck by the celerity with which the re
volted communities establi>hed a regular government, the long interval
which was suffered to elapse before any attempt was made to reconquer
them, and the footing of equality on which the combatants met at their
first encounter in the field. The explanation of these things is easy
and lies on the surface of this narrative. The eleven States were com
pletely organized as self-governed communities, before they attempted
to sever their connection with the Union ; as a Confederacy they had
only to reproduce and set in motion a machinery with the working of
which they were perfectly familiar, and of which both the model and
the materials were ready to their hands. Yet, could the Federal gov
ernment have marched an army on Charleston as soon as South Caro
lina issued her declaration of independence, the revolt might have been
crushed in its infancy, and the Union might have been saved from years
of devastation and carnage. But the Federal government was para
lyzed, not only by its own weakness, but by peculiar restraints and ex
traordinary difficulties. It had at its disposal no regular army

Further, there is no doubt that the Federal government was really
embarrassed .... by that peculiar reluctance to resort to force which
an American government might be expected to entertain. This reluc
tance, — the consciousness that it was generally felt around him, — the
fear lest an attempt to " invade " should drive (as in fact it did) the
Border Slave States, in whom the feeling was most keen and irritable,
into open revolt, — the hope, which many sensible and experienced
men were loath to abandon, that attachment to the Union might yet
survive, and the Confederacy, if left to itself, crumble away, — these
influences speak in Mr. Lincoln's inaugural address, though they can
hardly be said to supply a reasonable account of his policy."

It may be added to all this, that the government was in a
peculiarly helpless condition when the new President came into
office, and that the North was too divided in politics to be cal
culated upon for any immediately efficient policy. It was
necessary that the insurrection should begin the armed contest
and sever the Union by violence, in order to show to their polit
ical friends in the North what they were ready to do. The
bombardment of Fort Sumter, therefore, if war was inevitable,
was a blessing, because it forced men to choose a positive line
of action.

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 257

The readiness with which the Southern Confederacy was
organized was fitted to make more impression of strength and
firm purpose on foreigners than on ourselves. The spirit of
political organization is too familiar to .us to excite surprise ; and
the Constitution of the Confederate States was nothing but the
old one altered to provide against the overthrow of slavery.
But while something more was needed to persuade us that the
Southern movements meant permanent secession, often threat
ened, but never accomplished before, to the eyes of Europe the
Montgomery Constitution meant complete and final disruption,
a separate nationality, and war in case of collision. To the
foreigner, a new nation seemed to be coming into existence ; to
us, the movement seemed frantic and short-lived. Both were
in error. Our ignorance was, probably, essential to our suc
cess. The misconception on the other side of the water was
founded on what may be called deceptive facts, and thus i$
had an important bearing on questions of belligerency and
neutrality.

The questions whether there was a war between the Union
and the Confederacy, and when it began, Professor Bernard
does not discuss, but rather relies on American authorities, and .
mainly on the decision "of our Supreme Court. The principal
points in the opinion of the majority of the judges were that
at and before the date of the President's proclamation of
blockade a war was in existence ; that the blockade was an act
of war instituted jure belli, not originating war but presuppos
ing it ; and that from the fact of war all persons in the Con
federate States acquired a hostile, and in foreign states a
neutral, character. This neutral character exposed neutral
vessels to capture on the high seas, — r a liability which the fact
of war alone, and no municipal regulation or exercise of public
authority, could justify.

But a civil war, especially one where territorial lines divide
the parties, has peculiarities of its own. It places individuals
in the territory attempting to gain independence in new rela
tions to the old Constitution and government. " A govern
ment supposed to be sovereign is at war with those that are
supposed to be its subjects. There is a clashing of incompati
ble relations ; the same person being, if a loyal inhabitant of a

258 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

revolted territory, both a citizen and a public enemy, or, if a dis
loyal, and taken captive in actual war, treated as a subject of a
foreign nation. And even the unlawful governments them
selves may be regarded^ in certain respects, as exercising a
just authority. Such are the conflicts of right and fact in the
case of a community having a political existence and endeavor
ing to change the form of that existence." Is it strange, asks
Professor Bernard, that this anomalous condition should affect
international relations also ? Suppose such a community to com
mit wrongful acts against foreigners, to whom is the foreign
state to apply for redress when the sovereign is helpless, and
the insurgents may, erelong, lose their de facto existence ?
And if the foreigners have had commercial intercourse with
the insurgents as well as with their sovereign, on what terms
is that intercourse to be continued after an armed conflict has
begun ? On the sea especially, shall they submit to be searched
by either or by both parties to the civil war ? If they submit,
for instance, to search exercised by the old established govern
ment only, and resist it when exercised by the revolutionists,
they are not neutrals, but parties to the war, if that state of

• things can be called war which is unilateral, in which there is
only one belligerent. They are thus forced in every such case,
although they have stood aside altogether from the causes of
the war, to become parties to it. The simple practical solution
here, to use our author's language, kt is found in recognizing
both parties as belligerents ; that is (to expand the phrase into
an expression of its full meaning), as entitled, in respect of
the neutral, to all those exceptional rights and powers with
which sovereign states at war with one another are clothed by
international law." The recognition of these rights draws
after it the recognition of" the means by which they are exer-

* cised, — of prize courts established in the manner known to
the law of nations, of commissions issued by the government
of the community attempting to become a state, of a flag by
which its cruisers are known upon the sea.

It has sometimes been said that such states struggling into
existence have a right to be recognized as belligerents when
their organization and means enable them to carry on regular
warfare, and they are in actual conflict with their parent states.

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 259

It is not only a concession on the part of the neutral, but it is
obligatory upon the neutral, to recognize them. Our author
objects to this language, but thinks that recognition has been
sanctioned in such cases by the practice and opinion of nations,
not solely with a view to the protection of the neutral, but
on wider grounds of general expediency. The application of
the ordinary rules of war to civil conflicts makes them more
humane and regular, and restricts the sphere of their injury.
Hence he is willing to adopt the rule, that recognition of bel
ligerency ought not to be withheld, as being on the whole an
advantage to the world.

Here, while we agree with our author in his doctrine as it re
spects recognition of belligerency, we are constrained to make
one or two qualifying remarks. The first is that no rule of inter
national law forces a neutral state into an impartial attitude be
tween two such belligerents. It has its choice between aiding the
parent or already existing state and entire neutrality. Alliances
have existed between two sovereignties, stipulating the integrity
of each other, and such treaties are considered lawful. In such
cases there is a positive obligation to assist a state against a
rebellion aiming at its political life. But the principle is the
same when, after the outbreak of a rebellion, a state oifers its
assistance to another. It is assistance, not against a state
known to nations, but against a nondescript thing which has as
yet force and not law on its side, against a monster, out of the
pale as yet of the law of nations, and which threatens the order
of the world. It may grow into the proportions which civil
order can protect and recognize, but it is well for human quiet
if it fight its way into political existence by itself. Interna
tional law is made for nations, and sides with the established
condition of things. It does not frown on help offered by one
friendly state to another, and yet it allows states to sit still
and see their friends fight their own battles. It frowns on the
two extremes of aiding in the disruption of a state, and of
refusing to speak or even to act when gross inhumanity is
practised towards rebels.

Another remark which ought to be made here relates to the
length of time during which this rule of belligerency has been
maintained in civil wars, and particularly in those which may

260 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

be called wars of disruption. - There is no old precedent for or
against the rule, if we are not in a grievous error. The coun
tenance given by England to the Netherlands in their war with
Philip is not one, for Elizabeth played fast and loose in her
foreign relations as suited the policy of the moment, furnishing
ground for war by proceedings beyond the limits of neutrality ;
moveover, the war in the Low Countries was not a civil war ;
the feudal prince of the Burgundian provinces was also king of
Spain, and the war centred in the person of the Suzerain ; it had
little to do with the remote state where he was king. We be
lieve that there is no other precedent earlier than the time of our
Revolution. The attitude of France during that struggle is well
known. From half-concealed and yet disavowed assistance of
our cause, the king, not long after Burgoyne's capitulation,
jumped into recognition of the United States, and this, as it was
expected, brought on war with Great Britain. Infos justifying
memorial which Gibbon wrote, much is said of breach of
treaties on the part of France in aiding the rebellion of the Col
onies, but the views of international law there expressed are
vague and indefinite. The " Observations " of the Court of
Versailles, in reply, contain the modern doctrine in tolerably
clear words. " It results," it is there said, " from the stipula
tions of the treaty of Utrecht, that the king was not obliged
to forbid his subjects, relatively to America, to trade either in
merchandise not prohibited or in contraband of war, and that
the only obligation imposed on him was not to protect this latter
species of commerce. To put this truth in its full light, we
may consider the United States under two different points of
view, — as subjects of Great Britain, and as an independent
nation. On the first hypothesis, they are subject to the pro
hibitory laws of their mother country. They are forbidden to
have direct commerce with any country except England ; but
how can this prohibition, which is merely domestic, be extended
to strangers ? .... It was thus that the court of London itself
judged in regard to this point in the difficulties which it had
with the court of Madrid, and which led to the treaty of Pardo.
.... If, on the contrary, we regard the Americans as an
independent nation, or, if the expression pleases better, as a
nation with which England is at war, then neutral nations have

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 261

no other obligations to fulfil save such as usages or treaties im
pose on them. Those which France has been bound to recog
nize are expressed in the articles nineteen and twenty of the
treaty of Utrecht. The arrangements contained in those ar
ticles authorize commerce in merchandise which is not prohib
ited, and they do not require the king to forbid his subjects to
convey arms and munitions of war to the enemies of Great
Britain. They simply say that ships thus loaded, if met even
on the high sea, may be stopped and declared good prize of

war."

The relations of England and Holland, at the same epoch,
became more and more complicated, until they terminated in
war. Among other alleged grievances, Paul Jones carried two
English vessels into the Texel. The British government de
manded these vessels, on the ground that they were captured
" by a subject of the king, who, according to treaties and the laws
of war, fell into the class of rebels and pirates." The States-
General refused to give up the vessels, but declared that they
had given orders not to furnish the cruiser with munitions of
war or with other things, except such as he needed in order to
set sail and reach the nearest port where entrance would not
be refused to him. In the course of the discussion, Sir Joseph
Yorke, the British ambassador, remarks that " the directions
of the States- General, when they require captains of foreign
armed vessels to exhibit their letters of marque or commis
sion, give authority, according to the general usage of ad
miralties, for treating as pirates those whose letters are per
ceived to be unlawful, as not emanating from a sovereign
power." *

The same claim that the flag of the rebellious colonies
could not be respected by neutrals was brought forward when
the same sea-king, Paul Jones, carried three prizes into a port
of Norway. The king of Denmark delivered them up, but the
act gave rise to reclamations and demands on our part which
ran through more than sixty years.

* See especially De Marten's Nouvdles Causes Ctfebres, Tome I. Cause 2, p.
1.^4, and Cause 4, pp. 492-495. For the prizes taken into a port of Norway, see the
brief exposition of Mr. Lawrence iu his new French Commentary on Wheaton, I.
176-17&

262 British Neutrality during the. Civil War. [Oct.

It thus appears that Great Britain at that time denied the
present doctrine expounded by Professor Bernard, and now ad
mitted probably by common consent over the world, while
France and Holland received it. The doctrine was sanctioned
at a subsequent time by our government through the whole
history of the struggle between Spain and her South American
colonies. Our memory of our own claims in the Revolutionary
War, the natural tendencies of thought of a nation almost
always neutral, and a most pardonable sympathy with the
Spanish Americans in the effort to emancipate themselves from
a foreign and unacceptable dominion, not only induced us to
take a neutral position between Spain and her colonies, but
made it seem right that moral support should be given to the
revolters in public messages of the President to Congress.
" It was natural," says President Monroe, " that our citizens
should sympathize in events which affected our neighbors";
and his own sympathy comes to the surface more than once in
mention made of the successes of the insurgents and in hopes
that Spain might be induced to give up the contest.

In a recent message of President Grant touching the affairs
of Cuba, which, we think, the country has cordially approved,
the rule which has controlled the action of the government
with reference to a revolting country pending its struggle is
expressed in the following words of Mr. Monroe : " As soon as
the movement assumes such a steady and consistent form as
to make the success of the provinces probable, the rights to
which they were entitled by the laws of nations, as equal par
ties to a civil war, were extended to them." We doubt
whether these words express the rule on which either the
United States or any other modern civilized nation has acted,
and still more whether this can be made the basis of a rational
policy. Steadiness and consistency alone, however gre"at in
degree, do not make success probable ; it cannot be said that
the laws of nations entitle any community which is not yet a
state to any rights as a state, or to any treatment except that
dictated by humanity ; and it would be harsh in the extreme
to deny to ari oppressed people fighting for self-government the
right (if so it is to be called) of belligerency, because their
cause appears to be becoming hopeless. So much as this is

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 263

true, that we have not favored, and ought not to favor, rash and
mad revolts, sympathy with which may greatly increase the
woes of such as engage in them ; but we believe that if the
revolt has an organized government, the machinery of war, the
spirit of persistence, and is carrying on a bellam justum by land
or sea, the weight in the other side of the scale would hardly
be taken into account. In other words, only the fact of war, as
distinguished from insurrection or sedition, is to be looked at
by third parties. Still less, if the side of the old government
appeared to be prevailing, would it consist with the views of
the present age to deny belligerent rights to the rebels, until
they had been thoroughly crushed. Mr. Monroe, in his mes
sage of 1819, expresses the opinion that if it should "become
manifest to the world that the efforts of Spain to subdue her
provinces will be fruitless, it may be presumed that the Span
ish government itself will give up the contest." It was then
not yet manifest that their efforts would be successful. How
much probability is needed to concede belligerency to revolt ?
"We should rather say that, as long as the characteristics of
such a movement make its success improbable, it would not be
•wise nor right to regard rebels as equal parties in war with an
existing state, nor to treat them as having formed a state de
facto, when this is not warranted by the facts.

There is a special point of some importance to which Pro
fessor Bernard calls attention. A person making war against
a government which has a claim to his allegiance is without
doubt a rebel ; but is he properly called a pirate or justly
treated as such, when captured on the ocean. The English
called Paul Jones a pirate ; and in the late war, William Smith,
one of the crew of the Jeff. Davis, was convicted of piracy in
one of our courts. The crime of a pirate may be tried in any
court, and his ship is not the ship of any nation. The motive
of a pirate is plunder, but a cruiser of a rebellious state or
province is only endeavoring to distress his enemy in the way
of armed contest, and so to conquer a peace. The pirate is an
enemy of mankind, but the cruiser of a rebellious territory is
the enemy of a particular state and of those who trade with it
against the laws of war. The offended state, if it catches him,
may call him traitor or pirate at its pleasure, but, as Mr. Ber-

264 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

nard asks, would the animus be/Iig-eranJi, which is his motive,
constitute the legal offence of piracy in the view of the tribu
nals of a country the executive government of which had not
recognized the existence of war ? And in one particular case
an argumentum ad hominem may be pressed, which our author
politely passes by, that if the crew of the Savannah or of the
Jeff. Davis were pirates, Paul Jones was equally so, and there
fore the Dutch were wrong in refusing to restore his prizes to
Great Britain, and Denmark was right in surrendering them.

The next chapters of Professor Bernard's work are devoted
to the course pursued by European governments at the begin"
ning of our war, and especially to the queen's proclamation of
neutrality. Into the vexed question whether this public act
was premature and at the time unnecessary or not, we shall
not enter. It was issued two days after Mr. Dallas had offi
cially made known Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of blockade, and
eleven days after the first news of that measure reached Lon
don. If measured by the precedents, whether of Europe or of
the United States, it was entirely legal and proper. In pla
cing the two parties to the war on an equality, it followed the
uniform rule of our government ; and if the proclamation of
Mr. Yan Buren, in 1838, could be styled, as it was, a proclama
tion " for the prevention of unlawful interference in the civil
war in Canada," when no civil or military organization had
been set up, much more might this British proclamation speak
of hostilities as existing, after the fall of Sumter, and after
the announcement of a war measure like blockade, between the
United States and an organized, united community like the
States styling themselves the Confederate States of Amer
ica. It was followed in a large part of Europe, and even
in the Hawaiian Islands, by notifications which prohibited all
interference in the war, especially the construction of priva
teers for either party, and the entrance of the war vessels of
either party into the harbors of the respective nations, except
for a transitory purpose.

In his first instructions to the ambassadors at foreign courts
Mr. Seward insisted on neutrality, and this neutrality could
only be understood as " neutrality in a civil war between par
ties nearly equal, having as to neutral powers equal rights,"

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 265

at least such was neutrality in the parallel case of the South
American provinces, as understood by Mr. Monroe, and such
the neutrality allowed to us by Europe in our Revolutionary
times. When in June, 1861, the British orders prohibited
armed vessels of either party from carrying their prizes into
waters governed by British law Mr. Seward seemed satisfied,
and said that " it would probably prove a death-blow to South
ern privateering." But soon a change of feeling and of policy
appeared at Washington. The queen's proclamation was
hasty, and was dictated by a hostile spirit. Moral support had
been given to .the Confederacy, which had inspired even the
hope of speedy recognition. But the United States ought not
to be considered as an equal party with the Confederacy. We
could not regard the contest within our borders as a war, and
we should treat Confederate privateersmen as pirates. Mr.
Dayton was instructed to say to the French government that the
United States could not for a moment allow that government
to rest under the belief that they would be content to have the
Confederate States recognized as a belligerent power by nations
with which we were at amity. And long afterwards, when the
country had become thoroughly alienated in mind from Great
Britain, by the want of sympathy there with our cause, or by
sympathy with the Confederates, the queen's, proclamation
was charged with being the fountain of our evils, it gave
ground for damages, and was a virtual act of war. It is im
possible now for any cool person to admit the justice of these
assertions. Either the blockade imposed by the President,
and supported by an armed force, was to be received as a fact
by the British government, or, as they claimed, their vessels
still had the right to trade with Southern ports, which were not
under the fiscal control of the United States. The blockade
implied a state of war ; such was the judgment of the
courts. Mr. Seward indeed says with truth, that the Presi
dent did not in form declare the existence of war, and that the
courts reached their conclusion that a state of war was then
existing by a process of reason and argument. But it is of
no importance what name the President gave to the state of
things ; if he had called it a difficulty or a sedition until the
capture of Richmond, or until the surrender of Johnston's

266 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

army, this would not have altered the facts of the case. The
Supreme Court looked at the facts, and found that they came
within the definition of war from the time of the blockade.
The foreign courts did the same ; and their agreement in their
conclusion is proof that they both were right.

We come thus nearly to Mr. Bernard's conclusion, which we
give in his own words : " I am unable to comprehend how it
could be premature to provide for a state of circumstances
which was actually existing at the time, or precipitate to
announce in May a conclusion on which the President had
begun to act in April ; .... or how the British government
could be held justly answerable for the chimeras raised in
sanguine imaginations by an act which was itself lawful and
reasonable." If a hostile mind dictated an act not unlawful
in itself, let that go for what it is worth ; let it awaken the
indignation of the country, let that indignation seize its fair
chance of retaliation in parallel circumstances, if it must be
so ; but let us not try to overthrow international law, or to
parry its force by charges of evil intention.

Mr. Bernard passes on to the offer made by the American
government, early in the war, to accede to the treaty of Paris.
The British and French ministers refused to negotiate in this
matter, except on the understanding that it was to have no
bearing whatever on the Southern difficulty, and so the nego
tiation fell to the ground. It is obvious that they were obliged
either to take this position or to desert their existing position
of neutrality in our civil contest. The engagement, as they
understood it, would, if made, merely prevent the established
government of the United States from issuing letters of
marque to privateers ; it could have no effect on the legal rela
tions of privateersmen belonging to the Southern Confederacy,
because they were already de facto belligerents, and acknowl
edged as such. Mr. Seward was not willing to bind the United
States, without securing the advantage of putting an end to
Southern privateering, without, in short, including them in the
negotiation.

The chapter on the case of the Trent is one where at present
there will be little difference of opinion. Our government
honorably admitted the mistake of its naval officer, and gained

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 267

character by so doing with foreign powers. Mr. Bernard, after
giving in detail the history of this case, states certain proposi
tions, of which we quote the last : " It is not lawful on the
high seas to take persons, whatever their character, as pris
oners, out of a neutral ship, which has not been judicially
proved to have forfeited the benefit of her neutral character."

It is certain, from Mr. Bernard's expressed opinion, that the
official appointment of the persons taken from the Trent, as
envoys of the Confederate government, would not, from his
point of view, affect the case. So much the more surprised are
we to find in the work of another Oxford professor, Dr. Travers
Twiss, published in 1863, the following judgment. He is speak
ing of the arrest of Marshal Belleisle on hostile territory by a
power at war with his country : " It is quite another thing,
observes Grotius, if any prince shall, out of his territory, con
trive to surprise the ambassadors of another state, for this
would be a direct breach of the law of nations. The case of
the seizure of the envoys of the Confederate States of America
on their way to Europe on board the British post-office packet,
the Trent, by an United States cruiser, would seem to come
within the prohibition laid down by Grotius. Their seizure
was justly resented by Great Britain as a direct breach of the
law of nations, and the envoys, at the demand of the British
government, were set at liberty by the government of the
United States, and allowed to proceed to Europe in a British
vessel."

These words would seem to imply that the British govern
ment demanded back the arrested passengers on the ground
of their public character. But such we do not find to be the
fact. They are u certain individuals " in Lord RusselPs de-
sp%atch, "deux passagers" in M. ThouvenePs ; and in the vari
ous remonstrances which at the same time came from other
courts of Europe no stress is laid on their function. Besides,
with submission, we affirm that the law of nations is misinter
preted. Grotius, if Dr. Twiss had looked a little further, would
have told him that the rights of legation, of which the father
of international law is speaking, are. confined to persons sent
by sovereigns to each other. And another great authority,
with whom he must be familiar, would have informed him that

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 18

268 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

when Philip II. of Spain imprisoned and finally put to death
the noblemen from the Netherlands, sent to him as deputies
from a revolted territory, it was no offence against the law of
nations.*

The blockade of the Southern ports, and questions which
grew out of it, occupy several chapters of Mr. Bernard's work.
In regard to its general conformity with the rules of naval
warfare, he expresses himself as follows : —

" The blockade of the Southern coasts was certainly not free from
irregularities, nor was it efficient at all points ; it was instituted before
the government had a competent blockading force in readiness ; it
covered, nominally, more ground than the force could really occupy ;
and at more than one place it was intermitted and resumed without
notice. The British government was right, however, in forbearing to
insist on these defects as grounds of complaint. The commencement of
a blockade is seldom free from difficulties, and this had some peculiar
difficulties. The government of the United States was exerting itself
to overcome them, and had every motive to exertion. Credit should be
given to blockading officers for reasonable activity and vigilance, until
the contrary is shown. If irregularities can be proved, recourse may
be had to a prize court, which will decree restitution, and, unless they
are manifest and long continued, or appeals to the tribunals of the bel
ligerent be met by a plain denial of justice, the neutral government
will act wisely and properly in not taking the matter into its own
hands."

The question whether a blockade is effective is one of degrees.
If a single vessel runs it in a week, and ten are taken, there is
evidently a very great risk in the case. If only every other
vessel is taken, there is still risk, but is it effective ? The dec
laration of Paris only increases the difficulties which a good
definition ought to remove, when it says that a blockade, " in
order to be valid, must be effective, that is to say, maintained
by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the
enemy." If, then, a number of vessels in the course of a
year's blockade do get access to the enemy's port, shall we say
that the blockade is no longer effective ? The vagueness, we

* Grotius, II. 1 8, § 2, 1, says, " Qui extra hos legati sunt, provinciates, municipals
atque alii, non jure gentium, quod inter gentes est diversas, sed jure civili reguntur."
See also Bynkershoek, Quest. Juris. Publ. II. cap. 3.

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 269

should answer, is essential to the subject. No blockade can
keep out all the vessels that attempt to enter a port, if the prof
its of voyages rise at all in proportion with the risk. The dif
ficulty of putting an end to blockade-running is increased, as
Mr. Bernard remarks, by the introduction of steam navigation
into modern warfare, which, while it gives greater scope and
alertness to a blockading squadron, aids in a far higher degree
the newest kind of blockade-runners, made for high speed,
drawing little water, yet not deficient in stowage.

The number of vessels that ran the blockade led the Confed
erate emissary, Mason, to the hope that he could persuade the
British government to pronounce the blockade ineffective. His
long lists of such fortunate vessels, however, produced no effect.
The reply was that the declaration of Paris was directed against
paper blockades, that is, against such as are not sustained by
any actual force, or sustained by a notoriously inadequate force,
such as the occasional appearance of a man-of-war in the offing ;
that the adequacy of the blockading force must be a matter of
fact and evidence, and that the ineffectiveness of the blockade
had not been urged in prize cases before the American courts ;
and that practical effectiveness was what was intended in the
declaration.

It was an Herculean task for our government in the first
years of the war to create a navy adequate to the work of
blockade, and to that of scouring the seas in the protection of
commerce and the pursuit of hostile cruisers. The thought
occurred to some one that, if one or more of the channels into
Charleston Harbor could be blocked up with stones, some of
the ships employed there might be spared for other service.
This experiment was tried both there and at Savannah. The
main channel at Charleston received the stone-ships with their
contents, but the obstruction did not pay for the trouble. We
should not refer to this abortive attempt to supplement the
blockade, if it had not been made the subject of something like
remonstrances on the part of the British government, as being
injurious to the general and permanent interests of commerce.
Mr. Seward, in reply to the British ambassador, declared that
it was a temporary measure, and that it would be incumbent
on the United States to remove the obstructions as soon as the
Union should be restored.

270 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

This is a good example of the way in which neutral power
or the interests of commerce are advancing in their claims in
the most modern period against war power. But were the
claims just ? We think not. If I have a right to cripple my
enemy by bombarding and demolishing a town where neutral
trade may have flourished, why may I not obstruct a harbor ?
Why not render the port of Charleston inaccessible as well as
cannonade the city ? If it had disappeared from the face of
the earth, there were other and better sites for trade not far
off. Besides, a clear precedent is afforded for such obstruc
tions of ports by the case of Dunkirk, the harbor of which, by
the treaty of Utrecht, was to be stopped up and rendered unfit
for commerce, and remained in its condition of uselessness
until the peace of Paris, in 1783. When Louis XIV., just after
the peace of Utrecht, proposed to evade the terms of the treaty
by digging out the port of Mardik, near Dunkirk, and connect
ing it with the sea by a channel sixteen hundred toises long,
he was led to abandon the project in consequence of the pro
tests of the British government. Every new treaty between
France and Great Britain repeated the stipulations in regard
to this port. What treaty can do the force of war can do, for
neutral interests are affected in both instances alike. And in
the case of Dunkirk, it is to be added that the commercial
jealousy of England and Holland was the principal motive for
insisting on the destruction of the harbor, and not apprehension
of expeditions that might proceed from it to annoy the coasts
of England ; while our motive was simply the restoration of the
Union in the way of regular war.*

The high price of cotton in Great Britain, and the want in
the South, not only of munitions of war, but of many articles
of comfort or necessity which formerly came from the Northern
States, gave great activity to blockade-running, and in partic
ular the harbor of Nassau was crowded with vessels using it as
an entrepot bet ween Great Britain and the Southern coasts.
Nor were there merchants wanting in New York who were

* This was written before the news came to this country that the Prussians are
stopping up harbors in North Germany, and that, it would appear, on a large scale.
We doubt whether any neutral will complain of this ; and we feel certain that, if
any complaints are made, they will be treated as being entirely groundless.

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 271

ready to send to that port articles intended for the blockaded
districts of the Confederate States. To prevent this evil, a law
of May, 1862, gave power to the Secretary of the Treasury to
refuse clearance to any vessel whenever he had good reason to
believe that the goods on board of it, whatever was their osten
sible destination, were intended for places in possession or
under the control of insurgents against the United States. The
collectors of customs also were authorized, when they thought
it necessary, to exact bonds from masters or owners that car
goes should be delivered at the place specified in the clearance,
and that no part of the goods should be used " in affording aid
or comfort to any persons or parties in insurrection against
the authority of the United States."

These stringent requirements cut off, to a great extent, com
merce with the port of Nassau, and complaints arose on the
part of merchants there, which were supported by the British
government. It was urged that the refusal of clearances to
vessels laden with ordinary articles of peace was an injury to
the neutral, and an infraction of treaties ; that it really dis
criminated to the disadvantage of British merchants ; and that
the most arbitrary restrictions could thus be imposed on British
trade. The United States government denied any such inten
tion to injure the trade of any neutral ; a relaxation of the order
was allowed in respect to the exportation of coal ; and the
necessities of the case were pleaded as a reason for the act of
Congress and the orders of the Secretary of the Treasury. Mr.
Bernard decides that the act and the instructions violated no
rule of international law, and were no infraction of our treaties
with Great Britain. " A neutral port" — we quote his words —
" in the neighborhood of one which a belligerent is actively
blockading is ascertained to be carrying on a busy trade with
the blockaded port, to afford a shelter and rendezvous for the
ships employed in that trade, and a depot for their cargoes. Is
the belligerent bound to permit goods to be despatched from his
own ports, under his own eyes, to swell the stores of that depot ?
Is he bound to abstain from enforcing in his own ports regula
tions by which this may be checked and thwarted ? and is he
disabled from making such regulations by the circumstance
that, under a general clause in a treaty of commerce, there is

272 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

to be reciprocal freedom of trade between the people of the
neutral country and his own, subject to the laws of the two
countries ? This would not, I think, be a reasonable construc
tion of the treaty." In truth, if a belligerent in a civil war
could not, for his self-preservation, make regulations cutting
off a roundabout trade between his own ports and blockaded
ones, it would take but one step more to refuse him the right
of blockading in such a war altogether ; for prior treaties of
commerce opened his whole territory to neutrals, whom he
now seeks to exclude from entrance into certain harbors which
he claims to be his own.

Owing to the proximity of a port like Nassau to our South
ern coast, the subject of continuous voyages came before our
courts, audit received an extension greater, perhaps, than had
ever been given to it before. According to a view of the Eng
lish courts which was admitted by our own, if a ship left
port with an intention to break blockade, it was liable to cap
ture anywhere on the ocean, and the same guilt rested on the
goods, if the owners were privy ito the intention. But in the
late war, it would easily occur to European masters and owners,
that a neutral port in the vicinity of the American coast was
a convenient depot from which the goods might, in a blockade-
runner made for the purpose, be transshipped to the interdicted
harbors. If the goods had been conveyed for the purposes of
honest sale to Nassau, there could be no violation of law in the
transaction, even though the purchaser were from the Confed
erate States ; a bona fide sale began a new transaction. But
if an intention had existed at the start or on the voyage to con
vey the goods to a neutral port for the purpose of transshipping
them to a place under blockade, our courts held that this would
render both ship and goods liable to capture and condemna
tion, — the ship, provided the ulterior destination was the known
inducement to the voyage between the two neutral ports, and
the goods, even although orders were given by the owner to
unlade them. Indeed, orders to sell would not take away guilt,
unless the sale was honestly meant. In other words, the trans
action was one and the same, notwithstanding the apparent in
terruption, and the " ships were planks of the same bridge, all
necessary to the convenient passage of persons and property

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 273

from one and to another." If a vessel could not with impunity
discharge her lading into a blockade-runner at the mouth of a
blockaded harbor like Charleston, how could it make any dif
ference if the goods were transferred from ship to ship at a
neutral port like Nassau, or if a fictitious sale further disguised
the transaction ? Such was the expanded doctrine of " contin
uous voyages," as interpreted by our courts, which, doubtless,
we should have resisted and complained of sixty years ago.

Another point of interest which cama up in the war was
the liability to capture of goods going up the Rio Grande.
Where a river separates two states, one only of which is en
gaged in war, there can, of course, be no blockade of the stream
as a whole, and thus there was free access for goods to Mata-
moras, opposite to Brownsville. It became early in the war a
place of great .trade, so that, as was said, more than sixty ves
sels were cleared from New York in little more than a year,
having this for their destination. Complaints arose on the part
of the British government, when some vessels were seized at
the mouth of the river with contraband goods on board, osten
sibly intended to be sent up stream in lighters to the Mexican
town. The reply was, that the vessels captured intended to
send their freights to the insurgents on the American bank,
and that this was a question upon which a prize court must
pronounce a decision. The peculiarity of the cases of capture
on this river seems to be that the doctrine of ulterior destina
tion was applied to goods where the further transportation was
even overland, thus making them liable to capture and con
demnation, no matter how their ulterior destination was to be
reached.

The case of the Emily St. Pierre, a vessel from Calcutta, cap
tured in 1862, not far from the harbor of Charleston, presents
a remarkable instance of the changes of opinion on points of
international law which changes of national interest bring with
them. She was put in charge of a prize crew to be taken to
Philadelphia, but those of the captured crew who were left
on board regained possession of her and carried her into Liv
erpool. A claim was now made by our government for the ves
sel, on the ground that the rescue was fraudulent and an act of
violence towards a lawful cruiser. On the British side it was

274 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

replied that, as the rights of the owners had never heen extin
guished by a prize court, to restore her to her captors would be
to take her out of her owners' possession. This would be to
enforce the rights of the belligerent to his capture, — a thing
with which the municipal law of the neutral has nothing to do.
During the correspondence relating to this vessel, it was dis
covered that a similar case occurred in 1800, only that the par
ties had then taken positions just opposite to their present ones.
Great Britain then made demands for the restoration of a res
cued prize, while the United States refused compliance on the
same grounds which Great Britain now urged. " There can be
no doubt," says Professor Bernard, " that the American gov
ernment was right in 1800, and wrong in 1862, and the Eng
lish government wrong in 1800 and right in 1862. The en
forcement of blockades is left, and rightly left, by the law of
nations to the belligerent alone. They are enforced by the
exercise of the belligerent right of capture ; and this right is the
weapon which international law places in his hands for that
express purpose. Capture is an act of force which has to be
sustained by force, until the property in the vessel has been
changed by a sentence of condemnation. If she escape mean
while from the captor's hands, it is not for the neutral to restore
her to him. Resistance or a rescue is a distinct offence, ....
drawing after it a distinct and appropriate penalty, — confisca
tion. But here again it is for the belligerent to inflict the pen
alty, and it is not the business of the neutral to help him to do
this either by recovering his prize for him or by treating the
act as a crime." If the neutral were bound to do this, we
might add, he could only be bound by a treaty of extradition.

The latter part of Mr. Bernard's work is chiefly occupied
with the subject of the ships procured in England by Con
federate agents, and the questions to which they gave rise.
The history of all these vessels is given with more or less
detail, and, of course, the Alabama assumes the place of
importance in this discussion. It is not our intention, in the
present article, to enter at large into a matter which has called
forth so much diplomatic correspondence, so much angry
debate, so much warlike rhetoric as this. We would not, if we
could, put an end to the lull which has succeeded the blasts of

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 275

public feeling, or revive those heats which led to the summary
rejection of the Johnson treaty. It is to be hoped that some
one who has " had perfect understanding of all things from the
very first," who can unite dignified calmness and impartiality
with a sense of justice and a love of truth, will bring this, vexed
subject at the proper time and in the proper way before the
country, and will thus lead public opinion to a policy which
will be at once just and consistent with our old principles of
neutrality. In Mr. Bernard's exposition of the Alabama case
we find nothing to complain of; we meet here the same candor
and truthfulness which is obvious throughout the work. The
facts are stated with exactness, and supported by the proper
documentary evidence. His opinions in regard to the question
whether the British government was culpable or not in allow
ing this vessel to go out unarmed from the port of Liverpool
are freely but not confidently expressed on the side of his own
country. If they have preponderating weight, they will, in the
end, influence opinion on both sides of the water. We do not
intend to enter into the discussion which they would require,
as arguments on a point of international law, but feel compelled
to pass them by in respectful silence. We make, however, the
following observations on the case: — •

1. The vessel, afterwards called the Alabama, was - con
fessedly built as a ship-of-war for some foreign government ;
and one person at least made oath that he was engaged as a
seaman on board of her, and was informed by the man who
hired him that the vessel was going out to the Confederate
States of America. The individuals who were sworn to be
busy about this vessel, and one of whom was described as her
master, were reputed to be Confederate agents.

2. When the government issued orders to detain the vessel,
it admitted that there was prima facie evidence for so doing.
If the delay in coming to this conclusion was prejudicial to the
United States, this would be a fair point to be pressed in the
way of diplomacy or before a court of arbitration.

3. Did the adroitness of the Confederate agents in evading
the Foreign Enlistment Act, by sending the vessel without arma
ment into foreign waters, there to be supplied from England
with a crew, guns, and all the necessaries of war, — did this trick

276 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

free the government from all responsibility in regard to the in
juries inflicted by the Alabama upon vessels of a friendly power.
It is one thing to say, as eminent English lawyers say, that no of
fence against either the common law or the Foreign Enlistment
Act was committed by the mere building of a ship, apparently
adapted for warlike purposes, and by delivering her, unequipped
for war, to the known agent of a foreign belligerent power, and
another thing to say that there would be no wrong done to a
neutral by such a proceeding. Suppose there had been no such
Enlistment Act, as there was none until a few years since, do
the rights of other nations end with the provisions of municipal
law ? The law of England, it is said, afforded no adequate
protection to ambassadors until 1708. Would it have barred
the claim of a friend, whose ambassador had been maltreated,
to say that English law could not protect him ? If the Confed
erate agent at Liverpool had sent word to the British Secretary
of State that he had had a vessel of war built for his govern
ment, and intended to take it out to sea without an armament,
that, furthermore, he had made arrangements to have guns and
a crew sent from other parts of England to be put on board of
her at a convenient place, so far as we can gather from the
first lawyers of England, the statutes could have put no obstacle
in his way. He might have laughed at the Foreign Enlistment
Act, and need have feared no punishment. But either we on
this side of the water are grievously in the wrong, or interna
tional injuries are wholly independent of state law ; if there is
no law, or an inefficient one, that is no plea against foreign
claims : the obligations of nations are the main points in the
case. Let it be made to appear that no wrong known to the
law of nations is committed when a ship-builder on neutral soil
constructs a vessel of war, which is to be employed avowedly
in destroying the commerce of a friendly state, or let it be
made to appear that a contrivance which puts the threads of an
armament together in foreign waters, when they were evidently
spun in one and the same country may be overlooked, and the
United States can have no just claim for damages in the case of
the Alabama. But in that case it may well be asked, Of what
value are international laws of neutrality, if the neutral sub
jects can do what they will, and if war is fed and prolonged by
their cupidity ?

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 277

But it would be of small importance if we could fasten on
Great Britain the charge of negligence or of insufficient protec
tion to friendly states against hostile expeditions begun in
her territory. Safety in future wars, and the prevention of
heart-burnings between countries of the same race and with the
same institutions, demand some change for the future. That
change may proceed either from an alteration in 'English law
or from some improvement in, or modification of, the law of
nations.

Both Mr. Bernard and Mr. Bemis, we believe, remark that
the English Foreign Enlistment Act is, in most of its provisions,
more stringent than our act of 1817, after which it was modelled.
The differences between the acts, besides those which are to be
referred to the attempt in the English act at more exact
language, are these two : first, our act requires bonds to be
given, in the case of armed vessels sailing out of our ports,
which belong in whole or in part to citizens, that such vessels
shall not be employed to cruise against the subjects of any
friendly foreign power: secondly, the colectors of customs
are required to detain vessels built for purposes of war when
about to leave our waters, of which the cargo shall principally
consist of arms and munitions of war, whenever it is made prob
able to them that such vessels are intended to be employed in
cruising against the subjects of friendly states, and such deten
tion shall continue until the President gives his decision in the
case, or until bonds are given, as required by the provision
already mentioned. The original bill prevented citizens of the
United States from selling- vessels of war to subjects of any
foreign power, but that provision was struck out by the Senate.

Mr. Bernard remarks that neither of these existing sections
of our act could have been applied in the cases where com
plaint arose between the two countries ; the Alabama, for in
stance, was not a vessel owned even in part by subjects of Great
Britain, nor was its cargo, when it left port, composed of arms
and munitions of war. The two laws would have had precisely
the same application in a case like this. The differences as it
respects the execution of the respective laws are thus stated by
our author : —

" The English law, although in terms more stringent, appears to Lara

278 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

been enforced in practice less freely and readily than the American, the
working of which is assisted by a more efficient local machinery (the
institution of ' district attorneys '), and is also less embarrassed, perhaps,
by a fear of illegally interfering with private rights, — a fear always
present to the mind of an English public servant, and kept alive by the
constant responsibility of every subordinate to his chief, and of the
chief of every department to Parliament. Greater reliance is there
placed on local officials, and a large measure of discretion given to
them, and the questions of fact on which the legality of a seizure de
pends, are not stfbmitted to a jury.*'

There is in our system a greater capacity of vigorous admin
istration on the part of the general government than belongs to
the system in Great Britain ; but we fear that we must add that
public opinion can paralyze such vigor. It may happen that,
where assistance to one of the belligerents is popular, the dis
trict attorney may share in the sympathy and neglect his duty,
or may be overawed by the prevailing sentiment. Have we
not had instances of hostile and guilty enterprises set on foot
within the last twenty years, where the inferior officials of the
government closed their eyes until the bird had flown ?

The charges of the inefficiency of English law, whether
just or not, have led to projects for its improvement. A com
mission appointed in 1867 to consider and report any changes
which it might be desirable to make in the neutrality laws, re
ported the next year to the effect that " the prohibitions of the
act should be enlarged ; that the despatching of a ship with
knowledge that she would be employed in hostilities by a bel
ligerent, and the building of a ship with intent that she
should be so employed, after being fitted out and armed within
or beyond her Majesty's dominions, should be embraced within
these prohibitions. They added a recommendation, probably
of greater practical value, that where reasonable and probable
cause should exist for believing that a ship was about to be de
spatched contrary to the enactment, or, having been built or
fitted out contrary to the enactment, was about to be taken out
of the dominions of the orown, power should be given to arrest
and detain her, on a warrant issued by the Secretary of State,
or, within the limits of a colony, by the governor ; the burden
of proof that no violation of the act had been committed or

1870.] British Neutrality during the Civil War. 279

was intended to be thrown in every case on the owner of the
ship so arrested." This project of an amendment of the exist
ing neutrality laws has been submitted to the government, but
no legislation, unless of late, has carried it out. The changes
suggested seem to us excellent, and they go far beyond our laws
of a similar character in protecting friendly belligerents against
unneutral acts. If embodied in laws, they would confer new
honor on that enlightened spirit which has led to so many ad
vances in legislation during the last fifty years. And thus there
would be a proof to all states, that the nation which is at the head
of the world's commerce has no intention to promote its own
commerce in questionable ways, but rather has a deeper con
viction than any other state that its prosperity is connected
with universal peace.

But is it enough to make the neutrality laws of the leading
states more strict towards hostife expeditions undertaken with
in their borders, while the law of nations remains as it is ?
Let us consider for a moment what can now be done by neu
trals when a war breaks out between their friends. We have
so generally occupied a neutral position since our existence as
a nation began, and our trade, when the rest of the world was
at war, consisted so generally in innocent articles, — like provis
ions and naval stores, — that we were unprepared, at the break
ing out of the war, to regard as lawful the kinds of trade
which the law of nations does not forbid. Nay, more, we
complained of England for doing that which we ourselves did,
and which our courts did not condemn during the wars of the
South American provinces. The law of nations, as interpreted
by our courts, requires no neutral to interfere for the preven
tion of a trade in contraband carried on by its citizens or sub
jects, or to take active measures against ships purposing to run
a blockade instituted by a friendly state. It is held, in a tech
nical and formal way, that a contraband trade begins when the
articles so called are afloat on the high sea; and there is. a
general agreement that the neutral is not to be put to the cost
and trouble of keeping his subjects from such a traffic. The
police of the seas belongs to the belligerents, and the violation
of neutrality in carrying contraband, and in breaking blockade,
.it is for him, and for none else, to notice. How often were

280 British Neutrality during the Civil War. [Oct.

Judge Story's words quoted, especially by British writers a few
years back, that " there is nothing in our laws, or in the law
of nations, that forbids our citizens from sending armed ves
sels, as well as munitions of war, to foreign ports for sale. It
is a commercial adventure which no nation is bound to pro
hibit, and which only exposes the persons engaged in it to the
penalty of confiscation." * It is unnecessary to say that the
risk of confiscation has never been so great, and probably
never will be so great, that the gains of contraband trade do
not cover the losses. Neutrals thus supply the food upon which
war lives, and supply it alike to either belligerent that can
pay for it, so that until exhaustion comes upon one of the com
batants, the harvest of the neutral trader goes on. Is this
state of things the best for the interests of humanity and the
general welfare ? Is it not better for neutrals, on the whole,
that wars should be short and few ? And if so, may it not be
said to be the duty of nations to agree that contraband trade
shall be prohibited at the commencement of a voyage ? This
can be done, as it seems to us, without great difficulty, by
placing- vessels carrying such articles under heavy bonds that
they shall not be conveyed to the ports of a friendly nation en
gaged in war. We would put blockade-runners, as far as pos
sible, under the same penalties, and would wish to have Dr.
Phillimore's suggestion adopted, that all exportation of muni
tions of war by merchant ships of the belligerents should be
strictly prohibited. We should be glad also to have violators
of neutrality considered as prisoners of war, and treated as
such. That the world can be brought to all this with ease we
are not credulous enough to believe ; but we believe that if two
leading nations were to make a treaty containing such stipula
tions, the probability of their keeping peace with one another,
and with the rest of the world, would be decidedly increased.
May we be permitted, before we close, to make another sug
gestion looking towards a reform in the law of nations ? It
has been more or less the practice of cruisers for a long time,
when they took an enemy's vessel, and it was inconvenient to
send it into port for adjudication, to destroy it. The French
went so far as to burn a number of neutral American vessels

* Case of the Santissima Trinidad, 7 Wheaton, 340.

1870.] British Neutrality daring the Civil War. 281

for violations of the Berlin and Milan decrees. The Confed
erate cruisers in the late war burnt only American vessels.
This harsh measure, if applied to neutrals by a belligerent who
is not as yet a lawful and acknowledged power, would be un
safe, for there might be no remedy for a wrong use of it. But
is it a desirable exercise of power, where even a sovereign
state, which can make compensation for injuries done by its
cruisers, deals thus with its enemy ? Contracts of ransom are
falling into disuse ; they are frowned upon by the municipal
law of many European states, especially in the case of the
capture of neutral vessels. But whatever may be said against
them, they are better for the world than burning vessels, which
after all might turn out not to be lawful prize. At all events,
it is time that this most savage act of war on the sea, so far
beyond the ordinary destructions of war on the land, should be
prohibited by the common voice of nations.

The close of Professor Bernard's work is occupied with dis
cussions on the rights of persons subjected to draft in the
United States, who claimed to be British subjects, and with a
sketch of the negotiations since the war, which ended in Mr.
Reverdy Johnson's convention. Then follows a concluding
chapter, in which he notices the inconsistency between our old
positions when we were neutrals and those which we took when
we became belligerents. He has a right to do this, and such
inconsistency has been freely admitted in this article. We are
sorry, however, that he should feel called upon to use the
words, " It is the government of the United States which has
asserted, rightly or wrongly, the claim of a belligerent to cap
ture a neutral vessel conveying a diplomatic agent of the
enemy from one neutral port to another," when that govern
ment abandoned its position, and in fact acknowledged its mis
take. But his sense of justice leads him to express himself in
the following words, which we are glad to cite : —

" I do not recall these facts in order to throw blame on the American
government, but because they 'show how the point of view from which
a state regards questions of international right and expediency may
be affected by the situation in which it is placed, and how rapidly even
cherished opinions may give way before a great and violent change of
circumstances. The history of international law is full of such varia-

282 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

tions and inconsistencies. We, ourselves, are not clear from them.
Among the complaints urged by Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams, there
are some which seem but reproductions of those addressed by Lord Stor-
mont and Sir Joseph Yorke to the French and Dutch governments,
during the war of American Independence. And it would be easy to
draw an effective contrast between the severity with which Great
Britain formerly enforced the rights of belligerents, and the warmth
with which she lately asserted the rights of neutrals."

And in this same strain of candor he proceeds to set forth
the painful and trying position in which the United States was
placed, when struggling for their political existence with a
mighty revolt. It is this sense of justice, which appears in
almost every chapter, that entitles him to our sincere respect.
He gives, it is true, some hard blows to some of the doctrines
insisted upon, on our side, during the late war. It is good,
however, when a man with no especial sympathy for a cause,
but with a decided love of truth, can survey the ground where
nations have contended with a judicial eye, and determine the
landmarks that are to stand for the future. Only such discus
sion can abate excessive pretensions, can bring the opinions of
nations into harmony, and can settle the principles of inter
national law so firmly that old errors shall not be from time
to time revived.

THEODORE D. WOOLSEY.

ART. II. — Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection. A
Series of Essays. By ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE, Author of
"The Malay Archipelago," etc., etc. London and New
York: Macmillan & Co. 1870. 8vo. pp. xvi. and 384.

FEW scientific theories have met with such a cordial reception
by the world of scientific investigators, or created in so short a
time so complete a revolution in general philosophy, as the
doctrine of the derivation of organic species by Natural Selec
tion ; perhaps no other can compare with it when we consider
the incompleteness of the proofs on which it still relies, or the
previous prejudice against the main thesis implied in it, the

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 283

theory of the development or transmutation of species. The
Newtonian theory of gravity, or Harvey's theory of the circu
lation of the blood, in spite of the complete and overwhelming
proofs by which these were soon substantiated, were much longer
in overcoming to the same degree the deeply-rooted prejudices
and preconceptions opposed to them. In less than a decade the
doctrine of Natural Selection had conquered the opposition of
the great majority of the students of natural history, as well as
of the students of general philosophy ; and it seems likely that
we shall witness the unparalleled spectacle of an all but uni
versal reception by the scientific world of a revolutionary
doctrine in the lifetime of its author ; though by the rigorous
tests of scientific induction it will yet hardly be entitled to
more than the rank of a very probable hypothesis. How is
this singular phenomenon to be explained ? Doubtless in great
part by the extraordinary skill which Mr. Darwin has brought
to the proof and promulgation of his views. To this, Mr.
Wallace thus testifies in the Preface to his book : —

" The present work will, I venture to think, prove that I both saw
at the time the value and scope of the law which I had discovered, and
have since been able to apply it to some purpose in a few original lines
of investigation. But here my claims cease. I have felt all my life,
and I still feel, the most sincere satisfaction that Mr. Darwin had been
at work long before me, and that it was not left for me to attempt to
write 'The Origin of Species/ I have long since measured my own
strength, and know well that it would be quite unequal to that task.
Far abler men than myself may confess that they have not that untir
ing patience in accumulating, and that wonderful skill in using large
masses of facts of the most varied kind, — that wide and accurate
physiological knowledge, — that acuteness in devising, and skill in car
rying out, experiments, and that admirable style of composition, at
once clear, persuasive, and judicial, — qualities which, in their har
monious combination, mark out Mr. Darwin as the man, perhaps of all
men now living, best fitted for the great work he has undertaken and
accomplished."

But the skilful combination of inductive and deductive
proofs with hypothesis, though a powerful engine of scientific
discovery, must yet work upon the basis of a preceding and
simpler induction. Pythagoras would never have demonstrated

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 19

284 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

the " forty-seventh," if he had not had some ground of believing
in it beforehand. The force and value of a preceding and sim
pler proof has been obscured in this case by subsequent investi
gations. That more fundamental evidence accounts for the fact
that two such skilful observers and reasoners as Mr. Wallace
and Mr. Darwin arrived at the same convictions in regard to
the derivation of species, in entire independence of each other,
and were constrained to accept the much-abused and almost
discarded u transmutation hypothesis." And it shows, what is
more singular, why both reached, independently, the same ex
planation of the process of derivation. This was obviously
from their similar experiences as naturalists ; from the force
of the same obscure and puzzling facts which their studies of
the geographical distributions of animals and plants had
brought to their notice, though the Malthusian doctrine of
population was, doubtless, the original source of their common
theory. Mr. Darwin, in the Introduction to his later work on
" The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,"
attributes the beginnings of his speculations to the phenomena
of the distributions of life over large continental areas, and in
the islands of large archipelagos, and especially refers to the
curious phenomena of life in the Galapagos Islands in the
Pacific Ocean. Mr. Wallace, in his first essay, originally pub
lished in 1855, four years earlier than " The Origin of Species,"
refers to the same class of facts, and the same special facts in
regard to the Galapagos Islands, as facts which demand the
transmutation hypothesis for their sufficient explanation.

In the logical as well as historical consideration of the
theory of natural selection these facts, and the related phe
nomena of the geological successions of life (which afforded
the first scientific basis of the theory of transmutation), are
of greater importance than in the present aspects of the theory
is likely to appear to the general reader. The superstructure
of the theory, the proper discussion of Natural Selection and
the related estimates of the geological record, the points in
which u Darwinism " differs from the older forms of the trans
mutation hypothesis, from the views of Lamarck, and of the
author of " The Vestiges of Creation," are chiefly negative
phases of the doctrine, elaborate and often ingenious reason-

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 285

ings against the difficulties of an hypothesis, the first inductive
grounds of which are quite independent of them, but will,
doubtless, be ultimately brought within the scope of their de
ductive demonstrations, so far as it is possible to reconstruct a
continuous history of organic life from facts so multitudinous
and confused as the present distributions of life on the globe,
or so meagre and fragmentary as those which the records of
past life afford. But though much is to be credited to the
sagacity and candor of these most accomplished travellers and
observers in appreciating the force of obscure and previously
little studied facts, yet their theoretical discussions of the hy
pothesis brought forward to explain them must be credited
with an immense addition to the same class of observations, of
which Mr. Wallace's studies, especially the essay on " Mim
icry, and other Protective Resemblances among Animals," and
the four following essays, are admirable examples. Not only
Mr. Darwin's observations and experimental studies, pursued
for many years previous to the publication of the " Origin of
Species," but an ever-increasing activity in the same field, a
new and most stimulating interest in the external economy
of life, — in the relations of living beings to their special con
ditions of existence, — have been created by this discussion.
And so the discussion is no longer closet work. It is no web
woven from self-consuming brains, but a vast accumulation of
related facts of observation, bound together by the bond of
what must still be regarded as an hypothesis, — an hypothesis,
however, which has no rival with any student of nature in
whose mind reverence does not, in some measure, neutralize
the intellect's aversion to the arbitrary. In anticipating the
general acceptance of the doctrine which Mr. Darwin and Mr.
Wallace have done so much to illustrate, we ought to except
those philosophers who, from a severe, ascetic, and self-restrain
ing temper, or from preoccupation with other researches, are
disposed to regard such speculations as beyond the proper
province of scientific inquiry. But to stop short in a research
of " secondary causes," so long as experience or reason can
suggest any derivation of laws and relations in nature which
must otherwise be accepted as ultimate facts, is not agreeable
to that Aristotelian type of mind which scientific culture so

286 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

powerfully tends to produce. Whatever the theological ten
dencies of such a mind, whether ultimate facts are regarded
by it as literally arbitrary, the decrees of an absolute will, or
are summarily explained by what Professor De Morgan calls
" that exquisite atheism, ' the nature of things,' " it still can
not look upon the intricate system of adaptations, peculiar to
the organic world (which illustrates what Cuvier calls " the
principle of the conditions of existence, vulgarly called the
principle of final causes"), — it cannot look upon this as an
arbitrary system, or as composed of facts independent of all
ulterior facts (like the axioms of mechanics or arithmetic or
geometry), so long as any explanation, not tantamount to arbi
trariness itself, has any probability in the order of nature.
This scientific instinct stops far short of an irreverent attitude
of mind, though it does not permit things that claim its
reverence to impede its progress. And so a class of facts, of
which the organical sciences had previously made some use as
instruments of scientific discovery, but which was appropriated
especially to the reasonings of Natural Theology, has fallen to
the province of the discussions of Natural Selection, and has
been wonderfully enlarged in consequence. It cannot be
denied that this change has weakened the force of the argu
ments of Natural Theology ; but it is simply by way of sub
traction or by default, and not as offering any arguments
opposed to the main conclusions of theology. " Natural Selec
tion is not inconsistent with Natural Theology," in the sense of
refuting the main conclusions of that science, but only by re
ducing to the condition of an arbitrary assumption one impor
tant point in its interpretation of special adaptations in organic
life, namely, the assumption that in such adaptations foresight
and special provision is shown, analogous to the designing,
anticipatory imaginings and volitions in the mental actions
of the higher animals, and especially in the mind of man.

Upon this point the doctrine of Natural Selection assumes
only such general anticipation of the wants or advantages of an
animal or plant as is implied in the laws of inheritance. That
is, an animal or a plant is produced adapted to the general
conditions of its existence, with only such anticipation of a
change or of varieties in these conditions as is implied in its

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 287

general tendencies to vary from the inherited type. Particular
uses have no special causal relations to the variations that occur
and become of use. In other words, Natural Selection, as an
hypothesis, does not assume, and, so far as it is based on obser
vation, it affords no evidence, that any adaptation is specially
anticipated in the order of nature. From this point of view,
the wonderfully intricate system of special adaptations in the
organic world is, at any epoch of its history, altogether retro
spective. Only so far as the past affords a type of the future,
both in the organism itself and in its external conditions, can
the conditions of existence be said to determine the adaptations
of life. As thus interpreted, the doctrine of Final Causes is de
prived of the feature most obnoxious to its opponents, that
abuse of the doctrine " which makes the cause to be engendered
by the effect." But it is still competent to the devout mind to
take a broader view of the organic world, to regard, not its sin
gle phases only, but the whole system from its first beginnings
as presupposing all that it exhibits, or has exhibited, or could
exhibit, of the contrivances and adaptations which may thus in
one sense be said to be foreordained. In this view, however,
the organical sciences lose their traditional and peculiar value to
the arguments of Natural Theology, and become only a part of
the universal order of nature, like the physical sciences gener
ally, in the principles of which philosophers have professed to
find no sign of a divinity. But may they not, while professing
to exclude the idea of God from their systems, have really in
cluded him unwittingly, as immanent in the very thought that
denies, in the very systems that ignore him ? So far as Natural
Theology aims to prove that the principles of utility and adap
tation are all-pervasive laws in the organic world, Natural Selec
tion is not only not inconsistent, but is identical with it. But
here Natural Selection pauses. It does not go on to what has
been really the peculiar province of Natural Theology, to dis
cover, or trace the analogies of organic adaptations to proper
designs, or to the anticipations of wants and advantages in the
mental actions of man and the higher animals. In themselves
these mental actions bear a striking resemblance to those as
pects of organic life in general, which Natural Selection
regards ; and according to t^ views of the experiential psy-

288 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

chologist, this resemblance is not a mere analogy. In them
selves, and without reference to the external uses of these
mental actions, they are the same generalized reproductions of
a past experience as those which the organic world exhibits in
its laws of inheritance, and are modified by the same tenta
tive powers and processes of variation, but to a much greater
degree. But here the resemblance ceases. The relations of
such mental actions to the external life of an organism, in
which they are truly prophetic and providential agencies, though
founded themselves on the observation of a past order in expe
rience, are entirely unique and unparalleled, so far as any
assumption in the doctrine of Natural Selection, or any proofs
which it adduces are concerned. Nevertheless, a greater though
vaguer analogy remains. Some of the wants and adapta
tions of men and animals are anticipated by their designing
mental actions. Does not a like foreseeing power, ordaining
and governing the whole of nature, anticipate and specially
provide for some of its adaptations ? This appears to be the
distinctive position in which Natural Theology now stands.

We have dwelt somewhat at length on this aspect of our au
thor's subject, with reference to its bearing on his philosophical
views, set forth in his concluding essay on " The Limits of Nat
ural Selection as applied to Man," in which his theological po
sition appears to be that which we have just denned. We
should like to quote many passages from the preceding essays,
in illustration of the principle of utility and adaptation, in which
Mr. Wallace appears at his best ; but one example must suffice.
" It is generally acknowledged that the best test of the truth
and completeness of a theory is the power which it gives us of
prevision " ; and on this ground Mr. Wallace justly claims great
weight for the following inquiry into the " use of the gaudy
colors of many caterpillars," in the essay on Mimicry, etc.,
p. 117: —

" Since this essay was first published, a very curious difficulty has
been cleared up by the application of the general principle of protective
coloring. Great numbers of caterpillars are so brilliantly marked and
colored as to be very conspicuous even at a considerable distance, and
it has been noticed that such caterpillars seldom hide themselves.
Other species, however, are green or brown, closely resembling the col-

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 289

ors of the substances on which they feed ; while others again imitate
sticks, and stretch themselves out motionless from a twig, so as to look
like one of its branches. Now, as caterpillars form so large a part of
the food of birds, it was not easy to understand why any of them should
have such bright colors and markings as to make them specially visible.
Mr. Darwin had put the case to me as a difficulty from another point of
view, for he had arrived at the conclusion that brilliant coloration in
the animal kingdom, is mainly due to sexual selection, and this could
not have acted in the case of sexless larvae. Applying here the anal
ogy of other insects, I reasoned, that since some caterpillars were evi
dently protected by their imitative coloring, and others by their spiny or
hairy bodies, the bright colors of the rest must also be in some way use
ful to them. I further thought, that as some butterflies and moths were
greedily eaten by birds while others were distasteful to them, and
these latter were mostly of conspicuous colors, so probably these bril
liantly colored caterpillars were distasteful and therefore never eaten by
birds. Distastefulness alone would, however, be of little service to cat
erpillars, because their soft and juicy bodies are so delicate, that if
seized and afterwards rejected by a bird they would almost certainly be
killed. Some constant and easily perceived signal was therefore neces
sary to serve as a warning to birds never to touch these uneatable
kinds, and a very gaudy and conspicuous coloring, with the habit of
fully exposing themselves to view, becomes such a signal, being in strong
contrast with the green and brown tints and retiring habits of the eat
able kinds. The subject was brought by me before the Entomological
Society (see Proceedings, March 4, 1867), in order that those members
having opportunities for making observations might do so in the follow
ing summer," etc.

Extensive experiments with birds, insectivorous reptiles, and
spiders, by two British naturalists, were published two years
later, and fully confirmed Mr. Wallace's anticipations. His
book is full of such curious matters.

In a controversial essay called " Creation by Law," an an
swer to various criticisms of the doctrine of Natural Selection,
Mr. Wallace is equally happy and able ; and in his essay on
" The Action of Natural Selection on Man," he shows a won
derful sagacity and skill in developing a new phase of his sub
ject, while meeting, as in so many other cases, obstacles and
objections to the theory. It appears, both by geological evi
dence and by deductive reasonings in this essay, that the
human race is singularly exempt from variation, and the ac-

290 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

tion of Natural Selection, so far as its merely physical quali
ties are concerned. This follows from theoretical considera
tions, since the race has come to depend mainly on its mental
qualities, and since it is on these, and not on its bodily powers,
that Natural Selection must act. Hence the small amount of
physical differences between the earliest men of whom the re
mains have been found and the men of the present day, as com
pared to differences in other and contemporary races of mammals.
We may generalize from this and from Mr. Darwin's observa
tion on the comparatively extreme variability of plants, that in
the scale of life there is a gradual decline in physical varia
bility, as the organism has gathered into itself resources for
meeting the exigencies of changing external conditions; and
that while in the mindless and motionless plant these resources
are at a minimum^ their maximum is reached in the mind of
man, which, at length, rises to a level with the total order and
powers of nature, and in its scientific comprehension of nature
is a summary, an epitome of the world. But the scale of life
determined by the number and variety of actual resources in
an organism ought to be distinguished from the rank that
depends on a high degree of speciality in particular parts and
functions, since in such respects an organism tends to be high
ly variable.

But Mr. Wallace thinks, and argues in his concluding essay,
that this marvellous being, the human mind, cannot be a prod
uct of Natural Selection ; that some, at least, of the mental
and moral qualities of man are beyond the jurisdiction and
measure of utility ; that Natural Selection has its limits, and
that among the most conspicuous examples of its failure to
explain the order of nature are the more prominent and
characteristic distinctions of the human race. Some of these,
according to Mr. Wallace, are physical ; not only the physical
instruments of man's mental nature, his voluminous brain, his
cunning hand, the structure and power of his vocal organs, but
also a characteristic which appears to have no relation to his
mental nature, — his nakedness. Man is distinguished from
all soft and delicate skinned terrestrial mammals in having no
hairy covering to protect his body. In other mammals the hair
is a protection against rain, as is proved by the manner in which

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 291

it is disposed, — a kind of argument, by the way, especially
prized by Cuvier, which has acquired great validity since Har
vey's reasonings on the valves of the veins.* The backs of these
animals are more especially protected in this way. But it is
from the back more especially that the hairy covering is missed
in the whole human race ; and is so effectually abolished as a
character of the species, that it never occurs even by such
reversions to ancestral types as are often exhibited in animal
races. How could this covering have ever been injurious, or
other than useful to men ? Or, if at any time in the past his
tory of the race it was for any unknown reason injurious, why
should not the race, or at least some part of it, have recovered
from the loss and acquired anew so important a protection ?
Mr. Wallace is not unmindful of Mr. Darwin's doctrine of Cor
related Variation, and the explanations it affords of useless and

* It is remarkable that our author should be so willing to attribute such a slight
and unimportant character as the hair of animals, and even the lay of it, to Natural
Selection, and, at the same time, should regard the absence of it from the human
back as beyond the resources of natural explanations. We credit him, nevertheless,
with the clearest appreciation, through his studies and reflections, of the extent of
the action of the law which he independently discovered ; which comprises in its
scope, not merely the stern necessities of mere existence, but the gentlest amenities
of the most favored life. Sexual Selection, with all its.obscure and subtle influ
ences, is a type of this gentler action, which ranges all the way in its command of
fitnesses from the hard necessities of utility and warfare to the apparently useless
superfluities of beauty and affection. Nay, more, a defect which, without subtract
ing from the attractions or any other important external advantage in an animal,
should simply be the source of private discomfort to it, is certain to come under
the judgments of this all-searching principle.

It is a fair objection, however, sometimes made against the theory of Natural
Selection, that it abounds in loopholes of ingenious escape from the puzzling prob
lems of nature ; and that, instead of giving real explanations of many phenomena,
it simply refers them in general terms to obscure and little known, perhaps wholly
inadequate causes, of which it holds omne iynotum pro magnijico. But this objection,
though good, so far as it goes, against the theory, is not in favor of any rival hypothesis,
least of all of that greatest of unknown causes, the supernatural, which is magnificent
indeed in adequacy, if it be only real, but whose reality must rest forever on the nega
tive evidence of the insufficiency, not only of the known, but of all possible natural
explanations, and whose sufficiency even is, after all, only the counterpart or reflection,
of their apparent insufficiencies. Hence the objection is a fair one only against cer
tain phases of this theory, and against the tendency to rest satisfied with its imperfect
explanations, or to regard them lightly as trivial defects. But to such criticisms the
progress of the theory itself, in the study of nature, is a sufficient answer in gen
eral, and is a triumphant vindication of the mode of inquiry, against which such
criticisms are sometimes unjustly made.

292 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

even injurious characters in animals ; but he limits his consid
eration of it to the supposition that the loss of hair by the race
might have been a physiological consequence of correlation with
some past unknown hurtful qualities. From such a loss, how
ever, he argues, the race ought to have recovered. But he
omits to consider the possible correlation of the absence of
hair with qualities not necessarily injurious, but useful, which
remain and equally distinguish the race. Many correlated
variations are quite inexplicable. " Some are quite whim
sical: thus cats, which are entirely white and have blue eyes,
are generally deaf," and very few instances could be anticipated
from known physiological laws, such as homological relations.
There is, however, a case in point, cited by Mr. Darwin, the
correlation of imperfect teeth with the nakedness of the hair
less Turkish dog. If the intermediate varieties between men
and the man-apes had been preserved, and a regular connection
between the sizes of their brains, or developments of the nervous
system, and the amount of hair on their backs were observed,
this would be as good evidence of correlation between these
two characters as that which exists in most cases of correlation.
But how, in the absence of any evidence to test this or any
other hypothesis, can Mr. Wallace presume to say that the law
of Natural Selection cannot explain such a peculiarity ? It may
be that no valid proof is possible of any such explanation,
but how is he warranted in assuming on that account some
exceptional and wholly occult cause for it ? There is a kind of
correlation between the presence of brains and the absence of
hair which is not of so obscure a nature, and may serve to
explain in part, at least, why Natural Selection has not restored
the protection of a hairy coat, however it may have been lost.
Mr. Wallace himself signalizes this correlation in the preced
ing essay. It is that through which art supplies to man in a
thousand ways the deficiencies of nature, and supersedes the
action of Natural Selection. Every savage protects his back
by artificial coverings. Mr. Wallace cites this fact as a proof
that the loss of hair is a defect which Natural Selection ought
to remedy. But why should Natural Selection remedy what
art has already cared for ? In this essay Mr. Wallace seems
to us to have laid aside his usual scientific caution and acute-

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 293

ness, and to have devoted his powers to the service of that su
perstitious reverence for human nature which, not content with
prizing at their worth the actual qualities and acquisitions of
humanity, desires to intrench them with a deep and metaphysi
cal line of demarcation.

There are, doubtless, many and very important limitations
to the action of Natural Selection, which the enthusiastic stu
dent of the science ought to bear in mind ; but they belong to
the application of the principle of utility to other cases as well
as to that of the derivation of human nature. Mr. Wallace
regards the vocal powers of the human larynx as beyond the
generative action of Natural Selection, since the savage neither
uses nor appreciates all its powers. But the same observation
applies as well to birds, for certain species, as he says in his
essay on " The Philosophy of Bird's Nests," " which have natu
rally little variety of song, are ready in confinement to learn
from other species, and become much better songsters." It
would not be difficult to prove that the musical capacities of the
human voice involve no elementary qualities which are not
involved in the cadences of speech, and in such other powers
of expression as are useful at least, if not indispensable, in lan
guage. There are many consequences of the ultimate laws or
uniformities of nature, through which the acquisition of one
useful power will bring with it many resulting advantages, as
well as limiting disadvantages, actual or possible, which the
principle of utility may not have comprehended in its action.
This principle necessarily presupposes a basis in an antecedent
constitution of nature, in principles of fitness, and laws of
cause and effect, in the origin of which it has had no agency.
The question of the origin of this constitution, if it be a proper
question, belongs to metaphysical philosophy, or, at least, to
its pretensions. Strictly speaking, Natural Selection is not a
cause at all, but is the mode of operation of a certain quite
limited class of causes.* Natural Selection never made it

* Though very limited in extent, this class is marked out only by the single char
acter, that the efficient causes (of whatever nature, whether the forces of simple
growth and reproduction, or the agency of the human will), are yet of such a nature
as to act through the principles of utility and choice. It includes in its range,
therefore, developments of the simplest adaptive organic characters on one haud>

294 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone
should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to
no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the
phenomena of organic life.

In his obvious anxiety to establish for the worth of human
nature the additional dignity of metaphysical isolation, Mr.
Wallace maintains the extraordinary thesis that " the brain of
the savage is larger than he needs it to be " ; from which he
would conclude that there is in the size of the savage's brain a
special anticipation or prophecy of the civilized man, or even of
the philosopher, though the inference would be far more natural,
and entirely consistent with Natural Selection, that the savage
has degenerated from a more advanced condition. The proofs of
our author's position consist in showing that there is a very slight

and the growths of language and other human customs on the other. It has been
objected that Natural Selection does not apply to the origin of languages, be
cause language is an invention, and the work of the human will ; and it is clear,
indeed, that Natural, as distinguished from Artificial, Selection is not properly
the cause of language, or of the custom of speech. But to this it is sufficient to
reply, that the contrast of Natural and Artificial Selections is not a contrast of
principles, but only of illustrations, and that the common principle of " the survival
of the fittest " is named by Synecdoche from the broader though more obscure
illustration of it. If it can be shown that the choice of a word from among many
words as the name of an object or idea, or the choice of a dialect from among many
varieties of speech, as the language of literature, is a universal process in the devel
opments of speech and is determined by real, though special grounds of fitijess,
then this choice is a proper illustration of the principle of Natural Selection ; and is
the more so, with reference to the name of the principle, in proportion as the pro
cess and the grounds of fitness in this choice differ from the common volitions and
motives of men, or are obscured by the imperfections of the records of the past, or
by the subtleties of the associations which have determined it in the minds of
the inventors and adopters of language. It is important, however, to distinguish
between the origins of languages or linguistic customs, which are questions of philol
ogy, and the psychological question of the origin of language in general, or the origin
in human nature of the inventions and uses of speech. Whether Natural Selection
will serve to solve the latter question remains to be seen. In connection, however,
with the resemblance, here noted, between the primitive, but regularly determined
inventions of the mind and Natural Selection in its narrower sense, it is interesting
to observe a corresponding resemblance between the theories of Free- Will and Crea
tion, which are opposed to them. The objection that the origin of languages does
not belong to the inquiries of Natural Seleciion, because language is an invention,
and the work of Free- Will, thus appears to be parallel to the objection to Natural
Selection, that it attempts to explain the work of Creation ; and both objections
obviously beg the questions at issue. But both objections have force witli reference
to the real and proper limitations of Natural Selection, and to the antecedent con
ditions of its action.

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 295

difference between the average size of the savage's brain and that
of the European, and that even in prehistoric man the capacity
of the skull approaches very near to that of the modern man, as
compared to the largest capacity of anthropoid skulls. Again,
the size of the brain is a measure of intellectual power, as
proved by the small size of idiotic brains, and the more than
average size of the brains of great men, or " those who com
bine acute perception with great reflective powers, strong pas
sions, and general energy of character." By these considera
tions " the idea is suggested of a surplusage of power, of an
instrument beyond the needs of its possessor." From a rather
artificial and arbitrary measure of intellectual power, the scale
of marks in university examinations, as compared to the range
of sizes in brains, Mr. Wallace concludes it to be fairly inferred,
" that the savage possesses a brain capable, if cultivated and
developed, of performing work of a kind and degree far beyond
what he ever requires it to do." But how far removed is this
conclusion from the idea that the savage has more brains than
he needs ! Why may it not be that all that he can do with his
brains beyond his needs is only incidental to the powers which
are directly serviceable ? Of what significance is it that his
brain is twice as great as that of the man-ape, while the philoso
pher only surpasses him one sixth, so long as we have no real
measure of the brain power implied in the one universal char
acteristic of humanity, the power of language, — that is, the
power to invent and use arbitrary signs ?

Mr. Wallace most unaccountably overlooks the significance
of what has always been regarded as the most important dis
tinction of the human race, — its rationality as shown in lan
guage. He even says that u the mental requirements of sav
ages, and the faculties actually exercised by them, are very
little above those of animals." We would not call in question
the accuracy of Mr. Wallace's observations of savages ; but we
can hardly accord equal credit to his accuracy in estimating
the mental rank of their faculties. No doubt the savage mind
seems very dull as compared with the sagacity shown by many
animals ; but a psychological analysis of the faculty of lan
guage shows that even the smallest proficiency in it might
require more brain power than the greatest in any other

296 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

direction. For this faculty implies a complete inversion of the
ordinary and natural orders of association in the mind, or such
an inversion #s in mere parroting would be implied by the rep
etition of the words of a sentence in an inverse order, — a most
difficult feat even for a philosopher. " The power of abstract
reasoning and ideal conception,' ' which Mr. Wallace esteems as
a very great advance on the savage's proficiency, is but another
step in the same direction, and here, too, ce n'est que le premier
pas qui coute. It seems probable enough that brain power
proper, or its spontaneous and internal determinations of the
perceptive faculties, should afford directly that use or com
mand of a sign which is implied in language, and essentially
consists in the power of turning back the attention from a sug
gested fact or idea to the suggesting ones, with reference to
their use, in place of the naturally passive following and sub
serviency of the mind to the orders of first impressions and
associations. By inverting the proportions which the latter
bear to the forces of internal impressions, or to the powers of
imagination in animals, we should have a fundamentally new
order of mental actions ; which, with the requisite motives to
them, such as the social nature of man would afford, might go
*far towards defining the relations, both mental and physical,
of human races to the higher brute animals. Among these the
most sagacious and social, though they may understand lan
guage, or follow its significations, and even by indirection ac
quire some of its uses, yet have no direct power of using, and
no power of inventing it.

But as we do not know, and have no means of knowing, what
is the quantity of intellectual power, as measured by brains,
which even the simplest use of language requires, how shall
we be able to measure on such a scale the difference between
the savage and the philosopher ; which consists, not so much in
additional elementary faculties in the philosopher, as in a more
active and persistent use of such faculties as are common to
both ; and depends on the external inheritances of civilization,
rather than on the organic inheritances of the civilized man ?
It is the kind of mental acquisition of which a race may be
capable, rather than the amount which a trained individual
may acquire, that we should suppose to be more immediately

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 297

measured by the size of the brain ; and Mr. Wallace has not *•
shown that this kind is not serviceable to the savage. Idiots
have sometimes great powers of acquisition of a certain low
order of facts and ideas. Evidence upon this point, from the
relations of intellectual power to the growth of the brain in
children, is complicated in the same way by the fact that pow
ers of acquisition are with difficulty distinguished from, and
are not a proper measure of, the intellectual powers, which de
pend directly on organic conditions, and are independent of
an external inheritance.

But Mr. Wallace follows, in his estimations of distinct
mental faculties, the doctrines of a school of mental philoso
phy which multiplies the elementary faculties of the mind far
beyond any necessity. Many faculties are regarded by this
school as distinct, which are probably only simple combinations
or easy extensions of other faculties. The philosopher's men
tal powers are not necessarily different in their elements from
those which the savage has and needs in his struggle for ex
istence, or to maintain his position in the scale of life and the
resources on which he has come to depend. The philosopher's
powers are not, it is true, the direct results of Natural Selec
tion, or of utility ; but may they not result by the elementary
laws of mental natures and external circumstances, from facul
ties that are useful ? If they imply faculties which are useless
to the savage, we have still the natural alternative left us, which
Mr. Wallace does not consider, that savages, or all the races of
savages now living, are degenerate men, and not the proper rep
resentatives of the philosopher's ancestors. But this alterna
tive, though the natural one, does not appear to us as neces
sary ; for we are not convinced that " the power of conceiving
eternity and infinity, and all those purely abstract notions of
form, number, and harmony, which play so large a part in the life
of civilized races," are really so " entirely outside of the world of
thought of the savage " as our author thinks. Are they not
rather implied and virtually acquired in the powers that the
savage has and needs, — his powers of inventing and using
even the concrete terms of his simple language ? The fact that
it does not require Natural Selection, but only the education of
the individual savage, to develop in him these results, is to us

298 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

a proof, not that the savage is specially provided with facul
ties beyond his -needs, noF even that he is degenerated, but
that mind itself, or elementary mental natures, in the savage
and throughout the whole sentient world, involve and imply
such relations between actual and potential faculties ; just as
the elementary laws of physics involve many apparently, or at
first sight distinct and independent applications and utilities.
Ought we to regard the principle of " suction," applied to the
uses of life in so many and various animal organisms, as
specially prophetic of the mechanical invention of the pump
and of similar engines ? Shall we say that in the power of
" suction" an animal possesses faculties that he does not need ?
Natural Selection cannot, it is true, be credited with such rela
tions in development. But neither can they be attributed to a
special providence in any intelligible sense. They belong
rather to that constitution of nature, or general providence,
which Natural Selection presupposes.

The theories of associational psychology are so admirably
adapted to the solution of problems, for which Mr. Wallace
seems obliged to call in thfe aid of miracles, that we are sur
prised he was not led by his studies to a more careful consid
eration of them. Thus in regard to the nature of the moral
sense, which Mr. Wallace defines in accordance with the intui
tional theory as " a feeling, — a sense of right and wrong, —
in our nature, antecedent to, and independent of, experiences
of utility," — this sense is capable of an analysis which meets
and answers very simply the difficulties he finds in it on the
theory of Natural Selection. The existence of feelings of ap
proval and disapproval, or of likings and aversions to certain
classes of actions, and a sense of obligation, are eminently useful
in the government of human society, even among savages.
These feelings may be associated with the really useful and the
really harmful classes of actions, or they may not be. Such
associations are not determined simply by utility, any oftener
than beliefs are by proper evidence. But utility tends to pro
duce the proper associations ; and in this, along with the in
crease of these feelings themselves, consists the moral progress
of the race. Why should not a fine sense of honor and an un
compromising veracity be found, then, among savage tribes, as

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 299

in certain instances cited by Mr. Wallace ; since moral feelings,
or the motives to the observance of rules of conduct, lie at the
foundation of even the simplest human society, and rest directly
on the utility of man's political nature ; and since veracity and
honor are not merely useful, but indispensable in many rela
tions, even in savage lives ? Besides, veracity being one of the
earliest developed instincts of childhood, can hardly with pro
priety be regarded as an original moral instinct, since it ma
tures much earlier than the sense of obligation, or any feeling
of the sanctity of truth. It belongs rather to that social and
intellectual part of human nature from which language itself
arises. The desire of communication, and the desire of com
municating the truth, are originally identical in the ingenuous
social nature. Is not this the source of the " mystical sense
or wrong," attached to untruthfulness, which is, after all, re
garded by mankind at large as so venial a fault ? It needs but
little early moral discipline to convert into a strong moral sen
timent so natural an instinct. Deceitfulness is rather the ac
quired quality, so far as utility acts directly on the develop
ment of the individual, and for his advantage ; *but the native
instinct of veracity is founded on the more primitive utilities of
society and human intercourse. Instead, then, of regarding
veracity as an original moral instinct, " antecedent to, and in
dependent of, experiences of utility," it appears to us more
natural to regard it as origin'ally an intellectual and social in
stinct, founded in* the broadest and most fundamental utilities of
human nature. The extension of the moral nature beyond the
bounds of the necessities and utilities of society does not re
quire a miracle to account for it ; since, according to the prin
ciples of the associational psychology, it follows necessarily
from the elementary laws of the mind. The individual ex
periences of utility which attach the moral feelings to rules of
conduct are more commonly those of rewards and punish
ments than of the direct or natural consequences of the con
duct itself; and associations thus formed come to supersede
all conscious reference to rational ends, and act upon the will
in the manner of an instinct. The uncalculating, uncompr*o-
mising moral imperative is not, it is true, derived from the
individual's direct experiences of its utility ; but neither does
VOL. cxi. -— NO. 229. 20

300 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

the instinct of the bee, which sacrifices its life in stinging, bear
any relation to its individual advantage. Are we warranted,
then, in inferring that the sting is useless to the bee ? Sup
pose that whole communities of bees should occasionally be
sacrificed to their instinct of self-defence, would this prove their
instinct to be independent of a past or present utility, or to be
prophetic of some future development of the race ? Yet such
a conclusion would be exactly parallel to that which Mr. Wal
lace draws from the fact that savages sometimes deal honorably
with their enemies to their own apparent disadvantage. It is
a universal law of the organic world, and a necessary conse
quence of Natural Selection, that the individual comprises in
its nature chiefly what is useful to the race, and only incident
ally what is useful to itself; since it is the race, and not -the
individual, that endures or is preserved. This contrast is the
more marked in proportion as a race exhibits a complicated
polity or social form of life ; and man, even in his savage
state, " is more political than any bee or ant." The doctrine
of Natural Selection awakens a new interest in the problems of
psychology. Its inquiries are not limited to the origin of spe
cies. " In the distant future," says Mr. Darwin, " I see open
fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be
based on a new foundation, — that of the necessary acquire
ment of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light
will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." More
light we are sure can be expected from such researches than has
been discovered by Mr. Wallace, in the principles and analyses
of a mystical and metaphysical psychology.

The " origin of consciousness," or of sensation and thought,
is relegated similarly by Mr. Wallace to the immediate agency
or interposition of a metaphysical cause, as being beyond the
province of secondary causes, which could act to produce it
under the principle of Natural Selection. And it is doubtless
true, nay, unquestionable, that sensation as a simple nature,
with the most elementary laws of its activity, does really belong
to the primordial facts in that constitution of nature, which is
presupposed by the principle of utility as the ground or condi
tion of the fitnesses through which the principle acts. In like
manner the elements of organization, or the capacities of living

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 301

matter in general, must be posited as antecedent to the mode of
action which has produced in it, and through its elementary laws,
such marvellous results. But if we mean by " consciousness "
what the word is often and more properly used to express, —
that total and complex structure of sensibilities, thoughts, and
emotions in an animal mind, which is so closely related to the
animal's complex physical organization, — so far is this from
being beyond the province of Natural Selection, that it affords
one of the most promising fields for its future investigations.*

* In further illustration of the range of the explanations afforded by the principle
of Natural Selection, to which we referred in our note, page 293, we may instance
an application of it to the more special psychological problem of the develop
ment of the individual mind by its own experiences, which presupposes, of
course, the innate powers and mental faculties derived (whether naturally or su-
pernaturally) from the development of the race. Among these native faculties of
the individual mind is the power of reproducing its own past experiences in mem
ory and belief; and this is, at least, analogous, as we have said, to the reproductive
powers of physical organisms, and like these is in itself an unlimited, expansive
power of repetition. Human beliefs, like human desires, are naturally illimitable.
The generalizing instinct is native to the mind. It is not the result of habitual ex
periences, as is commonly supposed, but acts as well on single experiences, which
are capable of producing, when unchecked, the most unbounded beliefs and expec
tations of the future. The only checks to such unconditional natural beliefs are
other and equally unconditional and natural beliefs, or the contradictions and limit
ing conditions of experience. Here, then, is a close analogy, at least, to those funda
mental facts of the organic world on which the law of Natural Selection is based ;
the facts, namely, of the " rapid increase of organisms," limited only by " the con
ditions of existence," and by competition in that " struggle for existence " which
results in the " survival of the fittest." As the tendency to an unlimited increase
in existing organisms is held in check only by those conditions of their existence
which are chiefly comprised in the like tendencies of other organisms to unlimited
increase, and is thus maintained (so long as external conditions remain unchanged)
in an unvarying balance of life ; and as this balance adjusts itself to slowly changing
external conditions, so, in the history of the individual mind, beliefs which spring
spontaneously from simple and single experiences, and from a naturally unlimited
tendency to generalization, are held mutually in check, and in their harmony-
represent the properly balanced experiences and knowledges of the mind, and by
adaptive changes are kept in accordance with changing external conditions, or with
the varying total results in the memory of special experiences. This mutual limita
tion of belief by belief, in which consists so large a part of their proper evidence, is so
prominent a feature in the beliefs of the rational mind, that philosophers had failed
to discover their true nature, as elementary facts, until this was pointed out by the
greatest of living psychologists, Professor Alexander Bain. The mutual tests and
checks of beliefs have, indeed, always appeared to a great majority of philosophers as
their only proper evidence; and beliefs themselves have appeared as purely intel
lectual phases of the mind. But Bain has defined them, in respect to their ultimate

302 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

Whatever the results of such investigations, we may rest as
sured that they will not solve ; will never even propound the
problem peculiar to metaphysics (if it can properly be called a
problem), the origin of sensation or simple consciousness, the
problem par excellence of pedantic garrulity or philosophical
childishness. Questions of the special physical antecedents,
concomitants, and consequents of special sensations will doubt
less continue to be the legitimate objects of empirical researches
and of important generalizations ; and such researches may
succeed in reducing all other facts of actual experience, all our
knowledge of nature, and all our thoughts and emotions to in
telligible modifications of these simple and fundamental exist
ences ; but the attempt to reduce sensation to anything but sen
sation is as gratuitous and as devoid of any suggestion or guid
ance of experience, as the attempt to reduce the axioms of the
mathematical or mechanical sciences to simpler orders of uni-

natures, as phases of the will ; or as the tendencies we have to act on mere experi
ence, or to act, on our simplest, most limited experiences. They are tendencies,
however, which become so involved in intellectual developments, and in their mu
tual limitations, that their ultimate results in rational beliefs have very naturally ap
peared to most philosophers as purely intellectual facts ; and their real genesis in
experience has been generally discredited, with the exception of what are desig
nated specially as "empirical beliefs."

It may be objected that the generative process we have here described bears only
a remote and fanciful analogy, and not an essential resemblance, to Natural Selec
tion iu the organic world. But to this it is, perhaps, sufficient to reply (as in
the case of the origin of 'language), that if " the survival of the fittest" is a true
expression of the law, — it is to Mr. Herbert Spencer we owe this most precise
definition, — then the development of the individual mind presents a true example
of it ; for our knowledges and rational beliefs result, truly and literally, from the
survival of the fittest among our original and spontaneous beliefs. It is only by
a figure of speech, it is true, that this " survival of the fittest " can be described
as the result of a "struggle for existence" among our primitive beliefs; but
this description is equally figurative as applied to Natural Selection in the organic
world.

The application of the principle to mental development takes for granted, as we
have said, the faculties with which the individual is born, and in the human mind
these include that most efficient auxiliary, the faculty of using and inventing lan
guage. How Natural Selection could have originated this is not so easy to trace,
and is an almost wholly speculative question ; but if the faculty cou.»ists essentially,
as we have supposed, in a preponderance of the active and spontaneous over the pas
sive powers of the brain, effecting the turning-back or reflective action of the mind,
while the latter simply result in the following out or sagacious habir, we see at least
that the contrast need not depend on the absolute size of the brain, but only on the

1870.] Lirfiits of Natural Selection. 303

versal facts. In one sense material phenomena, or physical
objective states, are causes or effects of sensations, bearing as
they do the invariable relations to them of antecedents, or con
comitants, or consequents. But these are essentially empirical
relations, explicable perhaps by more and more generalized em
pirical laws, but approaching in this way never one step nearer
to an explanation of material conditions by mental laws, or of
mental natures by the forces of matter. Matter and mind co
exist. There are no scientific principles by which either can be
determined to be the cause of the other. Still, so far as scientific
evidence goes, mind exists in direct and peculiar relations to a
certain form of matter, the organic, which is not a different kind,
though the properties of no other forms are in themselves capable,
so far as scientific observation has yet determined, of giving rise
to it. The materials and the forces of organisms are both derived
from other forms of matter, as well as from the organic ; but
the organic form itself appears to be limited to the productive

proportion of the powers that depend on its quantity to those that depend on its
quality. We should naturally suppose, therefore, that the earliest men were proba
bly not very sagacious creatures, perhaps much less so than the present uncivilized
races. But they were, most likely, very social ; even more so, perhaps, than the sa
gacious savage ; for there was needed a strong motive to call this complicated and
difficult mental action into exercise ; and it is even now to be observed that sagaci
ty and sociability are not commonly united in high degrees even among civilized
men. Growths both in the quantity and quality of the brain are, therefore, equally
probable in the history of human development, with always a preponderance of the
advantages which depend upon quantity. But the present superiority of the most
civilized races, so far as it is independent of any external inheritance of arts, knowl
edges, and institutions, would appear to depend chiefly upon the quality of their
brains, and upon characteristics belonging to their moral and emotional natures
rather than the intellectual, since the intellectual acquisitions of civilization are
more easily communicated by education to the savage than the refinements of its
moral and emotional characteristics. Though all records and traces of this devel
opment are gone, and a wide gulf separates the lowest man from the highest brute
animal, yet elements exist by which we may trace the succession of utilities and ad
vantages that have determined the transition. The most essential are those of the
social nature of man, involving mutual assistance in the struggle for existence. In
strumental to these are his mental powers, developed by his social nature, and by
the reflective character of his brain's action into a general and common intelligence,
instead of the specialized instincts and sagacities characteristic of other animals ;
and from these came language, and thence all the arts, knowledges, governments,
traditions, all the external inheritances, which, reacting on his social nature,
have induced the sentiments of morality, worship, and refinement ; at which gazing
as in a mirror he sees his past, and thinks it his future.

304 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

powers of matters and forces which already have this form.
The transcendental doctrine of development (which is not
wholly transcendental, since it is guided, at least vaguely, by the
scientific principles of cause and effect, or by the continuities and
uniformities of natural phenomena) assumes that in the past
course of nature the forms as well as the materials and forces
of organic matter had at one time a causal connection with other
forms of material existence. Mental natures, and especially
the simplest, or sensations, would have had, according to this
assumption, a more universal relation of immediate connection
than we now know with properties of the sort that we call
material. Still, by the analogies of experience they cannot be
regarded as having been either causes or effects of them. Our
ignorances, or the as yet unexplored possibilities of nature, seem
far preferable to the vagueness of this theory, which, in addition
to the continuities and uniformities universally exhibited in
nature, assumes transcendentally, as a universal first principle,
the law of progressive change, or a law which is not universally
exemplified by the course of nature. We say, and say truly, that
a stone has no sensation, since it exhibits none of the signs that
indicate the existence of sensations. It is not only a purely
objective existence, like everything else in nature, except our
own individual self-consciousness, but its properties indicate to
us no other than this purely objective existence, unless it be the
existence of God. To suppose that its properties could pos
sibly result in a sensitive nature, not previously existing or co
existing with them, is to reason entirely beyond the guidance
and analogies of experience. It is a purely gratuitous suppo
sition, not only metaphysical or transcendental, but also mate
rialistic ; that is, it is not only asking a foolish question, but giv
ing a still more foolish answer to it. In short, the metaphysical
problem may be reduced to an attempt to break down the most
fundamental antithesis of all experience, by demanding to know
of its terms which of them is the other. To this sort of fatuity
belongs, we think, the mystical doctrine which Mr. Wallace is
inclined to adopt, " that FORCE is a product of MIND " ; which
means, so far as it is intelligible, that forces, or the physical an
tecedents and conditions of motion (apprehended, it is true,
along with motion itself, through our sensations and volitions),

1870.] Limits oj Natural Selection. 305

yet bear to our mental natures the still closer relation of
resemblance to the prime agency of the Will ; or it means that
" all force is probably will force." Not only does this*assumed
mystical resemblance, expressed by the word u will-force," con
tradict the fundamental antithesis of subject and object phe
nomena (as the word " mind matter" would), but it fails to re
ceive any confirmation from the law of the correlation of the
physical forces. All the motions of animals, both voluntary and
involuntary, are traceable to the efficiency of equivalent material
forces in the animal's physical organization. The cycles of
equivalent physical forces are complete, even when their courses
lie through the voluntary actions of animals, without the intro
duction of conscious or mental conditions. The sense of effort
is riot a form of force. The painful or pleasurable sensations
that accompany the conversions of force in conscious volitions
are not a consciousness of this force itself, nor even a proper
measure of it. The Will is not a measurable quantity of ener
gy, with its equivalents in terms of heat, or falling-force, or
chemical affinity, or the energy of motion, unless we identify
it with the vital energies of the organism, which are, however
(unfortunately for this hypothesis), the causes of the involun
tary movements of an animal, as well as of its proper volitions
considered from their physical side.

But Mr. Wallace is inclined to the opinion that the Will is
an incident force, regulating and controlling the action of the
physical forces of the vital machine, but contributing, even in
this capacity, some part at least to the actual moving forces of
the living frame. He says : —

" However delicately a machine may be constructed, with the most
exquisitely contrived detents to release a weight or spring by the exer
tion of the smallest possible amount of force, some external force will
always be'required; so in the animal machine, however minute may
be the changes required in the cells or fibres of the brain, to set
in motion the nerve currents which loosen or excite the pent-up
forces of certain muscles, some farce must be required to effect those
changes."

And this force he supposes to be the Will. This is the most
intelligible materialism we have ever met with in the discus
sions of this subject. It is true that in a machine, not only the

306 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

main efficient forces, but also the incident and regulating ones,
are physical forces ; and however small the latter may be,
they are 'still of the same nature, and are comparable in amount
with the main efficient forces. But is not this one of the most
essential differences between a machine and a sensitive organ
ism ? Is it impossible, then, that nature has contrived an in
finitely more perfect machine than human art can invent, —
machinery which involves the powers of art itself, if it be
proper to call that contrivance a machine, in which the regu
lating causes are of a wholly different nature from the efficient
forces ? May it not be that sensations and mental conditions,
generally, are regulating causes which add nothing, like the
force of the hand of the engineer, to the powers which he con
trols in his machine, ami subtract nothing, as an automatic
apparatus does, from such powers in the further regulation of
the machine ? We may not be able to understand how such
regulation is possible ; how sensations and other mental con
ditions can restrain, excite, and combine the conversions of
physical forces in the cycles into which they themselves do not
enter ; though there is a type of such regulation in the princi
ples of theoretical mechanics, in the actions of forces which do
not affect the quantities of the actual or potential energies of a
system of moving bodies, but simply the form of the move
ment, as in the rod of the simple pendulum. Such regulation
in the sensitive organism is more likely to be an ultimate inex
plicable fact ; but it is clear that even in a machine the amounts
of the regulating forces bear no definite relations to the powers
they control, and might, so far as these are directly concerned,
be reduced to nothing as forces ; and in many cases they are
reduced to a minimum of the force of friction. They must,
however, be something in amount in a machine, because they
are physical, and, like all physical forces, must be derived in
quantity from pre-existing forms of force. To infer from this
that the Will must add something to the forces of the organism
is, therefore, to assume for it a material nature. But Mr. Wal
lace escapes, or appears to think (as others think who hold
this view) that he escapes, from complete materialism by the
doctrine of the freedom of the Will. Though he makes the Will
an efficient physical force, he does not allow it to be a physical

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 307

effect. In other words, he regards the Will as an absolute
source of physical energy, continually adding, though in small
amounts, to the store of the forces of nature ; a sort of mo
lecular leakage of energy from an absolute source into the
nervous systems of animals, or, at least, of men. This, though
in our opinion an unnecessary and very improbable hypothesis,
is not inconceivable. It is improbable, inasmuch as it denies
to the Will a character common to the physical forces with
which the Will is otherwise assimilated by this theory, — the
character, namely, of being an effect in measurable amount as
well as a cause, or the character of belonging to cycles of
changes related by invariable quantities ; but as we do not re
gard the conservation of force as a necessary law of the uni
verse, we are able to comprehend Mr. Wallace's position. It is
the metaphysical method of distinguishing a machine from a
sensitive organism. But we do not see why Mr. Wallace is
not driven by it to the dilemma of assuming free-wills for all
sentient organisms ; or else of assuming, with Descartes, that
all but men are machines. The latter alternative would, doubt
less, redound most effectively to the metaphysical dignity of
human nature. Mr. Wallace appears to think, that unless we
can attribute to the Will some efficiency or quantity of energy,
its agency must be regarded as a nullity, and our apparent
consciousness of its influence as an illusion ; but this opinion
appears to be based on the still broader assumption, which
seems to us erroneous, that all causation is reducible to the
conversions of equivalent physical energies. It may be true
(at least we are not prepared to dispute the assumption) that
every case of real causation involves such conversions or
changes in forms of energy, or that every effect involves chan
ges of position and motion. Nevertheless, every case of real
causation may still involve also another mode of causation.
To us the conception is much simpler than our author's theory,
and far more probable that the phenomena of conscious volition
involve in themselves no proper efficiencies or forces coming
under the law of the conservation of force, but are rather
natural types of causes, purely and absolutely regulative, which
add nothing to, and subtract nothing from, the quantities of
natural forces. No doubt there is in the actions of the nervous

308 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

system a much closer resemblance than this to a machine. No
doubt it is automatically regulated, as well as moved, by. physi
cal forces ; but this is probably just in proportion as its agency
— as in our habits and instincts — is removed from our
conscious control. All this machinery is below, beyond, ex
ternal, or foreign to our consciousness. The profoundest, most
attentive introspection gains not a glimpse of its activity, nor
do we ever dream of its existence ; but both by the laws of
its operations, and by the means through which we become
aware of its existence, it stands in the broadest, most funda
mental contrast to our mental natures ; and these, so far from
furnishing a type of physical efficiency in our conscious voli
tions, seem to us rather in accordance with their general
contrast with material phenomena to afford a type of purely
regulative causes, or of an absolutely forceless and unresisted
control and regulation of those forces of nature which are
comprised in the powers of organic life. Perhaps a still
higher type of such regulation is to be found in those " laws of
nature," which, without adding to, or subtracting from, the
real forces of nature, determine the order of their conversions
by "fixed, stated, or settled " rules of succession ; and these
may govern also, and probably do govern, the successions of our
mental or self-conscious states, both in themselves and in their
relations to material conditions. Simple, absolute, invariable
rules of succession in phenomena, both physical and mental,
constitute the most abstract conception we can have of causal
relations ; but they appear under two chief classes, the phys
ical laws which determine the possible relations of the forms of
force, and those which are also concerned in the still further
determination of its actual orders of succession, or which, by
their combinations in the intricate web of uniformities in
nature, both mental and physical, determine the events in par
ticular that in relation to the laws of force are only determined
in general. The proper laws of force, or of the conversions of
energy, are concerned exclusively with relations in space. Re
lations in time are governed by the other class of laws. Thus,
in the abstract theory of the pendulum, the phenomena of
force involved are limited simply to the vertical rise and fall
of the weight, upon which alone the amounts of its motions

1870.] Limits of Natural Selection. 309

depend. The times of its vibrations are determined by the
regulating length of the rod, which in theory adds nothing to,
and subtracts nothing from, the efficient mutually convertible
forces of motion and gravity. What is here assumed in theory
to be true, we assume to be actually and absolutely true of
mental agencies.

But it may be said, and it often is said, " that this theory of
the Will's agency is directly contradicted in both its features
by consciousness ; that we are immediately conscious both of
energy and freedom in willing." There is much in our voli
tional consciousness to give countenance to this contradiction ;
but it is only such as dreams give to contradictions of rational
experience. The words " force," " energy," " effort," " resist
ance," " conflict," all point to states of feeling in our volitional
consciousness, which seem to a superficial observation to be
true intuitions of spontaneous self-originated causes ; and it is
only when these states of feeling are tested by the scientific
definitions and the objective measures of forces, and by the
orders of the conversions of force, that they are found to be
only vague, subjective accompaniments, instead of distinct ob
jective apprehensions or perceptions of what "force" signifies
in science. Such tests prove them to be like the -complemen
tary or 'subjective colors of vision. In one sense they are intu
itions of force, our only intuitions of it (as the aspects of
nature are our only intuitions of the system of the world) ; but
they are not true perceptions, since they do not afford, each
feeling in itself, definite and invariable indications of force as
an objective existence, or as affecting all minds alike. Even
the sense of weight is no proper measure of weight as an ele
ment of force ; and the muscular effort of lifting is only a
vague and variable perception of this conversion of force, and
does not afford even a hint of the great law of the conserva
tion and convertibility of forces, but, on the contrary, seems to
contradict it. The muscular feeling of resistance to motion or
,to a change of motion is an equally vague measure of inertia.
Indeed, the feelings of weight and resistance, which are often
regarded as intuitions of gravity and inertia, are insusceptible
of precise measurement or numerical comparison ; and though
capable of being trained to some degree of precision in esti-

310 Limits of Natural Selection. [Oct.

mating what is properly measured by other means, they could
never have revealed through their unaided indications the law
of the fixed and universal proportionality of these two forces.
The feeling of effort itself (more or less intense, and more or
less painful, according to circumstances, which are quite irrel
evant to its apparent effect) appears by the testimony of con
sciousness to be the immediate cause of the work which is
done, — work really done by forces in the vital organism,
which only the most recondite researches of science have dis
closed. But if this much-vaunted authority of immediate con
sciousness blunders so in even the simplest cases, how can our
author or any judicious thinker trust its unconfirmed, unsup
ported testimony in regard to the agency of the Will ? Is it
not like trusting the testimony of the senses as to the immo
bility of the earth ?

With hardly a point, therefore, of Mr. Wallace's concluding
essay are we able to agree ; and this impresses us the more, since
we find nothing in the rest of his book which appears to us to
call for serious criticism, but many things, on the contrary,
which command our most cordial admiration. We account for
it by the supposition that his metaphysical views, carefully ex
cluded from his scientific work, are the results of an earlier
and less severe training than that which has secured to us his
valuable positive contributions to the theory of Natural Selec
tion. Mr. Wallace himself is fully aware of this contrast, and
anticipates a scornful rejection of his theory by many who in
other respects agree with him.

The doctrines of the special and prophetic providences and
decrees of God, and of the metaphysical isolation of human
nature, are based, after all, on barbaric conceptions of dignity,
which are restricted in their application by every step forward
in the progress of science. And the sense of security they
give us of the most sacred things is more than replaced by the
ever-growing sense of the universality of inviolable laws, — laws
that underlie our sentiments and desires, as well as all that
these can rationally regard in the outer world. It is unfortu
nate that the prepossessions of religious sentiment in favor of
metaphysical theories should make the progress of science
always seem like an indignity to religion, or a detraction from

1870.] The Method of History. 311

what is held as most sacred; yet the responsibility for this
belongs neither to the progress of science nor to true religious
sentiment, but to a false conservatism, an irrational respect
for the ideas and motives of a philosophy which finds it more
and more difficult with every advance of knowledge to recon
cile its assumptions with facts of observation.

CHAUNCEY WRIGHT.

ART. III. — THE METHOD OF HISTORY.

HISTORY, in the sense of a systematic survey of the progress
of society, based on the principle of a necessary order of human
development, is emphatically a modern science. The ancients
had no history in this sense of the term, no " universal "
history as distinguished from the history of single nations.
They recounted the acts or described the fortunes of tribes and
states, but had nothing to say of the human family. They
knew no human family. They knew only Greeks and Barba
rians, Romans and Outsiders (exteri), Jews and Gentiles.
Polybius, indeed, called his history Kado\iKr), universal, but
only as comprehending in its survey of Roman affairs some
account of the nations with which Rome came in contact.
His starting-point is Rome, not man. No classic historio
grapher, from Herodotus to Herodian, has attempted a history
of man.

In one remarkable instance, however, the idea of such a
history, and with it, of a human family, is distinctly recognized.
In the Biblical Book of Genesis we have the beginning of a
history of man, but one which stops short with the mythic age
of the world. Biblical history brings man to the building of
Babel, or the period of greatest concentration, succeeded by
disruption and dispersion, and then, dismissing the theme", con
fines itself to the single Hebrew line. Brief and fragmentary
as the narrative is, these first chapters of the Bible contain
more important contributions to the science of history than all
the classics.

312 The Method of History. [Oct.

Christianity, by intoning the brotherhood of man, awakened
a new interest in human destiny. The Christian Fathers mani
fest a truer appreciation of the unity of the race. Bunsen calls
Clement of Alexandria " the first Christian philosopher of the
history of mankind-." St. Augustine's " City of God " em
braces in its scope the whole human race as the subject of
divine education, and distributes the ages of man in six days
of a thousand years each, to end with the millennium.

Of the historiographers of the Middle Age the Western are
simply chroniclers,* and the Byzantines, immensely important
in their line, confine themselves, with one or two exceptions,!
to the Lower Empire.

With the impulse given to the human mind by the stirring
events of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this branch of
science blossoms into new significance. The astounding dis
coveries of the great navigators who solved the " ocean-secret,"
and lifted the veil from what till then had been considered the
night side of the globe, the enlarged geographic and ethno
graphic views and the wider survey of human kind, resulting
from these discoveries, combining with the recent " Revival of
Letters " and the Saxon Reformation of the Church, gave to
history not only a new impulse, but a new direction. No longer
partial, local, it becomes encyclopedic, cosmopolitan. The
writers of history task themselves with new and higher aims,
evincing a new-born consciousness of unity and integrity per
vading all the epochs and all the races and generations of
man. The study of history becomes academic, and Torsellino's
" Epitome Historiarum " is used as a text-book in the univer
sities of Europe.

It was not, however, until after the lapse of another century,
that the fundamental principle of all history was adequately
stated. It was not till then that the discovery was made of a
science of history. For this science we are indebted to Italy.
The country which unlocked the New World was the first to

* Such are Eginhard, Paulus Diaconus, William of Malmesbury, Gregory of
Tours, Albert of Aix, William of Tyre, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Froissart, and
Matthew Paris.

t Zonaras wrote a " History of the World " ; Glycas, a " History of the World
from the Creation to the Death of Alexius Comnenus "; Zosimus, a " History of
the Roman Empire from Augustus to Honorius."

1870.] The Method of History. 313

suggest the true interpretation of the annals of the Old. John
Baptist Vico, a native of Naples, published in 1725 his " Sci-
enza Nuova," or " Principles of a New Science relative to the
Common Nature of Nations." This work contains the germ of
many of the speculations of subsequent philosophies of history ;
but its principal merit consists in its clear and emphatic asser
tion of the principle of divine necessity, that 'is, of a natural
law in historic processes and revolutions. Vico was the first to
point out distinctly the analogies and parallelisms in the history
of nations, and to show that the progress of society follows a
given order; that nations have their necessary preappointed
course of evolution and revolution ; that human history, in
short, no less than the material universe, is governed by fixed
laws, consequently that history is a science, or that a science
of history is possible. It is found, says Michelet, in his essay
on the New Science, that nations the most remote in time and
space follow in their political revolutions and in those of their
languages a strikingly analogous course. " To disengage the
regular from the accidental ; to trace the universal, eternal
history which develops itself in time in the form of particular
histories ; to describe the ideal circle within which the real world
revolves, — this is the aim of the new science. It is at once
the philosophy and the history of humanity."

From an examination of the languages, laws, and religions
of different peoples, and a survey of the course of events in
the principal nations, Vico deduces these positions: 1. Human
society is based on three fundamental conditions, — worship, or
the belief in Divine Providence ; marriage, or the restraint of
the passions ; sepultural rites, or the belief in immortality.
These are what Tacitus calls foedera generis humani. 2. Soci
ety has three great periods, — the theocratic, the heroic, and
the humane. 3. The civil and political life of nations, so long
as they preserve their independence, assumes successively four
different forms of government. The theocratic age produces
domestic monarchy (patriaichism). The heroic produces aris
tocracy, or the government of the city, limiting the abuse of
power. Then comes democracy, founded on the idea of natural
equality. And lastly, despotism, or imperial rule, establishes
itself on the ruins of democracy, and puts an end to the anarchy

314 The Method of History. [Oct.

and public corruption to which popular governments give rise.
Or, if that remedy fails, the degenerate nation, given over to
anarchy and corruption, becomes the prey of the spoiler, and
succumbs to a foreign yoke. 4. When a nation or when
society has passed 'through these stages, and, unreclaimed by
the revolutions it has experienced, still continues to decline
and degenerate, it passes at last into a second barbarism.
Faith expires, religion languishes, men grow brutal, cities
decay, society becomes effete and lies supine until regenerated
by some providential impulse from without. Then the cycle
of history begins anew, and humanity repeats with new auspices
its appointed course. 5. From the facts thus observed, from
the indications of law and a regular succession in human events,
Yico derives the idea of a great city of nations, whose founder
and governor is God, a republic of the universe, the miracle of
whose constitution is that through all its revolutions it finds in
the very corruptions of each preceding state the elements of a
new and better birth.

Since the publication of the 4< Scienza Nuova," the philosophy
of history has found no end of expositors. Of the numerous
works in this department, the most influential have been Mon
tesquieu's " Esprit des Loix," Ferguson's " Civil Society," Les-
sing's little treatise, u The Education of the Human Race,"
Herder's " Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Mensch-
heit," Kant's " Zur Philosophic der Geschichte," Fichte's
" Grundziige des gegenwartigen Zeitalters," the chapters re
lating to the progress of human society in Comte's u Cours
de Philosophic Positive," and Hegel's " Philosophic der Ge
schichte." We are speaking of the philosophy of history in
the narrowest sense, not of historic criticism or historic art ;
else would a host of names of equal and even graver note de
mand to be noticed in this connection.

It is now understood that history has its laws, as well as
astronomy ; that the course of events is a necessary, not a for
tuitous succession, and the march of humanity through the
nations aid through the ages a series of progressive develop
ments. The supposition is fundamental to the study of history
as a science. If the course of events and the destiny of na
tions were governed by no law and subject to no method, there

1870. J The Method of History. 315

could be no science of history, but only chronicles, registries
of facts unreferred to any principle or ruling idea, incapable
of classification. The study of history in that case would be
useless, because it would lead to nothing. The end of all
study is the discovery of law, that is, of spirit, that is, of Deity
in the facts studied. If in any class of facts no law were
discoverable, the knowledge of those facts would be hardly
worth the labor spent in acquiring it. We read history to little
purpose, if we read it only as a record of facts, and see in it no
demonstration of Divine method. The facts themselves are not
truly apprehended, unless we see them in the light of some
principle or law which they illustrate. Take the battle of
Actium, in Roman history. I read that the forces of Octavius
met those of Antonius in the Ambracian Gulf, and obtained a
signal victory over them. What signifies that fact to me ?
What do I know of Roman history, if all I gather from it is
that Octavius was the better general or the luckier man of the
two ? The real fact has escaped me, if I fail, to perceive its
historic import. It was not valor nor luck, but historic neces
sity that triumphed in that encounter. It was necessary that
democracy should replace an aristocratic oligarchy, like that of
republican Rome. It was necessary that democratic anarchy
should be replaced by an imperial head. Octavius represents,
in that conflict, the Latin or popular element in Roman his
tory. Antonius represents the Sabine or patrician. The in
ternal history of the Roman Republic, and especially that of the
previous century, had been a conflict of these two elements,
the former seeking to disengage itself from the latter. The
battle of Actium was the consummation of that struggle. With
the triumph of Octavius, qvi cuncta discordiis ciuilibus fessa
nomine principis sub imperium accepit* democracy came to a
head, Latin civility came to maturity, and in its turn became
the matrix of its successor in empire, the Christian Church.

An objection may be raised against the doctrine of historic
necessity, on the score of human free will. The conduct of
history lies in the hands of human free agents. A glance at
the course of events shows us that those revolutions \shich

* Tacitus. •

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 21

The Method of History. [Oct.

have furnished the materials and given the direction to his
tory have been the work of individuals following the impulse
of their own wills. How, then, can we affirm them to be the
operation of a law, or how can history conducted by free will
be a necessary process ? If one looks at the matter a priori,
it seems a priori improbable that the destinies of humanity
should be committed to individual caprice, or that able and de
signing men should shape the world according to their whim.
But what is the fact ? Free agency acts under given condi
tions, and those conditions are contained in the natural order
of things. There is no more escape from that order in the
moral world than in the physical. All the motions on the
earth's surface, however arbitrary and contrary one to another,
obey the parent motion of the earth, and are swept along in
the spheral march. So all possible movements of the human
will are comprehended in the providential sweep of the parent
will which works in each. The contradiction between freedom
and necessity, so perplexing in the sphere of private life, dis
appears in the large dynamic of history. There, freedom and
necessity are seen to be different factors of one movement,—-
freedom the human, necessity the divine. The highest free
dom is the strongest necessity, as in chemistry those affinities
which are termed elective are precisely the most determined.
Says Kant: " Whatever notion, in a metaphysical point of view,
we may form to ourselves of the freedom of the will, its mani
festation, i. e. human actions, like every other natural event,
is determined by general laws of nature." *

To the eye of sense, " the river windeth at its own sweet
will," but reflection knows that the valley through which it
winds has been scooped by the action of unchangeable laws ;
and in human life all freedom that succeeds is free occupation
of appointed paths. The course of destiny is the providential
channel in which human freedom elects to run. Accordingly,
the great men of history, the history-makers, are the " provi
dential men " ; they are those, in the language of Hegel, f
" whose private purposes contain the substance of that which
is willed by the spirit of the world." They may not be aware

* Zur Philosophic der Geschichte ; Idee zu einer Allgemeinen Geschichte in
Weltbiirgerlichen Absfcht.
t Philosophic der Geschichte.

1870.] The Method of History. 317

of their providential function ; they may not contemplate all
the results they are used to effect ; the ulterior consequences
of their free action may not have come within the scope of
their design. The consequences follow none the less. Leo
the Isaurian issues an edict prohibiting the use of images and
pictures in the churches ; Pope Gregory repudiates the edict,
and resists its execution in the West. What follows ? While
Emperor and Pontiff quarrel among themselves, the empire
splits between them, a goodly fraction comes off in Gregory's
hands. Following the bent of his own will in his own ecclesi
astical affairs, that prelate becomes the providential means of
sundering East and West, never to be united again. Rolf, from
the coast of Norway, bent on plunder, lands his pirates on the
soil of France, and extorts from Charles the Simple a slice of
his kingdom. Rolf has no prevision of a Norman landing on
the coast of Sussex, and an Anglo-Norman kingdom, and an
English House of Lords, all which the future drew from that
raid of his, whose providential import was to give to the finest
of the Gothic races a worthy field for their development.

Sometimes, however, the providential men, like Julius Caesar,
Mohammed, Cromwell, have shown themselves conscious of
that Divinity which shapes our ends and subsidizes our free
will in accomplishing its designs. It was no affectation or
puerile vanity which prompted the first Napoleon to call him
self the " Child of Destiny," but an irresistible conviction of
a power behind him whose minister he was in spite of himself.

Assuming, then, as a settled truth, that the course of history
is governed by natural laws, the question arises, How far ?«re
those laws discoverable and demonstrable by scientific investi
gation ? This is a question which only the future of scientific
investigation can answer. The application of logic to history
is yet too recent, history itself is too recent, to furnish a
complete solution. All that we can thus far assert, with any
degree of confidence, is, that enough of law is discoverable to
constitute history a science, or that a science of history is
possible.

The subject of this science is Man. To distinguish it from
anthropology let us say, Man in Society. To distinguish it
from ethnology let us say, Man the subject of progressive

318 The Method of History. [Oct.

development. We have then three distinct topics : Man,
Society or the State, and Social Progress.

1. Man. To the catholic eye of history he is one. The
science presupposes what all its discoveries tend to demon
strate, — the unity of the human race. We need not trouble
ourselves with the question whether all men actually originated
from one pair, or whether different portions of the globe have
given birth to independent varieties of the animal man. Enough
that man, as the subject of history, is one. The historic
nations have descended from one original. If any of the races
that inhabit the earth have a different origin, those races are
not historic ; they have no part in human destiny, and will
finally disappear from the earth, or be absorbed by historic
man. Man, as the subject of history, is one. The nations that
compose him have one geographical, probably one genealogical
origin.

Historic man was born, according to tradition, in Western
Asia, precisely where speculative ethnology would place his
. origin. If we glance at a map of the world on Mercator's pro
jection, we shall find that the portion of the earth's surface
which lies between the thirtieth and fortieth degrees of north
latitude, and between the fortieth and sixtieth of east longitude,
is about the centre of the habitable globe. Here it is, or here
abouts, that tradition first discovers man, on the banks of the
Tigris and the. Euphrates. From this natal centre we find him
radiating eastward and southeastward to the borders of the
Pacific and the Indian Ocean, westward and northwestward to
the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. In later ages his course
has been prevailingly westward, across the Atlantic into South
and North America. And now, having crossed the American
continent, and reached the uttermost verge of the west, on the
borders of that Pacific which long since bounded his eastern
migration, he has " come full circle " around the globe.

The where being settled, the next question is, How did man
begin his race ? Civilized or savage, in rude ignorance or fur
nished with science and art ? This has long been a point in
debate between ethnologers and theologians. The latter have
taught that man's first estate wag superior, not only in moral
purity, but also in intellectual illumination, to every subsequent

1870.] The Method of History. 319

age. Philosophy, on the contrary, maintains that the original
state was a savage state, such as we find it to this day in South
Africa and New Zealand, and that ages went by before the race
attained to the knowledge and arts of civilized life. Happily,
our subject is not burdened with the responsibility of this ques
tion. We have nothing to do with man prior to the period
when history finds him, that is, the earliest period marked by
contemporary or nearly contemporary records. The existence
of records implies civilization. The word " history," it will be
observed, has a twofold sense. We use it to denote the course
of events, and we use it to denote the record of those events.
This double meaning, says Hegel, is not accidental. It shows
that actual history and written history are nearly related, and
cannot exist independently the one of the other. History does
not begin to be until it is written. A people has no history
until it is sufficiently mature to record its life, until it arrives
at that degree of self consciousness which makes the recording
of it inevitable. The intellectual life of the individual does
not begin with the animal birth ; it begins with the birth of
consciousness. It dates from the period of reflection, from the
time when the individual begins to act knowingly, accounting
to himself for his action. History is the record of the intel
lectual life of society ; it begins with the self-consciousness of
society. It dates from the time when man associates in civil
bonds under fixed and accepted laws ; from the time when
society becomes organized, with settled functions and mutual
responsibilities. Whatever, then, may have been man's primal
state, when history first finds him he is civilized, skilled in
arts, governed by laws, living in cities, worshipping in temples.
Of the times antecedent to that state, with their confused strug
gles, history knows nothing. The exploration of those unre
corded ages belongs to another province than that of the histo
rian ; it belongs to the province of archaeology or fore-history.
History is coeval with civility, that is, with the formation of

states.

•

2. Accordingly, our next topic is the State. It is not with
man absolute or man as such, but with man conditioned by
social organizations, that the science of history is concerned.
These organizations — monarchical, republican, democratic, or

320 The Method of History. [Oct.

despotic — are the stated conditions of man's development, the
ordained method by which he accomplishes his moral destiny,
by which, especially, he satisfies two pressing demands of his
nature, — liberty and right. Liberty and right are both the
product of civil organization, i. e. of the state.

Of liberty the contrary opinion prevails. It is thought that
liberty belongs to man in his " natural state," as it is called,
that is, in a savage state, and is lost or impaired by civilization ;
that liberty is older than civil society ; that, being originally
unlimited, when states were formed it was surrendered for the
sake of the state. It has been affirmed, as a self-evident prop
osition, that man is " born free." That means, man is born
with a natural capacity for freedom, and, co-ordinate with the
development of that capacity, has a natural right to freedom.
It can mean nothing more. Rousseau, unconscious of self-con
tradiction, declares that man " is born free, but is everywhere
found in bonds." He should have said : man was made to be
free, but has nowhere realized that destination. But Rousseau
meant something more. He meant that man originally pos
sessed a freedom which he has -lost by civilization. He and
others have imagined a condition of humanity, a so-called
" state of nature," in which man was freer, and, in many
respects, more fortunate than we find him in civil society.
Since none of these theorists have informed us where in the
present this state is to be found, nor furnished any proofs of its
existence in time past, we are warranted in treating the notion
as a fancy or a fiction. The term " natural," applied to any
primitive pondition of man, imaginary or real, to distinguish it
from subsequent conditions, is a foolish limitation of nature,
equivalent to saying that the root of a plant is natural and the
blossom not natural. Civilization is the product of human
nature ; it contains nothing that human nature does not con
tain, and cannot, therefore, in any rational sense, be considered
as less a state of nature than that of the Camanches or New-

>

Zealanders. " If we are asked," says Ferguson, " where the
state of nature is to be found, we may answer, it is here.
And it matters not whether we are understood to speak in the
island of Great Britain, or at the Cape of Good Hope, or the
Straits of Magellan." " If we admit that man is susceptible

1870.] The Method of History. 321

of improvement, and has in himself a principle of progres
sion and a desire of perfection, it is improper to say that he
has quitted the state of nature when he has begun to proceed,
or that he finds a station for which he was not intended, while,
like other animals, he only follows the disposition and employs
the powers that nature has given." " If nature is opposed to
art, in what situation of the human race are the footsteps of
art unknown ? " *

The notion that primitive man is freer than civilized man is
an error which springs from not distinguishing between liberty
and caprice. We may dream of a state which combines what
is best in civilization with all that is charming in aboriginal
nature, but reality knows nothing of the kind. Reality
knows only the civilized man and the savage, and the question
is, Which is the freer of the two ? Superficial observation may
decide in favor of the savage, but closer inspection will change
that decision. The savage is less bound by conventions, but is
bound in other ways. He is more the slave of his passions,
more dependent on occasion, more fettered by necessity, less
master of himself and the world, and, therefore, less free than
the civilized. With less of law, he experiences greater limita
tion. The nearer we come to savage life, the more we find in
it of tyranny and violence, of the bondage of passion and ca
price. The nearer we come to it, the more we find the condition
of the savage to be one of thraldom and restraint ; the more
we find him bounded and bound. Ferguson, with one word,
refutes Rousseau's fancy of savage liberty, when he says : " No
person is free where any person is suffered to do wrong with im
punity " ; and Hegel, who defines liberty to be " the spirit's
realization of its own nature," insists that, so far from being an
accident of primitive man, it is something which must be wrought
out,, achieved, by a perpetual " mediation between knowledge
and will." Right and morality are its indispensable constitu
ents. It is true, society as such imposes restraints, but the
necessary restraints imposed by society are merely limitations
of individual caprice which hampers liberty. They promote
that emancipation of the will in which true freedom consists. f

* Essay on the History of Civil Society,
t See Hegel's Philosophic der Geschichte.

322 The Method of History. [Oct.

The notion of an antecedent natural liberty surrendered to so
ciety, and of social contracts requiring such surrender, is a
pure fiction. Liberty is not an original but an acquired pos
session, not an accident but a product, — the product of reflec
tion, of legislation, of scientific adjustment, — in a word, the
product of the state.

Likewise, the state is the parent and condition of morality.
Morality as sentiment, disposition, faculty, is innate. Morality
as fact is the product of law. Its earliest form, respect for
others' rights, originates with the institution of property. But
property in its first beginnings provokes the worst passions of
the human breast, occasions strife and shedding of blood. It
has therefore been deemed unfriendly to morality, one of the
evils which civilization has inflicted on mankind. " The first
man," says Rousseau, " who, having enclosed a piece of ground,
took it into his head to say, < This is mine,' and found people fool
ish enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
How many crimes, wars, murders, miseries, and horrors might
have been spared to the human race, if some one at that junc
ture had pulled up the stakes or filled up the trenches, and
had called to his fellow-men, * Beware how you listen to this
impostor ; you are lost if you forget that the fruits of the
ground belong to all, and that the earth is no man's prop
erty.'"*

But if property has been the occasion of strife and deeds of
violence, it has also served to develop the idea of right in
which all morality is founded ; and though some of the virtues,
such as courage, fortitude, and patience, might certainly exist
without it, most of the duties, and most of the topics and occa
sions of moral discipline which society now furnishes, would be
wanting. Most of the duties of social life, as now constituted,
are directly or indirectly connected with property. Rousseau
himself confesses that the first rules of justice are derived
thence. " For in order to render to each one his own," he re
marks, " it is necessary that each should own something."

Property begins with agriculture. To till the land it was
necessary to enclose it. From tillage for the use of the tribe
of land belonging to the tribe, such as we still find at certain

* Rousseau, Sur I'origine de 1'inegalite parmi les Hommes.

1870.] The Method of History. 323

*

stages of savage life, the transition was easy and natural to
tillage for private use, the fruits and the land being both the
property of the tiller.

The relation of agriculture to civil law and the moral well-
being of society was represented by the Greeks in the fable
of Demeter, the mythical goddess of agriculture, who was
called @eo-/Lto</>o/309, a law-bringer. An ancient cameo repre
sents her as accompanying Triptolemus, the planter, in his tour
around the earth. She exhibits a scroll containing a code of
laws, while Triptolemus scatters wheat-seed. Hebrew tradition
has embodied the same idea in the story of Cain, the first
tiller of the ground, who is also the first city-builder and
civilizer.

And not only by the institution of property which it author
izes and protects, and around which cluster so many motives
and obligations to virtue, but also by establishing stricter rela
tions between man and man, by civil jurisprudence making the
moral sense of the wisest the rule for all, and more especially
by maintaining the sanctity of wedded life, — parent and nurse
of domestic virtues, — the state develops the moral life of so
ciety. If, then, and so far as, man has a moral calling to fulfil
in this world, he belongs to the state and the state to him.
States are at once the theme and the organ of history.

3. Our next and last topic is Social Progress. Man is the
subject of progressive development. The world's history is
not an aimless succession of events, a heap of facts fanned to
gether by the flight of time, as the wind piles sand-drifts in the
desert, but a process and a growth. The ages are genetically
as well as chronologically related. The succession of events
is rational ; they follow each other by a necessary order in such
wise that one is the exponent of another, and all are moments
of one process. We say, then* that as civil society is the
topic, so progress is the method of history. In saying this we
pronounce no judgment on the question of man's perfectibility
and final perfection. We assert nothing as to the ultimate
destiny of the race, whether the consummation of history is to
be the perfection of society, according to the visions of the
millennarians, or whether it is to be the utter dissolution of so
ciety by the action of some remediless evil. These are ques-

324 The Method of Hittory. [Oct.

r

tions as to which history may aid us in forming an opinion, but
which history thus far is incompetent to decide. But survey
ing the past and present of society, we sea such evidence of
progress hitherto as warrants us in assuming — since some aim
and purpose must be assumed to make history intelligible —
that progress is that aim and purpose. We postulate progress
as the. key to history, as the mathematician uses an hypothet
ical number in determining an unknown quantity.

Progress in what and whitherward ? Progress in liberty,
answers Hegel, — progress first in the idea and then in the
thing. This progress, according to him, has three stages, di
viding the world's history into three epochs, — the period of the
Oriental nations, when only one was allowed to be free ; the
period of Greek and Roman civilization, when freedom was ac
corded to many ; and lastly, the period of the Germanic na
tions, when freedom is seen to be the rightful property of all.
Instead of liberty, let us say progress in social organization ;
a more comprehensive interest, of which liberty is one element
among many. Progress in social union and toward a state in
which that union shall be complete, in which nationalities shall
no longer divide mankind, when the human family shall con
sciously unite in one organic whole, a state combining the
greatest freedom of the individual with the greatest compact
ness of social union, and securing to all the members of the
common weal the greatest possible advantage in their connec
tion with each other. This destination is at present strictly
hypothetical. The immeasurable future alone can verify it.
It is rendered probable, however, by the course of events thus
far, of which it furnishes the most satisfactory solution. Ac
cording to this view, every epoch of human history is a new
stage of social development ; every state a fresh experiment in
social organization ; and every historic revolution, exposing the
inadequacy of each former state, inaugurates a new.

The condition of all development is antagonism. Nothing
grows without resistance, without opposition of contrary ele
ments. Society is no exception to the universal law. There,
too, is a perpetual conflict of opposing forces, bursting often into
open war.

War is a normal crisis in human affairs, and must, there-

1870.] The Method of History. 325

fore, occupy a large share in the world's annals. Judged from
the point of view of Christian ethics, it presents solely the aspect
of a moral evil, and incurs unreserved condemnation. So far
as war is the product of individual volition and design, so far
as it originates in or enkindles conscious malevolent passion, it
bears this character so distinctly and so appallingly, that the
moral view becomes paramount and excludes every other.
But war is not always, seldom indeed, on both sides, the prod
uct ,of malevolent passions ; and the moral aspect of war is
not the only one to be considered. It has its objective, provi
dential side, which demands the attention of the philosophic
historian. The same divine Teacher, who inculcated peace in
his precepts, acknowledges the historic necessity of war, when
he says, " I am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword."
Wars differ widely in their moral character, according to the
purposes of those who engage in them. There are wicked wars
of vengeance and ambition, and there are also righteous wars
of self-defence. There are idle wars of passion and caprice,
and there are necessary wars of antagonist races, and conflict
ing ideas, principles, religions. The Persian war to the
Greeks was a holy war, — a war of liberty, which decided the
destiny of Hellenic civilization. On the other hand, the Pelo-
ponnesian war was an idle war of rivalry, which decided noth
ing, but proved finally ruinous to all the states engaged in it,
and prepared the way for the downfall of Greece. The Thirty
Years' War, in the seventeenth century, was a necessary war of
principles, which decided for the most intellectual portion of
Europe the momentous question of the right of private judg
ment. But the Seven Years' War of the eighteenth century was
a foolish war of princely ambition and princely spleen, which
cost Europe over a million of lives, and secured to Austria, the
aggressor in that conflict, none of the prizes for which she had
contended.

Besides this antagonism of contrary elements, the progress of
society is further conditioned by a principle of alternation with
in itself which causes it to swing between opposite attractions,
or to gyrate around them as around the foci of an ellipse, and
which makes the development of humanity a series of revolu
tions, instead of a uniform movement in one direction. Hu-

326 The Method of History. [Oct.

manity gains something with each revolution. Each lands
society on a higher plane, and so the course of history becomes
a spiral movement, at once revolutionary and progressive.
There is a periodicity in the alternations of society, a regular
recurrence of the same phases, which indicates a law whose
action is calculable.

An instance of this periodicity is the regular recurrence of
periods of migration, which succeed each other at stated in
tervals in the world's -history, in conformity with a law of de
velopment inherent in society. There never was an age when
migration entirely ceased, but we may distinguish certain
epochs in which it has proceeded with special activity. And
these epochs we shall find to be the natural product of the
social developments which preceded them. The dispersion of
the builders of Babel, in Biblical history, indicates the com
mencement of one of these periods of migration, which seems
to have been a necessary reaction on a period of immature con
centration, when, in Biblical phrase, " the whole earth was of
one speech and one language," and when a city intended to be
a centre of consolidation for the human race was projected on
the plain of Shinar. This migration may be supposed to have
covered a period of five hundred years. The next occurs after
an interval of five centuries, about two thousand years before
the Christian era, and continues, with intermissions and fluc
tuations, and different degrees of activity, for a thousand years.
This great evolution, or series of evolutions, which colonized
Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Palestine, Greece, Italy, and the Grecian
Archipelago, appears to have been a reaction against the exces
sive spiritualism of the old Asiatic politics. It was followed by
a thousand years in which the concentrative tendency again
predominates, and migration, with occasional exceptions, ceases.
Then, again, the excess of sensualism in Greek and Roman
civilization encountered a reaction in Christianity, and Chris
tianity required new races and new regions in and through
which to develop its ideas. And now begins a new exodus
from the North, by which Europe is flooded with the German
and Scandinavian races, and which, with brief interruptions,
occupies another term of nearly a thousand years. The next
five centuries are consumed in consolidating the European

1870.] The Method of History. 327

monarchies, sometimes in antagonism, sometimes in har
mony, but always within the bands of the Church of Rome.
Then Church and State become oppressive ; the human mind,
new-quickened by the recently invented art of printing, reacts
on ecclesiastical tradition, reacts on civil oppression, reacts on
feudal privilege ; a new-found continent invites adventure, and
simultaneously with the Protestant Reformation inaugurates
the last of the migratory epochs now in progress.

In accordance with this outline, instead of the usual divis
ion of history into ancient, mediaeval, and modern, a more phi
losophic arrangement will distinguish four great periods, the
Asiatic, including the early African, the Greco-Roman, the
Germanic, and the American. Of these the first and the third
may be subdivided into an earlier and later Asiatic and Ger
manic.

Another example of periodicity in history is the alternation
of the positive and negative forces of the mind, imagination
and reflection. The old Asiatic civilization discovers in every
province of social life, and in all the action of the human mind,
the predominance of imagination. Life is overshadowed by
huge superstitions ; all is prodigious, titanic, — colossal tem
ples, colossal idols, in which the monstrous predominates over
the beautiful and humane. Everywhere mountainous theocra
cies piled upon poor humanity, absorbing and crystallizing
its best juices. The institutions of society rise frowning and
pitiless like stranded icebergs, while society itself, a scarcely
perceptible stream, creeps lazily out from beneath. In secular
or Japhetic history, the Persian war with the Greeks marks the
boundary line of this era. When Themistocles, by tampering
with the priests at Delphi, could bend the oracle in accord
ance with his plans, the despotism of faith and fate had ceased
for Greece. The secular element thenceforth asserts itself in
civil life. Reflection encounters Imagination in the Gulf of
Salamis, and puts a limit to his sway. There is no excess as
yet of the former faculty, but a happy equilibrium between the
two. Then appeared that miracle of Greek and Roman cul
ture which history is never weary of portraying. Then the
world's genius awoke and lifted up the hands which had hung
down and opened the long silent lips. Then was the blossom

328 The Method of History. [Oct.

time of art and song and philosophy and science ; the age of
the Parthenon, of the Apollo-Belvedere, of Sophocles and Plato,
followed, before its light had utterly gone out, by the age of
Cicero and the first Caesar, and the great Augustan age of Latin
civility and letters. •

But now the negative power acquires a disproportionate as
cendency, imagination grows torpid, art and religion decline,
materialism becomes rampant, all truth and reverence depart
out of life. The poets of Alexandria employ themselves with
shaping verses into eggs and axes. Lucian of Samosata has
turned the Pantheon into a cenotaph. Plutarch inquires " why
the oracles cease to give answers," and a voice from the island
of Paxos proclaims, " Great Pan is dead."

" Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of De'phos leaving,

No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."

The fire is gone out on the altar, the marble sleeps in the
quarry. Come ! Longobards and Franks, from the depths of
the Odenwald and the Black Forest, — come, pour your fresh
life into withered humanity, revive the perished world or
bury it !

The age of reflection ends, and a new era of despotic imagi
nation begins ; . another long cycle wherein the huge and gro
tesque prevails over the beautiful and just. Again the porten
tous misgrowths of time. Farewell to letters and science and
beautiful works of art.

"Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe."

*

The world's stage is cleared for a new act of the great drama.
The actors are harnessed warriors with closed visors and scar
let priests. The old decorations, the storied friezes and Corin
thian capitals, are replaced by the feudal castle, that, perched on
a cliff at the angle of the river, seems a continuation of the rock
itself, wrought by some freak of nature into pinnacles and par
apets. In the valley below the symbol of penal torture is dis
played in the cruciform church. The age of the Argonauts

1870.] The Method of History. 329

reappears in the Crusades. Europe hurls herself upon Asia.
The East and the West contend for the prize of the Holy
Land.

Such was life in those centuries, wild, monstrous, extreme
in devotion and in arms.

" Der Monch und die Nonne zergeisselten sich
Der eiserne Ritter turnierte."

Again there was a day when the empire of imagination re
ceived a check, and impassable limits were set to its sway.
And this time the change was effected by the pen instead of
the sword. And the agent was a German Professor of Phi
losophy. The birthday of the new era was the 31st October,
1517, when Martin Luther nailed to the church at Wittenberg
his nihety-five propositions which reinstated reason and con
science in their long-suppressed rights, opened an irreparable
breach between the Roman and the Saxon mind, and initiated
the second age of reflection, which has not yet expired, and
which comprises the great names of modern literature and sci
ence, from Galileo to Humboldt, from Shakespeare to Goethe.

Such is the method of history. Progress by alternation, by
conflict, by revolution, — always progress. These are the steps
by which Humanity moves in its foreordained path, advancing,
not simultaneously in all its faculties and members, but in one
or another part forever advancing. To what result and final
consummation of its course it is not in the Muse of History to
predict, until perhaps some thousands of years have been
added to her age,

" And old Experience do attain
To something of prophetic strain."

FREDERIC H. HEDGE.

330 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

ART. IY. — CONGRESSIONAL REFORM.

THE adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment seems to have
brought to a fitting close the struggle which has absorbed our
national politics for more than a quarter of a century, and the
relations of the black and white races must now apparently be
left to be adjusted by time. Other problems are pressing for
solution, the neglect of which threatens disasters hardly less
serious than those which we have so lately encountered. In
the first fifty years following the establishment of the Union the
functions of the general government were extremely limited.
The conduct of our foreign affairs and of the moderate army and
navy, the small civil service required for the post-office's and the
collection of the customs, which more than sufficed for the na
tional expenses, — all these went on without much interference
or connection with the mass of internal affairs in the hands of the
States. As the generation of great men born of the Revolution
passed away, the intellectual, if not moral, character, of the oc
cupants of our chief national offices steadily declined. The en
croachments of the slave power and the antislavery agitation
overshadowed all other political interests, and upon this contest
were charged all the increasingly manifest defects of our' Federal
organization. The conservative party accused the abolitionists
of absorbing the time and attention of Congress with their
wrangling, while the latter refused to see any public duty com
parable in importance with opposition to the enemy which, not
only in their view, but in that of foreign nations, threatened
the speedy overthrow of the Republic. It will hardly be denied
that most, if not all, of our prominent political leaders owe their
positions to the tenacity with which for many years they main
tained a stubborn resistance to the slave power. We use the
term " leaders " with reference to Congress, because, as we shall
presently attempt to show, the members of the executive are
not leaders in the sense of directing legislation. Good and
faithful service these men have done, and the country owes and
acknowledges a debt of gratitude. But while the main issue
upon which they fought has been decided in their favor, and
while they are still occupied with theories and experiments of

1870.] Congressional Reform. 331

reconstruction, — a subject which, if not wholly to be left to
time, is at all events of minor importance, — we think there
is through- the country an increasing and painful sense of their
inability to deal with other questions which now occupy the
first rank. The civil service, which has been so vastly in
creased, and the condition of which excites such despairing com
ment ; the diplomatic service, perhaps not too severely charac
terized as the worst known to any civilized nation ; the man-,
agement of the finances, including the public debt, the customs,
considered both as a means of revenue and of protection, and
the currency and banking systems, which have assumed such
formidable proportions ; and, finally, the manner in which pri
vate interests have assumed the control of the government ; —
these all are matters of which the vital importance will not be
disputed. Yet if we look at the manner of conducting business
in Congress, the time consumed in personal contests among
members, the heterogeneous bills and resolutions introduced at
random by any member, and quietly referred to committees ;
if we consider that the real measures to be acted upon are dis
cussed and prepared in secret committees subject to the tre
mendous pressure of private interests, which govern not only
the manner of treatment, but the subjects themselves to be
treated ; and, further, that the measures thus elaborated are re
ported to Congress without any official explanation of the the
ory and arguments upon which they are based, or of their rela
tion to the general plan of legislation ; that debate is suppressed
or amounts only to a mere form ; and that, after lying-in abeyance
during most of the session, these bills are hurried through at
last by a general party vote, and because something must be
done ; — under these circumstances, what hope or prospect is
there of any intelligent, comprehensive, and systematic treat
ment of the great problems which we have just now mentioned ?

The fundamental defect of organization seems to be in the
separation and diffusion of power and responsibility. The de
tails of administration of course should rest with the heads
of the executive departments. The practical operation of
legislative measures must be conducted by them ; and as the
efficiency or the reverse of the subordinate agencies must be
better known to them and better judged of by them than any

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 22

332 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

one else, the individual changes and appointments and the
method of conducting business should be, in a great measure,
under their guidance. Under our system these heads of depart
ments have little or no power. In the expression of their wishes,
they are limited to their annual reports, which Congress can
attend to or not as it pleases, and to private interviews with the
committees. Should these committees fail to adopt their views,
or should they even report bills adverse to them, the officials
have no remedy whatever, but must accept and carry out what
ever measures Congress sees fit to adopt. They may, it is true,
complain in their next report ; but as this not very dignified
proceeding does not compel Congress to defend its course, the
country presumes that the right is on the side of the collective
wisdom. Having thus but little power, heads of departments
cannot be held to any strict responsibility. Whatever the fail
ures of a secretary's administration, except in cases so flagrant
as to justify extreme measures, Congress has no power of call
ing him to account ; nor can it obtain from him any explanations
or information, unless by messages in response to cumbrous
resolutions, which messages probably reach Congress only after
it has passed on to, and is absorbed by, other business.

Turning next to Congress, we find that the initiative of legis
lation, which should properly belong to the chief official of the
branch of the public service to be affected, actually belongs to
nobody in particular. Any member may introduce a bill or
resolution upon any subject in which he feels an interest. A
dozen of these may be presented upon the same subject, which
differ entirely from one another. The member who presents a
bill usually feels called upon to accompany it with a speech.
This takes up the time of the body, but, except as stating his
views to his constituents, has no practical effect, because the real
measure to be acted upon is to come from a committee. All
these promiscuous bills and resolutions are referred to commit
tees, and as the real work is done in them, Congress is at liberty
to divide its time between " bunkum " speeches and personal
contests, which together make up the bulk of its proceedings.*

* u To keep a legislature efficient, it must have a sufficient supply of substantial
business. If you employ the best set of men to do nearly nothing, they will quar
rel with each other about that nothing." — The English Constitution, by W. BAGE-
HOT. London, 1869.

1870.] Congressional Reform. 333

The preparation of legislative measures in committees is
perhaps indispensable, but the manner of conducting this prep
aration, and the extent to which it is carried, seem to be
open to the gravest objection. All the new material, includ
ing reports of secretaries and the propositions of individual
members, are thrown into this retort. Each subject of legisla
tion is handed over to a few men, who give it their special at
tention. Private interests, which would be almost powerless
if they had to deal with the whole body of members acting
openly before the country, find their labors greatly simplified,
and as the work of committees is done in secret, the efforts of
the lobby are effectually screened from the public eye. The
committees are composed wholly of members of Congress,
each amenable to a small section of constituents, and naturally
attending more to the interests of these than to those of the
whole country. It is natural, also, that the committees should
be led to report measures likely to meet the approbation of the
Houses as actually composed, rather than such as being in
themselves just and expedient, may yet be unpopular with
members, and require the aid of public opinion to force their
adoption. Could there be an arrangement more suited to in
duce corruption, direct or indirect? When these measures,
thus adjusted upon a balance of special interests, rather than
upon general principles of equity, are reported to the houses,
it is again quite natural that debate should be suppressed.
Public discussion is not the ordeal with reference to which the
bills have been framed, and even if there is opposition, it is
from individuals, and is neutralized by the shades of difference
between them. There is no leader to gather up the dissenti
ents and oppose their united force to an obnoxious bill. Mem
bers who have no direct interest resign themselves to voting
with their party, being shielded from responsibility through the
enforced ignorance of their constituents. It often happens, —
indeed it is almost always the case with the most important
measures, — that bills are held over to the end of the session
from the known uncertainty of commanding support, and then
rushed through because opposition is hopeless. When legisla
tion of this kind, without any general plan or defined purpose,
is handed over to a secretary, who has hitherto had no official

334 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

share in it, to be carried out as he hest may, how is it possible
that the best talents of the country can be secured in the de
partments ? It will of course be said that it is the office of the
public press to keep the people informed concerning measures,
and to guide them in the elections. But not to mention that
the press is quite as often interested to mislead as to enlighten,
it is out of the question that any considerable proportion of the
people should read or digest the differing views of hundreds of
journals. Congress is the real centre at which the people should
learn the reasons of legislation, and get the means of judging
of the conduct, principles, and abilities of their representatives.
Under the present system no such facilities are afforded them.
The questions of slavery and the war were perfectly simple.
'The people comprehended these, and the manner in which they
performed their duty, and the sacrifices which they cheerfully
made for the right, give us every reason to be hopeful, wher
ever the popular will and intelligence can be brought to bear.
But the questions which are now pressing upon us are techni
cal, and call for the exercise of statesmanship. It is of no use
to call upon public opinion, because the people do not under
stand the subjects, and require to be led.

The general principle which we would indicate as the start
ing-point of reform is this, that the Executive, which represents
the whole people, as distinct from members of Congress, who
represent their several bodies of constituents, should have a
direct voice in the shaping of legislation, and should to the
same extent be held responsible for its results. To illustrate
the idea, we will take the office of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Suppose that instead of sending in an annual written report,
he were to state his views orally before the House, and that
one or more days were afterwards set apart for the discussion
of the views presented. He should be open to cross-examina
tion by any member, and thus the general nature and prin
ciples of the legislation proposed might be sifted and discussed
in the presence of the country. Thenceforward, at stated in
tervals during the session, he should be present in the 'House in
order to explain, either of his own motion, or in answer to in
quiry, the working of the machinery of his department, and of
acts previously passed, and to suggest such improvements, and

1870.] Congressional Reform. 335

ask for such further powers as he might deem necessary. The
Secretary should further have the right of attendance^ at the
meeting, not only of the Committee of Ways and Means, but
of all other committees upon business connected with his de
partment. With such a position and such responsibility, not
only would he have no sympathy with the private interests at
work upon the committees, but his interest being identified
with the success of his administration, he would be directly
opposed to them. If the bills thus prepared and reported to
the House were in accordance with the views of the Secretary,
it would be for his interest that they should be thoroughly dis
cussed and explained, not only to members, but to the country
at large. He would, therefore, desire that certain days, sep
arated by an interval of a week or more, should be set apart
for the first, second, and third readings of bills, in order that
members might not only inform themselves, but gather the
sense of their constituents. If, on the other hand, the bills
were adverse to the plans of the Secretary, it would be for him
to point out the defects, to propose amendments, or to urge the
recommitment 'of the subject. Supposing his opposition to rep
resent the interest of the country as against private combina
tion, he would serve as a rallying-point for the independent
members, who have now no means of uniting their forces. It
is evident that such a position would call for ability of the first
class. The shield which is now held before mediocrity by iso
lation, and by the fact that the Secretary is a mere instrument
for carrying out the plans of others, — plans in forming which
he has had but little influence, and for which he cannot, there
fore, be held responsible, — would be removed. A man who had
not a clear and definite policy, and the ability to defend it,
would be overwhelmed by the attacks and criticisms to which
he would be exposed. On the other hand, the opportunity for
ability to make itself felt would furnish an attraction for the
highest class of intellect. The demands made upon the oppo
sition, also, would tend to bring the foremtfst men to the front,
and would direct the choice of the President in the formation
of new Cabinets, in place of his being left, as now, to select
members almost at random. Candidates for the Presidency
would also be presented upon their own merits, instead of upon

336 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

the " availability " which nominating conventions usually find
in utter obscurity.* Congressional proceedings, instead of be
ing regarded as now almost with contempt, as having no practi
cal result, would be read with interest, as a key to the spirit of
legislation. A new basis would also be given for the method .of
congressional elections, and relief might be furnished from the
present system of nominations in caucus. A fundamental dif
ference between Congress and the Secretary might involve the
resignation of the latter, and it may be urged that this would
be inconsistent with our form of government by fixed terms, —
an objection to which we shall recur presently.

Meantime we propose to consider some instances of the work
ing of our present system, and the manner in which the remedy
suggested may be expected to operate. To begin with the di
plomatic service. In an article which appeared in this Review,!
Mr. Henry Brooks Adams gave the history of an attempt com
menced by Mr. Everett in 1853 to establish a system of con
sular, pupils. The effort was often repeated through a period
of ten years by Mr. Marcy, Mr. Cass, and Mr. Seward, the
process and the result being constantly the same. The Secre
tary, by great efforts with the Senate committee, would induce

* The London Economist of June 4, after praising the conduct of General Grant
during the Fenian invasion of Canada, remarks : —

" But enough has happened since his election to show that he is by no means
equal to exerting influence at all, good or bad, on a great many of the most im
portant political questions of the day, — finance, for instance, among the first ;
and it is quite certain that if America had had equal means of knowing the firm
ness and constancy and good sense of any generally informed politician, the choice
of such a man as President would have been already full of benefit to the country,
which General Grant, from the extreme limitation of his political knowledge and
interest, has not been able to confer. A statesman as well known to the people as
General Grant — as well known to Americans, say, as Mr. Gladstone is to us
— would have had quite equal confidence in himself and in his countrymen, and
would, besides, have felt that confidence on a hundred other subjects on which the
expression of an authoritative judgment would at once turn the scale of public
opinion. What American institutions seem to us to want most, is the means of
familiarizing the country with such statesmen. And this we do not see how the
Republic can ever have, till it gives to Congress the paramount importance attach
ing to a body which elects and can remove the administration/' The form of this
conclusion is not what we should adhere to, but we agree to its substance, namely,
that statesmen should be found and made known to the public by open debate in
Congress.

t October, 1869.

1870.] Congressional Reform. 337

it to bring in a bill for the purpose ; but there would be no
body to support or defend it, and it would fall under the shal
low rhetoric of individuals who feared it might conflict with the
congressional power of appointment. Finally, under Mr. Sew-
ard, a bill was forced through both houses. The system worked
well, consular pupils were appointed, some of great promise
were trained, and three of them appointed to office ; within a
short period, however, two out of the three were sacrificed to the
political jobbery of rotation in,office. Probably not one person
in ten thousand in this country knows anything of this history.
But if the Secretary of State had held a place in the Senate with
or without a vote, and had been thus in a position to defend his
plans, the country would have known the merits of the case,
and would, or at least might, have secured a different result.

We will quote two other cases before quitting foreign affairs.
The result of the treaty with Denmark, as to the island of St.
Thomas, is most mortifying to our national pride. The Danes
were at first very reluctant to treat. By persistent efforts, how
ever, Mr. Seward induced them to entertain proposals. The
price was arranged, a vote of the inhabitants of the island
taken, and the affair was supposed to be concluded, when lo !
the Senate refused to confirm the treaty, and the Danes were
informed, to their astonishment, that, in consequence of this, all
previous negotiations must go for nothing. One may easily
judge how ready foreign nations will henceforth be to deal with
our State Department ! Had Mr. Seward occupied a place in
the Senate, taking part in its deliberations, and being himself
open to question, he could not, at least without great personal
obloquy, have taken any step, unless the refusal or consent of
the Senate had been previously rendered certain. Again, Mr.
Sumner's speech upon the Alabama question created the great
est excitement in England. It was hardly possible for an
Englishman to conceive that so important a speech, made by
our leading statesman on the subject of foreign affairs, could be
utterly without significance as regards the policy of the govern
ment. Had the Secretary of State been present in the Senate,
he must have committed the government either directly or by
silence, or, on the other hand, must have disarmed the attack
by positive dissent. Indeed, in that case Mr. Suniner would

338 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

probably never have made the speech, without being sure whether
it expressed the views of the government.

The diplomatic service suffers in common with the civil ser
vice from perhaps the greatest evil which afflicts our national
affairs, — rotation in office for political purposes. Mr. Adams
points out, in the article referred to, the fearful development to
which this system has attained. He describes it as the result
of the usurpation by the legislature of the powers of the execu
tive, and states, as we think justly, that unless checked it will
certainly result in national corruption and decay, and the ulti
mate overthrow of the government. Having read with interest
his statement of.the facts, we looked eagerly for a corresponding
indication of the remedy. But in this he seems to us to have
failed. His points are, first, that the President, resisting legis
lative influence, should himself institute a competitive exami
nation for office, or some other method of appointment, if any
other appear preferable ; and, secondly, that a sound public
opinion should force Congress to keep its hands off of the func
tions of the executive. As to the first remedy, he admits that
we have never had, and probably never may have, a President
less trammelled by his antecedents, a person of more resolute
firmness, than General Grant ; and yet that the President has
been forced to succumb completely. As to public opinion,
the elections are now managed by office-seeking politicians,
availing themselves of party questions as their instrument.
Moreover, although the country is aware of the existing cor
ruption and laments it, very few persons know anything of
the details of the process by which General Grant has for the
first time been brought to a surrender. How can Congress,
constituted and elected as that body is, be brought by public
opinion to give up a power which constitutes its very life ? We
believe that the Executive must fight its own battles. If under
the present system it is too weak to do so, a fair field must be
furnished it in which it may state its case before the people, in
order that it may throw itself upon the country. In 1868 Mr.
Jenckes, of Rhode Island, introduced a bill for the reform of
the civil service, which was hailed by the country with delight.
It was referred to a committee, from which place of retirement
it has once or twice emerged, only to be summarily recommit-

1870.] Congressional Reform. 339

ted. Mr. Adams thinks that it is not suited to accomplish its
object. But if it were never so much so, it would have no bet
ter chance of success. Even if a committee could be induced
to report it, it would encounter the fiercest opposition from al
most the entire House, and there is nothing in the position of
Mr. Jenckes or of any other member which would give him the
authority of a leader to unite the scattered forces of the minor-,
ity. We suppose the department most interested in the civil
service to be the Treasury. If the Secretary of the Treasury
were to introduce into the House in person a measure of re
form, pointing out, as no one ought to be able to do better, the
evils of the existing system, and the necessity of the change
for the proper administration of his department, the vote of
every member would be carefully watched by his constituents,
and he would be held to a strict account. If Congress refused
to adopt the measure, the Secretary would appeal to the country,
both in debate in the House and by speeches in the intervals
of sessions, — a practice of " stumping " which, as soon as he
became an active member of the government, would cease to
have that undignified appearance which it now presents.

One of the departments of our government administration
which causes the most pain and humiliation to humane and pa
triotic citizens is that of Indian Affairs. It is charged that our
treaties with the tribes, even when well made, are badly exe
cuted ; that the agents intrusted with the payment of pensions,
etc., are of the most corrupt kind ; and it is evident that when
the Indians, exasperated by repeated acts of treachery and op
pression, resort to hostilities, an Indian war furnishes a golden
harvest to thousands of adventurers seeking to fatten upon the
government expenditure. Nominally, this branch of adminis
tration belongs to the Secretary of the Interior. He has, how
ever, no power of proposing to, and demanding of, Congress and
the country a settled scheme of policy which shall remedy these
abuses. On the other hand, there is no one in Congress who
can be held directly responsible. Members may vent their in
dignation, but it falls harmless upon the committee who have
charge of the subject, because the difficulty may be either in the
scheme of policy or in the execution of it ; and the former being
in the control of the committee, and the latter iu that of the

340 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

Secretary, neither is responsible for the results of the policy
adopted.

The enormous grants of land to railways, which are exciting
so much comment, furnish another illustration in point. Each
one passes through on its own merits, if the word is not a mis
nomer ; or if there is anything like concert of action, it is amo'ng
the various interests which lend each other support for the pur
pose of avoiding opposition. Anything like a permanent and
comprehensive policy is not possible to Congress and its com
mittees of constantly cTianging members, mostly little familiar
with precedents. It is true the members of the Cabinet change
also,, but the necessities of executive administration require a
more connected system, and with junction of power and re
sponsibility, a traditional policy would be likely to arise, in
which past experience would be brought to bear upon present
and future action.

With the view of " seeing ourselves as others see us," we
will quote, with reference to another department, an extract
from the Pall Mall Gazette of April 22d : — -

" Instances are occurring every day illustrative of that peculiar fea
ture of the Presidential or American form of government which excludes
the ministers of the executive from the legislative chambers. The
manner in which the funding and tariff bills are just now faring at the
hands of irresponsible members in Congress, and the inconsistent and
contradictory resolutions so frequently adopted in both houses with re
gard to them, while the Secretary of the Treasury, who has to adminis
ter the finances of the country, is obliged to look idly on, are cases in
point. But perhaps an equally good illustration is afforded by the at
tempted army legislation of the present session. About a year ago the
strength of the United States military forces was reduced by the dis-
bandment of twenty regiments. The officers of these regiments, how
ever, were all refained in the service, to the number of five hundred.
Their annual pay amounts in the aggregate to about a quarter of a mil
lion sterling. As they were not needed, General Logan, the chairman
of the Military Committee of the House of Representatives, shortly
after the meeting of Congress, in December last, introduced a bill for
saving this sum. He did not propose to dismiss the identical officers
whom the chances of disbandment had left without employment. The
principle he adopted was that a carefully organized board was to be
appointed, and to it was to be remitted the duty of selecting the five

1870.] Congressional Reform. 341

hundred officers whose services could best be dispensed with. They
were then to be mustered out, receiving a year's pay and allowances
as compensation. The bill passed the House with remarkable unanim
ity, and was approved by the press of the country generally. But when
it came to the Senate, it was there met by Mr. Wilson with a rival
scheme. In the first place, Mr. Wilson proposes to reduce the army
still further, fixing its strength at 25,000 men. In the second place,
he proposes to make it optional with officers to retire or not ; and in the
third place, instead of a year's pay and allowances, he would give only
six months in some cases, while he would allow eighteen months in others.
But not only does Mr. Wilson propose to reduce the army still further,
contrary to the declared opinion of General Sherman, and at the same
time fail to secure the reduction of taxation which the House bill aimed
at, he actually provides for the appointment of more officers in the staff
corps. These corps were constituted in 1866, on the calculation that the
army was to consist of 75,000 men. When last year the army was re
duced to about 35,000, it was enacted that no vacancy should be filled up
until the proportion before existing should be again attained. But Sen
ator Wilson's bill repeals the prohibition of new appointments in three
out of seven of the corps. General Sherman has strongly condemned
this bill, and it is believed that the President is equally opposed to it.
Nevertheless, it is expected that it will pass the Senate. We shall then
see one principle of legislation adopted by the House, and another by the
Senate, and both generally believed to be disapproved by those who have
to carry on the government of the country."

Whether the facts are here correctly stated or not, it is cer
tainly a fair example of much of our legislation. It may be said
that committees of conference reconcile the differences between
the two Houses ; but these committees, like all others, work
in secret, and their aim is generally compromise rather than
sound principles or the interest of the whole country, especially
as there is an increasing jealousy between the two Houses.
Besides they are still in no way obliged to consult the wishes of
the Executive.

Second only to the civil service in importance, if second to that,
is the department of the finances. In the case of the civil
service, however, the question is comparatively simple, while
the questions involved in the conduct of the finances require the
application of abstruse principles both of theory and practice,
— at once the technical knowledge of the merchant with the ana-

342 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

lytical and philosophical qualities of the student. The amount
of writing upon this subject which has appeared in the last five
years is truly astounding, and there is no authority which can
distinguish between the wildest fustian and the soundest reason
ing based upon experience. The public stands completely be
wildered among the multiplicity of doctors, and sees no other
course than to reject the whole and to adopt the expectant
system, with faith in our national resources, and a patient hope
that matters will in the end come right of themselves. It is
safe to say, however, that matters will not come right of them
selves. The late Mr. Cobden is said to have remarked that
the United States have suffered more from the evils of a bad
currency than from slavery itself; and if we may assume that
all our previous violations of the laws of currency have been
trifling compared with those which have been committed since
the war broke out, — though it may be rash to predict in what
form the disaster will come, — we can hardly expect that in
sowing the wind we shall escape the harvest of the whirlwind,
When we come to Congress the popular confusion is merely
concentrated. The cardinal points of Mr. BoutwelPs policy are
a bill for refunding the debt at a lower rate of interest, the
maintenance of taxation at full rates with a view to obtaining
a large surplus for reducing the. debt, and the selling of the
surplus gold in the treasury, for the double purpose of de
pressing the price and obtaining means for the purchase of
bonds. On all these points it is of the utmost importance that
the views and plans of the Secretary should be fully and pub
licly explained. We have yet to see in the public press any
expression of confidence in the funding scheme. It is of very
doubtful practicability. The saving proposed is some ten or
twelve millions, which, at a time when our surplus is one hun
dred millions, and the treasury is giving away more than the
sum first named to the national banks upon their circulation, does
not seem to be an object of vital importance. If the scheme
has any bearing upon a return to specie payments, which we
believe it has not, as neither Congress nor the country has any
clear idea of the method of its action, this is precisely the
kind of point which a Secretary should be called on to explain.
A funding bill was passed in the Senate, shorn of some of the

1870.] Congressional Reform. 343

main features which Mr. Boutwell was understood to desire.
It was brought in by Mr. Sherman and defended by him in a
half-hearted way, chiefly upon the ground that the Secretary
was daily pressing him for its passage. As to the House, for
weeks and weeks the public were entertained with the pros
pects of a bill being brought in by the committee, and with
rumors as to Mr. BoutwelPs hopes, wishes, and fears. The
whole session, in fact, was spent in waiting for bills from inde
pendent committees on subjects which should be treated as a
whole. Bills upon funding, upon the tariff, upon internal tax
ation, and upon the currency, wholly without reference to, and
even contradictory of, one another, are brought in just at the
close of the session, while the debates of the entire season
have turned upon the fancies and merits of individual mem
bers. As a consequence of this, when the time of real debate
comes, in. which, from the absence of leadership, every member
feels entitled to have his say, whether relevant or not, it be
comes necessary to limit the speeches to fifteen minutes, or
some short time, in which it is impossible that the subject
should be intelligently treated. Thus it happened, last July,
that in a few days were passed a tax and tariff bill, which, in
volving as it does a large loss of revenue, — unless this should
be made up by increased productiveness, — and therefore direct
ly opposed to Mr. Boutwell's policy, was yet prepared upon no
general plan which the country could understand ; a currency
bill which may call for forty-five millions of dollars, and yet
provides no source from which this sum shall be derived, and
which has no apparent relation to the grand object of specie
payments, its ostensible purpose being to satisfy certain indi
viduals or classes who think themselves entitled to banking
privileges ; and a funding bill, which, while transparently im
practicable, is deprived of the two features which alone gave
it a chance of success, foreign agencies and compulsory funding
by the banks. As these were two features which Mr. Boutwell
especially insisted upon, of course he cannot be held responsi
ble for any failure of the measure. Is it to be expected that
men of first-class abilities will submit to be treated in that way ?
As to the point of responsibility, Mr. Boutwell began a year ago
to buy up a large amount of bonds in excess of the sinking fund,

344 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

giving out that they would be held as a " special fund at the dis
posal of Congress." No action was taken by Congress upon this
course for a long time, until finally it was glided over by ordering
all the bonds in the sinking and special funds to be cancelled.

It remains, finally, to consider the objections which may be
urged against the proposed innovation. The first remark of
everybody to whom it is suggested is, that it is the English
system. There is, however, quite enough of difference between
the two systems to save us from an infringement of patent, and
we think that ours admits of decided improvement upon the
original. In England, the office of the sovereign being perma
nent, the appointments to office and the change of adminis
tration rest with the Prime Minister. A defeat of the govern
ment, therefore, upon any one point, involves a resignation and
a new formation of the whole Cabinet. If the country is dis
satisfied with the Home Department, this may cause a change
of the secretary for India, notwithstanding that this office may
be filled in the most satisfactory manner. This defect in the
English system has been often noticed, but it is so bound up with
their Constitution that no remedy has as yet been devised.
Under our system it does not appear that the resignation of a
single official would require an entire change of the Cabinet.
But even if the Secretary were to continue to hold office in case
of a defeat, he would be no worse off than at present, and the
election of a new Congress would, within a short period, give
the final decision of the country.

Another peculiarity of the English system is, that the Cabinet
is virtually elected by the legislature. If the Ministry is de
feated, it may appeal to the country by a dissolution, but the
men indicated by the. voice of Parliament must succeed to
office sooner or later. The nominal executive, the sovereign,
has no longer in practice the use of the veto. He can oppose
Parliament only through a dissolution, while over the House
of Lords, as against the popular will, he holds the rod of a
possible fresh creation of peers. Apparently, therefore, the
Executive is wholly under the control of the House of Com
mons. But the protection against this consists in the presence
in that House, and the participation in debate, of Cabinet offi
cers. The Ministers have the power of appeal to the ultimate

1870.] Congressional Reform. 345

tribunal, the people ; and if they can satisfy the latter, either as
to the merits of their case or as to their own ability and integ
rity, they can defend themselves against Parliament through
the electors. Thus the Irish Land Bill was not at all likely to
be popular in either house of Parliament. But " the British
electors had had time to consider, and though they did not
understand the bill, and do not understand it now, they did
understand that the Premier in proposing it was within the
range of his genius, and they warned all recalcitrant liberals,
in a low but perfectly audible growl, that under those circum
stances their function was not opposition to the government, but
silent' voting in its support. " * If the Ministers had been ex
cluded from Parliament, it is very possible that the Corn Laws
might have been in existence to this day.

The English writers, in comparing their own system with
the " Presidential," assume that under the latter no such
arrangements are possible, on the ground that the executive is
chosen by the people at regular intervals, and cannot be re
moved ; that heads of departments being appointed by him,
even if Congress should compel the resignation of an obnox
ious official, they cannot compel the President to a change of
policy ; and that if a sudden crisis of affairs occurs, which in
England is met by a change of Ministry, the fixed terms of
office prevent such a change here. It seems to us that the dif
ference is not in principle, but in form. Our terms of office are
short enough to preclude any very great harm from fixity of
tenure. The main point is to bring the questions At issue di
rectly before the people, and the evil of a brief delay in the
elections may well be no greater than that which may arise
from a too hasty change of Ministry through a sudden reversal
of a Parliamentary majority.

It may be objected that such a change is contrary to both
the letter and the spirit of our institutions. The Constitution
of the United States has nothing in reference to the subject
unless it be in the clause, " all bills for raising revenue shall
originate in the House of Representatives," and to this we
shall presently refer. We have been able to discover nothing
adverse to it in the rules and orders of the Houses. The

* The Spectator, June 4.

346 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

" Federalist " is silent upon this point, though in Paper XL VII.,
which was written by Mr. Madison, there is a sentence which
has an interesting bearing upon it. At that time the great
object of public apprehension was the power of the Executive,
and the aim was to separate wholly the powers of each depart
ment. Mr. Madison says : " I shall undertake to show that,
unless these departments be so far connected and blended
as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the.
degree of separation which the maxim requires as essential
to a 'free government can never in practice be duly main
tained." If the view we have taken is correct, the prediction
has been strikingly verified. In the debate in the House of
Representatives on the establishment of the Treasury Depart
ment, June 25, 1789, the question was upon the duty of the
Secretary " to digest and report plans for the improvement and
management of the revenue and the support of the public
credit." The arguments against the clause' were based on jeal
ousy of the Executive. It was said that all revenue bills must
originate with the House, that it did not consist with the dig
nity of that body that its work should be dictated by a public
officer, and that with his superior information a Secretary might
deceive and mislead the House to the most injurious measures.
On the other hand, it was contended that a bill was not " origi
nated " till it had passed the House, and that the mere propo
sal of measures by any person did not interfere with this ; that
it was perfectly open to the House to amend or reject the meas
ures proposed by the Secretary ; and that as the House would
be constantly refilled with new members from local and distant
constituencies, their want of knowledge would expose them to
the most serious mistakes, the best preventive of which would
be the guidance of an official possessing the requisite informa
tion and experience. Mr. Hartley replied to the last argu
ment by one of those general propositions which show that the
present Congress only retains something of the original spirit.
It was possible, he said, that there might be injurious mistakes
in finance, " but I would rather submit to this evil than, by my
voice, establish tenets subversive of the liberties of my coun
try." Another argument apparently needed to be developed
by time, that the absence of crystallizing power in the oppos-

1870.] Congressional Reform. 347

» »

ing views of members from the want of leadership would pre
vent them from arriving at any intelligent and definite conclu
sion. On the 21st of September, Mr. Hamilton, then Secre
tary of the Treasury, informed the Houses that he had prepared,
as requested, a report on the public credit, and the question
arose how it should be received. In favor of oral communica
tion, it was urged that members would not be able to under
stand the subject-matter without explanations ; but in favor of
a written communication, it was replied that the topics were too
abstruse and too complicated for oral treatment, and that the
main report, as well as all explanations, should be given in
writing. It does not seem to have been suggested that both
methods might be combined with advantage. Thus casually
appears to have been settled the policy of the* government in
this respect. In establishing the Departments of War and For
eign Affairs, this point appears not to Jiave been touched upon,
the long debate in the House in the latter case having turned
upon the question whether the Secretary should be removable
by the President. That both the Secretary and the President
did attend the meetings of the Senate we learn from the fol
lowing items: " Tuesday, July 21, 1789. Ordered, That the
Secretary for Foreign Affairs attend the Senate to-morrow and
bring with him such papers as are requisite, " etc. With which
request the Secretary complied ; and again on Saturday, Au
gust 22d : " The President of the United States came into the
Senate Chamber, attended by General Knox, and laid before
the Senate the following statement of facts." We find no later
record of any such attendance, but these cases at least serve to
show that the exclusion of the Executive from the Houses was
not originally insisted upon.

If, then, there is nothing in our laws or precedents contrary
to the proposed reform, we have next to*inquire how it could
be brought about. Supposing the experiment to commence
with the Treasury, it is evident that it requires a disposition on
the part of the Secretary, because it is not to be expected that
Congress should force him to take the step. But the advan
tages to a Secretary desirous of carrying out a definite policy are
so obvious, that a man must sooner or later be found who will
prefer them to the shelter given to incapacity by the present

YOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 23

348 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

system. On the part of Congress a corresponding disposition
can hardly be expected. The measure is directly antagonistic to
the private interests which hold such sway in the existing confu
sion, and almost equally so to the principles of election to which
many members owe their seats. We venture to assume, how
ever, that there are some members superior to any considera
tions lower than the interest of their country. One such mem
ber, having an understanding with the Secretary, might intro
duce a resolution to the effect that the Secretary be requested
to make his annual report orally to the House, and to appear in
that body on one day of each week thereafter during the ses
sion, for the purpose of making explanations, answering inqui
ries, and reporting progress in relation to the affairs of his
department. If Congress should refuse to adopt this, it would
be a legitimate ground for a canvass of the country, both by
the Secretary himself, by members and others who should per
ceive its advantages, and by the public press. It would have the
merits of simplicity and directness as compared with the com
plicated details upon which the public are now required to form
a judgment. Supposing this measure to have been at last
forced upon Congress, some other points suggest themselves as
to its working. If the fear of executive influence be still
urged as in 1789, we answer that the increased responsibility
would fully offset this. The cloak to incompetency furnished
by isolation would be removed. A Secretary who should favor
the maintenance of excessive taxation for the sake of buying
up debt at a large premium, the .placing the management of
our debt in the hands of foreign agents, and the selling of
Treasury gold when the actual balance at his command was
less than live per cent of the paper money afloat, would be
required to give full and satisfactory reasons for his policy. If
the head of any department failed to secure a majority in Con
gress, it would be open to the President to appoint another man.
If, however, the President and the Secretary were in accord
that the latter should not resign, he might accept as now,
though under protest, what measures he could secure from
Congress, or he might allow matters to stand until a new elec
tion either of Congress or the Executive, while in the mean
time the opinion of the country would be forming. The same

1870.] Congressional Reform. 349

course would apply in the case of the entire Cabinet. That the
system would not work here precisely as it does in England
seems to be no argument against its adoption. As many bills
have to pass both Houses, it might be necessary for some mem
bers to attend in both Houses, though it seems that the Secre
tary of State would need to appear only in the Senate.

It may be further objected that the system is inconsistent
with our method of doing business by committees. In England
it is not the practice to refer different classes of business to
special committees. Occasionally a select committee is ap
pointed for some special business, but every subject of impor
tance is debated in Committee of the Whole. The result is that
the House of Commons is greatly overworked. The sittings
last from about noon till two and even four o'clock in the morn
ing, and this day after day ; yet only a fraction of the mass of
pressing business can be got through with. Of course, human
strength cannot bear this, and there is much discussion as to
the remedy. One of the means suggested is that of appointing
special committees for different departments ; but the objection
is advanced as final, that the grand object of publicity would
suffer ; that the business must necessarily be conducted in
secret ; and that thus the country would lose the requisite infor
mation as io the several objects of legislation. We believe, or
at least hope, that the objection is not insuperable. The chair
man of a committee is the person who now reports and explains
the results of its deliberations, and many persons believe that
he corresponds to the English Cabinet Minister. But the dif
ference is fundamental. Such a chairman has, or needs to
have, but one object, — that of securing the passage of the bill ;
the Secretary would have quite a different one, — that of pro
moting the successful administration of his department. The
chairman is interested in but one bill or set of bills ; the Sec
retary would be equally interested in everything pertaining to
his department. The chairman has an interest in the tempo
rary measure of the moment ; the Secretary would be guided
by the past traditions and the permanent policy of his office,.
It is likewise to be remembered that no chairman can hold a
position of leadership to the whole House. If, therefore, the
head of a department were to attend the meetings of the various

350 Congressional Reform. [Oct.

committees in which he was interested, while he would endeavor
to reconcile their action, he would also upon their reporting
to Congress stand ready to enforce or correct it, and give such
information as would lead to intelligent response on the part of
members and the country.

One great advantage from the change would, we think,
appear in the improved tone of congressional proceedings. A
Secretary, anxious to gain supporters for a plan of administra
tion, would use courtesy in debate, at least in form, as one of
the simplest and most obvious of instruments ; and the same
would be true of a leader of opposition. It would be a new
and not unworthy experiment in Congress of the manner in
which " a soft answer turneth away wrath."

Other objections to the scheme, of more or less force, may
doubtless be raised ; and we may have stated too strongly, as
probable results, what might be more properly described as
tendencies ; but we ask whether any more practicable plan be
proposed to meet existing evils ? In France, under the impe
rial system, the executive absorbed the legislature, so that the
meetings of the Chambers were little more than a form, while
in this country we have to encounter precisely the opposite
evil. We are by no means blind admirers of the English Con
stitution., and were it our present object we could, doubtless,
point out evils in the state of English society as great as those
from which we suffer. But when we consider what has been
accomplished under that government ; that for more than two
centuries, while the rest of Europe has been torn with the
struggle between the spirit of feudalism and democracy, Eng
land has been free from violent social revolution ; that one
great danger after another, threatening to involve the whole
social fabric in the contest, has been successfully dealt with by
• a process of continued reform ; and that, even now, questions far
more intricately involved with the interests of classes and the
traditions of the past than any now before us are being grap
pled with, not without a good hope, and, at all events, with an
earnest purpose of success ; — when we consider this, it seems
well worth while to examine if there is not some feature of
their system which we can adopt with advantage. That we
have need of some remedy, that the country is greatly dissatis-

1870.] Congressional Reform. 351

fied with the proceedings of Congress, and looks with increasing
disgust upon the ways of politicians, we think, may be safely
assumed. May we not hope for the growth of a party of the
country, which shall have for its object the restoration of the
true relation between the executive and the legislature ?

One method of reform has been proposed and widely dis
cussed under the general name of representation of minorities,
or in detail as the cumulative, the preferential, and the limited
methods of voting. But, without particularly discussing these,
we may say that they seem to have one defect in common, that
they do not provide for nominations. The difficulty to be met
is not so much that large classes are unrepresented, as that
people will not vote. The voters have nothing to guide them,
except the nominations in caucus, which are, in great part, such
that respectable men prefer not to vote at all. The new meth
ods of voting do not, as it seems to us, provide for this evil.
There is nothing to lead a member Of Congress, however able,
industrious, or patriotic he may be, to hope that the exertion
of these qualities will secure for him advancement to high
posts of honor and responsibility in his country's service. In
like manner the absence of a real field for the display of these
qualities prevents the country from concentrating its attention
upon its ablest men. And both these causes combine to deter
the best men from seeking the public service. But members of
Congress must be chosen, and votes must be concentrated in
some way. And so it happens that the spoils of office, down to
the lowest grade, are employed and desperately clung to by
inferior men, who have yet the talent for using this method of
securing votes, — a method which tends constantly to degrade
both voters and officials.

We have endeavored to show that it is by connecting the
executive with the legislature, and by giving publicity to
debate, by opening to public competition prizes which shall
call out and stimulate the best talent,, and by placing the
people, than whom there is none in the world more competent
than our own, in a position to judge of and reward the exer
tions of its servants, — that it is by such means that we must
hope once more to attract our voters to the ballot-box, and to se
cure a solution of the great and pressing questions of the day.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD.

352 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

ART. Y. — ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY AND ENGLISH LABOR.

THAT a nation the most wealthy on earth should allow a
vast proportion of its inhabitants to languish in a state of pov
erty the most abject and the most hopeless ; that the nation
which claims the first rank among free states should suffer to
exist throughout its rural population a degree of degradation
hardly, if at all, removed from absolute slavery, is matter of
special wonder. Yet such is, and such has long been, the con
dition of England. After centuries of suffering, volumes of
discussion, and statutes without number, the question how to
deal with this state of things is pressing most alarmingly on
the government of that country, and exciting intense interest
all over the civilized world. It is becoming the question for
England, and one of graver import has never presented itself.
Is it or is it not to be solved ? Is there or is there not any
way of accounting for this strange anomaly ? We think that
there is, and that the clew to it is furnished in a remark which
is attributed to Mr. Disraeli.

That gentleman is reported to have said that the population
of England is made up of two nations. What is meant by this
assertion, and what is now the relative position of these two
nations, are the questions which this paper is intended to dis
cuss. We will begin with the account we have of the state of
England soon after its abandonment by the Romans.

Mr. Sharon Turner proves by quotations from Domesday
Book and other authorities, that he is justified in saying that
" there can be no doubt that nearly three fourths of the Anglo-
Saxon population were in a state of slavery ; and nothing could
have broken the powerful chains of law and force, by which the
landed aristocracy held the people in bondage, but such events
as the Norman Conquest, and the civil wars it excited," etc.
The Norman Conquest certainly made short work with the
Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, for it dispossessed it, and reduced it
to much the same state of bondage with its former slaves.

An old writer thus describes the change brought about by the
Norman Conques't : " This mere name of the laws of King-
Edward was all that henceforth remained to the Anglo-Saxon

1370.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 853

nation of its former existence ; for the condition of every in
dividual was changed by the Conquest ; from the highest to the
lowest, every one of the vanquished had been let down from
his former condition ; the chief had lost his power, the rich his
possessions, the freeman his independence, and he who under
the cruel custom of that age had been born a slave, become
the servant of a foreigner, no longer enjoyed those indulgences
that the habit of living together and community of language
procured for him on the part of his former master." (Sermo
Lupi, quoted by Mr. Thierry, Yol. I. p. 250.) This state of
things was of long duration. After that event (the Norman
Conquest) the entire Saxon population, gentle and simple, re
mained trodden under foot by their Norman masters. In the
year 1215, the date of Magna Charta, about one hundred and
fifty years after the Conquest, no change in this respect had
taken place. In speaking of that document, Sir William
Blackstone uses the following absurd language, which law stu
dents, from his day downwards, have too often accepted with
out question as the utterance of an oracle. After reciting
some of the less important articles of the charter, he adds :
" It confirmed and established the liberties of the city of Lon
don, and of all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports of the
kingdom; and lastly (which alone would have merited the
title it bears of the great charter), it protected every individual
of the nation in the free enjoyment of his life, his liberty, and
his property, unless declared forfeited by the judgment of his
peers, or the law of the land." One knows not whether to be
amused or provoked at such rodomontade. Could it be sup
posed from this lofty language, that, at the moment alluded to,
seven tenths of the people were, by the laws of the land, abso
lute slaves, gaining just as much by the great charter in 1215
as our negro slaves on Southern plantations, or elsewhere, did
by the Declaration of Independence in 1776 ? The cases are
almost parallel. This famous twenty-ninth chapter in the bald
Latin of the time runs thus : " Nullus liber homo capiatur,
vel emprisonetur, aut disseisiatur de libero tenemento suo, vel
libertatibus vel liberis consuetudinibus suis ; aut utlagetur, aut
exulet, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nee super eum ibimus, nee
super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum

354 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

vel per legem terras. Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut
differemus rectum vel justitiam." Now who were these liberi
homines, — these freemen? Nobody knew better than Mr.
Justice Blackstone that they were the great barons, the tenants
in capite of the king, and the lesser barons, and tenants hold
ing under them ; in point of number an exceedingly small
minority of the whole people. Spelman, in his Glossary, says
that liber homo anciently meant a gentleman, for scarce any
one besides was entirely free. If he is right, the true reading
should be, No gentleman shall be arrested, imprisoned, or dis
seised, etc., and to no gentleman will we sell, or deny, or delay
justice. On the same subject Sir George Nichols, in his History
of the Poor Laws (Yol. I. p. 19), uses this language, which
comes much nearer to the truth : " Magna Charta was wrung
from the unwilling John by the armed barons assembled at
Runnymede in 1215. This charter, long regarded as the foun
dation of English liberty, relieved the nobility and freemen
from the arbitrary exactions of the sovereign, but the serfs
and villains were not included, but remained in a state of slav
ery as before" A villain or rustic was not, however, by the
imposition of any fine, to be deprived of his carts, ploughs,
or implements of husbandry ; and this, as is remarked by Mr.
Hume, " was the only article calculated for the interests of this
body of men, probably at that time the most numerous in the
kingdom." With reference to this early period," Mr. Ma-
caulay observes : " The sources of the noblest rivers, which
spread fertility over continents, and bear richly laden fleets to
the sea, are to be sought in wild and barren mountain tracts,
incorrectly laid down in maps, and rarely explored by travel
lers. To such a tract the history of our country during the
thirteenth century may be not inaptly compared. Sterile and
obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that we
must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our
glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed,
that the national character began to exhibit those peculiarities
which it has ever since retained ; and that our fathers became
emphatically islanders, — islanders, not merely in geographical
position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their manners."
We are aware that it may be said, in defence of Sir W.

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 4 355

Blackstone, that all he intended to assert was the simple truth,
that every individual who had any property or liberties was to
be protected in the enjoyment of them ; and that he might be
supposed to mean that in the progress of time and the advance
ment of society these privileges, at first restricted to a few only,
came at last to be extended to every Englishman. We will
admit, for the sake of argument, that this may have been his
meaning ; and it is precisely the question at issue, how far and
in what sense this may be said to be true. Starting then from
this point of time, which leaves the English people, as distin
guished from their Norman masters, plunged in utter servitude,
we will attempt to follow them by means of the statute-book
and the courts of law, the only guides we have, up to our own
day. It is a melancholy picture, one of the saddest in the
annals of our race. The course we have to follow is by no
means a primrose path, and most English writers, especially
the popular historians, are little disposed to enter it, Sir W.
Blackstone being a sample of them all. Lord Macaulay, in
the passage just quoted, after a splendid exordium, avoids the
question and goes off into a sweeping generality, which com
mits him to nothing, while it pays but an equivocal compliment
to his countrymen. Mr. Hume is more candid. " Scarce any
of those revolutions," he says, " which in both history and
common language have always been denominated conquests,
appear equally violent, or were attended with so sudden an
alteration of both power and property." In our point of view
a correct notion of this conquest, the slavery consequent upon
it, the duration of .that state of slavery, and the way in which
it dropped out of sight, is essential to a proper understanding of
the pauperism existing in Great Britain, and of Mr. Disraeli's
startling assertion. While we are constantly told of the
equality before the law, and the right to even-handed justice,
which is the birthright of every Englishman, no one has ever
been able to tell us from what moment these privileges date, or
precisely what they are. Lord Macaulay says in his History of
England (Vol. I. p 22) : " Moral causes noiselessy effaced,
first the distinction between Norman and Saxon, and then the
distinction between master and slave. None can venture to
fix the precise moment at which either distinction ceased;

356 * English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

some faint traces of the old Norman feelings might, perhaps,
have been found in the fourteenth century. Some faint traces
of the institution of villainage were detected by the curious so
late as the days of the Stuarts ; nor has that institution ever
to this hour been abolished by statute." Where, then, are the
two nations now whose status was so distinctly marked for
more than three hundred years after the Norman Conquest ?
What became of those poor slaves, and how have they and their
descendants fared ? The answer must be sought in the laws of
the realm, — laws passed by Parliaments governed entirely by
the landed gentry, and marking, step by step, with vivid and
shocking distinctness, the selfishness and greed of men when
they are possessed of uncontrolled power. It will be observed
that for the first three hundred years after the Conquest there
were no poor, that is, there were no paupers, in the modern sense
of the word, who could claim a legal right to support ; the master
himself being bound to provide for his slaves. This is a most
important fact. The first act on record, recognizing this class
of poor, claiming wages, was in the 23d of Edward III., nearly
three hundred years after the Conquest, and one hundred and
thirty-four years from the date of Magna Charta. It may be
termed a turning-point in the character and history of the Eng
lish people. The two nations in question henceforth present
themselves in a new attitude towards each other. The mistake
then made has never been retrieved, and from it, we shall see,
grew up a practice which has led to disastrous results. The
process by which, in the course of time, the poor slave dropped
from the grasp of his master it is extremely difficult, and at
this late day perhaps impossible, to point out with any degree
of exactness. It is certainly known, however, that serfdom
was far from being extinguished, though somewhat weakened,
in the year 1348 (22d of Edward III.), when there fell upon
Europe a pestilence, unexampled in horror, — the well-known
' black death,' — which is said to have carried off one half the
inhabitants of England. The effects of this calamity upon the
two nations, which then as now composed the population of
England, remain uneffaced to this day. It would naturally be
presumed that when the shattered remnant of the pampered
class emerged from this dire visitation, it would be so pene-

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 357

trated with the nothingness of earthly distinctions, as to meet
its equally afflicted dependants as fellow-men and fellow-Chris
tians. It needs the experience we have ourselves lately had of
the effect of a long-continued habit of holding other men in
slavery fully to comprehend what actually took place. The
utter dread of the least approach to political or social equality
was too strong to be removed even by a warning like this.
It came out unchanged from the very valley of the shadow of
death. The poorer classes suffered most, and such as were not
still slaves naturally inclined to profit by their diminished num
bers, by refusing to work unless at higher wages than before
the sickness. It is one of the sayings of Adam Smith, that
" it is a good time for labor when two masters are running
after one workman ; it is the reverse when two workmen are
competing for one master." But this presupposes that both
parties are in a position to make a bargain, and to enforce it
when made. In this case, unfortunately, the master owned his
men, or if he had manumitted them, he belonged to a body who
owned all the land, and, by reason of that ownership, made all
the laws. Accordingly, the refractory workmen and servants
were met by an act known as the Statute of Laborers, which
begins by stating " that because a great part of the people, and
especially workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence,
many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of
servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive
wages, and some rather willing to beg in idleness than by
labor to get their living," then goes on to direct that every
man and woman of whatsoever condition, bond or free, able
in body and within the age of threescore years, not living in
merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own
whereof he may live, nor proper land about whose tillage he
may himself occupy, and not serving any other, shall be bound
to serve him who shall him require, «,nd take only the wages,
livery, meed, or salary which were accustomed to be given in
the places where he oweth to serve ; and if any man or woman,
being so required to serve, will not the same do, and that be
proved by two true men before the sheriff, or the bailiffs, or
constables of the town, he shall anon be taken and committed
to jail, there to remain under close keeping till he finds surety

358 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

to serve in the form aforesaid." And it is further directed that
" no man pay, or promise to pay, any' servant any more wages,
liveries, meed, or salary than was wont, nor in other manner
demand or receive the same, on pain of doubling that that so
shall be paid, promised, required, or received to him which
thereof shall feel himself grieved, pursuing the same." As
will readily be believed, another act became necessary in
amendment and continuation of this. The new act begins by
reciting, " Whereas late against the malice of servants which
were idle and not willing to serve after the pestilence without
excessive wages, it was ordained that such servants, as well
men as women, should be bound to serve, receiving salary and
wages accustomed ; and now, forasmuch as it is given the king
to understand in this present Parliament, by petition of the com
monalty, that the said servants, having no regard to the said
ordinance, but to their ease and singular coveties, do withdraw
themselves to serve great men, and others, unless they have
livery and wages to the double or treble of that they were wont
to take before, to the great damage of the great men and im
poverishing all the said commonalty ; wherefore it is ordained
that carters, ploughmen, drivers of the plough, shepherds, swine
herds, deies, and all other servants, shall take liveries and wages
accustomed. Where wheat was wont to be given they shall take
it, or for the bushel ten pence, at the will of the giver. In time
of sarcling (weeding) or haymaking the wages are to be but a
penny a day, without meat or drink or other courtesie demanded,
given, or taken." The act further provides that the said servants
are to be sworn twice in the year to hold to do these ordinances,
and directs that none of them go out of the town where he dwell-
eth in the winter to serve the summer, if he may serve in the
same town. Nine years after, the last of these acts, the 34th of
Edward III. was passed, imposing an additional penalty upon
laborers and artificers wtyo absented themselves from their ser
vices ; and directing that they should be branded on the fore
head with the letter F, " in token of falsity." At the same
time a fine of £ 10 was imposed on the mayor and bailiffs of a
town, if they failed to deliver up a laborer or artificer who had
left his service. The same restrictions were applied to arti
ficers and workmen in all the trades. This last act was passed

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 359

in 1360. In 1377 Edward III. died, and was succeeded by his
son, Richard II., a minor. The riots and violence which,
according to all the historians, prevailed during the last years
of the reign of Edward III., the natural consequence of the
acts just recited, soon led to open insurrection. From the
beginning of the new reign we read of grievous complaints by
the Lords and Commons, " of villains and land-tenants with
drawing their services, and affirming themselves to be quit and
utterly discharged of serfage due, as well of their body as of
their said tenures, and will not suffer any distress or other
justice to be made upon them, but do menace the ministers of
their lords, and gather themselves together in great routs, and
agree by such confederacy that every one shall aid other to
resist their lords with strong hands, to the great damage of the
said lords, and evil example to other to begin such riots."

This state of things continued for several years. " It was, in
short," says Sir George Nichols, " a struggle of the servile
many against the claims of the superior few " At length, in
1381, the 5th of Richard II., it came to a head in the great ris
ing under Wat Tyler. The insurgents amounted to one hundred,
thousand men in one body. They demanded a general pardon, the
abolition of slavery, freedom of commerce in market towns, with
out toll or impost, and a fixed rent on land, instead of the ser
vices due by villainage. Mr. Hume declares these requests to
have been extremely reasonable, and they were in fact complied
with by the king. Charters to that purpose were granted them,
and this body immediately dispersed and returned to their
several homes. Happy had it been for England had these
charters been confirmed and carried out in good faith. The
king met another body of the insurgents led by Tyler himself,
a collision took place, Wat was brained by the lord mayor, a
body of armed soldiers came to the king's assistance, the no
bility rushed to the rescue -of his Majesty, the rebels were forced
to submit. The charters of enfranchisement were at once re
voked by the Parliament, and, says Sir George Nichols, " the
low people were reduced to the same slavish condition as be
fore." Mr. Sharon Turner* gives the following account of the
Parliamentary proceedings : —

* History of England, Vol. II. p. 204, quarto edition.

360 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

" The insurrection was noticed in the speech from the government in
the following Parliament. The lord treasurer recommended an inquiry
to be made into the causes which had produced it. He reminded them
that the king had granted letters under his great seal, enfranchising the
servile part of the community, but declared that his Majesty was aware
that he could not do this consistently with the law of the land, and had
therefore recalled them. But he left it- to the prelates, Lords, and Com
mons to decide whether they would sanction the enfranchisement or not
adding from the throne this important intimation, that if they were de
sirous to enfranchise the servile classes, as it had been reported some
were, the king would assent to the measure. The Lords and Commons
did not adopt the liberal feeling of the sovereign ; they declared that
they would not sanction the manumission, though they should all perish
in one day ; and they annulled them universally"

Here was a golden opportunity lost forever. From this time
it is one gloomy picture of arrogant blindness and perversity
on the one side, and on the other of moody and sulky endur
ance. The same mass of degraded human beings presents
itself to Queen Victoria to-day, as confronted King Richard
five hundred years ago on Blackheath, — the grim Nemesis of
eight centuries of wrong.

Seven years later, in 1388, one hundred and seventy-three
years from the date of Magna Charta, was passed the 12th
Richard II., which has generally been considered as the origin
of English Poor Laws. By this statute the acts of Edward III.
are confirmed ; laborers are prohibited, on pain of imprison
ment, from quitting their residences in search of work, unless
provided with testimonials stating the cause of their absence
and time of their returning, to be issued by justices of the
peace at their discretion. And because laborers will not, and
for a long season would not, serve without outrageous and ex
cessive hire, prices are fixed for their labor, and punishments
awarded against the laborer who receives more, and the master
who gives more. Persons who have been employed in hus
bandry until twelve years of age are prohibited from becoming
artisans. Able-bodied beggars are to be treated as laborers
wandering without passports. Impotent beggars are to remain
where they are at the time of the proclamation of the act, or
if those places are unwilling or unable to support them, they
are, within forty days, to repair to the places where they were
born, and there dwell during their lives.

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 361

The late Mr. Nassau Senior, in an article in the Edinburgh
Review (October, 1841"), says: "We believe that the Eng
lish Poor Laws originated in selfishness, ignorance, and pride.
We are convinced that their origin was an attempt, substan
tially, to restore the expiring system of slavery." That sys
tem could not well be considered as expiring at this epoch,
as the vote just cited shows, and it existed and was recog
nized in the courts of law, as we shall presently show, two
hundred years after the passage of this statute of Richard II.
Let us look a moment at the state of things in that year (1388) .
The insurrection of Wat Tyler was not an ordinary rising in
one or two spots, as plainly appears from what has gone before,
but a great and general movement, with a fixed object. Mr.
Disraeli's two nations stood confronting each other. On the
one side the great body of the people, the enslaved Anglo-Saxon
population, on the other the descendants of the original Norman
barons, who owned all the land, and were consequently the
government, — not merely a majority of the Parliament, but the •
Parliament itself. There was then no manufacturing, no com
mercial, no banking interest to check in the smallest degree the
power of the landlords. The rustics or farm laborers were at
their feet. What could Magna Charta do for them ? Magna
Charta was merely a bargain between the king and his barons
and tributaries. It had not, and never could have had, any
force against an act of Parliament.

Of course we look in vain for any act of emancipation, but
many of the oligarchs began to find that the holding of slaves
was unprofitable, and they bethought themselves of a clever
means of relieving themselves of it. Sir George Nichols, in
speaking of the accession of Henry VII., about a century later,
says of the beggars and vagabonds : " This class of persons had
in all probability gained head during the disorder of the civil*
wars, and it may be presumed that their numbers were likewise
increased by the emancipation from villainage, which had now
been consummated, and which, while it left the people free to
follow their own inclinations, exonerated their masters from re
sponsibility for their support" What is meant by emancipation
from villainage having been consummated he does not explain.
It is one of those vague expressions with which English writers

362 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

always slide over this question. It is not material to discuss here
how far emancipation had actually proceeded at any given mo
ment. It did, no doubt, in every case release the master from
the obligation to provide for the maintenance of his slave, which
was exacted by virtue of laws such as existed among our
Southern slaveholders to protect themselves against careless or
unprincipled masters who would leave their slaves unprovided
for. As to the freedom of the people to follow their own incli
nations, we have already seen what that means. It no doubt
often happened that the master, finding his slaves burden
some, manumitted them, leaving them to shift for themselves.
Having no longer a master to depend upon, they of course
could not live without wages, and those wages were meted
out at the will of their former masters. Here, then, is the ex
planation of all the consequent misery which has fallen upon
England. Just in proportion to the decline in villainage has
been the increase of pauperism. It is the history of oligarchies
the world over. The landlords were omnipotent, and made act
after act of Parliament, fixing the wages of labor, which they
obliged their wretched slaves to take, under pain of fine, impris
onment, branding with a hot iron, whipping at the cart's tail till
the blood ran, and finally of death. There was never a moment,
from 1348, the date of the statute of laborers, to the reign of
George II., 1725, when the rate of wages for laborers, and gen
erally for artisans as well, was not regulated by act of Parlia
ment. In the reign of Henry VIII. things had got to a frightful
pass. There are said to have been seventy-two thousand men and
women who underwent capital punishment in a reign of thirty-
five years. This is p.robably an exaggeration, but the punish
ments of vagrants and vagabonds were severe and revolting be
yond belief. The impotent and aged poor were not provided
for, as in later times, by parochial assessment, but they were
furnished with a license recommending them to the charitable,
and they sometimes wore a badge or some kind of livery to
distinguish them. In the reign of Edward VI. it is still the
same story, — wages fixed by law, fines, whipping, branding, and
so on, for vagrancy, and thus things went on until the act of the
forty-third year of Elizabeth's reign (1601), as Sir George Nich
ols calls it, " the great turning-point of our Poor Law legisla-

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 363

tion." It is also a turning-point in the history of Mr. Dis
raeli's two nations. Sir George Nichols remarks : u The 43d of
Elizabeth was not the result of a sudden thought or of a single
effort, but was gradually framed upon the sure ground of expe
rience ; and it is curious to trace the successive steps by which
its chief enactment — that of a compulsory assessment for the
relief of the poor — came at length to be established. First, the
poor were restricted from begging, except within certain speci
fied limits ; next, the several towns, parishes, and hamlets were
required to support their poor by charitable alms, so that none
of necessity might be compelled " to go openly in begging," and
collections were to be made for them on Sundays, and the par
son was to stir up the people to be bountiful in giving. Then
houses and material for setting the poor on work were to be
provided by the charitable devotion of good people, and the
minister was every Sunday specially to exhort the parishioners
to contribute liberally ; next, the collector for the poor, on a
certain Sunday after divine service, was to set down in writing
what each householder was willing to give weekly for the ensuing
year ; and if any should be obstinate and refuse to give, the
minister was gently to exhort him, and if he still refused, then
to report him to the bishop, who was to send for and again
gently exhort him ; and if still refractory, the bishop was to certify
the same to the justices in sessions, and bind him over to appear
there, when the justices were once more gently to move and
persuade him; and if he would not be persuaded, they were
then to assess him in such a sum as they should think reasona
ble." This prepared the way for the more general assessment
authorized by the 14th and 39th of Elizabeth, which again led
to the complete and universal assessment of property, estab
lished by the further act (1601), which still continues the law.

We have seen that, from the " black death " in 1348, when
pauperism was unknown, villainage had gradually declined,
nobody seems to know exactly how, and that pauperism had
grown pari passu up to the close of the reign of Elizabeth.
Can anything be more apparent than that the wretched mass
of poverty and crime of that day was made up of villains 'and
the descendants of villains ? The two nations were there, one
of them, and that by far the more numerous, still virtually

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 24

364 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

slaves. ' But villainage proper, slavery pure and simple, was
also still there, notwithstanding the confident assertion of Sir
George Nichols that emancipation was .consummated just one
hundred years earlier, when Henry YIL, the grandfather of
Queen Elizabeth, ascended the throne. Professor Rogers, of
Oxford goes a century and a half further back, arid says that
" anything like the extreme theory of villainage was, I am con
vinced, extinct before the close of the thirteenth century (in
the teeth of the vote of 1381, quoted above). In many thou
sand accounts, he says (among the papers of Merton College),
I have never found a trace of any transfer of villains, or even
of their services to third parties." The statistics are those of
Professor Rogers himself. Sir Thomas Smith, secretary to
Edward VI., declares that in his time he never knew any vil
lain in gross throughout the realm, and that the few villains
regardant that were then remaining were such only as had be
longed to bishops, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical cor
porations in the preceding times of popery. The following
extract, however, from Lord Campbell's life of Sir James
Dyer, chief justice of the common pleas from 1559 to 1582,
shows that half a century later it was by no means extinct :
" It is not generally known that, down to the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, there were in England both * villains in gross,' or
slaves, who might have been sold separately like chattels,
and * villains regardant,' or slaves attached to particular land,
with which they were transferred along with the trees growing
upon it." Lord Campbell then gives four examples out of the
cases mentioned by Dyer in his reports. We will copy two of
them : " In an action of trespass and assault there was a jus
tification by the lord of a manor, that the plaintiff was his vil
lain regardant, and the evidence being that he was his villain
in gross, the question arose for which side judgment should be
given. The defendant insisted that the substantial question
was villain or free, not villain regardant or villain in gross.
And that naving greater rights over the plaintiff as villain in
gross than as villain regardant, he had proved more than he
was bound to prove, and the action was well barred. One
judge inclined to this opinion, but the rest of the court thought
that, in favor of liberty, the plea must be strictly the plea

870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 365

proved, and peradventure the plaintiff was misled by the false
issue tendered to him, and might have deemed it enough to
negative the regardancy^ without bringing forward proof to neg
ative villainage in gross. So the plaintiff became a freeman."

A. B., seized in fee of a manor to which a villain was re
gardant, made a feoffment of one acre of the manor by these
words : " I have given one acre, etc., and further, I have given
and granted, etc., John S., my villain." Question. " Does the
villain pass to the grantee as a villain in gross or as a villain
appendant to that acre ? " Two of the judges thought he should
pass in gross, as there are several gifts, though in one deed ;
while the other judges said that if the whole manor had been
granted, with a further grant of " John S., my villain," the vil
lain would clearly have passed as part of the manor, and there
fore that the acre and the villain being granted together, there
was no severance. The court being equally divided, no judg
ment seems to have been given. These cases were not dis
missed as no longer sustainable in an English court of justice,
as would be now done in our courts in case of a man claimed
as a slave, but entertained and adjudicated upon like any other
actions. Lord Campbell adds in a note : " Villainage is sup
posed to have finally disappeared in the reign of James I.,
but there is great difficulty in saying when it ceased to be law
ful, for there has been no statute to abolish it, and by the old
law, if any freeman acknowledged himself in a court of record
to be a villain, he and all his after-born issue and their de
scendants were villains." In point of fact, every copyholder
in England is at this moment a villain regardant, inasmuch as
in case of the sale of the manor of which he holds, he passes
with the land into the possession of the purchaser. Until the
passage of the Reform Bill of 1882, no copyholder, however
rich, had a vote for member of Parliament, because he held by
a base or villain tenure.

We have seen that slavery no sooner disappears than the
pauper takes its place. The abandoned slaves have become
so numerous and so clamorous, that it is absolutely neces
sary to make some provision for their support. The 43d of
Elizabeth directs that the church-wardens, and two or more
householders to be appointed by the justices, shall take order,

w» -m-,

866 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

with the consent of the justices, for setting to work children,
and all persons having no means to maintain themselves, and
using no ordinary or daily trade of life to get their living by ;
and to raise a fund by taxation of the inhabitants for such set
ting to work, and for the necessary relief of the lame, impo
tent, old, and blind poor not able to work. And the justices
are directed to send to the house of correction or common jail
such as shall not employ themselves to work, being appointed
thereunto as aforesaid.

" It appears," says Mr. Senior, in the article from which
we have before quoted, "that the 43d of Elizabeth, so far
from having been' prompted by benevolence, was a necessary
link in one of the heaviest chains in which a people calling it-,
self free has been bound. It was a part of a scheme prose
cuted for centuries, in defiance of reason, justice, and hu
manity, to reduce the laboring classes to serfs, to imprison
them in their parishes, to dictate to them their employments and
their wages. Of course persons confined to certain districts
by penalties of whipping, mutilation, and death must be sup
ported ; and if they were capable of labor, it is obvious that
they ought to be made to contribute to the expense of their
maintenance."

The same writer, in speaking of the act of the 12th of
Richard II., says : " There is not a clause in the whole act in
tended to benefit any persons except the employees of labor,
and principally agricultural labor, that is to say, the land
owners ivho made the law. If the provisions of the act could
have been enforced, the agricultural laborers — and they formed
probably four fifths of the population of England — would have
been as effectually ascripti g/ebc£ as any Polish serf."

Unhappily, in England there was no power to oblige the
masters to do what their own sense of justice should have
prompted. From the Conquest downward the owners of the
soil have ruled. The only check at the outset — the royal pre
rogative — was got rid of. As the divine right of kings faded
away, the divine right of lords and gentlemen has gained the
ascendency, and now rules, and will rule, until by some means
which it is impossible to foresee the avenger of the oppressed
shall work out a remedy.

*

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 367

Here, then, are Mr. Disraeli's two nations, one fourth masters
and three fourths slaves, entering into a somewhat different
relation ; the one fourth, as before, the most powerful body of
landed proprietors on earth, the other three fourths a helpless
multitude, just able, at best, to live from hand to mouth, and
threatening at any untoward run of luck to fall an overwhelm
ing burden on their obdurate fellow-countrymen. The sequel
of' the story is what must necessarily result from the vicious
principle from which it set out, namely, that the fourth part,
who were the employers, should fix,- without appeal, the wages
they were to pay to the three fourths, who were the laborers,
without the faintest attempt to draw these out of their helpless
condition. With this utter contempt of political economy, and
with such an outrage 'on the strongest and finest instinct of
our nature, the hope of advancement, with such disregard of
one of the maxims of their common faith, that the laborer is
worthy of his hire, what could be looked for but what we now
witness ? We wish to be understood that in saying this we
refer to land-owners in their legislative capacity. There have
always been in Great Britain a vast number of individuals of
the kindest fqelings, and in innumerable instances the hard lot
of the laboring class has been greatly alleviated by the Chris
tian benevolence of their superiors ; but, unhappily, it is little
that individual example or influence can do, where a vicious
principle is at the bottom of a whole system.

We have seen that this act of the 43d of Elizabeth is to this
day the law of the land. To follow its working during these
three hundred years would exceed our limits. A more pitiful
exhibition, as Mr. Senior has well said, of selfishness, ignorance,
and pride was never witnessed, — the selfishness of irresponsible
employees, ignorance of the simplest laws of political economy,
and the pride of caste. We will, therefore, pass from the year
1601 to the year 1834, — two hundred and thirty-three years.
By this time the state of things had become hideous. Mr.
Hume (Vol. I. p. 378) says, in describing the treatment
of the Anglo-Saxons by tlfeir Norman conquerors: u Contumely
seems even to have been wantonly added to oppression ;
and the natives were universally reduced to such a state of
meanness and poverty that the English name became a term of

368 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

reproach." What improvement has eight centuries produced
in this respect ? A writer in the Edinburgh Review (October,
1868) will furnish the answer. He is describing the effects of
the act of the 14th Charles II., known as the law of parochial
settlement : " The artificial congestion within narrow limits
brought about a state of things in which that commodity which
ought to be the most valued of all things, since it is the foun
dation of all value, came to be regarded as a superfluity and a
drug. Instead of being prized for his strength and skill, the
point of view in which the workingman was regarded was that
of a possible burden on the rates. In the eyes of parish officers
he was a nuisance ; in the mind of the land-owner, a bugbear
and an expense. To get rid of him, and to saddle another
parish with the liability of his maintenance, became a study
which all the resources of legal subtlety and chicanery were
strained to assist. The frauds and stratagems devised by
astute lawyers for the purpose of supporting or resisting orders
of removal ; the costly litigation to which these contests led,
and the reckless inhumanity with which the unfortunate objects
of them were bandied about from parish to parish, with less
consideration of their dignity as human beings than if they had
been part of the animal stock of a farm, — these 'are among the
saddest and most scandalous records of pauperism with which
the odious law of parochial settlement is justly chargeable."

From one abuse to another it at length came to pass that the
laborers were literally the property of the parish, able-bodied
and all. The overseers fixed the rate of wages each man was
to receive ; they were then let out to the farmers like cattle.
If they were not taken, they were sometimes put up at auc
tion, and sometimes stood in a pound awaiting a bidder. One
or two samples from Mr. Senior's article we will give : " At
Deddington, during the severe winter months, about sixty men
apply every morning to the overseer for work or pay. He
ranges them under a shed in a yard. If a farmer, or any one
else, wants a man, he sends to the yard for one, and pays half
a day's wages ; the rest is charged to the parish. At the close
of the day the unemployed are paid the wages of a day, less 2.d."
In the book of Hampton Poyle are the following items : " Paid
for men and boys standing in the pound six days, £ 6 7 s. 0 d."

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 369

And in every week's payment a list of these laborers, thus :
" M. Wheeler, standing in the pound six days, <£ 0 85. Od. I.
Cartwright, standing in the pound four days, £ 0 6s. Qd." This
would seem to be the climax of absurdity, as" well as of wanton
and jeering cruelty.

Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
Quatn quod ridicules homines facit.

But we shall soon see a lower depth. In the year 1818 the
poor rates had reached the frightful sum of £ 7,870,801, or
13 s. 3 d. per head of the entire population. They afterwards
fell, but in 1832 had again risen to £ 7,036,969. The alarm
became general. Parliament could no longer shut its eyes to
the danger. The matter was taken in hand in earnest, and a
commission consisting of the Bishop of London, the Bishop of
Chester, Sturges Bourne, Nassau W. Senior, Henry Bishop,
Henry Gawler, W. Coulson, James Trail, and Edwin Chadwick
was raised to consider and report on the subject'. These gen
tlemen devised a plan, which for a time gave hopes that the
evil had been checked. The plan was this, — to divide Eng
land into unions ; to build in each of these unions an immense
workhouse, and to oblige' every able-bodied person who applied
for relief to go into one of these houses. The system was car
ried on by means of a vast machinery, consisting of a central
board sitting at Somerset House, with local unions, also
directed by local boards, acting under the supervision of the
central board in 'London. For about four years its success
was marvellous. The rates fell from <£ 6,317,255 in 1834, to
£ 4,044,741 in 1837. But this notable scheme proved, like air
that had gone before it, a mere makeshift, — an outward appli
cation for a deep-seated malady, "parmaceti for an inward
bruise." One or two bad seasons, caused by the potato-rot,
swamped the houses. With seven millions of famishing human
beings, the workhouses in such a crisis were like a milldam in
an inundation, or Mrs. Partington's broom against the Atlan
tic. The plan has long since been given up, except as a pallia
tive. How far it is deserving even of that praise we shall
presently see. In the year 1862 the blockade of our Southern
ports plunged the cotton operatives of Lancashire into want
and misery. This calamity led to disclosures of a truly

370 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

agonizing description. One cannot read without a shudder
the letters of the Rev. Mr. Kinsley, who gave as a reason why
the district in which he lived should- not be expected to con
tribute to the relief of the distress in Lancashire, that the
condition of the suffering operatives in that county was, Qven
then, better than that of the average of farm laborers in the
whole kingdom. Again, one of the complaints that was heard
oftenest in the discussion of the horrors of garroting and its
causes, was that the criminals had no fear of imprisonment,
but rather courted it, inasmuch as their condition as prisoners
was altogether better than that of the poor but honest laborer
who was working by their side on the same premises. This
was nine years ago. Let us see how it compares with the
actual state of things.

The practice of regulating wages by statute, or by justices of
the peace in quarter sessions, which is the same thing, they
being always 'either large landed proprietors or beneficed cler
gymen, ceased with the year 1725 ; the last case cited by
Sir Frederick Eden is that regulating wages in .the county of
Lancaster for that year. The style of it is well worthy of the
olden time. It runs thus : " The person who gives more wages
than is appointed by the justices shall forfeit five pounds,
and be imprisoned ten days ; the servant whp takes more,
to be imprisoned twenty-one days. Every promise or gift
whatever to the contrary shall be void. We, the said justices,
shall make strict inquiries, and see the defaults against these
ancient and useful statutes severely corrected and punished."

Thus at last fell into desuetude, after an existence of four cen
turies, a system most selfish, most short-sighted, most demoraliz
ing and iniquitous. It has already been seen that the unfortu
nate working classes were none the better for its discontinu
ance. The landlords brought into play an engine more expe
ditious and more sweeping. Woe to the unlucky laborer who
presumed on his rights as a free-born Englishman. The land
lord's power of eviction was brought to bear upon him with
relentless force. The extent to which this arbitrary power on
the part of the great proprietors is exercised would hardly find
credit if not so well attested. Mr. Senior, in the article quoted
from above, says: "But as the burden of the poor laws was

1870.] . English Aristocracy and English Labor. 371

more and more felt by the landlords, all sorts of devices were
resorted to in order to shift settlements from one parish to
another. Where a parish belonged to a single owner, or to a
few owners acting in concert, the cottages were pulled down,
and the inhabitants bribed to sleep in adjoining parishes, under
conditions transferring their settlement. We have visited par
ishes where there was not a house except the squire's man
sion and the parsonage, and the whole labor was performed by
persons resident in the neighboring villages ; where the number
of proprietors or the interest of the cottage-owners rendered
this impossible, the object was effected by bribing girls to marry
men belonging to other parishes, and by apprenticing boys to
masters resident elsewhere ; and the result was a distribution
of the population, without reference to their welfare or their
utility."

The article by Mr. Senior, from which this extract is taken,
was written in 1841. What was the state of the case in July,
1867, twenty-six years later, when the following statements
were made in the London Quarterly Review ?

" It may," says the writer, "be proper, before we advert to the dis
closures of the commissioner's reports, to take a cursory view of the
districts in which this evil originated, and in which it now chiefly pre
vails ; for the origin of 'agricultural gangs' is undoubtedly connected
with the physical peculiarities of certain counties and their early social
condition. The extensive employment of women and children in rural
labor had its rise in two causes : first, in the extensive reclamation of
waste lands ; and, secondly, in the destruction of cottages, and the conse
quent removal of the people which inhabited them, rendering labor diffi
cult to procure, and imposing upon the farmer the necessity of obtain
ing it through the instrumentality of a middle man, who made it his
business to supply it at a cheap rate, gaining his living by organizing
bands of women, young persons, and children, of whom he became the
temporary master ; and the system is favored by the farmers for its
economy ho less than for its convenience

" In this reclaimed portion of England farm-houses, barns, and sta
bles, sufficient for all the requirements of a prosperous agriculture, were
erected. The cattle of the farm were housed in comfort, but no thought
is taken of the laboring man, no cottages were built for his accommo-

O t O

dation ; and as he could not reside on the land where his services were
required, he had to submit to the hard necessity of rising an hour or

372 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

two earlier than he otherwise would, and of walking, perhaps, miles to
his work. On those estates on which the peasant was so fortunate as
to secure some humble tenement to shelter him, he was dispossessed of
it as speedily as possible, lest he should one day become a pauper and
a burden to the parish, and he was driven to find a home how and where
he could. This has been particularly the case in Norfolk, where the
work of depopulation was proceeding in an accelerated ratio, until the
change in the law of settlement put a partial stop to the process. It
is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's country ! said the late
Earl of Leicester, when complimented on the completion of Holkham.
I look around, and not a house is to be seen but mine. I am the giant
of Giant Castle, and have eaten up all my neighbors

" It is a common practice for the gang-master to carry a stick or a
whip, but rather, it is said, to frighten the children with than for use ;
but the treatment depends entirely upon the disposition of the gang-
master. There is no control, or possibility of control, for the children
know that remonstrance would be immediately followed by expulsion
from the gang ; and the parents, having a pecuniary interest in their
labor, would but too certainly shut their ears to any complaint. In
stances are not uncommon of severe and lasting injuries having been
inflicted by brutal gang-masters, and gross outrages, such as kicking,
knocking down, beating with hoes, spuds, or a leather strap, ' diking,'
or pushing into the water, and ' gibbeting,' i. e. lifting a child off the
ground and holding it there by the chin and back of the neck until it is
black in the face, are said to be frequent

" The temptation of adding two or three shillings to the weekly
earnings of the family is generally too great for parents to withstand.
Mothers are represented as forcing their children into the gangs, and
prefer keeping them at home to placing them in service, that they may
farm them out to the gang-master; and it not unfrequently happens that
the father is indulging in voluntary idleness at home, while his off
spring are toiling in the fields. As it is the interest of farmers that the
supply of juvenile labor should always be equal to* his demand, they
are represented as generally opposed in the gang districts to the educa
tion of the poor

" It is occasionally the practice of the private gangs to pass the night
on the farms where they work ; according to one witness, this is a com
mon practice where they go long distances, and they sleep in a barn or
stable. A day or two previous to the visit of one of the assistant com
missioners to a place in Cambridgeshire, a gang had passed a night on
a farm, the gang-master, with his whole party, having been locked up
in a granary by the foreman of the farm, with as little thought of the

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 373

impropriety of the proceeding as if he had been folding a flock of
sheep. Some employers have endeavored to separate the sexes in pri
vate gangs and to limit the age at which children are permitted to
work in them ; but such efforts have generally been unsuccessful for

want of support, or of the means of enforcing their regulations

" The want of a proper distribution of labor is the chief cause of
the existence of agricultural gangs in the counties to which they have
hitherto been confined. The rural peasantry are thus being removed
from their parishes and relegated to open villages and towns, and the
household condition of the English laborer is becoming in the highest
degree deplorable. Whether he shall find cottage accommodations on
the estate which he tills, and to which his labor* is as indispensable as
the influences of the sun and the rain, depends, not on his ability to pay
a reasonable rent, but on the use which the owners think fit to make of
their property."

Here are the two nations alluded to by Mr. Disraeli, and in
what essential particular, except that the weaker cannot be sold
openly in the market, does their relative condition differ from
that of the same two nations at the moment when the vaunted
Magna Charta of Judge Blackstoiie threw its protecting aegis
over every inhabitant of the English soil ? The reader who has
followed us thus far will naturally ask, But what is to be the
end ? How is this sickening tragedy of centuries to find its
fitting catastrophe ? This is the question which now stares the
British people in the face, and no more appalling one has ever
presented itself to any country. He must be a bold man who
shall undertake to point out the means of escape from what
seems almost a desperate position. One thing we think, how
ever, may be safely assumed, and that is that no essential pro
gress towards improvement can be looked for while the same
body of men hold all the land, and at the same time command
solid majorities in both Houses of Parliament. What we now
-witness is essentially the feudal system of William the Con
queror. The military power of the prince and the royal
prerogative have, it is true, disappeared ; but the great landed
monopoly begun in that day is more powerful now, because
more concentrated than ever before. It commands the patron
age of army, navy, church, and bar, and pushes its advantage
to the utmost. Proof of this is not far to seek. We have not

374 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

space to discuss the way in which it is shown in the game laws ;
but any one who is curious on this branch of the question is
referred to the case of the Marquis of Exeter's two sacks of
dead rabbits.* On this case the House of Lords sat as the
grand court of appeal of the realm, to adjudicate on the con
struction of a law of their own making ; every one of the four
hundred and fifty judges, more or less, having as owners of
game preserves a direct personal interest in the question at is
sue, for which he would be subject to challenge as a juryman
in any common-law court in England, and yet their decision is
perfectly constitutional. What way of escape is there from a
state of things so serious ? We said just now that the great
landed proprietors, though less numerous now than heretofore,
are more powerful in the government than ever. Lord Macau-
lay estimates at not less than one hundred and sixty thousand
the number of landed proprietors in the time of Charles II.,
who, with their families, must have made up a seventh of the
whole population, and who derived their subsistence from little
freehold estates. The average incomes of these small land
owners was estimated at between sixty and seventy pounds a
year. About the middle of the last century the whole number
of landed proprietors, great and small, was estimated at two
hundred and seventy-four thousand. About that time a great
change took place. The sudden growth of the trade, to the
East Indies, and the expansion of the cotton manufacture,
raised up a vast number of bidders for landed property. Every
nabob from the East, every successful banker, cotton-spinner, and
manufacturer, must become a country gentleman at any price.
The consequence is that the two hundred and seventy-four
thousand land-owners of a century ago are reduced to little
over thirty thousand, and Lord Macaulay's class of one hundred
and sixty thousand small proprietors has quite disappeared.

M. Louis Blanc has in his letters some remarks on this subject
which are so just and so well put, that we transcribe them :
" This landed property possesses here an incomparable charm.
The golden dream of every Saxon merchant is to be one day
classed among the landlords. The manufacturer sighs for the
happy moment when he will be able to say, while taking his

* London Quarterly Review, January, 1867,. Article Game Laws.

1870.] English Aristocracy and English Labor. 375

morning walk, ' This is mine.' If far, very far from his
fatherland, the colonist turns his eye towards her, it is in the
hope of returning as a ' country gentleman.' And whence
springs this general earth hunger ? From the love of lucre ?
Not at all. There are estates of great extent, recently pur
chased, which return barely two per cent to their owners, in a
country where it is easy to place one's money, and with perfect
safety, at four and five per cent. It is, as the Times observes,
because land at the present day in England is an article of
luxury. This is the whole secret. But there is one point
which the Times has omitted to clear up, and it is this,
How comes it that where taxation weighs so heavily upon
articles of the first necessity, it does not weigh at all upon an
article of luxury ? " *

Tho last query of M. Louis Blanc has great significance, as
showing the enormous preponderance of the landed interest in
Parliament. The Review from which the foregoing extract is
taken says : " The amount of the. land tax in this country has
not materially increased since the commencement of the last
century, while in the same period the revenue of England has
risen from £ 3,895,204 to £ 70,683,850, and the rents of land
lords from £ 9,724,000 to £ 54,678,412. The monopoly of
lands is still going on, and beginning to excite apprehension.
This is not to be wondered at. All reflecting persons must see
that such an immense preponderance of one interest, carrying
with it, as it does, the control of the government, is a serious
evil."

In order to relieve themselves from the poor-rates, the land
lords are encouraging emigration, and with no little success.
It appears by the last returns in this country, that the immi
grants from England now exceed those from any other country,
Ireland not excepted. Those who emigrate are the well-to-do
and the able-bodied portion of the peasantry, leaving the aged,
the infirm, and the imbecile on the hands of their old masters.
In no long time this double process of the monopolizing of
land, and escape of the self-supporting portion of the working
class, will leave the landed aristocracy with no support
anywhere. Something must be done, and that without delay.

* Westminster Review, October, 1867, p. 187.

376 English Aristocracy and English Labor. [Oct.

The remedy must be an heroic one, — no less^than the volun
tary surrender on the part of the oligarchy of some of its
long-cherished privileges. What hope there is that such a
measure may be brought about let the uniform experience of
mankind decide.

The actual condition of things is the outgrowth of the Conquest.
When the villains were turned adrift, there was left the old
feeling of caste still operating to keep them in a state of humil
iating subjection. At the very time when the present Poor
Law was passed, in 1601, slavery, as we have seen, was still rec
ognized by the courts of law, and a stringent act was in force
limiting the wages of the laboring class to what it pleased the
landlord to give them. The late serfs and their descendants
were turned into paupers. This degraded class was on-no ac
count to be permitted to raise its heajcL It was thought better
.to feed them, as dependent paupers, at the public expense, than
to allow them to bring the only commodity they had, their
labor, into free competition in the market. It was thought safer
to shut them up in their parishes, and dole out to them a
wretched pittance, than to give them the chance to work out for
themselves an honorable independence. An author of the six
teenth century declares that he looks upon the class of poor
artisans and peasants as a disinherited class of men. In accord
ance with this policy, they were kept in ignorance as well as pov
erty. It is a most disgraceful fact that the landlords of England
have, as a class, uniformly set their faces against any national
system of education, avowedly for the reason that it would en
danger their supremacy. It now remains to be seen whether
they will doggedly adhere to the same narrow policy of class
legislation. While the world is awake to the axiom of modern
times, u that property has its duties as well as its rights" they
have brought themselves to sorrow by shutting their eyes to it.
' They may go on some time longer in the same infatuation. But
if they are wise, the landlords will not wait to be driven to the
wall. They will take the matter into their own hands before it
is too late. They have a task before them which rises above
all considerations of party or of caste. Whether they will be
equal to the emergency remains to be seen ; we trust they will
listen to the warning voice of one of their own class, the Duke

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 377

of Argyll, which, in conclusion, we heartily commend to their
thoughtful consideration. In the volume entitled " The Reign
of Law," under the seventh head, " Law in Politics," is this
paragraph : " The epoch of conquering races destroying the
governments and reconstructing the populations of the world
is an epoch which has passed away. Whatever causes there may
be now of political decline are causes never brought to such
rough detection, and never ending in catastrophe so complete.
Yet in modern days a condition of stagnation and decline has
been the actual condition of many political societies for long
periods of time. It is a condition prepared always by ignorance
or neglect of some moral or economical laws, and determined
by a long perseverance in a corresponding course of conduct.
Then the laws which have been neglected assert themselves. In
the last generation, and in our own time, the Old and the New
World have each afforded memorable examples of the reign of
law on the course of political events. Institutions maintained
against the natural progress of society have foundered amid
fanatic storms. Other institutions, upheld and cherished against
justice and humanity and conscience, have yielded only to the
scourge of war."

EDWARD BROOKS.

ART. VI. — PIERRE BAYLE.

PIERRE BAYLE was born in 1647, in the days of Mazarin and
the Fronde. He saw the rising of the sun of Louis XIV., its
meridian splendor, nee pluribus impar, and its disastrous setting
at Blenheim and Ramillies. In English history his life extends
from the execution of Charles I. through the reigns of Crom
well, Charles II., James, William and Mary, to Queen Anne.
He belongs to the most remarkable century the world has seen
since the one we date from, — - a century that has on its muster-
roll such names as Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Bacon, Descartes,
Spinoza, Locke, Leibnitz, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and
many more who would have been giants in any other company.
A century of great changes as well as of great men, it bridges

378 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

the passage from mediaeval to modern times. All the nations
were in a turmoil with wars, revolutions, persecutions, and bit
ter theological disputes, — a period we recommend to the notice
of newspaper reporters and speech-makers, who " always take
their hats off when they allude to this century," and cant in a
sad yet boastful tone of the terrible mental strain and excite
ment of our times.

It was in the fifteenth century, when Copernicus took the
earth from its fixed position in the centre of the universe, and
sent it whirling through space, that the series of events began
which unmoored society from its anchorage of a thousand
years, to drift we do not yet know where. How wonderful
these events seem if we try to detach them from their some
what musty association with the primers and readers of our
school-days. De Gama and -Columbus triple the size of the
world ; Gutenberg or Faust make a new world of ideas easy of
access. A new form of doctrinal and practical religion is
introduced, thanks to their invention, for it was printer's ink
Luther threw at the Devil. Of course, neither the ideas
nor the men that had satisfied the wants of half a hemisphere
were sufficient for the entire globe. The social equilibrium was
disturbed as well as the moral. A rebellion commenced against
tradition and authority, that has lasted three hundred years. It
is tolerably accurate to say that the sixteenth century under
took to overthrow authority in religion ; in the seventeenth, the
attack was on authority in philosophy ; in the eighteenth, on
hereditary government and rank. There are symptoms that
capital, or rather property, may be the ob'ect of the campaign
of the nineteenth. When property is put down, the aggressive
movement will be complete, unless we should think it necessary
to abolish education, talent, and character, and proceed,. as the
late M. Proudhon phrased itj to the liquidation of society.
Meantime we may consider that this great rebellion is triumph
ant with us, for authority is held in no respect whatever if it
interferes with the wants, wishes, or even whims of the noisy
part of the public. Rogues set civil laws at defiance with im
punity ; fools ridicule the laws of nature and of science, or
pretend to think that conditions peculiar to themselves will, in
some inexplicable way, upset all past experience ; and^ unluckily,

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 379

these rogues and fools 'generally belong to the class of " promi
nent men " who govern the country.

In the seventeenth century the new tide in the affairs of
mankind ran very swiftly. The old manners, habits, and beliefs
yielded rapidly to our modern ways. Trade brought with it
new luxuries and new wants, and was recognized as one of the
most important affairs of state. The nature and function of
money began to be understood. Gold, the great stimulus to
exertion and enterprise, poured in. The steady advance in
prices changed the relative conditions of life. Wealth, easily
obtained, attacked the exclusiveness of birth ; cheap books, the
exclusiveness of the learned.* The coarseness and rustic bru
tality of the civil wars gave place to mildness and civility, —
a une douceur et civilite extreme. After 1675 Bayle said, " We
live in a siecle philosophique" There was a general awaken
ing of the mind ; a delight with the wonders already accom
plished, and a lively hope of greater wonders to come ; a mil
lennial feeling such as sprang up again in the first days of the
French Revolution. At both periods enthusiastic philosophers,
carried away by the rapid progress of science, believed that
some means would yet be discovered to prolong human life
indefinitely.

Bayle was educated under the old system, but lived to learn
a new philosophy, a new science, to enjoy a new literature,
to adopt new customs, new manners, a new dress, and even a
new diet.f

We have come to consider novelty so good a thing in itself,
irrespective of its merits, that it is difficult to imagine a period
when ninety-nine men out of a hundred thought alike and had
inherited their thoughts. Beliefs had been bred-in and become
instinctive. Scholars yielded with a childlike submission to the
dicta of a dead master. If the great Albert or the angelic
Thomas had said that black was white, black was white, and
there was an end of it. True to this feeling, the conservatives

* A Spanish lady of rank complained that any low fellow might have the beau
tiful thoughts of Gratian for a crown. — BAYLE'S Nouvelles.

t Turnips, carrots, parsnips, green peas, did not come into use until the middle of
the seventeenth century. So with coffee, chocolate, and tea. " 1660, 25th Sept.
I did send for a cup of tea, a China drink of which I never had drank before." —
PEPYS, Vol. I. 110.

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 25

380 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

•
resisted fiercely every innovation. " Who are you who pretend

to know more than your ancestors ? " shouted the old physicians
when the new school proclaimed Harvey's theory of the circula
tion. " Shall we suffer practitioners of three days' standing to
insult the old doctrines and drive us out of a possession of a
thousand years ? " The doctrines of Aristotle, as interpreted
by them, had been so interwoven with the doctrines of the
Church, that to doubt him on any point was heresy. The study
of nature and meditations on the mind were perilous if result
ing in new views. Astrology was more orthodox than astron
omy on the Copernican system. Severe penalties impended
over the heads of students who broke with the old beliefs.
In 1624 the Parliament of Paris decreed death to all who
should teach maxims opposed to Aristotle and approved au
thors. Thirteen years later Descartes thought himself safer
in Holland than in France. Even in Holland he was obliged
to seek the protection of the local magistrates and of the
French ambassador against the violence of Voet, a bigoted
Protestant professor and preacher, who also thundered against
Harvey's theory as irreligious. In 1656 Pascal wrote of the
earth as the centre of the universe, although he knew that
Galileo was right. Even in 1683 the comedian Reynard says
that the Copernican system was considered heretical in Paris ;
and still later, Leibnitz forgot himself so far as to speak of the
Newtonian theory as immoral. But why should we wonder ?
Even in our enlightened era, philosophers, when they find
their arguments too feeble to upset the positions of a rival, have
recourse to the " logic which is not of this world," and pro
nounce th6m wicked. Darwin is met with the charge of athe
ism, and geologists lecture with Genesis suspended over their
heads by well-meaning people with more zeal than wisdom.
And so it will be to the end. When we were told, " the poor
ye have always with you," deficiency of intellect was meant
quite as much as lack of goods. But science cannot be put down ;
it will move in spite of the Church, and the ground it once has
occupied it never loses. The Academic des Sciences was
established in 1666 ; the Royal Society, a year or two earlier.
About the same time the " Journal des Savans," first-born of
scientific journals, was published : it is still in existence. The

1870.] Pierre Bayle. . 381

movement party was full of energy, and had the hearty assist
ance of the author and the bel esprit. Moliere ridiculed the
old school, who, like the Malade Imaginaire when he took his
degree in medicine, swore,

Essere in omnibus
Consultationibus,
Ancieni aviso
Aut bono
Aut mauvaiso.

A great point with the new school was to introduce science
to the gens du monde; " to rub off the rust of pedantry and
replace it by an attractive varnish of liveliness and elegance."
Scientific treatises were written in French instead of Latin.
The Abbe Gerard composed a philosophy for the use of persons
of quality. Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds is one of the
earliest efforts to make astronomy interesting to the ordinary
reader, and one of the most successful. It is still pleasant
reading, and not the less so because it is based upon Descartes'
theory of tourbillons. This was the beginning of the " pop
ularization " of science (the word is theirs). We have seen
the movement reach its vulgarization. At a time when research
is more active and sound than ever before, the public is fed with
a mixture of science and water, too weak to afford substantial
nourishment, which has made a great many minds rickety, and
peculiarly susceptible to attacks of spiritualism or any other
epidemic of folly that may be going about.

Another inherited weakness of the seventeenth century was
a love of subtlety in argument, often only ingenious and idle
quibbling. Dialectics were to the scholar what fencing was to
the gentleman, a pleasant and exciting exercise, becoming his
station in life, enabling him to gratify the excessive pugnacity
of the period. The doctors of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, like the knights in the Morte d' Arthur, never met
without a tussle. " Sir Knight, make thee ready to joust with
me," and they went at it in earnest, " tracing and traversing full
mightily and wisely," while the learned made a ring and passed
critical judgment upon the strokes. The religious history of
the seventeenth century is full of these personal encounters,
some of them in open lists, in the presence of great ladies. De

382 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

Retz relates in his memoirs a theological passage of arms, in
which he engaged Mestrezat, the minister of Charenton, before
Mme. de Rambure, Turenne, and other distinguished people.
In 1678 Claude and Bossuet, each the champion of his sect, dis
puted on the authority of the Church before Mile. De Duras,
and Claude refuted Nicolle's tract on Transubstantiation, at the
request of Mile. De Turenne. In these oral discussions there
was some courtesy and respect shown, but when theologians
attacked each other with the pen the fight was merciless.
" Theologians never bite without taking a piece out," said
Bayle ; " Cain killed Abel in a religious quarrel." After the
Thirty Years' War the theological controversies of Western
Europe equalled in violence the contests of the monks of
Constantinople in the fourth century. This moral epidemic
raged through the seventeenth century. There was so much
feeling in the strife, that invective became the favorite method
of reasoning. " The Pope 's the whore of Babylon," and " Cal-
vinismus bestiarum religio," are specimens of the arguments
commonly employed. Bayle suggested that " to use abuse in
ordinary controversy was a kind of sacrilege ; it was robbing
the Church." Arminianisni, Jansenism, Quietism, and, above
all, persecution, had kept up the stock of " saints of the old-time
enthusiastic breed." After the Revocation of the Edict, Holland
swarmed with refugees of every shade of opinion, and buzzed
like a hornet's-nest with angry controversy. In 1684 Bayle
writes that books of theology sell better than any others. " There
are as many as twenty editions of some of them ; I do not think
that Moliere's comedies or the satires of M. Despreaux will ever
go as far." This doctrinal animosity appeared in every act of
life. " You can tell the sect of a grammarian from the very
rudiments of his grammar " ; and Bayle advises in some
pamphlet " each Protestant prince to get a Protestant astrono
mer to recommend the change of style which they would have
adopted long since had not a Pope been the author of it." The
temper of the times was affected ; scientific and literary men
were almost as bitter as theologians. Like the Homeric
heroes, they considered abuse a becoming prelude to battle.
Even when the match began in play it ended in bad blood and
bad words. The vir celeberrime et erudilissime of the first

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 383

interchange of pamphlets became a fool, a villain, and an atheist
before the last surrebutter was put in. One is reminded of
Chucks, the boatswain, in Marryat's " Peter Simple," who always
began a reproof to his sailors with, " My dear man," and
ended with, " Take that, you d — d haymaking son of a sea-
cook." Bayle himself, the most moderate of men, but the
ablest dialectician of his day, wore the champion's belt and was
daily challenged to fight for it. In his room at Rotterdam,
" chez Mile. Wits sur le Schepesmaker's Have," he sat like
Goldsmith's porcupine, " self-collected, with a quill pointed
against every opposer." The day before his death he sent to
press a pamphlet aimed at Le Clerc, and spent the evening on a
reply to Jaquelot. When we think that these seventeenth-cen
tury combatants hurled folios at each other, we must admire
their vigor and endurance.

" Not two strong men th' enormous weight could raise,
Such men as live in these degenerate days."

All, or very nearly all, of them are dead books now, — des
livres qui ne parlent plus. We of the nineteenth century
look at these huge dark brown folios buried in the dust of
libraries as we look at the relics of a mastodon, and wonder
what kind of men

" Explored the deeps and shallows of the pen "

in that era. But the mammoth age of literature was then
passing away rapidly. The epoch of the folio was soon to be
overlaid by a new formation. The newspaper, destined to de
stroy it, had come into existence in 1631. Fifty years after,
Bayle writes of the author of some big volume : " How can he
expect to get readers in a time when one can hardly read all
the mercuries, journals, and news-letters that swarm in book
sellers' shops every day ? " A new literature sprang up in
France, and came to maturity as rapidly as {he vegetation of
an arctic summer. In his boyhood Bayle had little to read in
French but Montaigne and Plutarch. Descartes had published
his " Methode " at Leyden in 1637. His simple, clear, manly
style was as great an innovation as the philosophy it set forth.
Corneille's Cid was played about the same time. In 1656,
when Pascal wrote the first provincial letter, the " Yieux Gau-

384 Pierre Bayle. . [Oct.

lois " had given place to modern French. Within thirty years
after the publication of Pascal's famous pamphlets, the French
authors had become for precision, polish, and neatness of finish
the foremost literary workmen of the world, — a distinction
they may still fairly claim. The taste for books had kept pace
with the increase of good ones. It was the fashion to be a bel
esprit and a critic. The Grand Monarque was, perhaps, the
only gentleman in France who would have asked, " A quoi
sertoil, — il de lire ? "

Bayle made his first appearance before the public two or
three years before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
On the 9th of July, 1681, orders were issued to close the
Academy of Sedan, — one of the four Protestant academies of
France. When Sedan was ceded to France, all their existing
rights and privileges were guaranteed to the Protestants for
ever, and Louis XIV. had solemnly renewed the treaty. But
his confessors and his infirmities had persuaded him to abolish
a religion qui lui deplaisait, and to make the Protestants do
penance for his sins ; and the Academy of Sedan, in spite of
the foi et parole de roi, was the first that fell.

Bayle was Professor of Philosophy. Deprived of his means
of subsistence, foreseeing that evil days were approaching,
and doubly uneasy as a relaps, a relapsed heretic, he looked
about him for a refuge. The governor of Sedan offered him
great temporal advantages, if he would again change his faith.
But on that point, at least, Bayle seems to have never doubted
but once. He was thinking of 'England, when an offer reached
him from Rotterdam. M. De Paets, a councillor of the city,
brother-in-law of Cornelius de Witt, and head of the party in
Rotterdam opposed to the house of Orange, was desirous that
his country should getathe benefit of the learning, talent, and
honesty France was so foolishly throwing away. He proposed
to establish a university, to be callecj the Ecole Illustre, and of
fered Bayle a professorship, with five hundred florins a year
salary. Bayle accepted the offer, and remained in Rotterdam
until his death. He gave the burgomasters some trouble and
uneasiness, but it is doubtful if they* ever regretted having
called him to their new school, for his name was soon famous

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 385 .

throughout Europe. He became the President of .the Republic
of Letters, as Erasmus had been in the same city one hundred
and fifty years before him, as Voltaire was at Ferney fifty
years later ; a position similar to that held by Humboldt in
science in our time.

Des Maiseaux, a Huguenot who emigrated to England, lit
erary executor of Saint Evremond, a man of letters of the same
type as Jeremy Bentham's Genevese, M. Dumont, published
in 1729 a life of Bayle in two volumes. " Elle lie devait pas
contenir six pages," Voltaire said of it. It is a dull sum
mary of his works. Bayle's writings are his life. He moved
and had his being in books ; and his mission in this world was
to be the father of reviewers, and to write the " Dictionnaire
Historique et Critique," a book unique of its kind, the like of
which had never been written before and never can be again, — a
book that, like Plutarch's moral works, will always be valued as
a sort of literary curiosity-shop, in which all the odd fancies
and speculations, the scientific theories, the superstitions, cus
toms, stories, and mental bric-a-brac of the seventeenth cen
tury, can be found, as well as the views of one of its keenest
minds on science, philosophy, politics, and religion. After
Bayle's time learning became too extensive and varied for
the grasp* of one mind ; but at the end of the seventeenth
century it was still possible for such a man to know all that
was worth knowing, and it is doubtful if there was any
subject of interest then existing but what Bayle " had an
honest sight in it."

His one passion was study ; his only ambition, to read and
to write in liberty. " Plays, pleasure-parties, games, collations,
excursions into the country, visiting, and the like recreations,
necessary to many students, as they say, are not in my line.
I waste no time in that way. Neither do I waste time in do
mestic cares, nor in trying for place or for favor, nor in any
such matters." Like Newton, he had not the time to get
married. Soon after his arrival in Holland, when he was
thirty-five years of age, a match was proposed to him by his
friends, with a lady young, handsome, of good sense and good
temper, with fifteen thousand crowns in her own right, who
had no objection to become Mme. Bayle. He declined, giving

.386 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

as a reason that his happiness was in study and meditation,
and that the cares o£ a family were inconsistent with the pur
suits of a philosopher. As to money, he had enough for his
daily expenses ; more he considered useless. On this view of
life he acted, and succeeded, as literary men generally do, in
obtaining a large share of pleasure and content. " I have had
a leisure as delightful and as complete as any man of letters
could wish for ; and this appears to ine to be preferable to any
thing else."

He was born in the South of France, the son of a Huguenot
minister. A delicate, precocious boy, his reading seems to
have been desultory until he began his " logic " at twenty-one,
and entered the Jesuit college at Toulouse. It was not un
usual for Protestants to send their boys to Catholic schools.
The fathers made the most of their opportunity, as may be
seen from this entry in his " Calendarium " : " 1669, 9th
March. Change of religion. Next day I took up logic again."
Logic seems to have done its work, for soon after we find this :
" 1670, 21st August. I returned to the reformed religion."
As it was dangerous to change one's mind on this question in
1670, he fled to Geneva the same day. His conversion and
his reconversion, like the similar experiences of Chillingworth
and of Gibbon, seem to mark the period of mental develop
ment when Romanism is a satisfactory religion to a man of
sense and character who thinks for himself.

While earning his bread as a private tutor near Geneva he
studied the works of Descartes, and adopted the new system of
philosophy. Three years later he went te Rouen, where his
friend and fellow-student Jacques Basnage had got him a place
as tutor, and in 1675 he was in Paris teaching two unruly boys
for two hundred francs a year ; moderate pay, it seems, even
at that time. Bayle liked the capital. It was the only place,
he thought, for a man of letters to live. The society of the
learned, the public lectures, the libraries, delighted him ; he
also mentions, with approval, Poussin's pictures, Mile. Rocho-
nas the actress, and a certain potage de Talbot. But his
enjoyment .of these good things was marred by his position.
" I am sunk in a slough," he wrote to Basnage ; " no personal
merit can save a tutor from general disrespect." Basnage

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 387

came again to his assistance. He was finishing his theology at
Sedan. The professorship of theology was vacant. Basnage,
with the assistance of the Professor of Theology, the Rev. Pierre
Jurieu, obtained the place for Bayle, who filled it with the gen
eral approbation, until the academy was closed. Bayle repaid
Jurieu by recommending him to M. De Paets for a professor
ship in the Ecole Illustre.

Bayle and Jurieu became the Eteocles and Polynices of lit
erature. If fifteen years later they had been burned at the
same stake, — an event which might have happened had they
fallen into the hands of the French priests, — the flames would
have separated into two forks, as in the Theban myth ; but at
this time they were fast friends. Bayle " honored and admired
M. Jurieu," and his grandes et incomparables lumilres; and
Jurieu confessed, in the hottest moment of their subsequent
feud, that he had loved Bayle more than he had ever loved
any other man.

The world soon heard from the new professor of Rotterdam.
A comet of unusual size had appeared in 1680. That comets
portended war, pestilence, and danger, especially to the great,*
•was a universal superstition. Bayle wrote " Thoughts on the
Comet," to show the absurdity of this notion, not on merely
scientific grounds, because " there are so many good souls to
whom the soundest philosophical arguments are as suspicious
as the allurements of the play-house," but for theological
reasons. " Comets have always existed, they were seen by
the idolaters ; if miraculous now they were miraculous then ;
consequently, God performed miracles to strengthen idolatry."
His main argument suggested all manner of disquisitions on
almost every topic. Among others, thjs point was made, which
he might have found in Bacon's Essay on Superstition : " Is
not the idea of no God better than the wicked, incestuous gods
of the heathen ? Would not God prefer that the world should
remain ignorant of him rather than it should be abandoned to
the abominable worship of idols ? Has atheism anything to
do with moral conduct ? Has an unusual event any signifi
cance as a miracle, unless accompanied by the word?'1 The
book was full of a good sense unusual^at that day in such mat-

, # " WJien beggars die, then are no comets seen."

Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

ters. . It ridicules all presages and omens, lunar influences and
eclipses, unlucky days and unlucky numbers, and especially
astrology. " The general belief in this folly makes one mis
trust the soundness of public opinion." It was also noticed
for its lively, attractive style. Bayle dropped the pedantry
and magniloquence which had so long been the fashion in the
treatment of serious subjects, and presented the public with a
novelty, — " an author who wrote as everybody talked.'*

The " Thoughts " were published anonymously as the work of
a Roman Catholic, and the style was carefully adapted to the
character. Bayle then and afterward took great pains to con
ceal his authorship by ingenious prefaces, changes of manner,
and by employing different printers. " I have always had a
secret antipathy to put my name to a book," he wrote in the
Preface to the second edition of his Dictionary, " and reflec
tion has strengthened my natural inclination." The Protes
tants, including Jurieu, were pleased with the " Thoughts," for
it was easy to see that by idolaters Bayle meant the Catholics.
In a short time it became generally known that he was the
author of it.

Maimbourg, a French ecclesiastic, had published a History,
of Calvinism, very offensive to " those of the religion." Bayle
wrote a "Critique Ge'ne'rale" of it. The great learning shown
in this treatise, and its lively wit, attracted universal notice. It
was attributed to Claude, and was so much relished in Paris, that
Pere Maimbourg, smarting under the attack, had recourse to
the temporal arm, and obtained a decree that the " Critique "
should be burned by the hangman, and that any one who should
print, sell, or circulate it should suffer death. The minister of
police obeyed the order, but took care to have a copy of it
posted on every street corner in Paris, and all who could read
the advertisement managed to read the book.*

In 1684 Bayle began the " Nouvelles de la Re'publique des
Lettres," a monthly record of new books, new inventions, new
discoveries, intended for the general reader as well as for the

* Jurieu also wrote an answer to Maimbourg, full of the old stock arguments
against the Catholics. But Jurieu's book was not burned. Menage said, in his
" Ana," that Bayle's book wasf^vritten by an honnete homme, aud Jurieu's by a
vicille de preche, a fanatical old woman.

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 389

learned one, — the first specimen of the class of serials known
as Reviews. Bayle was a born journalist and reviewer. He
had the art of condensing the essence of a book into a few
pleasant words. His learning, his fairness, his* sense, his
vivacity, and a certain modern feeling in everything he wrote,
made his monthly the delight of the educated class. " A charm
ing thing," Benserade wrote him, " for lazy people to read your
opinions of books." The " Nouvelles " seem to have been the
great literary sensation of the period. The Academic wrote a
formal letter of congratulation to Bayle, assuring him that there
was but one opinion in that body as to his merit, and the Royal
Society elected him a correspondent and sent him Willoughby's
" Natural History of Fishes," as a mark of their respect.

The Jesuits of Toulouse now learned what had become of
their renegade pupil, and took steps to punish him ty trying to
convert his brother, a quiet Protestant minister residing in his
native village. The principal argument they used was a dark
and damp dungeon in the Chateau Trompette at Bordeaux.
Young Bayle died in it of cold, foul air, and insufficient food.
This and a hundred instances of cruelty equally infamous, and
the crowd of wretched exiles who poured into Holland to es
cape torture and the galleys, excited Bayle's horror of bigotry.
He wrote a passionate pamphlet in answer to the clerical boast,
." that France was all Catholic under Louis the Great." In it
he catalogued all the mean, malignant, and hypocritical atroci
ties the Catholic party had been guilty of, and held all Catholic
Frenchmen responsible for them. Persecution was the mpst
certain article of faith of the Catholic Church. " Could they
prove any other half as well by tradition, there would be no
answering them." He warned them that their success would
prove to be a triumph for Deism rather than for the true faith.
This was soon followed by a book on toleration. He took for
a title the text from St. Luke, always in the mouths of the
persecutors, Compelle entrare, " Compel them to come in."
Toleration is an old doctrine, one that suggests itself to the
weaker party ; but toleration at that time meant, " We ought
to be tolerated, but no one else." Heresy was crime with Prot
estants as well as with Catholics. The Calvinists longed to
persecute the Arminians and the Socinians. " Persecution,"

390 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

said Bayle, " is the ultima ratio of theologians." " To burn
a heretic is the only point on which all theologians agree."
Bayle took ground that even now we hold in theory rather than
in feeling. * He insisted upon the innocence of honest error,
the rights of a mistaken conscience, and universal toleration
even for Jews, Mahometans, and Pagans. " A correct life is
of more importance than a correct belief. The best creed will
not save the soul from damnation if its deeds have been
evil." Both these books were published under an assumed
name and character, and noticed in the " Nouvelles " as the
work of a stranger.

Jurieu was violently opposed to universal toleration and the
" indifference of creeds." He immediately wrote an answer.
" Such a doctrine," he said, was " pernicious," " a conspiracy
against truth." He was " distressed," " struck to the heart."

If the mother of the Regent Orleans was right in saying
that everybody was sent into this world to torment somebody
else, Jurieu' s mission must have been to torment Bayle. A
coolness had existed between them since the success of the
" Critique" on Maimbourg; it gradually grew into an enmity so
fierce and vindictive on the part of Jurieu, that Sainte-Beuve
has suggested as an explanation that Mme. Jurieu may not have
shared her husband's antipathy to Bayle. But this hypothesis
has no facts to sustain it ; it is based only on certain a priori
principles which seem implanted in the French mind.

Bayle was known to have been a man of the purest life, and
not fond of the society of women. Jurieu • was ten years his
senior, and full of energy and fire. Imperious, irascible, quar
relsome, and violent as Achilles, he considered himself the
Bossuet of Protestantism and the successor of Claude as head
of the Refugees. He was one of those lucky men who know
that they are always right. His cause was God's cause, his
enemies were false to their Creator and traitors to the state.
Boileau's verses were applied to him with justice, —

" Qui n'aime pas Cotin, n'estime pas son roi
Et n'a selon Cotin, ni J)ieu, ni foi, ni loi."

Although an enthusiastic Calvinist, his impatience of contra
diction led him to catch up any argument that might do service ;
he was accused of reasoning from hand to mouth, and even laid

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 391

himself open to the charge of rationalism. With all, a popu
lar preacher and so voluminous a writer that men wondered
how his admirers could find time to read all that he wrote.*
Unlike the better class of Protestant ministers who followed
the conservative example of Calvin in politics, Jurieu was a
republican, bitterly opposed to Louis XIV., and devoted to
William of Orange. He maintained the right of rebellion,
proclaimed the sovereignty of the people, and ridiculed passive
obedience and the divine right of kings. His lettres pasto
rales, of which great numbers circulated in France, encour
aged the Huguenots to open resistance. He is supposed to have
been instrumental in exciting the Camisard war in 1698. He
had resided in England and made use of his acquaintance with
persons and parties there to write against Charles II., and to stir
up the French emigrants against James. ' Careful study of the
mysteries of the Apocalypse had led him to announce that in 1689
the persecution of the Reformed religion would cease in France,
and that the refugees would be restored to their privileges and
possessions. Prodigies and miracles attested the truth of his
prediction. " In the Cevennes and in Beam angels had been
heard to sing psalms in the air ; in Dauphine* a shepherdess in
a trance had uttered excellent and divine words, announcing
the approach of the deliverance from bondage, and the spirit of
God had fallen upon many young children in the like manner."
1689 passed and his prophecies were not fulfilled. He then
preached war, and predicted that the time was near when the
exiles shoutd re-enter France, sword in hand, as the Waldenses
had marched back into Savoy, and, nothing daunted by his
repeated prophetic failures, he announced the fall of antichrist
and the millennium for the year 1715. Like most noisy, fa
natical, onq-sided men, he had great influence with the lower
classes and with the political party for whom he preached and
pamphleteered unceasingly. It was asserted by his friends
that the French government had tried to kidnap him, and this
added greatly to his popularity. After the death of De Paets,

* He left sixty volumes. Jurieu was often a clear and forcible writer. His
" Soupirs de la France Esclave " was republished in the first years of the French
Revolution as the work of a patriot. His " Histoire Critique des Dograes " is still
spoken of by theologians.

392 Pierre Bayle. [Oct..

Bayle's patron, the Orange and anti-French party ruled in
Rotterdam.

Bayle, on the other hand, had not a spark of the/cw ardent
et 'sombre that makes the enthusiast. He had " an eye for
both sides," and saw too many weak spots in both to feel cer
tain that either was entirely right. And Bayle was a thorough
Frenchman at heart. Like Montaigne, Pascal, Hume, and
Gibbon, sceptics as well as himself, he preferred monarchy to
government by the people. The strongest dislike of which he
was capable was for intolerance, bigotry, and dogmatism. These
cardinal vices he found as fully developed in his fellow-exiles as
in the Catholics. The conflict wasjiever fiercer between the two
parties than in 1690. It was political as well as religious. The
Allies were making war against France. Libels on Louis XIV.,
as well' as against the Papacy, swarmed in Holland. Jurieu
and his followers would tolerate no opposition. " If you want
to respect your religion," Bayle writes to a friend, " stay where
you are. You will be a much better Protestant if you only see
our religion where it is persecuted. You will be scandalized if
you see it where it rules." " God keep us from the Protestant
inquisition."

In the midst of this tumult appeared a pamphlet, " Avis aux
Refugies," written apparently by a Catholic in France, — a letter
of warning and advice addressed to his countrymen in Holland.
The writer, after ridiculing Jurieu and the non-fulfilment of
his prophecy for 1689, told the refugees that " if they ever
hoped to come back to France they must undergo a* quarantine
before entering the country to purify themselves from the foul
atmosphere of Holland, which has infected them with two
dangerous and odious maladies, — the love of libelling and the
love of republicanism, or, in other words, anarchy, the great
est curse that can befall a nation." " Libelling was a note of
heresy in itself. The ' social contract ' meant rebellion. The
Protestant religion provoked and encouraged rebellion. Eng
land was an example. It was well that France had been purged
of these seditious disturbers of the public peace, who were all
ready, if it served their turn, to place the reins of government
in the hands of the canaille."

The " Avis " exploded" like a bombshell among the refugees.

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 393

It was considered "the most pernicious writing that had ap
peared against them since the Reformation." It was attributed
to Pellesion, to La Roque, and among others to Bayle. Bayle
denied it. In 1691, when the " Avis " was nearly forgotten,
Jurieu suddenly accused Bayle of having written it, and ordered
him to leave the seven Provinces. " Bayle was always the
defender of James II. ; he had no amour de Dieu, his only
divinity was Louis XIV." " He was the enemy of Holland and
of true religion." " As I have not the power to punish M.
Bayle as he deserves, I will, at least, hold him up to infamy."
He tried to move heaven and earth, synods and burgomasters,
to do more. But Bayle stood to his denial, and Jurieu' s efforts
came to nothing, when suddenly fortune placed a new oppor
tunity in his hands.

There was in Geneva one M. Goudet, a Colorado Jewett of the
period, who had devised a plan for the pacification of Europe, and
a redistribution of territory among the powers. Among other
alterations of the map, King James, who was " unattached,"
was to reign over Palestine, with Jerusalem for a capital ;
France was to have Egypt and the island of Rhodes ; and forty
thousand Swiss were to be provided for at six hundred thousand
crowns a year, as the army and police force of all Europe. Gou
det requested Minutoli, a friend and correspondent of Bayle, to
submit the plan to him and to a few other eminent men in
Holland. Bayle looked at it and wrote to Minutoli that neither
he nor his friends thought well of it. By some accident a
manuscript copy fell into the hands of a book-dealer, who
printed it. Jurieu read it, and at once proclaimed in his loud
est tones that a cabal existed in Holland, a French faction de
termined to make a peace advantageous to France ; that Bayle
was the head of the conspiracy ; he had written the " Avis " to
prepare the public mind ; that he, Bayle, was " an enemy to
religion, a traitor to his fellow-refugees, and to the state that
protected him, and worthy of public detestation and of condign
punishment." Here was a very serious charge. To meddle
in affairs of state was a dangerous business, and the Orange
party, who were opposed to peace, were all-powerful in Hol
land. Bayle at once laid his denial before the Grand Bailli of
Rotterdam, and asked for an investigation, offering to abide the

394 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

result in prison if Jurieu would do the same. Meantime he
wrote the " Cabale Chim^rique." " Jurieu had discovered a
mare's nest; he contradicted himself; his accusations were as
absurd as they were false ; he had made them only because
I will not believe his ridiculous prophecies, }iis false miracles,
and his pretended revelations."

Jurieu, stung to the quick, appealed to the burgomasters for
protection against the insults of Bayle ; the judicious burgo
masters begged them both to keep quiet and to make it up.
But neither would keep quiet. .Jurieu wrote and preached ;
and Bayle, worried by calumny and misrepresentation, lost
patience and dignity, and insisted upon answering him. The
feud went on until Jurieu found a way to strike a blow that
could not be parried. He laid his charges before King William,
who was the more ready to believe them on account of Bayle's
old intimacy with De Paets, and the magistrates of Rotterdam
were directed to displace the Professor of Philosophy, and to
stop his salary of five hundred florins.

The Comte de Guiscard at once offered him one thousand
florins a year, with a guaranty of full liberty of conscience, if
he would return to France and undertake the education of his
son. Bayle refused this offer and others, among them X 200 a
year from Lord Huntington. He had enough for his simple
wants, and his time was1 fully occupied with the Dictionary.
The first volume was published in 1695. Jurieu made the Dic
tionary the occasion of fresh attacks. He cited Bayle before
the consistory of Rotterdam for his article on Pyrrhonism, on
the Manic Laws, on David and Sarah, and for certain obscenities
(reflexions galantes, Bayle called them), that disfigure the
book. In this defe'ct Bayle resembled Swift and Pope, — men
of the most correct lives, like himself. Jurieu also complained
of passages personally offensive. The consistory, after much
urging, advised Bayle to suppress these passages, and to make
various changes in other articles complained of. He consented
to do so in the second edition ; but his publishers printed the
suppressed matter in foot-notes, and in the third edition it found
its way back into its former position.

The difficulty of reconciling the existence of evil with Divine
goodness, which Bayle has treated so fully in the " Mani-

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 895

»

cheans," led to a long and fierce controversy with Le Clerc and
Jaquelot, both distinguished ministers of the Refuge. La Clerc
attempted to explain the mystery with Cudworth's Plastic
Nature, and Jaquelot made use of Origen's doctrine of the final
restoration of all souls to happiness. Bayle demolished them
both. It is said that Le Clerc and Jaquelot, instead of pray
ing, like St. Ambrose in his controversy with Augustine, " for
strength to break through the cobweb of his sophistry,"
held rather to the opinion of St. Jerome, that certain argu
ments are to be 'answered with blows, if reasons prove ineffec
tive. They are suspected of having allied themselves with
Jurieu to repeat in England the accusation against Bayle of
sympathy with France. The old charges were urged upon Lord
Sunderland with so much pertinacity, that he had determined
to order Bayle?s expulsion from the Provinces. It was solely
owing to the interference of Lord Shaftesbury of the " Charac
teristics," that he was permitted to finish his life in his home.
" The Republic of Letters," he said sadly, " has become a pays
de brigandage" He died in December, 1706. After his death
his great reputation increased. For the next fifty years the
Dictionary was the lecture des honnetes gens, — "a library in
itself to most people." Frederick the Great called it the
" Breviary of Good Sense." In his Essay on France, Gold
smith introduces Dr. Johnson, who asks leave to put his Lexicon
in the " Fame Machine," or omnibus. The driver refuses to
take it. " I have driven this coach, man and boy, these
two thousand years, and I do not remember to have carried
but one dictionary during the whole time." All of Bayle is
in this Dictionary, even his quarrels ; and the Dictionary, he
said, could have been put into one volume if he had written for
himself and not for the booksellers. Possibly, if he had lived
in the same set with Boileau and La Bruyere, but the conden
sation and polish of Paris was not found in Holland. AH the
exiles have what Sainte-Beuve calls the style refugie ; and Bayle
was diffuse by nature and fond of rambling disquisitions. To
the modern reader much, if not most, of the value of his book
lies in his curious anecdotes,. his historical investigations, and
his shrewd criticisms ; for, as he said, "it is not what has
happened, but what people say of what has happened," that is
VOL. cxi.~ NO. 229. 26

396 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

interesting. But to his immediate successors all this was use
less lumber, swelling the size of the book to no purpose. As
Bayle had predicted, Deism and liberalism sprang up and
grew in strength, until they ended in the atheism and anarchy
so thoroughly expressed in the well-known verses,

" Et des boyaux du dernier pretre
Serrez le cou du dernier des rois."

The bigotry and cruelty of the Catholic party, and the close
alliance between Church and State, made Christianity itself
odious to the progressive. What with Bayle had been a friendly
trial of skill in dialectics was war to the knife with them,
and e erase 2 I 'infdme their cry. In the Dictionary they found
everything that could be said on atheism, deism, the Christian
dogmas, and the various heresies. Freedom of the will, origi
nal sin, existence of evil, justification, and grace, u that ocean
without soundings or shore." It was an arsenal of weapons
ready made to their hands. They placed Bayle on a ped
estal and worshipped him. He was " le judicieux Bayle,"
" 1'eternel honneur de la raison humaine," " un des grand
hommes que la France a produits," u qui a eclairc le monde
et honore sa patrie," etc., etc. Yet Bayle had not given judg
ment in their favor. He took care never to offer his opinion
on these vexed questions. He only said, " Here is what seems
to me a difficulty," or, "I suggest this objection merely as
a problem to be solved." His position was this : " Which
ever side you take in controversy on religious dogmas, you will
come upon insurmountable difficulties. You cannot shut one
door, without leaving another open. With sixteen centuries and
one hundred thousand volumes before you, you can maintain or
deny whatever you please. Who is to decide on the interpreta
tion of Scripture ? The Fathers, like the gods in the Iliad, came
down to succor each side in turn, and to keep the battle going
until darkness separates the combatants. Each party sustains
itself by so many proofs from philosophy, theology, and the
Bible, that it is difficult to choose between them. A sect that
has been struck down can always get upon its legs again, if it
drops the defensive and attacks. God appears to be the com
mon Father of denominations, as of all things."

This was enough; but more than this, he seems to take

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 397 '

pleasure in his iconoclastic work. He goes about it in such a
cheerful, light-hearted way ! His tone betrays him ; it is not
respectful, often irreverent. No pious man would have ex
posed the weakness of the cause he had at heart. We may see
the faults of those we love, but we do not proclaim them to the
world. Indeed, to inquire at all is the sign of a sceptical
mind. Bayle felt this himself, and took his precautions, for
the times were ticklish.* How else can we explain his fierce
attack upon the memory of Spinoza, unless he felt it necessary
to " enliven his character," like Steele, who tells us that he
wrote his first play because of " the rebuffs he met with for his
religious doctrines " ? But the grand loophole of escape he kept
always open was Faith. " Our reason," he says, " tells us these
excellent doctrines are untenable, self-contradictory, absurd ; but
Revelation tells us they are true. Human reason, in the pres
ence of the Divine goodness and wisdom, is foolishness. Let
us, then, humbly lay it at the feet of Faith, our only anchor and
refuge. All that the good Christian needs to know is that his
faith rests upon the testimony of God. The more Faith crushes
our weak and limited reason, the greater her triumph. In what
else does the -merit of faith consist ? Where there is demon
stration, there can be no faith. If I believe in the immortality
of the soul and the heaven hereafter from demonstration, I
have no more merit than when I believe that 2x2 = 4."

The device, if a device, was clever, but not new. Many years
before Pompon atius had said he believed as a Christian what he
could not believe as a philosopher ; and his adversaries had sug
gested that it would be well to bura him as a philosopher and
not as a Christian. Bayle's enemies took the same view of
his case. There was no denying all that he had written about
the excellence of Faith, but " whether a doctrine is orthodox or
not," they said, " depends upon the intention of -the man who
teaches it." Bayle talks like the ordinary run of theologians,
but he is laughing at them all the time. He lets Reason talk
too much before he makes her hold her tongue. He ruins faith
by reason, and then destroys reason by faith. He com
promises both authorities." This was well put, but when Leib-

* 1697, Aikenhead was hanged at Edinburgh for blasphemy, only eighteen years
old.

398 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

nitz, Jaquelot, and La Placette undertook to show that reason
should always bear out faith, Bayle scattered their arguments
without difficulty. He even proved to them that the best of the
Fathers had held precisely his doctrine ; and that theologians
who had recourse to reason had never been considered orthodox.
Protest as he would, pious people instinctively felt that his book
was against them. The Protestants accused him of betraying
his party when he wrote the " Avis," and of driving weak souls
into the Catholic Church by showing that reason was a delusion
and faith the only sure guide. Bayle answered, that it required
a faith altogether different from any he had recommended to
believe that the Roman Church held the truth by Divine com
mission, and that the Protestants themselves refused the right
of private judgment to those who differed from them. The
Catholic priests, especially the Jesuits, in their " Journal de
Trevoux," wrote against him and preached against him for at
least fifty years. In 1750 Voltaire mentions that Pere Garosse,
of the order, had boasted of preaching against Bayle in Stras-
burg with such effect, that seven persons burned their Dic
tionaries in the market-place after the sermon.

Bayle is said to have influenced modern thought more than
any other man except Descartes. He was a shadow of the
coming eighteenth century cast before ; but it is not fair to hold
him responsible for the witty warfare of Voltaire on religion,
or for the brutal assaults of Paine. In his time it was not re
ligion that was fought over, but doctrine. The wisest and best
men believed that error in the most subtle religio-metaphysical
speculations was a crime to be punished on earth by the civil
power, and by eternal damnation in the world to come. There
has been a great change in opinion on this subject. Religion
itself is as sacred to us as it has ever been to mankind, but
conduct is now considered of more importance than creed.
Those old doctrines are as dead as the saints ; even their relics
have ceased to be reverenced. The superstition of dogma
is felt to be as foolish as the superstitions of tradition or of
ceremonial. Regeneration, justification, predestination, grace,
watch-words -then, are hardly catch-words now. They fall
dead upon our ears. We are Lutherans, Baptists, Calvinists,
from birth, habit, or prejudice. Few know or care to know the

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 399

distinguishing points of their creed. All Protestant sects might
gather under the same roof, if dogmas only were in question.
These are kept, like the church plate, by the preacher. But
Bayle lived in the midst of the swarm of doctrines, " hatched
by the long incubation of school divinity upon folly." He dis
cussed the mystery of man's origin, destiny, and relations with
Divine Providence with as little feeling as an anatomist when he
dissects a body. He never felt the cut of the knife on his own
nerves, like our nineteenth-century doubters. That he was an
upright, kind, and benevolent man, no one denied. He fulfilled
the customary religious duties, took the communion four times
a year, went to the Preche every Sunday, and listened to many
" a good, honest, painful sermon." He risked his life and
liberty, and gave up fortune and country, for 'his religion.
Twice, at least, he refused brilliant offers from France. He
had only to abjure to become another Pellesion with position
and wealth in the capital of learning. That he was a sincere
Protestant in the cardinal point of private judgment cannot be
questioned. He warned the Protestants that, in not holding
fast to that right, they gave the advantage in controversy to
the Catholics. Nor is it to be supposed that because he had
examined every system, he was without one, like the lady in
Crabbe's poem : —

" The creed of all men she takes leave to sift,
And, quite impartial, turns her own adrift."

A creed in those days was as necessary as clothes to decent
people. Bayle was a Calvinist. He thought that the scheme
of the Synod of Dort was, on the whole, sounder than les
mot/ens reldches of the Arminians ; " and whatever system a
man may fix upon," he said, " be it right or wrong, one thing
is certain, we must do good actions, love God, and act up to
our consciences." This will not be considered a very danger
ous form of scepticism.

But his religion was of the head rather than of the heart.
He had no besoin de croire. 'Much as he preached faith, he
had little use for it. Giant Despair did not inhabit Doubting
Castle when he visited there. He was incapable of that
agony of doubt which once drove Pascal to toss up, to decide by
heads or tails whether God existed and whether the soul was

400 Pierre Bayle. [Oct.

immortal ; he had not a trace of that abject fear of punishment
hereafter which reached insanity in Cowper. Bayle had an
intense dislike of dogmatism, with no toleration for people who,
having " made for themselves a God after their own image,"
insisted that everybody should bow down and worship him. He
could not refrain from turning their own weapons against his
noisy and bigoted fellow-exiles, and it happened to him, as to
Diomede at the siege of Trov, he wounded a divinity with the
sword he had drawn against wrangling mortals. Bayle
hated confident ignorance and falsehood. " Never give lies
quarter," was his motto. He shot at them " with arrows made
of any wood," and sometimes, in the eagerness of his pursuit,
ran them down on consecrated ground. The spirit of contra
diction, or rather of reaction from commonplace opinions, was
strong within him. To hear something loudly repeated every
day, created an inclination in him to doubt, to examine, to deny.

" I know him, bless him," some one said to Charles Lamb for

the twentieth time -of a Mr. B , whom he had never seen.

" Well, I don't," retorted Lamb, " but damn him at a hazard." *
Bayle was provoked to write the " Avis " by the violent and
disingenuous altercations of the refugees. His friend Basnage
evidently thought him the author of it. He told Des Maizeaux
that Bayle must at least have written the Preface and retouched
the work. " There is no mistaking his ingenuity, his wit, or
his style. There is but one Bayle." " It was aut Bayle aut
diabolus"

In philosophy Bayle was not a sceptic. Bouillier, author of
an excellent history of Descartes and his school, speaks of
Bayle's " Systeme de Philosophic " as " one of the best
of those excellent treatises on the knowledge of God and of
ourselves, suggested by the philosophy of Descartes " ; although
he admits that Bayle did not always swear in verba magistri,
and made some objections which none of the disciples of
Descartes were able to answer.

There are three degrees of scepticism, of which Montaigne,
Bayle, and Hume may be taken respectively as types.

* This rebellious feeling extended to more serious subjects in Lamb as well as in
Bayle. " The dogmatism of theology has disgusted Lamb, and it is that alone he
opposes. He has the organ of theosophy and is by nature pious." (Crabb Robinson,
Vol. I.)

1870.] Pierre Bayle. 401

Montaigne merely loosened the ground about received
opinions. Que sais je ? " What do I know ? " was his motto.
Bayle examined a great many questions, and showed that in
these, at least, it was impossible to know what was absolute
truth. Hume, from the very nature of the human understand-
ing, deduced that we are incapable of arriving at truth.
Hume was an a priori sceptic. Bayle would have been
an inductive sceptic, if he had been a 'maker of systems ; but
he was not, partly from his anti-dogmatizing temperament,
and partly from policy ; for he saw the great advantage in
controversy of holding 'no position that could be attacked.
His intellect, bright, sharp, and solid v as steel, delighted in
the play of dialectics. He had trained off every superfluous
ounce of prejudice, of sentiment. Since the day of Zeno,
there had been no one equal to him in his rare combina
tion of subtlety, learning, and good sense. He felt the joy a
master always feels in the exercise of his strength and skill.
He loved - to set up objections, for the pleasure of cutting
them down. He compared himself to Zeus Nephelegereta,
the gatherer of clouds. His keen eye detected a fallacy, how
ever carefully concealed, and he knew how to expose it by
" happily hitting the one point of view " which made its real
character visible to everybody. He was a destructive, not a
builder up ; the first of dialecticians, rather than a philosopher.
Otherwise he might have gone far. He anticipated Locke,
when he asked, " Why God could not have made the body
conscious of itself. We do not know how he acts on the mind.
We know nothing of substance, and arguments for or against
materiality are equally balanced and equally incomprehensible."
He anticipated Berkeley in showing that there is no proof of the
existence of matter ; for Descartes " extension " is as much a
" mode " or an u attribute " of matter, as color and scent. The
doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge is clearly set
forth in his writings ; there are hints, scattered here and there,
which suggest Kant ; and the moral of all his labors is that of
Mr. Lewes, in his History of Philosophy : " Inquiries con
ducted on the metaphysical method are but as dreams."

Few of Bayle's " difficulties " have been removed, few of
his " problems " solved. He may be answered by intuition, by

402 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

mysticism, by feeling ; but if we try to shape our feelings into
syllogisms, and call upon reason to assist us, we get a danger
ous ally. Reasoning in such matters is like the sword in quar
rels : " They that take the sword shall perish by it." Religion
is of " si^ch an unspeakable comfort " in the cares and misery of
this world, that to overthrow any form of it, even fetichism, un
less you have something better to put in its place, is a sin
against one's fellow-men. It cannot be denied that Bayle has
written much that renders him liable to this reproach. But
his motives may have been good ; he may have sincerely pos
sessed the faith he extols. Who shall say ? Leibnitz, who had
often crossed swords with him, wrote after his death : " It is
to be hoped that M. Bayle now finds himself surrounded by
those lights that are wanting to us here below, since there is
ground for supposing that he was not deficient in good inten
tions." " Charite bien rare parmi les theologiens," was Fon-
tenelle's remark on this.

F. SHELDON.

ART. VII. — FRANCE UNDER THE SECOND EMPIRE.

THE connection between the First and the Second Empire
is almost too obvious to need insisting upon. That the latter
is built upon so much of the massive ruins of the former as
had resisted disintegration, and still peered above the debris of
intermediate dynasties, is an admitted fact needing no demon
stration. The important question is, Of what materials do
these imperial foundations exist ? What, to drop metaphor,
are the ideas or sentiments, created by the First Empire, which
have outlived it ?

Now, when we endeavor to seize at* a glance the most prom
inent characteristic of the Napoleonic era, the impression first
presenting itself is that of French supremacy, — above all, of
French military supremacy. There can be no hesitation here.
It is by this characteristic that that epoch of French history
is pre-eminently distinguished from every other.

Closely connected with this idea of supremacy, although less

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 403

conspicuously prominent, stands the idea of authority ', of a firm
central power repressing anarchy and curbing revolution.
These two we take to be the main characteristics of the Napo
leonic era, the characteristics which left on that generation an
impress so deep as to prove hereditary, and thus prepared the
way for the Second Empire and its marvels.

The. persistency of the characteristics of race is one of the
most curious of ethnological problems. In the extant frag
ments of Cato the Elder's " Origines," the following passage
occurs : " Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime persequi-
tur ; rem militarem et argute loqui." * The remark is two
thousand years old, but remains strictly true at the present
day. To the Frenchman, vain at all points, but especially vain
where la gloire is concerned, the idea of France's military su-,
premacy possesses an attractiveness without some appreciation
of the intensity of which the course of recent French history
cannot possibly be understood. The apparent eclipse of this
idea was one main cause of the instability of Louis Philippe's
throne, and its brilliant " emersion," before the magic of Na
poleon's name, helped more than anything else to lift the
present Emperor into power.

Now it is tolerably apparent that race characteristics will
always be most powerful among the least educated classes.
In France the peasantry — the most purely Gallic portion of
the population — are in a state of ignorance only exceeded,
probably, by that of the same class in England. What little
knowledge they possess is, of course, only school-gained knowl
edge, neither developed nor assimilated by the processes of ob
servation and discussion which are open to the artisan of the
town, and hence rather fitted to enhance than to correct the
common rustic tendency to superstition, which in the imagina
tive Celt is especially strong.

But the French peasant, from the circumstance of his being
the owner of the soil he tills, is also intensely conservative in
character, oppdsed heart and soul to every revolutionary ten
dency, and therefore deeply enamored of that principle of
authority which we have named as one of the dominant ele
ments of the Napoleonic idea. For him the first Emperor,

* See Krause, Historicorum Romanorum Fragtnenta. Berlin, 1833.

40-i France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

whose picture hangs above his hearth, is France's tutelary
saint, the personification of that national grandeur which en
ables him to believe that, humble as he is, the mere fact of his
being un Francais raises him above the denizens of every
other country in the world. The simple intensity of this
hero-worship is almost incomprehensible to an American.
To find its parallel we must open some legendary chronicles
and go back to the days of King Arthur and his Round Table,
or of Charlemagne and his paladins. That the Emperor did
not really die in St. Helena, but remained, in some semi-spirit
ualized condition, a denizen of this nether world, was for years
the firm faith of thousands of these poor fellows, many of whom
at once accepted the conclusion that Louis- Napoleon was le
petit caporal himself rest&red to animation. The melodra
matic travesty of a Republic which followed the revolution of
1848, making universal suffrage logically imperative, threw
the elective power directly into the hands of these Napoleon-
worshippers, and the watchful Louis saw his advantage and
profited by it at once.* For a second time, popular sover
eignty, unenlightened by .education, engendered pure absolut
ism.

The vote of 1851, however, was swollen almost to unanimity
by the adhesion of many who were far from sharing the hero-
worship of the rural masses. It was solely as the representa
tive of the principle of authority that the bourgeoisie voted
for Louis Napoleon. He was in their eyes the alternative of
a socialistic republic, but their hearty acceptance of a regime
which annihilated their own political influence was naturally
impossible. The Emperor himself was perfectly aware of this.
He knew that by the majority of the enlightened classes the
Napoleonic era was regarded with very different sentiments
from those entertained by the rural population, and according
ly one of his main objects always was to " put down " the en
lightened classes and to give preponderance to the unenlightened.

* It will be remembered that a law restricting universal suffrage, passed by the
republican Assembly in 1850, in known opposition to the President's views, was
one of the incidents which helped to prepare public opinion for the coup d'etat.
The re-peal of this law was announced in the proclamation posted about Paris on
the morning after that famous — or infamous — act.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 405

This assertion seems at first sight almost an incredible one,
when we remember that France is not only one of the most
enlightened countries of the civilized world, but emphatically
the one which boasts loudest of her enlightenment. Its rele
vancy to our subject is, however, sufficiently close to demand
some proof of its accuracy. It is, indeed, one of the leading
facts which explain the utter hollo wness of that structure which
has already collapsed, and apparently could not but collapse,
before the first well-directed blow.

The France of which Louis Napoleon possessed himself,
with " well-used cruelty," * in 1851, was a nation full of noble
aspirations, but, thanks to a chronic state of revolution, so
utterly bereft of any sort of national faith, whether in religion,
morals, or politics, that these aspirations were without har
mony or precision of aim. .The various sections of society,
— the noblesse, the bourgeoisie , the operatives, and the pro-
Utaires, — forging for themselves, out of their own special and
exclusive interests, theories inconsistent with the interests of
others, and acknowledging no other authority than the con
viction of tli£ moment, had come at once into inevitable col
lision, and the .belief in the Republic which was to inaugurate
a millennium of peace, liberty, and brotherhood, had vanished
almost at the moment of that Republic's proclamation. The
state of things was one which justified, or rather demanded,
strong repressive measures, and of this the great majority of
the people were deeply conscious, as the vote of the 20th De
cember, — the vote of seven and a half millions, — strikingly
proved. But had Louis Napoleon possessed range as well as
clearness of vision, he would have felt that, with a nation whose
entire political life, for three quarters of a century, had been a
feverish striving after liberty, such a state of things could only
be exceptional. Unable to perceive this, he accepted the tem
porary as the normal condition of France, and set himself to
make perpetual a dictatorship which was only justified by
transient circumstances.

By restoring, after the coup d'etat, that universal suffrage

* " Bene usate si possono chiamar quelle crudelta che si fanno una sol volta per
necessita dell' assicurarsi." — MACHIATELLI, II Principe, Ch. VIII. (Dt quelli cho
per scelleratezze sono pervenuti al principato.)

406 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

which the sham Republic had sought to restrict, the Emperor
found at once a solid basis for his power in the Napoleon-
worshipping peasantry.* But the middle class and the opera
tives, meantime, were alike opposed to the absolute regime
which he inaugurated, and his efforts to repress this opposition
constitute almost the entire internal history of the Second
Empire. The parliamentary traditions of the Restoration and
of Louis Philippe were too deeply engrained to be altogether
ignored. Some empty names were, however, all that Louis
Napoleon deemed it necessary to concede to these traditions.
A senate, with no share in legislation, except to determine the
constitutionality of the laws submitted to it by the Emperor,
and a " legislative body " empowered to vote upon, but nei
ther to reject nor to amend these laws, both sitting with closed
doors, were the institutions substituted for the free " tribune >!
which had echoed to the incisive logic of a Guizot, the fiery
utterances of a Thiers, and the burning declamations of a
Lamartine.

This was, practically, to convert the legislature into a mere
court of record. But the Frenchman is no less prone to the
argute loqui than to the rem mililarem ; and, in spite of the
withdrawal of every stimulus to oratorical display, there was
still danger that the court of record might become a debating
society also. To prevent this the most strenuous efforts were
made to exclude every element of opposition, without which
there is no debate. " Official candidates " were put forward,
backed by ministerial circulars, and openly supported by the
whole force of a bureaucracy which ramifies from Paris through
out France, and obeys with mechanical precision the impulse
given from the centre. To the average Frenchman, nurtured
under this system of minute centralization, nothing is more
irksome than political responsibility, and the authoritative rec
ommendations of the government were adopted by the masses
with eager subserviency. As a result, the " liberal " intellect
of France was virtually excluded from the first Corps Legis-
latif, and was only represented in the second (that of 1857),

* According to the French census of J866, out of an entire population of thirty-
eight millions, twenty-six and a half millions inhabit country districts exclusively.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 407

by five members (Jules Favre, Picard, Darimon, Henon, and
— Ollivier).

Having thus, as he fondly believed, silenced the tribune, the
Emperor turned to the press, — a still more formidable oppo
nent, because penetrating into every household and knowing
no fatigue. The decree of February, 1853, subjected all news
papers to a preliminary authorization, and to the deposit of a
large sum by way of " caution money." The circulation of
matter considered objectionable, by an irresponsible minister,
entailed an official warning (avertissemenf), and after three
such warnings the paper might, at the option of the same min
ister, be suspended. In some cases this supervision of the
press took the preventive form, the minister formally interdict
ing the bare mention of certain facts the publicity of which
might seem to him undesirable ! Two judicial condemnations,
for contraventions or delits, authorized entire suppression of the
offending journal.

So much for the newspaper press. To get at literature in
its more solid form was not so easy, and^in the heart of Paris
a direct * interference with this was scarcely to be thought of,
even by the elect of eight millions. As far, however, as the
rural population — the Emperor's special object of anxiety —
were concerned, the thing presented no difficulty whatever.
The village book-trade in France is carried on througli the
medium of licensed hawkers (colporteurs*) ; and, under the
pretext of religious and moral supervision, these men were
now compelled to submit every separate book in their stock to
be stamped in the bureau of the Minister of the Interior. Of
course the refusal of this stamp to any work amounts to the
absolute interdiction of its sale among the peasantry.

In France no grade of education is exempt from government
control. Upon education, therefore, it was easy enough, me
chanically speaking, to lay a cramping hand. The only real diffi
culty was to do this without shocking public opinion too much.
But in Church-and-State Europe there is always a ready way to
turn such a difficulty. Throw education into the hands of the
priesthood, and its increase loses at once -all identity with the

* It is indirectly interfered with, however, even in Paris, by the decree requiring
both booksellers and printers to take out a government license.

408 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

increase of " enlightenment." Of course it is the " private "
schools which are furthest removed from government influence;
but as these, like the public schools, require an official authori
zation which is revocable at pleasure, it was easy to suppress
them here and there, on one pretext or another, and into the
vacancy so formed the wealthy and energetic ultramontane
confraternity, called the " Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne,"
almost invariably steps in.

This confraternity only occupies itself with primary educa
tion. In the higher grade the clerical competitors are, of
course, the Jesuits. To check the progress of these champions
of obscurantism the government of Louis Philippe had wisely
ruled that the degree of Bachelier-2S-lettres should be conferred
only on youths prepared in colleges open to government in
spection. The repeal of this regulation admitted the Jesuits
at once, with their superior wealth, their concentrated action,
and their imposing stock of arid erudition, to compete with
the liberal public establishments, which could not meet them
on equal terms, and since that repeal Jesuit colleges have been
multiplying in every direction. Thanks to arrangements of
this kind, the Emperor was enabled to make yearly boasts of
the spread of education in France, with the comfortable con
viction, the while, that the solidity of his throne had not thereby
been Impaired.

But these provisions were aimed mainly at the middle class,
whose constitutional and liberal tendencies they were meant to
cripple and silence. The laboring classes of the large towns, —
men nurtured amid revolutionary traditions and pervaded by
theories of the wildest and often the most desperate character,

— required a different treatment. Material well-being was the
Emperor's grand panacea for this source of disturbance. Con
stant employment and good wages would keep the irritations of
poverty away from the workingman's door ; cheap amusements

— concerts, hippodromes, and open-air dances — would indis
pose him for political intrigue or discussion, and beautiful bou
levards and public gardens, adorned with statues, fountains,
flowers, and trees, would invite him to healthy exercise, keep
his liver in order, and satisfy the feeling for sensuous beauty,
for elegance, brightness, and gayety, which is a characteristic

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 409

of the race. Accordingly, public works were inaugurated
throughout France, but more particularly in the metropolis, on
a scale of lavish magnificence to which modern history at least
affords no parallel. In this way Paris has become incomparably
the most beautiful city of Europe ; and as Paris is, for the
Frenchman, the representative of France, gratified popular
vanity has closed its eyes to the loss suffered by the popular
purse.* But in running magnificent boulevards and stately
aveaues through his capital in every direction, Louis Napoleon
did something more than gratify popular vanity and provide
work for turbulent operatives. He has at the same time
immensely facilitated military action against revolutionary
emeutes ; he has broken up and obliterated numerous hot-beds
of disturbance, and has, by the rise of rents inevitable upon
his improvements, driven the " dangerous classes " from their
objectionable lodgement in the interior of the town into the
cheaper suburbs.

With direct economical action in the workingman's favor, rents
under two hundred and fifty francs are exempted, in Pari's,
from taxation ; the " boucherie " has been wisely thrown open
to competition, and the " boulangerie " has been — not wisely
— subjected to a maximum price, with compensation from the
municipal revenues. As for repressive legislation, the strin
gent laws on the press affect of course the poor man's news
paper as much, at least, as the rich man's, and the law
restricting " meetings " to less than twenty persons, unless
officially authorized, — a law passed by the sham Republic
of 1848, — renders the organization of the perilous " club "
impossible.

The political status we have above described was that imme
diately created by the coup d'etat. It directly supports, we
think, our statement that the Emperor's leading policy has been
to make of the bourgeoisie and operatives political ciphers,!

* The total outlay on public works in Paris alone for the 'ten years ending with
1862 lias been estimated at $90,000,000. The cost of adding six metres to the
height of a single wing of the Louvre was $ 800,000. The erection of the Bou
levard de Sebastopol, which broke up some of the worst districts of the city, cost
$ 1 5,000,000.

t " The position of the legislature," boldly exclaimed M. de Flavigny in the
session of 1 853, " is simply degsading, and we senators are mere ciphers."

410 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

and to rest his own absolute power entirely on the rural popu
lation ; that is to say, on that portion of the people which is
notoriously the least educated and, above all, the least awakened
to political self-consciousness.* His whole system of govern
ment has been modelled on this policy, and the real merit of
that system has been, that an essentially low and selfish aim —
purely and simply that of establishing his own dynasty — has
been prosecuted with so much of worldly wisdom that the
appearance of a close harmony with the enlightened tendencies
of the age has been consistently kept up almost from beginning
to end. As far as the material prosperity and political influ
ence which make a show in the world are concerned, Louis
Napoleon secured for France that commanding position which
is so infinitely dear to the national vanity. What " domestic
happiness " he brought her is another question, which we shall
now examine.

One test of a good government is, unquestionably, its har
mony with the stage of development at which the governed
nation has arrived, — its fitness to discern and satisfy the re
quirements of that stage. In this sense, England and Russia,
for example, are both well-governed countries, although their
political systems are strikingly dissimilar, and would, if inter
changed, probably deserve to be considered the two worst-
constructed governments in the world. Tried by this test, the
Second Empire must be condemned at once. The charac
teristic movement of European civilization, during the la*st
century, has been towards limited monarchy and representa
tive institutions ; and the country which inaugurated that
movement, and placed itself at its head, was France. It is
unnecessary to refer to the extreme forms which these prin
ciples have occasionally taken in that country ; the broad fact
is all that we have to do with here. The " principles of
the Revolution " reduce themselves in the last analysis to
the two above mentioned (with the addition, in exceptional
intensity, of the principle of "equality"), and the principles
of the Revolution, in one form or another, — philosophically
interpreted, grotesquely exaggerated, or brutally caricatured,

* The army, in its great majority, is simply a portion of the rural population,
drilled or supposed to be drilled, into intenser Napoleon-worship.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 411

— constitute the only approach to political convictions, the
only materials out of which a national creed can ever be con
structed which France has to offer.

But we have no wish to betake ourselves to the facile tri
umphs of an a priori argument. We appeal to facts.

The Napoleonic system, of an absolute monarchy, based upon
universal suffrage, is a political monstrosity, possible only where
the masses, who supply the approving majority, are entirely
destitute of all political education. With such a system the
legislative influence of the enlightened classes is wholly irrec
oncilable. The two cannot exist side by side, unless under
the condition of internecine hostility. This proposition seems
almost self-evident, and yet its force entirely escaped the
French Emperor, who, from first to last, has steadily pursued
his policy, of keeping the provinces in pupilage and ignorance,
while he has, from time to time, yielded to the pressure of the
towns, and ceded large privileges to the educated minority.

We have already mentioned that the liberal opposition was,
in the first imperial legislature, wholly unrepresented,* and that,
in the second (elected in 1857), it only numbered five members.
These five members, however, were sent up from Paris and other
leading towns, revealing, when the immense efforts of the
bureaucracy against their return were taken into account,
an intensity of disaffection never dreamt of by the self-com
placent autocrat. The attempt of Orsini followed shortly af
terwards (January 14, 1858), to complete the rudeness of his
awakening ; and under the first terror of the revelations con
nected with that conspiracy, — revelations prudently withheld
from the public, — the atrocious lot de surete generate was
passed, which imposed fine, imprisonment, and even exile upon
the mere utterance of opinions hostile to the government of
the Emperor. The organization of a system of espionage, both

* The eloquent Orleanist, Monta'emhert, cannot properly be classed with the
liberal opposition. His indignant protest, in the senate chamber, however, against
the degraded position of the legislature, and particularly against <the confiscation of
the Orleans possessions, deserves record. " I find it stated, in your decree," he said,
" that enough will remain to the princes of the house of Orleans to take an hon
orable position. This is exactly the same language which was held three years ago,
when I was told, ' If we take from M. de Montalemhert half his estates, he will still
be quite rich enough.' '

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 27

412 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

private and public, was the natural result ; and, for some time,
the demoralizing era of the infamous Fouche seemed about to
be revived.

But Louis Napoleon soon perceived that this was not the
course adapted either to the people or the age. The courageous
plain-speaking of the press, in the teeth of ceaseless and mer
ciless persecution, would alone have sufficed to open his eyes
to the volcanic nature of the ground on which he wa,s tread.-
ing.* With one of those sudden tours, characteristic of the
man, and well fitted to impress the melodramatic fancy of the
Gaul with the. idea of profound reflection and sharp, unbend
ing decision, but in whose manifest inconsistency calm criticism
detects a policy based on nothing deeper than a shrewd guess
at the prevailing drift of the moment, the Emperor abandoned
the path he had entered, and astonished the world by a decree
(November 24, 1860) which, at first sight, looked like a return
to parliamentary days. The legislative body received, by this
decree, the right to amend government bills, and to vote an
address in reply to the speech from the throne, stating therein
what measures were deemed desirable for the national interest.
Above all, its sittings were permitted in future to be public,
and its debates free. The burst of rapture and of adulation
which followed these really insignificant concessions gave pain
ful evidence of the state of debasement into which France had
fallen. After the first effervescence had passed, however, a
calm examination produced different feelings, and the decree
was soon in danger of being as much depreciated as it had at
first been overvalued. It was the Emperor himself who came
forward, in apparently frank good faith, to rehabilitate his con
cessions and explain their significance.

" Up to this day," he said, in the opening speech of the ses
sion of 1861, " the discours d'ouverture has failed to bring my
government into sufficient intimacy with the great state bodies,
and these have been deprived of the power to justify the govern
ment by their public adhesion or to enlighten it by their counsels.

* In 1857 and 1858 the Revue de Paris, the Assemb/e'e Nationale, and the Manuel
General de V Instruction primaire were suppressed ; the Presse was thrice " warned,"
and finally " suppressed "-; the Slecle, the Gazette de France, the Constitutionnel,
were repeatedly " warned," the publisher of the former fined and imprisoned also.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 413

I have decided to place annually before you a general review of
the situation of the Empire, as well as the most important diplo
matic despatches. In your address you can manifest your senti
ments concerning the events taking place (Jes fails qui s'accom-
plissenfy, not, as hitherto, by 'a simple paraphrase of the speech
from the throne, but by a free and loyal expression of opinion.
In former times, as you know, the suffrage was limited. The
Chamber of Deputies had, indeed, ampler prerogatives, but the
great number of public functionaries admitted to it gave the
government a direct influence over its resolutions. The Cham
ber of Peers also voted laws, but the majority could, at any
moment, be displaced by the addition of new members ; more
over, measures were not always discussed on their real merits,
but rather on the chance of their adoption or rejection keep
ing in or ousting a ministry. At the present day, the laws are
carefully and maturely prepared by a council of enlightened
men, who give their advice on all measures in contemplation.
The Senate, the guardian of the national compact, whose con
servative power only makes use of its initiative in circum
stances of gravity, examines the laws solely with reference
to their constitutionality. But, as a genuine political court
of appeal, the numbers which compose it cannot be aug
mented. The Legislative Body does not, it is true, interfere
in all the details of administration, but it is directly nominated
by universal suffrage, and counts no public functionary in its
bosom. It debates measures with the most entire liberty ;
if they are rejected, it is a warning not unheeded by the gov
ernment (un avertissement dont le gouvernement tient compte) ;
but this rejection neither gives a shock to power, arrests the
course of affairs, nor forces upon the sovereign advisers in whom

he cannot confide Exhaust all discussions, gentlemen,

during your vote on the address, according to the measure of
their gravity, that you may afterwards devote yourselves en
tirely to the affairs of the nation.''

This speech — from which we have given the above long
extract on account of its authoritative exposition of the pos
ture of the legislative body at the moment — created a most
favorable impression, and the five liberal members already
referred to availed themselves at once of the conceded right of

414 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

free discussion by proposing as an amendment to the address
a demand for the abolition of the loi de surete generate and
all other exceptional laws, including more particularly those
on the press, and the detestable system of official candida
ture.

The question of the press was naturally one of the most
urgent. Free and public legislative debates seemed almost of
necessity to imply the right to print these debates and to dis
cuss their substance. A concession of some kind was indis
pensable here, but the meagre measure brought in by the gov
ernment showed at once that this concession was to be nothing
more than a sham. By the new law the administrative regime
to which the press was subjected remained unchanged. The
sole alteration it made in the despotic decree of 1852 was to
strike out the proviso entailing suppression of a journal after
two condemnations for contraventions et delits, and to de
clare that administrative " warnings " were to be considered
as of no effect after the lapse of two years. No wonder that
the eloquent Jules Favre, the leader of the liberal forlorn hope,
protested against this law as utterly out of harmony with the
recent decree. " I fearlessly assert," he exclaimed, " that, as
matters now stand, there is no press in France but a govern
ment press, no opinion professed except the opinion dictated
or authorized beforehand by the administration itself. And
how could it be otherwise ? Has not the same power which
authorizes the creation of a journal reserved for itself the right
to strike it dead at its good pleasure ? . . . . Liberty must be
restored to the press ! " he cried, addressing the Minister (M.
Billault) in direct terms ; " as long as it is withheld you will
meet here a determined adversary, who, on every opportunity,
will proclaim to the country that the wish to retain arbitrary
power is in itself a confession of incurable weakness ! " To
this courageous interpellation M. Billault opposed a statement
of the home policy of the government which was probably
more candid than the Emperor considered at the moment de
sirable. " Do not imagine," he said, " that the grand act of
the 24th November is one of those concessions under favor of
which the enemy, already in the environs, finishes by penetrat
ing into and mastering the fortress. All the foundations on

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 415

which the government policy and the public security rest —
the law of general safety, the regime of the press, 'the patron
age exercised by government in the elections — are now at
tacked. But the very speeches we hear in this chamber prove
clearly enough that the government cannot go further without
compromising itself. Messieurs," continued the speaker, " en
presence des partis qui s'agitent, le gouvernement n'aban-
donnera pas son droit, qu'il tient du peuple, d'empecher les
reunions electorates' la ou ces reunions offriraient un danger ; il
n'abandonnera pas son droit d'appuyer certaines candidatures
en face de celles que patronnejront les partis} il ne dissondra
pas cette chambre qui a si bien servi le pays ; il ne modifiera
pas la position que le plebiscite de 1852 a faite du pouvoir."

There could be no mistake about language like this. But what
are we to think of the policy of which it is the exponent?
The concessions made could not possibly have been dictated
by any other motive than that of conciliating liberal opinion.
Now liberal opinion in France comprises, notoriously, the vast
majority of the intelligence of the country. Could a really
far-sighted ruler persuade himself, for a moment, that mis
erable scraps of liberality like these would satisfy anybody
of intelligence ? The thing is inconceivable. To such men
either a full measure must be meted out, or absolute denial
must be persevered in. Either a liberal system in good faith,
or a repressive system. The government that oscillates be
tween the two inevitably loses ground on both sides. Its
own adherents waver in their faith, and the opponents it hopes
to disarm only become more embittered by the deceptions
practised on them, and more emboldened by what little they
have won.

The thorny question of the publication of the debates was
settled by a Senatus-consulte, which ruled that authorized sum
maries of these should be transmitted every night to all the
newspapers. A short-hand report of the same debates in ex-
tenso was also to be inserted daily in the Moniteur, and the
journals were at liberty to publish either the summary or the
report, but must print whichever was selected, entire.

The latter proviso was evidently aimed against any inclination
to give undue prominence to favorite orators. The government

416 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

was itself the first to transgress it. Terrified by the eloquent
utterances of the opposition, which daily grew more vehement,
it had recourse to the more stringent machinery already re
ferred to, and prohibited, by ministerial communiques, the pub
lication of arguments which it felt itself powerless to refute.
The communique indeed began now to take the place of the
avertissement, with a positively retrograde force, because tend
ing to substitute a preventive for a coercive policy ; actions for
delits depresse, too, became daily more numerous and sentences
more severe. Not the less, however, nay, rather the more,
did the enfranchised tribune assert its power, and in 1862 we
find the Corps Legislatif twice rejecting a bill for an annuity to
Count Palikao, although brought forward under the avowed
patronage of the Emperor, by whom it was ultimately made
law in spite of the chamber's dissent !

Meanwhile the general election of 1863 was drawing near,
and the government might well be supposed to be intently
studying the signs of the times. If such was the case, how
ever, the result of those studies did not speak much for their
depth. The opposition to the system of " official candidature "
was one of the strongest points of the liberal party. The sys
tem itself was in flagrant contradiction with the most elemen
tary notion of the representative principle. It was condemned
and ridiculed by the public opinion of Europe, and its defend
ers could adduce no single argument which would bear the
most superficial analysis. Under circumstances of the kind
one would imagine that proceedings so offensive would at least
be conducted as quietly and unostentatiously as possible. If ab
solutely indispensable to the maintenance of a government so
constituted, a decent veil would surely be thrown over them,
and the wheels of the bureaucratic machine would be brought
to smoother and more noiseless action. The very reverse
course was adopted ! Two central committees, formed in Paris
at the commencement of the electoral campaign, one represent
ing a fusion of the Orleanists, legitimists, and moderate liberals,
with the Duke de Broglie as its president, the other consisting
of the more thoroughgoing liberals of 1848, and presided over
by Carnot, were broken up at once, in virtue of the law against
reunions, though this law was really meant to apply only to

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 417

assemblies menacing the public peace. An angry circular was
publicly addressed by M. de Persigny to all the pr-efets through
out France, declaring that the government had withdrawn its
patronage from certain deputies, twenty-four in number, who,
although elected on the " official " ticket, had presumed to
vote with the opposition upon the Roman question, — one of
the most unpopular measures to which the government was
pledged, — and a letter from the Minister of the Interior was
inserted in the Moniteur^ announcing that the administration
would oppose, with the utmost energy, the election of M. Thiers.
The result was exactly what might, with a small exercise of
common sense, have been foreseen. Out of an aggregate of, in
round numbers, ten million electors, five million three hundred
and fifty-five thousand only cast their votes for the govern
ment, and two million supported the opposition ; while the
remainder did not vote at all. The liberal representation
was increased from five to thirty-six members ; Paris, out of
nine liberal candidates returning eight, among whom was, of
course, M. Thiers. The immense number of non-voters — above
two and a half million — might well have made the government
ponder on its position. With a zealous far-spreading bureau
cracy like that of France, employed to secure the largest possi
ble vote for the government, it was next to impossible that all
these men could be indifferent to the administration. Indiffer
ence must inevitably have yielded to the stimulants ceaselessly
applied by prefets, sous-prefets, and maires. Were they then
opposed to the government ? This was scarcely likely either,
as in such a case the strong political excitement of the day
would have driven them to the ballot-box. The probability
is that these abstainers represented, for the most part, the dis
satisfied element, — that they were men who had their doubts
of the policy pursued, and refused their approving vote accord
ingly. But to which side, then, would these doubts apply ?
Certainly not to the repressive policy of the government, which
could not well be more stringent, but rather to its liberal poli
cy, which could not well be more hesitating or vague. Here,
then* was material upon which the mature power of the govern
ment had already failed to act, but which the growing force of
liberal opinion could fairly hops to influence, as it would infal
libly strive to do.

418 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

Was the gravity of this situation appreciated by the Em
peror and his advisers? Not in anyway. The speech from
the throne was.unusually colorless, and the only reforms spoken
of, at all deserving the name, were a law permitting trades-
unions conditionally, and a law giving ampler functions to the
general and municipal councils.

Meanwhile the opposition in the Chambers, formidable com
paratively as it had become, was treated with haughty con
tempt by the majority ; and in his reply to the address of 1864,
the Emperor coolly observed : " Let us each remain in our
proper spheres. You, gentlemen, enlightening and controlling
the progress of the government, I taking the initiative in all that
may promote the greatness and prosperity of France ! ':

The home policy of the following year was distinguished by
the reorganization of the municipal councils, and a circular,
from the Minister of the Interior instructing the prefets to
allow the municipal electors to manifest their choice freely,
" inasmuch as local interests only were in question at such
elections." The conseils generaux of the Seine and Marne,
presuming on the conceded amplification of their functions,
ventured to pass certain resolutions, chiefly concerned with
improvements in their own internal organization. The " lib
erty " was checked at once, and the resolutions were declared
null and void by imperial decree.*

The eventful year 1866 opened amid unusual tranquillity.
" For the first time during many years the quidnuncs allowed
spring to approach without predicting a general European
war ! >: The imperial finances, always more or less disordered,

* It was on the occasion of a somewhat similar " liberty " taken by the council
general of the Haute Garonne, a few years earlier, that Napoleon administered to
that abashed body a most signal rebuke. " Un homme/' he said, " qui sort de
la vie privee pour venir passer trois on quatre jours au chef-lieu de son departe-
mcnt, fait une chose egalement inconvename et ridicule lorsqu', a la faveur de
quelques observations utiles sur I'administration particuliere de son departement,

il se permet des observations critiques et incoherentes Sans doute il a ete un

temps oil la confusion de toutes les idees, la faiblesse extraordinaire de I'adminis
tration generale, les intrigues qui 1'agitaient, faisaient penser a beaucoup (Je cito-
yens isole's qu'ils etaient phis sages que ceux qui les gouvernaicnt et qu'ils avaient
plus de capacite pour les affaires. Ce temps n'est plus. L'Empereur n'e'coute
personne que dans la sphere des attributions respectives." The nephew here seems
to have caught the very trick of the uncle's style !

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 419

seemed to be gradually improving under the able supervision
of M. Fould ; and the dissensions of Prussia and Austria,
which had not yet passed out of the field of diplomacy, prom
ised to France a speedy opportunity of again asserting herself,
under exceptionally imposing conditions, as the arbiter of
Europe. The liberal party meanwhile waited with anxiety for
the speech from the throne. It seemed to them impossible
that, in the face of their own manifest progress, the path of
reform, entered upon so long ago as 1860, should still remain
a mere cul de sac.

Their hopes were doomed to signal disappointment. The
expected speech passed an elaborate eulogy on the Constitution
of 1852, which, " holding itself equally aloof from both ex
tremes, had founded a national and sagely matured system on
the just equilibrium of the different powers of the • state."
This instrument 6f despotism was declared, with solemn
irony, " to have certain analogies with the constitutional forms
of the United States," and the hearers were informed that the
fact of its differing from the English Constitution was no proof
of its being defective. " Have we not had enough discussion
of government theories during the last eighty years ? "
exclaimed the imperial Pecksniff. "Is it not far more
useful now to seek practical means to ameliorate the moral
and material condition of the people ? Let us employ our
selves in diffusing everywhere, along with enlightenment,
sound economical doctrines, the love of excellence, and reli
gious principles. When all Frenchmen now invested with
the political franchise shall have been enlightened by educa
tion, they will have no difficulty in recognizing truth, and will
not allow themselves to be led astray by deceitful appearances ;
finally, when all shall have imbibed from childhood those prin
ciples of faith and of morality which elevate man in his own
eyes, they will know that, above human intelligence, above the
efforts of science and of reason, there exists a supreme Will
which rules the destinies of individuals as well as of nations."

The stupor with which this sentimental eulogy of absolutism
was listened to by earnest men, whose whole life had been one
struggle for a political freedom, which the imperial speaker
seemed a short time before to have dangled before their eyes

420 France under the Second Umpire. [Oct.

for the mere pleasure of jerking it now beyond their reach,
may be easily imagined. Words of this kind addressed to
such men were manifestly nothing but a transparent cloak for
contemptuous repudiation, and the canting form given to the
words rendered the contempt all the more stinging.

As if to remove any possible doubt as to the reactionary
significance of this speech, M. de Persigny favored the Senate
with an amplification of the eulogy, and characterized the
recent reorganization of the municipal councils as a mistake,
— a departure from the true and admirable principle of author
ity.* The Moniteur published at the same time a ministerial
note recalling to the recollection of the press, in severe terms,
the law which forbade the insertion of any other than the offi
cial report of the procedings of the legislature.

In the Corps Legislatif a most determined stand was made
against this attitude of the government, and all France thrilled
with the burning eloquence of those debates. The challenge
to abstract political discussion so imprudently given by the
speech from the throne and by M. de Persigny was taken up
at once, and the imperial logic was torn to shreds by M. Thiers
and M. Jules Favre, amid the tempestuous agitation of the
house. But the most significant event of the session was the
amendment to the address. This amendment, which called for
the development of the decree of the 24th November, 1860,
"the propriety and opportuneness of which appear to have
been formally demonstrated by an experience of five years,"
was signed by forty-six members, several of whom had been
elected on the " official ticket," while all the other signers, al
though not government partisans, were known to desire the
stability of the Empire. The amendment was of course re
jected, but it obtained the respectable number of sixty-one votes,
and a second amendment, presented on the following day, under
the same auspices, and having reference solely to the press
obtained five adherents more. A minority of sixty-six formed

* On this reorganization the government had given a sort of promise to select
the maires, in future, from the members of the municipal councils, instead of
nominating them, as heretofore, from among mere political partisans, without
reference to their local relations. This promise, however, was so far from being
carried out, that in six hundred and ninety two cases it had already been disre
garded.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 421

outside of the proper liberal (or republican) party was thus
the direct result of the Emperor's reactionary policy, and the
very parliamentary organization which he most dreaded was
stimulated into more rapid growth by his ownsmisjudged
efforts to stifle it. The Corps Legislatif had now its centre
gauche * and the party was no sooner constituted than it ob
tained the adhesion of M. Emile Ollivier, who had formed one of
the illustrious minority of five in the first imperial Chamber,
but had recently quarrelled with his old associates. u On nous
refuse a present," exclaimed M. Ollivier at the close of his elo
quent speech on the amendment, " mais on ne saurait nous em-
pecher de prendre par 1'esp^rance possession de 1'avenir. Oui ;
Pavenir nous appartient ; pour le hater, reconnaissons-nous,
rapprochons-nous, concertons-nous, afin que notre union fasse
notre force, en attendant qu'elle fasse notre vietoire." If the
magic crystal of Egypt could have been held up at that mo
ment before his eyes, how would the glowing orator have
started to see in it his rhetorical prophecy realized for one brief
brilliant moment ; and how he would have shuddered at the
blank darkness beyond !

Meanwhile events were silently preparing themselves, which
were destined to lay bare to the world the emptiness of the im
perial system and its profoundly demoralizing influence upon
the noble, but impulsive, people who had been deceived by its
shallow self-confidence and dazzled by its glitter. The tradi
tional foreign policy of France has been to prevent her imme
diate neighbors, as far as might be, from becoming too power
ful. Second-rate neighbors, whom she can treat patronizingly,
and on whose eager and respectful assistance she may reason
ably count in case of an emergency, have always been consid
ered by France her proper and desirable entourage. The
Italian policy of the Emperor had already created dissatisfac
tion by its want of harmony with this policy ; and the feeling
had been but partially allayed by the brilliant successes of
Magenta and Solferino, by the sublime consciousness of fight-

* The party divisions of the French Chamber are usually distinguished as the
Right, consisting of the supporters of the government through thick and thin ; the
Uiijkt Centre, consisting of its moderate supporters ; the Left, or extreme radical
party; and the Left Centre, or moderate liberal (Conservative) party.

France under the Second Umpire. [Oct.

ing, as no other country ever fought, " purely for an idea,"
and by the annexation of Savoy and Nice.

Among the " not too powerful " neighbors of France was
the Germaji Confederation, which, although possessed of all
the elements of gigantic strength, had long lacked cohesion
and unity, and possessed only a dreamy flickering sense of its
own individuality. The German Confederation had been so
long inert, except for its occasional intestine commotions, that
Europe had gradually come to regard its qualification of " an
eminently conservative body " in the light, not of a contingent,
but of an essential attribute. Ces gros Allemands were set
down, by France especially, as obese, phlegmatic, unambitious
beings, whose lives were complete with a pipe, a glass of
" lager," and a drowsy discussion of transcendental meta
physics. It was wholly forgotten, apparently, that they were
pure-blooded descendants of the same men who had over
turned the Roman Empire and reconstructed the map of the
world.

Recently, however, these good Germans had been making
themselves uncomfortably conspicuous. This is not the place
to recapitulate the incidents of the Schleswig-Holstein war,
and it is sufficient to mention that this war revealed a restless,
energetic ambition on the part of Prussia which awakened in
the more far-seeing of European statesmen dim presentiments
of serious future complications, and seemed at any rate clearly
to indie-ate that the antagonism of the two leading German
powers — an antagonism which had contributed so much to
that " eminent conservatism " of the Confederation — was
tending towards a collision which would probably terminate,
forever that desirable state of things. The respective occu
pation, by these powers, of the two Duchies of the Elbe gave
the immediate pretext to this collision ; and it was in that pre
liminary pause which always precedes a death-struggle of the
kind, — when the antagonists silently collect their strength
and count their friends, — that the Emperor showed that
limited sagacity, one of the latest results of which has been
his own ruin.

Having secured the neutrality of Russia, by holding up to
her that principle of nationality which hafe always had a

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 423

special and portentous attraction for that power, Prussia looked
around for some active ally who might counterbalance the well-
known traditional influence of Austria with the secondary Ger
man states. That ally was found at once in Austria's " natural
enemy," Italy ; with her an offensive and defensive alliance
was speedily concluded. Without this alliance it seems
scarcely probable that Prussia would have ventured upon the
conflict. But at that period the influence of France over
Italy was supreme ; and there is not the slightest doubt that,
had France pronounced a single disapproving word, the
alliance referred to would never have been effected. Why was
that word not pronounced ? The answer to this question has
already almost passed from the domain of conjecture into
that of historic certainty. During the stormy debates of 1867,
the veteran liberal, Gamier Pagos, affirmed categorically that
Count Bismarck, on his visit to Biarritz, in 1865, — a visit
destined to be the Tilsit manque of the Second Empire, —
had explicitly offered to Louis Napoleon the Rhine frontier as
the price of adhesion to Prussian schemes, and that this offer
had been " neither accepted nor rejected " by the imperial wis
dom. This statement was never denied ; and the celebrated
" draft treaty," in Count Benedetti's handwriting, which was
given to the world the other day in the London Times ,*may
safely be considered a reproduction apres coup of Bismarck's
offer, — but a reproduction which, under the altered circum
stances, Prussia could afford to put aside with civil con
tempt, as one might put aside the begging-letter of a bank
rupt roturier, who a few days before had thought his wealth
entitled him to treat all his acquaintance with haughty
condescension.

The fact no doubt ?s, that when Napoleon III. warily re
frained either from explicitly rejecting or explicitly accepting
Count Bismarck's offer, his motive was to hold himself free to
demand, when the right moment came, still better terms. He
looked forward to a long war, exhausting to both antagonists,
but to Prussia., in all probability, fatal ; and he believed that
at the end of it he would be able to step loftily forward as the
supreme arbiter of the destinies of the belligerents, and to
secure all sorts of good things for the mere asking. Under the

424 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

influence of these anticipations, while refusing to commit him
self in any way on the Prussian statesman's proposal, Napoleon
had conceded all that Prussia really desired, — the neutrality
of France, — while, the attitude he himself assumed enabled
the Court of Berlin to meet Benedetti's subsequent suggestions
with the unanswerable reply: "You are too late! Had you
accepted our original offer, we should, of course, have been true
to our engagements. You declined to commit yourself, and we
alse are uncommitted."

That Louis Napoleon had confidently counted upon the
triumph of Austria is no mere conjecture of ours. With that
conspicuous want of judgment, which the world in^general,
dazzled by the sudden blaze of his elevation, was long unable
to discover, he made this conviction public in one of those
oracular letters to his Minister of State, which form a curious
feature of his government. The letter we refer to was
addressed to M. Drouyn de Lhuys on the llth of June, 1866, on
the eve, that is, of the Austro-Prussian conflict. In this most
injudicious document Napoleon lays down — under a con
ditional form indeed, but not the less dogmatically on that
account — what the foreign policy of his government is, as
far as the belligerent states are concerned. Had the conference
which he had suggested to these states taken place, M. Drouyn
de Lhuys would have been instructed to declare therein, that
France would only require an extension of frontier in case the
European equilibrium were destroyed. The German modifica
tions which the imperial policy would have urged at that con
ference would have been the following: For the secondary
states he would have asked a closer union, a more powerful
organization, and a more important share in the Confederate
system; for Prussia, more homogeneity and force in the
Northern direction ; for Austria, the maintenance of her great
position in Germany, but the cession of Venetia to Italy in
return for an equitable compensation.

Why Louis Napoleon should have committed himself to a
categorical prophecy of this kind seems inexplicable, unless
on the hypothesis that, by dint of constantly attitudinizing as
" the man of fate," he had ended with really supposing himself
to be infallible. In this case, at any rate, Fate signally dis-

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 425

IT

proved his familiarity with her decrees. The results of the
Austro-Prussian conflict were as directly the reverse of the
Emperor's expectations as they could well be. The secondary
states, — those, at least, north of the Main, — instead of ac
quiring a closer union and larger share in the Confederate sys
tem, were subjected to the hegemony of Prussia, which had
annexed Hanover and the Elbe Duchies, and made herself the
absolute mistress of the military forces of a population of
twenty-nine millions. Finally, Austria, so far from retaining
her " great position," found herself absolutely excluded
from Germany, and had to cede Yenetia without any com
pensation whatever. This was, indeed, cancelling the treaties
of 1815, but cancelling them to the profit of Prussia and Italy
alone, and to the serious detriment of France.

But the letter of the llth of June had contained a dec
laration as well as a prophecy. In case the equilibrium
of Europe were disturbed, France would require territorial
aggrandizement. The hypothesis had been most signally ful
filled, and, as a matter of course, the world looked for the fulfil
ment of the consequence also. Was the Luxemburg affair, with
its humiliatingly impotent conclusion,* the sole effort made
in that direction. Most certainly not, as the Times's " secret
treaty " plainly shows* But whatever these efforts may have
been, — however numerous and however importunate, — it is
certain that they met with only one reception from Prussia,

— a civil but decisive negative.

From that hour the fate of the Empire was virtually sealed.
Its prestige was gone. The idea of French supremacy, which
had hitherto been associated with it, almost as its synonyme,
proved baseless, and it was left to hold its own, as it best might,
on its own intrinsic merits.

* The little Grand Duchy of Luxemburg had been a member of the late German
Confederation, and its capital — one of the most strongly fortified places in'Europe

— had been declared a federal fortress by the treaties of Vienna, and was garri
soned exclusively by Prussians. This arrangement was, of course, invalidated by
the dissolution of the Confederation, and France seized the opportunity to negotiate
for the acquisition of Luxemburg. This acquisition would have satisfied the terms
of the celebrated letter of the llth June, and would have given France another
stronghold against Germany. The failure of the negotiation before the opposition
of Prussia, and the compromise of a mere demolition of the fortifications, which
France had to accept, will be remembered.

426 France under the Second Umpire. [Oct.

<

Louis Napoleon had at least sagacity enough to see how
desperate was the position which he had made for himself.
But his efforts to secure the retrieval of that position were as
little marked by true statesmanship as the conduct by which
he had compromised it. As a first step, — with, apparently,
some faint hope of throwing the responsibility of the letter of
the llth June from its writer upon its recipient, — M. Drouyn
de Lhuys was summarily dismissed, and a circular was issued
by his ad interim successor, contradicting, as plainly as de
cency would allow, all the positions laid down in the letter re
ferred to. According to M. de La Valette, the efforts of Germany
at unification were worthy of all encouragement. They were
only " an imitation of France," and were calculated rather
to draw the two nations closer together tl^an to separate them.
The modern tendency of the European peoples, indeed, to
group themselves according to nationalities, gradually absorb
ing the secondary states, sprang evidently from the desire
to secure for their general interests more efficacious guaranties.
In short, u from the more elevated point of view from which
the imperial government surveyed the destinies of Europe, the
horizon appeared to it wholly freed from menacing eventuali
ties " ; and France herself could discern nothing, on any side,
calculated either to impede her progress or to trouble her pros
perity.

We give here only the conclusions of Marquis de La Ya-
lette's elaborate and skilful exposition. Unfortunately for his
•impressiveness, it was incumbent on the writer to add a para
graph which, by no logical tour deforce, could be fitted into the
argument. " The results of the last war," the Marquis was
compelled to say, " contain a grave lesson for us. They point
out to us the necessity, for the defence of our territory, of per
fecting our military organization without a moment's delay "

A singular necessity, truly, to spring from the disappearance
of all menacing eventualities ! The proverbial dialectic readi
ness of the Frenchman seized at once upon the non sequitur,
and when M. Eouher favored the Corps Legislatif with an ora
torical rechauffe of the Minister of State's circular, Jules
Favre, amid a scene of stormy agitation, put to him the fol
lowing formidable dilemma : " Either the speech you have

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 427

made us is a mere piece of conventional show (n'est autre chose
qu'une ostentation necessaire'), corresponding in no way to
notorious political realities, or you are bound to withdraw the
bill for military reorganization, which you have just laid before

us."

But, by that fatality which proverbially attends untruth in
every form, poor M. Rouher was not contented with retailing the
fallacies of his superior. He must needs, in his zeal, develop
and expand them. Germany, more homogeneous, M. de La
Yalette had said, approaches us nearer in sympathies, and so
gives us additional guaranties of peace. " France must congrat
ulate herself," exclaimed M. Rouher, " to see the old German
Confederation, an enormous mass of seventy-five millions, whose
purely defensive character was a mere illusion, broken up, as it
now is, into three fragments."

It would be difficult to imagine any position more flagrantly
in contradiction, not only with the uneasy national presenti
ments of the moment, but with the common-sense view of
Europe in general. The evil genius of the Emperor — the man
who, with sleepless vigilance, and with a political penetration
rarely matched, had now set himself to undermine the paste
board colossus — saw his opportunity, and seized it at once.
M. Rouher' s rash fallacy had scarcely been uttered, when Count
Bismarck quietly gave to the world the secret treaties of de
fensive alliance which, immediately after the Peace of Prague,
had virtually conferred upon Prussia the military control of
the Southern German States, as well as of the Northern.
The incredulous smile with which Europe had received the
French Minister's speech was changed at once into a derisive
laugh, and the Emperor had to endure a public humiliation.
Of M. Rouher's " three fragments," two were shown to be
really one, and the third was crippled Austria !

The situation was growing daily more critical. What was
to be done ? To arm France rapidly but unostentatiously, per
haps for a mere assertion of power, perhaps for a desperate
struggle, to soothe popular anxiety and remove popular dis
content, were the ideas which suggested themselves at once
to the imperial mind and which were at once translated into
action. The grand " Universal Exposition " of 1867 would

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 28

428 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

contribute greatly, it was thought, to the latter of these objects.
It would give enhanced wages to numberless artisans, it would
attract hosts of generous and magnificent visitors to Paris, and
would make that city, for the time being, literally the brilliant
metropolis of the civilized world. To some extent these antici
pations were realized. But — as if Fortune were weary or
ashamed of her late favorite — even this dazzling show was not
to pass without its episode of humiliation. In the middle of
an imperial fete a telegram, it is said, dated Queretaro, Mexico,
was handed to the Emperor, containing the terrible words,
" Maximilian was shot to-day." No wonder that Louis Napo
leon's cheek blanched and that his eye quailed as he read that
sentence. The noble young enthusiast, whose miserable death
it recorded, had been placed by his hand on that fatal throne ;
and the ephemeral empire, on whose debris the youthful corse
was flung, had been kept together only by the blood and treasure
of France. Among all " sad stories of the deaths of kings,"
this was one of the saddest, if its painful accompaniments be
taken into account.

But if the Emperor's fantastic dream of a Latin Transatlantic
counterpoise to Anglo-Saxon expansion had proved a melan
choly failure, if Prussia had struck from his hand the sceptre of
European supremacy, and Count Bismarck had shown the
shallowness of his claims to political wisdom, Louis Napoleon,
with a nation like France at his disposition, — a nation so great
in every sense, of such vast resources, such ready enthusiasm,
such self-reliance, and such rare military instinct, — could still
hope to retrieve everything, to recover all, or nearly all, he
had forfeited, and to see himself again mighty as the acknowl
edged representative of the interests and desires of the French
people.

To do this, it was, probably, only necessary to appreciate
accurately the prevailing national tendencies of France, and to
accord to these a frank and legitimate recognition. Now in
nations constituted as those of Europe chiefly are, where
what may be called political education is confined almost ex
clusively to the " wealthy and intelligent " minority, while the
mass of the people possess, if any, only the vaguest and most
elementary notions of government and systems of govern-

1870.] France under the Second Umpire. 429

ment, the index to national tendencies must be sought per
force in the politically educated minority alone. The stolid,
intellectually inert rural population of France, upon which the
Empire rested, is utterly incapable of theorizing in politics.
To it absolutism and constitutionalism are words alike void
of meaning. " Red Republicanism " and " Socialism," on the
contrary, convey a clear conception to their minds, and that
conception is the abolition of the rights of property, the for
feiture, without compensation, of the few hectares of soil which
they have inherited from generation to generation, or purchased
with the toil-won hoards of many patient years, and every fur
row of which has been fertilized with the sweat of their brow.
" Government" to these men means the strong arm that can
secure them against forfeiture of this kind, — this, and nothing
more. Details to them are mere surplusage, and names are
but empty words. Call your government absolute or consti
tutional, at your good pleasure. Let your ministers be re
sponsible or irresponsible, bridle your press or give it the rein,
do anything, au nom de Dieu, to suit your fancy, but dame!
save us from Socialism and Red Republicanism ! Leave us
our little ground in peace. Let us drink cider from our own
orchards and eat galette of our own barley as our forefathers
did, and we will pay our taxes cheerfully, and you may go on
speechifying about politics in your Chamber there for ever and
ever.

There is no doubt that this is, as nearly as possible, the
view taken of politics by the mass of the rural population in
France, and that had Louis Napoleon possessed a sufficiently
unbiassed judgment, with sufficient decision of character and
largeness of views, he might have converted his autocratic gov
ernment into a limited monarchy, and so have secured the sup
port of the intelligent minority, rendered his throne stable, and
France herself doubly powerful by a genuine national unity,
without risking in any way the loss of his rural supporters.
An inkling of this seems, every now and then, to have crossed
his mind. But the curse of the Idees Napoleoniennes — the
despot's idea that governnient means autocracy and that poli
tics mean cajolery — lay heavy upon him and dragged him
down. A few short months after the eulogy on absolutism pro-

430 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

nounced on opening tile session of 1866, we find the Emperor
coming forward again as a letter-writer, but with opinions dia
metrically opposed to those of the speech from the throne.
" Aujourd'hui," he writes to his Minister, on the 19th of Janu
ary, 1867, evidently under the influence of the ideas just now
referred to, — " aujourd'hui je crois qu'il est possible de donner
aux institutions de 1'empire tout le developpement dont elles
sont susceptibles, sans compromettre le pouvoir que la nation
m'a confie." After this injudicious " finality " exordium, the
imperial scribe proceeds to develop his thesis. The discussion
on the address has proved a mere wasteful tourney of words.
It is abolished, and the right of ministerial interpellation, " pru
dently regulated," is granted in its place. The Ministers are
to be present in future in the Chambers and to take part in the
debates ; the law of public meetings is to be modified, and the
delits de presse are to be transferred from the discretionary
power of the government to the tribunals of correctional police.

These concessions, which the Emperor pompously called
" le couronnement de 1'edifice elev6 par la volonto nationale,"
were, it will be perceived, sufficiently meagre. They had,
however, this peculiarity about them, that they corresponded,
almost article by article, with the programme of the celebrated
minority of forty-six, who had signed the amendment to the
address of the previous session ! Now this amendment had
been rejected, with scorn and indignation, by the imperialists of
the " Right " as an insult to the crown, a miserable dallying
with revolution. The profound lucubrations, therefore, of this
imperial master of political wisdom resulted in measures which
were received in sullen, shamefaced silence by his most enthu
siastic supporters, and coldly welcomed by those whom they
were meant to conciliate, as an unavoidable concession to the
pressure of circumstances.

But the autocrat could not yield up even this meagre portion
of personal power loyally and honestly. Every possible de
vice was resorted to to extract the kernel from the ceded fran
chises and leave their recipients nothing but a shell. Public
meetings for electoral purposes were, indeed, allowed within
certain fixed dates ; but so many minute formal regulations,
with severe penalties for infringement, surrounded the privilege,

1870.] France under the Second Empire.

that few would care to avail themselves of it, and in any case
the Minister could forbid and the /?r^/'dissolve, at pleasure.
In press matters the same dishonest, tricky course was pur
sued. The penalties of imprisonment and of arbitrary sup
pression were done away with ; but a system of exorbitant fines
was substituted, which could easily be so worked as to ruin
any obnoxious journal ; and while printer and publisher were
exempted from the obligation of a license, the writers them
selves (whom a law of the sham Republic of 1848 still compels
to sign their contributions with their true names) were sub
jected to a five years' deprivation of political rights, — an
especially heavy penalty in France, where politics form an hon
orable career, in which the press is the ordinary starting-point..
As for the transfer of competency to the Tribunals of Correc
tional Police, the French Magistracy, especially in its inferior
grades, has become of late years so completely the tool of power
that this concession was, in strictness, no more real than the
others.* Thus the main results of the trumpeted reforms,
taken altogether, were aggravated irritation and mistrust, with
slightly increased facilities for their manifestation.

But even these measures, pure snares and delusions as
they were, took many months to assume a practical form ; and
when they did so, which was not until 1868, signs were already
abroad of another imperial volte-face in the reactionary direc
tion. Bristling with penal formalities, however, as the new
press law was, the mere abolition of the arbitrary regime,
although barely more than nominal, gave a stimulus to jour
nalism which proved incontestably how great that expansive
force must be which 'could produce so much when the repress
ing weight was lightened so little. Within six weeks from the
promulgation of the law, thirty new papers had sprung up in
Paris alone, conspicuous among which was Rochefort's Lan-

* The above assertion will scarcely he called in question hy any one who went
carefully through the report of the late trial of Prince Pierre Bonaparte. A
remarkably able French contributor to the London Pall Mall Gazette writes in
January last as follows : " The Magistracy, under the reign of Messrs. Baroche,
Delangle, and Troplong, has failed to withstand the deplorable influences surround
ing it. No one believes in the guaranty of irremovability, and as all promotion is
in the hands of government, ambition is naturally fostered at the cost of con
science."

432 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

terne ; while the provinces, within the same brief period,
added sixty-five to their original starveling supply.* Endless
press trials were the immediate result, — convictions virtually
inevitable, and penalties excessive. The daring and force,
however, of the partially unchained giant defied all terrors of
the kind. If one arm only was free, he was ready at once for
the mortal combat, and the terrified government understood
too late how implacable was the foe it had to deal with.f
" Nous en sommes toujours aux proccs de presse qui se multi-
plient," writes the brilliant "chronicler" of the Revue des
deux Mondes in December, 1868. And so it went on, day
after day and month after month. Always the same old story,
the same irreconcilable enmity, the same stern lessons, the
same stubborn heedlessness, the same fated results.

But how was it, meanwhile, with the real creators and sus-
tainers of the Second Empire, — the rural population ? For
these, as we have already pointed out, the Napoleonic regime
represented two broad elementary notions, — the notion of
French supremacy, satisfying their Gallic craving for glory ;
and the notion of authority, satisfying their economic require
ments. Now the former of these notions had already received
shock after shock, — the formidable rivalry of Prussia, the
ignominious failure in Mexico, the checkmate in the Luxem
burg game with Bismarck as well as in the Polish game with
the Czar.J Before reiterated blows like these the cherished
faith in France's leadership of Europe was gradually giving
way ; and now the unhappy necessities of the case com
pelled the government itself to weaken the basis at least of the
other elementary notion, — the absorbing economic interests
of these peasant proprietors, the Empire's true constituents.

* So completely had the discretionary regime succeeded in killing the provin
cial press, that at the commencement of 1868 seven of the largest provincial towns,
representing an aggregate population of nearly a million and a half, only possessed
eleven daily papers among them, whose total circulation did not reach one hundred
and thirty thousand !

t The government attempt to revive the preventive system in a prohibition to
advertise subscriptions for a monument to Batidin, one of the victims of the coup
d'etat, was openly defied by the whole independent press of Paris (November, 1868).

J This was in 1863, when France had to abandon her warlike attitude in favor
of poor oppressed Poland, on the refusal of England and Austria to back her. The
humiliation here could only exist for a country which so constantly boasts itself
more than a match for " coalesced Europe."

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 433

The census of France, for some years back, has puzzled sta
tisticians, scandalized moralists, and delighted an influential
school of Political Economy, by showing an annual increase of
population greatly below that of any other country in the civ
ilized world. Extraordinary and offensive theories of French
immorality have been based upon this singular fact, — theories
overthrown at once by the census tables themselves, which
demonstrate that the one hundred and eighty-five arrondisse-
ments, whose actually diminishing population explains the low
general average of increase, are not those in which the large
towns— - the haunts of vice — are situated, but those which
are specially classified as " agricultural." The true key to the
deficiency is unquestionably supplied in a very able paper upon
the census of 1866, which was read before the French Institute
by M. de Lavergne. This paper establishes, beyond dispute,
a direct relation between the ratio of increase in population
and the amount of the annual contingent claimed by the con
scription. With a contingent of forty-six thousand men,
population increases at a tolerable rate ; with sixty thou
sand, its progress becomes sensibly slower ; with one hundred
thousand, there is as nearly as possible an equilibrium between
births and deaths ; and, when the contingent rises to one hun
dred and forty thousand men, the population actually declines.
The conscription, then, is the true cause of the quasi station
ary condition shown in the French census-tables. It is the
drain of the vigorous youth of the country, which, taking the
spring out of -the year (to use a singularly vivid classical meta
phor),* deadens its productive power, and, in accordance with
an elementary economic law, diminishes the vital energies in
like ratio.

Upon a rural population of peasant proprietors the conscrip
tion falls with exceptional severity. The young man it carries
away represents the farm laborer, who, as the son of the house,
works with all the heartiness and intelligence that community
of interests proverbially inspires. To supply his place, even

rrjs 7r6Xews a.vr]pr)<r6ai, &<rrrep TO Zap £K TOV eVtcturoO el e^aipfdei-rj.
( Arist. Rhetoric, i. 7. 2.) Aristotle gives the words as a quotation from Pericles's cele
brated funeral oration. But the metaphor was evidently a favorite with the Greeks,
as we find it in Herodotus also (vii. 162).

434: France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

inefficiently, is a heavy tax upon the farmer ; and to provide a
substitute is much oftener beyond his means than is the case
with the city artisan, who has not, moreover, an equally strong
personal motive to incur the expense.

No wonder, then, that the new military law of 1867, —
the law so illogically demanded in M. de La Valette's cir
cular of September, 1866, should awaken discontent even
among these, the Emperor's stanchest supporters. This law,
indeed, came out of the legislative crucible in a much milder
form than that originally given to it, — thanks to the strong
repugnance manifested by the entire nation 'to its first pro
visions. It added two years, however, to the whole term of
service, but diminished by two the time to be passed in the
active division of the army, and permitted marriage, after the
first of four years in the reserve. The annual contingent
was made one hundred thousand men (at which figure popu
lation becomes, according to M. de Lavergne, stationary), giv
ing France a peace establishment of seven hundred and fifty
thousand men, — five hundred thousand in the active army,
and two hundred and fifty thousand in the reserve. Besides
this, in imitation of the Prussian landwehr, all the young men
not drawn for the annual contingent, or who are exempted
from any other cause than under-size or bodily infirmity, were
formed into a Garde nationals mobile, or Garde mobile, as
it is commonly called, subject to fifteen days' — not consecutive
— drill in the year, and liable to be called out for home ser
vice only, and that by a special law. The effective force of this
body was estimated at half a million.

The state of things to which, by the end of 1868, Napo
leon's " rare political wisdom " had brought France was sim
ply this : abroad, her continental hegemony was virtually
gone, her prestige obscured : at home, the consciousness of
this eclipse had produced a general sense of humiliation,*
extending to every class, and penetrating into every household,
without distinction. Taking the country by sections, what do
we find ? A rural population, wavering in their simple Napo
leon-worship, and distrustful of the future ; operatives and
proletaires, — direct legatees of the sanguinary fanaticism of

* The rise of Prussia, according to a writer in the Revue des deux Blondes, was
regarded, throughout France, as une sorte de deche'ance.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 435

'89, and of that alone, — just as bitter in their hatred of imperial
ism as if they had never eaten bread from the Emperor's hand ; *
a bourgeoisie intensely irritated at the tricky, insincere, shilly
shally policy, opposed to their own earnest and fervent strug
gles for enfranchisement, and gradually losing all awe of a
man in whose reputed sagacity and decision of character they
no longer believed ; a priesthood with sentiments very much
akin, mutatis mutandis, to those of the operatives, eager to
snatch at every good thing put in their way, but perfectly
aware that the sole tie between themselves and the Empire was
the need they had of each other for ends often discordant,
and perfectly ready, at any moment, to change the blessing
into an anathema, should their exclusive, corporate interests so
demand ; f and, finally, the imperialist party proper, the Em
peror's immediate adherents, profoundly dissatisfied by his con
cessions to their opponents, and, like them, utterly distrustful
of the fast-and-loose policy, which seemed to be guided by no
fixed principles whatsoever.

The elections of 1869 threw a startlingly clear light upon
the state of parties, and revealed to Louis Napoleon the abyss
upon whose slippery edge he was standing. Upon literally the
very eve of these elections, however, the Emperor, with almost
incredible want of tact, flagrantly insulted the retiring Corps
Legisiatif by deliberately overriding one of its formal acts, and
placing himself again before -the disaffected country in the
character of an autocrat, pure and simple. J At this same time

* At the " Workingmen's International Congress," held at Brussels in 1868, the
portion of the Annual Report contributed by the French delegates is nothing but
a bitter impeachment of their " would-be patron," the Emperor. '• The French
government, of course," it begins, " takes the lead in reactionary proceedings against
the working classes." Such is the gratitude for some two hundred million dollars
of public money spent upon Paris alone !

t On the Roman question, the priesthood turned at once against the Empire, and,
during the Italian war, they were only partially prevented from offering public prayers
for the success of Austria ! Louis Napoleon retaliated by the suppression of the So
cieties of St. Vincent de Paul, — an act which exposed him to furious clerical
abuse.

\ An increase of some $ 50,000 on the school vote had been refused by the Cham
ber, after an animated discussion. A few days afterwards, a report from the Minis
ter of Public Instruction appeared, with the imperial approuve at foot, blaming this
action of the Chamber, and coolly stating that not only $ 50,000, but S 60,000, had
been taken from other services, and appropriated to make good the injudicious par
simony of the legislature (May, 1869).

486 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

liberal ideas were so prevalent that even official candidates,
although just as strenuously backed by the administration as
ever, gave a certain constitutional coloring. to their addresses,
and, in many cases, affected to have no personal relations
whatever with the prefet, who carefully kept up the decep
tion. In spite, however, of bribery, corruption, and trickery,
of all kinds,* the elections gave three and a half million votes
to the opposition, and the Corps Legislatif of 1869 showed
itself a regular parliamentary body, prepared for that healthy
discussion of measures and principles which is utterly irrec
oncilable with the regime which Louis Napoleon had labored
to found. f

But when this state of things had become as clear as the
light of day, had the Emperor penetration enough to take a
correct measure of his position, self-denial enough to accept its
necessities, and wisdom enough to adapt himself to them loy
ally and without reserve ? On the contrary, this, the most
critical part, and in fact the turning-point of his career, full
of grave lessons and clear-spoken warnings, suggested nothing
to that man of little faith but another arch-juggle, which filled
up the measure of his misdeeds.

As in all previous cases, the Emperor began by affecting to
yield completely and unreservedly to the declared wishes of the
nation. Parliamentary government, since such was the coun
try's desire, was precisely what» he most approved of and was
most eager to carry out. Accordingly a decree was introduced
(8th November), sharing with the Corps Legislatif his hitherto
jealously guarded initiative. Senators and deputies were made
eligible to the Cabinet ; each legislative body was to decide
upon its own internal regulations, and members of both had the
privilege of putting questions to the Ministry. The budget
was to be voted by chapters and articles, instead of in lump

* The close supervision exercised over the rural electors may be inferred from a
liberal device, which consisted in erasing the official candidate's name from the gov
ernment voting-papers, which were of a particular form, and writing an opposition
name in its place.

t In the new Chamber, the "Right Centre," or constitutional imperialists, num
bered one hundred and twenty members, led by Emile Ollivier; the " Left Centre,"
or moderate liberals,- numbered forty-one; and the extreme "Left," twenty-nine
members.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. ' 437

sums by state departments ; modifications of the tariff could
only be made valid by legislative enactment ; and amendments
disapproved by the government were to be pronounced upon
in the last appeal by the Chamber.

The chief value of these concessions lay iji the additional lever
age which they promised to afford to the influence of the repre
sentative assembly, and the leading section of the opposition —
the centre droit, which numbered one hundred and twenty mem
bers — hastened to raise itself to the level of the situation.
Abolition of the hated law of public safety and of official can
didature, suppression of the stamp on newspapers, trial by jury
in delits de presse, administrative decentralization, and liberty
of superior instruction, constituted the programme put forward
by this section of the Chamber, and indicate clearly enough
the points upon which reform was most loudly demanded. The
Emperor accepted this programme at once, and with an osten
tation "of constitutionalism which produced a marvellous effect
for the moment, he actually dismissed his former Cabinet,
and summoned " the leader of the opposition," M. Ollivier
himself, to his counsels, giving him carte blanche instructions
to form a new Ministry. This act created a veritable enthu
siasm, not only in France, but still more perhaps in England,
whose usually cautious press sang pasans over this imperial
conversion, as over the commencement of a new era among
their neighbors of peace, prosperity, and Arcadian happiness.

The enthusiasm was short-lived. While the country was
waiting impatiently for the reform bill which was to realize the
policy of the centre droit, for the dissolution which must logi
cally follow it, and for the consequent formal installation of
parliamentary government, the Emperor forgot, amid the smil
ing world around him, the abyss beneath his feet, and turned
yearning eyes upon the dazzling prize of personal power which
seemed just about to slip from his hands forever. Was it too
late, even now, to save this darling possession, with all its
fascinations and excitements ? No, a light flashed upon him ;
a chance still remained. The Constitution of 1852 had been
battered and disfigured indeed, but it still remained unre-
pealed, and the sixth article of that Constitution ran thus :
" The Emperor is responsible to the French people alone, to
whom he has at all times the right to appeal."

*

438 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

Here was clearly the opening to a restoration of the golden
age of autocracy. If France had sent up to Paris a legislative
body with a troublesome element of opposition in it, that ele
ment, after all, was a minority which, with proper manage
ment, might be rendered of no effect. Let France re-elect the
Emperor by a majority of millions, — one of those majorities
which, with careful manipulation, can easily be insured, — and
the Emperor, like another Antaeus, will, by contact with the uni
versal suffrage which gave him birth, recover all his strength,
and neutralize in his single person, as directly representing an
overwhelming majority of the nation, any section of the Cham
ber which may oppose his will.

By a fortunate accident the man whose accession to the im
perial counsels as " leader of the opposition" had proved such
an effective stroke of generalship was precisely the sort of
man — fluent, shallow, and vain — to be made the instrument
for carrying out this new plot. The pretext, too, a most ser
viceable pretext, was ready at hand. If the Constitution of
1852 had been established by an appeal to universal suffrage,
or a plebiscitum, as Napoleon chose to call it in the classical
jargon of the first Revolution, that Constitution could, of
course, be essentially modified only by the same authority.
The logic was irresistible, and M. Emile Ollivier accepted it.
But if irresistibly logical, how did such a proceeding agree
with constitutional maxims and with common sense? The
Chamber just then assembled had been elected by universal
suffrage. The plebiscitum therefore would, in the last analy
sis, be simply an appeal to the same authority on its own
decision, but now recorded. A confirmation of that decision
could not give it additional force, while a reversal of it would
discredit universal suffrage as a foundation of stable govern
ment altogether. But the real danger which lay in the plebis
citum was of a very different kind. Such a vote is really given
under constraint. It is a choice between two fixed alternatives,
" government or anarchy." Discussion and qualification are
alike excluded. It is the favorite dilemma of the cross-examin
ing lawyer on a point the whole significance of which lies in its
surrounding conditions : " I want none of your reasons, sir, no
chopping logic here. Give me a straightforward, honest, an
swer, — yes or no."

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 439

The opposition saw through the scandalous imposture at a
glance, and held it up to scorn in terms of glowing indignation.
But it was in vain. The majority — a majority made up, it '
must be remembered, under the old system of official candida
ture — was relentlessly against them, and the renegade Minis
try carried the plebiscitum through the Chamber by one hun
dred and seventy-one votes against forty-eight. Immediately
previous to the appeal to the country, one of those " frightful
conspiracies," in the mounting of which the Paris police have
had such large experience, was got up for the occasion, and
vigorously advertised. The " Red Republican " spectre, no
matter how clumsily imitated, has never lost its terror for the
peasant proprietor, and u the Beaury conspiracy " proved a
great success. Seven million three hundred thousand ayes,
against one million five hundred and fifty thousand noes, rati
fied the Constitution of 1852, with modifications, and restored
to Anta3us — as he fondly believed — his pristine giant's
strength. The Corps Legislatif, indeed, was a little more dif
ficult to deal with than of old. But still the great majority
made it less troublesome, and M. Emile Ollivier had already
settled down into a mere imperial mouth-piece, another Per-
signy or Rouher, modernized by a thin coating of liberal var
nish. Of a dissolution nothing more was said. " We have
five years before us," coolly observed the Prime Minister, " to
carry out our programme, — the five years that the legislature
has yet to run ! "

The triumph was a grand one. It amounted, for all political
purposes, to a restoration of personal government, to a pacific
repetition of the covp d'etat. Still, two or three incidents of
the plebiscitum had a good deal in them calculated to produce
anxiety. The great cities — Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Bor
deaux — had all voted against it ; the proportion of noes had
been largest in the best educated and most influential depart
ments, smallest in the poorest and least educated ; * and,
more serious than all the rest, the army, the supposed strong-

* A Paris journal (Le Temps] published an elaborate analysis of the rote on the
plebiscite vote, showing that in the seventeen best educated departments of France
the noes were 26 per cent, while in the twenty-three least educated they were
only 11 j per cent.

440. France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

hold of Napoleon-worship and the most elaborately favored as
well as the most vigilantly watched of all sections of the pop
ulation, had actually given a percentage of negatives larger
than that of the agricultural departments ; * while in some
cases (at Strasburg, for instance) the ominous cry of Vive la
republique ! had startled the barracks. This last incident was
altogether new and of the gravest significance. The system of
conscription in France — drawing yearly some one hundred
thousand of the youth of the land into the military service,
and returning about the same number of trained soldiers to
civil life — has at least the merit of maintaining a constant
" solidarity " between the army and the people, and of render
ing the employment of the former against the latter, as an
instrument of oppression, next to impossible.! It contributes
also powerfully, no doubt, to foster that military sentiment
which is a national characteristic, and has a marked and de
cisive influence upon the direction and tone of that sentiment.
A disaffected army, therefore, is a serious matter for any govern
ment ; for a Napoleonic government it was much more than
serious. At the same time symptoms became apparent which
indicated that the Corps Legislatif, in spite of its official ma
jority, would not prove by any means so tractable as had been
anticipated ; nay, that there was positive danger of its forcing
the Ministry along the path of liberalism much more rapidly
than had been contemplated or desired. J

There was a good deal here that had an ugly look of failure
attout it, and it was under the influence of the forebodings
thereby generated that the Emperor finally resolved upon
playing his last card, — a great war, which should , reassert
France's military supremacy and restore to the Second Empire
that prestige without which the authenticity of its lineage
seemed always opened to doubt.

Into the details of that war "and its tragic catastrophe, still
in process of consummation, we cannot enter here. What we

* Vi/. 14 J per cent, or 50,000 noes against 300,000 ayes.

t Louis Napoleon was quite aware of this solidarity, and did his best to counter
act it, by encouraging, among other things, the re-enlistment of soldiers who
had completed their term.

$ The Chamber, for instance, passed a bill, in opposition to the government, ena
bling the conseils gtfnfraux to discuss politic.al questions.

1870.] France under the Second Empire. 441

have wished to describe has been, the series of mistakes by
which Louis Napoleon was led into this, his last great venture,
and to set forth the state of things, resulting directly from his
political errors, which rendered the collapse of his government
inevitable before the first well-directed blow. One of the most
sagacious statesmen of our century, in conversation with an
English friend, remarked of the French Emperor : " He has
no definite policy. He has a number of political ideas floating
in his mind, but hone of them matured. The only principle,
if principle it can be called, which connects together these
various ideas is the establishment of his dynasty, and his con
viction that the best way to secure it is by feeding the vanity
of the French people. It is this uncertain policy, guided by
selfish and dynastic considerations, which makes him so
dangerous." We believe the accuracy of Count Cavour's
estimate to be strictly borne out by all that we have detailed
above. Napoleon III., in character and ideas as in fortunes,
was simply the result of certain antecedents, and above this
level of ideas he never rose. He had intelligence enough to
discern that the dazzling military career of Napoleon I. had
made upon the national vanity of France an impression far
deeper and more general than many much wiser men than
himself supposed. And he had wit enough to divine that,
with a country in a state of chronic revolution, — a country
so profoundly disordered, politically and morally, that, like a
fretful invalid, it passed with feverish impatience from one
remedy to another, without faith or hope in any, — the turn
of the Napoleonic nostrum was sure, sooner or later, to come.
In cases of this kind, men of one idea, provided only that
idea be the right one, are the successful men, because, ever
on the watch, the flood-tide cannot possibly escape them.
Twice, Louis Napoleon mistook, with almost ludicrous inca
pacity, the signs of that tide, and when its swell at last bore
him to fortune, little more action was needed on his part than
simply to yield to the set of the current and keep himself
at the surface. All the rest was done for him.

His grand mistake — a mistake from the trammels of which
he was fated never to extricate himself — was to imagine, as
his uncle had imagined, that the Napoleonic enthusiasm repre-

442 France under the Second Empire. [Oct.

sented the whole of the national character instead of a side of
it only ; that France had no nobler aspirations than he himself
had. Varied experiences had proved to Louis Napoleon that
there were other social forces to work than those upon which
his own political theory was built. But, like all men of one
idea, he was wholly unable to appreciate the intensity of
these forces, and he treated them throughout merely as subor
dinate disturbing influences, which must be simply humored or
cajoled to a certain extent. This narrow and essentially self
ish system has failed, as it was inevitable that it should, and
its representative has already taken his place in that long line
of historic personages, who seem to have lived only in order
more forcibly to point an old moral by adorning a new tale.
In the sudden eclipse indeed of this man's dazzling splendor
there is a depth of tragedy far more solemnly impressive, for
us of this nineteenth century, than anything which the ordi
nary teachings of history can show. Alexander the Great and
Julius Caesar vanished from mortal gaze in the very zenith of
their glory ; but the hand that hurried them away was the
hand of the Irresistible, and the lesson conveyed was material
rather for the preacher than for the moralist. The fall of the
great Napoleon was a gradual one, brought painfully about by
external forces concentrated against him, and due, apparently
at least, as much to the necessary antagonism of the old order
of things as to any inherent weakness in his own creation.
Even the sudden and ignominious collapse of the " Monarchy
of July " had its explanation in the deficient moral courage of
Louis Philippe and his advisers, rather than in the intrinsic
defects of 'the regime over which they presided. But the
miserable ruin which has overtaken Napoleon III. belongs
to an entirely different category from these. Leaving Paris in
the morning, surrounded by all the splendid insignia of bound
less power, innumerable hosts marshalled at his beck, and awe
struck Europe waiting with ready hands to applaud his suc
cesses, this man in the evening stands utterly isolated from all
that pride, pomp, and circumstance. At the very first reverse,
the whole glittering pageant seems literally to fall away from
him, as magic jewels and trappings in some fairy tale vanish,
at an ill-omened word. France, insensible to fear, pours out

1870.] France under the Second Umpire. 443

blood and treasure, without stint or reserve, in the unequal
conflict. But for him not one sou, not one drop, is devoted ;
and when, conscious that the magnificent capital which has
grown beneath his hands into a city of palaces has no longer
any shelter to give him within its walls, he takes refuge with
a pitying foe, the place he leaves vacant is scarcely marked,
and France, so sensitive and sympathetic, has no single word
of regret for the unwept and unhonored exile.

And now that the Second Empire has worked out its desti
nies and woven its own shroud, how tempting is the opportunity
to speculate on what lies beyond ! The proclamation of a Re
public has already awaked lively sympathies here, as it could
not but do, and general opinion hails the transformation as an
accomplished and permanent fact. We wish we could share in
this view ; but, looking realities in the face, we find little en
couragement to do so. Nascitur, non fit, is a proposition fully
as applicable to political systems as to poets. Forms of gov
ernment do not create the special conditions which their prop
er working supposes, but are themselves developed from those
pre-existent conditions. The germ of American republicanism
was contained as essentially in the political principles and
training which the Pilgrims brought out with them from Eng
land, as the oak is contained in the acorn. The oak and the
republic are alike results of an evolution from within, modified
bv the influences acting from without. But where is such a

%/ o

germ to be traced either in France's historic antecedents, in
her public life, or in her social tendencies ? The principle of
equality is no doubt firmly rooted in the French character.
But this principle, although an indispensable element of repub
licanism, is perfectly reconcilable with the most absolute des
potism, as Eastern history notoriously shows. It may furnish
the cement to bind the foundation, but possesses, in itself
alone, no sustaining power. If we turn to the public life of
France, the prospect is still less promising. One of the marked
characteristics of members of the Celtic race is an imaginative
enthusiasm which predisposes them to grandiose theorizing and
visionary speculation, while they turn away^with dislike from
common-sense realities and practical details. The only correc
tive to a failing of the kind is an obligatory acquaintance with
VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. 29

444 France under the Second Umpire. [Oct.

these realities and a personal interest in these details. But, un
fortunately, the political education of the Frenchman is entire
ly destitute of this corrective. Administrative centralization
exists in France to a degree almost inconceivably minute.
Without the authorization of the prefet or of one of his sub
ordinates, nothing which has, however remotely, a bearing on
general interests, can be done anywhere ; and the prefet
himself can authorize nothing without the license of his
chief, the Minister of the Interior, in Paris. If a man wants
to put up a steam-engine, he must go first to the prefet;
if he wishes to build a furnace, the prefet prescribes certain
conditions, which the structure must fulfil ; a bridge over a
streamlet, a simple parish road, require the approval of a whole
hierarchy of councils, with final reference to the inevitable
Minister. Thanks to this system, which directly enhances in
stead of counteracting the dislike for practical details already
referred to, the average Frenchman has a perfect horror of
political responsibilities, and avails himself eagerly of every
pretext, every opportunity, for evading them, — poor promise
for republicanism.

If we look back to historic antecedents, we find nothing to
encourage us. The Republic of 1848 was simply an oligarchy.
Decree after decree was issued by the party in power with the
most reckless indifference to the feelings and rights of others.
The President and the Assembly were always at war. The
minority uniformly refused to recognize the authority of the
majority, and was always ready to appeal against it to arms !
The first six months of the Republic was a succession of
emeutes, and in a short time the country found itself robbed
of many of the franchises which a monarchy had secured it,
— the press gagged, the right of public meeting smothered,
the suffrage mutilated !

The " half-way house " of limited monarchy would be our
prediction of France's next stable phase, if we were rash
enough to make a prediction, which we are not.

H. W. HOMANS.

1870.] Theodore Mommsen. . 445

ART. VIII. — THEODORE MOMMSEN.

THIRTEEN years ago * the attention of the readers of this
review was directed to the name of Theodore Mommsen, and
his Romische Geschichte was briefly characterized." He was at
that time hardly known outside of Germany ; and it is probable
that this was the first mention made of his name to the
American public. He has since come to be recognized all over
the world as one of the first of living historians, and by far
the first authority upon Roman history and antiquities. His
history has been translated into English, and has become a
standard authority in England ; and I now take the occasion
of its republication in this country to attempt a more complete
analysis of his qualities as an historian than was then possible,
when his work had only recently appeared.

Probably the first characteristic which strikes the majority of
Mommsen's readers is the completeness of his preparation for
writing history, — the extent and the minuteness of his acquire
ments, apart from his purely intellectual qualities as a thinker,
or the use he makes of his materials as an historical writer.
His plan is a vast one, embracing the entire life of the nation,
private as well as public ; and in every department one is
amazed, both at the thoroughness of his knowledge and at the
insight which makes the merest trifle serve to illustrate his
theme. This is not simply great learning, — that is to be
expected as a matter of course in a thoroughly trained German
philologist, — but an intimate acquaintance with classical
literature, which is the entire stock in trade of most writers
upon ancient history, is to this man only his solid foundation,
while in every related branch of inquiry he is equally at home.
Nor is this merely a show of learning, which, in an elaborate
work, might dazzle laymen in each speciality, but which masters
would recognize as obtained at second-hand ; it is more even
than that legitimate use of materials provided by others, which
every writer must make to some extent, since no a omnia
poss twins omnes ; but in each branch of knowledge bearing on

*

* North American Review for January, 1857.

446 . Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

his subject he has himself done work and conducted investi
gations which entitle him to the rank of a master. When,
therefore, he adopts the results of other inquiries, it is as one
competent to criticise and judge their methods and results.

In the common branches of philology, — the criticism and
interpretation of ancient authors, — he has not been very
astive, reserving his strength for more difficult, or at least
more special work. Still, even here he has not been idle.
Many brief essays attest his industry in this field ; for instance,
a recent number of " Hermes " (Vol. IY. No. 3) contains an
elaborate article by him upon the authorities followed by
Tacitus, — an encouraging sign, among many others, that he is
engaged in the preparations for the continuation of his history.
In especial his chapters upon Roman literature are in them
selves philological treatises of the first rank, combining the
exhaustive treatment of the philologist with the philosophical
and literary criticism of the historian and thinker.

His chief labors, however, have been bestowed upon those
collateral branches of philology which most classical students
either leave entirely aside or touch only incidentally. In lin
guistics proper he has made a careful study of the Italian dia
lects cognate to Latin, that is, just that branch of comparative
philology which bears directly upon Roman history. These
historical bearings are most important ; for his treatises upon
" The Lower Italian Dialects," taken together with the inves
tigations of other able scholars in this field, have completely
established the truth of the theory first proposed by A. W. von
Schlegel, that the Umbrian and Sabellian dialects form one
family with the Latin, in other words, that all the Italian na
tionalities, with the exception of the Etruscans and Japygians
and some of those in the North, formed one race, the Italian,
a sister, not a daughter, of the Greek. If this view is correct, —
and it is hardly possible to question it, — Niebuhr's Pelasgian
theory, to which so many English writers still cling persist
ently, falls of itself ; and our historian is warranted in laying
down as his aim, " to relate the history of Italy, not simply
the history of the city of Rome." The nearness of kin of the
Celts and the Italians, maintained by so many distinguished
scholars, he neither asserts nor denies, 'thinking the evidence
not yet sufficient to pass judgment upon.

1870.] Theodore Mommsen. 447

In the important and difficult science of " Epigraphik," — the
deciphering and interpretation of inscriptions, — Mommsen must
be acknowledged to be second to none. It is in this field, indeed,
that he has been mainly occupied of late years, as his immense
Corpus Inscriptionum Regni Neapolitani and other important
works testify. Difficult as this science is, and comparatively un
known ground as it therefore presents to most scholars, it is here
that the great historian finds much of his most valuable material.
For here are contemporary records, — records that have come
straight to us from the hands of the ancients themselves,
uncorrupted by the blunderings of copyists, the interpolations
of partisans, or the emendations of philologists. They are the
records not merely of magistrates and wars and statutes, but of
the every-day life of the common people, — tombstones, bound
ary-stones, votive offerings, imprecations, calendars ; and in
all these, amid much rubbish, there is many a precious bit of
knowledge which* our author knows how to detect and use.
Every new edition calls in the evidence of newly discovered
inscriptions, either in supporting or modifying his former
views ; and nothing illustrates better his sagacity and watchful
industry than the changes in the foot-notes to the earlier chap
ters in the successive editions of the history.

Closely allied to the study of inscriptions is that of remains
of art ; no discovery in this field, from a statue to a bit
of stone-wall, escapes his notice, or fails to teach him just
what it is competent to teach. Coins, in especial, have been
the object of his attention and the subject of one of his most
elaborate treatises, — Das Romische Munzwesen. But, as in
the branches already mentioned, it is not as a numismatist,
but as an historian, that he has made this investigation ; his
sole object is to learn what coins will teach him in regard to
the culture and institutions of the Romans. For coins are
full of historical matter, when studied aright. For example,
in the fact that the so-called Latin colonies enjoyed the right
of coining money of their own, while there exist no coins,
either of Roman colonies or of municipia with full citizen
ship, he finds proof that the Roman colonists still remained
Roman citizens, while the Latin colonist exchanged his Roman
citizenship for a partial independence ; and that at all times,

448 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

so far as the Roman state extended, there was only one system
of money. Again, in the style of the oldest Roman coins, as
well as from the comparison of the several alphabets * and
systems of weight used in Italy, he is aided in arriving at the
important conclusion, one of his fundamental doctrines,
that it was from the Greeks, not from the Etruscans, that the
Romans derived lessons in civilization.

All these branches of inquiry may fairly be grouped under
the head of. philology ; and philology is the essential foun
dation for a student of antiquity. Mommsen,. however, al
though possessing the essential foundation, is not, after all,
primarily a philologist, but a jurist. If I am not mistaken,
he took his degree at the University of Kiel, in the Faculty of
Law ; and he was, at any rate, Professor of Roman Law for
some years at the University of Breslau. It has been an
nounced that he is to prepare the volume on Roman Jurispru
dence for Becker and Marquardt's work on Roman Antiquities ;
and the latest publication of his that I have seen advertised is
an edition of the Code of Justinian. The importance of this
legal training in its influence upon the rnind of the historian
can hardly be overestimated. We see it in his strong grasp of
legal and political questions, the rigorous logic of his deduc
tions, and the strenuousness with which he insists upon the
ideas of law and authority. Even in his earliest published
work, the treatise De Collegiis et Sodaliciis Romanorum, — his
dissertation on taking the doctor's degree, — he vigorously
expresses his feeling as a jurist, in criticising some feeble
argument of Wunder : " Fateor ignorare me quid philologi ad
vim pertinere arbitrentur ; iuris periti certe in hac vi deiectione-
que non agnoscunt nisi lusum verborum." In still higher terms,
perhaps with some degree of exaggeration, a similar sentiment
is expressed, in his essay upon Das romische Gastrecht, in his
Forsc/tung-en : " He who cannot do this, for the reason that he
is not familiar enough with the comprehension- and treatment
of matters in Roman Law, will do well to leave these inquiries
unread ; but, for the matter of that, he will also do well not to
meddle at all with the older epochs of Rome."

* One piece of evidence, among many, is the fact that the Greek Odysseus became
Uture among the Etruscans, while the Romans used the Sicilian Ulixes.

1870.] Theodore Mommsen. 449

This combination of juridical and philological training, to
which union each element has contributed whatever it had to
offer, is the source of Mommsen's distinctive character as an
historian. Other writers have traced with as much enthusiasm,
as accurate scholarship, and perhaps as much native insight
as he the political development of Rome ; but no one of them
has possessed so solid a basis to build upon, in the thorough
comprehension of that jurisprudence which determined this
whole development ; that is to say, no other historian has
been able to treat the Roman constitution from so profound an
understanding of the principles upon which this constitution
rested. Others have studied its phenomena of growth, he alone
has gone to the roots.

He is, therefore, above all things, a political historian, a stu
dent of political science, and a thinker upon political questions.
In this field, he is fond of looking for analogies in other times
and nations ; from England, especially, he has borrowed a mul
titude of apt illustrations, recognizing in her, no doubt, the
best modern parallel to the character and career of Rome.
Thus : -

" The expulsion of the Tarquins was not, as the pitiful and deeply
falsified accounts of it represent, the work of a people carried away by
sympathy and enthusiasm for liberty, but the work of two great politi
cal parties, already engaged in conflict, and clearly aware that their
conflict would steadily continue, — the old burgesses and metceci, — who,
like the English Whigs and Tories, in 1688, were, for the moment,
united by the common danger which threatened to convert the Com
monwealth into the arbitrary government of a despot, and differed
again as soon as the danger was over."- -Vol. I. p. 336.

He abounds in general principles and pithy sayings on polit
ical philosophy. A rich collection of political maxims and
principles might be made from his writings, such as the follow
ing:—

".Many nations have gained victories, and made conquests, as the
Romans did ; but none has equalled the Roman, in thus making the
ground he had won his own by the sweat of his brow, and in securing,
by the ploughshare, what had been gained by the lance. That which is
gained by war may be wrested from the grasp by war again, but it is not
so with the conquests made by the plough." — Vol. I. p. 247.

450 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

" The belief that it is useless to employ partial and palliative means
against radical evils, because they only remedy them in part, is an arti
cle of faith never preached unsuccessfully by baseness to simplicity, but
it'is none the less absurd."— Vol. II. p. 391.

" That faith in an ideal, which is the foundation of all the power and
of all the impotence of democracy, had come to be associated in the
minds of the Romans with the tribunate of the plebs." — Vol. II.
p. 406.

"History has a Nemesis for every sin, — for an impotent craving
after freedom, as well as for an injudicious generosity." — Vol. II.
p. 299.

" If it is a political mistake to create meaningless names, it is hardly
a less to establish the reality of absolute power without a name." —
Vol. III. p. 460 (second German edition ; Vol. IV. of the English trans
lation).

"Mankind arrives at new creations with unspeakable difficulty, and
therefore cherishes, as a sacred inheritance, the forms that have been
once developed. For this reason, Caesar, with good judgment, leaned
(anknupfen) upon Servius Tullius in like manner as Charles the Great
leaned upon Csesar, and as Napoleon tried, at least, to lean on Charles
the Great." — Vol. II. p. 464.

" The holy feeling of justice and reverence for law, hard to unsettle
in the minds of men, are still harder to create." — Vol. II. p. 477.

In regard to disputed questions of political science, it is, per
haps, enough to say that Mommsen is no doctrinaire. He is,
first and last, an historian, and an historian of Rome ; he con
cerns himself little with abstract theories of government, but
. on each occasion considers solely what was good for Rome at
that time. In general, he sympathizes with any government that
does its work well, whatever its form or name may be. " A
change in the form of the state," he says, " is not, in itself, an
evil for a people." It is, perhaps, easier, however, to show
what he does not believe in than what he does believe in ; that
is, any sham or inefficiency is sure to call upon itself wrathful
condemnation from him. He is called an enemy of democ
racy, and it is true he is an enemy of false democracy, 'but
he is equally an enemy of the common type of monarchy and
aristocracy. Thus he says of kings : —

" A fresh illustration had been afforded of the truth that, of all hap
hazards, none is more hazardous than an absolute hereditary monarchy.'
— Vol. II. p. 266.

1870.] Theodore Mbmmsen. 451

" One of those rare men [Caesar] to whom it is due that the name of
king does not serve merely as a glaring example of human pitifulness
\_Er1)armlicftkeit\" — Vol. III. p. 525.

Of aristocracy : —

" The narrowness of mind and short-sightedness, which are the proper
and inalienable privileges of all genuine patricianism \_Junkerthum]" —
Vol. I. p. 350.

" It [the Senate] sank in this epoch from its original high position, as
the aggregate of those in the community who were most experienced
in counsel and action, into an order of lords, filling up its ranks by
hereditary succession, and exercising collegiate misrule." — Vol. II.
p. 386.

Of democracy : —

"Tyranny is everywhere the result of universal suffrage." — Vol. I.
p. 359.

" The proper supports of every really revolutionary party [in Rome,
that is], the proletariate and the freedrnen." — Vol. II. p. 421.

But if oligarchies and ochlocracies receive no favor at his
hands, a really efficient senate, or popular assembly, finds no
lack of appreciation. If any one form of government in the
abstract appears to commend itself to him, it is the self-govern
ment of an intelligent people : —

" The senatorial aristocracy had guided the state, not primarily by
virtue of hereditary right, but by virtue of the highest of all rights of
representation, — the right of the superior, as contrasted with the mere
ordinary man." — Vol. II. p. 386.

" Whatever could be demanded of an assembly of burgesses like
the Roman, which w'as not the motive power, but the firm foundation,
of the whole machinery, — a sure perception of the common good, a
sagacious deference towards the right leader, a steadfast spirit in pros
perous and evil days, and, above all, the capacity of sacrificing the indi
vidual for the general welfare, and the comfort of the present for the
advantage of the future, — all these qualities the Roman community
exhibited in so high a degree that, when we look to its conduct as a
whole, all censure is lost in reverent admiration." — Vol. II. p. 403.

If, therefore, his political philosophy is at fault in anything,
it appears to be in a disposition to judge actigns rather by
results than by motives ; that is, to be sure, rather as an historian
than as a moralist. He guards himself so carefully against

452 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

the delusive habit of speculating upon what might have been,
and again from that petty temper which refuses to forgive
the least obliquity in means, even in view of great aims, that he
is too ready to justify whatever turned out well, or even, one al
most thinks, whatever was successful in the end, as if it could
not have been done otherwise. And in his impatience at weak
ness and incompetence in great crises, he is apt to overlook or
underrate what real efficiency was connected with them, and to
pronounce harsh judgment upon qualities and men that failed
in their generation, but under other circumstances might have
done good service. " For history there are no judgments of
high treason {Hochverrathsparagrapheri)" he says. And
again : " It is not proper in the historian either to excuse the
perfidious crime by which the Mamertines seized their power,
or to forget that the God of history does not necessarily punish
the sins of the fathers to the fourth generation" (Vol. II.
p. 40) ; which last assertion may surely be doubted. It is at
any rate inconsistent with that quoted above, that " history
has a Nemesis for every sin." Moreover, his lawyer's rever
ence for authority too often leads him to side with power and
prerogative, against the impotent cravings after freedom.
Hence the principle " that the people ought not to govern, but
to be governed," by which he means, however, that the proper
demand of reform " was not for limitation of the power of the
state, but for limitation of the power of the magistrates."

A man who is an original student and an authority in so
many branches of learning — classical literature, antiquities,
linguistics, epigraphy, numismatics, and legal science — lives
in such an atmosphere of antiquity, that he can see things which
duller and less carefully trained eyes overlook, and give weight
to evidence that is no evidence at all to others. Often it may
be strictly true of such a one that he knows as an eyewitness,
because he looks at things with such a perfect comprehension
of them that he can place himself in the position of a contem
porary, and feel a certainty which, perhaps, he cannot explain,
in relation to the affairs of a distant time. It is like the judg
ment of a statesman or a shrewd man of business, who forms
his opinions by processes which he does not attempt to analyze,
and upon scraps of evidence of which he may not even be

1870.] Theodore Mommsen. 453

conscious, but who nevertheless is right, where a mechanical
reasoner woul.d be all wrong. No person, therefore, can criti
cise Mommsen fairly, except so far as he can look at matters
from his point of view. Where his views are formed upon dis
tinct written evidence, they are a legitimate subject of debate ;
where they are the result of his vast knowledge, all we can say
is, that no man knows more than he upon the subject, and no
man has a more intuitive insight into the relations of historical
events.

It is impossible to read a page in any part of this work with
out being impressed by the scholarship and the profound in
sight of the author ; but probably all critics would agree that
the most original and characteristic portions are those which
treat of the earliest institutions, and of the downfall of the
Republic. These two portions, the beginning and the end
of the present work, would appear as widely different from
each other in nature and requirements as possible, and cer
tainly they call out in the fullest degree the varied and con
trasted powers of the writer. Both are indeed essentially po
litical ; but the one demands the power of inferring truth almost
by intuition from a mass of fragmentary, contradictory, and
often false statements, in relation to a period buried in the
deepest obscurity ; the other presents the historian a more
familiar task, — that of tracing cause and effect in events
which puzzle rather from their complication and from the ob
scurity of motives, than from any actual scarcity of materials.

The first prominent characteristic of Professor Mommsen's
treatment of the primitive history of Rome is the emphasis
with which he brings out the opposition in principle between
the original patrician constitution, of a purely patriarchal
nature, resting upon a Divine authority which is represented in
the auspices, and embodied in the Senate, and the order of
things that resulted when foreign elements were incorporated
into the state. This distinction has been familiar ever since
the time of Niebuhr, but no other writer has analyzed the prim
itive patriarchal institutions of the monarchy, and depicted
the nature of the subsequent revolution so clearly as it is done
in these volumes.

The patriciate was a definite body, elaborately organized

454 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

into tribes, curies, and houses (gentes), institutions of an essen
tially patriarchal nature, resting upon an assumed community
of origin. The " houses " at least carefully preserved the tra
ditions of such common origin, and kept up special religious
usages,^ special customs, and a strong sense of individuality ;
they had sanctuaries of their own, a common property, and a
certain control over their own members. This was an organism
whose origin goes back beyond the commencement of historical
records, and with all its formalism and exclusiveness, — its
unnaturalness to our eyes, — it was in no sense artificial, but
had grown up spontaneously with the life of the community.
The term plebeian, on the other hand,- was an essentially neg
ative one, applied to that unorganized mass of persons who
were outside of the patriciate. Plebeians, it was said, had no
gens, that is, they lacked the hereditary organism of the patri
cians. To be sure, illustrious plebeian families, such as those of
Lucullus, Metellus, and Catulus, developed for themselves the
so-called Licinian, Cascilian, and Lutatian gentes, after the
analogy of the patrician houses ; still, these were not original
institutions. This negative term, plebeian, embraced a con
siderable variety of classes, — the clients, or dependants upon
patrician houses, metasci, or foreigners not naturalized, mem
bers of conquered Latin communities, and emancipated slaves.
These were inhabitants of Rome, but not citizens, and were
governed and protected by laws which they had no share
either in making or defending.

In time the plebeians came even to outnumber the citizens,
and individuals among them were eminent for wealth and
ability. Then followed that reorganization of the state which
is the important event of the second period of the monarchy,
known as that of the Tarquins. Tradition ascribes to the elder
Tarquin a desire to extend the patriciate constitution over the
whole body of inhabitants ; when this plan failed, by reason
of religious obstacles, — a resistance, of which the augur Attus'
Navius was the mouthpiece, — another method of bringing the
non-patricians within the pale of the state was adopted by the
kings of this dynasty. The patriciate was left untouched, but
another organization, which should include both patricians
and plebeians, was created by its side, or rather two or-

1870. J Theodore Mommsen. 455

ganizations, the classes and centuries for military purposes,
the tribes for revenue and administrative purposes, both of
which were afterwards made the basis of popular assemblies.
These institutions, ascribed to King Servius Tullius, introduced
a new and momentous principle into the Roman polity, that
the state was commensurate with its territory and inhabitants,
and hot confined to the descendants of a few families. And
the long struggle of the orders is in truth a contest between
the patriarchal and the territorial principles, for the control of
the state.

A second point of primary importance in Mommsen's view
of the constitutional history of the early period is that the con
test of the orders consisted in reality of two contests, carried
on side by side, sometimes aiding, but perhaps as often retard
ing, each other. The unjust management of the public domain,
and the oppressive laws of debt, did not affect plebeians as such,
but only the poor and friendless plebeians ; and, what is more
important still, wealthy plebeians themselves, as members
of the Senate, appear to have been ranked with the oppressors
and monopolists. The same persons, therefore, — the Licinii,
the Publilii, and other prominent plebeians who were con
tending against the patricians for the rights of intermarriage"
and of holding office, — themselves sat in the Senate by the
side of patricians, and shared with them the unjust monopoly of
the public domain. Nay, more, the tribunes of the plebs elected
to protect the poor debtors against the ruling aristocracy might
themselves have an interest, as members of the plebeian aris
tocracy, in the very abuses which it was their duty to check.
No wonder the struggle was long and bitter, and the progress
slow, seeing that the leaders of the plebs were striving to
gratify their own ambition, while the masses simply wanted
justice and security.

It is not desirable to discuss here in detail the points in
which Mommsen's views of the early constitution differ from
those held by other scholars. These are matters rather of
antiquities than of history ; and it is enough to have described
the two which underlie the whole. For the peculiar char
acter of the political struggles of the Republic was derived
from the contrast between the developed organism of the

456 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

patriciate and artificial organism of Servius Tullius ; it was
with sincerity that the conservatives raised the cry of sacrilege
against the innovators, who would tamper with institutions
which received their sanction from the divine auspices. And
while this irreconcilable antagonism of principle explains the
bitter and obstinate resistance of the aristocracy, the reformers
themselves were divided and half-hearted. The abuses would
have come to an end long before they did, if the attacks upon
them had been made in good earnest and with a hearty unity
of purpose. When the poor of Athens were suffering under
quite similar burdens, one great statesman, in a single year, was
able to carry through enactments which put a stop to them
forever. But Rome had no Solon ; or, if Spurius Cassius
might have turned out one, the established order of things was
too strong for him. There was such a variety of grievances, and
such complication of party issues, that it was impossible to
unite heartily for any one object at a time. So Rome had to
be contented with partial and grudging reforms, and at last
with a compromise in the shape of an u Omnibus Bill," which
left the seeds of evil ready to germinate anew in the time of
the Gracchi.

The chapters which treat of the transition from Republic to
Empire are remarkable, not so much for essential originality,
as for the completeness and logical consistency with which the
views of the author are maintained. There does not exist so
forcible a vindication of the Empire as an historical necessity,
such overwhelming proof of the hopeless disintegration of the
Republic, such an earnest eulogy of Julius Caesar and his policy.
The exhibition given in this volume of the character of state
and statesmen at this period is all the argument possible in
the case. If we fail to accept in full the result to which the
historian would conduct us, it is because his undisguised wor
ship of efficiency, and excessive reverence for authority, do not
always carry us along with him. And yet one can hardly fail
to recognize with him, that the Republic had already become
impossible, that Caesar was a man peculiarly endowed to be
the founder of a new government, and that his assassination
was an incalculable disaster.

It would be a mistake, however, to regard Mommsen as

1870.] Theodore Mommsen. 457

belonging to either of the schools of historical opinion repre
sented respectively by the Emperor Napoleon III. and Mr.
Congreve. He is no believer in the French type of Caesarism,
which identifies itself with democracy, — meaning by democ
racy the right of the people, not to rule themselves, but to
choose their rulers, — which uses the people merely as the
instrument of democracy. His sympathies are rather with
what may be called Periclean democracy, — the distinctive
popular sagacity which knows the needs of the state, and is at
once able, in times of peril, to recognize its natural leader,
and willing to surrender unlimited power to him for a season.
But, after all, this is a power which exists only in a people in
its vigor. The Roman people had it when they put their des
tinies iiito the hands of Cincinnatus, Camillus, and Fabius
Maximus ; but when the Roman mob — no longer a people —
gave dictatorial power to Gracchus, Marius, or Ca?sar, it was
another thing. Pericles represented the sound judgment and
concentrated action of a free, people ; Caius Gracchus was
simply a demagogue, that is, wielded the concentrated ac
tion, the unthinking brute force, of a demoralized mob. It
might be, no doubt was, with pure motives and wise aims ;
but it was none the less an essentially monarchical power,
while the other was, in the true sense of the word, republican.
Now, to say that Mommsen sympathizes with the one of these
and not with the other, is only to say that he most admires
Roman institutions when they were healthy and vigorous ;
when they had become effete he regrets it, but recognizes the
fact, and sees in it the necessity of a Gracchus or a Ca3sar,
seeing that a Pericles was no longer possible. He does not, in
itself, like this new form of demagogism ; but, on the other
hand, he does not abhor it as we do. It follows that he is still
further removed from Mr. Congreve's view, that the Empire
was the manhood, of which the Republic was' the infancy and
youth ; and surely we shall agree here that the Empire was
not development, but decay ; that, as has been forcibly said,
" the Empire may have been a necessary evil, it may have been
the lesser evil in a choice of evils, but it was, essentially, a
thing of evil all the same."

As has been remarked above, there is no esrentia! novelty

458 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

in Mommsen's views in regard to this period of the Republic.
Perhaps the most striking point he makes is in carrying hack
the commencement of the decay to a much earlier period than
is usually done. Even at the time of the Second Punic War,
commonly considered the epoch of the highest vigor and
purity of the Republic, he shows that the causes were already
actively at work which eventually destroyed it. Those writ
ers, therefore, who have borrowed from the ancients their
notions of the demoralizing influence of wealth, and ascribe
the degeneracy of the Romans to the increase of riches and
luxury, consequent upon the conquests of the sixth century of
the city, find little support in him. Already, before Macedo
nia and Carthage fell, Rome had outgrown her urban institu
tions, her yeomanry had disappeared, and her religion had lost
all its vitality and power over the lives of men. .

In these three points we find indicated the fundamental de
fects of antiquity, the causes from which it resulted that
ancient civilization possessed only a limited capacity for
development, and ancient nations only a limited capacity for
growth. Modern history gives no support whatever to the
common theory, that nations, like men, have their necessary
periods of growth, maturity, and decay. Modern society, as
a whole, has displayed a steady progress for more than a
thousand years ; modern nations have had their alternations of
progress and retrogression, but every new wave of progress
has reached a higher point than the last ; the licentiousness of
the time of Charles II. and the political corruption of the time
of George II. have been succeeded by the purity and virtue of
Victoria's reign. But antiquity presents no parallel to this.
Ancient nations did, like the human body, contain within them
the seeds of necessary decay and death. When one element of
growth had run its course, there was no counteracting element
to infuse a new life, and preserve the wavering balance ; society
became one-sided, and toppled over. Thus a downward ca
reer, once'begun, was never checked. Even the age of the Anto-
nines was only a seeming exception, a few years of wise gov
ernment, but with no real improvement in the community.

The three defects of antiquity were social, political, and reli
gious y in each of these fields, the development was partial

1870.] Theodore Mommsen. 459

and unexpansive, resulting in a brilliant, but exhaustive ca
reer ; and each of these defects led to an incurable and fatal
disease. First, the ancients had no conception of a free so
ciety. Their civilization was founded upon slavery ; their free
citizens displayed heroic virtues for a time, but slavery, by its
very nature, encroached upon freedom and destroyed it.
Slave labor supplanted the free yeomanry, great estates swal
lowed up the small freeholds, and the middle class steadily
disappeared. The institution of slavery, therefore, destroyed
the foundation of free institutions. Secondly, the idea of the
state was inseparable from that of the city. They had no
other conception of a free state than that of the city, governed
by the public assembly ; consequently, when the state grew in
size, its institutions were inadequate. Whatever lay outside
the city itself must be governed by authority, or be vested with
only a shadow of political power ; in either case, the free gov
ernment was at an end. Thirdly, the religions of Greece and
Rome *lost their hold upon men's reason, and of course upon
their conscience ; they were still maintained as forms, but prac
tically gave way to superstitions and philosophies.

Only one of these three evils struck the thoughtful mind of
Tiberius Gracchus, — the disappearance of small freeholds
throughout many parts of Italy, the substitution for them of
great plantations, latifundia, cultivated by slave labor, and the
consequent growth of an immense proletariat in the city. His
instincts were no doubt right in seizing upon this as the most
serious evil ; it was certainly the most pressing. No doubt, too,
his plan of meeting it was the best possible under the circum
stances, — to call in the public domain (above a certain amount)
in the occupation of the nobles and distribute it in freeholds
among the poor citizens, a procedure analogous in principle to
that of a " homestead act." But if this was the best possible
remedy, this fact only shows how deeply rooted was the evil ; for
experience proved, what reflection will show must have been the
case, that it was only a partial and temporary remedy. The
act of Tiberius Gracchus was passed and carried faithfully into
operation. In the course of six or seven years, the number of
citizens capable of bearing arms, which had been diminishing
for some time before, was increased by 76,000 men, — nearly

VOL. cxi. — NO. 229. bO

460 Theodore Mommseri. [Oct.

one fourth; and yet even so wide-reaching a measure as this
does not appear to have had any material influence in post
poning .the downfall of the Republic. And it will be xeasily seen
that such an increase of yeomanry can have been only tempo
rary, so long as the tendencies which caused the absorption of
small freeholds were not checked. The members of the city
proletariat who were transplanted upon farms, were surely no
more likely to hold their own against the aggressions, fraud,
and cajoleries of their wealthy neighbors, than the original
yeomanry had been. The prohibition to alienate their free
holds would be easily evaded, and a few years would see the
new proprietors back in the slums of Rome. Or even if this
were not the case, the growth of the proletariat from natural
causes would at any rate not be affected. Mr. Long's compari
son of this measure with the proposed schemes of emigration
on a large scale as a means of relieving England of pauperism,
is perfectly in point. Reduce the population as much as you
will, and so long as the habits and character of the peDple re
main what they are, they will at once propagate again up to
the verge of the means of subsistence.

Again, the available public domain in Italy was very soon
exhausted, long before the mass of paupers was adequately
provided for. Caius Gracchus, to be sure, proposed to take
lands in the provinces for this purpose, and here was an inex
haustible supply, if the ruling classes had had any desire to
carry out his plans. But after his death the schemes of colo
nization were abandoned, and at any rate, from what has been
said above, it will appear that their only result could have been
to draw off by hundreds from a mass of poverty and crime that
was increasing by thousands. Caius, to be sure, appears to
have been aware of the inadequacy of colonization as a re
storative for the state. It would relieve somewhat an evil that
could not be wholly cured, and meanwhile a new element in
the state, to replace the lost yeomanry, might furnish a secure
basis for a healthy commonwealth. The Italian allies, who
were still comparatively vigorous and virtuous, would, it was
hoped, regenerate the community. Here again, as in the case
of the agrarian laws and the colonization schemes, unques
tionably he saw clearly the thing to be done ; but just as in

1870.] * Theodore Mommsen. 461

their case, it is doubtful how much good even this would have
effected. The Social War resulted, thirty years later, in be
stowing citizenship upon practically the whole of the Italian
allies ; but it does not appear that the Republic was essen
tially benefited by this, or its existence materially prolonged.
For this series' of measures only touched one evil, — the social
condition of the citizens ; the other causes of decay were not
reached. By the distribution of land, the planting of colonies,
and the extension of the franchise to the Italians, the body of
citizens had been fundamentally improved ; but the constitu
tion was still as inadequate as ever for its necessities. What
good could it do to have a virtuous and patriotic set of voters
up among the mountains, so long as the only way of exercising
political influence was by going to Rome ? Whoever possessed
the suffrage, the power was virtually in the hands of the resi
dents of the city. Even, therefore, if these reforms had gone
so far as to put an effective stop to the centralization of landed
property and the growth of slavery, instead of merely giving a
temporary relief, the constitution could never have done the
work that was required of it, for the reason that it lacked
power of growth and adaptation. The political ideas of the
ancients were of narrow range ; within certain limits their
thought was vigorous and accurate, but they could, not go out
side those limits. The Romans could not see that their empire
had outgrown their institutions, and if they had seen it we
may doubt whether they could have devised a remedy. It was
not until the broader and freer life of modern times that means
were devised of uniting freedom with extent of dominion. The
republican institutions of Rome were clearly inadequate for
the complex administration of this vast empire ; and, so far as
we can see now, nothing but absolute monarchy possessed the
unity of purpose and concentrated energy which were required.
I have spoken only of two of the causes of the fall of the
Republic, — the destruction of its social structure by slavery,
and the inadequacy of its institutions to do the work of gov
ernment. Either of these was enough to cause its ruin ; but if
these had not been enough, the utter decay of religion and
morality had deprived the community of all that makes a re
public possible. And here one cannot help turning to the

462 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

rapid degeneracy in our own Republic, — the corruption, vio
lence, inefficiency, growth of mobocratic ideas, decay of public
spirit^ and, worst of all, loss of that reverence for law which is
the only foundation for free governments. There is more re
semblance between Rome after the Gracchi and America after
Andrew Jackson, than one likes to acknowledge. But, after
all, nothing is more misleading than historical parallels, and it
is not hard to show that, however great may be our political
degeneracy, and however appalling the perils before us, the
analogy to Rome is only in superficial and symptomatic circum
stances. These might be the sign of the same diseases that
destroyed Rome, but they are not. We have dangers and de
fects of our own, and it may be that they are as deadly and
unavoidable as those by which Rome perished ; but with them
our present inquiry has no concern. The three defects which
led to the overthrow of the Roman Republic do not exist
among us; on the other hand, we can see only encourage
ment where there was only hopelessness for them.

In the first place, we possess what Rome had lost, — a healthy
social organization. In spite of the -centralizing tendencies of
modern society, the counteracting influences have so far proved
strong enough to preserve the balance. The middle class —
the strength of republican institutions — is probably increasing
rather than diminishing in numbers, virtue, and intelligence.
This assertion can be made only doubtfully, to be sure, and it
will not be agreed to by all ; but however that may be with the
North, there is at any rate the great fact that in the South a
middle class has been wholly created within five years. In
that section of country it was the custom to boast, and with
truth, that its society rested upon the same foundation as
that of ancient Rome, and it presented the same phenomena
as Rome, — all the resources of the community controlled in
the interests of a body of landed capitalists, and the consequent
discouragement of a middle class. All this is changed. How
ever the experiment may succeed, it is t(5 be tried ; society
has been radically reorganized, and every opportunity afforded
for the growth of an independent yeomanry, in full faith that
if opportunity is given natural causes will bring about the de
sired end. Whatever diseases, therefore, our social system

1870.] Theodore Mommsen.

may develop, there are as yet no indications of that most fatal
one, the loss of a middle class.

In the second place, this vigorous middle class, scattered over
the whole extent of the country, is not, by reason of this dis
persion, deprived of its due influence upon public affairs ;
but is able, by means of representation and of our federal form
of government, to act upon both national and local affairS with
effect proportioned to their respective nearness and impor
tance. It is true, our political organization is far from perfect,
and our mode of representation in particular is crude and
clumsy, and no doubt we suffer far more from these defects
than is generally supposed. But modern political philosophy
is broad and expansive, where that of the ancients was confined
to a narrow routine. We are in the habit of questioning our
institutions closely, scrutinizing their defects, and proposing
remedies. The single fact of the recent revision of the Consti
tution of Illinois is full of promise for the future ; for it is re
vised, not in the interest of doubtful theories, but with the aim
of practical improvement. The ancients, on the other hand,
could not understand where their political system was defective.
They could conceive of but one type of republicanism ; and
when this had exhausted its power and resources, they had no
refuge left but in despotism.

In the third place, religion is not a dead thing with us, as it
was in Rome in the last years of the Eepublic. However great
the corruption, vice, and indifference at the present day, there
was never a time when religion was more active or more efficient
in combating them. What peculiarly characterizes the reli
gious institutions of our time is that they have learned to
leave idle speculation aside, — to leave theology to the theolo
gians, — and to use their strength in contending against vice,
crime, ignorance, and want. Religion, at the present time, has
entered into the affairs of daily life, with an organized skill
and aggressive energy which are quite new to her in this field,
and is conducting the fight against the powers of evil with
wonderful spirit and success. This is the element which prom
ises to purify, strengthen, and preserve the others. We have,
therefore, a sound social organization, and an expansive
political system, both of which were wanting to Rome. But

464 Theodore Mommsen. [Oct.

we possess also in the active, liberal type of Christianity which
is characteristic of the present age a power of which Rome
was even more destitute ; and this is our great hope for with
standing that flood of corruption and anarchy which, in the
absence of these other checks, was the immediate cause of the
overthrow of the Roman Republic.

In 'an historian like Mommsen, the matter is so much more
than the style, that it would be quite excusable to pass over his
rhetorical qualities without comment. Rhetorical qualities as
such he may be said scarcely to possess. His object is always
to instruct, and he makes no attempt at fine writing, picturesque-
ness, or brilliant narrative. His style is direct and masculine,
quite free from the cumbrous and involved sentences in which
German writers seem to delight, although his compact and
weighty sentences are far from rapid or easy reading. The
English translation, indeed, surprises one who is familiar with
the original, by giving the impression of an animation and
grace which the original seems to lack ; and yet this seeming
defect of the original may be only the inaccurate impression re
ceived by one to whom the language is a foreign one. However
that may be, if his narrative is somewhat heavy, and too much
interrupted^ by dissertation, he is a master in that high order
of eloquence which results from moral earnestness and vigorous
thought, and depends upon directness and simplicity of expres
sion, rather than upon mere rhetorical ornament. His remark
able analyses of character ought not to be passed over without
notice ; to one who believes in the influence of person upon
the course of history, they possess a peculiar value.

Most of what appears as defect in form, in the German
edition, is due to the neglect of typographical elegances, in
virtue of which the book is brought within the reach of very
moderate purses. The compact type, the long unbroken para
graphs, the absence of illustrative matter, and of any but the
most general table of contents (dates and marginal index are
copiously given), are perhaps slight matters. It is, however,
a serious defect that there are so few references to authorities,
and that opinions which run counter to prevailing views are
merely stated with hardly any argument. The author owes it
to his students, and to the interests of that branch of knowl-

1870.] Mulford'* Nation. 465

edge to which he has devoted his life, to have a more elaborate
edition prepared of his great work, in a style worthy of it,
expanded into a large number of volumes, furnished with full
tables of contents and chronological tables, and provided with
references and citations wherever these would be a material
assistance to the student.

Meanwhile we are waiting impatiently for the additional
volumes, which shall describe the Empire with the same vigor
and comprehension with which he has already described the
Republic. No person living is so competent to treat of the
Roman Empire, for no other person understands so well the
roots from which it sprang. And since in the Empire itself is
to be sought the origin of much that is most fundamental in
the institutions of the modern epoch, Mommsen's new vol
umes, whenever they come, will be an indispensable foundation
for the study of modern history.

W. P. ALLEN.

ART. IX. — CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. — The Nation : The Foundations of Civil Order and Political Life
in the United States. BY E. MULFORD. New York : Hurd and
Houghton. 1870. pp. 418.

THE main purpose of this book is to show that the moral being of
the nation is its essential principle. Other subordinate questions are
also discussed, many of which are connected with the forms and func
tions of the National and State governments of the United States.
While with, the ancients, theoretical politics were usually treated as a
branch of ethics, in England and this country political discussion has
been almost exclusively confined to the organization of government, the
distribution of its functions, its representative basis, and similar topics,
which have an immediate practical bearing. The foundation of the
nation in morals has not been a subject of systematic investigation.
Mr. Mulford has the advantage of being -the first in this country to
enter -upon the field, and this fact alone will always give his work a
distinction in American literature. We cannot better give an idea
of the scope and method of the book than by a summary of the course
of the argument.

466 Mulfortfs Nation. [Oct.

The foundation of the nation is laid in the nature of man, in his
instinctive desire of association with his fellows, and his readiness to
enter into the relations and assume the obligations incident to such asso
ciation. With Aristotle, the author regards the fact that " man is by na
ture a political being," as the first postulate of political science. The
nation is a social relationship, into which the individual is born, and
into the consciousness of which he grows by a normal development.
This relationship, participated in by successive generations, gives to
the nation permanence and a continuity of existence from age to age.
This common relationship, and the laws and institutions through
which it is established, impart to the nation unity, make it an or
ganism with the characteristics of all organisms, — unity, identity
of structure, and development after a principle or law. Its real mem
bers are parts of a whole, and have the consciousness of being so.
Those who have no such consciousness, whether from ignorance and
low morality or the conceit of wealth or culture, constitute the unor
ganized mob and rabble of the state. The nation is not only an organ
ism, but as the embodiment of the conscious social life of man, it is a
conscious organism, having all the characteristics of a moral personality.
By virtue of this conscious moral personality, it comes to have rights:
and obligations, and to recognize a vocation for itself in history, and a
conscious aim in the life of the race. By virtue of this moral person
ality, that organized life of society which the nation represents is
a progressive moral order in which the moral personality of the individ
ual finds its sphere and development. The nation establishes rights,
and rights belong* to man only in his moral being and personality,
since all rights are of a person and represent the relations of a person,
in the nation to the nation or to other persons. These rights are natu
ral rights, because belonging to human nature, or positive rights, be
cause established by the nation ; they are not, however, to be regarded
as of different kinds and having an unequal sanction or validity, as
though natural rights had their foundation in human nature, and posi
tive rights had their foundation only in the determination of the state ;
for the nation is but the manifestation of the moral nature of man, and
in its normal action is continually defining and establishing natural
rights as positive rights, and. finds in this process, in this constant multi
plication and refinement of rights, its advancement.

As in the nation is found the realization of rights, so, as a corollary
to this proposition, in the nation is found the realization of freedom.
But the freedom here intended is not a negative freedom, a mere ab
sence of restraint, but a moral freedom. It is the determination of per
sonality, in accordance with the moral order. This moral order the

1870.] Mulfortfs Nation. 467

nation in its normal action establishes in the form of rights and duties,
-which constitute the sphere of personality. All laws in conflict with
this moral order tend to destroy freedom, and contain the elements of
real tyranny. All laws in development of this moral order tend to
the increase of freedom and to perfect the nation.

In this way the essential antagonism between slavery and the nation
is made manifest. The war of the Rebellion illustrated this antagonism.
Slavery was a denial of rights, and must inevitably come in conflict
with the nation, whose development comes by the realization of rights
and of freedom. In treating, with reference to these views, the ten
dency in ancient times to regard the individual as subordinate to the
nation, and existing only for the nation, and the tendency in modern times
to regard the state as wholly subordinate to the individual, and existing
solely for his advantage, the author ranges himself on neither side.
The state is not to be regarded as secondary to the individual, nor the
individual as subordinate to the state. Both are moral persons, and
being so, the sphere of the personality of each is sacred to the other.
The moral order of the nation furnishes the necessary field for individ
ual development, and in respect to this order the individual and the
nation must harmonize. Both are bound by the same moral law, and
the wills of both must hold the same determination.

The sovereignty of the nation is the. assertion of its personality
through its self-determined will. As such it is inalienable, indivisible,
indefeasible, and irresponsible to any external authority. As the
manifestation of an organic unity, it is evolved from the whole political
body. It is not, therefore, inherent in any individual, family, aristoc
racy, or caste, but in the corporate people. Sovereignty is manifested
in law, which is the assertion of the will of the people. But it is the
will of a moral personality that is really thus asserted. The assertion
of a will not thus amenable to a moral order would not be law, but es
sential lawlessness. Law, in its essential nature, implies consonance
with reason and justice. The sovereignty of the nation, acting through
its normal powers, and asserted in law, constitutes the government.
These powers are legislative, judicial, and executive. They are not
arbitrary in their constitution, but different manifestations of the will
of the nation, operating according to its normal process in thought, in
judgment, and in action. These powers do not represent a division of
powers nor limitations of each other, but each, in its sphere, stands for
the sovereignty of the nation. These powers are instituted in the for
mal constitution which establishes the order of the nation. Its formal
constitution, however, is one thing, its real constitution another, and is
identified with the nation in its organic being. The nation precedes the

468 Mulfortfs Nation. [Oct.

constitution, forms it, and changes it, according to its will, in order to
promote its own ends, and represent its development. The true life of
the nation may sometimes be better shown in sweeping away its consti
tution than in maintaining it. The normal assertion of the sovereignty
of the nation is by a representative government and constitution, for
in this form 6nly is realized the sovereignty of the nation as a moral
organism. As a moral organism it is constituted of persons, and its con
stitution, therefore, should provide for a government' based on the repre
sentation of persons. It is not interests, families, numbers, literary or
mechanical skill, which are the true basis of representation, but per
sons, — those who have the will, the conscious self-determination and
freedom of persons, whatever be their color, race, or occupation. Every
one born into the nation, and maturing under its influences, if a real per
son, has a right to representation. He is organically a member of the
nation. Minor children, those who have taken bribes or made wagers,
the imbecile and insane, and criminals, have no will of their own, no
personality, and are to be excluded from suffrage. Foreigners should
not be naturalized, except upon terms that would make it sure that they
have become assimilated with the nation. The reference of power to
mere numbers, to the impersonal mass, is earnestly deprecated. It is
the unreason of the state, when it calls upon ignorance, vice, and
crime to determine its career. By the same moral test, the duty of
the representative is ascertained. He represents the moral personality
of the nation, and he wrongs that personality as well as his own, if his
aim is to follow the dictates of a constituency rather than to stand for the
good of the state.

The internal order of the nation, in its most highly developed form,
is established in what is entitled the commonwealth. The beginning of
this subordinate organization is in the community, arising out of the
neighborhood of families and the common interests and necessities
that grow out of this neighborhood. The security of life, liberty, and
property, through the institution of civil rights, the regulation of indus
tries, the administration of the civil order, are within the peculiar prov
ince of the commonwealth. Its most perfect form is found in the
American States. It is by such phrases as that the nation is immanent
in the commonwealth, is external to the commonwealth, has only a for
mal and not an organic unity and sovereignty, that the author quite un
satisfactorily attempts to indicate the irrationality of the secessionists
and followers of Calhoun, who sought to found society upon the com
monwealth, instead of the nation.

From the consideration of the relation of the commonwealth to the
nation, he passes to the consideration of the confederacy. To this the

1870.] MulforcCs Nation. 469

nation is the antagonistic principle. The confederacy represents only
the combination of separate societies, and has no principle upon which a
real unity can be established. Its order is only formal, and based upon
temporary expediency. It is the organization of selfishness, and per
ishes in the conflict of selfish interests, while the nation is the or
ganization of a universal moral order, and has its normal develop
ment in overcoming the tendencies of selfishness, and asserting the
cause of humanity. The national principle is also the antagonist of
the empire, for the reason that the imperial government is in the
emperor or an imperial class, instead of in the organic people. The
people, instead of participating in the government, are its subjects.
As a result, there is no development of individual personality, and
no moral life or spirit in the people.

Since the being of the nation is conditioned upon its realization of
a moral order, and the development of this order is the process of his
tory, the nation must be regarded as the integral element of history.
Everything in the life of the race, outside the limits of the formation
and experience of the nation, is vague and undefined, and beyond the
pale of history. As the nation subsists in a moral order, independent
of race, it follows that it is the national, not the social element in the
nation that imparts the historical distinction. In the same race, in
the same age, in mainly the same soil and climate, it is asserted there
may be the greatest possible contrast in respect to civilization, and this
contrast will be in exact proportion to the development of the life of
the nation. But in the destruction of the nation civilization is de
stroyed. The harmony of these views of national being with the
teachings of the Old Testament, and with the Christian conception of
Christ and his kingdom, is the subject of the closing chapter. The his
tory of Judaea, it is claimed, is a revelation of the Divine order, and
teaches all ages of the world the laws -that govern the .rise and fall of
nations, while in Christ are revealed the Divine relations of humanity,
which the nation must realize that is truly such, and represents the
highest political ideal. " The nation is to work as one whose achieve
ment passes beyond time, .whose honor and glory are borne into the
eternal city. It is not true that it may look for its perfect rest. It
has an immortal life. It is no more the kingdom of this world, but it
is formed in the realization of the redemptive kingdom of Christ.
The leaders and the prophets of the people can only repeat the an
cient lesson, ' He is come ; unto him shall the gathering of the people
be.' "

Valuable and suggestive as is a large part of this work, still as a
demonstration or reasoned exposition of the main doctrine of the €ssen->

470 MulforcCs Nation. [Oct.

tial identity of moral and national life, it is very unsatisfactory. It
seems entirely to ignore the methods of such an exposition. There is
no analysis of the subject. There is no definition of terms, there is little
illustration drawn either from life or history, there is no historical induc
tion. It is a body of doctrinal assertion, of abstract assumptions and
deductions therefrom, in a peculiar and undefined terminology. Under
different titles the same ideas are continually repeated, with every va
riety of permutation in the phrases. While some results are reached
by deductions from propositions which must be supposed to carry their
own evidence with them, the main theme advances little beyond the
author's reiterated assertion.

His argument for the dependence of national upon social life turns
upon the asserted fact that the nation is a moral organism. If a
moral organism, then its moral being is the law of its organization, and
as that prevails the nation is perfected. But how is the nation a moral
organism ? It is true, it is made up of beings having moral capacity,
organized as one whole. But so is a railroad corporation. Is the corpo
ration a moral organism in the same sense and for the same reason ?
Mr. Mulford makes the assertion, and leaves it to the intuitions of his
readers. His postulate is the proposition to be established, and should
be at the close rather than at the beginning of his work. The same
fact, too, is the criterion by which he tries most of the questions in
fundamental politics that he discusses.

But suppose the nation to be a moral organism, how does this ab
stract conception help to an understanding of what the nation really
is, what the ties are that bind its members together, and what the
mystery is by which the individual is pe'rfected in his individuality,
and his, patriotism is enlarged and intensified? Suppose, on the other
hand, it is denied that the nation is in any but a rhetorical or analogical
sense a moraPorgariism, are not the propositions maintained as deduc
tions from this fact true, nevertheless, and may they not be deduced
from history and the nature of man ? Of what avail, then, is this
shuffle of abstractions ?

Moreover, such phrases dominate in the argument at the expense of
the real doctrine. Because a confederacy is not an organism, is not one
state, but a combination of states, and because the nation is an organism,
and realizes a moral order, the confederacy is regarded as the enemy of
the nation, and is made to represent an evil principle. It is obvious,
however, that even a confederacy among states is better than nothing ;
that a formal, as distinguished from an organic, unity is more productive
of moral order than no union at all. If the confederacy is associated in
history with disaster, it is not because it is in itself evil, but because of

1870.] Rossetti's Poems. 471

the weakness of the bond ; and this is due, on the author's principles, to
an inferior moral condition in the constituents of the confederacy, which
renders them incapable of that self-sacrifice and self-surrender to the
general weal which exist in the higher life of the nation, and are es
sential to it.

The vicious influence of the author's formulas is shown again in his
representation of the war of the Southern Rebellion as primarily a con
flict between the nation and the confederacy rather than between free
dom and slavery. But clearly slavery was the cause of the assertion
of the confederate principle, and without slavery the Rebellion would
not have taken place. The disloyalty of the slave States to the na
tion is the strongest possible illustration of the author's doctrine, that
national life is a development of moral life. Southern slavery sapped
the moral strength of .the people, and thereby weakened the social
principle that seeks expression in the unity of the nation. Because
slavery was immoral it was sectional, because freedom was moral it
was national.

In point, also, of literary execution, the work is not a success. This
is the more remarkable, as it gives evidence of a nice literary apprecia
tion, and is marked by a rare felicity of quotation, especially from
Shakespeare and the Bible. The constant recurrence, however, of the
same abstract, undefined phrases and formulas, and the great sameness
in the structure of the sentences, give to the style a certain awkward
ness, stiffness, and often obscurity. It is the style of a person unused
to. giving his thoughts expression.

Nevertheless, the work is conceived in a high philosophical spirit ; it
represents the long labor of a scholar and a thinker, working at the
central truths of the state ; it is the expression of a devout, refined,
and cultivated mind, familiar with profound and varied studies, arid
holding very positive convictions upon the religious, philosophical, and
political questions of the day. If not the work of a master, it is that
of an earnest disciple. It teaches the impressive lesson that the high
est crime against the nation is treason to its moral life, and may be
read with profit by every lover of his country who would study the
foundations of its permanent well-being.

2. — Poems. By DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. Author's edition.
Boston : Roberts Brothers. 1870. pp. 282.

FOR some twenty years Mr. Dante Rossetti has been more or less
well known, even to persons not counted .among his particular ad
mirers, as a man of great poetical susceptibility and refined poetical

472 Rossetti s Poems. [Oct.

taste. His translations of the " Vita Nuova," of the " Inferno," and
other mediaeval Italian poetry, abundantly proved this, and proved,
too,. that he had in a high degree the power of literary expression.
Despite, then, that presumption of incapacity very rightly entertained
against a man who does not make public trial of a strength for which
public acknowledgment is asked, there has been a disposition to give
Mr. Rossetti the credit his immediate circle of friends asked for
him as a poet of extraordinary abilities. It is true that he has
printed, besides his translations, some original poems which would
have served as confirmatory evidence in his favor; but the distinc
tion between the printing of a work and the publication of it is not
often better marked than in the case of " The Blessed Damozel,"
in its earlier form ; and the general public has, until the appearance
of this volume, known but little more of his poetry than that it was
handed about among a few friends, and by them admired with what
to most discriminating persons seemed like extravagance. This, for the
reason just mentioned, that the world is not much inclined to believe
in poetry which is deliberately and persistently hid under a bushel ;
and, secondly, because readers and observers who have discernment
are apt to feel a general distrust of the capacities of such natures
as seem to have the weakness of contemptuously or with morbid un
easiness shunning the judges who alone can make general award, and
seeking the presumably partial applause of a few ; and, finally, because
the few who in this instance called us to admire were not judges in
whom there is entire confidence. It is not, we imagine, hazarding
much to say that instructed lovers of poetry feel no great confidence
in the justice of a poet's claim to praise, merely because he is enthu
siastically praised by Mr. Swinburne, who, his friends may profitably
remind themselves, praises Mr. Walt Whitman, and puts him beside
William Blake ; or because he is admired by Mr. William Rossetti, who
has done poetry no better service, much as he has written in poetry
and criticism, than he did when he carried the strict Pre-Raphaelite
theory of poetry to its legitimate end, and absurdly versified a criminal
trial and its cross-examinations ; or because he is declared most admi
rable by Mr. William Morris, whose pretty stories should riot long blind
many to his emptiness of matter and his extremely elaborate simplicity
of manner, — fit conclusion, paradoxical though it may seem to say so,
to the Pre-Raphaelite grotesqueness and weakness of his earlier " De
fence of Guenevere," with its strained and false medievalism ; or be
cause he is praised by Miss Jean Ingelow ; or by Mr. Thomas Woolner,
whom, however, we ought not to mention without saying that — unless
it be Miss Christina Rossetti, at her best, when she is picturesque and

1870.] Rossettis Poems. 473

not too Pre-Raphaelite, and passionate and not too sensuous — he is by
very much indeed the simplest, honestest, and most thoroughly pleasing
of all the group of poets with whom he is usually classed. Better than
negative praise, too, can be given him, as any one may see who will look
at « My Beautiful Lady."

It is in this circle of poets and artists^ and their intimates, some of
them having in their capacity as artists a strong claim on the respect
of people of cultivation, and most of them being at least interesting to
people of cultivation, that Mr. Rossetti has had his high reputation.
But as we have said, their dicta have not been of wide acceptance among
those not given over to the cultus of Pre-Raphaelitism. Of this Cultus
it is not out of our present province to speak, for it has affected the liter
ary as well as-the pictorial or plastic expression o'f all who gave them
selves up to it ; but it is beyond our ability to treat of it as it should be
treated of if one would make thoroughly clear the genesis and charac
ter of the works done under its influence. It may, however, be per
mitted any one to say that it had an absurd and ridiculous side ; »and
if tliis aspect of it be once seen, the investigator and critic will doubt
less find himself disembarrassed of some of that hindering reverence
with which it is probable he might otherwise approach works which
have been so very emphatically pronounced admirable and excellent,
and which are to most critics strange enough and new enough to be not
a little baffling. He does not need to be at all a hardened critic in
order to laugh at the projectors of the " Germ," for example, admired
artists though they be, when he learns that, inasmuch as they believed
that they had before them in conducting that iconoclastic magazine a
work of great difficulty and labor, they decided to indicate this belief
by always pronouncing the name of their periodical with the initial
letter hard. This seems too absurd to be readily believed, — that a num
ber of grown men should go about saying " germ " with a hard g, be
cause they had resolved to paint as good pictures, and write as good
poems, and make as good reviews of other people's poems as they pos
sibly could. Yet, if a layman with no recognized right to say any
thing about art may say so, there is nothing in this procedure which is
essentially inconsistent with the characteristics of the works which
Pre-Raphaelitic art has produced, — as indeed how should there be?
Over-strenuousness, enthusiasm in need of reasonable direction, self-con
scious, crusading zeal, the exaggeration of surface-matters at the expense
of the essential thing sought, affectation, which, however, may probably
be the expression of genuine moods of minds in natures too little
comprehensive, — all these one can fancy that one sees in the pictures
and poems just as in this baptism of the magazine which the school set

474 Rossetti s Poems. [Oct.

on foot. The " Germ," by the way, lived through four numbers, Mrhi
are now to a certain extent curiosities worth looking at, as indicating
the aims or the feelings of a school of art which has made much
noise, and also as containing some of the first work of Mr. Dante Ros-
setti, Miss Rossetti, and Mr. Woolner ; and moreover several de
signs by Pre-Raphaelite artftts which, although generally feeble both
in subject and treatment, possess, in one or two instances, what is held
to be characteristic merit and characteristic defect. Not to insist on
what is perhaps not very well worth attention, but by way of corrobo
rating the evidence which our story of the " Germ" may offer, we may
mention the fact that some years since, when something like an Ameri
can Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in the city of New York,
where an American " Germ" too was established and lived for a while,
it was seriously discussed by the brethren whether or not they should
discard the ordinary clothes of contemporary mankind, and endue them
selves with doublets and long hose and pantofles, and such other articles
of dress as doubtless had so much to do with making the Titians and
Angelos and Andreas of the old days of art.

In the volume in hand Mr. Rossetti puts before the public the
poems which have assured his friends of his genius, and offers us the
means of making an advised estimate of his value as a poet to the
world at large, which cannot intelligently judge of his value to partic
ular schools, but which can with sufficient intelligence compare his pro
ductions with the general body of poetry. Opinions must differ; but
the prevailing opinion, we should say, will be that we have in Mi1. Ros
setti another poetical man, and a man markedly poetical, and of a kind
apparently though not radically different from any other of our second
ary writers of poetry, but that we have not in him a true poet of any
weight. He certainly has taste, and subtlety, and skill, and sentiment
in excess, and excessive sensibility, and a sort of pictorial sensuous-
ness of conception which gives warmth and vividness to the imagery
that embodies his feelings and desires. But he is all feelings and de
sires ; and he is of the earth, earthy, though the earth is often bright and
beautiful pigments ; of thought and imagination he has next to nothing.
At last one discovers, what has seemed probable from the first, that one
has been in company with a lyrical poet of narrow range; with a man
who has nothing to say but of himself; and of himself as the yearning
lover, mostly a sad one, of a person of the other sex. Where there
seems to be something more than this, as in such a dramatic
piece as " Sister Helen," for instance, the substratum is usually
the same ; and the essentially subjective, and narrowly subjective
charapter of the poem is only temporarily concealed by the author's

18'< 0.] Rossettis Poems. 475

\ ite mediaeval dress, which is never obtained except at the cost of
thawing over the real life of the Middle Ages the special color which it
suits the author's purpose to throw over it. Mediae valism of this kind,
elaborately appointed and equipped, has always been common enough,
and certainly it has great powers of imposition ; but what is it usually
but our taking, each of us as it chances to suit his taste or his purpose,
some one aspect of the true life of the Middle Ages, or, as it may
happen, the classic ages, or the age of Queen Anne say, or King Da
vid, or Governor Winthrop, and making that stand for the objective
truth ? With Mr. Morris, say, the Middle Ages mean helmets and the
treacheries of long-footed knights who fiercely love ladies who em
broider banners, and wear samite gowns, and watch ships sailing out to
sea, as do illuminated ladies, out of all drawing, in old manuscripts.
Another man's Middle Ages are made up of tourneys and knightly
courtesies. The England of Queen Anne is to such and such a man all
coffee-houses and wigs and small-swords ; and to such and such another,
Governor Winthrop's New England is going always to church, and
hanging witches, and austerely keeping fasts. We confess that when
ever this particular form of self-indulgence is accompanied by an osten
tation of exactness and of absolute reproduction of the past times, or
when, as in the case of a certain school of writers, the impression given
is the impression of the writer's inability to live the life of his own age,
and to see that in that also the realities of life and thought, the sub
stance and subject of all really sound poetry, present .themselves for
treatment, we confess that we experience a feeling not far removed
from contemptuous resentment. Surely there is something wrong in the
thinker or the poet — shall we say, too, in the artist ? — who can content
himself with his fancies of the thoughts and feelings and views of times
past, and who can better please himself with what after all must be more
or less unreal phantasmagoria, than with the breathing life around him.
Considered as a lyrical poet pure and simple, a lyrical verse-making
lover, apart from whatever praise or blame belongs to him as a Pre-
Raphaelite in poetry whose Pre-Raphaelitism is its most obvious
feature, it will be found that Mr. Rossetti must be credited with an in
tensity of feeling which is overcast almost always with a sort of
morbidness, and which usually trenches on the bound of undue sen-
suousness of tone. Pretty and natural, for example, is the idea, in
"The Stream's Secret," of the lover's making the wandering brook,
endowed with the kind of animate existence that is so readily accorded
the running stream, the confidant and messenger of his mistress.
But the somewhat too erotic key-note is not long in making itself
heard here, any more than in most of the other poems :
VOL. CXI. — NO. 229. 31

476 Rossettis Poems. [Oct.

" Ah me ! with what proud growth
Shall that hour's trusting race be run ;
While, for each several sweetness still begun
Afresh, endures love's endless drouth :

Sweet hands, sweet hair, sweet cheeks, sweet eyes, sweet mouth,
Each singly wooed and won.

Therefore, when breast and cheek

Now part, from long embraces free, —

Each on the other gazing shall but see

A self that has no need to speak :

All things are sought, yet nothing more to seek, —

One love in unity."

This certainly, if a little obscure and stammering in detail, and not much
worth doing, is in the general forcible and vigorous. Freer from the
fault of sexuality, if that is what we are to call it, is the skilful and
even beautiful little poem entitled " The Portrait," though in that also
there is an undercurrent of earthly passionateness which marks it as in
tune with its autlior's all but unvarying mode of conceiving of love,
which is with him, if never quite mere appetite, never, on the other
hand, affection. This poem is, however, well worth attention for its
delicacy and subdued warmth of passion, — the beloved woman being
now dead, and the regard for the portrait tempering the love for its
original ; and also it is good by reason of some excellent pictures
which it contains.

Picturesqueness, indeed, is, as might have been expected, one of our
author's strtmg points. For one thing because he looks on nature
with the eyes of a man whose business in the world it is to see and
make pictures ; and it might be not easy to find, outside of the delightful
poems of Mr. William Barnes, who has so extraordinary an eye for
the landscape-picturesque, any more decided recent successes in this
way than Mr. Rossetti has made. Then, for another thing, he looks on
life with the feeling of a born painter, whose natural instrument of ex
pression is color, and who can with more ease indicate and subtly hint
than he can clearly enunciate with intellectual precision what he wishes
to convey to us. Thus he is no doubt at a disadvantage with most of his
critics, and has for the necessary injustice, to call it so, which these do
him, only the somewhat imperfect compensation of pleasing with an
excess of vague pleasure a certain number of his more impressible
readers of like mind with himself. The sensuousness, too, of which we
speak, making it natural for him to seek palpable, tangible images in
which to embody his conception, is another allied cause of his strength
as a pictorial writer.

The union of the qualities we have mentioned — his warmth of pas-

1870.] Rossettis Poems. 477

sion, his picturesque power, his medisevalism in its apparently less af
fected form, his skill in the technic of verse — are perhaps best seen in
the best known and, all things considered, the best worth knowing, of
his poems ; though we should say that having had exceptional luck
with it, " The Blessed Damozel " is not that work of his in which he
himself is most distinctly visible. Nor would it, we think, be true to
say that there are not passages in other poems of his in which he, by
glimpses, appears at greater altitude than in this one, and which gives
the reader a better opinion of him. Though, for the matter of that, in
" The Blessed Damozel " he is hedged about with that peculiar respect
which is given to the maker of a rounded and complete work, — that
respect accorded to a creator, and which is not given to the same man
even when he is producing sweeter and deeper detached strains than
are to be found in the melodious harmony of his perfected symphony or
oratorio. The poem is no doubt fresh in the memory of many who
first made its acquaintance twenty years or so ago. It is improve*} in,
the present edition ; the changes, we observe, all being in the direction
of less quaintness and Pre-Raphaelite roughness and more definiteness
of thought, — albeit there is perhaps a little loss of the force and strik-
ingness which the old quaintness had. Here, for example, we give
the second stanza as it appeared in the " Germ," to which we prefix
the first stanza as it reads in the volume before us : —

" The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven ;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth

Of waters stilled at even ;
She had three lilies in her hand
And the stars in. her hair were seven.

* • *

" Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,

No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift

On the neck meetly worn ;
Her hair, lying down her back,

Was yellow like ripe corn."

In the new edition we have this reading of the last four verses, which
we give by way of illustrating briefly the nature and effect of the
changes that have been made : —

" But a white rose of Mary's gift

For service meetly worn ;
Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn."

In the first stanza, too, there have been similar changes. Formerly

"Her blue, grave eyes were deeper much
Than the deep water even," —

478 Rossetti's Poems. [Oct.

the color of the eyes having now been changed apparently from blue to
dark ; and the verses smoothened and modernized a little. These altera
tions are less considerable than many others which the author has made,
but they illustrate as well as any others our remark as to the kind of
alterations that have been made.

Of the rest of the books we have little to say as regards particular
pieces. The sonnets descriptive of pictures will no doubt be accepted
as skilfully interpretative by many persons who know already the
pictures upon which they are based ; and doubtless the sonnets giving
subjects for pictures will have a value in the eyes of artists, which
they can hardly have in those of literary readers. We may .venture to
say that they seem to us, as sonnets merely, not very good ; although
they are carefully constructed and are in that respect to be commended,
as well as for occasional happinesses of thought. The same thing we
should say of the other sonnets, but not without selecting one or two as
examples of Mr. Rossetti's general weakness, both as concerns his ca
pacity of thought and his over-warmth of temperament. It is something
very like morbidly gratified sexual sensuousness, too, that we discover in
"Jenny," a poem in which a young man " moralizes" a young woman of
the town whom he has accompanied home from a place of amusement,
and comments on her way of life and her probable character and fate
after the manner of Mr. Browning in his analytical moods. It is the
fashion to say of such things, that, although it is difficult to see how the
author contrived it, he has managed with consummate skill to avoid the
intrinsic indelicacy of his subject. As a matter of fact, however, it may
be doubted if the inherent indelicacy is not what he just has not avoid
ed ; and whether all writers who practise this sort of morbid anatomy
do not do something towards debauching the minds of a certain number
of their readers. Such things tend, we imagine, to confound the dis
tinction between morality and immorality, and have much the same
effect as the prurient moral novels with which M. Feuillet, or the ex
cellent M. Dumas fils occasionally buttresses the foundations of society.
Another piece in which Mr. Rossetti shows that he has felt the influence
of Mr. Browning is " A Last Confession," which is one of the most direct
and simple poems in the volume, and perhaps the one which is most
fairly on a common and ordinary level of thought and sympathy.
Worthy of mention, too, for various reasons, are " Eden Bower," with
its curious legend and successful versification which not even the device
of a burden can destroy ; " The Woodspurge," for its truthful, forcible
presentation of the facts of external nature, and of the psychological
fact that sometimes, in moments of the greatest pain and distress, some
trivial thing will impress itself ineflfaceably upon the memory ; " The

1870.] Rossetti's Poems. 4F9 '

Honeysuckle," also, which succeeds " The Woodspurge," and like it has
one or two of our author's exasperating bits of quaintness, is both
pretty and true, and may almost be set down with its companion as
making the most satisfactory pair of poems in the book ; the
translations from the French of Villon are felicitously done; and if
there is anybody who wants to get at once a full mouthful of mediae-
valism such as may keep him cloyed for a good while, and who has not
at hand Mr. Morris's " Defence of Guenevere " where the poet is a
little better concealed and the medievalism is more out and out hot and
strong, we advise him to turn to " John of Tours," " Sister Helen,"
"The Staff and Scrip," and "My Father's Close."

To whatever the reader turns he will, we think, as we have said,
come at last to the conclusion that Mr. Rossetti is essentially a subjective
poet who deals with the passion of love, and who has at command a set
of properties which have the advantage of being comparatively new
and striking to most readers and have the disadvantage of being thought
by most readers to be merely properties. And the love to Avhich he con
fines himself will be found to be at bottom a sensuous and sexual love,
refined to some extent by that sort of worship of one's mistress as saint
and divinity which the early Italians made a fashion, certainly, whether
or not it was ever a faith by which they lived. It is, we take it, to his
long study in this school that Mr. Rossetti owes much of this turn that
his thoughts take. See, for example (to instance hastily), how in his
own translation of Giacomino Pugliesi's poem " Of his Dead Lady," the
lover anticipates the Blessed Damozel going to God with her lover
by the hand and asking that his arid her heaven should be merely to be
together as on earth : —

"Had I my well beloved, I would say

To God, unto whose bidding all things bow,
That we were still together night and day."

And here again, by the way, in Jacopo da Lentino, is a hint of less con
sequence for the yearning of the damozel: —

"I have it in my heart to serve God so

That unto Paradise I shall repair, —
The holy place through the which everywhere

I have heard say that joy and solace flow, —
Without my lady I were loath to go,
She who has the bright face and the bright hair."

Besides its sensuousness and its sort of ecstasy, sadness and dejection
characterize Mr. Rossetti's love, which sheds tears and looks backwards
with regret, and forwards without cheerfulness, and yearningly into the
mould of the grave, as often as it looks backwards upon remembered
raptures and forwards to an eternity of locked embraces and speechless

480 Coble's History of the Norman Kings of England. [Oct.

gazing upon the beloved. His love is, on the whole, rather depressing.
It is, however, past doubt that, although the world at large is not going
to give Mr. Rossetti anything like the place that has been claimed for
him, — though it is even probable that the fashion of his poetry will
very soon pass away and be gone for good, and the opinion of his genius
fall to an opinion that he is a man of the temperament of genius lack
ing power to give effect, in words at least, to a nature and gifts rare
rather than strong or valuable, nevertheless it will be admitted that he
is an elaborately skilful love-poet of narrow range, who affords an occa
sional touch that makes the reader hesitate and consider whether he has
not now and again struggled out and really emerged as a poet worthy
of the name. We cannot say that in our own case the hesitation has
ever lasted long. Nor can we say that we have not oftener hesitated
and almost made up our mind to say of him, that he is very unprofita
ble, — a writer so affected, sentimental, and painfully self-conscious that
the best that can be done in his case is to hope that this book of his, as
it has " unpacked his bosom " of so much that is unhealthy, may have
done him more good than it has given others pleasure. Of course to
say so would be to speak far too harshly, and would convey a false
impression. To say so would, however, express accurately enough
one mood of mind into which the reader is thrown during the perusal
of these poems ; and it would really be no falser than very much of
the praises which they have called out.

3. — History of the Norman Kings of England. From a new Collation
of the Contemporary Chronicles. By THOMAS COBBE, Barrister of
the Inner Temple. London : Longmans, Green, & Co. 1869. 8vo.
pp. xciii, 387.

MR. COBBE'S history of the Norman Kings will serve very well for
a while as a continuation of Mr. Freeman's incomplete work. It com
mences at the point which the latter has just reached, — the Conquest,
and continues to the death of Stephen. Further, the two writers agree
sufficiently well upon the nature of the early Constitution, and — what
is more to the purpose — the nature of the Conquest, and the relation
which the new king sustained to the English people. On the rather
unimportant point whether Edward the Confessor nominated Harold as
his successor, Mr. Cobbe doubts where Mr. Freeman believes ; but on
the more vital questions of the legitimacy of Harold's royalty, and the
utter nullity of William's claims, they are entirely at one. Mr. Cobbe
would vex the soul of Mr. Freeman by his use of the word Saxon, and

1870.] Coble's History of the Norman Kings of England. 481

he seems to hold more nearly the old views as to the introduction of the
Feudal System by "William. But then he pays very little attention to
points of this sort, and as Mr. Freeman has not yet arrived at the full
discussion of it, it makes little difference after all. As a writer, the
two are not to be compared ; for Mr. Freeman's graphic and vigorous
style forms a strong contrast to the strange use of language which pre
vails in this volume. Mr. Cobbe's style is indeed a very vicious one,
abounding in participles and relatives, in unusual and obsolete words
and in short, jerky sentences. Thus, page 282, " Tidings spread
throughout the land. The empress had come to try her cause. The
issue, already in use, enhanced by so much, approached the crisis.
England alarmed, every malcontent took heart;, but the spirit of all
royalists veiled." Sometimes there is a real vigor in these short sen
tences, as, page 207, at a Synod at Westminster : " Seventeen articles,
mostly inconvenient, were now added to men's conscience." But in
general they serve to disprove, if it needed to be disproved, the popu
lar superstition that vigor and picturesqueness reside in short sentences.
And as for Mr. Cobbe's vocabulary, he delights in such terms — prob
ably taken bodily from his chronicles, — as renege, denay, facete,
metier, wiseand, haut barons, to edify a castle, and racial stimulus (for
stimulus of race).

These faults of style are more prominent in some portions of the
work than in others ; where Mr. Cobbe is strongly interested, he writes
freely and vigorously, in a more natural and quite agreeable style.
And his narrative of events, which in the reign of Henry Beauclerc —
whom he hates — is confused and clumsy, warms into life under Ste
phen, — whom he likes, — and becomes animated and clear. He gives
one hundred and thirty-five pages to Stephen's twenty-nine years,
while Henry's thirty-five have only a hundred. So that this dreariest
and most anarchical portion of English history really becomes some
what comprehensible in his hands, and this is perhaps the best service
that Mr. Cobbe has done to historical study in this volume.

We will quote a passage from the Preface, page xxviij, as a speci
men of Air. Cobbe's best style, in spite of an excessive bluntness of
expression, and of some of his prevailing faults. He is speaking of
the monkish chronicles, and describing the manner in which they de
pict the four Norman kings.

" In these writers William stands before us harsh, rapacious, yet not
forbidding wholly nor without recognition for some greatness ; as a
soldier, courageous to the height, if not chivalrous ; as a statesman, true
to his purpose, careful of his prize. A king of men, ruling by the
sword, austere, awful, in whom the majesty of the realm might shine

482 Coble's History of the Norman Kings of England. [Oct.

awhile. Scarcely heroic, yet capable in his work ; captain of a gang of
robbers, too, to whom the country was an exchequer ; chaste, voracious,
silent, friendly, cautious, fearless ; whom few of his sort surpass.

u Rufus — in whose time 'men obeyed the king rather than justice,'
too coarse to be really magnanimous ; potent in the flesh l as a young
bull ' ; one sinning ' as it were with a cart rope '; who, with the palace-
•lights, quenched shame — they portray great in arms, in affairs rude ;
ignorant in all things, offensive ; one scarcely redeemed from abhorrence
by pity ; a projector, not, as his father, fortunate ; and with this other
difference that, whereas the one utilized the religious sentiment as a
social bond, the other defied God and man.

" Henry, the clerk and favorite of clerks, clerks show selfish by rule
and line, void of natural affections, consummately practised in double-
dealing, 'of designs inscrutable/ They reverence him, but they distin
guish not between his successes and the means thereof. Ascribing
glory to the Almighty for his three chief gifts, wisdom, victory, wealth,
they gloze over the perfidy, the ambition, the avarice, which they note
in him. He merited the praise of churchmen by foundations, by ad
dress in ecclesiastical concern?, by timely deference to class prejudices.
He restored the nightly torches in his palace ; but in the blaze of pane
gyric we discover his demerits.

" Stephen they admire while greatly blaming. Aware that through
gentleness he ruined peace, they sedulously separate the man from the
miseries of his reign. They point to his prime perjury as if it were a
peculiar taint in him affecting his cause, and withal work out a Nemesis
through the 'treasons of his subjects; forgetful that King Henry had
caused the nobles to forswear themselves in the matter of the treaty
•with Duke Robert, and had thriven notwithstanding."

Mr. Cobbe might easily take high rank as an historian ; for he is
industrious and honest, and while maintaining his impartiality, shows
a sympathy and personal interest in his characters, which is a val
uable quality in an historian. But after all, one gathers nothing so
distinctly frorn, reading this book as the confirmation of one's previous
impression that the reigns of these Norman kings were not worth
knowing, and that the sooner they are forgotten the better. Yet
this impression is not a correct one. The events of these reigns are,
it is true, confused and unimportant ; and it was hardly worth while
to gpend so much labor on what is, after all, a mere chronicle of
dreary wars and intrigues. But with all the confusion and anarchy,
in which the Norman period resembles the later Carolingian period,
it resembles it likewise in its real historical value. These obscure
and tiresome years possess great constitutional interest, if we could

1870.] Hoadly's Records of the Colony of Connecticut. 483

only get at it ; for it was during these years that the Feudal System
was developed in England, just as it was during the later Carolingian
period on, the Continent ; in these years it was that the old Constitution
of England was forgotten, and that the nation was prepared by degrees
for that new life that began under the Plantagenets. It is not, therefore,
these dull campaigns, these plots and treasons and cruelties, that the
reader wants. Mr. Cobbe has done a service in bringing some order
out of the tangled, snarl of the chronicles ; but he would have done
better still if he had attempted to do for the constitutional changes what
he has done for the jdynastic events. And it is not that he lacks power
for this, for his best passages are those in which he leaves the annals,
and analyzes character or motives, or describes ecclesiastical events, —
for in regard to these he has done some good work ; witness the account
of the Council of Rheims, held by Pope Calixtus II. But as Mr.
Cobbe neither attempts himself to unravel the constitutional history of
this epoch, nor gives us the materials to do it for ourselves, we must
wait in patience for Mr. Freeman's closing volumes, having entire con
fidence that in them we shall find just what we want.

5. — The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut from October,
1706, to October, 1716, with the Council Journal from October ,17 10,
to February, 1717, transcribed and edited in accordance with a Reso
lution of the General Assembly. BY CHARLES J. HOADLY, Librarian
• of the State Library. Hartford: Press of Case, Lockwood, and
Brainard. 1870. 8vo. pp. 612.

No community in the world has so good a printed record of its ad
ministrative history as Connecticut. Nothing of the kind could be
possessed by European nations, with their origins in times when there
was no printing and little writing, and with their very different methods
of transacting public business. The governments of our New England
plantations kept their journals from the first. Those of Massachusetts
and of Plymouth down to the time of the Revolution of the seventeenth
century have been excellently well produced in print by Mr. Shurt-
leff and Mr. Pulsifer ; but their plan, determined by the legislative order
under which they acted, did not admit of such illustrations from collat
eral sources as have been collected by the Rhode Island and Connecti
cut editors. Mr. Bartlett's " Records of the State of Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations," covering, as far as the extant materials
allow, the whole ground from the beginning to the year 1792, is ex
tremely rich in such illustrations, but it is necessarily less satisfactory.

484 Hoadly's Records of the Colony of Connecticut. [Oct.

on account of the loose habits of the eccentric people of those colonies
in respect not only to the keeping of records but to the transactions
which make the matter of public registration.

All persons interested in our New England history know the extraor
dinary exactness, fulness, and rare merit in all respects, of Mr. Hoad
ly's " Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven " from the
beginning of that community in 1638 to its political extinction in 1665,
and of Mr. J. Hammond Trumbull's " Public Recoyds of the Colony of
Connecticut" from the beginning in 1636 till the revival of the old
government in 1689 after the usurpation of Sir Edmund Andros. Mr.
Hoadly's two later volumes, of which the second is now before us, con
tain the records of the General Court of Connecticut (constituted after
1698 of two branches) from 1689 to the end of 1716, the third year
after the accession of the House of Hanover to the British throne. As
much of the contemporaneous journal of the Council, or Board of
Magistrates, as has been preserved, has been incorporated into the
record, with the convenient distinction of a smaller type. Some orders,
not appearing on the colonial journals, but known from other documents
to have been passed, are inserted in their historical place with a similar
mark of discrimination.

An interest of the most agreeable kind attaches to the passage of
history to which these two volumes relate. Enjoying, unlike both
New Hampshire and Massachusetts, both a government strictly her
own, and immunity from the ravages of French and savage war, — un
like Rhode Island, the tranquil order of a religious population, — Con
necticut was the happiest of the colonies of New England. Her towns,
rising within the period from thirty to nearly fifty in number, had each
its church and its educated minister. Her free schools raised all her
children above the hardships and the temptations of poverty, and pre
pared them for the discharge of the duties of virtuous citizens. The
agricultural industry, which mostly employed her people, was favorable
to health, frugality, content, and love of freedom. Her caution, and
the less urgent demands upon her for costly military preparations, had
saved her from incurring "heavy debt, and she had little, share in the
financial embarrassments which weighed so heavily on the more power
ful colony. Her relations with the mother country brought little
occasion for conflict or alarm. Encouraged by the prospect of perma
nent self-government, as the danger of interference from England seemed
to diminish, Connecticut might address herself — as she did, with the
wise solicitude which these volumes attest — to measures for the im
provement of her institutions and the well-being of her people.

Mr. Hoadly's last volume covers one half of the time of the benefi-

1870.] Bryant's Iliad of Homer. 485

cent administration of the only clergyman who was ever chief magis
trate of a New England colony. The Reverend Gurdon Saltonstall,
then of New London, afterwards of New Haven, was chosen Governor
of Connecticut in 1707, after the third John Winthrop's death, and was
continued in this office by successive elections till his own death in 1724.
In the critical period through which he conducted the administration
there was revealed a widely-reaching dissatisfaction with the ancient
strictness of religious rule. His energetic character sustained as much
as was then defensible of the ancient rigor, and helped to devise securities
for it in the famous Saybrook Platform. With a grand love of learn-
in":, which he brought from Harvard College, he drew freely from an
affluent fortune to build up in his adopted home the college at New
Haven, which through the succeeding generations has so magnificently
rewarded his care. With an obstinate prudence which would not be
mystified nor coaxed nor bullied, he kept his colony out of the raging
whirl of paper money, holding within such limits its promises to pay,
extorted by the ill-fated expedition for the conquest of Canada, that
many years passed before they ceased to have the whole value which
they represented, and the depreciation never became considerable. His
hand upon the helm was always firm and steady. No wonder if some
thought it heavy and rough. His abilities, energy, various accomplish
ments, and generous public spirit everybody had to own, whatever
grudge they bore him. No name, on the long list of Connecticut wor
thies, weighs for more in the establishment of that character which
through generations not a few clung to " the land of steady habits."
The record of the administration which he superintended deserves the
admirably well-furnished and skilful diligence which has been ex
pended upon this volume.

6. — The Iliad of Homer, Translated into English Blank Verse. By
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. Boston : Fields, Osgood, & Co.

AMONG the various theories according to which poems. have been
translated, two seem to us to be sound. Both are founded on the fact
that the distinctive and inimitable part of a poet is his style, and the
fact that the forms of his verse are essentially native to the language
in which he writes. To illustrate the first proposition : The parting of
a soldier from his wife and child before a battle is an incident repeated
a million times in every century. The parting of Hector and An
dromache is made by a poet's style the one immortal incident of the
kind. To illustrate the second proposition : Latin and Greek verse is

486 Bryant's Iliad of Homer. [Oct.

founded on the quantity of the syllables. English verse is founded on
accent. Hence the resemblance of an English metre to a Greek or
Latin one can be only accidental and superficial. If Milton had been
native to the Latin language, he must have written his poem in Latin
hexameters. If Homer had been native to the English language, he
would have written the Iliad in blank verse or in heroic couplets. The
ancients agreed with those moderns who think the accented hexameter
essentially a bad verse.

Of the two kinds of translation which we like, one is an exact render
ing of the original text into idiomatic prose. The other kind can be made
only by a poet who reproduces the thoughts and pictures of the original
in his own style, and in a metre native to his own language. Hence we
consider Pope's Iljad, with all its faults, more like Homer's than any
other poetical translation, just as some living hero is on the whole more
like Achilles than any statue. All other poetic translators, except
Chapman, are between these extremes. They compromise difficulties
of expression and difficulties of interpretation, trying to be either as
literal as is consistent with versification, or as poetical as is consistent
with literalness. Of these the best is Mr. Bryant. He has produced
a better poem than any other of his school, and has adhered as closely
to the text as any but the prose translators.

INDEX

TO THE

HUNDRED AND TENTH VOLUME

OF THE

merican lictoteto.

Ancient Creed, an, 82-116.

Carlyle on the English poor. 334 — on habit,

405.

1 Coup d1 Etat, Louis Napoleon's, Tenot's his
tory of, 377-398.

Creed, an Ancient, article on, 82-116 —
account of the stones found by Sir Wal
ter Elliott, 82 — Mr. Fergusson's theories
about Aryans and Turanians, 83, 84 —
some reasons for the wide-spread worship
of the snake, 84, 85 — connection between
serpent-worship and human sacrifices,
85, 86— Mr. Fergusson's theory of the ori
gin of snake- worship in Egypt, 87-89 —
tree and serpent worship in Greek my
thology, 90-92 — representation of ser
pents on coins, 93 — traces of the ancient
creed in Germany, 93, 96 — Mr. Fergus-
son denies that the serpent was ever
worshipped in the British Isles, 97 —
does not admit Stonehenge and Avebury
to be Druidical temples, 98 — traces of
serpent-worship in Northeast Scotland,
98, 99 — emblem of the cross found
among several nations previous to their
conversion to Christianity, 99 — serpent-
worship exists to-day in Africa, 100 —
its existence in America before time of
Columbus, 100 — Mr. Fergusson's inter
pretation of the story of the trees of
knowledge and of life, in Genesis, 101,

102 — no mention of serpent or tree wor
ship in connection with Abraham or his
immediate descendants, 103 — their wor
ship clearly indicated in time of Moses,

103 — the brazen serpent of Moses wor
shipped for six centuries, 103, 104 — the
Ophites of early Christian times, 105 —
snake-worship in Persia, 106, 107 — in
Cashmere, 107 — in Cambodia, its great
temple, 107, 108 — the Bo-tree of Ceylon,
108 — difficulty of ascertaining the early
forms of religion in India, 109 — the
heroes of the Maha-Bharata, "-1 its
fables of a serpent-race, i1'" "e-
worship still prevaK if
India, 111 — Buddhisi i-

perstitions of the aboriginal races of
India, 111 — Buddha of purely Aryan
origin, 112 — tree-worship an important
part of Buddhism, snake-worship at first
rejected, afterward an essential element,
113 — chaitya caves and topes, 113,
note — the snake in Indian architecture,
113, 114 — modern architecture Aryan,
stone architecture Turanian, 114-116.
Darwinism in Germany, article on, 284-
299 — leading contributions to the De
velopment Theory made in last fifteen
years in England, 284 — Goethe's indi
cation of the scientific drift of this half-
century, 284, 285 — Oken's and Kant's
suggestions, 286 — origin of the term
" Natural Selection," 287 — Europe pre
pared for Darwin's theory by Lyell's
geological works, 288 — great scientific
value of Darwin's treatise, 289 — gen
eral acceptance of his views by scientific
thinkers, 290 — delight of German athe
ists in them, 290-295 — their positive-
ness in asserting what Darwin only con
siders possible, or at most probable, 291
— the anthropoid apes, 292 — physical
likeness and spiritual unlikeness of the
. Bushman and the gorilla, 293, 294 — su
pernatural power may have been inserted
at the point where mind first appeared,

295 — Darwin not an atheist, 295, 296 —
the Paleyan theory of creation not valid,

296 — the most wonderful machinery of
nature must be accounted for, 297 —
even atheists confess that progress is the
law of the world, 297 — the Darwinian
conception of a Creator not lacking in
dignity and majesty, 298.

Ecclesiastical Crisis, The, in England, arti
cle on, 151-208 — the Liberal leaders
insisted that the Irish and English estab
lishments were entirely independent of
each other, 151 — bigoted action of the
English clergy, 152-155 — rejection of
Peel, Gladstone, and Sir Roundell Palm
er, by Oxford, 154 — efficiency and be
neficence of Gladstone's disestablishment

470

Index.

bill, 155 — general decadence of the
principle of State churches, 157-162 —
conservative political record of the cler
gy, 162 - 165 — their opposition to a na
tional system of secular education, 165,
166 — their influence in maintaining un
just university tests, 166, 167 — their
social usefulness in country parishes,
168, 169 — Church of England, as Chat
ham said, has Calvinistic Articles and a
Popish Liturgy, 170 — characteristics of
the Evangelical party, 171-174 — its
corruption by Lord Palmerston, 174- 176
— the Ritualist party, 177-196 — its
origin and growth at Oxford, 177, 178 —
"Young England," 179— J. H. New
man, 180-186 — Dr. Pusey, 186, 187 —
confessional, monasticism, 188, 189 —
utter untenableness of the Ritualist po
sition, 189-192 — the Broad-Church
party, 196-208 — its essential charac
teristic, rationalism, 196 — Dr. Hampden
its author, 199 — Dean Milman, Mr.
Robertson, Dean Stanley, 200 — Mr.
Jowett, Dr. Temple, Mr. Maurice, 201 —
"Essays and Reviews," 201-203 — Dr.
Colenso's books, 203 — Mr. Mansel's sui
cidal theory, 204 — litigation against
Broad-Churchmen, 205 - 208.

Ellis, Alexander J., his Early English Pro
nunciation, critical notice of, 420-437.

England, the ecclesiastical crisis in, 151-
208 — Norman Conquest of, 349-377.

Freeman, E. A., his, History of the Norman
Conquest reviewed, 349-377.

Gladstone, his fertility in theories for justi
fying the existence of the English estab
lishment, 151.

Great West, Parkman's Discovery of, re
viewed, 260 - 284.

Hazlitl, W. Carew, his Library of Old
Authors, critical notice of, 444-463.

Indian Migrations, article on, 33-82 —
knowledge now possessed of Indian lan
guages, 34 — identity of Indian systems
of consanguinity, 34, 35 — Algonkin
migrations, 35-43 — Atlantic nations,
36, 37 — Great Lake Nations, 37-39 —
Mississippi nations, 39-41 — Rocky
Mountain nations, 42, 43 — Dakota mi
grations, 43-54 — Dakotas, 43, 44 —
Asiniboines, 44 — Missouri nations, 45 —

. Winnebagoes, 46 — Upper Missouri na
tions, 46-50 — no direct evidence re
specting the country from which the
Dakotas carne, 47, 48 — probable course
of their migrations, 48-50 — Hodenos-
aunian nations, 51-54 — reasons for
classing them as a branch of the Da-
kotan stock, 51-53 — migrations of the
Gulf nations, 54, 55 — of the Prairie
nations, 55 — Shoshonee migrations, 55 -

58 — Athapasco, Apache migrations, 58,

59 — Village Indians of New Mexico
and Arizona, 59, 60 — of Mexico and
Central America, 61-67 — traditions of
certain tribes concerning their last mi
grations, 62-67 — mouud-builders, 67,

68 — Eskimo, 69 — summing up of the
evidence indicating the Valley of the
Columbia as the source of the Indian
population of North and South America,
69-78 — discussion of the question of
Asiatic origin of the Indian family, 78-
82.

James, Henry, his Secret o f Swedenborg
critical notice of, 463-468.

Janus, his The Pope and the Council, crit
ical notice of, 438-444.

Legal-Tender Act, The, article on, 299-
327 — relative duties of private and of
public citizens. 300 — we must assume
at the outset that the Legal-Tender Act
was not necessary, 300, 301 — prevalent
financial ignorance among officers of the
Government at the time of its enact
ment, 302 — Thaddeus Stevens's unfit-
ness to direct the economical policy of
the country, 302 — Mr. Spaulding's quali
fications, '303, 304 — the Legal-Tender
Act not necessary when enacted, 304-
311 — Mr. Spaulding's objections to sell
ing government bonds at market price,
307 — his letter on necessity of the Legal-
Tender Act, 308 — Mr. Hooper, Mr.
Bingham, Mr. Stevens, and Senator
Sherman's views of its necessity, 310,
311 — only two modes for a govern
ment to obtain money, — to take, or bor
row, 312 — principles which regulate
loans, 312, 313 — Mr. GrinneH's opinion
of Mr. Gallatin's opposition to a Legal-
Tender Act, 314 — government "shin
ing" in Wall Street, 314, 315 — cause
of Mr. Chase's consenting to Mr. Spauld
ing's bill, 315, 316 — debate in the
House of Representatives, 316-321 —
Mr. Spaulding's speech, 317 — Mr. Bing-
ham's. 319 — Mr. Stevens's and Mr.
Shellabarger's, 320 — the opponents, 321

— debate in the Senate, — Mr. Fessen-
den, 322 — Mr. Collamer and Mr. Sum-
ner, 323 — Mr. Spaulding's responsibil
ity, 324 — double misfortune that Mr.
Chase, as Secretary of Treasury, adopted
the course he did, 325 — no evidence
that the war might not have been suc
cessfully carried through without re
course to legal-tender paper, 325, 326.

Let-Alone Principle, The, article on, 1-33

— inability of men to see what consti
tutes individual liberty, 1 — the let-alone
principle either a declaration of rights,
or a maxim of policy, 1,2 — the natural
rights of man, and their modifications
by society, 2, 3 — limitation of rights to
gifts of nature, by the equal rights of
others, 3, 4 — by Voluntary obligations,
4 — by taxation, 4 — examination of the
necessity of taxation, 4-7 — " protec
tive duty " denned and condemned, 7, 8

— usury laws a relic of barbarism, 8 —
legal-tender laws, 8-10 — real points at
issue between friends and foes of free
dom in government and trade, 10, 11 - —
two points on which the let-alone prin-

Index.

471

ciple is based, 11, 12 — arguments from
these propositions, against protection,
12-24 — the iron industry, 14, 15 —
witty petition of Bastial, 15, 16 — arbi
trary distinction made by protectionists
between natural and artificial products,
17 — why we cannot compete with the
cheap labor of Europe, 23, 24 — the
policy of usury laws, 24-27 — the cur
rency question viewed in the light of the
let-alone principle, 27-33.

Maine's Ancient Law quoted, 351-360.

Migrations, Indian, 33-82.

Newman, J. H., his intellectual and moral
characteristics, 180-186.

Norman Conquest, The, of England, arti
cle on, 349-377 — Mr. Freeman's high
qualities as an historian, 350 — his con
tributions to comparative jurisprudence,
350, 351 — variety of form assumed by
the same primitive institutions in differ
ent countries, 351, 352 — patriarchal
character of early institutions, 353 —
division of people into two classes in
Rome and in England, 354 — relation of
eorls and ceorls to each other and to
the commonwealth, 354 — constitution
of the Witenagernot, 355 — nature of the
Anglo-Saxon kingship, 356 — rules of
inheritance to the throne, 357 — the
early date and steady continuance of
English liberties, 357, 358 — nature of
the Norman Conquest, 360, 361 — com
pared with the three earlier conquests,
362 — the Heptarchy, 362 — how the
country came to be called England, 363
— the continuousness of English history,
365 — imperial titles assumed by the
early kings of England, 366, 367 — rela
tion of Scotland to England, 367, 368 —
Anglo-Saxons, 368, 369 — marked differ
ences between them and the Normans,
370 — feudalism, 370 - 372 — political
and social changes wrought in England
by the Norman Conquest, 372, 373 —
growth and overthrow of the German
Empire, 374 — relation between William
the Conqueror and the papal see, 375,
376.

Palmer, Sir Roundell, why rejected by
Oxford, 154.

Parkman's Discovery of the Great West,
article on, 260-284 — wisdom of Mr.
Parkman's method of writing the his
tory of French discovery, colonization,
and dominion in North America, 260 —
deficiency in this department of our his
torical literature, 261 — variety and ex
tent of French enterprise in* this country,
261-263 — materials for Mr. Parkman's
history, 263, 264 — Nicollet's discovery
of the Winnebagoes, 266 — La Salle,
267 — story of his expeditions to Ohio,
Illinois, and the Mississippi, 268-281 —
Father Claude Allouez's mission at
Green Bay, 271 — Father Marquette, his
chivalrous devotion, adventures, and
death, 272 - 275 — La Salle's expedition

•with Beaujeu to take possession of the
mouth of the Mississippi, 282, 283.

Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism,
233-260.

Political Art, The Prospects of, article on,
398-419 — nature of political liberty,
398 — political history of the world made
up almost exclusively of disputes about
the seat of sovereignty, 399 — sover
eignty a means, not an end, 400 — pro
gress in legislation, 400 — scantv contri
butions made to the science of govern
ment since the Roman Empire, 401-403

— causes of the slow progress of scien
tific legislation, 404-411 — force of cus
tom, 405, 406 — ignorance of human
nature, 407 — this nature different in
masses of men from what it is in indi
vidual men, 408 — ascertained tendencies
of society, 409 — European ideal of the
State just after the Middle Ages, 409 —
difference between old-school and new-
school legislators, 411 — present ease and
skill in collecting and arranging statis
tics, 412 — unconscious assimilation go
ing on among all civilized states, 412 —
conscious assimilation, 413 — compara
tive legislation, 414 — parliamentary
legislation, 415 — its inadequacy as now
managed, 416 — outlook for future legis
lation, 417-419.

Poverty and Public Charity, article on,
327-349 — public charity a duty, 328

— Edward Livingston's Louisiana penal
code, 328 — poverty the condition of the
great majority of the American people
before 1820, 328, 329— first charitable
and penal establishments founded in
New York, Philadelphia, and Boston,
330 — results of Josiah Quincy's study
of the question of pauperism in Massa
chusetts, 331 — condition and system of .
Massachusetts previous to 1863, 331 -
333 — condition and number of poor in
England and on the European continent,
334, 335 — poverty not increasing in
United States, 336 — decrease of pau
perism in Massachusetts since 1863,
336-339— virtual decrease in New York
City, 340 — large percentage of foreign-
born or children of foreign-born parents
among present paupers, 34i — meth
ods adopted in Massachusetts for re
ducing the number of the dependent
classes to a minimum, 343 — the New
York City Board of Charities and Cor
rection, and the Massachusetts State
Board of Charities, 344 — deaf-mute edu
cation in Massachusetts, 345 — what the
Massachusetts Board has done and aims
to do, 345, 346 — the Visiting Agency,
and its excellent effects, 346, 347 — Re
ports of different State Boards, 347, 348.

Pumpelly, Raphael, his Across America
and Asia, critical notice of, 224-228.

Railway Problems in 1869, article on,
116-150 — immediate effect of Congress
granting aid to Pacific Railroad, 116 —

472

Index.

mysterious Credit Mobil ier, and its con
nection with the Pacific Railroad, 117 —
danger of fostering special interests by
legislation, 118 — experience of Massa
chusetts from 1836 to 1869, 119, 120 —
railroad consolidations consequent upon
completion of Pacific Railroad, 120-123

— extension of Baltimore and Ohio Rail
road, 121 — Pennsylvania Central, 121,
122 — Erie, 122 — New York Central,
122, 123 — neutralization of the Ameri
can policy concerning entail, by the
growth of railroad corporations, 124 —
points of likeness between the railroad
system and the Roman Catholic church,
125 — demoralizing political tendency of
the system, 127 — development of the
American Express system, 128 — its en
croachments upon the legitimate busi
ness of railroads, 129 — "time freights,"

— Blue, Red, and White Lines, 130, 131

— competition the bane of railways and
an injury to the public, 132, 133 — ne
cessity of combination among railroads,
and the dangerous power resulting there
from, 134-137 — "stock-watering" in
1869, 137- 145 — extent of freight busi
ness, 145, 146 — policy of having rail
roads owned by government, 146, 147 —
conflict between government and vast
corporations, 148-150.

Recent Publications, List of some, 468.

Spiritualism, The Physics and Physiology
of, article on, 233 -'260 — healthy scepti
cism of supernatural agencies, developed
by intelligence, 233 — phenomena of
spiritualism of such a character as to
impress profoundly the credulous and
ignorant, 234 — possibility of careful and
experienced judgment being deceived by
false sensorial impressions of real objects,
234, 240 — by non-existent images cre
ated by the mind, 235 — nature of ani
mal electricity, 236 — the mind, what
it is, and where located, 236, 237 —
Reichenbach's theory of magnetic influ
ences, od, 237-240 — no proof that mag
netism produces the clairvoyant state,
causes raps, etc., 240 — legerdemain in
many cases of supposed spiritualism, 241

— somnambulism, 241 - 250 — different
kinds, 242 — instance of natural som
nambulism, 242-244 — of artificial, 245

— voluntary hypnotism, 246-250 — hys
teria, and the analgesic condition induced
by it, 250 - 253 — a sufficient explanation
of some phenomena usually considered
the result of spiritual agency, 253, 254 —
catalepsy and ecstasy, 255-258 — no
proof yet adduced of the agency of spir

its, 258, 259 — Algazzali's description
of his search for actual knowledge, 259.

Tenofs Coup d'Etat, article on, 377 - 398 —
who M. Tenot is, 377 — previous me
moirs of the Coup d'Etat, 378 — Louis
Philippe's reign and abdication, 379 —
the Republican Constitution, 380 — Louis
Napoleon's return to Paris, 382 — his
election as President, 383 — successive
ruptures between him and the Assembly,
383, 384 — revision of the Constitution
to render his re-election imoossible, 384
— different parties in 1850, 385 — changes
of ministers, 386 — failure of the "ques-
tor's proposition," 386 — the President's
special confidants, — De Morny, 387 —
De Persigny and Colonel Flenry, 388 —
preparation to make General St.* Arnaud
Minister of War, 389 — President's re
ception on the night of December 1,
1851, 390 — principal features of the
coup d'etat, 390 — printing the President's
proclamations, 390 — occupation of the
Assembly Palace, and arrest of promi
nent men, 391 — purport of the procla
mations, 392 — mode and incidents of
the arrest of recusant members of As
sembly, 393 — barricades, death of Bau-
din, 394 — De Maupas frightened out of
his wicked wits, 395 — De Morny's plan
for crushing opposition, and its bloody
success, 396 — the coup d'etat complete,
396 — subsequent history of leading men
on either side, 397 — popularity of M.
Tenet's work, 398.

Treasury Reports, The, article on, 209-
223— 'laws of finance invariable and
universal, 209 — impolicy of taxing the
country to get out of debt immediately,
209,210 — illustrated by English finan
cial experience, 210 — difficulty of pla
cing a 4i per cent loan, 211 — basis of
the theory of currency, 213 — degree of
contraction necessary, 214 — our double
currency, — greenbacks, and , national
bank-notes, 215 — arguments of the
Comptroller of the Currency against
greenbacks, 217, 218 — feasible mode of
distributing and controlling the govern
ment currency through an Office of
Issue, 220-222 — illustrated in history
of Bank of England, 222 — difficulty of
securing judicious legislation on the sub
ject by Congress, 223.

free and Serpent Worship, 82-116.

Wesley's relation to the Church of England,
171.

Whitney, J. D., his Geological Survey of
California, critical notice of, 228-232.

Yosemite Guide-Book, notice of, 228-232.

Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company.

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